“Prometheus. Meditation” by Thomas Merton and “Doctor Zhivago” by Boris Pasternak: dialogue of ideas

The purpose of this article is to show the ideological connection between two diverse texts corresponding to the same epoch, namely the prose poem “Prometheus. Meditation” by the American monk T. Merton and the novel by the classic of Soviet literature B. Pasternak “Doctor Zhivago”. The article shows how the figure of Prometheus in Hesiod’s version, interpreted by Merton as a sign of the psychological situation in which a modern person finds himself, is displayed in some characters of Doctor Zhivago (Strelnikov, Mi-Kulitsyn, Dudorov and Gordon), and the figure of Prometheus in the Aeschylus version, understood by Merton as a prototype of Christ, - in the image of Yuri Andreevich Zhivago. Merton and Pasternak single out the main human quality - the ability to give oneself to others. The article shows two opposite models of human behavior, based on the idea of the manifestation of personal will or rejection of it, embodied in Pasternak’s novel, and the corresponding behavioral models presented in Merton’s essay. The central image of the novel, Yuri Zhivago, is a poet who sacrifices his life for the divine gift of poetry. The Aeschylus Prometheus also sacrifices his life. The zone of ideological rapprochement between the two authors - Pasternak and Merton - is the understanding of man as a conductor of the divine gift. This theme is also reflected in Pasternak’s later lyrics. The novel “Doctor Zhivago” ideologically enriches Merton’s concept, showing that a person can give himself to people by serving art. The poetic inspiration of Yuri Zhivago is an analogue of the divine fire received as a gift by Prometheus. This research is theoretically based on M.M. Bakhtin’s idea of a dialogical meeting of two consciousnesses in the humanitarian sphere. In the framework of this work, the intersection of views of T. Merton and B. Pasternak are considered in the context of a person’s understanding of the phenomenon of life as a gift. The novelty of the work is due to the lack of research in which Merton’s theology would be compared with Pasternak’s Christian concept.