Religious Community and the Integrity of the Internal and External in the Unfinished Story ‘Island’ by I. V. Kireevsky

Abstract

This article examines the ideal of social life that I. V. Kireevsky has presented in his unfi nished story “The Island” (1838), and how this ideal actually turns out to be an artistic explication of the ideas expressed by the author in his response article to A. S. Khomyakov (1839). It shows how Kireevsky discusses the relationship between the internal and the external, since the story presents actually both the ideal of its coherence, integrity (the religious community of the islanders as an example), and variations of deviation from the ideal (the inhabitants of mainland Greece and Europeans as an example). In the journey of the main character Alexander Paleolog, I. V. Kireevsky also raises the question of personal responsibility, spiritual work on oneself on the path to the ideal, which he further develops in the texts of the 1840–1850s.