The article reveals that the theme “Perfect love casts out fear…”, which is stated in the epigraph to N.S. Leskov’s story “Non-Lethal Golovan”, determines the poetics of the whole work and especially the image of the protagonist. The epigraph is firstly attributed to the first epistle of John. It is emphasized that the name of John indicates the theme of perfect love, because it is the central theme in all the texts of this apostle. The forms of embodiment of this theme in the story such as mythopoetics, the image of the rite, the story-remembrance, turn the image of the righteous into the prototype (John the Theologian, George the Victorious, Jesus Christ). The reminiscences, which urge the reader to recall the prototype of the image, are stated and described. Leskov’s reasons and methods of creating an image in the text inherit the technique, language and meaning of the icon. This resemblance may be discovered in the author's effort to show the face of the saint, and the reader to see him. The study of the interaction between word and image in the artistic system of the Russian classic continues in this article. It is possible thanks to the analysis of poetics, followed by the description of the aesthetic principles of the writer,
and to revealing the anagogical properties of the image. There is the depiction of the moment of spiritual victory over evil in Leskov’s story “Non-Lethal Golovan”. That miracle is the plot of all the icons “The Miracle of St. George about the Serpent”. The iconographic image is the archetypal for the verbal one. Both of them have the same process of recollection, which covers the hero-narrator as well as the reader. The story in Leskov’s “righteous” cycle teleologically embodies the theme of perfect love as the theme of insight, “eyes of the soul” enlightenment.
For citation:
Evdokimova O.V., Trofimova A.V. “Perfect love casts out fear…”: the forms of the theme embodiment in the story “Non-Lethal Golovan” by N.S. Leskov, Ivanovo State University Bulletin, Series: Humanities, 2023, iss. 4, pp. 13—20.