The Palestina's theme in the creative dialogue between V. A. Zhukovsky and N. V. Gogol

A creative dialogue between V. A. Zhukovsky and N. V. Gogol began in the first half of the 1830s, and became especially intensive in the 1840s, when it was focused around religious and philosophical issues. At that time, Zhukovsky and Gogol were creating transcriptions of biblical texts and writing religious and philosophical prose. The theme of Palestine had taken a special place in their creative dialogue. The theme of Palestine was at the center of their creative communication in 1850, when Zhukovsky had asked Gogol, who visited the Holy land in 1848, to share «local colors of Palestine». The interest of Zhukovsky to the theme of Palestine was associated with his work over the Picturesque sacred history - part of his intended course for original home schooling for young children. During this work the poet had collected and studied numerous publications on biblical history and geography and had prepared many chronological schemes, maps of Palestine and so on. The interest of Zhukovsky in the theme of Palestine was linked with the idea of the poem «Wandering Jew». Gogol’s interest to the theme of Palestine was spiritual-ascetic: he hoped the pilgrimage to Jerusalem would transform him internally. This inner transformation was needed by Gogol in order to fulfill his artistic challenge - the finishing of the poem «Dead Souls». Even since 1842 Gogol clearly understood that the reason for the difficulty in working on this poem was that he had not walked the way of repentance and reformation, which should be taken by the characters of the poem in the second and third volumes. Since then, the fate of the poem in the mind of Gogol dealt with his moral perfection. And insofar as the fate of the poem, according to the thoughts of Gogol, was connected with the fate of Russia (Russia had to be transformed along with the transformation of the heroes of «Dead Souls»), it turned out that the fate of the entire country depended on Gogol’s moral perfection. Since the trip to Jerusalem was to be the central event of his moral betterment, we can understand his especially anxious and excited attitude towards this trip. Gogol, solving his spiritual-ascetic task, had an artistic purpose; Zhukovsky, on the contrary, solving the artistic challenge, was referring to the aim of spiritual-ascetic: the poem «Wandering Jew» was supposed to be summarizing his spiritual path, a kind of internal autobiography. Thus Gogol and Zhukovsky were in «inverse» position to the «Palestinian subject» and so do their poems «Wandering Jew» and «Dead Souls». Both poems are autobiographical. The autobiographical character of the «Wandering Jew» is retrospective (the author tells us about the already trodden path), the autobiographical character of «Dead Souls» is perspective: the author is trying to walk a certain way of life together with his hero.