Poetics of the ‘ideal’: The ancient and Christian tradition in K. N. Leontyev’s novel Odysseus Polychroniades
Abstract
This article examines the interaction between ancient and Christian world-view traditions in K. N. Leontyev’s novel Odysseus Polychroniades. Leontyev expresses Christian ideas using images of Greek heroes. The ancient tradition is represented in the pan-aesthetic attitude of the literary work. In the text, the two traditions are compared using the ‘icon – picture’ opposition. The article stresses the connection between Christian and ancient tradition, which proves to be more important than differences between them. It is concluded that two cultural ideals affecting the formation of the novel’s poetics have major influence on each other.