“The Truth Is Not Transmitted!”: Expression, Understanding and Dialogue in V. F. Odoevsky’s Novel “Russian Nights”

The article examines the problems of expression, understanding and dialogue in the works of V. Odoevsky. The writer emphasized the importance and originality of his thoughts about this in a letter to A. Kraevsky. Odoevsky understood language broadly, as a semiotic system. Natural sciences, history, art have their own languages. The writer gave preference to the language of art and emphasized the superiority of the microcosm over the macrocosm, and of intuitive, creative knowledge over rational knowledge. Being a lybomudr, Odoevsky dreamed of creating an “ideal” language common to all sciences, but he soon became disillusioned with this idea. In the 1830s, the writer moved away from philosophical abstractions to the individual and unique. At the same time, he noted the universality of the language of art and especially music. In the novel “Russian Nights” Odoevsky comes close to the problems of expression and awareness of the “inexpressible” in words. The form of the novel actualizes this issue, since it is largely structured as a dialogue between friends who express their innermost thoughts, but often encounter misunderstanding or cold irony from their rational interlocutors. According to Odoevsky, the path to a genuine statement, as well as to its understanding, lies in the realm of the spirit: only a pure heart and prayer will help a person fully express his thought and understand another. Odoevsky’s philosophy of language is rooted in German classical philosophy, medieval Western European mysticism and the Orthodox patristic tradition.