Życie, śmierć i coś jeszcze… Agonistyka religijna w twórczości Mikołaja Gogola

Life, death, and something else... Religious struggle in the works of Nikolai Gogol

The article considers the religious nature of the creative life of Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) from a philosophical point of view. The writer’s creative life is understood as a struggle (bodily and spiritual) between God and the world, life and death. This struggle builds a kind of stage on which the writer’s life unfolds. In addition, the article takes up the perception and understanding of reality as “banality” (Rus. pošlost’), the demonism and atheism that are connected with it, the religious function of art, and the ways of seeking salvation (at various levels of experience and under different guises: the salvation of the world, salvation outside the world, and the salvation of oneself). Finally, the problem of religious alienation is considered, seen through the prism of the life and creative experience of Gogol.