The New Testament in Nikolay Rainov’s Novel "Between Desert and Life"

Abstract

The text offers a parallel and juxtaposing reading of the canonical evangelical texts and Nikolay Rainov’s novel Between Desert and Life. It is known that in his complicated transformation of the New Testament, the writer implants theosophical ideas in his narration radically changing the meaning and the message. Which is more, his incarnation of God is, in a strange way, evil and misanthropic. The interpretation shows closeness between passages of the novel and the book N. Rainov was translating at that time (1919) – Thus Spoke Zarathustra.