The leitmotif of Christian self-effacement in Boris Zaitsev’s prose (short stories “Earthly Sorrow” and “Student Benedictov” used as the example)

The analysis of two short stories by B. K. Zaitsev, “Earthly Sorrow” and “Student Benedict”, written in Russia in the 1910s are presented hereafter. Their main leitmotif is the value of human life, and the memory of it in future generations. The purpose of the study is to identify Christian motifs in the work of B. K. Zaitsev, hidden or explicit, with these two works used as the example. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that, despite the interest in Zaitsev as one of the key figures in the literature of the Russian diaspora in the first half of the 20th century and many studies of Zaitsev’s work, in particular, within the framework of Christian philosophy, these two short stories are considered in this aspect for the first time. This analysis has revealed ideas related to the Christian religious concept, largely presented implicitly by the writer. The results obtained indicate the identified cases of intertextuality in the works of B. K. Zaitsev, allusions to his novella “St. Sergius of Radonezh”, other famous works of literature, in particular, Seneca’s “Moral Letters to Lucilius”, the poem “Kurgan” by A. K. Tolstoy, as well as the texts of the Bible, the biography of St. Francis of Assisi. There are direct and implicit references to A. S. Pushkin’s poem “…A poor knight lived in the world” and his verse novel “Eugene Onegin”.