«The Story of the Priest Alexei» (1877) is examined in general less often than other «mysterious stories» by I.S. Turgenev, sometimes remains even not included into this series. Meanwhile, its place among the later short stories by Turgenev is important, several mysteries associate with it. Some scholars compare «The Story…» to the works by N.S. Leskov and F.M. Dostoevsky; others interpret it in terms of mythopoetics and psychoanalysis or in the contexts of hagiographic topics, old Russian bookishness and folklore. Some authors of recent works base their readings on the narratological paradigm.
Keywords
I.S. Turgenev; «The Story of the Priest Alexei»; «mysterious stories»; F.M. Dostoevsky; hallucination; mythopoetics; unconscious; narratology.