The theme of “memento mori" in Russian literature of the 19th century (N. V. Gogol and L. N. Tolstoy)

The article is devoted to the topic “memento mori” (memory of death) in the works of N. V. Gogol and L. N. Tolstoy. The ideological position of the writers is marked by complex religious searches and spiritual searches, in which the category of death is a special semantic dominant. Reflections on the transience of life, the desire to abandon the vain world, and the acquisition of the true meaning of existence connect the work of Gogol and Tolstoy with the genre tradition of the Middle Ages – “memento mori". The purpose of the study is to determine the semantic field of the phenomenon of death in the artistic systems of these authors, taking into account their worldview. The scientific novelty of the material is due to the chosen research vector – the study of the realization of the death motif as a key concept of "true" and "false" in the author's reflections on the meaning of human existence. As a result of the analysis, it was found that in Gogol's work the theme of death is understood in line with the Orthodox tradition and from the standpoint of ethics in the artistic world of Leo Tolstoy. Regardless of the religious beliefs that lie in different ideological planes, the writers emphasized the moral principle in death.