“Are art and artistry compatible with christianity...” (Reflections of K. S. Aksakov and his contemporaries)

The article deals with the problems of literary and spiritual disputes in social and aesthetic thought of the 1840s — 1850s. Researched articles K. S. and I. S. Aksakov, I. V. Kireyevsky, A. S. Khomyakova, epistolary heritage of Slavophiles; also are attracted some judgments about the art and religion such as opinions of V. A. Zhukovsky, P. A. Vyazemsky, V. F. Odoevsky. It turns out that the question of whether artistic creativity is compatible with the fullness of the religious worldview, becomes one of the central questions for Russian culture by the 1840s. A similar look at this decade is being advanced for the first time. In the article it is confirmed by a variety of materials: letters, autobiographical notes, literarycritical and journalistic articles of figures of the first half of the 19th century. Attracting of the poetic work of the Aksakov brothers (which does not, however, become the subject of special attention) helps to see the relevance of problems such as the relationship between empirical life and monasticism for that time; art and faith; individual self-improvement and national identity. Particular attention is paid in the article to the Slavophil perception of the last book of Gogol. It is established that it was “Selected places from correspondence with friends” that recreated the tension of social, aesthetic and religious disputes. In the Russian literature of the New Time it was the first experience of combining the style and imagery of spiritual prose with the aesthetic expression of the writer. A similar attempt to bring literature and religion closer together split society, prompting in the Slavophil environment exactly opposite judgments and evaluations. Disputes of the 1840s — 1850s recorded the difficulty of combining Art and Christianity and, at the same time, created the prerequisites for creative, quite successful experiments of this kind in Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century.