ON THE MEANING OF “PICTURESQUENESS” OF THE SOUTHERN WORLD IN GOGOL’S WORKS (once again about the writer’s attitude to the Nazarene artists)

In Italian painting, Gogol sought to find a spiritual counterbalance to the folklore devilry of another, Little Russian South, embodied in the heroines of the cycle “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” (1831–1832) and the story “Viy” from the cycle “Mirgorod” (1834) – however, he discovered its source. In the cycle “Arabesque”, the Renaissance ideal of Raphael’s Madonna returned to the ancient standard of sensual beauty, which in “Evenings...” and “Vie” was defined as demonic. As a result, Gogol saw the threat of spiritual enslavement in the picturesqueness of the South as a whole. In the second edition of the story “Portrait” (1842–1843), the religious ideal of art was no longer born of the picturesqueness of the South, personified in the demonic moneylender, but was opposed to it.