Dialogue with the bible in Thomson’s world of arts

Abstract

The deepest reflection and longing for paradise lost have appeared in the English literature since Shakespeare and Milton. In the era of romanticism, it resulted in "cemetery poetry", a gothic horror novel, and ArtNuovo creates a true artistic tonatology, the most prominent representative of which was J. Thomson. The outcast poet, who lived his life under the oppression of misery and alcoholism, reached the limits of despair in “The City of Terrible Night”, severing communication not only with somewhat non-existing God, but also with surroundings and communications of the world of the living. The ghosts of former inhabitants of the earth are his lyrical characters; the landscape is dematerialized; only the "dead" is aesthetized here. And the antithesis to the biblical New Jerusalem was justly regarded here. However, the "stopped moment" of perpetual despair does not go beyond the boundaries of the Christian cosmos. Thomson was in the orbit of Calvinism, believing that God arbitrarily chose only a few people, doomed others to infernal torment, clearly ranking himself among the latter. But his denial of God ultimately sounds like an appeal to Him. The author's consciousness remains within the limits, set by the biblical paradigm, which is characteristic of Modernism as a whole. Finally, we note, that it’s just human indifference to humans’ own salvation, which the same Calvinism considers the sign of renunciation, it makes us look more closely at the author's lyrical dialogue with the Creator.