Nikolai Gogol's Dreams of Water and Air (The Aesthetics and Poetics of the Elements in the Works of N. V. Gogol)

The article explores the imagination in artistic creativity through the works of N. V. Gogol. Material imagination, in which images are generated by nature itself, is connected to the anthropology of material elements – fire, water, earth, air – which has a long philosophical tradition beginning with the earliest steps of ancient philosophy. Poetic imagination returns to mythopoetic images that have separated in popular fantasy from the elements and phenomena of nature, their metaphorical significance. Analyzing material imagination in Gogol's texts ("Hanz Kuchelgarten," "Night of May...," "The Sorochinsky Fair," "The Terrible Revenge," "Viy") allows for the description of certain psychological patterns of mythopoetic imagination, in which the key role of the elements as forces of nature is directly linked to human experiences. Mythopoetic figures in the realm of material imagination cease to be banal allegories, instead embodying ancient and fundamental human experiences in which the deep unity of humans and the Cosmos is realized. The theoretical and methodological basis of this research is the concept of the phenomenology of poetic imagination by Gaston Bachelard, in particular, his concept of material imagination and its role in artistic creativity and perception. The visions of material imagination described by Gogol can, like other phenomena of art, take their place in phenomenological studies. The article outlines a possible phenomenological approach to understanding these phenomena (for example, using the concepts of E. Husserl such as "impressive sensations," "giletic data," and the concept of "pre-objective experience" by M. Merleau-Ponty). Analyzing material imagination in artistic creativity, including a phenomenological approach, allows for tracing the origins of mythopoetic images in the living connection of humans with the elements and forces of nature, explaining these origins, and illustrating them with numerous examples. This approach, which includes psychological and phenomenological reflection, significantly differs from many existing studies that emphasize the ethnographic approach to mythopoetic imagination and contributes a substantial input to the complex studies of the processes of artistic creativity and perception.