“Life is Joy”: Franciscan Foundations of Mikhail Prishvin’s Life-Creation Strategy

The article examines "Francis' layer" in the works of Mikhail Prishvin from 1908 to 1953 (short story "Pro zverya uzhasnogo vida" ("About a Terrible-Looking Beast"), novella "Zhen-Shen" ("Ginseng"), book "Zolotoy Rog" ("Golden Horn Bay"), "Diary," "Nezabudky" ("For- get-Me-Nots"), "Glaza zemli" ("Eyes of the Earth"), "Notebook"), revealing direct and hidden references to the image of St. Francis of Assisi and Franciscan texts ("Canticle of the Sun," Thomas of Celano's "First Life of St. Francis of Assisi," "Little Flowers of St. Francis"). The image of St. Francis of Assisi appears in Prishvin's texts at critical moments in Russian history (1908, 1917, 1933, 1937, 1953) and becomes not only a literary but an existential and life-creative the writer's response to the challenges of the time. The Franciscan experience of nature in its personalistic uniqueness becomes one of the most important sources of Prishvin's main life-creating (spiritual practice) principle ("kindred (merciful) attention"), which gives rise to a feeling of happiness in the soul. In the 1940s Prishvin returns to the cultural myth of St. Francis as a Renaissance personality, which took shape in the Russian religious and philosophical Renaissance at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries; in this myth St. Francis, with his acceptance and justification of the world as God's creation, overcomes medieval ascetic dualism (matter as evil, the gap between flesh and spirit) and expresses humanistic values, thereby connecting God and the world, Christianity and nature, Christianity and culture. St. Francis becomes one of the crucial ontological sources of Prishvin's concept of the integrity of being (the unity of the earthly and the heavenly). From a Franciscan personalistic position (meeting a star, a drop of dew, and a forget-me-not), Prishvin argues with the positivist view of the universe (Harold Spencer Jones), which destroys the Christian and romantic myth of the living cosmos. Prishvin brings clos- er to St. Francis, joy as a crucial concept of his life creativity. Focusing on the image of St. Francis, Prishvin is building his life-creative strategy in the tragic 20th century. Summing up his life, the writer defines this strategy and mission ontologically in the spirit of St. Francis ("Life is joy").