Religious problematics in the literary works and journalism of A. Nepominyashchiy

Abstract

   The article describes religious views of the Russian rock bard A. Nepomnyashchiy. Based on the “Bread of the Earth” album, the blog “In hoc signo vinces!” in LiveJournal and the article “Orthodoxy and Rock Music”, the article reconstructs the poet’s Orthodox worldview, examines various aspects of his life and his perception of the world. In particular, it reveals the attitude of A. Nepomnyashchiy to the institution of the Church, to other religions, to the theme of faith in poetic art, to rock poetry and modern “industrial civilization”. The work identifies the possibility of studying the dialogical relationships between Christian culture and rock poetry, and presents A. Nepomnyashchiy’s view of this problem. In the course of this study, we found that in the early 2000s, the journalism, poetry and blog of A. Nepomnyashchiy revealed the rock poet’s well-rounded views on the relationships between Christianity and Russian culture, on the Orthodox Church and on the possibility of the coexistence of Orthodox ideology with protest sentiments, on the modern secular society, “industrial civilization”, other religions and Western culture. We highlight the contrast between the dominant moods in the diary and in his songwriting: in the poet’s LiveJournal simple positive entries prevail, but in the album “Bread of the Earth” eschatological motifs, the motifs of winter, cold, war, alienation and loss of love dominate.