Garden and god in the novels by L.Tolstoy and F.Dostoevskiy

The garden in the famous trilogy is considered to be locus amoenus, an idyll place of «eternal spring and love», «child Eden», whose symbol is maman. Another sense of the garden is related to the image of mother: hortus conclusus, a place of religious meditation and pray to God. The garden appears as a locus of self-cognition and comprehension of «theological truth» in the novel by F.M. Dostoevskiy «Brothers Karamazov». It is embodied in monastic elder Zosima and symbolizes «life-paradise», taking central place in Zosima's theodicy. In the garden Nicolenka Irtenjev and Alesha Karamazov experience a moment of epiphany. Semantics of the «garden-epiphany», «garden-revelation» of the both writers is related to spiritual discoveries of the characters.