고골의 「로마」에 나타난 멜랑콜리의 수사학

Abstract

Gogol's Rome is exceptional in his works especially in respect to his obsessional attachment to Rome. But early Gogol in Ukraina was acquainted with the Latin culture and the tradition of idealizing Rome. In addition, he finds the spiritual hometown in Rome in the late 1830-s after leaving Russia in despair and disappointment. In these elements we can find one common psychological element, that is, melancholy. Culturally Ficino's concept of melancholy as a dual character of genius serves as the mental principle of Baroque and picturesque paintings, which actually prove to be the rhetorical sub-texts in Rome. In this work, melancholy is projected into the rhetoric representation of two heroes of Annuntiata and young prince and two cities of Paris and Rome. Gogol represents them rhetorically, using mainly the sub-texts of Baroque and picturesque paintings. Here Gogo's aesthetics is based primarily on the Neoplatonism, characterized by the mixture of the Christianity and ancient mysticism, especially gnosticism. In this study the psychological and aesthetic principles in Rome, which prove to be recurrent in Gogol's whole works, show Gogol's specific aesthetic solution viewpoint in the earlt 1840s. In addition, Gogol himself considered this work as a prelude of Dead Souls. Both facts imply that this work might serve as the reliable guide for the understanding of Gogol's artistic world, especially Dead Souls. The unsolved questions raised in Rome, such as the contradiction of Renaissance aesthetics and Baroque aesthetics, the contradiction of the Christianity and pagan mysticism, the distortion or absence of the image of Father, might be searched for in the next study of Gogol's Dead Souls.