Elena S. Tverdislova, PhD in Philology, Academic Consultant, Jerusalem Russian City Library, Agrippas Street, 88, 9451309, Jerusalem, Israel. E-mail: helenatverd@gmail.com
The author of this paper analyzes the notion of childhood, its formation and development, in the works of Mikhail Prishvin and Janusz Korchak It argues that childhood should be thought of as an aspect of being that does not pass with maturity. Despite the differences in their life circumstances. which very trying for Prishvin and tragic for Korchak, both writers shared a similar approach to children, and the description of childlike feelings and states. They measured childhood as an existential category inseparable from religious consciousness. Their religiosity was another commonality. Prishvin came from a family of schismatics, Korchak came from the Jewish faith. For them, the question of God was a natural one, and inseparable from ethics, and religious beliefs were broader than doctrine. Both professed childhood as a belief in the original purity of human nature. Adults had to turn this property into a way of life and trust the child like themselves. This approach became their connecting thread between the essence of being and faith, which found its expression in the existential-religious justification of childhood. They wrote not for children, but about children and with an appeal to adults – on behalf of the child.
childhood; existential category; religious consciousness; human nature; children’s writer; children’s doctor.
30.10.2023
25.11.2023
Tverdislova, E.S. “Prishvin and Korchak: Existentialreligious Perception of Childhood and Child as a Life Program”. Literaturovedcheskii zhurnal, no. 1(63), 2024, pp. 131–151. (In Russ.) DOI: 10.31249/litzhur/2024.63.07
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