DANGEROUS THEORY OF PRAYER. GOGOL’S APOCALYPTIC INPATIENCE AND THE STATE OF HEAVEN
Annotation
An important part of the non-fictional heritage of N. V. Gogol, which can be called
theological, was practically unknown and not studied until the beginning of the 20th century.
Subsequently, these texts became the reason why the name of Gogol is now included in the
history of the formation of philosophical and theological thought in Russia. G. Florovsky,
generally recognizing Gogol’s theological talent, sharply criticizes the religious reasoning
of the Russian classic, primarily his “theory of prayer”, seeing in it a dangerous temptation
for Christian believers. This article attempts to show that the fragment of Gogol’s letter to
Yazykov chosen by Florovsky does not satisfy the requirements of pure theory, remaining
a practical edification. Bringing Gogol’s thought to the necessary level of abstraction, as well as
its correlation with his other thoughts about prayer in particular and Christianity in general,
allows us not only to remove the main accusations from the “theory”, but also to use it as a link
between Gogol’s ideas about individual duty of every Christian and his project of a theocratic
state. This, in turn, clarifies Gogol’s ideas about the special importance of state service and his
own place in Russian literature as a writer as a type of religious and public service.
Keywords
Gogol, prayer, service, state, monarchy, theocracy, author’s death
Literature
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The research was carried out at Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University with the support of
the Russian Science Foundation, project No 22–18–00214, https://rscf.ru/en/project/22–18–00214/