Gerasimova Svetlana Valentinovna

Gerasimova Svetlana Valentinovna

Dec., 2025

sacred and profane culture, cultural code, compassion, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Teffi, religious philosophers.

The purpose of the article is to correlate the principles of the genesis of love-compassion in Russian culture with artistic models of its realization in fiction, to show how love-compassion forms Russian cultural identity and influences people's lives, inspiring them to good deeds and mutual assistance. Works of fiction were chosen as material for the analysis of this problem. The conceptualization of love-compassion is presented in Teffi's story «The Limit» («Predel»). This theme is also developed in the literature of the Golden Age. In Pushkin's novel-poem, Tatyana Larina spiritually matures from European love-idealization to love-compassion for Onegin, not ceasing to love him, even when he became for her the murderer of Lensky and a parody of a romantic hero. Sonechka Marmeladova is presented as a genius of love-compassion. Based on the analysis of this problem, the article formulates important conclusions. The sacred code of love-compassion for Christ forms the Russian understanding of love-compassion in everyday life. Sacred experience determines the ordinary. Love compassion is the core of Russian culture. This type of love correlates with the ideal of foolishness, darkened icons, apophatic theology and the philosophy of kenosis, which was developed by Russian religious philosophers.

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license