"Barlaam’s heresy" and "Mirages" by Grigory Nedetovsky

For research of the atitude towards Hesychast tradition in the Russian post-reform culture of the 19th century we compared two works belonging to G. I. Nedetovsky (O. Zabyty) (1846-1922), writen in different genres: patrology article “Varlaamitsky Heresy” (1872) and narrative “Mirages” (1882). First of all, we sought to single out a psychological approach of Nedetovsky-patrologist. Tis approach, in our opinion, extremely precisely describes the background on which there was a perception of the Hesychasm by the ‘high’ culture of 19th century. Te understanding of this psychological approach according to which perception of Hesychasm was impossible does possible reconstruction of ‘the Russian culture without Hesychasm’. Tis reconstruction, on the one hand, was made at O. Zabyty’s “Mirages”, and, on the other hand, it had a real embodiment in secular culture of educated Russian society of the end of the 19th century. Frailty of these designs of ‘Russia without Hesychasm’ is the proof which is carried out by the principle of reductio ad absurdum that Hesychast tradition is actually important for the Russian culture.