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Abstract:

The article examines Mikhail Prishvin’s story “Spas- Chekryak,” which opens the prose cycle “New Earth” in the book of “responses to life,” “Zavoroshka” (1913), in a broad historical, cultural, and religious-philosophical context. Dedicated to the writer’s impressions of the pilgrimage to the Bolkhov district of the Oryol province to the famous priest Georgy Kossov (1855–1928), “Spas-Chekryak” continues the theme of apology of the white clergy and its public vocation in a situation of tense religious, and philosophical searches in Russian society at the turn of the 19^th–20^th centuries. T he a rticle d iscusses t he writer’s spiritual and worldview position through his dialogue and dispute with V.V. Rozanov “about the sweetest Jesus and the bitter fruits of the world.” The synthesis of “earthly” and “heavenly,” physical and metaphysical principles, organizing the artistic space of the story, determines the logic and ontology of Prishvin’s vision of the world, the key to comprehension of which is the idea of “recognition of reason in religious affairs,” tracing to the spiritual and practical experience of the elder Ambrose of Optina, who blessed Yegor Chekryakovsky for pastoral service “in the world” and “for the world.”