From journalism to literary text, a journey through the works. Cherished words of D.S.

And you need to make this communication easy and simple.

Old age makes people grumpier and more talkative (remember the saying: “The weather becomes rainier in autumn, and people become more talkative in old age”). It is not easy for the young to bear the deafness of the old. Old people don’t hear enough, answer inappropriately, and ask again. When talking to them, you need to raise your voice so that the old people can hear. And when you raise your voice, you involuntarily begin to get irritated (our feelings often depend on our behavior than our behavior depends on our feelings).

An old person is often offended (increased touchiness is a characteristic of old people). In a word, it is difficult not only to be old, but also difficult to be with old people.

Nevertheless, young people must understand: we will all be old. And we must also remember: the experience of old people can be very useful. And experience, and knowledge, and wisdom, and humor, and stories about the past, and moral teachings.

Let's remember Pushkin's Arina Rodionovna. A young man may say: “But my grandmother is not Arina Rodionovna at all!” But I am convinced of the opposite: any grandmother, if her grandchildren want, can be Arina Rodionovna. Arina Rodionovna would not have become for everyone what Pushkin made her for himself.

Arina Rodionovna showed signs of old age: for example, she fell asleep while working. Remember:
And the knitting needles hesitate every minute

In your wrinkled hands.
What does the word “slow” mean? She did not always hesitate, but “minute by minute,” from time to time, that is, as happens with old people who fall asleep from time to time. And Pushkin knew how to find sweet traits in Arina Rodionovna’s senile weaknesses: charm and poetry.

Notice with what love and care Pushkin writes about the senile features of his nanny:

Longing, premonitions, worries

It seems to you...

The poems remained unfinished.

Arina Rodionovna became close to all of us precisely because Pushkin was next to her. If it weren’t for Pushkin, she would have remained in the short memory of those around her as a talkative, constantly dozing off and preoccupied old woman. But Pushkin found the best features in her and transformed her. Pushkin's muse was kind. People, communicating, create each other. Some people know how to bring out the best in others. Others do not know how to do this and themselves become unpleasant, annoying, irritable, and sadly boring.

Old people are not only grumpy, but also kind, not only talkative, but also excellent storytellers, not only deaf, but have a good ear for old songs.

Almost every person combines different traits. Of course, some features predominate, others are hidden and suppressed. You must be able to awaken their best qualities in people and not notice minor shortcomings. Hurry to establish good relationships with people. Almost always, good relationships are established from the first words. Then it’s more difficult.

What to do in old age? How to overcome its shortcomings? Old age is not just fading, calming down, a gradual transition to peace (I can say - to “eternal peace”), but just the opposite: it is a whirlpool of unforeseen, chaotic, destructive forces. This is a powerful element. Some kind of funnel that sucks a person in, from which he must sail, move away, get rid of it, with which he must fight, overcome it.

Not just a decrease in memory, but a distortion memory work, not the extinction of creative possibilities, but their unexpected, sometimes chaotic fragmentation, which should not be succumbed to. This is not a decrease in sensitivity, but a distortion of ideas about the outside world, as a result of which the old person begins to live in some kind of special, his own world.

As you get older, you can’t play giveaway; it must be attacked. You need to mobilize all your intellectual strength in yourself so as not to go with the flow, but to be able to intuitively use zaoticness in order to move in the right direction. It is necessary to have a goal accessible to old age (taking into account the shortening of time and the distortion of opportunities).

Old age creates “wolf pits” that should be avoided.
D. S. Likhachev “Russian classical literature”

Russian classical literature” is not just “first-class literature” and not “exemplary” literature, which has become classically impeccable due to its high purely literary merits.

All these advantages, of course, exist in Russian classical literature, but this is not all. This literature also has its own special “face,” “individuality,” and characteristic features.

And I would first of all note that the creators of Russian classical literature were authors who had enormous “social responsibility.”

Russian classical literature is not entertaining, although it has a high degree of fascination. This is fascination of a special nature: it is determined by the invitation to the reader to solve complex moral and social problems - to solve together: both the author and the readers. The best works of Russian classical literature never offer readers ready-made answers to the social and moral questions posed. The authors do not moralize, but seem to appeal to readers: “Think!”, “Decide for yourself!”, “Look what happens in life!”, “Don’t hide from responsibility for everything and everyone!” Therefore, answers to questions are given by the author together with the readers.

Russian classical literature is a grandiose dialogue with the people, with their intelligentsia in the first place. This is an appeal to the conscience of readers.

The moral and social issues with which Russian classical literature addresses readers are not temporary, not momentary, although they were of particular importance for their time. Thanks to their “eternity,” these questions are of such great importance to us and will be so for all subsequent generations.

Russian classical literature is eternally alive, it does not become history, “the history of literature” only. She talks to us, her conversation is fascinating, elevates us both aesthetically and ethically, makes us wiser, increases our life experience, allows us to experience “ten lives” with her heroes, experience the experience of many generations and apply it in our own lives. It gives us the opportunity to experience the happiness of living not only “for ourselves,” but also for many others - for the “humiliated and insulted,” for “little people,” for unknown heroes and for the moral triumph of the highest human qualities...

The origins of this humanism of Russian literature lie in its centuries-long development, when literature sometimes became the only voice of conscience, the only force that determined the national self-awareness of the Russian people - literature and folklore close to it. This was at a time of feudal fragmentation; at the time of foreign yoke, when literature and the Russian language were the only forces connecting the people.

Russian literature has always drawn its enormous strength from Russian reality, from the social experience of the people, but foreign literatures have also served to help it; first Byzantine, Bulgarian, Czech, Serbian, Polish, ancient literature, and from the Peter the Great era - all the literature of Western Europe.

The literature of our time has grown on the basis of Russian classical literature.

The assimilation of classical traditions is a characteristic and very important feature of modern literature. Without assimilation of the best traditions there can be no movement forward. It is only necessary that in these traditions everything that is most valuable is not missed, forgotten, or simplified.

We must not lose anything from our great heritage.

“Book reading” and “book reverence” must preserve for us and for future generations its high purpose, its high place in our lives, in the formation of our life positions, in the choice of ethical and aesthetic values, in order not to litter our consciousness various kinds of “reading material” and meaningless purely entertaining bad taste.

The essence of progress in literature is the expansion of the aesthetic and ideological “possibilities” of literature, created as a result of “aesthetic accumulation”, the accumulation of all kinds of experience in literature and the expansion of its “memory”.
D. S. Likhachev “Russian culture”

Once I was returning from a trip to Astrakhan and back. The ship is modern, huge, comfortable; it carries more than three hundred passengers.

But there was not a single one who remained indifferent at the sight of flooded forests and tattered architectural monuments on the banks. No sooner had one once beautiful building with a collapsed roof disappeared from sight than another appeared in sight. And so on for the entire twenty-two days of the journey. Trouble, trouble strikes with swan wings!

And it was even more upsetting when we did not see the building at all, which had recently risen on the shore, but was mercilessly demolished under the pretext that its appearance had become ugly due to neglect and neglect.

This is blatant irresponsibility and mismanagement!

Is it really impossible to adapt dying churches and old estates to the needs of the surrounding population or leave them as monuments, signs of the past, covering them only with good-quality roofs, preventing further destruction?!

After all, almost all of them are quite beautiful, placed in the most prominent places.

They cry through the eye sockets of their empty windows, looking at the passing palaces of rest.

And this upset absolutely everyone. There was not a single person who was indifferent to the sight of a passing culture.

We do not preserve antiquity, not because there is a lot of it, not because among us there are few connoisseurs of the beauty of the past who love our native history and native art, but because we are in too much of a hurry, too expecting an immediate return. But ancient monuments instill, just as well-groomed forests, a caring attitude towards the surrounding nature.

We need to feel ourselves in history, to understand our significance in modern life, even if it is private, small, but still kind to others.

Everyone can do something good and leave behind a good memory.

Keeping the memory of others is leaving a good memory of yourself.
D. S. Likhachev “Russian North”

Russian North! It's hard for me to express in words my admiration, my admiration in front of this edge. When for the first time, as a boy of thirteen years old, I traveled along the Barents and White Seas, along the Northern Dvina, visited the Pomors, in peasant huts, listened to songs and fairy tales, looked at these extraordinarily beautiful people who behaved simply and with dignity, I was completely stunned. It seemed to me that this is the only way to truly live: measuredly and easily, working and receiving so much satisfaction from this work. What a well-coordinated karbas I had the opportunity to sail in (“go” the Pomors would say), how magical fishing and hunting seemed to me. And what an extraordinary language, songs, stories... But I was just a boy and my stay in the North was very short - only a month - a summer month, the days were long, sunsets immediately turned into sunrises, colors changed on the water and in the sky every five minutes, but the magic remained the same. And now, many years later, I can swear that I have never seen a better place. I am fascinated by him until the end of my days.

Why? In the Russian North there is a most amazing combination of present and past, modernity and history (and what history - Russian! - is the most significant, the most tragic in the past and the most “philosophical”), man and nature, the watercolor lyricism of water, earth, sky, the formidable power of stone, storms, cold snow and air.

Our northern writers write a lot about the Russian North.

But they are northerners, many of them left the village (“left”, but to some extent remained) - they are embarrassed to write about their own things. They themselves sometimes think that if they praise their own, it will be perceived as bragging.

But I was born in St. Petersburg and lived my whole life only in these three cities: St. Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad, and maybe also in St. Petersburg - this is a special, working-class city that emerged from St. Petersburg. I’m not at all embarrassed to write about my endless love for the Russian North...

But the most important thing that the North cannot fail to touch the heart of every Russian person is that it is the most Russian. He is not only Russian in spirit, he is Russian in that he played an outstanding role in Russian culture.

He not only saved Russia in the most difficult times of Russian history - in the era of the Polish-Swedish intervention, in the era of the First Patriotic War and the Great War, he saved us from oblivion Russian epics, Russian ancient customs, Russian wooden architecture, Russian musical culture, Russian great lyrical elements - song, verbal, Russian labor traditions - peasant, craft, seafaring, fishing. From here came wonderful Russian explorers and travelers, polar explorers and warriors unparalleled in stamina.

Can you really tell us about everything that our North is rich and famous for, why it is dear to us and why we must protect it like the apple of our eye, not allowing mass migrations, loss of labor traditions, or desertion of villages.

People come and will continue to come here to experience the moral healing power of the North, just as they go to Italy to experience the healing power of the European South.

D. S. Likhachev “Russian language”

The greatest value of a people is its language - the language in which it writes, speaks, and thinks. He thinks! This must be understood thoroughly, in all the polysemy and significance of this fact. After all, this means that a person’s entire conscious life passes through his native language. Emotions, sensations - only color what we think, or push the thought in some respect, but our thoughts are all formulated in language.

The surest way to know a person - his mental development, his moral character, his character - is to listen to how he speaks.

If we notice a person’s manner of carrying himself, his gait, his behavior, and by them we judge a person, sometimes, however, erroneously, then a person’s language is a much more accurate indicator of his human qualities, his culture.

So, there is the language of a people, as an indicator of its culture, and the language of an individual, as an indicator of his personal qualities, the qualities of a person who uses the language of the people.

I want to write not about the Russian language in general, but about how this language is used by this or that person.

Much has been written about the Russian language as the language of the people. It is one of the most perfect languages of the world, a language that has developed over more than a millennium, giving in the 19th century the best literature and poetry in the world. Turgenev spoke about the Russian language - “... it is impossible to believe that such a language was not given to a great people!”

But it also happens that a person does not speak, but “spits words.” For every common concept, he has not ordinary words, but slang expressions. When such a person speaks with his spitting words, he reveals his cynical essence.

From the very beginning, the Russian language found itself in a happy position - from the moment of its existence together in the depths of a single East Slavic language, the language of Ancient Rus'.

Already the Old Russian language (the language of Ancient Rus') joined the wealth of other languages - first of all literary Old Bulgarian, then Greek (through Old Bulgarian and in direct relations), Scandinavian, Turkic, Finno-Ugric, West Slavic, etc. It not only enriched itself lexically and grammatically , he became flexible and receptive as such.
Due to the fact that the literary language was created from the combination of Old Bulgarian with the folk colloquial, business, legal, “literary” language of folklore (the language of folklore is also not just colloquial), many synonyms were created in it with their shades of meaning and emotional expressiveness.
The language reflected the “inner strengths” of the people - their tendency towards emotionality, the diversity of their characters and types of attitude towards the world. If it is true that the language of a people reflects its national character (and this is certainly true), then the national character of the Russian people is extremely internally diverse, rich, and contradictory. And all this had to be reflected in the language.
It is already clear from the previous that language does not develop alone, but it also has linguistic memory. It is facilitated by the existence of thousands of years of literature and writing. And here there are so many genres, types of literary language, a variety of literary experience: chronicles (by no means uniform in nature), “The Tale of Igor’s Host”, “The Prayer of Daniel the Zatochnik”, sermons of Kirill of Turov, “Kiev-Pechersk Patericon” with its charm “simplicities and inventions,” and then - the works of Ivan the Terrible, various works about the Time of Troubles, the first records of folklore and... Simeon of Polotsk, and at the opposite end from Simeon, Archpriest Avvakum. In the 18th century, Lomonosov, Derzhavin, Fonvizin, then Krylov, Karamzin, Zhukovsky and... Pushkin. I will not list all the writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries; I will pay attention only to such language virtuosos as Leskov and Bunin. They are all incredibly different. They definitely write in different languages. But poetry develops language most of all. This is why the prose of poets is so significant.

What an important task it is to compile dictionaries of the language of Russian writers from ancient times!

Old Russian literature

Westerners and Slavophiles are similar to each other: in their ignorance (excusable for their time) of ancient Russian culture and in the incorrect opposition of Ancient Rus' to new Russia. This opposition was started by Peter the Great himself. He needed to contrast his cause with Ancient Rus', add pathos to his reforms, and justify his determination and cruelty. But there was no decisive turning point. I wrote about this in a special article. Peter's reforms were the product of a process that lasted throughout the 17th century. Peter himself and his comrades were people who grew up in Moscow. Peter changed the entire sign system in Russian culture - military uniform and civilian clothing, banners, customs, entertainment, moved the capital to a new place, changed ideas about the power of the monarch, about his behavior, introduced the Table of Ranks, created a civil alphabet, etc., and etc. All this was striking. He built a fleet, but it was still the Pomors who worked on the oars of the galleys and on the yards of the sailing ships...

The idea of a “turning point” was established equally among Westerners and Slavophiles, and is still alive today.

The importance of the Slavophiles in modern Russian culture was very great, not only because the older Slavophiles opposed serfdom, but because they prepared a correct assessment of ancient Russian art, contributed to the search for ancient Russian manuscripts, etc. Any movement forward requires a look back at the old, in Russia - at “its antiquity”, at Ancient Rus', at the values that it possessed. Remember Leskov, Remizov, Khlebnikov, and in painting - Malevich, Kandinsky, Goncharova and Larionov, Filonov and many others. Their avant-garde is half ancient Russian and folklore. Many people do not realize this, but in the West, the fascination with these artists ran parallel to the fascination with icons.

The literature of Ancient Rus' is fragmentary. It survived only in fragments. But the variety of fragments allows one to judge the enormous size of the whole.

Ancient literature differs from new literature in the conditions of its existence, its existence in general. Ancient literature was distributed by hand, through lists. In the lists it is both distorted and improved. A work may depart from its original form for the better or for the worse. It lives with the era, changes under the influence of changes in the environment, its tastes, its views. It moves from one environment to another. The scribe, not just the writer, creates the work. The scribe plays the role of performer in folklore. There is even improvisation in ancient literature, and it creates the same variability as in folklore.

There is a common perception of the “lack of independence” of ancient Russian literature. However, not only every literature, but also every culture is “not independent”. The true values of a culture develop only in contact with other cultures, grow on rich cultural soil and take into account the experience of the neighboring one. Can grains develop in a glass of distilled water? Maybe! - but until the grain’s own strength is exhausted, then the plant dies very quickly. From here it is clear: the more “independent” any culture is, the more independent it is. Russian culture (and literature, of course) is very lucky. It grew on a wide plain, connected to East and West, North and South. Its roots are not only in its own soil, but in Byzantium, and through it - in Antiquity, in the Slavic south-east of Europe (and above all in Bulgaria), in Scandinavia, in the multinational state of Ancient Russia, in which on equal terms with the Eastern Slavs included the Finno-Ugric peoples (Chud, Merya, all of them even participated in the campaigns of the Russian princes) and the Turkic peoples. In the 11th–12th centuries, Rus' was in close contact with the Hungarians and the Western Slavs. All these contacts grew even wider in subsequent times. Just the enumeration of the peoples who came into contact with us speaks of the power and independence of Russian culture, which was able to borrow a lot from them and remain itself. What would happen if we were fenced off from Europe and the East by a Chinese wall? We would remain deep provincials in world culture.

Is there a “backwardness” of ancient Russian literature? What is meant by this concept of “backwardness”? What are we, running a race? After all, in this case there must be a certain start, conditions, etc. What if the peoples of Europe belong to different age groups, and our birth is not always clear? Byzantium and Italy continued Antiquity, and we began to develop later and under different conditions. In a word: is my neighbor, who is three years old, behind me?

The other is “inhibition.” Did it exist in the culture of Ancient Rus'? In some ways, yes, but this is a feature of development and does not fall under assessment. Let's say we did not have such a lightning-fast transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age as in Italy. In Italy there was the “Renaissance era”, and we had the phenomena of the Renaissance, and they lasted for several centuries - right up to Pushkin. Our Renaissance was “inhibited,” and therefore the struggle for the personal principle in our culture was especially intense and difficult and was sharply reflected in the literature of the 19th century. Is it good or bad?

Another concept is “the artistic weakness of literature.” Every culture is weak in some ways and strong in others. Old Russian culture was very strong in architecture, in the fine arts, and now it turns out – in music. And in literature? The literature was unique. The journalistic quality, moral demands of literature, and the richness of the language of the literary works of Ancient Rus' are amazing.

The picture is quite complex.

In the Middle Ages, the main thing in literature was the creation of a strong and stable system capable of resisting (especially in the conditions of a foreign statehood and a foreign culture).

External “conservatism” is a feature of medieval culture, and especially Slavic culture.

The philosophical feature of ancient Slavic thinkers is to follow this principle. Hence the abundance of quotes asserting the continuity of thought, its traditionalism. Hence, in the very construction of the works, there is adherence to the enfilade principle (works of different genres are, as it were, strung together on one plot).

In medieval literature, the creation of new stylistic and genre systems is often based on old components (images, metaphors, metonymies, stylistic turns, elements of “weaving words” and canons). In modern times, the new is created mainly from the invention of new terms.

“Bashfulness of form” is a very important phenomenon for the progressive development of literature. This is not only a fear of the “frozenness” of genres, their monotony, but also a desire for truth, for the simplicity of truth. To one degree or another, it can be in any literature, but for Russian literature it is especially typical. “Bashfulness of form” leads to simple forms (completely impossible without form), to the forms of documents, letters, secondary and minor genres, to the desire to avoid a “smooth” style, “smooth writing” (Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Leskov), to the constant renewal of the literary language through colloquial language (Dostoevsky, Leskov, Zoshchenko and many others), through the language of shorthand notes (in Dostoevsky’s “Demons”), through parodying foreign expressions that sometimes seem pompous and pretentious, etc., etc. I wrote about this several times. Departing from conventional forms (“bashfulness of form”), literature all the time involuntarily gives birth to a new conventional form within itself, gives rise to new genres, etc. Realism deviates farthest from conventional forms and still gives rise to new conventional forms.

Traditionality is typical of all medieval literature - literature of the time of feudalism. The first question that arises is: what is this connected with?

I think that this traditionalism of all medieval literature is associated with the hierarchical structure of feudal society. A society divided according to a hierarchical principle differs within itself in terms of rights and power, and this division, usually very complex, is reinforced by customs, ceremonies, behavioral etiquette, and clothing (clothing serves as a sign system, indicating who is in front of people).

All the differences in a hierarchical society are so fractional and numerous that they are difficult to remember and need to be constantly reinforced. Hence the tendency towards constancy of the entire sign system in culture. And traditionality is characteristic not only of literature, but also of all art in general - for painting, sculpture, architecture, applied art, and even for everyday life, for etiquette of behavior.

The Middle Ages are ceremonial, and ceremonies are always traditional. This is a property of any ceremony. That is why, to this day, ceremonies in royal or university life in Western Europe are performed in clothes that were centuries old and with ancient objects that are not used in modern times (staffs, maces, swords, breast chains, robes, etc.).

The second question that arises in connection with the first: in what areas of literature does traditionality affect itself?

There are a lot of these areas in the literature. First of all, the traditional nature of the genre system, which is different from the simultaneously existing genre system of folklore. The whole system of literature is a kind of ceremonial system. Lives are read on their own occasions, chronicles on their own, solemn words and sermons on their own, etc. And each “reading” is performed in its own way: in churches, in the monastery refectory, or individually in a cell, from the church pulpit, or is used for reference - as a reminder of one or another ritual, order of worship. In literature, a “hierarchy of genres” has been developed: some are written in a “high” literary language, others in a simpler language, etc. There are also traditional formulas (separately for each genre), etiquette formulas, individual words and expressions, used in some cases and not common in others.

But in addition to the traditions of genres and their use, there are traditions in the depiction of people. There are saints, but they are also different: martyrs of the faith, warriors, rulers, monks, high-ranking church figures. Each of the saints is depicted according to its own rules, in its own canons. But, besides the saints, there are also simple people, and among the simple ones there are beggars, peasants, and government officials. All of them belong to certain traditions of depiction, especially since the plots are repeated and can only unfold in one way and not another. Here's a small example. A villain, a robber, can become a saint in all medieval literature. Here the way is clear for him. But a true saint (unless he is a hypocrite) will never become an apostate from the truth. There is a certain “preset image”, and here’s what’s surprising: this preset has its own logic. Tradition does not go against the laws of psychology.

In short, there are dozens of forms of tradition, hundreds of traditional formulas, thousands of ways of formalization. Literature continuously develops traditionality and it is very difficult to abandon it.

Literature is dominated by the “charm of traditional forms”!

Question three: what is the relationship between traditionality and artistry? Doesn't the dominance of traditionalism mean that there is no genuine creativity in literature (and in art in general) in the Middle Ages?

No, in art, and in particular in literature, there is not only a dominant tradition, but also a struggle against it. And this is where the “force lines” of creativity arise. Art is always the overcoming of “non-art,” but if this “non-art” is weakly expressed, then the struggle against it that delights us will also be weak. In every strong art it is opposed by a strong, resisting “non-art.” In medieval literature, “non-art” is traditionality. God forbid I think that by doing so I seem to recognize traditionality as a negative phenomenon. Marble resists the sculptor, and a real sculptor appreciates this. The only people who do not appreciate this resistance are those false sculptors who work with the help of devices that make their work easier, on material that allows them to create anything and in any size. Then such monsters appear in art as the famous “Tsar Baba” in Kiev, monuments to cosmonautics in Moscow (“Gagarin” or the crazy “crank” in Ostankino), etc. It costs these “sculptors” nothing to tear down a mountain (with with the help of machines, of course), but only medieval architects could truly include the mountain in their artistic goals! The same is true in medieval literature. The material of tradition is huge, varied, it resists; the artist feels its “heaviness”, the diversity of language, canons in the depiction of a person and creates things and works of amazing beauty.

Here in “The Tale of Boris and Gleb”. Gleb behaves according to the traditions prescribed by the hagiography-martyrium genre: he does not resist the murderers, but he childishly asks them not to kill him: “Don’t hurt me, my dear and dear brothers! Don’t hurt me, you haven’t done anything evil.” Etc. This monologue before the murder is quite long, but at the same time it is justified by Gleb’s age. Gleb’s request not to kill him - just him, Gleb, and not a cliché: “Have mercy on us.”<юности>mine, have mercy, my Lord!.. You will not reap me from a life that has not ripened, you will not reap class<колоса>, not already grown up”, etc.

Many such examples of the penetration of art into the stencil could be given, and it is these penetrations that revive traditional art. Tradition serves as a frame for precious inclusions of genuine creativity.

Question four. And what is the role of this particular type of “material resistance” in medieval literature - in the history of literature? Medieval literature belongs to the norms of elementary literature, in which the personality of the writer, his individuality, is unclear. After all, we find the same thing in relation to traditionalism in folklore. And it is important that traditionalism facilitates creativity. A carpenter is cutting a hut. He doesn’t need to invent anything new—much new, at least. The sizes of logs and boards, cutting methods - all this has been determined for centuries. He will just change something a little, put an extra log, weave a new pattern in something. It is easy for him to work without errors. The same thing happens in folklore when creating a new song or epic, crying for the dead, etc. But it is even clearer in medieval literature. Traditions, canons, etiquette, ready-made forms of language allow the writer (who sometimes does not feel like a writer at all) to concentrate on the main thing and create a work for a new saint or something for a new service to the old one. The chronicler already knows what to write down from the events taking place, what facts to highlight, and to inform the reader about them. He will add something of his own to this “traditional vision” of history, reflect his excitement, his sorrow... Traditionality increases the genetic abilities of literature and facilitates the creation of new works.

Question five. Why is this “genetic ease” needed? Let there be fewer works, but with different materials of resistance. This question is complex. I'll try to explain what's going on here. Literature exists and develops only under the condition of a certain saturation of the “space of literature” with works. If there are few works, literature as a living whole ceases to exist. In literary works there is a “shoulder feeling”, a feeling of neighborhood. Each new talented work increases the literary demands of the writing and reading society. If there is no folklore at all, it is impossible to compose an epic. In a society where music has never been heard, it is impossible to create not only Beethoven, but also Gershwin. Literature exists as a medium. The Brothers Karamazov could appear and exist only in conjunction with other works.

From the depths of the “literary universe” come “gravitational waves” and radiations penetrating it. They come from other galaxies - for example, Byzantine, Syrian, Coptic, and some even from somewhere beyond all possible galaxies. These are traditional waves. As astronomers, we can make assumptions from them about the beginning of literature, about the beginning of literary life. No one has yet accurately recorded their occurrence, their beginning. By studying traditions, we can understand the emergence of literary creativity. A. N. Veselovsky came close to solving this issue.

Outside of Russian, Armenian, Georgian literature there are their own forms of oral art of the word, there is the literature of Byzantium, behind it is Antiquity, and beyond that what?

To penetrate into the very depths of the existence of the art of words, we must be astronomers of literature, have a gigantic scientific imagination and gigantic erudition.

Not only literary works require proximity, but also the proximity of sciences requires a lot. Literary studies have lagged behind other sciences. We have a lot to do.

Modern writers (writers of the New Age) are proud of the accuracy of their comparisons and external similarities. And medieval writers sought to see the essential behind the external. Metaphors were symbols for them; the inner essence broke through the external resemblance - the chicken came out of the egg shell...

When the author of “The Lay of Igor’s Campaign” compares Yaroslavna with a cuckoo, he sees in her not just a bird (then it would be better to compare her with a seagull), but a mother whose son is in someone else’s nest - in Konchak’s nest.

The swan in the Lay is always a vision before death. And then, when the Polovtsian carts fleeing from the Russians scream like a swan. And then, when the Virgin of Resentment beats her swan wings on the Blue Sea - the very same one from where the Polovtsian regiments moved towards Igor’s army.

It is no coincidence that Yaroslavna turns in her cry to the Sun, Wind and Dnieper, that is, to three of the four elements: light, air, water. She does not need to turn to the Earth, for she is the Earth itself, that is, her homeland. The earth cannot be hostile. The sun first warned Igor, and then twisted the bows of Igor’s warriors with thirst. The wind drove clouds from the sea to Rus' and picked up the Polovtsian arrows to bring them to Igor. The Dnieper could have helped Svyatoslav’s raids reach the battlefield, but it did not help.

And in response to Yaroslavna’s plea, the sun, which warned Igor with darkness, hides Igor’s flight with the same darkness. The wind comes like tornadoes from the sea to the Polovtsian camps. The Dnieper, the main of the Russian rivers, helps Igor with its allied rivers in his flight to the Russian land.

Medieval metaphors are created by the similarity of action, and not by the similarity of appearance: for Cyril of Turov, the holy fathers of the cathedral are “rivers of rational paradise, watering the whole world of saved teaching and sinful filth with the streams of your punishment, washing away” (Adrianova-Peretz V.P. Essays on the poetic style of the Ancient Rus', p. 50). Emperor Tzimiskes at Manasseh: “another paradise of God, four rivers flowing: truth, wisdom, courage, chastity” (Russian Chronograph, ch. 177, p. 383). Man is grass (psalm 102, v. 14), date and cedar (selected psalms 34). Pachomius the Serb has Nikon of Radonezh as a “noble garden” (Yablonsky, pp. LXIX–LXX). Avvakum in a letter to Morozova, Urusova and Danilova calls them: “the vine of reverence, the stem of suffering, the flower of sacredness and the fruit given by God.”

Developed metaphor. Symbolism that became a painting. In “The Life of Tryphon of Pechenga” his oral testament to the brethren before his death: “Do not love the world and those in the world; You yourself know how damned this world is - like the sea is unfaithful, rebellious, abyss (?) with the touches (?) of wicked spirits, disastrously agitated by the winds, bitter lies, slander shaking devilishly, foaming, raging with the sins of the wind and confused, about immersion<о потоплении>strives for peace lovers; weep everywhere, spread its destruction, and finally condemn everything with death” (Orthodox interlocutor, 1859, part 2, p. 113).

In the ideological side of every literary work there are, as it were, two layers. One layer of completely conscious statements, thoughts, ideas that the author seeks to instill in his readers and what he is trying to convince or convince them of. This is a layer of active influence on readers. The second layer is of a different nature of activity: it is, as it were, implied. The author takes it for granted and common to him and his readers. This second layer is mostly passive. It begins to actively act and influence the reader only when the work moves to another era, to other readers, where this layer is new and unusual. This second layer could be called the “worldview background.”

In “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” the first layer - the effective layer - is contained in the author’s calls for unity, for the defense of the Russian land, in the author’s attempts to interpret the entire Russian history and individual historical facts in the spirit of his historical concept and his political convictions. “Open paganism” can be attributed to this same layer, expressed, for example, in the name mention of pagan gods.

The second layer in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” is hidden and can only be studied through analysis. This second layer includes, for example, general pagan ideas - about the peculiar aspects of human destiny, about the relationship between man and nature, about the cult of Earth, Water, Family, Sun and Light. These also include belief in omens, the belief in the special connection of grandchildren with their grandfathers, etc.

The “teaching” of Vladimir Monomakh is addressed specifically to the princes: “And sit down and think with the squad, or straighten people out, or go fishing, or travel ...” (p. 158).

The same “activity” of comparisons as in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” is also noted by O. M. Freidenberg for Homer. “Thus, a sign of the realism of a detailed comparison becomes effectiveness, movement, speed. What does it convey? Affect, noise, scream, all kinds of movements: the flight of a bird, an attack of a predator, a chase, a boil, a surf, a storm, a blizzard, fires and floods, stormy torrents of rain, the whirling of insects, the swift running of a horse... Even in a stone flight is noticeable, in a star - a moment of scattering sparks, a fall in the tower. Comparisons are filled with the noise of the elements, the howling and groaning of waters, the buzzing of flies, the bleating of sheep, the roar of animals... This is how everything is depicted, even a thing: the wheel turns, the skin stretches, the cauldron boils, etc. Before us are processes, not statuary-changed positions; and among them are labor processes, such as threshing, winnowing, reaping, hunting, crafts and needlework" (O. M. Freidenberg. The origin of the epic comparison (based on the material of the Iliad). - Proceedings of the anniversary scientific session. 1819–1944. Leningrad State University, Leningrad, 1946, p. 113).

We see the same thing in the “Word”: everything is described in movement, in action. As in the Iliad, the battle is compared to a thunderstorm, a downpour. Cosmic phenomena are used as comparisons (princes are compared to the sun, failure is predicted by an eclipse). Comparisons with labor processes prevail: harvesting, sowing, forging - and with images of hunting and hunting animals (pardus, falcons). The world of the gods enters the world of people - as in the Iliad. And at the same time, “The Tale of Igor’s Host” is not “The Iliad.”

The world of the “Word” is a big world of easy, uncomplicated action, a world of rapidly occurring events unfolding in a vast space. The heroes of The Lay move with fantastic speed and act almost effortlessly. The point of view from above dominates (cf. “raised horizon” in ancient Russian miniatures and icons). The author sees the Russian land as if from a great height, covers vast spaces with his mind's eye, as if “flying with his mind under the clouds”, “prowls through the fields to the mountains”.

In this lightest of worlds, as soon as the horses begin to neigh behind Sula, the glory of victory is already ringing in Kyiv; The trumpets will only begin to sound in Novgorod-Seversky when the banners are already standing in Putivl - the troops are ready to march. The girls sing on the Danube - their voices wind across the sea to Kyiv (the road from the Danube was by sea). The ringing of bells can be heard in the distance. The author easily transfers the story from one place to another. It reaches Kyiv from Polotsk. And even the sound of a stirrup can be heard in Chernigov from Tmutorokan. Characteristic is the speed with which the characters, animals and birds move. They rush, jump, rush, fly over vast spaces. People move with extraordinary speed, scour fields like wolves, are transported hanging on a cloud, and soar like eagles. As soon as you get on a horse, you can already see the Don - there is definitely no multi-day and difficult steppe crossing across the waterless steppe. The prince can fly “from afar.” It can soar high, spreading in the wind. Its thunderstorms flow across the lands. Yaroslavna is compared to a bird and wants to fly over it. Warriors are light - like falcons and jackdaws. They are living shereshirs, arrows. The heroes not only move with ease, but effortlessly stab and slash enemies. They are strong like animals: aurochs, pardus, wolves. For Kurdish people there are no difficulties and no effort. They gallop with bows tensed (stretching a bow while racing is extremely difficult), their bows are open and their sabers are sharp. They rush around the field like gray wolves. They are familiar with the paths and yarugs. Vsevolod's warriors can crumble the Volga with oars and pour down the Don with their helmets.

People are not only strong like animals and light like birds, but all actions are performed in the “Word” without much physical strain, without effort, as if by themselves. The winds easily carry arrows. As soon as the fingers lay on the strings, they themselves begin to rumble with glory. In this atmosphere of ease of every action, the hyperbolic exploits of Vsevolod Bui Tur become possible.

The special dynamism of “The Word” is also associated with this “light” space.

The author of the Lay prefers dynamic descriptions to static ones. It describes actions, not stationary states. Speaking about nature, he does not give landscapes, but describes the reaction of nature to events occurring among people. He describes the approaching thunderstorm, nature's help in Igor's escape, the behavior of birds and animals, nature's sadness or its joy. Nature in “The Lay” is not the background of events, not the scenery in which the action takes place - it is itself a character, something like an ancient chorus. Nature reacts to events as a kind of “storyteller”, expresses the author’s opinion and the author’s emotions.

The “lightness” of space and environment in “The Lay” is not in every way similar to the “lightness” of a fairy tale. She is closer to the icon. The space in the “Word” is artistically reduced, “grouped” and symbolized. People react to events in masses, nations act as a single whole: Germans, Venetians, Greeks and Moravians sing the glory of Svyatoslav and repent of Prince Igor. As a single whole, like “clumps” of people on icons, the Gothic red maidens, Polovtsians, and squads act in the “Lay”. As in icons, the actions of princes are symbolic and emblematic. Igor disembarked from the golden saddle and moved into the saddle of the kashchei: this symbolizes his new state as a prisoner. On the river on Kayal, darkness covers the light, and this symbolizes defeat. Abstract concepts - grief, resentment, glory - are personified and materialized, acquiring the ability to act like people or living and inanimate nature. Resentment rises and enters like a maiden onto the land of Trojan, splashes with swan wings, lies awaken and are put to sleep, joy wilts, darkness fills the mind, rises across the Russian soil, strife sows and grows, sadness flows, melancholy spreads.

The “light” space corresponds to the humanity of the surrounding nature. Everything in space is connected not only physically, but also emotionally.

Nature sympathizes with the Russians. Animals, birds, plants, rivers, and atmospheric phenomena (thunderstorms, winds, clouds) take part in the destinies of Russian people. The sun shines for the prince, but the night groans for him, warning him of danger. Div shouts so that the Volga, Pomorie, Posulye, Surozh, Korsun and Tmutorokan can hear him. The grass droops, the tree bows down to the ground. Even the walls of cities respond to events.

This method of characterizing events and expressing the author’s attitude towards them is extremely characteristic of “The Lay”, giving it emotionality and at the same time a special convincingness of this emotionality. It’s like an appeal to the environment: to people, nations, to nature itself. Emotionality, as it were, is not the author’s, but objectively exists in the environment, is “diluted” in space, flows in it.

Thus, emotionality does not come from the author; the “emotional perspective” is multifaceted, as in icons. Emotionality seems to be inherent in the events themselves and in nature itself. She saturates the space. The author acts as an exponent of what is objectively existing outside his emotionality.

All this is not in the fairy tale, but much is suggested here by the chronicle and other works of ancient Russian literature.

The only significant work of the 12th century about an “offensive” campaign is “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” but we know that it was undertaken for defensive purposes “for the Russian land,” and this is emphasized in every possible way in the “Tale.”

But how many works appear on purely “defensive” themes, especially in connection with Batu’s invasion, the invasions of the Swedes and Livonian knights: “Tales of the Battle of Kalka”, “The Life of Alexander Nevsky”, “The Tale of the Destruction of the Russian Land”, chronicle stories about the defense of Vladimir , Kiev, Kozelsk, the story of the death of Mikhail of Chernigov, Vasilko of Rostov (in the chronicle of Princess Maria), “The Tale of the Ruin of Ryazan,” etc. The end of the 14th and 15th centuries was again covered by a whole wreath of stories about the defense of cities: about the Battle of Kulikovo, about Tamerlane, about Tokhtamysh, about Edigei, a number of stories about the defense against Lithuania. A new chain of stories about courageous defense, but not about courageous campaigns - in the 16th century. The main one is about the defense of Pskov from Stefan Batory.

It cannot be said that literature in historical reality has a shortage of offensive themes. Only one Livonian War, fought with varying degrees of success, in which outstanding victories were won, would have provided so many opportunities in this direction.

The only exception is “Kazan History”, most of which is devoted to the Russian campaigns against Kazan. The same thing continues in the 18th and 19th centuries. None of the great victories over the Turks in the 18th century produced great results, nor did the campaigns in the Caucasus and Central Asia. But the “Caucasian theme,” like “Kazan History,” led to a kind of idealization of the Caucasian peoples - right down to the Caucasian army itself, dressed by order of Ermolov in the clothes of the Caucasian highlanders.

Only a defensive war provided food for the creative imagination of great writers: the Patriotic War of 1812 and the Defense of Sevastopol. It is remarkable that War and Peace does not concern the foreign campaign of the Russian army. “War and Peace” ends at the borders of Russia. And this is very significant.

I don’t think that this is a trait specific to Russian literature. Let us remember “The Song of Roland” and other works of the Middle Ages. Let us also remember the works of the New Age.

The heroism of the defenders has always attracted the attention of writers more than the heroism of the attackers: even in Napoleonic history. The most profound works are dedicated to the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon's hundred days, the campaign against Moscow - or rather, Napoleon's retreat.

Immediately after the Second World War, in his lectures at the Sorbonne on the history of Russian literature, A. Mazon said: “The Russians have always savored their defeats and portrayed them as victories”; he meant the Battle of Kulikovo, Borodino, Sevastopol. He was wrong in his emotional assessment of defense topics, hostile to everything Russian. But he was right in that the people are peace-loving and more willing to write about defense than about attack, and they see heroism, the victory of the spirit in the heroic defense of their cities and country, and not in the capture of another country, the capture of other people's cities.

The psychology of defenders is deeper; patriotism can be shown more deeply in defense. The people and culture of the people are essentially peace-loving, and in the wide range of topics in literature this can be seen with complete clarity.

There cannot be any recurrence of the scientific dispute about the antiquity of the “Lay”, but there are enough of various kinds of amateurs, and you can never vouch for them... “The Lay”, like any well-known famous monuments, is a favorite object to “show oneself.” Amateurs are a different matter. Those who love the “Word” can discover many new things and can enter into science. But amateurs and amateurs are different categories of people.

Documents have always been part of the chronicle. Let us recall the treaties with the Greeks in 911 and 941, the texts of which are included in the Tale of Bygone Years. And in the future, along with literary materials (historical stories, military stories, lives of saints and sermons), the chronicle very often included written documents, not to mention “oral” documents - speeches of princes at a meeting, before going on a campaign or before a battle, on princely photographs: they were also transmitted, whenever possible, with documentary accuracy. However, only in the 16th century did the chronicle itself begin to be fully understood as a document - incriminating or justifying, giving rights or taking them away. And this leaves an imprint on the style of the chronicle: responsibility makes the presentation of the chronicle more magnificent and sublime. The chronicle adjoins the style of the second monumentalism. And this pretentious style is a kind of fusion of oratory with state paperwork.

Both developed to a high degree in the 16th century and intertwined with each other in the peaks, that is, in literary works.

But is the chronicle the pinnacle of literary art? This is a very important phenomenon of Russian culture, but it seems, from our point of view, the least literary. However, raised on the columns of oratorical monumentalism and office-work monumentalism, the chronicle rose to the very heights of literary creativity. It has become the art of artificiality.

Not only “The Secret of the Secret”, “Stephanit and Ikhnilat”, “The Tale of Queen Dinara”, many works of Maxim the Greek, the messages of Elder Philotheus and “The Tale of the Princes of Vladimir” - the latter outlining theories ( not always similar) the rights of Russian sovereigns to the throne and to their role in world history, but also chronographs and chronicles, chronicles and chroniclers. State power, interpreted differently, is nevertheless always placed highly, the authority of the sovereign is affirmed everywhere, the responsibility of sovereigns to the country, subjects and world history, the right to intervene in the destinies of the world, is affirmed everywhere. On the one hand, this destroyed the old ideas about the Grand Duke as a simple owner of people and lands, but, on the other, elevating the power of the sovereign to the sole representative and defender of Orthodoxy after the fall of the independence of all Orthodox states, it created the preconditions for the confidence of the Moscow sovereigns in their complete infallibility and the right to interfere even in all the little details of private life.

The teachings, instructions, advice, concepts of the origin of the clan and the power of the Moscow sovereigns not only put power under the control of the public, but also at the same time instilled in the Moscow sovereigns the idea of their complete lack of control, creating ideological prerequisites for the future despotism of Ivan the Terrible.

About the “low voice” of ancient Russian literature. This is not said at all as a reproach to her. The volume sometimes interferes and irritates. She is intrusive and unceremonious. I have always preferred “quiet poetry.” And the following incident reminds me of the beauty of ancient Russian “quietness.” At one of the conferences of the ancient Russian literature sector of the Pushkin House, where there were reports on ancient Russian music, Ivan Nikiforovich Zavoloko, now deceased, spoke. He was an Old Believer, graduated from Charles University in Prague, had an excellent knowledge of languages, classical European music, and the manner of performing vocal works. But he also loved ancient Russian singing, he knew it, he sang it himself. And so he showed how to sing with hooks. But I had to not stand out in the choir, sing in a low voice. And, standing at the pulpit, he sang several works of the 16th–17th centuries. He sang alone, but as a member of the choir. Quiet, calm, self-absorbed. This was a lively contrast to the manner in which some of the choirs now perform ancient Russian works.

And in literature, authors knew how to restrain themselves. It won’t take you long to see such beauty. Remember the story in “The Tale of Bygone Years” about the death of Oleg, the story about the capture of Ryazan by Batu, “The Tale of Peter and Fevronia of Murom”. And how many more of these modest, “quiet” stories that had such a strong effect on their readers!

As for Habakkuk, he is on the verge of the New Age.

The “empathy” of Archpriest Avvakum is amazing. Regarding the loss of the son of the noblewoman Morozova, Avvakum writes to her: “You no longer feel comfortable lashing rosaries with rosaries, and you don’t feel like watching horses ride, and stroking their heads - do you remember how it used to be?” The feeling of the absence of a son is clearly conveyed to the point of physiology: there is no one to pat on the head! Here Habakkuk the artist is visible.

The literature of modern times adopted (somewhat unnoticed by itself) many features and features of ancient literature. First of all, her consciousness of responsibility to the country, her teaching, moral and state character, her sensitivity to the literature of other peoples, her respect and interest in the destinies of other peoples who entered the orbit of the Russian state, her individual topics and moral approach to these topics.

“Russian classical literature” is not just “first-class literature” and not “exemplary” literature, which has become classically impeccable due to its high purely literary merits.

All these advantages, of course, exist in Russian classical literature, but this is not all. This literature also has its own special “face,” “individuality,” and characteristic features.

And I would first of all note that the creators of Russian classical literature were authors who had enormous “social responsibility.”

The best works of Russian classical literature never offer readers ready-made answers to the social and moral questions posed. The authors do not moralize, but seem to appeal to readers: “Think!”, “Decide for yourself!”, “Look what happens in life!”, “Don’t hide from responsibility for everything and everyone!” Therefore, answers to questions are given by the author together with the readers.

Russian classical literature is a grandiose dialogue with the people, with their intelligentsia in the first place. This is an appeal to the conscience of readers.

Russian classical literature is eternally alive, it does not become history, “the history of literature” only. She talks to us, her conversation is fascinating, elevates us both aesthetically and ethically, makes us wiser, increases our life experience, allows us to experience “ten lives” with her heroes, experience the experience of many generations and apply it in our own lives. It gives us the opportunity to experience the happiness of living not only “for ourselves”, but also for many others - for the “humiliated and insulted”, for “little people”, for unknown heroes and for the moral triumph of the highest human qualities...

The origins of this humanism of Russian literature lie in its centuries-long development, when literature sometimes became the only voice of conscience, the only force that determined the national self-awareness of the Russian people - literature and folklore close to it. This was at a time of feudal fragmentation, at a time of foreign yoke, when literature and the Russian language were the only forces connecting the people.

The literature of our time has grown on the basis of Russian classical literature.

We must not lose anything from our great heritage.

“Book reading” and “book reverence” must preserve for us and for future generations their high purpose, their high place in our lives, in the formation of our life positions, in the choice of ethical and aesthetic values, in preventing our consciousness from being littered various kinds of “reading material” and meaningless, purely entertaining bad taste.

Works of great art always admit of several explanations, all equally correct. This is surprising and not always even clear. I will give examples.

The features of style and worldview reflected in works can be simultaneously and fully explained, interpreted from the point of view of the writer’s biography, from the point of view of the movement of literature (its “internal laws”), from the point of view of the development of verse (if this concerns poetry) and , finally, from the point of view of historical reality - not only taken at once, but “unfolded in action.” And this applies not only to literature. I noticed similar phenomena in the development of architecture and painting. It's a pity that I'm not very familiar with music and the history of philosophy.

In a more limited way, mainly in the ideological aspect, a literary work is explained in terms of the history of social thought (there are fewer explanations of the style of the works). It is not enough to say that every work of art must be explained in a “cultural context.” This is possible, this is correct, but not everything comes down to this. The point is that a work can equally be explained in the “context of itself.” In other words (and I am not afraid to say this) - immanent, subject to explanation as a closed system. The fact is that the “external” explanation of a work of art (historical situation, the influence of the aesthetic views of his time, the history of literature - its position at the time the work was written, etc.) - to a certain extent “dismembers” the work; commenting and explaining a work to one degree or another fragments the work and loses attention to the whole. Even if we talk about the style of a work and at the same time the style is understood in a limited way - within the limits of form - then a stylistic explanation, losing sight of the whole, cannot give a complete explanation of the work as an aesthetic phenomenon. Therefore, there always remains the need to consider any work of art as a kind of unity, a manifestation of aesthetic-ideological consciousness.

In literature, the movement forward takes place, as it were, in large brackets, covering a whole group of phenomena: ideas, stylistic features, themes, etc. The new enters along with new facts of life, but as a certain totality. A new style, the style of an era, is often a new grouping of old elements that form new combinations with each other. At the same time, phenomena that were previously in secondary positions begin to occupy a dominant position, and what was previously considered paramount recedes into the shadows.

When a major poet writes about something, it is important not only what he writes and how, but also what he writes. The text is not indifferent to who wrote it, in what era, in what country, and even to who pronounces it and in what country. That is why the American “critical school” in literary criticism is extremely limited in its conclusions.

In the Testament of Saint Remigius to Clovis: “Incende quod adorasti. Adora quod incendisti.” “Burn what you worshiped, worship what you burned.” Wed. in the “Noble Nest” in the mouth of Mikhalevich:

And I burned everything I worshiped

He bowed to everything he burned.

How did this get from Remigius to Turgenev? But without finding out this, you cannot even write about it in literary commentaries.

Themes of the books: reality as potential literature and literature as potential reality (the latter topic requires scientific wit).

X.1. The difference between the sexes is a special gift of the Creator to the people He created. “And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). Being equally bearers of the image of God and human dignity, man and woman are created for integral unity with each other in love: “For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife; and the two will become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Embodying the original will of the Lord for creation, the marital union blessed by Him becomes a means of continuing and multiplying the human race: “And God blessed them, and God said to them: be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). The characteristics of the sexes are not limited to differences in bodily structure. Man and woman represent two different modes of existence in one humanity. They need communication and mutual replenishment. However, in a fallen world, gender relations can become perverted, ceasing to be an expression of God-given love and degenerating into a manifestation of the sinful addiction of fallen man to his own self.

Highly appreciating the feat of voluntary chaste celibacy, accepted for the sake of Christ and the Gospel, and recognizing the special role of monasticism in its history and modern life, the Church has never treated marriage with disdain and condemned those who, out of a falsely understood desire for purity, disparaged marriage relations.

The Apostle Paul, who personally chose virginity for himself and called to imitate him in this (1 Cor. 7:8), nevertheless condemns “the hypocrisy of false talkers, seared in their conscience, forbidding marriage” (1 Tim. 4: 2-3 ). The 51st Apostolic Canon says: “If anyone... withdraws from marriage... not for the sake of the feat of abstinence, but because of abomination, forgetting... that God, creating man, created them husband and wife, and thus blasphemes , slanders the creature, - either he will correct himself, or he will be expelled from the sacred rank and rejected from the Church.” It is developed by the 1st, 9th and 10th rules of the Gangra Council: “If anyone condemns marriage and abhors a faithful and pious wife who has intercourse with her husband, or condemns her as unable to enter the Kingdom [of God], let it be under oath. If anyone is a virgin or abstains, moving away from marriage as one who abhors it, and not for the sake of the beauty and holiness of virginity itself, let him be under an oath. If any of those who are virgins for the sake of the Lord exalt themselves over those who are married, let him be under an oath.” The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, in a resolution dated December 28, 1998, referring to these rules, indicated “the inadmissibility of a negative or arrogant attitude towards marriage.”

X.2. According to Roman law, which formed the basis of the civil codes of most modern states, marriage is an agreement between two parties free in their choice. The Church accepted this definition of marriage, interpreting it based on the evidence of Holy Scripture.

The Roman lawyer Modestine (3rd century) gave the following definition of marriage: “Marriage is the union of a man and a woman, a community of all life, participation in divine and human law.” In almost unchanged form, this definition was included in the canonical collections of the Orthodox Church, in particular, in the “Nomocanon” of Patriarch Photius (IX century), in the “Syntagma” of Matthew Blastar (XIV century) and in the “Prochiron” of Basil the Macedonian (IX century), included in the Slavic “Helmsman’s Book”. The early Christian fathers and teachers of the Church also relied on Roman ideas about marriage. Thus, Athenagoras, in his Apology to Emperor Marcus Aurelius (2nd century), writes: “Each of us considers as his wife the woman to whom he is married according to the laws.” The Apostolic Constitutions, a fourth-century monument, exhort Christians to “marry in accordance with the law.”

Christianity complemented pagan and Old Testament ideas about marriage with a sublime image of the union of Christ and the Church. “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the Church, and He is the Savior of the body; but just as the Church submits to Christ, so do wives to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her, in order to sanctify her, cleansing her with the washing of water through the word; that he might present it to himself as a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that she might be holy and without blemish. Thus should husbands love their wives as their own bodies: he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one has ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and warms it, just as the Lord does the Church; because we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. Therefore a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This mystery is great; I speak in relation to Christ and the Church. So let each of you love his wife as himself; but let the wife fear her husband” (Eph. 5:22-33).

For Christians, marriage has become not just a legal contract, a means of procreation and satisfaction of temporary natural needs, but, in the words of St. John Chrysostom, “the sacrament of love,” the eternal unity of spouses with each other in Christ. Initially, Christians sealed marriage with a church blessing and joint participation in the Eucharist, which was the oldest form of celebrating the Sacrament of Marriage.

“Those who get married must enter into a union with the consent of the bishop, so that the marriage is about the Lord, and not out of lust,” wrote Hieromartyr Ignatius the God-Bearer. According to Tertullian, a marriage “confirmed by the Church, confirmed by the sacrifice [Eucharist], is sealed with a blessing and inscribed in heaven by the angels.” “It is necessary to call upon the priests to strengthen the spouses in their life together with prayers and blessings, so that... the spouses will spend their lives in joy, united by God’s help,” said St. John Chrysostom. Saint Ambrose of Milan pointed out that “marriage must be sanctified by priestly protection and blessing.”

During the period of Christianization of the Roman Empire, civil registration continued to provide legality to marriage. Sanctifying marital unions with prayer and blessing, the Church nevertheless recognized the validity of a civil marriage in cases where a church marriage was impossible, and did not subject the spouses to canonical punishments. The Russian Orthodox Church currently adheres to the same practice. At the same time, she cannot approve and bless marital unions that are concluded, although in accordance with the current civil legislation, but in violation of canonical regulations (for example, fourth and subsequent marriages, marriages in unacceptable degrees of blood or spiritual relationship).

According to the 74th novel of Justinian (538), a legal marriage could be concluded either by an ecdic (church notary) or by a priest. A similar rule was contained in the eclogue of Emperor Leo III and his son Constantine V (740), as well as in the law of Basil I (879). The most important condition for marriage remained the mutual consent of the man and woman, confirmed in front of witnesses. The Church did not protest against this practice. Only since 893, according to the 89th novel of Emperor Leo VI, free persons were obliged to marry according to church rites, and in 1095 Emperor Alexius Komnenos extended this rule to slaves. The introduction of compulsory marriage according to church rites (IX-XI centuries) meant that by decision of the state authorities, all legal regulation of marriage relations was transferred exclusively to the jurisdiction of the Church. However, the widespread introduction of this practice should not be perceived as the establishment of the Sacrament of Marriage, which has existed from time immemorial in the Church.

The order established in Byzantium was also adopted in Russia in relation to persons of the Orthodox faith. However, with the adoption of the Decree on the separation of Church and State (1918), marriage according to the church rite lost its legal force; Formally, believers were given the right to receive a church blessing after registering their marriage with government authorities. However, during the long period of state persecution of religion, performing a solemn wedding in a church actually remained extremely difficult and dangerous.

The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church on December 28, 1998 noted with regret that “some confessors declare civil marriage illegal or demand the dissolution of a marriage between spouses who have lived together for many years, but due to certain circumstances have not performed a wedding in church... Some pastors - confessors do not allow persons living in “unmarried” marriages to receive communion, identifying such marriage with fornication.” The definition adopted by the Synod states: “Insisting on the need for church marriage, remind pastors that the Orthodox Church respects civil marriage.”

The community of faith of spouses who are members of the body of Christ is the most important condition for a truly Christian and ecclesiastical marriage. Only a family united in faith can become a “domestic Church” (Rom. 16:5; Philm. 1:2), in which husband and wife, together with their children, grow in spiritual improvement and knowledge of God. Lack of unanimity poses a serious threat to the integrity of the marital union. That is why the Church considers it its duty to encourage believers to marry “only in the Lord” (1 Cor. 7:39), that is, with those who share their Christian beliefs.

The above-mentioned definition of the Holy Synod also speaks of the Church’s respect “for a marriage in which only one of the parties belongs to the Orthodox faith, in accordance with the words of the holy Apostle Paul: “An unbelieving husband is sanctified by a believing wife, and an unbelieving wife is sanctified by a believing husband” (1 Cor. 7. 14).” This text of the Holy Scripture was also referred to by the fathers of the Trullo Council, who recognized as valid the union between persons who, “while still in unbelief and not being counted among the flock of Orthodox, were united in legal marriage,” if subsequently one of the spouses converted to faith (Rule 72 ). However, in the same rule and other canonical definitions (IV Vs. Sob. 14, Laod. 10, 31), as well as in the works of ancient Christian writers and Church Fathers (Tertullian, St. Cyprian of Carthage, Blessed Theodoret and Blessed Augustine), it is forbidden marriages between Orthodox Christians and followers of other religious traditions.

In accordance with ancient canonical instructions, the Church even today does not sanctify marriages concluded between Orthodox Christians and non-Christians, at the same time recognizing them as legal and not considering those in them to be in fornication. Based on considerations of pastoral economy, the Russian Orthodox Church, both in the past and today, finds it possible for Orthodox Christians to marry Catholics, members of the Ancient Eastern Churches and Protestants professing faith in the Triune God, subject to the blessing of the marriage in the Orthodox Church and the upbringing of children in the Orthodox Church. faith. The same practice has been followed in most Orthodox Churches over the past centuries.

By a decree of the Holy Synod of June 23, 1721, marriages of Swedish captives in Siberia with Orthodox brides were permitted under the above conditions. On August 18 of the same year, this decision of the Synod received detailed biblical and theological justification in a special Synodal Message. The Holy Synod subsequently referred to this message when resolving issues of mixed marriages in the provinces annexed from Poland, as well as in Finland (decrees of the Holy Synod of 1803 and 1811). In these areas, however, a more free determination of the religious affiliation of children was allowed (temporarily, this practice sometimes extended to the Baltic provinces). Finally, the rules on mixed marriages for the entire Russian Empire were finally enshrined in the Charter of Ecclesiastical Consistories (1883). An example of mixed marriages was many dynastic marriages, during which the transition of the non-Orthodox party to Orthodoxy was not mandatory (with the exception of the marriage of the heir to the Russian throne). Thus, the Holy Martyr Grand Duchess Elizabeth entered into marriage with Grand Duke Sergius Alexandrovich, remaining a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, and only later, of her own free will, she accepted Orthodoxy.

X.3. The Church insists on lifelong fidelity of spouses and the indissolubility of Orthodox marriage, based on the words of the Lord Jesus Christ: “What God has joined together, let no man separate... Whoever divorces his wife for reasons other than adultery and marries another commits adultery; and he who marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matthew 19:6:9). Divorce is condemned by the Church as a sin, because it brings severe mental suffering to spouses (at least one of them), and especially to children. The current situation is extremely worrying, in which a very significant proportion of marriages are dissolved, especially among young people. What is happening is becoming a real tragedy for the individual and the people.

The Lord called adultery, which desecrates the sanctity of marriage and destroys the bond of marital fidelity, the only acceptable basis for divorce. In cases of various conflicts between spouses, the Church sees its pastoral task as using all its inherent means (teaching, prayer, participation in the Sacraments) to protect the integrity of the marriage and prevent divorce. Priests are also called upon to conduct conversations with those wishing to get married, explaining to them the importance and responsibility of the step being taken.

Unfortunately, sometimes, due to sinful imperfection, spouses may be unable to preserve the gift of grace they received in the Sacrament of Marriage and to preserve the unity of the family. Desiring the salvation of sinners, the Church gives them the opportunity for correction and is ready, after repentance, to again admit them to the Sacraments.

The laws of Byzantium, established by Christian emperors and not condemned by the Church, allowed for various grounds for divorce. In the Russian Empire, divorce on the basis of existing laws was carried out in a church court.

In 1918, the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, in its “Definition on the reasons for the dissolution of a marriage union sanctified by the Church,” recognized as such, in addition to adultery and the entry of one of the parties into a new marriage, also the apostasy of a spouse from Orthodoxy, unnatural vices, inability to marital cohabitation, which occurred before marriage or was the result of intentional self-mutilation, leprosy or syphilis, long-term unknown absence, condemnation to punishment coupled with deprivation of all rights of the estate, encroachment on the life or health of the spouse or children, daughter-in-law, pimping, taking advantage of the indecency of the spouse , incurable serious mental illness and malicious abandonment of one spouse by the other. Currently, this list of grounds for divorce is supplemented by such reasons as AIDS, medically certified chronic alcoholism or drug addiction, and the wife committing an abortion with her husband’s disagreement.

For the purpose of spiritual education of the newlyweds and to promote the strengthening of marital ties, priests are called upon to explain in detail to the bride and groom the idea of the indissolubility of the church marriage union, emphasizing that divorce as a last resort can only take place if the spouses commit acts that are defined by the Church as grounds for divorce. Consent to the dissolution of a church marriage cannot be given to please a whim or to “confirm” a civil divorce. However, if the breakdown of a marriage is a fait accompli - especially when the spouses live separately - and the restoration of the family is not considered possible, ecclesiastical divorce is also allowed by pastoral indulgence. The Church does not encourage second marriage. However, after a legal ecclesiastical divorce, according to canon law, a second marriage is permitted to the innocent spouse. Persons whose first marriage broke up and was dissolved through their fault are allowed to enter into a second marriage only on condition of repentance and fulfillment of penance imposed in accordance with the canonical rules. In those exceptional cases when a third marriage is allowed, the period of penance, according to the rules of St. Basil the Great, is increased.

The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, in its Resolution dated December 28, 1998, condemned the actions of those confessors who “prohibit their spiritual children from entering into a second marriage on the grounds that a second marriage is allegedly condemned by the Church; prohibit married couples from divorcing in cases where, due to certain circumstances, family life becomes impossible for the spouses.” At the same time, the Holy Synod decided to “remind pastors that in its attitude towards second marriage the Orthodox Church is guided by the words of the Apostle Paul: “Are you united with your wife? Don't look for a divorce. Are you left without a wife? Don't look for a wife. However, even if you get married, you will not sin; and if a virgin marries, she will not sin... A wife is bound by the law as long as her husband lives; if her husband dies, she is free to marry whomever she wants, only in the Lord” (1 Cor. 7:27-28,39).”

X.4. The special inner closeness of the family and the Church is already visible from the fact that in the Holy Scriptures Christ speaks of Himself as the bridegroom (Matthew 9.15; 25.1-13; Luke 12.35-36), and the Church is depicted as His wives and brides (Eph. 5:24; Rev. 21:9). Clement of Alexandria calls the family, like the Church, the house of the Lord, and St. John Chrysostom calls the family the “small church.” “I will also say this,” writes the Holy Father, “that marriage is a mysterious image of the Church.” A home church is formed by a man and woman who love each other, united in marriage and striving for Christ. The fruit of their love and community are children, the birth and upbringing of which, according to Orthodox teaching, is one of the most important goals of marriage.

“This is the heritage of the Lord: children; the reward from Him is the fruit of the womb,” exclaims the Psalmist (Ps. 126.3). The Apostle Paul taught about the salvation of childbearing (1 Tim. 2:13). He called on the fathers: “Do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the teaching and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). “Children are not an accidental acquisition, we are responsible for their salvation... Neglect of children is the greatest of all sins, it leads to extreme wickedness... We have no excuse if our children are corrupt,” instructs St. John Chrysostom. St. Ephraim the Syrian teaches: “Blessed is he who raises children in a manner pleasing to God.” “The true father is not the one who gave birth, but the one who raised and taught well,” writes Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk. “Parents are primarily responsible for the upbringing of their children and cannot attribute the blame for their bad upbringing to anyone but themselves,” preached Hieromartyr Vladimir, Metropolitan of Kiev. “Honor your father and your mother, so that your days on earth may be long,” says the fifth commandment (Ex. 20:12). In the Old Testament, disrespect towards parents was considered the greatest crime (Exodus 21:15,17; Proverbs 20:20; 30:17). The New Testament also teaches children to lovingly obey their parents: “Children, be obedient to your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to the Lord” (Col. 3:20).

The family as a home church is a single organism whose members live and build their relationships on the basis of the law of love. The experience of family communication teaches a person to overcome sinful selfishness and lays the foundations for healthy citizenship. It is in the family, as in a school of piety, that the correct attitude towards one’s neighbors, and therefore towards one’s people, towards society as a whole, is formed and strengthened. The living continuity of generations, beginning in the family, finds its continuation in love for ancestors and the fatherland, in a sense of involvement in history. That is why the destruction of traditional ties between parents and children is so dangerous, which, unfortunately, is largely facilitated by the way of life of modern society. The downplaying of the social significance of motherhood and fatherhood in comparison with the success of men and women in the professional field leads to the fact that children begin to be perceived as an unnecessary burden; it also contributes to alienation and antagonism between generations. The role of the family in the development of personality is exceptional; it cannot be replaced by other social institutions. The destruction of family ties is inevitably associated with a disruption in the normal development of children and leaves a long, to some extent indelible, imprint on their entire subsequent life.

Orphanhood with living parents has become a glaring problem in modern society. The thousands of abandoned children who fill orphanages and sometimes end up on the streets are evidence of the deep ill health of society. Providing such children with spiritual and material assistance, taking care of their involvement in spiritual and social life, the Church simultaneously sees its most important duty in strengthening the family and in making parents aware of their calling, which would eliminate the tragedy of an abandoned child.

X.5. In the pre-Christian world, there was an idea of a woman as a being of a lower order in comparison with a man. The Church of Christ has fully revealed the dignity and vocation of women, giving them a deep religious justification, the pinnacle of which is the veneration of the Most Holy Theotokos. According to Orthodox teaching, the gracious Mary, blessed among women (Luke 1:28), revealed with Herself that highest degree of moral purity, spiritual perfection and holiness to which humanity was able to rise and which surpasses the dignity of the angelic ranks. In Her person motherhood is sanctified and the importance of the feminine principle is affirmed. With the participation of the Mother of God, the mystery of the Incarnation is accomplished; thereby She becomes involved in the cause of salvation and revival of humanity. The Church highly reveres the evangelical myrrh-bearing women, as well as the numerous faces of Christian women glorified by the exploits of martyrdom, confession and righteousness. From the very beginning of the existence of the church community, women actively participate in its organization, in liturgical life, in the works of mission, preaching, education, and charity.

While highly appreciating the social role of women and welcoming their political, cultural and social equality with men, the Church simultaneously resists the tendency to diminish the role of women as spouses and mothers. Fundamental equality of dignity of the sexes does not abolish their natural differences and does not mean the identity of their vocations both in the family and in society. In particular, the Church cannot misinterpret the words of the Apostle Paul about the special responsibility of the husband, who is called to be the “head of the wife,” loving her as Christ loves His Church, as well as about the call of the wife to submit to her husband, as the Church submits to Christ (Eph. 5. 22-23; Col. 3. 18). These words are, of course, not about the despotism of the husband or the enslavement of the wife, but about primacy in responsibility, care and love; We should also not forget that all Christians are called to mutual “submission to one another in the fear of God” (Eph. 5:21). Therefore, “neither is man without wife, nor wife without husband, in the Lord. For as the wife is from the husband, so is the husband through the wife; yet it is from God” (1 Cor. 11. 11-12).

Representatives of some social movements tend to belittle, and sometimes even completely deny, the importance of marriage and the institution of family, focusing on the socially significant activities of women, including those that are incompatible or little compatible with female nature (for example, work associated with heavy physical labor). There are frequent calls for an artificial equalization of the participation of women and men in every sphere of human activity. The Church sees the purpose of a woman not in simple imitation of a man and not in competition with him, but in the development of all the abilities given to her by the Lord, including those inherent only in her nature. Without placing emphasis only on the system of distribution of social functions, Christian anthropology assigns a much higher place to women than modern irreligious ideas. The desire to destroy or minimize natural divisions in the public sphere is not characteristic of the ecclesiastical mind. Sexual differences, like social and ethnic differences, do not impede access to the salvation that Christ brought for all people: “There is no longer Jew, nor Gentile; there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). However, this soteriological statement does not mean an artificial impoverishment of human diversity and should not be mechanically transferred to any social relations.

X.6. The virtue of chastity, preached by the Church, is the basis of the internal unity of the human person, which must remain in a state of harmony of mental and physical forces. Fornication inevitably destroys the harmony and integrity of a person’s life, causing grave damage to his spiritual health. Debauchery dulls spiritual vision and hardens the heart, making it incapable of true love. The happiness of a full-blooded family life becomes inaccessible to a fornicator. Thus, the sin against chastity also entails negative social consequences. In conditions of the spiritual crisis of human society, the media and works of so-called mass culture often become instruments of moral corruption, glorifying and extolling sexual unbridledness, all kinds of sexual perversions, and other sinful passions. Pornography, which is the exploitation of sexual desire for commercial, political or ideological purposes, contributes to the suppression of the spiritual and moral principles, thereby reducing a person to the level of an animal guided only by instinct.

Propaganda of vice causes particular harm to the unconfirmed souls of children and youth. In books, films and other video products, in the media, and in some educational programs, adolescents are often instilled with an image of sexual relations that is extremely degrading to human dignity, since it does not include the concepts of chastity, marital fidelity and selfless love. Intimate relationships between a man and a woman are not only exposed and exposed, insulting the natural sense of modesty, but are also presented as an act of purely bodily satisfaction, not associated with deep inner community and any moral obligations. The Church calls on believers, in cooperation with all morally healthy forces, to fight the spread of this devilish temptation, which, by contributing to the destruction of the family, undermines the foundations of society.

“Whoever looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” says the Lord Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:28). “Lust... having conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin that is committed gives birth to death,” warns the Apostle James (James 1:15). “Fornicators... will not inherit the Kingdom of God,” states the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 6:9-10). These words fully apply to both consumers and, even more so, producers of pornographic products. The words of Christ also apply to the latter: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea... Woe to that man through whom temptation comes.” (Matthew 18:6-7). “Fornication is a poison that kills the soul... He who commits fornication renounces Christ,” taught Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk. Saint Demetrius of Rostov wrote: “The body of every Christian is not his, but Christ’s, according to the words of Scripture: “You are the body of Christ, and individually members” (1 Cor. 12.27). And it is not proper for you to desecrate the body of Christ with carnal, voluptuous deeds, except for legal marriage. For you are the house of Christ, according to the words of the apostle: “The temple of God is holy; and this temple is you” (1 Cor. 3.17).” The ancient Church, in the writings of its fathers and teachers (such as Clement of Alexandria, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. John Chrysostom) consistently condemned obscene theatrical scenes and images. Under penalty of excommunication from the Church, the 100th rule of the Council of Trulla prohibits the production of “images that...corrupt the mind and cause the ignition of unclean pleasures.”

The human body is a wondrous creation of God and is destined to become the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19-20). Condemning pornography and fornication, the Church does not at all call to disdain the body or sexual intimacy as such, for the bodily relations of a man and a woman are blessed by God in marriage, where they become the source of the continuation of the human race and express chaste love, complete community, “unity of souls and bodies” of the spouses , for whom the Church prays during the rite of marriage. On the contrary, what deserves condemnation is the transformation of these pure and worthy relationships according to God's plan, as well as the human body itself, into an object of humiliating exploitation and trade, designed to extract selfish, impersonal, loveless and perverted satisfaction. For the same reason, the Church invariably condemns prostitution and the preaching of so-called free love, which completely separates physical intimacy from personal and spiritual community, from sacrifice and complete responsibility for each other, which are only possible in lifelong marital fidelity.

Understanding that the school, along with the family, should provide children and adolescents with knowledge about gender relations and the physical nature of man, the Church cannot support those “sex education” programs that recognize premarital relations, much less various perversions, as the norm. It is completely unacceptable to impose such programs on students. The school is designed to resist vice that destroys the integrity of the individual, to cultivate chastity, and to prepare youth to create a strong family based on fidelity and purity.

Application

Cherished words of D.S. Likhacheva

Biography of Likhachev

Likhachev Dmitry Sergeevich - literary critic, historian, art critic, cultural critic, public figure. Born into an intelligent St. Petersburg family of an electrical engineer.

In 1923, Likhachev entered the Faculty of Social Sciences at Petrograd University, where he studied at the ethnological and linguistic department in two sections at once - Romano-Germanic and Slavic-Russian.

On February 3, 1928, at a meeting of the “Space Academy of Sciences” (which included students from several institutes), he made a report in which he half-jokingly argued for the advantages of the old spelling. The text of the speech was written according to the abolished rules and was a parody imitation of the learned writings of a medieval scribe. In the report he openly spoke about the oppression of the Russian Orthodox Church by Soviet power. A few days later he was arrested.

He was a prisoner of the Solovetsky Monastery. In 1931 he was transferred to the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, and a year later (1932) he was released early. In 1936, his criminal record was cleared. For several years after returning from prison he worked as an editor and proofreader. It was impossible to get another job; in addition, he hoped that in an inconspicuous position he would be able to avoid new repressions. Since 1938 he conducted scientific work at the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House), (since 1954) he headed the sector of ancient Russian literature. Professor at Leningrad University (1946-1953). Author of dozens of books and hundreds of articles.

WITH1939 Likhachev became a specialist “ancientist”Vfield of history of Russian literature.

During the Second World War, Likhachev did not abandon his hometown, despite degeneration, he continued to engage in science.

D.S. Likhachev took his enormous fame calmly.

He has written 39 research books on culture and ancient Russian literature, on topics of morality, philosophy, and historical poetics.

In 2000, D. S. Likhachev was posthumously awarded the State Prize of Russia for the development of the artistic direction of domestic television and the creation of the all-Russian state television channel “Culture”.

№ 5 “Everything is calm at sea”

One strong impression from childhood in Kuokkala. On Easter week,How and in all Russian Orthodox churches churches, it was allowed to call everyone and in any time. Father and we, two brothers, once (we came to the dachas early in the spring) went to the bell tower to ring. How delightful it was to listen to the ringing right under the bells!

Then one incident occurred that “glorified” my brother and me among all the summer residents. The wind was blowing from the shore (the most dangerous). My older brother took off the blue curtain in our nursery, placed it on our boat and offered a sailing ride to a completely domestic boy - the grandson of Senator Davydov.

Home boy Seryozha went to his grandmother and asked her permission to go for a ride.

Grandmother was a smart lady with violet eyes,sat in a steel-colored silk dress under a sun umbrella. She only asked if Seryozha would get his feet wet: in a boat there is always water at the bottom. She told Seryozha to put on galoshes.

Seryozha put on new shiny galoshes and got into the boat.

All this happened before my eyes. Go. The wind, calm as always near the shore, intensified in the distance. The boat took off. I watched from the shore and saw: the blue sail slowly tilted and disappeared. Grandmother, as she was in a corset and with an umbrella, walked on the water, stretching out her arms to her beloved Seryozha. Having reached deep water, the grandmother with violet eyes fell unconscious.

And on the shore, behind a fence made of sheets, the vice-rector of St. Petersburg University, the handsome Prozorovsky, was sunbathing. He watched his grandmother and, when she fell, rushed to save her. And, oh horror! - in only shorts.

He picked up the grandmother with violet eyes and carried her to the shore. And I ran home with all my might.

Running up to our dacha, I slowed down and tried to be calm. The mother asked, obviously having guessed that something had happened: “Is everything calm at sea?” I immediately replied: “Everything is calm at sea, but Misha is drowning.”

These words of mine were remembered and later recalled hundreds of times in our family. They became our family saying whenever something unpleasant happened suddenly.

And at that time the following happened at sea. The home boy Seryozha, of course, did not know how to swim. His brother began to save him and ordered him to take off his galoshes. But Seryozha didn’t want to - either so as not to disobey his grandmother, or because he felt sorry for the shiny galoshes with the copper letters “S. D." (“Seryozha Davydov”). The brother threatened: “Get off, you fool, or I’ll throw you up myself.”

The threat had an effect, and boats and boats were already rowing from the shore.

My father arrived in the evening. My brother was taken to the second floor to be flogged, and then my father, without changing his habits, took us for a walk along the sea.

As expected, my brother and I walked ahead of our parents.

Those who met them said, pointing to my brother:“Savior, savior!”, and the “savior” walked gloomy, with a sobbing face.

They also praised me for my “wise” restraint. And once, during a particularly strong storm, someone I met said to me: “Everything is calm at sea, but four booths were washed away and overturned.”

I immediately ran to the sea to look.

I still love storms, but I don’t like the deceptive onshore wind.

№ 8. “External impressions”

Neither my family nor I, an eleven or twelve year old boy, of course, really understood anything about what was happening, and it was happening almost before our eyes, since we lived on Novoisakievskaya Street near St. Isaac’s Square. The family had little understanding of politics. When, in the first days of the February Revolution, the “gordoviks” (as policemen were called in Petrograd) captured the tower of St. Isaac’s Cathedral and the attics of the Astoria Hotel and from there fired at any gathering crowd, my parents were indignant at the “gordoviks” and were afraid to approach these places. But when the “Gordoviks” were dragged from their positions and the angry crowd killed them, the parents were outraged by the cruelty of the crowd, not particularly entering into further discussion of the events.

When my father and I walked along Bolshaya Morskaya and saw how peasants who had come to the city to earn money were building a house and carrying weights on their backs, shod in bast shoes so as not to slip, I was almost choked with pity and remembered with my father the “Railroad” Nekrasova.

The same thing happened on any embankment in places where it was allowed to unload barges with bricks and firewood. Huge people wheeled their wheelbarrows with heavy loads quickly and quickly to climb, without stopping, along the narrow planks thrown from the sides of the barges onto the embankment. We felt sorry for the boats, tried to imagine how they live separated from their families on these barges, how they freeze at night, how they yearn for their children, for whom they, in essence, earned their bread through hard work.

But when these same former loaders and porters, craftsmen and minor employees went with free tickets to the ballet at the Mariinsky Theater and filled the stalls and boxes, the parents regretted the former diamond shine of the blue Mariinsky Hall. The only thing that pleased parents at those performances was that the ballerinas danced no worse than before. Spesivtseva and Luke were just as magnificent, bowing to the new audience just as they bowed to the old.

But how wonderful it was! What a lesson in respect for the new audience the theater of that time gave us all!

The most important and at the same time the most difficult period in the formation of my scientific interests was, of course, university.

I entered Leningrad University somewhat earlier than the required age: I was not yet 17 years old. Several months were missing. At that time they accepted mainly workers. This was perhaps the first year of admission to the university based on class. I was neither a worker nor the son of a worker, but an ordinary employee. Even then, notes and recommendations from influential people were important. I’m ashamed to admit that my father got me such a note, and it played a certain role in my admission.

“Red” professors and just professors appeared. However, there were no professors at all - this title, like academic degrees, was abolished. Defenses of doctoral dissertations were made conditionally. Opponents concluded their speeches like this: “If this were a defense, I would vote for the award...” The defense was called a dispute.

The division of the “conditional professorship” into “reds” and “olds” was also conditional based on who addressed us how; "comrades" or "colleagues". The "Reds" knew less, but addressed the students as "comrades"; the old professors knew more, but told the students "colleagues." I did not take this conventional sign into account and went to everyone who seemed interesting to me.

I entered the Faculty of Social Sciences. The abbreviation FON also stands for: “Faculty of Expecting Brides.” But, in modern times, there were few “brides” there. There just seemed to be a lot of them out of habit: after all, before the revolution, only men studied at the university.

What did being at university give me the most? It is difficult to list all the things I have learned and learned at university. It was not limited to listening to lectures and participating in classes.

The only thing I regret is that, that not everyone was able to visit.

№ 9. “Trust as a movement”

However, back to school time.

At school, I got the hang of drawing caricatures of teachers: simply, with one or two lines. And one day during recess I drew everyone on the chalkboard. And suddenly the teacher came in. I froze. But the teacher came up, laughed with us (and he himself was depicted on the board) and left without saying anything. And after two or three lessons, our class teacher came to the class and said: “Dima Likhachev, the director asks you to repeat all your caricatures on paper for our teacher’s room.”

We had smart teachers.

At the Lentovskaya school, where I studied, students’ own opinions were encouraged. There were often arguments in class. Since then, I have strived to maintain independence in my tastes and views.

The first time after moving to a government apartment on the Petrograd side (Gatchinskaya, 16, or Lakhtinskaya, 9), I continued to study with May. In it I experienced the very first school reforms, the transition to labor education (carpentry lessons were replaced by sawing wood for heating the school), to joint education of boys and girls (girls from a neighboring school were transferred to our school), etc. But it became completely impossible to travel to school on crowded trams, and walking became even more difficult, since the difficulties with food in Petrograd at that time were terrible. We ate duranda (pressed cakes), oat bread with kosti, sometimes we managed to get some frozen potatoes, we walked to Lakhta for milk and received it in exchange for things. I was transferred nearby to the Lentovskaya school on Plutalova Street. And again I ended up in a wonderful school.

A close connection, friendship, and “common cause” formed between students and teachers. Teachers do not need to enforce discipline with strict measures. Teachers could shame a student, and this was enough for the public opinion of the class to be against the offender and the mischief would not be repeated. We were allowed to smoke, but none of the school's natives exercised this right.

№ 11. "Blockade"

War broke out. At the recruiting station, with my constant ulcerative bleeding, I was completely rejected, and I was content with participating in self-defense, living in a barracks position at the institute, working as a “signalman” and on duty at the tower of the Pushkin House. I was in charge of a manual siren, which I activated during every enemy air raid. I slept either on a Krylov sofa, or on a large sofa from Spassky-Lutovinov, and thought and thought. My wife tried to buy all the rations for everyone at home, and got up at night to be the first in line at the store. The children were then ordered to be taken out of Leningrad, but the adults were to remain. But we hid our children in Vyritsa, from where they were taken out just before the Germans occupied it by the head of the proofreading department of the publishing house of the Academy of Sciences, M.P. Barmansky. If it weren't for him, I would have been left withoutfamilies. We in the Pushkin House had no idea that the enemy was so close to Leningrad, although we went to trench work - first at Luga, then at Pulkovo.

It’s amazing that, despite the hunger and the physical work to save our valuables in the Pushkin House, despite all the nervous tension of those days (or perhaps precisely because of this nervous tension), my ulcer pains completely stopped, and I found time to read and work.

The losses in our institute, in our family, among our friends and relatives were terrifying: more than half of my relatives and friends died from exhaustion. We have very little idea of how many people were killed by hunger and all other hardships.

Millions of people no longer know what the blockade was. It's impossible to imagine. What can we say about visitors, about foreigners?

To get a little idea of what the blockade was like, you need to go to school when classes end. Look at these noisy children and imagine exactly them, but in tens of thousands, silently lying in their beds in frozen apartments, without moving, not even asking for food, but just looking at you expectantly.

I learned about the end of the war in the morning on the street - by the faces and behavior of passers-by: some laughed and hugged each other, others cried alone. What other event could cause so much joy and such a wave of grief? They cried for those who died, died of exhaustion in Leningrad, did not wait to meet their relatives, who turned out to be disfigured and unable to work.

I don’t remember only one thing: the feeling of vengeful triumph.

If people all over the world had and retained a living sense of horror from their experiences during the war, modern politics would be structured differently.

№ 10. "Floors of Caring"

Floors of care. Caring strengthens relationships between people. It binds families together, binds friendships, binds together fellow villagers, residents of one city, one country.

The feeling of caring for another appears very early, especiallyin girls. The girl doesn’t speak yet, but she’s already trying to take care of the doll, nursing it. Boys, very small, love to pick mushrooms and fish. Girls also like to pick berries and mushrooms. And they collect not only for themselves, but for the whole family.

Gradually, children become objects of increasingly higher care and themselves begin to show real and broad care - not only about the family, but also about the school where parental care placed them, about their village, city and country...

Caring is expanding and becoming more altruistic. Children pay for taking care of themselves by taking care of their elderly parents - when they can no longer repay the children’s care. If concern is directed only at oneself, then one is selfish.

Caring is what unites people.

A person must be caring. A carefree or carefree person is most likely a person who is unkind and does not love anyone.

Morality is highly characterized by a sense of compassion. In compassion there is the consciousness of one’s unity with humanity and the world (not only people, nations, but also with animals, plants, nature, etc.)

№ 20. “Russian classical literature”

Russian classical literature” is not just “first-class literature” and not “exemplary” literature, which has become classically impeccable due to its high purely literary merits.

All these advantages, of course, exist in Russian classical literature, but this is not all. This literature also has its own special “face,” “individuality,” and characteristic features.

And I would first of all note that the creators of Russian classical literature were authors who had enormous “social responsibility.”

The moral and social issues with which Russian classical literature addresses readers are not temporary, not momentary, although they were of particular importance for their time.

Russian classical literature is eternally alive, it does not become history, “the history of literature” only.

The origins of the humanism of Russian literature lie in its centuries-long development, when literature sometimes became the only voice of conscience, the only force that determined the national self-awareness of the Russian people - literature and folklore close to it. This was at a time of feudal fragmentation, at a time of foreign yoke, when literature and the Russian language were the only forces connecting the people.

Without assimilation of the best traditions there can be no movement forward. It is only necessary that in these traditions everything that is most valuable is not missed, forgotten, or simplified.

We must not lose anything from our great heritage.

№ 44. "Development"

Every person is obliged (I emphasize - obliged) to take care of his intellectual development. This is his duty tothe society in which he lives and to himself.

The main (but, of course, not the only) way of intellectual development is reading.

Reading should not be random.

Reading, in order to be effective, must interest the reader. An interest in reading in general or in certain branches of culture must be developed in oneself. Interest can be largely the result of self-education.

The danger of reading is the development (conscious or unconscious) of a tendency towards “diagonal” viewing of texts or various types of speed reading methods.

“Speed reading” creates the appearance of knowledge.

№ 47. "Historical Prejudices"

M We are very often at the mercy of historical prejudices. One of such prejudices is the conviction that ancient, “pre-Petrine” Rus' was a country with continuouslow literacy.

Thousands and thousands of handwritten books are stored in our libraries and archives, hundreds of birch bark letters were found in Novgorod - letters belonging to artisans, peasants, men and women, ordinary people and people of high social status. Printed books show a high level of typographic art.

More and more new centers of book culture are being discovered in the monasteries of Ancient Russia among forests and swamps, on islands - even far from cities and villages. In the handwritten heritage of Ancient Rus', we are increasingly discovering new original works and translations. It has long been clear that the Bulgarian and Serbian manuscript heritage is more widely represented in Russian manuscripts than in their homeland.

Old Russian frescoes and icons and Russian applied art have received general recognition throughout the world. Ancient Russian architecture turned out to be a whole huge world, amazingly diverse, as if belonging to different countries and peoples with different aesthetic cultures. From the manuscripts we received an idea about ancient Russian medicine, about Russian historiosophy and philosophy, about the amazing variety of literary genres, about the art of illustration and the art of reading, about various systems of spelling and punctuation. And we keep repeating and repeating: “Illiterate Rus', bast-footed and silent Rus'!”

Why is that? I guess: maybe becauseXIXcentury, the carriers of ancient Russian culture remained predominantly peasants; historians judged ancient Russia mainly by them, by the peasants, and they had long been ensnared by serfdom, increasing impoverishment, lack of time to read, backbreaking work, and poverty.

It was serfdom that brought with it that illiteracy, like the “bast shoes” of the peopleXIXconvict, which even to historians seemed primordial and typical of Ancient Rus'.

One phrase in Stoglav about the illiteracy of the Novgorod priests served and continues to serve this conviction of the illiteracy of the entire population. But the Council of the Hundred Heads, designed to establish a uniform order of church rules for all of Rus', had in mind only the Novgorod custom of electing street priests by the entire street, as a result of which persons who did not have an accurate idea of \u200b\u200bthe church service ended up as priests.

In a word: the abundant material of excellent handwritten and printed books stored or heroically collected by our patriotic enthusiasts in the North, the Urals, Siberia and other places requires us to recognize the high written culture of the first seven centuries of Russian life.

№ 34. "Kindness"

Good cannot be stupid. A good deed is never stupid, because it is selfless and does not pursue the goal of profit.

"Week of open good deeds." This is a topic for thought and a short essay. The action takes place at an unknown time. Maybe in the year two thousand. The word “kind” is despised, and they say “dobrenky” when they want to insult. There should only be “irreconcilability.” And suddenly a decree: you can and even need to do good deeds - do them individually! It is even recommended to engage in charity. You can give and beg for alms. It is possible and even recommended to give and receive in debt. You can come to hospitals to help the sick, wash the floors. You can, you can, you can... And so people discover the happiness of kindness. For many, acquisitiveness, the passion for profit, for collecting trifles, dissolves like fog. People smile at each other after doing a good deed. Someone is carrying an elderly man across the street. Not “someone”, but everyone gives up their seats on the subway to the elderly.

Happy faces. The saleswomen are happy to sell and are happy to carefully wrap their purchases.

And they are already asking to extend the week of open goodbusiness They write letters to the top about this.

Children are zealously taking up the revolution of goodness! They are the most and the first to be infected with goodness. Good becomes their favorite game. They look for the poor, the sick, the elderly, orphans who need help, and find the unfortunate. Groups of “pathfinders of good” are organized.

There is a reconciliation with the world. That's why there are unhappy people: to give happiness to others. The unhappy become the happy cares of others, for the unhappy in one thing can be happy in another.

You can only do so much in life, but if you don’t do anything, even small, against your conscience, then by doing so you will bring enormous benefit.

№ 39. "Honor and Conscience"

Moral concepts that we really lack in our assessments of people: decency and honor. Very rarely, when praising a person, they say: “He is a decent person.” And even less often: “he acted as honor told him.”

Meanwhile, think about how many applications both concepts have: decency in family life, decency as a journalist, decency in love. The honor of a doctor, the honor of a worker, the honor of a school, the honor of a citizen, the honor of a husband or wife. A word given by a person, no matter who he is, must be kept, otherwise his honor will be tarnished.

And another forgotten moral concept is “courtesy” in behavior.

It is most natural and easiest to maintain independence by being polite. You should be polite not only to ladies and with ladies, but with everyone and always.

What is the outward expression of honor: a person keeps his word, both as an official (employee, statesman, representative of an institution), and as a simple person; a person behaves decently, does not violate ethical standards, maintains dignity - does not grovel before his superiors, before any “blessing giver”, does not accommodate other people’s opinions for profit, does not be stubborn to prove that he is right, does not settle personal scores, does not “pay off” with the “right people” at the expense of the state (various concessions, “devices”, etc.).

Lack of morality brings chaos to social life.

There is one significant difference between conscience and honor. Conscience always comes from the depths of the soul and is purified by conscience to one degree or another. Conscience is gnawing. Conscience is never false.

True honor is always in accordance with conscience. False honor is a mirage in the desert, in the moral desert of the human (or rather bureaucratic) soul.

Martynov, who killed Lermontov in a duel, precisely for this reason bequeathed not to write his name on the grave and not to erect any monument for himself. What a difference with Dantes, until the end of his long and prosperous life he was convinced that he had “no other way out” (although the way out was quite simple - to sacrifice his external honor for the sake of his internal one).

№ 41. "Gentlemen's Humor"

I never cease to be amazed at the reconciler,healing, ennoblingpropertyof the human mind - laughter, which no most perfect computer can ever possess, even if it calculates where, at what moment and on what occasion one should laugh.

In April 1826, a duel was to take place between US Secretary of State (that is, Foreign Secretary) Henry Clay and Senator John Randolph. I will not talk about the reasons for the duel, I will convey those “fightingwords"(insulting words obliging the enemy to a duel), which were uttered by Randolph (by the way, the insult, very cruel and public, was no longer without an element of humor; Randolph used the text from Fielding’s “Tom Jones”).

The duel had to take place according to very cruel American rules - from ten steps. At the first exchange of shots, both, however, missed. “This is a child’s game,” Clay said, “I demand a second shot.” His second shot only pierced Randolph's clothing. Then, in response, Randolph fired into the air and announced: “You owe me the cost of my clothes!” “I’m glad it’s no more,” Clay replied, and the opponents made peace. Randolph's wit and Clay's successful response saved both from the third round of the duel.

№ 33. "Idleness"

Idleness does not consist at all inthat a person sits idle, “with folded hands” in the literal sense. No, the slacker is always busy: he talks idle talk on the phone (sometimes for hours), goes to visit people, sits in front of the TV and watches everything, sleeps for a long time, comes up with different things to do. In general, a slacker is always very busy...

№ 55. "Selflessness"

A television cameraman who lived in Antarctica for several months spoke. When frosts and winds become especially severe, penguins stand in a circle. In the middle are the smallest, then the larger ones, then the adults, and outside - in a circle, in the very south - the old people, the leaders. And they die to preserve the race.

№ 40. "Trains"

Sergei Sergeevich Averintsev told me how in the summer he rented a dacha next to the railway. Trains prevented him from sleeping. Finally he decided: it’s not trains rushing by, but people passing by with their worries and thoughts. And the noise of the trains stopped annoying him. He began to sleep.

You need to develop a benevolent, “understanding” attitude towards your surroundings, and then life will become easier.

Evil people live shorter lives than good people.

(I) Russian classical literature is not just “first-class literature” and not “exemplary” literature, which has become classically impeccable due to its high purely literary merits. (2) All these advantages, of course, exist in Russian classical literature, but this is not all. (3) This literature has its own special face, individuality, and characteristic features of its day. (4) And I would first of all note that the creators of Russian classical literature were authors who had enormous social responsibility. (5) Russian classical literature is not entertaining, although it is characterized by a high degree of fascination. (6) This fascination is of a special nature: it is determined by the invitation to the reader to solve complex moral and social problems - to solve together, both the author and the readers. (7) The best works of Russian classical literature never offer readers ready-made answers to the social and moral questions posed. (8) The authors do not moralize, but seem to appeal to readers: “Think!”, “Decide for yourself!”, “Look what happens in life!”, “Don’t hide from responsibility for everything and everyone!” (9) Therefore, answers to questions are given by the author together with the readers. (10) Russian classical literature is a grandiose dialogue with the people, with their intelligentsia in the first place. (11) This is an appeal to the conscience of readers. . (12) The moral and social issues with which Russian classical literature addresses readers are not temporary, not momentary, although they were of particular importance for their time. (IЗ) Thanks to their eternity, these questions were of such great importance to us and will be so for all subsequent generations. (14) Russian classical literature is eternally alive, it does not become history, only the history of literature. (15) She talks to us, her conversation is fascinating, elevates us both aesthetically and ethically, makes us wiser, increases our life experience, allows us to experience ten lives together with her heroes, experience the experience of many generations and apply it in our own own life. (16) It gives us the opportunity to experience the happiness of living not only “for ourselves,” but also for many others - for the “humiliated and insulted,” for “little people,” for unknown heroes and for the moral triumph of the highest human qualities... ( 17) The origins of this humanism of Russian literature lie in its centuries-long development, when literature sometimes became the only voice of conscience, the only force that determined the national self-awareness of the Russian people - literature and folklore close to it. (18) This was at a time of feudal fragmentation, at a time of foreign yoke, when literature and the Russian language were the only forces connecting the people. (19) We must not lose anything from our great heritage. (20) Book reading and book veneration must preserve both for us and for future generations its high purpose, its high place in our lives, in the formation of our life positions, in the choice of ethical and aesthetic values, in preventing our consciousness of various kinds of “reading material” and meaningless, purely entertaining bad taste. (21) The essence of progress in literature is the expansion of the aesthetic and ideological possibilities of literature, created as a result of aesthetic accumulation, the accumulation of all kinds of experience in literature and the expansion of its “memory”. (D. Likhachev)
1. Which statement contradicts the author's point of view? 1) Russian classical literature has become a fact of history. 2) Interestingness is characteristic of Russian literature. 3) Moral and social issues of Russian literature are timeless. 4) In certain historical periods, Russian literature was the only force determining the national identity of the Russian people. 2. Determine the style and type of text. 1) artistic style; reasoning 2) scientific style; description 3) journalistic style with elements of popular science; reasoning 4) popular science style; reasoning 3. Which word contains a disparaging assessment of the phenomenon it expresses? 1) litter 2) reading 3) moralize 4) bad taste 4. How is the word formed? flawless in sentence 1? 5. What part of speech is the word thanks to(sentence 13)? 6. From sentences 14 - 16, write down the phrase(s) with attributive relations, the dependent word(s) of which is related to the main word by the type of adjacency. 7. Determine which part of the sentence is the infinitive been through(sentence 15). 1) predicate 2) addition 3) definition 4) circumstance 8. Among sentences 17-21, find a sentence with a separate definition that has homogeneous members. Write the number of this offer. 9. Among sentences 1 - 15, find complex sentences with a subordinate clause. Write the numbers of these sentences. AT 7. Among sentences 1 - 10, find a sentence that is connected with the previous one using lexical repetition, pronouns, and an introductory word. Write the number of this offer. (l) What a mirror of life our language is! (2) No, he is truly disgraceful