|
The term Russian soul ((ロシア語:Русская душа); also ''great Russian soul'', ''mystifying Russian soul'') has been used in literature to describe Russian spirituality. The writings of many Russian writers such as Nikolai Gogol, Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky offer descriptions of the Russian soul. The Russian word "душа" (''dushá''), is most closely translated into the word soul. The Russian soul can be described as a cultural tendency of Russians to describe life and events from a religious and philosophically symbolic perspective. This word's widespread use and the flexibility of its use in everyday speaking is one way in which the Russian soul manifests itself in Russian culture. In Russia a person's soul or ''dusha'' is the key to a person's identity and behavior and this cultural understanding that equates the person with his soul is what is described as the Russian soul. Depth, strength, and compassion are general characteristics of the Russian soul. According to Dostoevsky, "the most basic, most rudimentary spiritual need of the Russian people is the need for suffering, ever-present and unquenchable, everywhere and in everything".〔''Russian Talk: Culture and Conversation During Perestroika'', Nancy Ries, Cornell University Press (1997), ISBN 0-8014-8416-2.〕 Dostoevsky's ideas about Russian soul are closely connected with Eastern Orthodox Christianity, its ideal of Christ, his suffering for others, his will to die for others and his quiet humility about it. In the second edition of the story ''Taras Bulba'', Gogol provides one of the early characterizations of what came to be known as the Russian soul when Taras exhorted his fellow Cossacks, saying: "There have been brotherhoods in other lands, but never any such brotherhoods as on our Russian soil. It has happened to many of you to be in foreign lands. You look: there are people there also, God's creatures, too; and you talk with them as with the men of your own country. But when it comes to saying a hearty word--you will see. No! They are sensible people, but not the same; the same kind of people, and yet not the same! No, brothers, to love as the Russian soul loves, is to love not with the mind or anything else, but with all that God has given, all that is within you."〔''Taras Bulba''; by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol; The Project Gutenberg Etext of Taras Bulba and Other Tales; February, 1998; (#1197 )〕 ==The Term== The concept of a Russian soul arose in the 1840s chiefly as a literary phenomenon. Famous author Nikolai Gogol and literary critic Vissarion Belinskii jointly coined the term upon the publication of Gogol’s masterpiece ''Dead Souls'' in 1842. At the time landowners often referred to their serfs as “souls” for accounting purposes, and the novel’s title refers to the protagonist’s scheme of purchasing claims to deceased serfs. Apart from this literal meaning, however, Gogol also intended the title as an observation of landowners’ loss of soul in exploiting serfs.〔Robert C. Williams, "The Russian Soul: A Study in European Thought and Non-European Nationalism," ''Journal of the History of Ideas'' 31 (1970): 573-588, accessed November 27, 2010, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2708261〕 Vissarion Belinskii, a notedly radical critic, took Gogol’s intentions a few steps farther and inferred from the novel a new recognition of a national soul, existing apart from the government and founded in the lives of the lower class. Indeed, Belinskii used the term “Russian soul” several times in his analyses of Gogol’s work, and from there the phrase grew in prominence, and eventually became more clearly defined through the writings of authors such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky. This famous brand of nationalism, however, was the product of a continuous effort by Russia’s various classes to define a national identity.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Russian soul」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|