Teater och teologi : Kristet och judiskt rolltagande i Vladimir Sharovs roman Repetitsii

• The article rises questions of how ideas of chosenness are presented in Vladimir Sharov’s novel The Rehearsals (Repititii) and how the various characters in the narrative understand their identities in relation to other religious groups. Starting from Sharov’s own statement that the history of Russia could be seen as a commentary to the Bible, the article examines how different religious groups are portrayed in the novel and how the groups are attributed with various roles, put against each other in gradually more and more grave conflicts, finally resulting in the main actors viewing the killing of the Other as necessary for fulfilling God’s eschatological plan. The article aims to show how, in the narrative, themes of chosenness, religious zealotry and expectance for an imminent End lead up to the killing of the actors playing the parts of the Jews, who, according to the narrative, need to be exterminated in order to hasten the End. Applying the term heterotopia, the article concludes that The Rehearsals illustrates, in condensed form, conflicts and tensions between Jewish and orthodox Christian theology and exegesis within Russian history, and how these tensions are most acute in historical periods which are particularly dramatic externally and/or internally. The novel begins and ends claiming that the Jewish nation ceased to exist with the boy Kobylin, who in 1939 miraculously survived the massacre that was aimed at killing all the Jews, but who was no longer a Jew when he left the site of the trauma, a metaphoric theme that is also central to the article. 

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Filosofi, etik och religion -- Religionshistoria (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Philosophy, Ethics and Religion -- History of Religions (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Religionshistoria

History of Religions

Religionshistoria

History of Religions

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kap (ämneskategori)