DAS GEWAND DES SCHICKSALS: ein Blick auf Dmitrij Merežkovskijs Roman über Julian den Abtrünnigen (Julian Apostata) und seinen klassizistischen Symbolismus

[Fortune’s vestige: a view on Dmitrij Merežkovskij’s novel Julian the Apostate and its classicising symbolism]

Yordan Lyutskanov

The study rethinks the place of Dmitrij Merežkovskij within Russian aesthetical culture between Dostoevskij and Bakhtin. This comes as a side-effect from investigating the poetics of his first novel (considered to be the first Russian modernist novel), “Julian the Apostate”, which actually has been the theme of study. A globalising conception, designating it as “classicising symbolism”, has been introduced. Restraining itself from demonstrating close analysis of the novel here, the inquiry focuses its summarising approach on two issues: of juxtaposing various drama forms within the frame of the novel and of aesthetically relevant aspects of epiphany throughout the plot unfolding (and approaching the phenomenon of cultural memory selectiveness as made manifest through preference to particular forms of synaesthesia).
In employing the concept of “classicising symbolism” the author of the work has experienced the influence of Lev Pumpjanskij (whose philological project shares genealogy with Merežkovskij’s and Bakhtin’s) and thereby has put himself in an intriguing epistemological situation.