I remember very well the saint’s words: “People are proud and cannot carry out impassive judgment on themselves” (St. Basil the Great), but when there is very little left before stating that he has already lived to advanced years, you involuntarily reverse your thoughts in the past years.
From this "reverse" you very rarely remain positive and come into symphonic agreement with the unforgettable pop from "The Elusive Avengers": "We are all weak, for human beings are." I still want to sum up the results of the past years, and it’s always nice to remember what touches, inspires and inspires joy. And there is nothing shameful and unorthodox in joy. The apostle unambiguously said about this: “However, brethren, rejoice, be perfected, be comforted, be of one mind, be at peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you” (2 Corinthians 13:11).
It is clear that today the meaning of words and definitions has changed. The world has even brought its own meanings to seemingly clear concepts, far from faith and God, but we are Orthodox, and we love akathists, and there, no matter the stanza, then “Rejoice!”.
I’ll count down five decades with a tail and I’ll definitely remember:
The sieve jumps across the fields,
And a trough in the meadows ...
Mom reads, but I feel sorry for Fedor, and how not to feel sorry if:
And the poor woman is alone,
And she cries and she cries.
A woman would sit at the table,
Yes, the table is out of the gate.
Baba would cook cabbage soup,
Go look for the pot!
And the cups are gone, and the glasses,
Only cockroaches remained.
Oh, woe to Fedora,
Woe!
My father did not read Chukovsky and Marshak to me. He knew otherwise. I learned about what friendship is and who a hero is from Simon's lines:
- You hear me, I believe:
Do not take such death.
Hold on my boy: in the light
Don't die twice.
No one in our life can
Get out of the saddle! -
Such a saying
Major had.
And how not to be a coward and not be afraid at night, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin taught me:
Poor Vanya was a coward:
Since he is late at times,
Covered in sweat, pale with fear,
I went home through the cemetery.
Years passed. Tales from the three-volume book of Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev, together with Pinocchio and the Snow Queen, were replaced by the wizard from the Emerald City with Oorfene Deuce and underground kings, then Jules Verne came with Captain Grant, Ayrton and Nemo.
Childhood - after all, it had an amazing feature: from morning to evening - an eternity. Now we consider this time according to the principle: Christmas - Easter - Trinity - Protection ... and again Christmas. Everything is fleeting, and sometimes it seems that instantly. In childhood it is different, every day there is amazing, with amazing news and an exciting event. All for the first time.
School years - the discovery of Russian classics. It was impossible not to open it, since the teacher was Maria Ivanovna. So all the countless good stories and stories about “Maryivanovna” are about my teacher. It is thanks to her that until the present day I quote the incomparable Skalozub to the place and out of place: “If evil is to be stopped: to collect all the books and burn them,” as I paraphrase Molchalin: “At my age, it is “worthy” to dare to have your own judgment. Maria Ivanovna gave us the ability to understand the works under study not only from a literature textbook, but also from the point of view of their everlasting modernity (this is the main difference between the classics and the literary boulevard). And although the name of the teacher was absolutely Soviet - Komissarov, now it is clear that she did not think in terms of socialist realism. Perhaps that is why, when my friend and I decided to defend poor Grushnitsky and blame the proud Pechorin from A Hero of Our Time, Maria Ivanovna silently, but with a smile, returned the essays to us, where there was simply no grade.
Many years later, in high school and in the army, when I first opened the Bible, it became clear that many of the stories of Scripture were familiar to me. Our historian, without pointing to the source, told us about the flood, and about Job, and about Abraham. His lesson almost always ended with a beautiful, as he said, “legend”, which, as it turned out later, was a presentation of the Bible.
With books in those years it was not easy, but I wanted to read. And even when I spent half of my first salary on the semi-legal book market in Rostov, my parents did not grumble, because for them the truth that “a book is the best gift” really was indisputable.
Years passed, times changed dramatically. It became not afraid to pronounce the names of those writers whose existence we knew only from "critical" devastating articles in Soviet newspapers. Although in the army the political officer took away from me One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which had been withdrawn from the libraries, he returned the magazine during demobilization. And the institute teacher on strength of materials, seeing that instead of studying Hooke’s law and Bernoulli’s hypothesis, I was reading “A calf butted an oak tree,” he only grinned, shook his finger, and after the lecture asked for the sowing pamphlet “until the morning.”
By the years of mature, already, one might say, family, by the thirtieth birthday, along with thick literary magazines with texts by Yu.V. Trifonova, V.D. Dudintseva, A.P. Platonov, V.T. Shalamov was visited by unknown N.S. Leskov, I.A. Bunin, I.S. Shmelev and A.I. Kuprin.
At the same time, it was through books that a meaningful interest in Orthodoxy began. It was already possible to find the Gospel, and in the Rostov Cathedral to buy the "Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate", which always (just a few pages!) There were sermons and historical articles. At the immensely expanded Rostov book market, not only the Herald of the Russian Christian Movement, but also the books of Sergei Aleksandrovich Nilus, along with reprinted hastily stitched Ladder and Fatherland, began to be sold almost freely.
Faith became a necessity, as it was understood and realized that the basis of all beloved works was precisely the Orthodox culture, the Orthodox heritage.
At a small village railway station in the Belgorod region (I don’t even remember what brought me there) I met a priest of my age, in a cassock (!), with the latest issue of Novy Mir in his hands, which surprised me beyond words. We met. We got talking. We went to have tea with the priest, enthusiastically discussing the latest literary novelties.
Tea was somehow forgotten, but two cupboards with theological literature, old editions, unknown authors and mysterious, still incomprehensible names became, in fact, decisive in later life. They just changed it.
Once, during Great Lent, my Belgorod priest offered to go to the wisest and most holy place in Russia. "Where is this?" I didn't understand. "To Optina. The monastery has already been returned.” I already knew something about Ambrose of Optina, the elders of the monastery, since “On the Bank of the River of God” by S.A. Nilusa and the Jordanville book by Ivan Mikhailovich Kontsevich Optina Pustyn and Her Time were among my favorites. We arrived for a couple of days, but I stayed at the monastery for almost a whole year. Initially, I decided that I would stay until Easter. It's all too unusual. An amazing service, still incomprehensible monks and a constant feeling that you are not living in real time. The past is so closely combined with the present that if I met Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy and Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol on the skete path, I would not be surprised ...
Optina made me reread and rethink our classics of the 19th century. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky became understandable, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was loved, and the Slavophiles turned out to be not only fighters for the Third Rome, but also interesting writers.
In the evenings I took a fancy to myself in a corner in the monastery hotel and read books there. The monks at that time still did not have separate cells and lived wherever they could. One of them, tall, thin, wearing glasses, somewhat similar to me, noticed my personality and asked a couple of times why I was not sleeping and what I was reading. It turned out that this interest was not just curiosity. Soon I was called to the monastic steward and offered to work in the publishing department of the monastery. To be in Optina among monastic services, clever monks and books, and to study books... I couldn't believe it.
Our restless leader, the then abbot, the current archimandrite Melchizedek (Artyukhin), is a man who treats the book reverently. It is not surprising that the first edition after the revolution of 1917 of Abba Dorotheus' Soul-Beneficial Teachings was published in Optina, just as the reprint edition of all the volumes of the Lives of the Saints by St. Demetrius of Rostov became a landmark event.
Time is fleeting. A quarter of a century has passed since those monastic days. 25 years of priesthood, which is impossible to imagine without a book. The book is the joy that taught, educated, educated and led to faith.
An Orthodox contemporary, I am sure of this, needs to read constantly. And not only the holy fathers, theologians and Orthodox writers. Great works have God's foundations, that's why they are great.
Today there is a lot of controversy about the future of the book. It is no longer necessary to look for unread and momentarily necessary. Enough to go online. The search engine will return dozens of links and even determine the place, the thought or quote you are looking for. But still, in the evening, you take another book from the pile, open it at random to feel the indescribable smell of books, and then proceed to the bookmark ...
And now, when I read these lines, behind me are shelves with the necessary and favorite books - my everlasting joy, originating in βιβλίον (“book” in Greek), that is, in the Bible.
Back in 1994, Vladislav Listyev, in the TV program “Rush Hour”, asked the then head of the publishing department of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Pitirim (Nechaev), reading on TV channels the representative of the Church was not only new, but also caused great resonance, since about who they were ministers of the Church knew only from the Soviet atheistic template or from rumors, which, as you know, tend to grow into fictions and outright lies. And suddenly it turns out that those in cassocks not only read the Bible in an incomprehensible language, pray and bow, but also orient themselves in the culture of their people, in which Russian classical literature occupies one of the main places.
Why is this dialogue of the murdered leader remembered, whether it is secular literature. Having received an affirmative answer, Listyev asked what exactly Vladyka liked, and immediately received an answer - Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. I must say that in the early 90s, any appearance of the already deceased metropolitan? Yes, all due to the fact that over and over again in conversations with believers, both in parishes and in the Orthodox segment of the Internet that permeates the whole world, disputes and discussions flare up: how much it is permissible and necessary for a believer to know the literary heritage of our ancestors, and above all Russian classics? Perhaps the Holy Scriptures, the works of the holy fathers and the hagiographic heritage, that is, the lives of saints and ascetics of piety, are quite enough? And if at the parish it is easier to conduct conversations on this topic, and the priest still has an advantage not only in position and rank, but also, if possible, include specific examples from this heritage in his sermons, then it is much more difficult in the world wide web and correspondence. It would seem that you are talking to a completely sane, sincerely believing and educated interlocutor, but the result is deplorable. Categorical: “A priest has no right to read worldly fiction! Scripture and tradition are enough.”
I remember with pain the discussion, two or three years ago, on the answers of the clergy to the question of the Orthodoxy and the World portal: “What would you recommend reading from fiction books during the days of Great Lent?” It was not possible to come to a consensus, the compromise was, as far as I remember, only in relation to Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev. The opponents, of course, were not anathematized, but they were "banned" and subjected to devastating criticism ardently and harshly.
Again and again this question is repeated and discussed. Moreover, in the arguments almost never there are words that all our literature is ecclesiastical, that is, Orthodox, has a conception. Picking up a book, it is quite worthy to remember those who gave us the Slavic alphabet, made us “literate” in the original sense of the word, how not a sin would be to thank our own chroniclers, from whom the Russian book went.
Before moaning about the fact that among the current book collapses there are many frankly sinful, embarrassing and tempting works, one must nevertheless remember that the head is intended for thought, that you are a man, the image and likeness of God, only when you know how to choose. It is the Orthodox faith that gives us lessons, instructions and examples of how to make this choice. And the Lord Himself indicated the first selection criterion: “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but you don’t feel the beam in your eye?” (Matthew 7:3). We, knowing these words, see in secular literature only the sins of writers, discuss their philosophical and worldly mistakes, completely forgetting that we ourselves once, and even now often fall into dark abysses.
Let me quote a Russian scientist, literary critic, MDA professor Mikhail Mikhailovich Dunaev who appeared before God not so long ago: “Orthodoxy establishes the only true point of view on life, and Russian literature assimilates this point of view (not always in full) as the main idea, becoming such Orthodox in spirit. Orthodox literature teaches the Orthodox view of man, establishes the correct view of the inner world of man, determines the most important criterion for evaluating the inner being of man: humility. That is why the new Russian literature (following the Old Russian) saw its task and the meaning of existence in kindling and maintaining spiritual fire in human hearts. This is where the recognition of conscience as the measure of all life values comes from. Russian writers recognized their work as a prophetic ministry (which Catholic and Protestant Europe did not know). The attitude towards the figures of literature as visionaries, soothsayers has been preserved in the Russian consciousness to this day, although it is muffled.
So what kind of literature ignites and maintains the spiritual fire in our hearts? First of all, Russian classics, from epics to the ever-remembered Rasputin.
Where can one find an example of the transformation of the human soul from the passions of youth to the understanding and chanting of faith? In the work of A.S. Pushkin. He atoned for all his sins of youth with one of his verses “The Hermit Fathers and Immaculate Wives…” and with a poetic letter to St. Philaret.
Or "Dead Souls" by N.V. Gogol. Where, if not in this poem in prose, is the whole list of so-called “mortal” sins shown so colorfully, in detail, sensibly and with all the nuances? This book is a kind of practical instruction on what not to be. When attacking Gogol's "Viy" and other stories about all sorts of evil spirits, look at the author's spiritual prose, which causes such strong irritation in the same evil spirits in human form.
The great and unsurpassed A.P. Chekhov. Stories where kindness and sincerity either win (which is more often), or cry that they have been forgotten. In short stories - true stories about the weakness of the strength of a person who only hopes for himself.
It's sad when F.M. Dostoyevsky is trying to be assessed through the prism of his disordered life and passion for gambling. God's talent in his stories and novels is multiplied, but falls and sins ... Throw a stone at Fyodor Mikhailovich who does not have them.
And it is permissible and necessary to read Tolstoy. Everyone. Even Leo. "War and Peace" and many stories, coupled with "Sevastopol Tales", no one surpassed in skill, breadth of plot, historical, moral and philosophical value. To evaluate the work of this great writer for his excommunication from the Church is the height of unreasonableness. It is better to understand that Lev Nikolaevich, who at the end of his life tried to make Christ a man out of God Christ, forgot the Apostle’s warning: “Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5, eight). I recommend reading the book by Pavel Valerievich Basinsky “The Saint against the Lion. John of Kronstadt and Leo Tolstoy: the story of one enmity, where the author compares two contemporary contemporaries.
Many of those who prove the harmfulness and uselessness of secular literature, including classical literature, for an Orthodox person ask a banal question: “How can I read this book if there is not a word about God?” But in the Book of the Song of Songs of Solomon, the word God is not found even once, but it is included in the Bible!
Doesn't the description of the beauty of nature and man, noble deeds and deeds, the protection of the offended and the Fatherland, make us recall the famous "You created all wisdom"?
Of course, one must be able to choose the useful and necessary. Distinguish good from bad. But for this, the Lord gave us understanding. The selection criterion for me personally is clear: any book where a person is defined in eternity, where there is an understanding of good and evil, where compassion, mercy and love predominate, is quite acceptable for our reading. And in the first place - Russian classics. So let's not become like Griboedov's Skalozub.
After the theme of the eternity of classical Russian literature, its enduring spiritual value and significance for a modern person who positions himself as Orthodox, I would like to step into the present day. I always want to find new, modern, interesting authors who write about Orthodoxy or from the point of view of Orthodoxy. To be honest, we must admit that we are not rich in writers' names. Those for whom a book is an integral part of life will probably easily list the names of prose writers, poets and publicists who can see reality through the prism of our faith. Now there are many literary groups, circles, commonwealths, etc. But, unfortunately (or to joy?), any literary community of the present day is, first of all, piits, rhymes components. There are many poets, only poetry is not enough.
Although there are also good stanzas that meet the challenges of the present day:
All that is called a nation
Everything that makes you proud
For normal patriots
Without clinical intrigue -
Keeps unchanged
Wise, Pushkin, rich,
Our native, free,
Russian, tasty, colorful language!
God forbid that such discoveries be regular, and not only poetic.
There is much less prose, but still it is necessary to name the authors-priests who are not only necessary, but also interesting to read: Nikolai Agafonov, Yaroslav Shipov, Andrey Tkachev, Valentin Biryukov. I do not write them down as "classics", but there is no doubt that we have before us - solid works written in our Russian, Orthodox tradition.
After all, we often talk about the memory of our ancestors, about paternal coffins, about continuity and traditions. Moreover, our tradition is a refraction of tradition in the Orthodox sense of it. Several years ago, our Patriarch said: “…tradition is a mechanism and a way of transferring values that cannot disappear from people's life. Not everything that is in the past is good, because we throw away garbage, but we do not keep everything from our past. But there are things that need to be preserved, because if we do not preserve them, our national, cultural, spiritual identity is destroyed, we become different, and most often we become worse.”
P.S. In addition to the classics, I highly recommend books from the Life of Remarkable People series. In recent years, almost two dozen excellent works about our saints and ascetics of piety have been published. These books were written, for the most part, by Orthodox authors.
Does reading fiction help save the soul? Should a believing Orthodox person read Russian classics? Holy Scripture or Russian writers? Is the reading of the Gospel and the works of the Holy Fathers compatible with literary work and poetic creativity? Can a believer in general be engaged in literary creativity? And what is the purpose of the literary word? These questions have ardently interested and continue to interest Orthodox readers and Russian writers at all times, giving rise to different, sometimes opposite, and often very harsh and categorical judgments.
It is impossible to agree with the opinion that Russian classical literature completely defies or even, as some argue, opposes Orthodoxy with its evangelical values and ideals. At the same time, it is impossible to agree with another extreme view that identifies the spiritual experience of our classics with the experience of the holy fathers.
What is the purpose of the human word in the light of the teaching of the Word of God? And how has this appointment been fulfilled and is being fulfilled in Russian literature?
"By the word of the Lord were created heavens, and by the breath of his mouth all their host"(Ps. 32:6). “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It was in the beginning with God. Everything came into being through Him, and without Him nothing came into being that came into being.”(John 1:1-3).
About the Word as the second Hypostasis of the Divine Trinity - our Lord Jesus Christ - we, believing Orthodox people, have a clear teaching of Holy Scripture, the testimonies of the apostles, saints and holy fathers.
But after all, the Lord endowed His creation, man, with the ability of the word. For what purpose did the Creator give man the opportunity to create words? And what should it be in the mouth of men?
And this was explained to us by the Lord Himself, as well as by His apostles and holy fathers.
“Every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from above, from the Father of lights ... Having willed, He gave birth to us with the word of truth, so that we could be some firstfruits of His creatures”(James 1:17-18).
That is, man received the opportunity to speak as a creature in the image and likeness of God.
And this grace-filled gift of the word was given by the Lord to man to serve God and people with the light of truth: “Serve one another, each with the gift that you have received, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If anyone speaks, speak as the words of God; if anyone serves, serve according to the strength that God gives, so that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen"(1 Pet. 4:10-11).
The word of man serves either salvation or destruction: "Death and life are in the power of the tongue..."(Prov. 18, 22); “I tell you that for every idle word that people say, they will give an answer on the day of judgment: for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned”(Matthew 12:36-37).
The idea that the human word, like the Word of God, is a creative and active force, and not just a means of communication and transmission of information, was repeatedly emphasized in his writings by our holy righteous father John of Kronstadt: “A verbal being! .. Believe that with your faith into the constructive Word of the Father, and your word will not return to you in vain, powerless... but it builds up the minds and hearts of those who listen to you... The word in our mouths is already creative... with the word, the living spirit of man comes out, not separated from thought and the words. You see, the word, by its nature, is creative even in us... Believe firmly in the feasibility of every word..., remembering that the originator of the word is God the Word... Treat the word reverently and cherish it... No word is idle , but has or should have its own power... "for with God no word will remain powerless"(Luke 1:37) ... this is generally the property of the word - its power and perfection. This is how it should be in the mouth of a person.
The true purpose of the human word - to serve God and bring the light of Truth to people - was most fully and deeply embodied in the literature of Ancient Russia. The literature of this time is remarkable for its amazing integrity, the inseparability of word and deed, and spirituality. This period of gathering Russian lands, fighting with enemies of external and internal discord, asceticism, poverty and harshness of life - was marked by the highest spiritual upsurge. This was the period when the foundation was erected on which our Russian word, Russian literature is based.
By the grace of God, Russia as a strong centralized state arose with the adoption of Christianity. The Russian people was formed from disunited, although related tribes, according to the first Russian chronicler Nestor known to us, as "one language, baptized into one Christ." It was a time when the West almost completely submitted to the heresy of Catholicism, and the East was ready to fall under the rule of Islam. Russia was created by the Lord as a receptacle for Christian teaching, the guardian of Orthodoxy.
The Orthodox faith, having given Russia strength and sanctification, having pulled the Russian land together with invisible spiritual threads, illuminated and filled everything with itself. Orthodoxy has become the basis of our statehood, legislation, moral foundations of management, determined relations in the family and society. Orthodoxy became the basis of the self-consciousness of the Russian people, a source of piety, enlightenment, and culture. It brought up the moral qualities, the ideals of the Russian people, formed a special, integral, original character. Russian literature was born as an ecclesiastical, prayerful, spiritual act. From her very first steps she assimilated the strictest moral Christian trend, took on a religious character.
Prince Evgeny Nikolaevich Trubetskoy (1863-1920), a remarkable Russian thinker with a rare gift for writing, a deep researcher of icon painting, wrote: the holy Orthodox faith did not have such a vital, one might say life-giving connection with the life of the soul of the people, as we have in Russia.
Orthodoxy became so native, understandable, close, alive for the Russian people also because it appeared immediately in their native language, with Slavic worship and writing. Thanks to the Equal-to-the-Apostles educators, Saints Cyril and Methodius, the Russian people heard the voice of God calling them in their own language, understandable to the mind and accessible to the heart. They translated from Greek the most important books of the Holy Scriptures and liturgical books into the Slavic language, creating two graphic varieties of Slavic writing - Cyrillic and Glagolitic. In 863 in Moravia, Constantine the philosopher (Saint Cyril Equal to the Apostles) compiled the first Slavic alphabet.
Holy Scripture was the first book that a Russian person read. The Word of God immediately became the common property of the entire Russian people. It passed from hand to hand in large numbers. The Bible has become the native, home book of a Russian person, sanctifying thoughts, feelings, words, enlightening. The Gospel, the Psalter, the Apostle, many Russian people knew by heart. And the Russian language, unique in its kind of sonority, melodiousness, flexibility and expressiveness, having been sanctified by the light of Christ, becoming the language of communion with God, further developed under the influence of the Word of God. The Russian people understood the Russian language as sanctified, given to the service of God.
Russian literature opens with the work of the first Russian Metropolitan of Kyiv, Hilarion. He also reflected the power and greatness of the Orthodox teaching, its significance for the whole world and for Russia, in the not quite processed Russian language. This is the “Word of Law and Grace” (XI century)
The literature of Ancient Russia shows us such masterpieces as "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", "The Tale of Bygone Years" by Nestor, "Teachings of Vladimir Monomakh"; lives - "The Life of Alexander Nevsky" and "The Tale of Boris and Gleb"; creations of Theodosius of the Caves, Cyril of Turov; “Journey beyond three seas” by Afanasy Nikitin; the writings of Elder Philotheus, who revealed the idea of Moscow as the Third Rome; composition of Joseph Volotsky "Illuminator"; "Cheti-Minei" by Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow; monumental works "Stoglav" and "Domostroy"; poetic legends and spiritual verses of the Russian people, called the “Pigeon Book” (deep), reflecting the ideals of Christian morality, gospel meekness and wisdom.
During the ancient period of Russian writing (XI-XVII centuries), we know up to 130 Russian writers known by name - bishops, priests, monks and laity, princes and commoners. The Russian talents of that time - speakers, writers, theologians - aspired only to subjects discovered and indicated by Christian teaching. Faith was reflected in all the work of the Russian people. All the works and creations of the Russian word of that time, different in strength of expression and talent, had one goal - religious and moral. All these works breathe the inseparability of words and deeds. All Russian literature of that time was church-going, spiritual. Writers, thinkers are not dreamers, but visionaries, seers. Prayer was their source of inspiration. Secular literature, as well as secular education, was not at all among the people of Ancient Russia.
The period of ancient Russian history and culture is the period of the highest spiritual upsurge of the Russian people. For a number of centuries, up to the 18th century, this spiritual upsurge was enough.
The radical reorganization that Tsar Peter intended to accomplish and did in the social and political life of Russia was reflected in culture, art, including literature. But the Petrine reform, which had the goal of destroying what ancient Russia lived on, was not carried out in an empty place. The problem of the damage to the Orthodox consciousness and worldview of a Russian person of the 17th century, which Archpriest Avvakum accurately managed to notice: “Loving carnal fatness and refuting the mountainous valleys” - began to undermine the spiritual life of the Russian people even earlier.
Achieved by Russia in the XVI-XVII centuries. worldly successes, the growth of earthly well-being were fraught with dangerous temptations. Already the Stoglavy Cathedral (1551) marked a decrease in spiritual mood and piety.
“In the 17th century, we can observe the beginning of a powerful and graceless Western influence on the whole of Russian life, and this influence went, as you know, through Ukraine, which joined in the middle of the century, which was content with what it got from Poland, which, in turn, was the backyard Europe ... and the final demolition took place during the period of Peter's reforms, ”points out an outstanding Orthodox researcher of Russian literature, Master of Theology Mikhail Mikhailovich Dunaev.
The terrible period at the beginning of the 17th century, called in Russia the Time of Troubles, when it seemed that the whole Russian land was ruined and perished and that the state, torn to pieces, could not rise, only thanks to Orthodoxy, which was the spiritual support and source of strength, helped the Russian people to prevail over enemy. When this incredible tension of forces passed, calmness, peace, tranquility, silence and abundance came, bringing, as it happens, spiritual relaxation. There was a desire to decorate the earth and turn its appearance into a symbol of the Garden of Eden. This was reflected both in art (temple building, icon painting) and in literature.
There are new, previously impossible for a Russian person who lived according to the Word of God: "My kingdom is not of this world"(John 18, 38) and exalted the ideal of holiness over all life values - the aspirations of the human soul for "earthly treasures", which are reflected in literature.
Along with traditional literary works based on a religious view, spiritual experience and an irrefutable fact, other genres and methods of literature, hitherto unknown in Russia, appear. Here, for example, is a significant and impossible in the literature of the early period "The Tale of a Luxurious Life and Joy." Or “The Tale of the Hawk Moth, How to Enter Heaven”, where the hawk settles in the best place... Western Renaissance translated literature also appears with its own faith, unbelief and its own, purely earthly ideals, where purely earthly standards are applied to the spiritual spheres. There are even anti-clerical works, such as "Kalyazinsky Petition" - a satirical parody of monastic life, allegedly written by monks. The tradition of combining fiction and real fact is also emerging (for example, The Tale of Savva Grudtsin), while in ancient Russian literature there was only one thing - literary and artistic understanding of the fact and the absence of fiction. Everyday life begins to prevail. Adventurous stories also appear, in imitation of Western literature, bearing the rudiments of psychologism of dark passions, for example, The Tale of Frol Skobeev, where there is no religious understanding of life at all. “And Frol Skobeev began to live in great wealth” - this is the outcome of the story, where a noble nobleman seduces the daughter of an eminent and wealthy steward by cunning and deceit, and, having married her, becomes the heir to wealth.
The whole existence of Russia was also influenced by two schisms that shook Russian society in the 17th century - a church schism, under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, and under Peter I, a no less disastrous split of the nation - class. The position of the Church in the state and society has also changed. The church is not yet separated from the state, but it no longer has undivided and unconditional authority. The secularization of society is increasing.
The animal kingdom at all times approached the peoples with the same age-old temptation: “I will give you all this if you fall down and bow down to me”(Matthew 4:9). But in a world that lies in evil, the people of Ancient Russia tried to live according to the laws of another, mountainous world. The vision of a different meaning of life, a different truth of life, is what fills all ancient Russian literature. A new period in the history and literature of Russia begins in the 18th century. The literature of this period is called “literature of the new time”.
Man did not turn away from God, but began to see the meaning of his life in settling on earth. Man began to bring heaven down to earth. Man is not likened to God, but God is likened to man. And most importantly, there is a gap between word and deed - creativity and prayer.
The 18th century passed under the banner of the Enlightenment - an ideology completely alien to the Russian people in his understanding of the truth. What is Enlightenment? This is the recognition of science's ability to give a final interpretation of the universe. This is the deification and recognition of the omnipotence of the human mind. This is the exaltation of “the wisdom of this world,” about which the Apostle said: "The wisdom of this world is foolishness before God"(1 Cor. 3:19-20).
It was not possible to drive literature into the rigid framework of the Enlightenment. Whatever changes in external life occurred, the spiritual ideal of the Russian person remained associated with the image of holiness, in many essential features different from holiness in the Western sense. This did not allow to definitively turn off the originally designated path of spiritual development. Orthodox holiness is based on the acquisition of the Holy Spirit through an ascetic deed of prayer. The type of Catholic "holiness" is emotional and moral, based on sensual exaltation, on a psychophysical, but not spiritual basis (if we recall the Catholic "saints").
The literature of this period did not show the achievements that marked the previous and subsequent periods. The method of enlightenment classicism, revealed by Moliere, Racine, Lessing, in Russia gave the names of M.V. Lomonosov, A.P. Sumarokova, V.K. Trediakovsky, G.R. Derzhavin, D.I. Fonvizin. In classicism, everything is subordinated to the ideas of statehood, while writers turn primarily to reason. Teachings, instructions, reasoning, schematism, clichés and conventions make these works boring, and the limitedness of the enlightening mind reveals itself in the works of writers even against their will.
But living sprouts of creative thought make their way in Russia even in the most graceless times. Often yielding to the crafty spirit of humanism, Russian literature even then could not be satisfied with the ideal of self-affirmation of man on earth, for Orthodoxy, which raised the Russian man, initially rejects such an ideal. All creativity, for example, G.R. Derzhavin, a great artist, a wise philosopher and a humble Christian, does not fit into the schemes of any literary movement, and is sanctified by true faith and a purely Orthodox perception of life.
And one of the founders of classical Russian poetry, Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, made scientific knowledge a form of religious experience. “Truth and faith are two sisters, daughters of the same Supreme Parent, they can never come into conflict with each other,” he clearly expressed the meaning of his scientific worldview. He verified his scientific ideas by the works of the holy fathers, for example, St. Basil the Great, and in science he saw an assistant and ally of theology in the knowledge of "the wisdom and power of God."
Yes, and all the best writers of the word of this period, showing reverence for the greatness of the Builder and giving prayerful praise to Him, although they follow the literary laws of classicism, they put into their works a meaning that is different from the outlook on life offered by Western classicism.
During this period of our culture, the formation of the literary language and the laws of Russian classical literary creativity begins.
The laws of Russian rhetoric are also taking shape - a science that sets out the rules of eloquence, that is, the ability to correctly express one's thoughts in writing and orally, the foundations of which were laid by the Monk Theophan the Greek, a man of great learning, invited in 1518 to Moscow to write and translate church books.
The work of Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov, a poet, playwright and literary critic, one of the largest representatives of Russian literature of the 18th century, awarded the Order of St. Anna and the rank of real state councilor, contributed a lot to the development of the literary Russian language.
His work "On Russian spiritual eloquence" is significant. In it, he cites as an example for everyone who wants to engage in the spiritual word, “excellent spiritual rhetoricians”, whose works serve the glory of Russia: Feofan, Archbishop of Novogorodsky, Gideon, Bishop of Pskov, Gabriel, Archbishop of St.
It must be said that at that time the conciliar, not yet fragmented consciousness of the Russian man, and the awareness of each individual of his involvement in the unity of all creation, had not yet had time to completely evaporate from the being and spirit of the Russian man. It was it that required to rise to an all-encompassing vision of any problem. It was precisely this free unity of all for love for God and for each other, which gave complete spiritual freedom, that imposed on the Russian man the foolish responsibility of the individual. Responsibility to God and people. Perhaps this is where the broad and deep coverage of problems that has always been characteristic of Russian literature, its indifference to the fate of the Fatherland, the Church and its people, comes from.
There is nothing surprising, strange, or even more blasphemous, as it may seem to our contemporary, closed in himself, in the fact that A.P. Sumarokov considers the problems of Russian spiritual rhetoric. We also did not have that ugly papism that exalts itself above all other members of the Church, which is inherent in Catholicism. “Serve one another, each one with the gift that he received”, - the Russian people understood these words directly and effectively.
Sumarokov, having considered all the best in the works of the remarkable Russian spiritual orators of that time, such as “enormity, importance, harmony, brightness, color, speed, strength, fire, reasoning, clarity”, accompanying a true deep understanding of spiritual issues, says that that it concerns the purely gift of eloquence. Of course, he says, if we demanded that all rhetoricians possess such a great talent for rhetoric as these men listed, who “shone like bright stars in thick darkness,” then the temples of God would be empty for lack of preachers. But at the same time, according to him, "it is truly regrettable when the glorification of the great God falls into the mouths of the ignorant." Sumarokov regrets that sometimes “profound idlers”, who speak “floridly”, but do not themselves understand what they are talking about, relying only on their own concepts and not having entered into great spiritual questions either with their mind or heart, they undertake to preach the Truth of God.
The Holy Fathers of all times spoke about this. Saint Gregory the Theologian wrote: “Not everyone can philosophize about God! Yes, not everyone. This is not acquired cheaply and not by reptiles on earth! .. What can be philosophic about and to what extent? About what is available to us and to the extent that the state and ability of understanding in the listener extends ... Let us agree that it is necessary to speak about the mysterious mysteriously, and about the holy - sacredly. And our reverend father John of Damascus, in his work “The Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith,” said that not everything can be known to a person from the Divine and not everything can be expressed by speech.
It is not surprising that Sumarokov does not advise all holders of the gift of eloquence to theologize and intrude into the study of the depths of God's economy and His incomprehensible Providence for us, but to preach the Word of God, to call to faith and true morality.
In general, the culture of the new time, including literature, is divided into church, spiritual and secular.
Spiritual literature goes its own way, revealing marvelous spiritual writers: St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, St. Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, St. Theophan the Recluse Vyshensky, St. Righteous John of Kronstadt. Our patristic heritage is great and inexhaustible.
Secular literature (focusing its attention on the problems of a secular society, which did not exist in Ancient Russia at all), has undergone the influence of the Renaissance, enlightenment, humanism, atheism and has lost a lot.
But, unlike the literature of the West, where the process of secularization began already from the Renaissance and by the 19th century there was a literature without Christ, without the Gospel, Russian classical literature has always remained, in its worldview and the nature of the reflection of reality, although not in its entirety - according to to his Orthodox spirit.
Alexey Alexandrovich Tsarevsky, the son of an archpriest, professor of the Department of Slavic dialects and the history of foreign literatures, as well as the Department of the Slavic language, paleography and the history of Russian literature of the Kazan Theological Academy, cites in his book “The Significance of Orthodoxy in the Life and Historical Destiny of Russia” (1898) the statement of a French critic Leroy-Bellier that in all of Europe Russian literature remains the most religious: “The depth of the great creations of Russian literature, sometimes even against the will of the authors, is Christian; despite seeming even rationalism, the great Russian writers are in essence deeply religious.
MM. Dunaev writes: “No matter how strong the Western influence was, no matter how victoriously the earthly temptation penetrated Russian life, but Orthodoxy remained uneradicated, remained with all the fullness of the Truth contained in it - and could not disappear anywhere. Souls were damaged - yes! - but no matter how the public and private life of Russians wandered in the dark labyrinths of temptations, and the needle of the spiritual compass still stubbornly showed the same direction, even if the majority moved in the exact opposite direction. Let's say it again, it was easier for a Westerner: for him, intact landmarks did not exist, so that even if he went astray, he sometimes could not suspect at all.
Larisa Pakhomievna Kudryashova , poet and writer
List of used literature
1. "The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ." Holy Assumption Pskov-Caves Monastery, M., 1993.
2. "Interpretation of the Gospel of Matthew", edited by Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvensky), M., 1994.
3. "Monastic work." Compiled by Priest Vladimir Emelichev, St. Danilov Monastery, Moscow, 1991.
4. Encyclopedic dictionary of Russian civilization. Compiled by O.A. Platonov, M., 2000.
5. "Guide to the study of dogmatic theology", St. Petersburg, 1997.
6. "An accurate statement of the Orthodox faith." Creations of St. John of Damascus, M-Rostov-on-Don, 1992.
7. “On faith and morality according to the teachings of the Orthodox Church”, Edition of the Moscow Patriarchy, M., 1998
8. Metropolitan John (Snychev). "Russian knot". SPb. 2000.
9. A.A. Tsarevsky. “The Significance of Orthodoxy in the Life and Historical Destiny of Russia”, St. Petersburg, 1991.
10. "Writings of the Apostolic Men", Riga, 1992.
11. "Complete collection of works of St. John Chrysostom". v.1, M., 1991.
12. “Collected Letters of St. Ignatius Bryanchaninov, Bishop of the Caucasus and the Black Sea”, M-SPb, 1995.
13. Saint Gregory the Theologian. "Five words about theology", M., 2001.
14. Holy Righteous John of Kronstadt. "In the World of Prayer". SPb., 1991.
15. “Conversations of Schema-Archimandrite of the Optina Skete of Elder Barsanuphius with Spiritual Children”, St. Petersburg, 1991.
16. Prince Evgeny Troubetzkoy "Three essays on the Russian about the Russian icon". Novosibirsk, 1991.
17. Saint Theophan the Recluse. "Advice to the Orthodox Christian". M., 1994.
18. M.M. Dunaev. "Orthodoxy and Russian Literature". at 5 o'clock, M., 1997.
19. I.A. Ilyin. "The Lonely Artist" M., 1993.
20. V.I. Nesmelov. "Human Science". Kazan, 1994.
21. Saint Theophan the Recluse. “Embodied Housebuilding. The experience of Christian psychology. M., 2008.
Notes
1. Bible, New Testament, Matt. 7; thirteen; 14. - M.: International Orthodox Publishing Center
Literature, 1994. - 1018 p.
2. Dunaev M. M. Orthodoxy and Russian literature: textbook. manual for students of theological academies and seminaries. - M.: Christian literature, 1996. - S. 190-200.
3. Ivanova S. F. Introduction to the temple of the word. - M.: School-Press, 1994. - 271 p.
4. Lermontov M. Yu. Works. - M.: Pravda, 1986. - T. 1. - 719 p.
5. Pushkin A. S. Works. - M.: Fiction, 1985. - T. 1. - 735 p.
L. N. Kuvaeva
CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE
The article discusses the special social and educational role of Russian classical literature, as well as the study of Christian-oriented texts, and, above all, the Bible itself, at school.
Key words: literature, Christian texts, teaching and upbringing at school.
CHRISTIAN TRADITION IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE
The article deals with a particular public and social educational role of the Russian classical literature and studying the role of Christian-oriented texts, and, above all, the Bible at school.
Keywords: literature, Christian texts, training and education in schools.
Russian Orthodoxy came into contact with fiction proper historically only recently, coexisting with it for about two hundred years. Perspicacious Orthodox thinkers have revealed its important meaning for Christians. The Orthodox view of literature, in the most general terms, lies in the understanding of literature, poetry as a kind of God's gift that allows people to discover the truth, incomprehensible in other ways, which can become a step towards the highest God's truth. This view, according to which literature is placed in such a high place in the hierarchy of values, goes back to the idea belonging to the apostle Paul that the spiritual development of a person precedes his spiritual development: “A spiritual body is sown, a spiritual body is raised” (1 Cor. 15, 44) . Literature has not only preserved, but also brilliantly developed the ability to reveal the truth, appealing not only to the heart, but also to the mind of a person. And almost always, in all civilizations, literature in its best examples was recognized as an indispensable element in the upbringing of children - this was also the case in pre-revolutionary Christian Russia.
Literature and world poetry show us the depth and complexity of the human personality, convincing us that a person is not a product of the environment and production relations, but represents something much more complex and significant for us. In this revival, the return of the destroyed world, the restoration of communication with it, a huge
and a very special role was played by Russian classical literature. She was practically the first to reveal to us that Russia that was once, the division of good and evil, the foundations of that bygone life, as well as the ideas of honor and mercy, conscience, which for a long time existed in Soviet society as remnants of the old, not allowing to completely eradicate the human from person. And, perhaps most importantly, faith in God, declared a lie, an absurd relic, the lot of backward old women, “opium for the people,” appeared from the pages of these books as the most important part of human life, the object of the most complex reflections and difficult and painful doubts. And amazing is the height and light with which the heroes of Russian classical books who had faith or who had found it were filled. Despite all the prohibitions and pressure from the authorities, genuine literature continued to exist - persecuted, unpublished, wrote Akhmatova, Bulgakov, Pasternak, Tsvetaeva and Mandelstam, Tvardovsky. A. Solzhenitsyn and writers and poets of such different scale and nature of talent as Shalamov, Rasputin, Astafiev, Iskander, Brodsky, Abramov, Belov became the symbol of the new genuine literature...
In one of the letters of F. M. Dostoevsky we find: “Above all this (literature), of course, the Gospel, the New Testament in translation. If he can read in the original (in Church Slavonic), that is, it would be best, the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, by all means.
Realizing that understanding the spiritual life of the people, explaining the words and images born in it is possible only with knowledge of the key texts that made up this culture, we come to the conclusion that it is necessary to get acquainted with the Bible in literature lessons as one of the key texts of European, including Russian culture.
Having abandoned the Bible as the basis of Christian doctrine, we also abandoned the most important canonical text, the content and significance of which, of course, are not limited to its religious aspect.
In trying to bring the Bible back to school, it is necessary to look at it, first of all, as one of the first written texts (translated), which is an economical collection of texts that includes various genres. The point of Bible study lessons is not a review with historical commentary. The purpose of the classes is to convey to students the artistic perfection and the religious-humanistic, human content of the greatest monument of world culture, to help them feel the originality of the poetic language of the Bible, its highest artistry; determine the meaning of the Bible in the context of world literature.
The Bible is a literary monument that formed the basis of our entire written verbal culture. The images and plots of the Bible inspired more than one generation of writers and poets. Against the backdrop of biblical literary stories, we often perceive today's events. This book contains the beginnings of many literary genres. Prayer, psalms have found continuation in poetry, in hymns. Many biblical words and expressions have become proverbs and sayings, enriching our speech and thought. Many plots formed the basis of stories, novels, novels by writers of different peoples and times.
“Russian literature saw its task and the meaning of existence in kindling and maintaining spiritual fire in human hearts,” notes M. M. Dunaev. “This is where the recognition of conscience as the measure of all life values comes from.”
This was sensitively perceived and accurately expressed by N. A. Berdyaev: “In Russian literature, among the great Russian writers, religious themes and motives were stronger than in any other country.
the territory of the world. All our literature of the 19th century is wounded by the Christian theme, all of it seeks salvation, all of it seeks deliverance from evil, suffering, the horror of life ... The combination of torment for God with torment for man makes Russian literature Christian even when Russian writers retreated in their minds from the Christian faith.
A student familiar with the Bible does not have to impose his explanation when reading such works as "The Prophet" by A. S. Pushkin or M. Yu. Lermontov, "Crime and Punishment" by F. M. Dostoevsky, "Poems by Yuri Zhivago" from the novel B. L. Pasternak “Doctor Zhivago”, I. Shmelev “Summer of the Lord”, etc. Such a student himself is already oriented in literature, is able to independently compare “Judas Iscariot” by L. Andreev and the work of the Bulgakov Master, and in their relation to the Bible. In order to organize work with children to study works in comparison with biblical texts, we have developed didactic materials that consist of a system of questions and tasks for a work (or episode) and an informer card. The information card includes texts from the Holy Scriptures, reference material from encyclopedias, dictionaries, works or excerpts from the works of writers or poets (for comparison), excerpts from critical works of literary critics.
In our opinion, the Bible as the key text of culture should be used in the school literature course. It uplifts children spiritually and touches them emotionally.
“A people that has forgotten its culture disappears as a nation,” wrote A. S. Pushkin. To avoid this, we must take care that our children become not only the heirs of their national culture, but also the successors of its best traditions. And the main role in this belongs to the teacher of literature.
Turning to the study of literature in high school classes of classical works of the 19th-20th centuries from the point of view of the use of Christian plots and images in them, we solve the following tasks:
Initiation to the spiritual heritage of their people;
Education of love and respect for the Motherland, for its people, for its culture, traditions;
The formation of students' ability to determine their attitude to what they read, to interpret the canonical text in the context of the work of a particular writer.
Acquaintance with the main artistic versions of Christian stories will help students comprehend the value orientations of modern culture.
The outstanding scientist, linguist, philologist and philosopher M. M. Bakhtin rightly notes: “Each culture of the past contains huge semantic possibilities that have remained undiscovered, unrealized and unused throughout the history of the life of culture. Antiquity itself did not know the antiquity that we now know. That distance in time, which turned the Greeks into the ancient Greeks, was of great transformative significance: it is filled with the disclosure of more and more semantic values that the Greeks really did not know about, although they themselves created them.
One of the realities of modern life is the substitution of values. In connection with this remark, it is impossible not to cite as an illustration a commentary on the poem about the Grand Inquisitor by the famous English writer D. Lawrence: “I re-read The Grand Inquisitor, and my heart sinks. I hear the final refutation of Christ. And this is a devastating result, because it is also confirmed by the long experience of mankind. Here reality is against illusions, and illusions are with Christ, while the flow of time itself
I refute it with reality... There can be no doubt that the Inquisitor pronounces Dostoevsky's final judgment about Jesus. That judgment, alas, is: "Jesus, you're wrong, people have to correct you." And Jesus in the end silently agrees with the Inquisitor, kissing him, just as Alyosha kisses Ivan.
Such a paradoxical reading of Dostoevsky, undertaken by the master of the psychological novel, once again convinces us that in the 21st century the problem of understanding Christian traditions and the meaning of their interpretation has become more acute.
The polemical comprehension of the Bible is relevant in science, journalism, and fiction. Speaking in literature lessons about the use of Christian plots and images, it must be remembered that we are dealing with interpretations of the canonical text in the works of one or another writer, but not copying biblical stories and not an attempt by any author to create his own Scripture.
Interest in the Bible has not weakened among scientists, philosophers, writers for centuries. The need to turn to the Bible, its great educational value was emphasized by L. Tolstoy: "It is impossible to replace this book." A. S. Pushkin called it "the key of living water." Turning to the Bible in literature lessons is the displacement of the lack of spirituality that struck us, the revival of Russian self-consciousness.
“Being Russian means not only speaking Russian. To be Russian means to believe in Russia as the Russian people, all its geniuses and builders believed in it. Without faith in Russia, we cannot revive it” (I. Ilyin).
The theme of a harmonious, creative, moral life for people and in their name reveals a significant feature of Russian classics - the ABC of familiarization with Christianity - Orthodoxy.
Orthodoxy in the artistic context of Russian classics is always the moment of the highest tension of the quests and fates of the heroes.
The heroes of Dostoevsky, turning to the Gospel, learn the highest spirituality, go to self-purification and faith. The ABC of Christianity is given (for example, in The Brothers Karamazov) through a kind of humanistic "cycle" of the rebirth of heroes - from sin to redemption, repentance and brotherhood in love. L. Tolstoy’s reflections are also consonant with Dostoevsky, who is convinced that the path of Christianity is not in rituals, candles, icons, “but in the fact that people love each other, do not repay evil for evil, do not promise, do not kill each other.” “I believe in God, whom I understand as Spirit, as love, as the beginning of everything. I believe that he is in me, and I am in him,” wrote L. Tolstoy.
The original feature of Russian classics of the 19th century is also that the greatness of Christian love and forgiveness actively interact with a special type of love between a woman and a man, the measure of which is Christian love - forgiveness and renunciation in the name of the good of others. Russian artistic culture has discovered a kind of criterion: what is the hero in the sphere of love, such is his social and moral potential, the degree of his maturity, responsibility. The Russian type of love, most often, is selfless, it elevates the one who loves, and illuminates the beloved with great light. This is a great work of the soul, a victory over egoism. This is both a gift from heaven and a richness of the spirit with its boundless dedication to perfection. With this type of love in mind, Dostoevsky, in his speech about Pushkin, spoke of it as the most important national treasure, as the highest type of Russian spirituality, reaching out to Russia, its shrines, the Russian people. The Russian type of love as a measure of life and overcoming death, repentance and purification is expressed with special faith in the Russian classics of the 19th century.
Russian literature manifests itself everywhere as a force of integration: it stops decay in its irresistible striving for wholeness. On the way to acquiring this wholeness - humanism and humanity. Humanism as a cult of a high personality and humanity as a cult.
Notes
1. Chetina E. M. Evangelical images and plots, motives in artistic culture. Problems
interpretation. - M.: Flinta: Science, 1998. - S. 3-4.
2. Chetina E. M. Tsit. op.
E. L. Kudrina
SPIRITUAL AND MORAL PROBLEMS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF ART EDUCATION
The article considers art education as a mechanism for the preservation, reproduction of the value traditions of society, as well as the formation of the spiritual and moral foundation of the individual.
Key words: art education, spirituality, morality, cultural traditions and values.
SPIRITUAL AND MORAL PROBLEMS OF CULTURAL EDUCATION
The article deals with artistic education as a mechanism for preservation, reproduction of valuable traditions of society, as well as the formation of spiritual and moral foundations of personality.
Keywords: art education, spirituality, morality, cultural traditions and values.
The modern period of development of our society is characterized by both important positive changes and a number of negative phenomena that are inevitable in a period of major socio-political changes. Many of them have a negative impact on both public morality and civic consciousness; they changed not only the attitude of people to law and labor, man to man, but also to the state and society as a whole. A change in value orientations is also taking place in education.
It should be noted that the problems of education are always in the center of attention of both the authorities and the Russian intelligentsia. At the same time, art education, both independently and in the context of spiritual and moral education, occupies an important place among educational problems and represents a very controversial picture.
For many centuries, Orthodoxy has had a decisive influence on the formation of Russian identity and Russian culture. In the pre-Petrine period, secular culture practically did not exist in Russia: the entire cultural life of the Russian people was centered around the Church. In the post-Petrine era, secular literature, poetry, painting and music were formed in Russia, reaching their apogee in the 19th century. Having spun off from the Church, Russian culture, however, did not lose that powerful spiritual and moral charge that Orthodoxy gave it, and up until the revolution of 1917 it maintained a living connection with church tradition. In the post-revolutionary years, when access to the treasury of Orthodox spirituality was closed, Russian people learned about faith, about God, about Christ and the Gospel, about prayer, about theology and worship of the Orthodox Church through the works of Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky, and other great writers, poets and composers. During the entire seventy-year period of state atheism, Russian culture of the pre-revolutionary era remained the bearer of the Christian gospel for millions of people artificially uprooted from their roots, continuing to testify to those spiritual and moral values that the atheistic authorities questioned or sought to destroy.
Russian literature of the 19th century is rightly considered one of the highest pinnacles of world literature. But its main feature, which distinguishes it from the literature of the West of the same period, is its religious orientation, a deep connection with the Orthodox tradition. “All our literature of the 19th century is wounded by the Christian theme, all of it is looking for salvation, all of it is looking for deliverance from evil, suffering, the horror of life for the human person, people, humanity, the world. In her most significant creations, she is imbued with religious thought,” writes N.A. Berdyaev.
This also applies to the great Russian poets Pushkin and Lermontov, and to the writers - Gogol, Dostoevsky, Leskov, Chekhov, whose names are inscribed in golden letters not only in the history of world literature, but also in the history of the Orthodox Church. They lived in an era when an increasing number of intellectuals were moving away from the Orthodox Church. Baptism, weddings and funerals still took place in the church, but visiting the church every Sunday was considered among the people of high society almost a bad form. When one of Lermontov's acquaintances, having entered the church, unexpectedly found the poet praying there, the latter was embarrassed and began to justify himself by saying that he had come to church on some order from his grandmother. And when someone, having entered Leskov's office, found him praying on his knees, he began to pretend that he was looking for a fallen coin on the floor. Traditional clericalism was still preserved among the common people, but was less and less characteristic of the urban intelligentsia. The departure of the intelligentsia from Orthodoxy widened the gap between it and the people. All the more surprising is the fact that Russian literature, contrary to the trends of the times, retained a deep connection with the Orthodox tradition.
The greatest Russian poet A.S. Pushkin (1799-1837), although he was brought up in the Orthodox spirit, departed from traditional clericalism in his youth, but he never completely broke with the Church and repeatedly turned to the religious theme in his works. Pushkin's spiritual path can be defined as a path from pure faith through youthful disbelief to the meaningful religiosity of a mature period. Pushkin went through the first part of this path during his years of study at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, and already at the age of 17 he wrote the poem "Unbelief", testifying to inner loneliness and the loss of a living connection with God:
Does he silently enter the temple of the Most High with the crowd
There it multiplies only the anguish of his soul.
At the magnificent triumph of ancient altars,
At the voice of the shepherd, at the sweet choir singing,
His unbelief torment worries.
He does not see the secret God anywhere, nowhere,
With a faded soul, the shrine is ahead,
Cold to everything and alien to tenderness
With annoyance, he listens to the quiet prayer.
Four years later, Pushkin wrote the blasphemous poem "Gavriiliada", which he later retracted. However, already in 1826, the turning point in Pushkin's worldview occurred, which is reflected in the poem "The Prophet". In it, Pushkin speaks of the vocation of a national poet, using an image inspired by the 6th chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah:
Spiritual thirst tormented,
In the gloomy desert I dragged, -
And a six-winged seraph
Appeared to me at a crossroads.
With fingers as light as a dream
He touched my eyes.
Prophetic eyes opened,
Like a frightened eagle.
He touched my ears
And they were filled with noise and ringing:
And I heard the shudder of the sky,
And the heavenly angels flight,
And the reptile of the sea underwater course,
And the valley of the vine vegetation.
And he clung to my lips,
And tore out my sinful tongue,
And idle-talking, and crafty,
And the sting of the wise snake
In my frozen mouth
He invested it with a bloody right hand.
And he cut my chest with a sword,
And took out a trembling heart
And coal burning with fire
He put a hole in his chest.
Like a corpse in the desert I lay,
And God's voice called out to me:
“Arise, prophet, and see, and listen,
Do my will
And, bypassing the seas and lands,
Burn people's hearts with the verb."
Regarding this poem, Archpriest Sergei Bulgakov remarks: “If we did not have all the other works of Pushkin, but only this one peak sparkled with eternal snow in front of us, we could clearly see not only the greatness of his poetic gift, but also the entire height of his vocations." The acute sense of the divine vocation, reflected in the "Prophet", contrasted with the bustle of secular life, which Pushkin, by virtue of his position, had to lead. Over the years, he became more and more burdened by this life, about which he repeatedly wrote in his poems. On the day of his 29th birthday, Pushkin writes:
A gift in vain, a gift random,
Life, why are you given to me?
Ile why the fate of the mystery
Are you sentenced to death?
Who got me hostile power
Called out of nothingness
Filled my soul with passion
Doubt aroused the mind? ...
There is no goal in front of me:
The heart is empty, the mind is empty,
And makes me sad
The monotonous noise of life.
To this poem, the poet, who at that time was still balancing between faith, disbelief and doubt, received an unexpected response from Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow:
Not in vain, not by chance
God gave me life
Not without the will of God a mystery
And sentenced to death.
I myself by wayward power
Evil from the dark abyss called,
Filled my soul with passion
The mind was filled with doubt.
Remember me, forgotten by me!
Shine through the dusk of thoughts -
And created by You
The heart is pure, the mind is bright!
Struck by the fact that an Orthodox bishop responded to his poem, Pushkin writes Stanzas addressed to Filaret:
In hours of fun or idle boredom,
It used to be my lyre
Entrusted pampered sounds
Madness, laziness and passions.
But even then the strings of the evil one
Involuntarily, I interrupted the ringing,
I was suddenly struck.
I shed streams of unexpected tears,
And the wounds of my conscience
Your fragrant speeches
The clean oil was rejoicing.
And now from a spiritual height
You extend your hand to me
And with the power of meek and loving
You subdue wild dreams.
Your soul is warmed by your fire
Rejected the darkness of earthly vanities,
And listens to Philaret's harp
In sacred horror the poet.
At the request of censorship, the last stanza of the poem was changed and in the final version it sounded like this:
Your soul burns with fire
Rejected the darkness of earthly vanities,
And listens to the harp of the Seraphim
In sacred horror the poet.
Pushkin's poetic correspondence with Filaret was one of the rare cases of contact between two worlds that were separated by a spiritual and cultural abyss in the 19th century: the world of secular literature and the world of the Church. This correspondence speaks of Pushkin's departure from the unbelief of his youthful years, the rejection of the "madness, laziness and passions" characteristic of his early work. Poetry, prose, journalism and dramaturgy of Pushkin in the 1830s testify to the ever-increasing influence of Christianity, the Bible, and the Orthodox Church on him. He repeatedly rereads the Holy Scriptures, finding in it a source of wisdom and inspiration. Here are Pushkin's words about the religious and moral significance of the Gospel and the Bible:
There is a book by which every word is interpreted, explained, preached in all ends of the earth, applied to all sorts of circumstances of life and events of the world; from which it is impossible to repeat a single expression that everyone would not know by heart, which would not already be a proverb of the peoples; it no longer contains anything unknown to us; but this book is called the Gospel - and such is its ever-new charm that if we, sated with the world or dejected by despondency, accidentally open it, then we are no longer able to resist its sweet passion and are immersed in spirit in its divine eloquence.
I think that we will never give the people anything better than the Scriptures... Its taste becomes clear when you start reading the Scriptures, because in it you find the whole human life. Religion created art and literature; everything that was great in the deepest antiquity, everything depends on this religious feeling inherent in man, just like the idea of beauty along with the idea of goodness ... The poetry of the Bible is especially accessible to pure imagination. My children will read with me the Bible in the original... The Bible is universal.
Another source of inspiration for Pushkin is Orthodox worship, which in his youth left him indifferent and cold. One of the poems, dated 1836, includes a poetic transcription of the prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian "Lord and Master of my life", read at Lenten services.
In Pushkin of the 1830s, religious sophistication and enlightenment were combined with rampant passions, which, according to S.L. Frank, is a hallmark of the Russian "broad nature". Dying from a wound received in a duel, Pushkin confessed and took communion. Before his death, he received a note from Emperor Nicholas I, whom he had known personally from a young age: “Dear friend, Alexander Sergeevich, if we are not destined to see each other in this world, take my last advice: try to die a Christian.” The great Russian poet died a Christian, and his peaceful death was the completion of the path that I. Ilyin defined as the path “from disappointed unbelief to faith and prayer; from revolutionary rebellion to free loyalty and wise statehood; from dreamy worship of freedom to organic conservatism; from youthful polygamy - to the cult of the family hearth. Having traveled this path, Pushkin took a place not only in the history of Russian and world literature, but also in the history of Orthodoxy - as a great representative of that cultural tradition, which is all saturated with his juices.
Another great Russian poet M.Yu. Lermontov (1814-1841) was an Orthodox Christian, and religious themes repeatedly appear in his poems. As a person endowed with a mystical talent, as an exponent of the "Russian idea", conscious of his prophetic vocation, Lermontov had a powerful influence on Russian literature and poetry of the subsequent period. Like Pushkin, Lermontov knew the Scriptures well: his poetry is filled with biblical allusions, some of his poems are reworkings of biblical stories, and many epigraphs are taken from the Bible. Like Pushkin, Lermontov is characterized by a religious perception of beauty, especially the beauty of nature, in which he feels the presence of God:
When the yellowing field worries,
And the fresh forest rustles at the sound of the breeze,
And the crimson plum hides in the garden
Under the shade of a sweet green leaf...
Then the anxiety of my soul humbles itself,
Then the wrinkles on the forehead diverge, -
And I can comprehend happiness on earth,
And in the sky I see God...
In another poem by Lermontov, written shortly before his death, the quivering sense of the presence of God is intertwined with the themes of fatigue from earthly life and the thirst for immortality. A deep and sincere religious feeling is combined in the poem with romantic motifs, which is a characteristic feature of Lermontov's lyrics:
I go out alone on the road;
Through the mist the flinty path gleams;
The night is quiet. The desert listens to God
And the star speaks to the star.
In heaven solemnly and wonderfully!
The earth sleeps in the radiance of blue ...
Why is it so painful and so difficult for me?
Waiting for what? do I regret anything?
Lermontov's poetry reflects his prayerful experience, moments of emotion he experienced, his ability to find solace in spiritual experience. Several of Lermontov's poems are prayers in poetic form, three of which are titled "Prayer". Here is the most famous of them:
In a difficult moment of life
Does sadness linger in the heart:
One wonderful prayer
I believe by heart.
There is a grace
In consonance with the words of the living,
And breathes incomprehensible,
Holy beauty in them.
From the soul as a burden rolls down,
Doubt is far away
And believe and cry
And it's so easy, easy...
This poem by Lermontov has gained extraordinary popularity in Russia and abroad. More than forty composers have set it to music, including M.I. Glinka, A.S. Dargomyzhsky, A.G. Rubinstein, M.P. Mussorgsky, F. Liszt (according to the German translation by F. Bodenstedt).
It would be wrong to represent Lermontov as an Orthodox poet in the narrow sense of the word. Often in his work, youthful passion is opposed to traditional piety (as, for example, in the poem "Mtsyri"); in many images of Lermontov (in particular, in the image of Pechorin), the spirit of protest and disappointment, loneliness and contempt for people is embodied. In addition, Lermontov's entire short literary activity was colored by a pronounced interest in demonic themes, which found their most perfect embodiment in the poem "The Demon".
Lermontov inherited the theme of the demon from Pushkin; after Lermontov, this theme will firmly enter Russian art of the 19th - early 20th centuries up to A.A. Blok and M.A. Vrubel. However, the Russian "demon" is by no means an anti-religious or anti-church image; rather, it reflects the shadowy, wrong side of the religious theme that pervades all Russian literature. The demon is a seducer and deceiver, it is a proud, passionate and lonely creature, obsessed with protest against God and goodness. But in Lermontov's poem, goodness triumphs, the Angel of God finally lifts the soul of the woman seduced by the demon to heaven, and the demon again remains in splendid isolation. In fact, Lermontov in his poem raises the eternal moral problem of the relationship between good and evil, God and the devil, Angel and demon. When reading the poem, it may seem that the author's sympathies are on the side of the demon, but the moral outcome of the work leaves no doubt that the author believes in the final victory of God's truth over the demonic temptation.
Lermontov died in a duel before he was 27 years old. If in the short time allotted to him Lermontov managed to become a great national poet of Russia, then this period was not enough for the formation of mature religiosity in him. Nevertheless, the deep spiritual insights and moral lessons contained in many of his works make it possible to inscribe his name, along with the name of Pushkin, not only in the history of Russian literature, but also in the history of the Orthodox Church.
Among the Russian poets of the 19th century, whose work is marked by a strong influence of religious experience, it is necessary to mention A.K. Tolstoy (1817-1875), author of the poem "John of Damascus". The plot of the poem is inspired by an episode from the life of St. John of Damascus: the abbot of the monastery in which the monk labored forbids him to engage in poetic creativity, but God appears to the abbot in a dream and commands to remove the ban from the poet. Against the background of this simple plot, the multidimensional space of the poem unfolds, which includes the poetic monologues of the protagonist. One of the monologues is an enthusiastic hymn to Christ:
I see Him before me
With a crowd of poor fishermen;
He is quiet, on a peaceful path,
Walks between ripening bread;
Good speeches of His joy
He pours into simple hearts,
He is truly a hungry herd
It leads to its source.
Why was I born at the wrong time
When between us, in the flesh,
Carrying a painful burden
He was on his way to life!
Oh my Lord, my hope,
My strength and cover!
I want you all thoughts
Grace to you all song,
And thoughts of the day, and vigil nights,
And every beat of the heart
And give my whole soul!
Don't open up for another
From now on, prophetic lips!
Thunder only in the name of Christ,
My enthusiastic word!
In the poem by A.K. Tolstoy included a poetic retelling of the stichera of St. John of Damascus, performed at the funeral service. Here is the text of these sticheras in Slavonic:
What worldly sweetness is uninvolved in sorrow; what kind of glory stands on the earth is immutable; the whole canopy is weaker, the whole dormouse is more charming: in a single moment, and all this death accepts. But in the light, Christ, of Your face and in the delight of Your beauty, whom thou hast chosen, rest in peace, like a Lover of mankind.
All the vanity of man, the Christmas tree does not abide after death: wealth does not abide, nor glory descends: having come after death, this is all consumed ...
Where there is worldly passion; where there is temporary daydreaming; where there is gold and silver; where there are many slaves and rumors; all the dust, all the ashes, all the canopy...
I remember the prophet cryingly: I am earth and ashes. And I looked at the packs in the tombs, and saw the bones exposed, and rech: then who is the king, or the warrior, or the rich, or the poor, or the righteous, or the sinner? But give rest, O Lord, with the righteous Thy servant.
And here is a poetic transcription of the same text, made by A.K. Tolstoy:
What sweetness in this life
Earthly sadness is not involved?
Whose expectation is not in vain?
And where is the happy among people?
Everything is wrong, everything is insignificant,
What we have gained with difficulty,
What glory on earth
Is it firm and immutable?
All ashes, ghost, shadow and smoke
Everything will disappear like a dusty whirlwind,
And before death we stand
And unarmed and powerless.
The hand of the mighty is weak,
Insignificant royal decrees -
Accept the deceased slave
Lord, blessed villages!
Among the heaps of smoldering bones
Who is the king? who is the slave? judge or warrior?
Who is worthy of the Kingdom of God?
And who is the outcast villain?
O brothers, where are the silver and gold?
Where are the hosts of many slaves?
Among unknown graves
Who is poor, who is rich?
All ashes, smoke, and dust, and ashes,
All ghost, shadow and ghost -
Only with you in heaven
Lord, and harbor and salvation!
Everything that was flesh will disappear,
Our greatness will be decay -
Accept the deceased, Lord,
To Your blessed villages!
Religious themes occupies a significant place in the later works of N.V. Gogol (1809-1852). Having become famous throughout Russia for his satirical writings, such as The Inspector General and Dead Souls, Gogol significantly changed the direction of his creative activity in the 1840s, paying increasing attention to church issues. The liberal-minded intelligentsia of his time met with incomprehension and indignation Gogol's "Selected passages from correspondence with friends" published in 1847, where he reproached his contemporaries, representatives of the secular intelligentsia, for ignorance of the teachings and traditions of the Orthodox Church, defending the Orthodox clergy from N.V. Gogol attacks Western critics:
Our clergy is not idle. I know very well that in the depths of monasteries and in the silence of cells, irrefutable writings are being prepared in defense of our Church... But even these defenses will not yet serve to completely convince Western Catholics. Our Church must be sanctified in us, and not in our words... This Church, which, like a chaste virgin, has been preserved alone from apostolic times in its immaculate original purity, this Church, which is all with its deep dogmas and the slightest external rites, like would have been taken down straight from heaven for the Russian people, which alone is able to solve all the knots of perplexity and our questions ... And this church is unknown to us! And this Church, created for life, we still have not introduced into our lives! Only one propaganda is possible for us - our life. With our life we must defend our Church, which is all life; with the fragrance of our souls we must proclaim its truth.
Of particular interest are "Reflections on the Divine Liturgy", compiled by Gogol on the basis of interpretations of the liturgy, belonging to Byzantine authors Patriarch Herman of Constantinople (VIII century), Nikolai Cabasilas (XIV century) and St. Simeon of Thessalonica (XV century), as well as a number of Russian church writers. With great spiritual trepidation, Gogol writes about the transformation of the Holy Gifts at the Divine Liturgy into the Body and Blood of Christ:
Having blessed, the priest says: having changed by Your Holy Spirit; the deacon says three times: amen - and the body and blood are already on the throne: transubstantiation has taken place! The Word called forth the Eternal Word. The priest, having a verb instead of a sword, made a slaughter. Whoever he himself is, Peter or Ivan, but in his person the Eternal Bishop Himself performed this slaughter, and He eternally performs it in the person of His priests, as by the word: let there be light, the light shines forever; as in the saying: let the earth bring forth grass, the earth will grow it forever. On the throne is not an image, not a look, but the very Body of the Lord, the same Body that suffered on earth, suffered temptations, was spat on, crucified, buried, resurrected, ascended with the Lord and sits at the right hand of the Father. It preserves the form of bread only in order to be a food for man and that the Lord Himself said: I am bread. The church bell rises with the bell tower to announce to everyone about the great moment, so that a person, wherever he is at that time, whether on the way, on the road, whether he cultivates the land of his fields, whether he sits in his house, or is busy with another business, or languishes on sickbed, or in prison walls - in a word, wherever he is, so that he can offer prayer from everywhere and from himself at this terrible moment.
In the afterword to the book, Gogol writes about the moral significance of the Divine Liturgy for every person who takes part in it, as well as for the entire Russian society:
The effect of the Divine Liturgy on the soul is great: it is performed visibly and with one’s own eyes, in the sight of the whole world and hidden ... And if society has not yet completely disintegrated, if people do not breathe complete, irreconcilable hatred among themselves, then the innermost reason for this is the Divine Liturgy, which reminds a person of about the holy heavenly love for a brother... The influence of the Divine Liturgy can be great and incalculable if a person would listen to it in order to bring what he hears into life. Teaching everyone equally, acting equally on all links, from the king to the last beggar, he speaks the same thing to everyone, not in the same language, he teaches everyone love, which is the bond of society, the innermost spring of everything harmoniously moving, writing, the life of everything.
It is characteristic that Gogol writes not so much about the communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ at the Divine Liturgy, but about “listening” to the Liturgy, being present at the divine service. This reflects the widespread practice in the 19th century, according to which Orthodox believers took communion once or several times a year, usually on the first week of Great Lent or during Holy Week, and the communion was preceded by several days of “fasting” (strict abstinence) and confession. On other Sundays and feast days, believers came to the liturgy only in order to defend, to “hear” it. Such practices were opposed in Greece by collivades, and in Russia by John of Kronstadt, who called for frequent communion as possible.
Among the Russian writers of the 19th century, two colossus stand out - Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Spiritual path F.M. Dostoevsky (1821-1881) in some ways repeats the path of many of his contemporaries: upbringing in the traditional Orthodox spirit, a departure from traditional clericalism in youth, a return to it in maturity. The tragic life path of Dostoevsky, who was sentenced to death for participating in a circle of revolutionaries, but pardoned a minute before the execution of the sentence, who spent ten years in hard labor and in exile, was reflected in all his diverse works - primarily in his immortal novels "Crime and Punishment", "Humiliated and Insulted", "Idiot", "Demons", "Teenager", "The Brothers Karamazov", in numerous novels and stories. In these works, as well as in The Writer's Diary, Dostoevsky developed his religious and philosophical views based on Christian personalism. At the center of Dostoevsky's work is always the human person in all its diversity and inconsistency, but human life, the problems of human existence are considered from a religious perspective, which implies belief in a personal, personal God.
The main religious and moral idea that unites all of Dostoevsky's work is summarized in the famous words of Ivan Karamazov: "If there is no God, then everything is permitted." Dostoevsky denies autonomous morality based on arbitrary and subjective "humanistic" ideals. The only solid foundation of human morality, according to Dostoevsky, is the idea of God, and it is precisely the commandments of God that are the absolute moral criterion by which humanity should be guided. Atheism and nihilism lead a person to moral permissiveness, open the way to crime and spiritual death. The denunciation of atheism, nihilism and revolutionary moods, in which the writer saw a threat to the spiritual future of Russia, was the leitmotif of many of Dostoevsky's works. This is the main theme of the novel "Demons", many pages of the "Diary of a Writer".
Another characteristic feature of Dostoevsky is his deepest Christocentrism. “Throughout his whole life, Dostoevsky carried the exceptional, unique feeling of Christ, some kind of frenzied love for the face of Christ ... - writes N. Berdyaev. “Dostoevsky's faith in Christ passed through the crucible of all doubts and was tempered in fire.” For Dostoevsky, God is not an abstract idea: faith in God for him is identical with faith in Christ as the God-man and Savior of the world. Falling away from the faith in his understanding is a renunciation of Christ, and a conversion to faith is a conversion, first of all, to Christ. The quintessence of his Christology is the chapter "The Grand Inquisitor" from the novel "The Brothers Karamazov" - a philosophical parable put into the mouth of the atheist Ivan Karamazov. In this parable, Christ appears in medieval Seville, where He is met by a cardinal inquisitor. Taking Christ under arrest, the inquisitor conducts a monologue with Him about the dignity and freedom of man; Throughout the parable Christ is silent. In the monologue of the inquisitor, the three temptations of Christ in the desert are interpreted as temptations by miracle, mystery and authority: rejected by Christ, these temptations were not rejected by the Catholic Church, which accepted earthly power and took away spiritual freedom from people. Medieval Catholicism in Dostoevsky's parable is a prototype of atheistic socialism, which is based on disbelief in the freedom of the spirit, disbelief in God and, ultimately, disbelief in man. Without God, without Christ, there can be no true freedom, the writer asserts through the words of his hero.
Dostoevsky was a deeply ecclesiastical person. His Christianity was not abstract or mental: having suffered throughout his life, it was rooted in the tradition and spirituality of the Orthodox Church. One of the main characters of the novel The Brothers Karamazov is the elder Zosima, whose prototype was seen in St. Tikhon of Zadonsk or St. Ambrose of Optina, but who in reality is a collective image embodying the best that, according to Dostoevsky, was in Russian monasticism . One of the chapters of the novel, "From the conversations and teachings of the elder Zosima", is a moral and theological treatise written in a style close to the patristic. In the mouth of the elder Zosima, Dostoevsky puts his teaching about all-embracing love, reminiscent of the teaching of St. Isaac the Syrian about the “merciful heart”:
Brothers, do not be afraid of the sin of people, love a person even in his sin, for this is the likeness of God's love and is the height of love on earth. Love the whole creation of God, and the whole, and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God. Love animals, love plants, love everything. You will love every thing, and you will comprehend the mystery of God in things. Once you comprehend it, you will tirelessly begin to know it further and more, for every day. And you will finally love the whole world already with a whole, universal love ... Before a different thought, you will become perplexed, especially when you see the sin of people, and you will ask yourself: “Should we take it by force or with humble love?” Always decide: "I will take it with humble love." You will decide so once and for all, and you will be able to conquer the whole world. Humility of love is a terrible force, the strongest of all, and there is nothing like it.
Religious topics are given a significant place on the pages of the Writer's Diary, which is a collection of journalistic essays. One of the central themes of the "Diary" is the fate of the Russian people and the significance of the Orthodox faith for them:
They say that the Russian people do not know the Gospel well, they do not know the basic rules of faith. Of course, so, but he knows Christ and carries Him in his heart from time immemorial. There is no doubt about this. How is a true presentation of Christ possible without a doctrine of faith? This is a different issue. But a heartfelt knowledge of Christ and a true conception of Him fully exist. It is passed down from generation to generation and has merged with the hearts of people. Perhaps the only love of the Russian people is Christ, and they love His image in their own way, that is, to the point of suffering. The name of the Orthodox, that is, the most truly confessing Christ, he is most proud of.
The "Russian idea", according to Dostoevsky, is nothing but Orthodoxy, which the Russian people can convey to all mankind. In this Dostoevsky sees that Russian "socialism" which is the opposite of atheistic communism:
The vast majority of the Russian people are Orthodox and live by the idea of Orthodoxy in full, although they do not understand this idea responsibly and scientifically. In essence, in our people, apart from this “idea”, there is no one, and everything comes from it alone, at least our people want it that way, with all their heart and deep conviction ... I’m not talking about church buildings now and not about tales, I’m talking about our Russian “socialism” now (and I take this word opposite to the church precisely to clarify my thought, no matter how strange it may seem), the goal and outcome of which is the nationwide and universal Church, realized on earth, since the earth can contain it. I'm talking about the indefatigable thirst in the Russian people, always inherent in it, for the great, universal, nationwide, all-brotherly unity in the name of Christ. And if this unity does not yet exist, if the Church has not yet been fully built up, no longer in prayer alone, but in deeds, then nevertheless the instinct of this Church and her tireless thirst, sometimes even almost unconscious, are undoubtedly present in the heart of our many millions of people. The socialism of the Russian people does not lie in communism, not in mechanical forms: they believe that they will be saved only in the end by all-world unity in the name of Christ... And here one can directly put the formula: who among our people does not understand his Orthodoxy and its ultimate goals, he will never understand even our people themselves.
Following Gogol, who defended the Church and the clergy in his Selected Places, Dostoevsky reverently speaks of the activities of Orthodox bishops and priests, contrasting them with visiting Protestant missionaries:
Well, what kind of Protestant is our people really, and what kind of German is he? And why should he learn German in order to sing psalms? And does not everything, everything he seeks, lie in Orthodoxy? Is it not in him alone that the truth and the salvation of the Russian people, and in future centuries, for all mankind? Is it not in Orthodoxy alone that the Divine face of Christ was preserved in all its purity? And perhaps the most important pre-chosen purpose of the Russian people in the fate of all mankind consists only in preserving this Divine image of Christ in all its purity, and when the time comes, to reveal this image to a world that has lost its ways! .. Well, by the way : what about our priests? What do you hear about them? And our priests, too, they say, are waking up. Our spiritual estate, they say, has long since begun to show signs of life. With tenderness we read the edifications of the lords in their churches about preaching and a fine life. Our shepherds, according to all reports, are determined to write sermons and prepare to deliver them... We have many good shepherds, perhaps more than we can hope for or even deserve.
If Gogol and Dostoevsky came to realize the truth and salvation of the Orthodox Church, then L.N. Tolstoy (1828-1910), on the contrary, departed from Orthodoxy and stood in open opposition to the Church. About his spiritual path Tolstoy says in his "Confession": "I was baptized and brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith. I was taught it from childhood and throughout my adolescence and youth. But when I graduated from the second year of university at the age of 18, I no longer believed in anything that was taught to me. With amazing frankness, Tolstoy talks about the way of life, thoughtless and immoral, which he led in his youth, and about the spiritual crisis that hit him at the age of fifty and almost drove him to suicide.
In search of a way out, Tolstoy immersed himself in reading philosophical and religious literature, communicated with official representatives of the Church, monks and wanderers. Intellectual search led Tolstoy to faith in God and return to the Church; he again, after a long break, began to go to church regularly, observe fasts, go to confession and take communion. However, communion did not have a renewing and life-giving effect on Tolstoy; on the contrary, it left a heavy mark on the writer's soul, which was connected, apparently, with his internal state.
Tolstoy's return to Orthodox Christianity was short-lived and superficial. In Christianity, he perceived only the moral side, while the entire mystical side, including the Sacraments of the Church, remained alien to him, since it did not fit into the framework of rational knowledge. Tolstoy's worldview was characterized by extreme rationalism, and it was precisely this rationalism that prevented him from accepting Christianity in its entirety.
After a long and painful search, which did not end with a meeting with a personal God, with the Living God, Tolstoy came to the creation of his own religion, which was based on faith in God as an impersonal principle that guides human morality. This religion, which combined only separate elements of Christianity, Buddhism and Islam, was distinguished by extreme syncretism and bordered on pantheism. In Jesus Christ, Tolstoy did not recognize the incarnate God, considering Him only one of the outstanding teachers of morality along with Buddha and Mohammed. Tolstoy did not create his own theology, and his numerous religious and philosophical writings, which followed the Confession, were mainly of a moral and didactic nature. An important element of Tolstoy's teaching was the idea of non-resistance to evil by violence, which he borrowed from Christianity, but carried to the extreme and opposed to church teaching.
Tolstoy entered the history of Russian literature as a great writer, author of the novels "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina", numerous novels and short stories. However, Tolstoy entered the history of the Orthodox Church as a blasphemer and a false teacher who sowed temptation and confusion. In his writings written after the Confession, both literary and moral and journalistic, Tolstoy attacked the Orthodox Church with sharp and vicious attacks. His "Study of Dogmatic Theology" is a pamphlet in which Orthodox theology (Tolstoy studied it extremely superficially - mainly from catechisms and seminary textbooks) is subjected to derogatory criticism. The novel "Resurrection" contains a caricature description of Orthodox worship, which is presented as a series of "manipulations" with bread and wine, "meaningless verbiage" and "blasphemous sorcery", allegedly contrary to the teachings of Christ.
Not limiting himself to attacks on the teaching and worship of the Orthodox Church, in the 1880s Tolstoy began to remake the Gospel and published several works in which the Gospel was "cleansed" of mysticism and miracles. In the Tolstoy version of the Gospel, there is no story about the birth of Jesus from the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit, about the resurrection of Christ, many miracles of the Savior are missing or distorted. In a work titled "Combining and Translation of the Four Gospels," Tolstoy presents an arbitrary, tendentious, and at times frankly illiterate translation of selected gospel passages, with a commentary reflecting Tolstoy's personal dislike for the Orthodox Church.
The anti-church orientation of Tolstoy's literary and moral-journalistic activities in the 1880-1890s caused sharp criticism of him from the Church, which only further embittered the writer. On February 20, 1901, by decision of the Holy Synod, Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Church. The resolution of the Synod contained the following formula for excommunication: "... The Church does not consider him a member and cannot consider him until he repents and restores his communion with her." Tolstoy's excommunication from the Church caused a huge public outcry: liberal circles accused the Church of cruelty towards the great writer. However, in his “Response to the Synod” dated April 4, 1901, Tolstoy wrote: “The fact that I renounced the Church that calls itself Orthodox is completely fair ... the grossest superstitions and sorcery, which completely hides the whole meaning of the Christian doctrine. Tolstoy's excommunication was thus only a statement of the fact that Tolstoy did not deny, and which consisted in Tolstoy's conscious and voluntary renunciation of the Church and of Christ, which was recorded in many of his writings.
Until the last days of his life, Tolstoy continued to spread his teaching, which gained many followers. Some of them united in communities of a sectarian nature - with their own cult, which included "prayer to Christ the Sun", "prayer of Tolstoy", "prayer of Muhammad" and other works of folk art. A dense ring of his admirers formed around Tolstoy, who were vigilant to ensure that the writer did not change his teaching. A few days before his death, Tolstoy, unexpectedly for everyone, secretly left his estate in Yasnaya Polyana and went to Optina Pustyn. The question of what attracted him to the heart of Orthodox Russian Christianity will forever remain a mystery. Before reaching the monastery, Tolstoy fell ill with severe pneumonia at the Astapovo postal station. His wife and several other close people came here to see him, who found him in a difficult mental and physical condition. From Optina Hermitage, Elder Barsanuphius was sent to Tolstoy in case the writer wanted to repent and reunite with the Church before his death. But Tolstoy's entourage did not notify the writer of his arrival and did not allow the elder to see the dying man - the risk of destroying Tolstoyism by breaking with Tolstoy himself was too great. The writer died without repentance and took with him to the grave the secret of his dying spiritual throwings.
In Russian literature of the 19th century there were no more opposite personalities than Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. They differed in everything, including in aesthetic views, in philosophical anthropology, in religious experience and worldview. Dostoevsky argued that "beauty will save the world", while Tolstoy insisted that "the concept of beauty not only does not coincide with goodness, but is rather opposed to it." Dostoevsky believed in a personal God, in the divinity of Jesus Christ, and in the salvation of the Orthodox Church; Tolstoy believed in an impersonal Divine Being, denied the Divinity of Christ, and rejected the Orthodox Church. And yet, not only Dostoevsky, but also Tolstoy cannot be understood outside of Orthodoxy.
L. Tolstoy is Russian to the marrow of his bones, and he could have arisen only on Russian Orthodox soil, although he changed Orthodoxy ... - writes N. Berdyaev. - Tolstoy belonged to the highest cultural stratum, which fell away in a significant part from the Orthodox faith, which the people lived ... He wanted to believe, as ordinary people believe, not spoiled by culture. But he did not succeed in the slightest degree ... The common people believed in the Orthodox way. Orthodox faith in the mind of Tolstoy collides irreconcilably with his mind.
Among other Russian writers who paid great attention to religious topics, N.S. Leskov (1831-1895). He was one of the few secular writers who made representatives of the clergy the protagonists of his works. Leskov's novel "Soboryane" is a chronicle of the life of a provincial archpriest, written with great skill and knowledge of church life (Leskov himself was the grandson of a priest). The protagonist of the story "At the End of the World" is an Orthodox bishop sent to missionary service in Siberia. Religious themes are touched upon in many other works by Leskov, including the stories The Sealed Angel and The Enchanted Wanderer. Leskov's well-known essay "Trifles of Bishop's Life" is a collection of stories and anecdotes from the life of Russian bishops of the 19th century: one of the main characters of the book is Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow. The essays “The Sovereign's Court”, “Bishops' Detours”, “Diocesan Court”, “Pastor's Shadows”, “Synodal Persons” and others adjoin the same genre. Peru Leskov owns works of religious and moral content, such as "The Mirror of the Life of a True Disciple of Christ", "Prophecies about the Messiah", "Point to the Book of the New Testament", "Selection of Fatherly Opinions on the Importance of Holy Scripture". In the last years of his life, Leskov fell under the influence of Tolstoy, began to show interest in schism, sectarianism and Protestantism, and departed from traditional Orthodoxy. However, in the history of Russian literature, his name has remained associated primarily with stories and stories from the life of the clergy, which won him reader recognition.
It is necessary to mention the influence of Orthodoxy on the work of A.P. Chekhov (1860-1904), in his stories referring to the images of seminarians, priests and bishops, to the description of prayer and Orthodox worship. The action of Chekhov's stories often takes place on Holy Week or Easter. In The Student, a twenty-two-year-old student of the Theological Academy on Good Friday tells the story of Peter's denial to two women. In the story “In Holy Week,” a nine-year-old boy describes confession and communion in an Orthodox church. The story "Holy Night" tells about two monks, one of whom dies on the eve of Easter. The most famous religious work of Chekhov is the story "Bishop", which tells about the last weeks of the life of a provincial vicar bishop, who recently arrived from abroad. In the description of the rite of the "twelve Gospels" performed on the eve of Good Friday, Chekhov's love for the Orthodox church service is felt:
Throughout all the twelve Gospels, one had to stand motionless in the middle of the church, and the first Gospel, the longest, most beautiful, was read by him himself. A cheerful, healthy mood took possession of him. This first gospel, "Now be glorified the Son of Man," he knew by heart; and as he read, from time to time he raised his eyes and saw on both sides a whole sea of lights, heard the crackling of candles, but there were no people to be seen, as in past years, and it seemed that they were all the same people that were then in childhood and in youth, that they will be the same every year, and until when, only God knows. His father was a deacon, his grandfather was a priest, his great-grandfather was a deacon, and his whole family, perhaps from the time of the adoption of Christianity in Russia, belonged to the clergy, and his love for church services, the clergy, for the ringing of bells was innate, deep , ineradicable; in church, especially when he himself participated in the service, he felt active, cheerful, happy.
The imprint of this innate and ineradicable ecclesiality lies on all Russian literature of the nineteenth century.
MAOU "Molchanovskaya secondary school No. 1"
Research
"Christian Plots and Images in Russian Literature"
Kritskaya L.I.
Eremina I.V. - teacher of the Russian language and literature, Moscow School of Education No. 1
Molchanovo - 2014
Christian plots and images in Russian literature
Introduction
Our entire culture is built on the basis of folklore, antiquity and the Bible.
The Bible is an outstanding monument. The book of books created by the nations.
The Bible is a source of stories and images for art. Biblical motifs run through all our literature. The main thing, according to Christianity, was the Word, and the Bible helps to return it. It helps to see a person from humanitarian positions. Each time requires truths, and therefore an appeal to biblical postulates.
Literature refers to the inner world of man, his spirituality. The main character becomes a person who lives according to evangelical principles, a person whose main thing in life is the work of his spirit, free from the influence of the environment.
Christian ideas are a source of unfading light, which is served in order to overcome chaos in oneself and in the world with it.
From the very beginning of the Christian era, many books about Christ were written, but the church recognized, that is, canonized, only four Gospels, and the rest - up to fifty in number! - brought either to the list of the renounced, or to the list of apocrypha, allowed not for worship, but for ordinary Christian reading. The Apocrypha were dedicated to both Christ and practically all the people from his inner circle. Once these apocrypha, collected in the Cheti-Minei and retold, for example, by Dmitry Rostovsky, were a favorite reading in Russia. “Consequently, Christian literature has its own Sacred Sea and there are streams and rivers flowing into it or, rather, flowing from it.” Christianity, carrying a new worldview that differs from pagan ideas about the origin of the Universe, about the gods, about the history of the human race, laid the foundations of Russian written culture, caused the emergence of a class of literate.
The Old Testament history is the history of trials, falls, spiritual cleansing and renewal, faith and unbelief of individuals and the whole nation - from the Creation of the world to the coming of the Messiah Jesus Christ, with whose name the New Testament is associated.
The New Testament introduces us to the life and teachings of Christ the Savior from his miraculous birth to the crucifixion, appearance to the people and ascension. At the same time, the Gospel must be considered from several angles: religious teaching, ethical and legal source, historical and literary work.
The Bible is the most important (key) ethical and legal work.
At the same time, the Bible is a literary monument, light in the basis of our entire written verbal culture. The images and plots of the Bible inspired more than one generation of writers and poets. Against the backdrop of biblical literary stories, we often perceive today's events. In the Bible we find the beginnings of many literary genres. Prayers, psalms have found continuation in poetry, in hymns...
Many biblical words and expressions have become proverbs and sayings, enriching our speech and thought. Many plots formed the basis of stories, novels, novels by writers of different times and peoples. For example, "The Brothers Karamazov", "Crime and Punishment" by F. M. Dostoevsky, "The Righteous" by N. S. Leskov, "Tales" by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, "Judas Iscariot", "The Life of Vasily Thebesky" by L. Andreev , “The Master and Margarita” by M. A. Bulgakov, “A Golden Cloud Spent the Night”, A. Pristavkin “Yushka” by A. Platonov, “The Block” by Ch. Aitmatov.
The Russian bookish word arose as a Christian word. It was the word of the Bible, liturgy, lives, the word of the Church Fathers and saints. First of all, our writing has learned to speak about God and, remembering Him, to tell about earthly affairs.
Starting from ancient literature to the works of today, all our Russian literature is colored by the light of Christ, penetrating into all corners of the world and consciousness. Our literature is characterized by the search for truth and Good, commanded by Jesus, so it is oriented towards the highest, absolute values.
Christianity introduced a higher principle into literature, gave a special structure of thought and speech. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth" - that's where poetry comes from. Christ is the Logos, the incarnate word contained in itself the fullness of truth, beauty and goodness.
The sounds of biblical speech always gave rise to a lively response in a sensitive soul.
The biblical word is a storehouse of knowledge of God, thousands of years of wisdom and moral experience, because it is an unsurpassed example of artistic speech. This side of Scripture has long been close to Russian literature. “We find many lyrical poems in the Old Testament,” noted Nikolai Yazvitsky in 1915. “In addition to the hymns and songs scattered in the books of Genesis and the Prophets, the whole book of Psalms can be considered a collection of spiritual odes”
Christian motifs enter literature in different ways, receive different artistic development. But they always give creativity a spiritually ascending direction, they orient it towards something absolutely valuable.
All Russian literature of the 19th century was imbued with gospel motifs, ideas about life based on Christian commandments were natural for people of the last century. F. M. Dostoevsky also warned our 20th century that the retreat, the “crime” of moral norms leads to the destruction of life.
Christian symbols in the novel "Crime and Punishment" by F. M. Dostoevsky
For the first time, religious themes are seriously introduced by F.M. Dostoevsky. In his work, four main evangelical ideas can be distinguished:
"man is a mystery";
“a low soul, having come out from under oppression, oppresses itself”;
"the world will be saved by beauty";
"ugliness will kill."
The writer knew the Gospel from childhood, and in adulthood it was his reference book. The circumstances of the death penalty of the Petrashevites made it possible to experience a state on the verge of death, which turned Dostoevsky to God. The winter ray of sun from the dome of the cathedral marked the physical embodiment of his soul. On the way to hard labor, the writer met with the wives of the Decembrists. The women gave him a Bible. He did not part with her for four years. Dostoevsky experienced the life of Jesus as a reflection of his own: in the name of what suffering? It is this very copy of the Gospel that Dostoevsky describes in the novel “Crime and Punishment”: “There was some book on the chest of drawers ... It was the New Testament in Russian translation. The book is old, used, leather-bound. This book has a lot of pages covered with pencil and pen marks, some places marked with a fingernail. These marks are an important evidence for understanding the religious and creative quests of the great writer. “I will tell you about myself that I am a child of unbelief and consciousness up to now and even ... to the grave cover ... I have composed myself a symbol of faith in which everything is clear and holy to me. This symbol is very simple; here it is: to believe that there is nothing more beautiful, deeper, more sympathetic, more reasonable, more courageous and more perfect than Christ, and not only not, but with zealous love I tell myself that it cannot be. Moreover, if someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, then I would rather stay with Christ than with the truth. (from a letter from F. M. Dostoevsky to N. D. Fonvizina).
The question of faith and unbelief became the main one in the life and work of the writer. This problem is at the center of his best novels: The Idiot, Demons, The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment. The works of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky are filled with various symbols and associations; a huge place among them is occupied by motifs and images borrowed from the Bible and introduced by the writer in order to warn humanity, which is on the verge of a global catastrophe, the Last Judgment, the end of the world. And the reason for this, according to the writer, is the social system. The hero of "Demons" Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, rethinking the gospel legend, comes to the conclusion: "This is exactly like our Russia. These demons coming out of the patient and entering the pigs are all the sores, all the uncleanness, all the demons and all the demons that have accumulated in our great and sweet patient, in our Russia, for centuries, for centuries!
For Dostoevsky, the use of biblical myths and images is not an end in itself. They served as illustrations for his reflections on the tragic fate of the world and Russia as part of world civilization. Did the writer see the paths leading to the improvement of society, to the mitigation of morals, to tolerance and mercy? Undoubtedly. The key to the revival of Russia, he considered the appeal to the idea of Christ. The theme of the spiritual resurrection of the individual, which Dostoevsky considered the main one in literature, pervades all his work.
"Crime and Punishment", which is based on the theme of moral decline and spiritual rebirth of man, is a novel in which the writer presents his Christianity. There can be many reasons for the death of the soul, but here is the path that leads to salvation, according to the writer, there is only one - this is the path of turning to God. I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me, even if he dies, will come to life, ”the hero hears the gospel truth from the lips of Sonechka Marmeladova.
Having made Raskolnikov's murder of an old pawnbroker the basis of the plot, Dostoevsky reveals the soul of a criminal who has violated the moral law: "Thou shalt not kill" is one of the main biblical commandments. The reason for the terrible delusions of the human mind, rationally explaining and arithmetically proving the justice and benefit of the murder of a mischievous old woman, the writer sees in the retreat of the hero from God.
Raskolnikov is an ideologue. He puts forward an anti-Christian idea. He divided all people into "rulers" and "trembling creatures." Raskolnikov believed that everything was allowed to the “lords”, even “blood for conscience”, and “trembling creatures” could only produce their own kind.
Raskolnikov tramples on the sacred - unshakable right for human consciousness: he encroaches on a person.
“Do not kill. Do not steal! - written in an ancient book. These are the commandments of mankind, axioms accepted without proof. Raskolnikov dared to doubt, decided to check them. And Dostoevsky shows how this incredible doubt is followed by a host of other tormenting doubts and ideas for those who violate the moral law, and it seems that only death can save him from torment: by sinning with his neighbor, a person harms himself. Suffering affects not only the mental sphere of the criminal, but also his body: nightmares, frenzy, seizures, fainting, fever, trembling, unconsciousness - destruction occurs at all levels. Raskolnikov is convinced by his own experience that the moral law is not prejudice: “Did I kill the old woman? I killed myself, not the old woman! Here he slammed himself, forever! The murder turned out to be not a crime for Raskolnikov, but a punishment, suicide, a renunciation of everyone and everything. Raskolnikov's soul is drawn to only one person - to Sonya, to the same, like him, a violator of the moral law, rejected by people. It is with the image of this heroine that the gospel motifs in the novel are connected.
Three times he comes to Sonya. Raskolnikov sees in her a kind of "ally" in crime. But Sonya goes to shame and humiliation for the sake of saving others. She is endowed with the gift of infinite compassion for people, in the name of love for them she is ready to endure any suffering. One of the most important gospel motives in the novel is connected with the image of Sonya Marmeladova - the motive of the victim: “There is no more love than if someone lays down his life for his friends” (John 15, 13) Like the Savior who endured the torments of Calvary for us, Sonya betrayed himself to a daily painful execution for the sake of a consumptive stepmother and her hungry children.
Sonya Marmeladova is Raskolnikov's main opponent in the novel. She - with her whole fate, character, choice, way of thinking, self-awareness opposes his cruel and terrible life scheme. Sonya, placed in the same inhuman conditions of existence as he, even more humiliated than he, is different. A different system of values was embodied in her life. By sacrificing herself, giving her body to be mocked, she retained a living soul and that necessary connection with the world that the transgressor Raskolnikov breaks, tormented by the blood shed in the name of the idea. In Sonya's suffering is the atonement of sin, without which the world and the person who creates it, lost his way and lost his way to the temple, do not exist. In the terrible world of the novel, Sonya is that moral absolute, the bright pole that attracts everyone.
But the most important thing for understanding the ideological meaning of the novel is the motive of the spiritual death of a person who has fallen away from God and his spiritual resurrection. “I am the vine and you are the branches; whoever abides in Me and I in him bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing... Whoever does not abide in Me will be cast out like a branch and wither; but such branches are collected and thrown into the fire, and they are burned,” the Savior said to his disciples at the Last Supper” (John 15, 5-6). Such a dry branch is similar to the protagonist of the novel.
In the fourth chapter of the 4th part, which is the climax in the novel, the author's intention becomes clear: not only the spiritual beauty of Sonechka, her selflessness in the name of love, her meekness is shown to the reader by Dostoevsky, but most importantly - the source of strength to live in unbearable conditions - faith in God. Sonechka becomes a guardian angel for Raskolnikov: reading in the apartment of the Kapernaumovs (the symbolic character of this name is obvious: Capernaum is a city in Galilee, where Christ performed many miracles of healing the sick) to him an eternal book, namely an episode from the Gospel of John about the greatest miracle performed Savior - about the resurrection of Lazarus, she tries to infect him with her faith, pour her religious feelings into him. It is here that the words of Christ are heard, which are very important for understanding the novel: “I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me, even if he dies, will live. And whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” In this scene, Sonya's faith and Raskolnikov's unbelief collide. The soul of Raskolnikov, "killed" by a perfect crime, will have to gain faith and rise again, like Lazarus.
Sonya, whose soul is full of "insatiable compassion", having learned about Raskolnikov's crime, not only sends him to the crossroads ("... bow, kiss the ground you defiled first, and then bow to the whole world, on all four sides, and tell everyone aloud : “I killed!” Then God will send you life again”), but she is also ready to take on his cross and go with him to the end: “Together we will go to suffer, together we will bear the cross! ..” Putting her cross on him, she as if blesses him on the hard path of the torment of the cross, with which only it is possible to atone for what he has done. The theme of the Way of the Cross is another of the gospel motifs of the novel Crime and Punishment.
The hero's path of suffering is his path to God, but this path is difficult and long. Two years later, in hard labor, the hero’s epiphany comes: in nightmares about a pestilence that struck all of humanity, Raskolnikov’s illness is easily recognized; it is still the same idea, but only brought to its limit, embodied on a planetary scale. A person who has fallen away from God loses the ability to distinguish between good and evil and carries a terrible danger for all mankind. Demons, possessing people, lead the world to destruction. But demons will be free where people expel God from their souls. The picture of a man dying from a “terrible pestilence”, seen by Raskolnikov, in illness, in delirium, is the direct cause of the coup that happened to him. These dreams served as an impetus for the resurrection of the hero. It is no coincidence that the disease is timed to coincide with the end of Great Lent and Holy Week, and in the second week after the Resurrection of Christ, a miracle of transfiguration occurs, which Sonya dreamed and prayed for while reading the Gospel chapter. In the epilogue, we see Raskolnikov crying and hugging Sonya's legs. "They were resurrected by love ... he was resurrected, and he knew it ... Under his pillow lay the Gospel ... This book belonged to her, it was the one from which she read to him about the resurrection of Lazarus."
The entire novel "Crime and Punishment" is built on the motif of the resurrection of man to a new life. The path of the hero is the path through death to faith and resurrection.
For Dostoevsky, Christ stood at the center of both being and literature. The idea that if there is no God, then everything is allowed, haunted the writer: "Having rejected Christ, they will flood the whole world with blood." Therefore, gospel motifs occupy an important place in Dostoevsky's prose.
Christian views of LN Tolstoy.
Tolstoy entered Russian literature in the 1950s. He was immediately noticed by critics. N.g. Chernyshevsky singled out two features of the writer's style and worldview: Tolstoy's interest in the "dialectic of the soul" and the purity of moral feeling (special morality).
Tolstoy's special self-consciousness is trust in the world. For him, naturalness and simplicity were the highest value. They had the idea of simplification. Tolstoy himself also tried to lead a simple life, although a count, although a writer.
Lev Nikolaevich came to literature with his hero. A complex of features that were dear to the writer in the hero: conscience (“conscience is God in me”), naturalness, love of life. The ideal of the perfect man for Tolstoy was not a man of ideas, not a man of action, but a man capable of changing himself.
Tolstoy's novel War and Peace was published simultaneously with Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. The course of the novel from artificiality and unnaturalness to simplicity.
The main characters are close to each other in that they are true to the idea.
Tolstoy embodied his idea of folk, natural life in the image of Platon Karataev. “A round, kind person with soothing neat movements, who knows how to do everything“ not very well and not very badly ”, Karataev does not think about anything. He lives like a bird, as freely inwardly in captivity as in freedom. Every evening he says: “Lay, Lord, with a pebble, raise it with a ball”; every morning: "He lay down - curled up, got up - shook himself" - and nothing worries him, except for the simplest natural needs of a person, he rejoices in everything, knows how to find the bright side in everything. His peasant warehouse, his jokes, kindness became for Pierre "the personification of the spirit of simplicity and truth." Pierre Bezukhov remembered Karataev for life.
In the image of Platon Karataev, Tolstoy embodied his favorite Christian idea of non-resistance to evil by violence.
Only in the 70s Tolstoy in his work on the novel "Anna Karenina" refers to the idea of faith. The reason for this appeal was the crisis that Tolstoy experienced in the mid-70s. During these years, literature for the writer is the most disgusting passion. Tolstoy wants to give up writing, he begins to engage in pedagogy: he teaches peasant children, develops his own pedagogical theory. Tolstoy carries out reforms on his estate, brings up his children.
In the 1970s, Tolstoy changed the scale of his artistic interest. He writes about the present. In the novel "Anna Karenina" - the story of two private people: Karenina and Levin. The main thing in it is a religious attitude to the world. For the novel, Tolstoy took an epigraph from their Bible, from the Old Testament: "Vengeance is mine, and I will repay"
At first, Tolstoy wanted to write a novel about an unfaithful wife, but the idea changed in the hall of the work.
Anna Karenina is cheating on her husband, so she is a sinner. It seems to her that she is right, natural, since she does not love Karenin. But by making this little lie, Anna gets caught in a web of lies. Many relationships have changed, and most importantly - with Serezha. But more than anything else, she loves her son, but he becomes a stranger to her. Confused in her relationship with Vronsky, Karenina decides to commit suicide. She will be rewarded for this: secular rumor, legal law and the court of conscience. In the novel, all three of these possibilities for Tolstoy's condemnation of Anna Karenina's act are contested. Only God can judge Anna.
Karenina decided to take revenge on Vronsky. But at the time of the suicides, she pays attention to small details: “She wanted to fall under the first carriage, which had caught up with her in the middle. But the red bag, which she began to remove from her hand, delayed her, and it was already too late: the middle passed her. We had to wait for the next car. A feeling similar to the one she experienced when, while bathing, she was preparing to enter the water, seized her, and she crossed herself. The habitual gesture of the sign of the cross evoked in her soul a whole series of girlish and childhood memories, and suddenly the darkness that covered everything for her broke, and life appeared to her for a moment with all her bright past joys.
She feels terror under the wheels. She wanted to get up and straighten up, but some force crushed and shredded her. Death Tolstoy portrayed terribly. The measure of sin requires the measure of punishment. Karenina is punished by God in this way and this is revenge for sin. Tolstoy begins to perceive human life as a tragedy.
Only since the 80s did Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy come to the canonical Orthodox faith.
For Dostoevsky, the most important problem was the resurrection. And for Tolstoy, the same problem is interesting as the problem of overcoming death. "The Devil", "Father Sergius" and, finally, the story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich". The hero of this story resembles Karenin. Ivan Ilyich was accustomed to power, to the fact that one stroke of the pen can decide the fate of a person. And it is with him that something unusual happens: he slipped, hit - but this accidental blow turns into a serious illness. Doctors can't help. And the consciousness of imminent death comes.
All relatives: wife, daughter, son - become strangers to the hero. Nobody needs him and suffers for real. There was only a servant in the house, a healthy and handsome guy, as a human being became close to Ivan Ilyich. The guy says: "Why don't you work hard - we will all die."
This is a Christian idea: a man cannot die alone. Death is work, when one dies, all work. To die alone is suicide.
Ivan Ilyich - a man of an atheistic warehouse, a secular man, doomed to inaction, begins to remember his life. It turns out that he did not live on his own. My whole life was in the hands of chance, but I was lucky all the time. This was spiritual death. Before his death, Ivan Ilyich decides to ask his wife for forgiveness, but instead of "forgive me!" he says "miss it!". The hero is in a state of final agony. The wife makes it difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Dying, he hears a voice: "It's all over." Ivan Ilyich heard these words and repeated them in his soul. Death is over, he told himself. “She is no more.” His consciousness became different, Christian. The resurrected Jesus is a symbol of the soul and conscience.
The idea of the resurrection of the soul, as the main idea of Leo Tolstoy's work, became the main one in the novel "Sunday".
The protagonist of the novel, Prince Nekhlyudov, experiences fear and awakening of conscience in court. He understands his fatal role in the fate of Katyusha Maslova.
Nekhlyudov is an honest, natural man. In court, he confesses to Maslova, who did not recognize him, and offers to atone for his sin - to marry. But she is embittered, indifferent and refuses him.
Following the convicted Nekhlyudov goes to Siberia. Here there is a twist of fate: Maslova falls in love with another. But Nekhlyudov can no longer turn back, he has become different.
Having nothing to do, he opens the commandments of Christ and discovers that such suffering has already happened.
The reading of the commandments brought about the resurrection. Nekhlyudov stared at the light of the burning lamp and froze. Remembering all the ugliness of our life, he clearly imagined what this life would be like if people were brought up on these rules. And a delight that had not been experienced for a long time seized his soul. It was as though he, after a long languor and suffering, suddenly found peace and freedom.
He did not sleep all night and, as it happens with many, many who read the Gospel for the first time, while reading, he understood in all their meaning the words, read many times and unnoticed. Like a sponge, he absorbed water into himself that necessary, important and joyful thing that was revealed to him in this book. And everything he read seemed familiar to him, seemed to confirm, brought to consciousness what he had known for a long time, before, but did not fully realize and did not believe.
Katyusha Maslova is also resurrected.
Tolstoy's thought, like Dostoevsky's, is that true insight into God is possible only through personal suffering. And this is the eternal idea of all Russian literature. The result of Russian classical literature is the knowledge of the Living Faith.
Christian motifs in fairy tales M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin
Just like F. M. Dostoevsky and L. N. Tolstoy, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin developed his own system of moral philosophy, which has deep roots in the millennial cultural tradition of mankind. From childhood, the writer knew and understood the Bible perfectly, especially the Gospel, which played a unique role in his self-education, he will remember his contact with the great book in his last novel “Poshekhonskaya Antiquity”: “The Gospel was such a life-giving ray for me ... it sowed the rudiments in my heart common human conscience. In a word, I have already left the consciousness of vegetation and began to realize myself as a man. Not only that: I transferred the right to this consciousness to others. Up to now I have known nothing about the hungry, nor about the suffering and burdened, but I have seen only human beings, formed under the influence of the indestructible order of things; now these humiliated and insulted stood before me, radiant with light, and loudly cried out against the innate injustice, which gave them nothing but shackles, and insistently demanded the restoration of the violated right to participate in life. The writer becomes a defender of the humiliated and offended, a fighter against spiritual slavery. In this relentless struggle, the Bible turns out to be a true ally. Numerous biblical images, motifs, plots, borrowed by Shchedrin from both the Old and New Testaments, make it possible to discover and understand the multidimensionality of Shchedrin's creativity. They figuratively, succinctly and succinctly convey important universal human content and reveal the secret and passionate desire of the writer to enter the soul of every reader, to awaken dormant moral forces in it. The ability to understand precisely the hidden meaning of one's existence makes any person wiser, and his worldview more philosophical. To develop this ability in oneself - to see the eternal, parable content in the external, momentary - helps with his mature creativity - “Fairy tales for children of a fair age” - Saltykov-Shchedrin.
The plot "not just fairy tales, not that were" "Village fire" introduces the peasants-fire victims, with their unfortunate fate and is directly compared with the biblical story of Job, who, by the will of God, went through terrible, inhuman suffering and torment in the name of testing sincerity and strength his faith. The roll call is bitterly ironic. The tragedy of modern Jobs is a hundred times worse: they have no hope for a successful outcome, and the strain of their spiritual strength costs them their lives.
In the fairy tale “The Fool”, the gospel motif “you must love everyone!”, Transmitted by Jesus Christ to people as a moral law, becomes the core one: “Love your neighbor ... love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and persecute you” (Matt., 5 ). The bitter sarcasm and deep sadness of the author are caused by the fact that the hero Ivanushka, who since childhood by nature lives in accordance with this commandment, in human society seems to be a fool, “blissful”. The writer has a tragic feeling from this picture of the moral perversion of a society that has not changed since the time when Jesus Christ came with a sermon of love and meekness. Mankind does not fulfill the promise given to God, the covenant. Such apostasy has disastrous consequences.
In the fairy tale-parable "Hyena" the satirist speaks about one "breed" of morally fallen people - "hyenas". In the finale, the gospel motif arises of the expulsion by Jesus Christ of their possessed man of the legion of demons that entered the herd of pigs (Mark 5). The plot acquires not a tragic, but an optimistic sound: the writer believes, and Jesus strengthens in him the faith and hope that the human will never completely perish and the "hyena" features, demonic spells are doomed to dissipate and disappear.
Saltykov-Shchedrin is not limited to the elementary use of ready-made artistic images and symbols in his works. Many fairy tales relate to the Bible on a different, higher level.
Let's read the fairy tale "The Wise Scribbler", most often interpreted as a tragic reflection on a fruitlessly lived life. The inevitability of death and the inevitability of moral judgment on oneself, on the life lived, organically introduce the themes of the apocalypse into the fairy tale - the biblical prophecy about the end of the world and the terrible judgment.
The first episode is the story of an old scribbler about how “one day he just didn’t hit his ear a little”. For the piskar and other fish, who were dragged somewhere against their will, all to one place, it really was a terrible judgment. Fear fettered the unfortunate, the fire burned and the water boiled, in which the “sinners” humbled themselves, and only he, the sinless baby, was released “home”, thrown into the river. Not so much the specific images as the very tone of the narrative, the supernatural nature of the event is reminiscent of the apocalypse and makes the reader remember the coming doomsday, which no one can avoid.
The second episode is the sudden awakening of the hero's conscience before his death and his reflections on the past. “The whole life instantly flashed before him. What were his joys? Who did he comfort? To whom did you give good advice? To whom did you say a kind word? Who sheltered, warmed, protected? Who heard about it? Who remembers its existence? And he had to answer all the questions: "No one, no one." The questions that arise in the mind of the scribbler refer to the commandments of Christ, in order to make sure that the life of the hero did not correspond to any of them. The most terrible result is not even that the scribbler has nothing to justify himself from the height of eternal moral values, which he “accidentally” forgot about in his “trembling” for his “belly”. With the plot of the tale, the writer addresses every ordinary person: the theme of life and death in the light of biblical symbolism develops as the theme of the justification of human existence, the need for moral and spiritual perfection of the individual.
Just as organically and naturally close to the Bible is the fairy tale “Konyaga”, in which the everyday plot about the plight of a peasant is enlarged to a timeless, universal scale: in the story about the origin of Konyaga and Pustoplyasov from one father, an old horse, a reflection of the biblical story about two sons of one father, Adam, to Cain and Abel. In "Konyaga" we will not find an exact correspondence to the biblical story, but the closeness of the idea, the artistic thought of the two plots is important for the writer. The biblical story introduces into Shchedrin's text the idea of the primordial nature of human sin - deadly enmity between people, which in a fairy tale takes the form of a dramatic division of Russian society into an intellectual elite and an ignorant peasant mass, of the fatal consequences of this internal spiritual break.
In "Christ's Night" the climactic event in sacred history is recreated by poetic means - the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the third day after the crucifixion. The main Christian holiday is dedicated to this event - Easter Saltykov-Shchedrin loved this holiday: the holiday of Christ's bright resurrection brought an amazing feeling of emancipation, spiritual freedom, which the writer so dreamed of for everyone. The holiday symbolized the triumph of light over darkness, spirit over flesh, good over evil.
The same content is guessed in Shchedrin's fairy tale. In it, without hiding, the writer reproduces the gospel myth of the resurrection of Christ: “Rising early on the first day of the week on Sunday, Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom he cast out seven demons. Finally, he appeared to the eleven apostles themselves, who were reclining at the supper ... And he said to them: go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, and whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16)
In Shchedrin's tale, this event was combined and merged with another - the image of the Last Judgment and the picture of the second coming of Jesus Christ. Changes in the gospel text allowed the writer to make not only understandable, but also visible, plastically tangible the ideal theme of the fairy tale - the inevitable resurrection of the human spirit, the triumph of forgiveness and love. To do this, the writer introduced a symbolic landscape into the narrative: the themes of silence and darkness (“the plain becomes numb”, “deep silence”, “snow shroud”, “mourning points of the villages”), symbolizing for the writer “terrible bondage”, slavery of the spirit; and the themes of sound and light (“the hum of a bell”, “burning spiers of churches”, “light and warmth”), meaning renewal and liberation of the spirit. The resurrection and appearance of Jesus Christ confirm the victory of light over darkness, spirit over inert matter, life over death, freedom over slavery.
The resurrected Christ meets people three times: with the poor, the rich, and Judas – and judges them. "Peace to you!" - Christ says to the poor people who have not lost faith in the triumph of truth. And the Savior says that the hour of national liberation is near. Then he turns to the crowd of the rich, world-eaters, kulaks. He brands them with a word of censure and opens the way of salvation for them - this is the judgment of their conscience, painful, but fair. These meetings make him remember two episodes of his life: prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane and Golgotha. At these moments, Christ felt his closeness to God and to people who then still, not believing him, mocked him. But Christ realized that they were all embodied in him alone and, suffering for them, he atoned for their sins with his own blood.
And now, when people, having seen with their own eyes the miracle of the resurrection and coming, “filled the air with sobs and fell on their faces,” he forgave them, for then they were blinded by malice and hatred, and now the veil has fallen from their eyes, and people have seen the world, bathed in the light of Christ's truth, they believed and were saved. The evil that has blinded people does not exhaust their nature; they are able to heed the goodness and love that the "son of man" came to awaken in their souls.
Only Judas Christ did not forgive the fairy tale. There is no escape for traitors. Christ curses them and dooms them to eternal wandering. This episode caused the most heated debate among the writer's contemporaries. L. N. Tolstoy asked to change the ending of the tale: after all, Christ brought repentance and forgiveness into the world. How to explain such an end to the “Christ night”? For the writer, Judas is the ideological opponent of Christ. He betrayed deliberately, being the only one of all people who knew what he was doing. The punishment of immortality corresponds to the severity of the crime committed by Judas: “Live, damned! And be for future generations a testament to the endless execution that betrayal awaits.
The plot of "Christ's Night" shows that in the center of the fairy-tale world of Saltykov-Shchedrin there has always been the figure of Jesus Christ as a symbol of innocent suffering and self-sacrifice in the name of the triumph of moral and philosophical truth: "Love God and love your neighbor as yourself." The theme of Christian conscience, the gospel truth, which is the leading one in the book, links the individual fairy tales included in it into a single artistic canvas.
The image of social disorders and private human vices turns into a human tragedy under the writer's pen and the writer's testament to future generations to arrange life on new moral and cultural principles.
N.S. Leskov. righteousness theme.
“I love literature as a means that gives me the opportunity to express what I consider to be true and good ...” Leskov was convinced that literature is designed to raise the human spirit, to strive for the highest, not the lowest, and “evangelical goals” are dearer to her any others. Like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Leskov valued in Christianity practical morality, striving for active goodness. “The universe will someday collapse, each of us will die even earlier, but as long as we live and the world stands, we can and must by all means in our power increase the amount of good in ourselves and around ourselves,” he said. “We will not reach the ideal, but if we try to be kinder and live well, then we will do something ... Christianity itself would be futile if it did not contribute to the multiplication of goodness, truth and peace in people.”
Leskov constantly strived for the knowledge of God. “Religiousness has been in me since childhood, and rather happy, that is, one that early began to reconcile faith with reason in me.” In Leskov's personal life, the angelic divine principle of the soul often encountered ebullition, with the "intolerance" of nature. His path in literature was difficult. Life forces any believer, any seeker, aspiring to God, to solve one main question: how to live according to the commandments of God in a difficult life full of temptations and trials, how to unite the law of heaven with the truth of the world lying in evil? The search for truth was not easy. In the conditions of the abomination of Russian life, the writer began to look for the good and the good. He saw that “the Russian people love to live in an atmosphere of the miraculous and live in the realm of ideas, seeking solutions to the spiritual tasks set by their inner world. Leskov wrote: “The history of the earthly life of Christ and the saints honored by the church is the favorite reading of the Russian people; All other books are still of little interest to him. Therefore, “to promote the development of the people” means “to help the people become Christians, because they want this and it is useful for them.” Leskov confidently, knowingly insisted on this, saying: "I know Russia not in writing ... I was my own person with the people." That is why the writer was looking for his heroes among the people.
“The iconostasis of the righteous and saints” of Russia was called by M. Gorky the gallery of original folk characters created by N.S. Leskov. One of Leskov's best ideas was embodied in them: "Just as a body without a spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead."
Russia Leskov is motley, loud-mouthed, polyphonic. But all the narrators are united by a common generic trait: they are Russian people who profess the Orthodox Christian ideal of active goodness. Together with the author himself, they "love goodness just for the very good and do not expect any reward from it, anywhere." As Orthodox people, they feel like wanderers in this world and are not attached to earthly material goods. All of them are characterized by a disinterested and contemplative attitude to life, which allows them to keenly feel its beauty. In his work, Leskov calls the Russian people to "spiritual progress", moral self-improvement. In the 1870s, he goes looking for the righteous, without whom, according to the popular expression, "not a single city, not a single village stands." “The people, according to the writer, are not inclined to live without faith, and you will not consider the most exalted properties of his nature anywhere, as in his attitude to faith.”
Starting with a vow “I won’t rest until I find at least that small number of three righteous ones, without whom there is “no hail of standing”, Leskov gradually expanded his cycle, including 10 works in his last lifetime edition: “Odnodum”, “Pygmy”, “ Cadet Monastery”, “Russian Democrat in Poland”, “Non-lethal Golovan”, “Silverless Engineers”, “Lefty”, “The Enchanted Wanderer”, “The Man on the Watch”, “Sheramur”.
Being a pioneer of the type of righteous man, the writer showed its significance both for public life: “Such people, standing aside from the main historical movement ... make history stronger than others”, and for the civil formation of a person: “Such people are worthy to know and in certain cases of life to imitate them, if they have the strength to contain the noble patriotic spirit that warmed their hearts, inspired the word and guided their actions. The writer asks eternal questions: is it possible to live without succumbing to natural temptations and weaknesses? Can anyone reach God in the soul? Will everyone find their way to the Temple? Does the world need the righteous?
The first of the stories of the cycle conceived by Leskov is Odnodum and the first righteous man is Alexander Afanasyevich Ryzhov. Coming from petty officials, he had a heroic appearance, physical and moral health.
The basis of his righteousness was the Bible. From the age of fourteen he delivered mail, and "neither the distance of the tedious journey, nor the heat, nor the cold, nor the winds, nor the rain frightened him." Ryzhov always had a cherished book with him, he extracted from the Bible "great and solid knowledge, which formed the basis of all his subsequent original life." The hero knew a lot of the Bible by heart and especially loved Isaiah, one of the famous prophets who gave a prediction about the life and deed of Christ. But the main content of Isaiah's prophecy is the denunciation of unbelief and human vices. It was one of these passages that young Ryzhov shouted in the swamp. And biblical wisdom helped him develop moral rules, which he faithfully observed in his life and work. These rules, drawn from the Holy Scriptures and from the conscience of the hero, met both the needs of his mind and conscience, they became his moral catechism: “God is always with me, and besides him, no one is afraid”, “Eat your bread in the sweat of your face” , “God forbids taking a bribe”, “I don’t accept gifts”, “if you have a great restraint, then you can get by with a small one”, “it’s not about the dress, but about reason and conscience”, “it’s forbidden to lie by the commandment - I won’t lie” .
The author characterizes his hero: “He honestly served everyone and especially did not please anyone; in his thoughts, he reported to the One, in whom he unfailingly and firmly believed, calling him the Founder and Master of all things”, “pleasure ... consisted in the performance of his duty, served faithfully, in office he was“ zealous and serviceable ”,“ was moderate in everyone”, “was not proud”…
So, we see the "biblical eccentric" lives in a biblical way. But this is not a mechanical adherence to established norms, but rules understood and accepted by the soul. They form the highest level of personality, which does not allow even the slightest deviation from the laws of conscience.
Alexander Afanasyevich Ryzhov left behind "a heroic and almost fabulous memory." With a close assessment: "He himself is almost a myth, and his story is a legend" - begins the story "Non-lethal Golovan", which has the subtitle: "From the stories of the three righteous." The hero of this work is given the highest characteristic: a “mythical face” with a “fabulous reputation”. Golovan was nicknamed non-lethal because of the conviction that he is “a special person; a man who is not afraid of death. How does a hero deserve such a reputation?
The author notes that he was a "simple man" from a family of serfs. And he dressed as a “man”, in an age-old, oiled and blackened sheepskin coat, worn both in frost and in heat, but the shirt, although canvas, was always clean, like boiling water, with a long colored tie, and it “informed Golovan’s appearance something fresh and gentlemanly... because he really was a gentleman." In the portrait of Golovan, there is a resemblance to Peter 1. He was 15 inches tall, had a dry and muscular build, swarthy, round-faced, with blue eyes ... A calm and happy smile did not leave his face for a minute. Golovan embodies the physical and spiritual power of the people.
The writer claims that the very fact of his appearance in Orel in the midst of a plague epidemic that claimed many lives is not accidental. In the time of disasters, the people's environment “puts forward heroes of generosity, fearless and selfless people. In ordinary times, they are not visible and often do not stand out from the mass; but he will run into the people of "pimples", and the people single out a chosen one from themselves, and he works miracles that make him a mythical, fabulous, non-lethal face. Golovan was one of those…”
The hero of Leskov is surprisingly capable of any work. He "was in full swing from morning until late at night." This is a Russian man who can handle everything.
Golovan believes in the inherent ability of every person to show goodness and justice at a decisive moment. Forced to act as an adviser, he does not give a ready-made solution, but tries to activate the moral forces of the interlocutor: “... Pray and do it as if you need to die now! Tell me, how would you do it this time?” He will answer. And Golovan will either agree, or say: “And I, brother, dying, that’s how I did it better.” And he will tell everything cheerfully, with his usual smile. People trusted Golovan so much that they trusted him to keep a record of purchases and sales of land. And Golovan died for the people: during the fire, he drowned in a boiling pit, saving someone else's life or someone's property. According to Leskov, a true righteous person does not retire from life, but takes an active part in it, tries to help his neighbor, sometimes forgetting about his own safety. He walks the Christian path.
The hero of the story-chronicle "The Enchanted Wanderer" Ivan Severyanych Flyagin feels some kind of predestination of everything that happens to him: as if someone is watching him and directing his life path through all the accidents of fate. From birth, the hero belongs not only to himself. He is the child promised to God, the praying son. Ivan does not forget about his destiny for a minute. Ivan's life is built according to the well-known Christian canon, concluded in a prayer "for those who swim and travel, in illnesses suffering and captive." According to his way of life, this is a wanderer - a runaway, persecuted, not attached to anything earthly, material. He went through cruel captivity, through terrible Russian ailments, and, having got rid of "all sorrow, anger and need", turned his life to the service of God and the people. According to the plan, behind the enchanted wanderer stands the whole of Russia, whose national image is determined by its Orthodox Christian faith.
The appearance of the hero resembles the Russian hero Ilya Muromets. Ivan has irrepressible strength, which sometimes breaks through in reckless actions. This silushka jumped at the hero in a story with a monk, in a duel with a valiant officer, in a battle with a Tatar hero.
The key to unraveling the mystery of the Russian national character is Flyagin's artistic talent, which is associated with his Orthodox Christian worldview. He sincerely believes in the immortality of the soul and sees in the earthly life of a person only a prologue to eternal life. An Orthodox person keenly feels the short duration of his stay on this earth, he realizes that he is a wanderer in the world. The final pier of Flyagin is a monastery - the house of God.
The Orthodox faith allows Flyagin to look at life disinterestedly and reverently. The hero's view of life is broad and full-blooded, as it is unlimited by anything narrowly pragmatic and utilitarian. Flyagin feels beauty in unity with goodness and truth. The picture of life unfolded by him in the story is God's gift.
Another feature of Flyagin's inner world is also connected with Orthodoxy: in all his actions and deeds, the hero is guided not by his head, but by his heart, an emotional impulse. “A simple Russian God,” said Leskov, “has a simple dwelling -“ in the bosom. Flyagin has the wisdom of the heart, not the mind. From a young age, Ivan has been in love with the life of animals, with the beauty of nature. But a powerful force, not controlled by the mind, sometimes leads to mistakes that have dire consequences. For example, the murder of an innocent monk. The Russian national character, according to Leskov, clearly lacks thought, will, and organization. This gives rise to weaknesses, which, according to the writer, have become a Russian national disaster.
Lesk's hero has a healthy "seed", a fruitful foundation for living development. This seed is Orthodoxy, sown into Ivan's soul at the very beginning of his life's journey by his mother, which has grown with the awakening of conscience in the face of a monk who periodically comes to him and suffered from his mischief.
Loneliness, trial by captivity, homesickness, the tragic fate of the gypsy Grusha - all this awakened Ivan's soul, opened before him the beauty of selflessness, compassion. He goes into the army instead of the only son of the old men. Since then, the meaning of Ivan Flyagin's life has been the desire to help a suffering person in trouble. In monastic seclusion, the Russian hero Ivan Flyagin purifies his soul by performing spiritual feats.
Having gone through an ascetic self-purification, Flyagin, in the spirit of the same folk Orthodoxy, as Leskov understands him, acquires the gift of prophecy. Flyagin is filled with fear for the Russian people: “And tears were given to me, wonderfully plentiful! .. I was crying about my homeland.” Flyagin foresees the great trials and shocks that the Russian people are destined to endure in the coming years, he hears an inner voice: "Arm!" “Are you going to go to war yourself?” they ask him. “But how about it? the hero answers. “Certainly, sir: I really want to die for the people.”
Like many of his contemporaries, Leskov believed that the main thing in the Christian doctrine is the commandment of effective love and that faith without works is dead. It is important to remember God and pray to him, but this is not enough if you do not love your neighbors and are not ready to help anyone who is in trouble. Without good deeds, prayer will not help.
Righteous Leskov - teachers of life. "The perfect love that animates them puts them above all fears."
Alexander Blok. Gospel symbolism in the poem "The Twelve".
The twentieth century. A century of turbulent changes in Russia. The Russian people are looking for the path that the country has to take. And the Church, which for centuries has been the guide of people's moral consciousness, could not but feel the burden of the people's rejection of centuries-old traditions. “The genius gave people new ideals, and, therefore, showed a new path. People followed him, destroying and trampling without hesitation everything that had existed for many centuries, that had been formed and strengthened by dozens of generations,” wrote Leo Tolstoy. But can a person easily and painlessly give up his former existence and go on a new, only theoretically calculated path? Many writers of the 20th century tried to answer this question.
Trying to solve this problem Alexander Blok in the poem "The Twelve", dedicated to October.
What does the image of Jesus Christ in the poem "The Twelve" symbolize?
This is the assessment given to this image by critics and writers in different years.
P. A. Florensky: “The poem“ The Twelve ”is the limit and completion of Blok’s demonism ... The character of the charming vision, the parodic face that appears at the end of the poem“ Jesus ”(note the destruction of the saving name), extremely convincingly proves the state of fear, longing and unreasonable anxiety“ deserving of such time."
A. M. Gorky: “Dostoevsky ... convincingly proved that there is no place for Christ on earth. Blok made the mistake of a half-believing lyricist by placing Christ at the head of the "Twelve"
M. V. Voloshin: “The twelve Blok Red Guards are depicted without any embellishment and idealization ... there is no data, except for the number 12, to consider them apostles - in the poem there is none. And then, what kind of apostles are these who go out to hunt their Christ? speaks through him.
E. Rostin: “The poet feels that this robber Russia is close to Christ… For Christ came first of all to harlots and robbers, and he called them the first in his kingdom. And because of this, Christ will be at their head, take their bloody flag and lead them somewhere along their inscrutable paths.
It is quite obvious that the image of Christ is an ideological core, a symbol, thanks to which the "Twelve" acquired a different philosophical sound.
The poem had a huge resonance throughout Russia. She helped to comprehend what was happening, especially since Blok's moral authority was undeniable. Arguing with him, clarifying the ambiguity of the image of Christ, people also clarified their attitude towards the revolution, the Bolsheviks, Bolshevism. It is impossible not to take into account the time, 1918. No one could yet predict how events would develop, what they would lead to.
For many years, Jesus was even perceived as the image of the first communist. It was quite historical. In the first years of Soviet power, the Bolshevik ideas were perceived by the majority precisely as a new Christian doctrine. “Jesus is the pinnacle of humanity, realizing in himself the greatest of all human truths - the truth about the equality of all people ... You are the successors of the work of Jesus,” Academician Pavlov wrote in the Council of People's Commissars, reproaching the Bolsheviks for excessive cruelty, but hoping to be heard.
But did the author of The Twelve share such views? Of course, he was not an atheist, but he separated Christ from the church as a state institution of autocracy. But even the Twelve do without the name of the saint, they do not even recognize him. Twelve Red Guards marching “eh, eh, without a cross” are depicted as murderers who “everything is allowed”, “no regrets” and “drinking blood” is like chewing a seed. Their moral level is so low, and their life concepts are so primitive, that there is no need to talk about any deep feelings and lofty thoughts. Murder, robbery, drunkenness, depravity, "black malice" and indifference to the human person - this is the appearance of the new masters of life walking "by sovereign step", and pitch darkness surrounds them for a reason. "God bless!" - exclaim the revolutionaries, who do not believe in God, but call on Him to bless the "global conflagration in the blood" they fanned.
The appearance of Christ with a bloody flag in his hand is the key episode. Judging by the diary entries, this ending did not give rest to Blok, who never commented publicly on the meaning of the last lines of the poem, but from his notes, not intended for publication, it can be seen how painfully Blok was looking for an explanation for this: “I just stated the fact: if you look closely into the blizzards along the way, you will see "Jesus Christ." But I myself deeply hate this womanly ghost.” “There is no doubt that Christ is walking with them. The point is not “whether they are worthy of him”, but the terrible thing is that He is again with them, and there is no other yet; do you need another one? "I'm kind of exhausted." Christ "in a white halo of roses" goes ahead of people who create violence and, perhaps, already profess another faith. But the Savior does not abandon His children who do not know what they are doing, who do not keep the commandments given by Him. To stop the wild revelry, to reason and return the murderers to the bosom of God - this is the true work of Christ.
In the bloody chaos, Jesus personifies the highest spirituality, cultural values, unclaimed, but not disappearing. The image of Christ is the future, the personification of the dream of a truly just and happy society. That's why Christ "is unharmed even from a bullet." The poet believes in man, in his mind, in his soul. Of course, this day will not come soon, it is even “invisible”, but Blok has no doubts that it will come.
Leonid Andreev. Old Testament and New Testament parallels in the writer's work.
Like Leo Tolstoy Leonid Andreev passionately opposed violence and evil. However, he questioned Tolstoy's religious and moral idea, never associated with it the liberation of society from social vices. The preaching of humility and non-resistance was alien to Andreev. The theme of the story "The Life of Basil of Thebes" is "the eternal question of the human spirit in its search for its connection with infinity in general and infinite justice in particular."
For the hero of the story, the search for a connection with "infinite justice", that is, with God, ends tragically. In the image of the writer, the life of Father Vasily is an endless chain of harsh, often simply cruel tests of his boundless faith in God. If his son drowns, he drinks his grief out of grief, Father Vasily will remain the same fervently believing Christian. In the field where he went, having learned about the trouble with his wife, he “put his hands to his chest and wanted to say something. The closed iron jaws trembled, but did not give in: gritting his teeth, the priest spread them with force, and with this movement of his lips, similar to a convulsive yawn, loud distinct words sounded:
I believe.
Lost without an echo in the desert of the sky and the frequent ears of corn was this prayer cry, so insanely similar to a challenge. And as if objecting to someone, passionately convincing and warning someone, he again repeated
I believe".
And then the twelve-pound boar will die, the daughter will fall ill, the expected child will be born an idiot in fear and doubt. And, as before, he will completely drink the popadya and, in desperation, will try to lay hands on himself. Father Vasily will tremble: “Poor thing. Poor. All are poor. Everyone is crying. And there is no help! Ltd!"
Father Vasily decides to take off his dignity and leave. “Their soul rested for three months, and again lost hope and joy returned to their home. With all the strength of the suffering experienced, the priestess believed in a new life ... ”But fate prepared another tempting test for Father Vasily: his house burns down, his wife dies from burns, and a catastrophe broke out. Having given himself over to contemplation of God in a state of religious ecstasy, Father Vasily wants to do for himself what is supposed to be done by the Almighty himself - he wants to resurrect the dead!
“Father Vasily opened the tinkling door and through the crowd ... went to the black, silently waiting coffin. He stopped, raised his right hand imperiously, and hurriedly said to the decaying body:
I'm telling you, get up!"
He utters this sacramental phrase three times, bends over to the hump, “closer, closer, grabs the sharp edges of the coffin with his hands, almost touches the blue lips, breathes in them the breath of life - the disturbed corpse answers him with a stinking, coldly ferocious breath of death.” And the shocked priest finally had an insight: “So why did I believe? So why did you give me love for people and pity - to laugh at me? So why did you keep me captive, in slavery, in chains all my life? Not a free thought! No feeling! Not a breath! Crushed in his faith in God, not finding any justification for human suffering, Father Vasily, in horror and insanity, runs away from the church onto a wide and beaten road, where he fell dead, fell "prone, bony face into the roadside gray dust ... And in his pose he kept he is the swiftness of the run ... as if even the dead he continued to run.
It is easy to see that the plot of the story goes back to that biblical legend about Job, which occupies one of the central places in the reflections and disputes of Dostoevsky's heroes in The Brothers Karamazov about divine justice.
But Leonid Andreev develops this legend in such a way that the story of Basil of Thebes, who lost more than Job, is filled with a godless meaning.
In the story "The Life of Basil of Thebes" Leonid Andreev posed and solved "eternal" questions. What is truth? What is justice? What is righteousness and sin?
He raises these questions in the story Judas Iscariot.
Andreev takes a different approach to the image of the eternal traitor. He portrays Judas in such a way that it is a pity not for the crucified God the Son, but for the suicide Judas. Using biblical legends, Andreev says that the people are to blame for both the death of Christ and the death of Judas, that humanity has in vain blamed Judas Iscariot for what happened. Forcing one to think about the "baseness of the human race", the writer proves that the cowardly disciples of the Prophet are guilty of betraying the Son of God. “How did you allow this? Where was your love? The thirteenth apostle, like Christ, was betrayed by everyone.
L. Andreev, trying to philosophically comprehend the image of Judas, calls to think about the solution of the human soul, which is convinced of the dominance of evil. The humanistic idea of Christ cannot stand the test of betrayal.
Despite the tragic end, Andreev's story, like many of his other works, does not give grounds for concluding that the author is completely pessimistic. The omnipotence of fate concerns only the physical shell of a person doomed to death, but his spirit is free, and no one is able to stop his spiritual quest. The emerging doubt about ideal love - for God - leads the hero to real love - for a person. The abyss that previously existed between Father Vasily and other people is overcome, and the priest finally comes to understand human suffering. He is shocked by the simplicity and truth of the revelations of parishioners at confession; pity, compassion for sinful people and despair from the understanding of his own powerlessness to help them push him to rebellion against God. He is close to the anguish and loneliness of the gloomy Nastya, the throwing of a drunken priest, and even in the Idiot he sees the soul "omniscient and mournful."
Belief in one's own chosenness is a challenge to fate and an attempt to overcome the madness of the world, a way of spiritual self-affirmation and a search for the meaning of life. However, possessing the makings of a free person, Thebeian cannot but bear the consequences of spiritual slavery that came from the experience of the past and his own forty years of life. Therefore, the method that he chooses to realize his rebellious plans - the accomplishment of a miracle by the "chosen one" - is archaic and doomed to failure.
Andreev poses a two-pronged problem in The Life of Basil of Thebes: he gives a positive answer to the question of the high possibilities of a person, and evaluates the probability of their realization with the help of God's providence negatively.
M. A. Bulgakov. The peculiarity of understanding biblical motifs in the novel "The Master and Margarita".
The 1930s was a tragic period in the history of our country, the years of unbelief and lack of culture. This particular time Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov places in the context of sacred history, comparing the eternal and the temporal. The temporary in the novel is a reduced description of the life of Moscow in the 30s. “The world of writers, members of MOSSOLIT is a mass world, an uncultured and immoral world” (V. Akimov “On the winds of time”). The new cultural figures are untalented people, they do not know creative inspiration, they do not hear the “voice of God”. They do not claim to know the truth. This wretched and faceless world of writers is opposed in the novel by the Master - a personality, creator, creator of a historical and philosophical novel. Through the Master's novel, Bulgakov's characters enter another world, another dimension of life.
In Bulgakov's novel, the gospel story about Yeshua and Pilate is a novel within a novel, being its original ideological center. Bulgakov tells the legend of Christ in his own way. His hero is surprisingly tangible, vital. One gets the impression that he is an ordinary mortal person, childishly trusting, simple-hearted, naive, but at the same time wise and insightful. He is physically weak, but spiritually strong and, as it were, is the embodiment of the best human qualities, a herald of high human ideals. Neither beatings nor punishment can force him to change his principles, his boundless faith in the predominance of the good in man, in the "kingdom of truth and justice."
At the beginning of Bulgakov's novel, two Moscow writers are talking on Patriarch's Ponds about a poem written by one of them, Ivan Bezdomny. His poem is atheistic. Jesus Christ is depicted in it in very black colors, but, unfortunately, as a living, real person. Another writer, Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, an educated and well-read man, a materialist, explains to Ivan Bezdomny that there was no Jesus, that this figure was created by the imagination of believers. And the ignorant but sincere poet "on all this" agrees with his learned friend. It was at this moment that a devil named Woland, who appeared on the Patriarch's Ponds, intervenes in the conversation of two friends and asks them a question: “If there is no God, then, one asks, who controls human life and the whole routine on earth?” "The man himself controls!" Homeless replied. From this moment, the plot of The Master and Margarita begins, and the main problem of the 20th century, reflected in the novel, is the problem of human self-government.
Bulgakov defended culture as a great and eternal universal human value, created by endless human labor, the efforts of the mind and spirit. Continuous efforts. The destruction of culture, the persecution of the intelligentsia, which he considered "the best layer in our country," he could not accept. This made him a "Protestant", a "satiric writer".
Bulgakov defends the idea: human culture is not an accident, but a pattern of earthly and cosmic life.
The twentieth century is the time of all sorts of revolutions: social, political, spiritual, the time of the denial of the old ways of managing human behavior.
“No one will give us deliverance: neither a god, nor a king, nor a hero. We will achieve liberation with our own hand” - this is the idea of time. But managing oneself and other human lives is not so easy.
The mass man, liberated from everything, uses "freedom without a cross" primarily in his own interests. Such a person treats the world around him as a predator. It is incredibly difficult to express new spiritual guidelines. Therefore, objecting to the quick answer to Bezdomny, Woland says: "I'm sorry ... after all, in order to manage, you need to have some kind of plan at least for a ridiculously short period, well, let's say a thousand years!" A person who has mastered culture and developed his life principles on its basis can have such a ridiculous plan. Man is responsible for the entire routine of life on earth, but the artist is even more responsible.
Here are the heroes who are sure that they control not only themselves, but also others (Berlioz and Homeless). But what happens next? One dies, the other is in a madhouse.
In parallel with them, other heroes are shown: Yeshua and Pontius Pilate.
Yeshua is confident in the possibility of human self-improvement. This Bulgakov hero is associated with the idea of goodness as recognition of the spiritual uniqueness, personal value of each person (“There are no evil people!”). Yeshua sees the truth in harmony between man and the world, and everyone can and should discover this truth; striving for it is the goal of human life. Having such a plan, one can hope for "management" of oneself and "everything in general, the routine on earth."
Pontius Pilate, the viceroy of the Roman emperor in Yershalaim, in his service carrying out violence on the controlled land, lost faith in the possibility of harmony between people and the world. Truth for him is in submission to an imposed and irresistible, albeit inhuman, order. His headache is a sign of disharmony, a split that this earthly and strong person is experiencing. Pilate is alone, he gives all his affection only to the dog. He forced himself to come to terms with evil and is paying for it.
“The strong mind of Pilate parted ways with his conscience. And a headache is a punishment for the fact that his mind allows and supports the unjust arrangement of the world. (V. Akimov "On the winds of time")
Thus, in the novel, the discovery of the “True Truth” takes place, which combines reason and goodness, mind and conscience. Human life is equal to spiritual value, spiritual idea. All the main characters of the novel are ideologists: the philosopher Yeshua, the politician Pilate, the writers Master, Ivan Bezdomny, Berlioz, and even the "professor" of black magic Woland.
But an idea can be inspired from without; it can be false, criminal; Bulgakov knows well about ideological terror, about ideological violence, which can be more sophisticated than physical violence. “You can “hang” human life on a thread of a false idea and, having cut this thread, that is, having convinced yourself of the falsity of the idea, kill a person,” writes Bulgakov. By itself, a person will not come to a false idea, by his good will and sound reasoning he will not accept it into himself, he will not connect his life with it - evil, destructive, leading to disharmony. Such an idea can only be imposed, inspired from outside. In other words, among all violence, the worst is ideological, spiritual violence.
Human strength is only from good, and any other strength is already from the "evil one." Man begins where evil ends.
The novel "The Master and Margarita" is a novel about a person's responsibility for good.
The events of the chapters, which tell about Moscow in the 1920s and 1930s, take place during Holy Week, during which a kind of moral revision of society is carried out by Woland and his retinue. “The moral inspection of the whole society and its individual members continues throughout the novel. Any society should be based not on material, class, political, but on moral foundations. (V. A. Domansky “I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world”) For faith in imaginary values, for spiritual laziness in search of faith, a person is punished. And the heroes of the novel, people of imaginary culture, cannot recognize the devil in Woland. Woland appears in Moscow in order to find out whether people have become better over a thousand years, whether they have learned to manage themselves, to note what is good and what is bad. After all, social progress requires an obligatory spiritual…. But Woland in Moscow is not recognized not only by the townsfolk, but also by people of the creative intelligentsia. Woland does not punish the townsfolk. Let them! But the creative intelligentsia must bear responsibility, it is criminal, because instead of the truth, it propagates dogmas, which means that it corrupts the people, enslaves them. And as it was already said, spiritual enslavement is the most terrible. That is why Berlioz, Bezdomny, Styopa Likhodeev are punished, for "to each will be given according to his faith," "all will be judged according to their deeds." And the artist, the Master, must bear special responsibility.
According to Bulgakov, the writer's duty is to restore a person's faith in lofty ideals, to restore the truth.
Life requires from the Master a feat, a struggle for the fate of his novel. But the Master is not a hero, he is only a servant of the truth. He loses heart, abandons his novel, burns it. The feat is accomplished by Margarita.
Human destiny and the historical process itself is determined by the continuous search for truth, the pursuit of the highest ideals of truth, goodness and beauty.
Roman Bulgakov about the responsibility of a person for his own choice of life paths. It is about the all-conquering power of love and creativity, elevating the soul to the highest heights of true humanity.
The gospel story depicted by Bulgakov in his novel is also addressed to the events of our national history. “The writer is concerned about the questions: what is the truth - following the state interests or focusing on universal values? How do traitors, apostates, conformists appear? one
The dialogues of Yeshua and Pontius Pilate are projected onto the atmosphere of some European countries, including ours in the 30s of the 20th century, when the individual was mercilessly oppressed by the state. This gave rise to general distrust, fear, duplicity. That is why the little people who make up the world of Moscow philistinism are so insignificant and petty in the novel. The author shows various aspects of human vulgarity, moral decay, ridicules those who apostatized from goodness, lost faith in a high ideal, began to serve not God, but the devil.
The moral apostasy of Pontius Pilate testifies that under the conditions of any totalitarian regime, be it imperial Rome or Stalin's dictatorship, even the strongest person can survive and succeed only guided by the immediate state benefit, and not by his own moral guidelines. But, unlike the tradition established in the history of Christianity, Bulgakov's hero is not just a coward or an apostate. He is the accuser and the victim. Having ordered the secret liquidation of the traitor Judas, he takes revenge not only for Yeshua, but also for himself, since he himself may suffer from a denunciation to the emperor Tiberius.
The choice of Pontius Pilate correlates with the entire course of world history, is a reflection of the eternal conflict between the concrete historical and the timeless, universal.
Thus, Bulgakov, using the biblical story, gives an assessment of modern life.
The bright mind of Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov, his fearless soul, his hand, without a shudder or fear, tears off all the masks, reveals all the real guises.
In the novel, life beats with a mighty stream, the creative omnipotence of the artist triumphs in it, defending the spiritual dignity of art in the twentieth century, an artist who, therefore, is subject to everything: God and the devil, the fate of people, life and death themselves.
Ch. Aitmatov. The specifics of Christian images in the novel "The Scaffold".
Twenty years after the first publication of The Master and Margarita, a novel appeared Chingiz Aitmatov"The Scaffold" - and also with an inserted short story about Pilate and Jesus, but the meaning of this device has drastically changed. In the situation of the “perestroika” that has begun, Aitmatov no longer cares about the drama of relations between the writer and the authorities, he shifts the focus to the drama of the people’s rejection of the sermon of the Righteous, drawing a too direct and even, perhaps, blasphemous parallel between Jesus and the hero of the novel.
Aitmatov offered his artistic interpretation of the gospel story - the dispute between Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate about truth and justice, about the appointment of man on earth. This plot once again speaks of the eternity of the problem.
Aitmatov comprehends the famous gospel scene from the standpoint of today.
In what does Aitmatov's Jesus see the meaning of existence on earth? The point is to follow humanistic ideals. Live for the future.
The novel explores the theme of a return to faith. Mankind, having gone through the suffering and punishment of the Last Judgment, must return to simple and eternal truths.
Pontius Pilate does not accept the humanistic philosophy of Christ, because he believes that man is a beast, that he cannot do without wars, without blood, just as flesh cannot do without salt. He sees the meaning of life in power, wealth and power: “People will not be taught either sermons in temples or voices from heaven! They will always follow the Caesars, like herds following the shepherds, and, bowing before power and blessings, they will honor the one who turns out to be merciless and more powerful than all "...
A kind of spiritual counterpart of Jesus Christ in the novel is Avdiy Kalistratov, a former seminarian who was expelled from the seminary for freethinking, because he dreamed of purifying the faith from human passions, from the will of the Caesars, who subjugated the servants of the Church of Christ. He told his father-coordinator that he would seek a new form of God to replace the old one that came from pagan times, he explained the motives for his apostasy as follows: “Really, in two thousand years of Christianity, we are not able to add a single word to what was said not in biblical times? Tired of his own and other people's wisdom, the coordinator practically predicts the fate of Christ to Obadiah: “And in the world you can’t take your head off, because the world doesn’t tolerate those who question the fundamental teachings, because any ideology claims to possess the ultimate truth.”
For Obadiah, there is no road to the truth outside of faith in the Savior, outside of love for the God-Man, who gave his life in the name of atonement for the sins of all mankind. The Christ in Obadiah's imagination says: “Vice is always easy to justify. But few people thought that the evil of lust for power, with which everyone is infected, is the worst of all evils, and one day the human race will pay for it in full. Peoples will perish." Obadiah is faced with the question of why people sin so often, if it is known exactly what needs to be done in order to get into the desired kingdom of heaven? Either the predetermined path is wrong, or they are so torn away from the Creator that they do not want to return to him. The question is old and heavy, but it requires an answer from every living soul who is not completely mired in vice. In the novel, only two heroes are true and they believe that people will eventually create a kingdom of goodness and justice: this is Obadiah and Jesus himself. The soul of Obadiah moved back two thousand years in order to see, understand and try to save the one whose death is inevitable. Obadiah is ready to give his life for the one who is dearer to him than anything in the world.
He is not only a preacher, but also a fighter who fights evil for high human values. Each of his opponents has a clearly articulated worldview that justifies his thoughts and actions. In real life, the categories of good and evil have become mythical concepts. Many of them are struggling to prove the superiority of their own philosophy over the Christian one. Take, for example, Grishan, the leader of one of the small gangs, into which Obadiah falls by inscrutable ways. He set out, if not to defeat a specific evil with the word of God, then at least to reveal the reverse side for those who can follow the path of escaping reality into narcotic dreams. And Grishan opposes him as the very tempter who seduces a weak person with a pseudo-paradise: “I enter God,” he says to his opponent, “from the back door. I bring my people closer to God faster than anyone else.” Grishan publicly and consciously preaches the most attractive idea - the idea of absolute freedom. He says: "We are running from the mass consciousness, so as not to be captured by the crowd." But this flight is not capable of bringing deliverance from even the most primitive fear of state laws. Obadiah felt this very subtly: "Freedom is freedom only when it is not afraid of the law." Obadiah's moral dispute with Grishan, the leader of the "messengers" for marijuana, in some ways continues the dialogue between Jesus and Pilate. Pilate and Grishan are united by disbelief in people, in social justice. But if Pilate himself preaches the “religion” of strong power, then Grishan preaches the “religion of high”, replacing the high human desire for moral and physical perfection with drug intoxication, penetration to God “from the back door”. This path to God is easy, but the soul is given to the Devil.
Obadiah, dreaming of the brotherhood of people, the age-old continuity of cultures, appealing to human conscience, is alone and this is his weakness, because in the world that surrounds him, the boundaries between good and evil are blurred, high ideals are violated, lack of spirituality triumphs. He does not accept Obadiah's preaching.
Obadiah seems powerless before the forces of evil. At first, he is brutally beaten half to death by the "messengers" for marijuana, and then, as Jesus is crucified by the thugs from the "junta" of Ober-Kandalov. Having finally established himself in his faith and convinced of the impossibility of influencing with a holy word those who only outwardly preserved their human appearance, who are capable of destroying everything that exists on this long-suffering earth, Obadiah does not renounce Christ - he repeats His feat. And the words of the crucified Obadiah sound in the voice of one crying out in the real desert: “There is no self-interest in my prayer - I do not ask for even a fraction of earthly blessings and do not pray for the extension of my days. I will not stop crying out only for the salvation of human souls. You, Almighty, do not leave us in ignorance, do not allow us to seek excuses in the closeness of good and evil in the world. The life of Obadiah is not in vain. The pain of his soul, his suffering for people, his moral feat infect others with "world pain", encourage them to join the fight against evil.
A special place in the quest of Obadiah is occupied by his god-building. For Aitmatov, the ideal of humanity is not God-Yesterday, but God-Tomorrow, the one that Avdiy Kalistratov sees him: “... all people taken together are the likeness of God on earth. And the name is that hypostasis God - God-Tomorrow ... God-Tomorrow is the spirit of infinity, and in general it contains the whole essence, the totality of human deeds and aspirations, and therefore, how to be God-Tomorrow - beautiful or bad, kind-hearted or punishing “Depends on the people themselves.”
Conclusion
The return to Christ as a moral ideal does not at all mean that writers strive to please the resurgent religious consciousness of many of our contemporaries. It is conditioned, first of all, by the idea of salvation, the renewal of our world, devoid of the "name of the saint."
Many poets and prose writers sought to find the truth, to determine the meaning of human existence. And they all came to the conclusion that it is impossible to build the happiness of some on the misfortune of others. It is impossible to renounce centuries-old traditions and moral principles and build a universal house of equality and happiness from scratch. This is possible only if one follows the path laid down in man by nature itself. By way of harmony, humanism and love. And the conductors of this truth on earth are people who have managed to feel true, pure and eternal love for people.
More than one generation of writers will turn to gospel motifs, the closer a person is to eternal truths, commandments, the richer his culture, his spiritual world.
Oh, there are unique words
Whoever said them spent too much.
Only blue is inexhaustible
Heavenly and mercy of God. (Anna Akhmatova).
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