GNOSTIC TOPOS IN THE LITERATURE OF GERMAN ROMANTICISM

Abstract

The article is devoted to the manifestation of Gnostic topos in the culture of German Romanticism, in particular, in the theory and artistic practice of the Jena Romantics, who formed a mystical understanding of art, which gave rise to a reverence for the artist-creator, the savior poet, who was called upon to spiritualize the imperfect and bring the Kingdom of God into the earthly existence. The Gnostic topos was formed as a result of the adoption of the ideas and images of Gnosticism by the European culture. They continued to exist within European, in particular, German culture and, in the process of assimilating individual creative consciousness, actualized the meaning that resonated with the ideological concept of a particular cultural era. Rethinking the Gnostic topoi in the works of the German romantics was expressed in a special teaching about the heroic, the idea of falling away from the world, which acquired the social and moral meaning of the material and spiritual opposition, in the hierarchy of self-sufcient worlds between God and man built through individualized knowledge-revelation (gnosis). The reflection of the Gnostic topos in the works of Novalis is considered in detail.