We experience time as an enemy as we slide through it towards death. After the death of his wife, Lewis wrote that he looked into the night sky and knew for sure that nowhere in time and space would he find her face, her voice, her hands. Time is this "nowhere", this "never". Even if we do not die with death, we leave, we are part of the past. “And the past has passed, (...) and time is another name for death”, and “the temple of human achievements will perish in the ruins of the universe”.
The "night sky" that terrified Lewis, as Pascal feared the "eternal silence of infinite space", is not space, but time. The emptiness of space is a symbol of the emptiness of the past, in which there is no longer life, reality, or the “present”.
However, time and death are friends to us, not only enemies: by framing our life, they give it great value, just as the cosmos gives it to the earth. When we think that we are going to die, life goes up in value many times over. It is believed that at the moment of death we look anew through our whole life and appreciate it in a new way. But for this you don’t have to wait for death, you can set up such an experiment right now. Think of a common event. Then imagine - imagine well - that you have a few minutes left to live. Now remember the same thing again. How precious it will seem to you!
Let us do this with our whole life and we will see that death not only makes life "past", but also gives life to the past; not only turns everything valuable into "the past", but also gives great value to the past. Yearning for the irretrievably departed, we see him through the eyes of death, although we are still alive.
However, this is not enough. Time and death make life precious, but not eternal. We yearn for eternity, even if we do not know what it is. We are not satisfied with the rational world of repetitions, the universal workbench, where everything is in its place (“He made everything beautiful in its own time (...), a time to be born and a time to die, (...) a time to destroy and a time to build”) (Ekk 3:11,2,3). We rejoice in birth, but not in death; we don't cry at christenings and we don't laugh at wakes. We love creation, not destruction. We don't care. We judge. We choose.
The universe does not choose or judge. She is completely indifferent to our sorrows.
Let's take a look at the universe. How much does it contain - from atoms to agnostics, from holothurians to galaxies? Let the sum of this be "x". How many are already missing or will not be soon? Also "x". No difference. Not "x + 1" or "x-1", but "x". The universe does not one iota prefer life to death. Stars, and those are mortal. The law of the universe is the cycle of births and deaths, the river of time, Buddhist samsara. "That which arises, that also disappears." Such is the "pure and indisputable eye of doctrine."
But Buddha is wrong. With all due respect to such a giant of the spirit, I will say that he forgot something. We arise and do not disappear - not the impersonal cosmic mind, driven only by mystics, but you and I, people, a multitude of "I". Our heads (or hearts?) stick out above the river of time. The Buddha considered us an illusion, an imaginary, we are born and die, but passionately want to live after death. What we need is across the river. If we cannot get over it, if we cannot see the face of God and live, then we lived in vain, we lost, we did not succeed.
The Universe satisfies all our desires, except for the main one. She is an aladin lamp, a tree of desires, a smorgasbord of everything until it reaches the signature dish. We whet the appetite with appetizers, and then we will be offered emptiness. If this is all, the world is ruled not by chance, but by an evil God, a universal sadist who lays out decoys in order to rather destroy us. The last truth behind the walls of the world is either a good God or an evil one, everything converges too much here. An idea, a plan, a drawing appear through the world; the only question is whether the artist is good.
The best way to find out is to meet him. But how? We are exiled to the land of time. How to get out into eternity?
You read first! An excerpt from the book of Mikhail Morgulis “Longing for Paradise”, from the chapter “Meeting with the Devil”. Critic K. Andreev called the book of Mikhail Morgulis "an answer to our generation."
EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK OF MIKHAIL MORGULIS "LONGING FOR PARADISE".
(ENCOUNTER WITH THE DEVIL)
(This writer gave an answer to a whole generation!).
Critic Konstantin Andreev, Moscow)
We went to a path that wound along a mountain road. Suddenly the wind blew, and there was a strong smell of sulfur. Head spinning, I squeezed Pony's hand with force.
There was an infectious laugh. It was a happy laugh. And a soft, gentle voice said:
- My dear fool ... Do you think you escaped from the slavery of hell to freedom ?! Actually? Crazy romance...
After a pause, the voice whispered excitedly:
- In fact, from the free kingdom of the prince of darkness, you again landed in the earthly false jungle of goodness. Sweet dupes, you think the earth is grass, rivers and fields. Fools! The earth is a place for sacrifices. And do you know who is being sacrificed? Of people. And you know who? God. Now you will again become unfortunate human worms. You will, you will definitely sin, and you will still come back to me.
Jesus? Yes, it's all true, but you will get back to me.
For half a minute the voice played roulades in an unfamiliar language; And he spoke happily again:
- My dear fool. And what have you achieved? Well, you stayed here, on the land of Adam and Eve. And they became mortal again! They changed life with me for a ghostly hope that did not come true. But still, for the sake of justice, I want to remember and exalt the great deed of Adam and Eve. They did not know that God in the Garden of Eden allowed me to test their loyalty. And they believed me. After I persuaded them to leave God, they created a mixture of heaven and hell on earth. And so, you are back in this terrible mess, let's call it Raad. There is love and hate, truth and lies, good and evil, here He and I. And Eve and Adam are my adopted children. And no one is allowed to forget about their feat. But, of course, you, like many others, want to humiliate their great deed, the people who left paradise ... Real revolutionaries, not hypocrites! You want to be in the silent circle of those who are unhappy with their decision. You, like others, really want to return to the paradise from which you were once expelled. But, dear fools, without Adam and Eve you would still be slaves in paradise, mesmerized rabbits. But no one fully appreciated their feat. But thanks to them, you can now sin, repent, cry, suffer and laugh through your tears! Yes, it’s true, then the retribution comes... And this is a special retribution... But understand, dear ignoramuses, after Eve and Adam, all people have the freedom to choose between heaven and hell. After all, after the land of Raad, you have to go somewhere ... Thanks to these two revolutionaries, I managed to convince many in the land of Raad: now you can kill and forgive, die and love, you own the bird that we gave you with Him, by our common agreement . This bird is your soul, wonderful and vile. One wing is white and the other is black.
So, you have chosen Raad... Well, go, dear fool! Rejoice and weep, sin and pay. If you didn't want to be with me, stay here... Most importantly, don't go back to paradise...
And then again there was a sharp smell of sulfur. And the voice again laughed contagiously, and said, choking with laughter:
Don't be afraid, I won't do anything to you. You were your own judge and signed your own verdict. You are already punished, fools beloved. The punishment of the world will be on you, however, as well as on Him. You will still look for me, and I will be found, and together we will laugh at your hopes in Raada. I am kind, I will accept you as my best friends. I'm a little sorry you're so stubborn, because I like you. I will be waiting for you...
I quietly and hoarsely asked:
“So what is life?”
For a moment the voice stammered, but then it said loudly and distinctly:
Life is an enemy pretending to be a friend.
Then the voice began to move away, but you could still hear:
- Look for me, call me, they will give me. I am kind, I am kinder than him.
The smell of sulfur began to subside. And, only once, already from afar, came a ringing laugh. And then the wind stopped and it became quiet.
* * *
We have not parted our hands. Our fingers remained intertwined. We were breathing heavily, as if we had been under water for a long time and finally surfaced. Pony was hard to look at. Her face was covered with a white mask. Red hair hung over this Pierrot mask. I hugged her and felt the coldness of her body. Not only was she cold, the cold had penetrated deep into her. I began hugging her with all my might, kissing her frozen lips. And she began to warm up and come to life.
- Pony, eternal friend, you heard the great Liar, who has no equal in this world in lies and sincerity in lies. And he is the most great actor. Everybody best performers Hamlet next to him become a pale shadow. But he is a liar, everything he says is not true. There is a paradise that the Lord keeps for us, and there, in the Garden of Eden, He is waiting for our return. These are His words: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
– Jeremiah, why was Christ silent?
- He used to shut up before. But today He was not silent. We were His answer. What will happen tomorrow, I do not know. But today He has overcome evil with us. And stayed with us.
And, again wrapping our fingers around each other, we went at random.
“I know, Pony, you can’t get used to happiness. Happiness is often torn fallen angels, their names are envy and anger. A person who wants to always be happy is doomed. When his happiness breaks, he sees one death ahead. If love breaks, death again arises before him. Love is not only a feeling, it is one of many feelings. It becomes the most important - when God touches this love. And then the state of the soul changes, then you constantly feel in it the heavenly tenderness of the Holy Spirit. Pony, Pony, I would like to console everyone, but I'm only human. And even the Lord will not comfort those who do not seek comfort from Him. Everyone runs to Him as to a doctor, a policeman, a judge, an official. And He stands alone in the middle of the stadium, which boos Him with thousands of throats. And He only speaks softly into their fury-maddened eyes. And a human tear, as lonely as He, rolls down His cheek.
And I began to remember the words about Him, written in the psalms:
“The soul was in me, like a child weaned from the breast.
The soul has got rid of, like a bird from a net of catchers, the net has been torn apart, and we have got rid of it.
LANDS OF MAGIC PLACES AND LONGING FOR PARADISE
(on the book by Mikhail Morgulis "Longing for Paradise")
"I tell you, longing will only die with you."
This line from John Steinbeck ("To the East of Eden") is the first part of the epigraph to the novel by Mikhail Morgulis "Longing for Paradise" - the red thread on which the plots are strung...
I, the reader, have the property-luxury of not having doubts, which often overcome professional critics, when, "inferring", "unraveling" the writer, sifting his "fruits" through a fine sieve, looking through the texts into the light, they torment themselves and us with the question: Isn't there enough material for...
My “doubtlessness” is not in self-confidence and not in inductive clairvoyance, they say, give me a drop, and I will say the sea ...
(Although, if you take this phrase from the novel: “Ever since Adam and Eve left paradise, all mankind and every person, consciously or unconsciously, has been dreaming of returning to lost heaven» , - isn't this the same drop in which? ..)
I admit that my “luxury” is a mixture of impudence to draw conclusions from small things and fear of being deceived in hopes of further recognition ... Result: in contact with worthy, in a small amount accessible, and afraid to be disappointed in the jewel that suddenly opened, I, at the end of reading, I happily slam the book shut and shout: enough! - after all, I already saw what I wanted (in fact, it was the author who painted in me, supposedly my desire from the beginning)! ..
It seems to me that after reading just one book by Mikhail Morgulis, I tasted the salt (soul? - soul?) of the epistolary work of this "paradise-earthly" writer, whose capacious lines breathe and smell, bloom and sparkle, cool and warm, listen and make noise , scare and soothe ...
[“Steam wriggled from the ground like milky vine shoots. ... It had just rained: suddenly lightning cut like a razor across the peaceful belly of the sky, and water fell on the ground. The raid was gangster short, the rain quickly rushed off into the mountains, hastily clattering on the frightened red roofs of lonely houses. And immediately, fiery spears of the sun whistled from the open sky. It is not known why it smelled of watermelons, pink overripe pulp-slush, dotted with black mother-of-pearl seeds. The sweet pink smell crowded and interrupted even the honey dope of freshly cut grass. But the breath of a black horse was already felt, on which Evening, dressed in all black, galloped from the mountains. - (“There are days for people”)]
The writer-priest Mikhail Morgulis called his book Longing for Paradise. Probably, it is easy to be deceived by the title of the work (together with the spiritual status of the author), and the “deception” may well be intensified by the last plot movement of the characters novel of the same name(avant-garde - only in terms of location? - a work in the collection), men and women ("Adam" and "Eve"), - movement towards Paradise ...
Yes, “Adam” and “Eve” in “Tosca...” are almost saints... And it can be assumed that the whole book, its whole idea, is in the glorification of holiness, purity...
However: to Paradise - and not to Paradise! .. (In the text: “It seemed to me that we were Eve and Adam returning to Paradise”).
(“It seemed” - it turns out: remaining on the ground, and not soaring into the sky).
That is, in fact, in this very place, with last words“Melancholy...”, the title-status “deception” begins to melt like an avalanche (and this will be confirmed by subsequent stories) and understanding grows: the book is not about saints ...
The book is about us sinners; about us - the living, who, according to nature, yearn for Paradise. About each of us, who do not know, do not imagine Paradise in heaven, but have our own, local, privatized from birth or from the first awareness of ourselves as a person, paradise on Earth:
“... there is a place on earth where you once, grabbing the handrails with your hands, began to climb out onto the spat-spitted deck of life. And in this place, flapping tired wings, your soul should descend to rest. This is the yard where your childhood is left".("Lands are magical places")
(Is it not because he himself, like his hero from "Tosca ..." - "... I saw furious pupils of passion and cold, an intoxicating screech of malice and a flowery dryness of kindness"? Read "Get Out in the Rain" - and perhaps you will hear how the wounded cry blue birds, falling with hooked beaks into the water of the lakes calling them ... ")
To what, to what upper limits the Knower is unknown; but what is from us ourselves (simple and eternally guilty to each other while we live) is already enough, because there is already infinitely much for creativity.
Sometimes it seems that there is no plot in the stories - that the author, throwing his head to the divine sky, sorts out, near the sinful earth, only by touch, some wonderful rosaries, with an immense number of beads of various, unpredictable shapes, - like pebbles on the side of the road urban and rural roads (where there are no only “correct” figures - balls, cones, cubes, tetrahedra ...) acute angle, will it hurt to the point of blood with a knife edge ... But each bead will certainly run across, with the talent of the author, into lines, and the lines will draw pictures in us that will make us smile, think, cry ... Because in each picture there is a person, ranging from funny to tragic, as the embodiment of earthly Life, fleeting, but rich, fitting into the universal moment - from birth to death.
Every attentive reader will exclaim, through laughter and tears: that's how it was, that's how it is, - I believe ...
[“Like a warm hand mouse in a sleeve, happiness climbed into it. No, what a mouse, this boat broke into his blood. Small rowers rushed in a boat along the swift current of vessels and sang songs. A strange song, as if they were the voices of the Incas from a dead state. They rushed and sang, and then, at the turn, they suddenly raised their heads, because somewhere they sang in response. ("Voice of Lake Michigan")]
And this simple, worldly trust in the author, perhaps, will fashion in the reader true image behavior, expiating the biblical guilt of the descendants of Adam and Eve, living on the “cursed earth”, on which “thorns and thistles” grow, from which they feed all the days of their lives, earning bread in the sweat of their faces ...
Love for one's neighbor, for nature, are projections that make up the vector of love for Him, who gives hope for the Garden of Eden. There is no other way, more direct and easy, not straining the mind, soul and heart.
And if at least one of the hundreds of Readers after reading the book says not only "I believe ...", but also "I believe!" - this will be a great reward for the Unmercenary Author, the reward for which he creates.
The final lines of the epigraph to "Yearning for Paradise" are from Thomas Wolfe ("The wind is striving, and the rivers are flowing"):
“Then I did not yet know the truth that only one who has humility, and tolerance, and the ability to hear someone else’s soul is truly superior to others.”
This, in a Wolfian phrase, from Mikhail Morgulis, the author, to readers ...
But let him, Mikhail Morgulis, know that with the same phrase I, the Reader, - to him, the Author ... about him; with a slight, already from myself, emphasis on prior ignorance and subsequent discovery: “I didn’t know, I wasn’t sure ... until I read it ...”
[“Life shouted to the anguish, which caught the heart in a trap, that it would not hold the heart, let it go, because tenderness would soon come and make us all happy.” - ("Longing for Paradise")]
Leonid Netrebo,
Now there is some kind of epidemic fear of beauty in art. Obviously, this is a subconsciously skeptical attitude towards Dostoevsky's expression that supposedly beauty will save the world and to all sorts of exclamations like - "we will still see the sky in diamonds" or "this man sounds proud." Of course, it is not easy to take all this at face value after the Holocaust and the Gulag Archipelago and after the glaring abyss of inequality, when tasteless boasting of villas, diamonds, yachts humiliates honest people when, in order to survive, they fight like fish on ice, and the prestige of an arrogant policy has collapsed catastrophically after the rampant two-standard and paranoid mutual eavesdropping. However, the beauty of the behavior of people who manage to do not get dirty, there are, and there are more of them than we sometimes think. They are the real heroes, but they seem to be eccentric losers against the backdrop of the success of those whose seeming courage of enterprise is based only on the shamelessness with which they step over others. In general, spiritual beauty is now Cinderella.
First abstract paintings Kandinsky were very beautiful, they had something of the beauty of nature - from sunsets, from dawns, from rainbows, from the northern lights. Pollock's paintings, especially his "Cathedral", were full of the beauty of his overwhelming tragic temperament and self-destructively suffocating great energy. Miró's paintings with his "mirobs" were charming, like the rock motifs of prehistoric ancestors resurrected in him.
All this was still painting. Conceptualism, with its toilet aphorisms, inscriptions, with rusty beds in which condoms are lying, and dirty socks, has captivated modern museums. This former rebellion against petty-bourgeois sugaryness has now, with cynical practicality, turned into a profitable "sleeping business". ingenious sculptures Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti were replaced by unthinking and unsympathetic installations. The beauty of the melody has disappeared from the music, although even Scriabin found such marvelous mysterious pheromones between sounds and colors. Literature is dominated by sarcasm, skepticism turning into pessimism, there is not enough oxygen, one can feel the mortal fear of the authors to look too sentimental, to be accused of grandiloquence. Beauty is forlornly huddled in a corner, otherwise, God forbid, they will be accused of beauty. Art is now either too grounded, or creates fakes of the unearthly in endless "fantasy", representing only a cowardly escape from reality. But the secret is that everything truly unearthly is on earth.
Against today's background, the story of the writer and priest Mikhail Morgulis - "Longing for Paradise" - is a risky venture. It is written with fearless beauty. She herself is substituted for ridicule, bullying, parodies. But she has one rare quality for books now - you can fall in love with her. This is exactly what happened to me! What is one unforgettable expression "apricot kiss". With whom could he happen to the author-hero of the book?
Imagine that the heroine turned out to be a kind of agent of the devil, the “prince of darkness”, like his obedient Mata Hari, whose task, inspired by the “prince of darkness”, was to recruit other novices. But only pretending to be the executor of his will, the order, in fact, she only performed what love prompted her to do. God, what a fantasy tasteless melodrama, skeptics will throw up their hands. Alas, our life itself sometimes looks like a melodrama, and even tasteless. But the heroine of Morgulis still came to life not from comics, but from the pages of John Steinbeck's story "Red Pony", which I also knew from childhood, as Morgulis, and called his heroine - Pony. In the story of Morgulis, I found so much romantic sentimentality, for which so many people yearned so much among the cynical banter, having not heard for so long beautiful fairy tales that closed last page with chagrin that it is the last, but also with childlike gratitude that this story or poem in prose washed away from me the fatigue that was not childish, distrustful of fairy tales. Incurable skeptics will easily find everything in this story to crush it ruthlessly. And I found everything in it, so as not to tear myself away from it.
But did Arina Rodionovna, Hans Christian Andersen, and Alexander Grin deceive us with their fairy tales, as did those who drove us into the barracks and gas chambers of their political utopias? My childish faith even in good tales here it could already go into disbelief. Unbelief in what? Yes, everything .. except for the people I love. And, fortunately, there are many of them, and they are in all the countries where I have been. Isn't the road to people the road to God? The land of people is dear to us because it evokes the most unearthly feelings in us. The tragedy of both Lermontov’s and Vrubel’s demons is that they were deprived of these feelings by their non-filial non-belonging to the earth, and for all the difference in characters, like cold-blooded twin brothers, they were doomed to loneliness by the same curse of Pushkin’s Demon: “He didn’t believe love, freedom; He looked mockingly at life - And he did not want to bless anything in all nature.
Therefore, deprived of simple human warmth, everything superhuman, which only notorious mediocrities strive to achieve with all their might, leads to the only happiness due to the merits of the unfortunate - to hatred. One of my sons, Sasha, quoted me in a Christmas letter this year what Nelson Mandela once said, from whom even in 27 years in prison his tormentors did not achieve hatred:
"Hatred is the poison we drink thinking it will kill our enemies." (literal translation: Being offended and resentful is like drinking poison in the hope that it will kill your enemies)
I even tried to turn this article into a dialogue of aphorisms, but suddenly I felt that it was being arbitrarily reconstructed into something not so mental as it was playfully lively, songlike, dashing, a little Leshchenko, or something, and why not:
What made you sad Masha, Masha,
joy, what has bypassed you?
life, as if porridge-malash,
burned your lips again?
Even if love is naive
she is smarter than hate
Witch envy broadcasts hysterically,
but let's not trust her.
You don't believe a bad word
from rivals and from rednecks.
Let them give you malice
still choose love.
Among all the parties and gangs,
be careful flying somersault
our earthly crazy ball,
I love you - all the way!
Not loving anyone is ugly
How not to make snowballs in winter
and it is impossible to love Russia,
if there is no one to love in it!
January. 2014
That's where I was carried by a gust of Christmas snowstorm from the pages of my story dear Michael Morgulis. However, one could expect all sorts of adventures from his prose, for it is very undisciplined, if approached with strict rules.
This book has no exact analogues - there are only tender points of contact with Saint-Exupery's "The Little Prince" or with the story "Jonathan Livingston, Seagull" - one American pilot Richard Bach, published in the seventieth year, almost all Americans of teenage psychology read it, which does not always coincide with age, including mine.
Once amazing in its own way moral purity my American friend, in her early twenties, read aloud to me when, in biblical terms, "were sick of love." Critics and prose writers arrogantly laughed at this book in the USA, but I think it was out of envy, because it lay under hundreds of thousands of pillows filled with dreams. This story was too simple-hearted for skeptics, but on the other hand, it saved many desperate people from drug addiction and suicide, restoring their faith in themselves and in life through words from the beak of a seagull.
Morgulis understood the power of the fairy tale created by him, and he entered it himself, and survived it, not suspecting what would happen to him. And a self-transformation happened. Love transforms us, and the red Pony became his Ariadne, but also herself. Both of them were transformed, and they gave the gift of this self-transformation to the boy who appeared in the book, who seemed to be waiting in the wings, when some fairy tale would notice him and give him a hand. Oh, how we need the rarest spiritual breed of earthly and at the same time unearthly people, because only from an unearthly height one can sometimes see how people can be helped to get rid of the troubles that threaten them on earth, which has already become part of the practical vision of astronautics. Again, impolitely breaking the structure of prose, rhythms and rhymes come out of me from somewhere, although not so bad:
There are special boys.
that call them all at the same time-
This book is addressed, in general, to such boys, who even stayed in their teenage years for a long time, like one of my acquaintances, whom I often see in the mirror, and to girls who are somewhat similar to boys, including my wife, who is still still proud of the fact that she still has a hump on her nose from a hockey puck when they played in Petrozavodsk not at the rink, but simply on the street with wire sticks.
I immediately caught that this book has a special melody, as if the notes were hidden between the lines, and I thought that this, apparently, was Schumann's "Childhood Concert". It turns out I figured it out. Try to do the same, put on this concert and start reading this book. This is a magical union. Don't take this book just religiously. The envious struggle of the "prince of darkness" with his rival for human souls- this is a poetic metaphor of the struggle of humanity - with inhumanity, armed with so many temptations, and the most dangerous of them is the disastrous hypocrisy, pretending to be salvation, although in his eyes there is no, no, and the devilish will flash. The author of the story was saved by his own fairy tale. I seem to have forgotten to tell you what it is called: "Longing for Paradise." If in fact there is no heaven in the world, then the longing for it turned out to be the most heavenly. It was published eight years ago by the Concordia publishing house, and the two-thousandth edition evaporated with lightning speed along with the publishing house. Now it has been beautifully re-released. Search. I did find her. In it you will eventually see a ray of light behind dark forest. It was the beauty-savior that shone for you. I hope that after reading this book you will also have the taste of an apricot kiss on your lips.
