"All things came into being through Him..."
The Book of Books... This is how they talk about the Bible, thereby denoting with the utmost brevity its place in human culture.
This is the Book in the most general, highest and single meaning, which has been living in the minds of peoples since time immemorial: the Book of Fates, which keeps the secrets of life and the destiny of the future. This is the Holy Scripture, which all Christians perceive as inspired by God himself. And this is a treasury of wisdom for all thinking people of the Earth, whatever their beliefs. This is a book-library, which for more than a thousand years has been composed of many verbal works created by different authors in different languages.
This is a book that brought to life countless other books where her ideas and images live: translations, arrangements, works of verbal art, interpretations, studies.
And over time, its creative energy does not decrease, but increases.
What is the source of this life-giving force? Many thinkers, scientists and poets thought about it. And here is what A. S. Pushkin said about the New Testament (his thoughts can be attributed to the entire Bible): “There is a book with which every word is interpreted, explained, preached in all parts of the earth, applied to all kinds of circumstances of life and events of the world; from which it is impossible to repeat a single expression that everyone would not know by heart, which would not already be a proverb of the peoples; it no longer contains anything unknown to us; but this book is called the Gospel, - and such is its ever-new charm that if we, satiated with the world or dejected by despondency, accidentally open it, then we are no longer able to resist its sweet passion and are immersed in spirit in its divine eloquence.
Ever since the Slavic translation of the Gospel, the Psalter and other biblical books, created by the great educators Cyril and Methodius, appeared in Russia, the Bible has become the first and main book of Russian culture: from it the child learned to read and write and think, Christian truths and norms of life, principles morality and the foundations of verbal art. The Bible entered the consciousness of the people, into everyday life and spiritual life, into ordinary and high speech; it was not perceived as a translation, but as native and able to make people of all languages related.
But over the decades of the 20th century The Bible remained persecuted in our country, as it was in the first centuries of the new era, when the rulers of the Roman Empire tried to stop the spread of Christianity.
It seemed that the long reign of savage idolatry, which appeared under the guise of scientific atheism, weaned the mass of readers from the Bible and weaned them from understanding it. But as soon as the Book of Books returned to families, schools, libraries, it became clear that the spiritual connection with it was not lost. And first of all, the Russian language itself reminded of this, in which the winged biblical words withstood the onslaught of clerical carrion, unrestrained foul language and helped preserve the spirit, mind and euphony of native speech.
The return of the Bible allowed readers to make another discovery: it turned out that all Russian literary classics, from antiquity to the present, are connected with the Book of Books, rely on its truths and precepts, moral and artistic values, correlate their ideals with it, cite its sayings, parables, legends... This connection is not always obvious, but opens up in close, sympathetic reading and introduces, as it were, a new dimension to the "artistic universe" created by verbal art.
Now we are re-reading and thinking about the Bible, accumulating knowledge about it, which was previously gradually mastered in school years. We comprehend what has long been known as new: after all, behind every detail we see a huge world that has remained distant or completely unknown to us.
The very title of this book is a precious fact of cultural history. It comes from the word biblos: this is the Greek name for the Egyptian papyrus plant, from which huts, boats, and many other necessary things were made in ancient times, and most importantly, writing material, the pillar of human memory, the most important foundation of culture.
The Greeks called a book written on papyrus he biblos, but if it was small, they said to biblion - a little book, and in the plural - ta biblia. That is why the first meaning of the word Bible is a collection of small books. These books contain legends, commandments, historical testimonies, hymns, biographies, prayers, reflections, studies, messages, teachings, prophecies... The authors of the books are prophets, priests, kings, apostles; the names of most of them are indicated, the authorship of other books is established by the research of scientists. And all biblical writers are artists who own persuasive, picturesque, musical speech.
The books of the Christian Bible are divided into two parts that arose at different times: 39 books of the Old (Ancient) Testament, (approximately X - III centuries BC) and 27 books of the New Testament (end of I - beginning of II century AD) .). These parts, originally written in different languages - Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek - are inseparable: they are imbued with a single desire, create a single image. The word "covenant" in the Bible has a special meaning: it is not only an instruction bequeathed to followers, future generations, but also an agreement between God and people - an agreement on the salvation of mankind and earthly life in general.
The number of literary works in Russian containing reflections on the Bible, its images and motives is extremely large, it is hardly even possible to list them. The idea of the creative word permeates the entire Bible - from the First Book of Moses to the Revelation of John the Theologian. It is solemnly and powerfully expressed in the opening verses of the Gospel of John:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It was in the beginning with God. Everything came into being through Him, and without Him nothing came into being that came into being. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men; And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.”
Bible and Russian literature of the 19th century.
It was in the 19th century that spiritual problems and biblical stories became especially firmly embedded in the fabric of European, Russian and all world culture. If one were only to enumerate the titles of poems, poems, dramas, stories that have been devoted to biblical problems over the past two hundred years, then such an enumeration would take a very long time, even without descriptions and citations.
At one time, Honore Balzac, summing up the "Human Comedy", noted that the whole epic was written by him in the spirit of the Christian religion, Christian laws and law. But in fact, in the huge, multi-volume work of Balzac, there is little Christian spirit. There is a lot in it, it is really a panorama of human life, but a mundane life, immersed in everyday life, passions, sometimes small, and we do not see ups and downs. The same can be said about Gustave Flaubert, and about many other Western writers, whose biographies obscure eternal questions. Such was the dynamics of the development of literature in the West in the 19th century. In the 20th century, the picture changes and the search for the eternal begins again.
Russian literature of the 19th century differs favorably from Western literature in this respect. Because from Vasily Zhukovsky to Alexander Blok, she was always focused on burning moral problems, although she approached them from different points of view. She was always worried about these problems and rarely could dwell only on life writing. Writers who limited themselves to everyday difficulties found themselves pushed to the periphery. Writers who are worried about the problems of the eternal have always been in the center of the reader's attention.
“And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Life-Giving…” The Russian nineteenth century was filled with this spirit (even when it rebelled). The golden age of our literature was the age of the Christian spirit, kindness, pity, compassion, mercy, conscience and repentance - this gave it life.
M. Naryshkina, Biblical Motifs and Plots in Russian Literature of the 19th – 20th Centuries. Moscow 2008
Spiritual tradition in Russian literature is understanding of the Christian essence of man and the Orthodox picture of the world in literature, which has a transhistorical character. Metropolitan Hilarion's "Sermon on Law and Grace" - the beginning of the history of ancient Russian literature - was heard either before the Easter morning service, or, most likely, on the first day of Easter on March 26, 1049 (Rozov N.N. Synodal list of works by Hilarion - a Russian writer of the XI century) . Trying to “consider the Christian foundation of Russian literature (Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev)” (Prishvin M.M. Diaries.), One cannot lose sight of the fact that for many generations of Russian people, not so much home reading as liturgical practice was the main way understanding of the text of the Holy Scriptures. According to A.S. Pushkin, it is “the Greek religion, separate from all others, that gives us a special national character” (A.S. Pushkin. Notes on Russian history, XVIII century, 1822). This was reflected in the literary texts of even those Russian authors who might not accept other sides of the Christian faith.
Russian literature of the first seven centuries of its existence is distinctly Christocentric, that is, initially oriented primarily towards the New Testament. The Old Testament texts are comprehended in this case on the basis of the Orthodox picture of the world. The main purpose of this literature is the churching of man. In Russian literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, Christocentrism manifests itself both directly and much more often implicitly: the author’s spiritual, ethical and aesthetic orientation - not always rationalized and realized - to the person of Christ: the attitude of ancient Russian literature to “imitation” is still too alive in cultural memory Christ ("The Brothers Karamazov", 1879-80; "Idiot", 1868, F.M. Dostoevsky; "Lord Golovlev", 1875-80, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin). This partly explains the maximalist ethical requirements for the hero of a literary work of Russian classics, which are much stricter than in Western Europe of the same historical period. Precisely because the “best” is always present in the mind of the author, there are so few “positive” heroes in Russian literature who can withstand comparison with the moral height given by the old Russian book tradition (“Student”, 1894, A.P. Chekhov). The constant fear of spiritual imperfection in the face of the ideal Holy Russia, the fear of the discrepancy between the low present reality and this high predestination make all other earthly problems of human life secondary and insignificant.
Hence the constant desire to pose "damned questions." Hence the love for the poor, holy fools, beggars and convicts, patience and aestheticization of this patience, love for one's neighbor - with all the understanding of its imperfection: orientation towards the ethical absolute and equally absolute acceptance of the world as it is. A deep, close and never interrupted connection with the New Testament is the main thing that constitutes the unity of Russian culture as a whole. When analyzing the works of Russian classics, one must keep in mind that often " the hidden influence does not stop even when the Orthodox tradition is not remembered"(Averintsev S.S. Byzantium and Russia: Two types of spirituality). Even the sharp rejection of the Orthodox spiritual tradition by some authors testifies to its special significance for Russian literature. The outward formlessness of a number of works of Russian classics, the polyphony of Dostoevsky and the evasion of the formulation of the “ultimate truth” in Chekhov’s works, despite the obvious difference in the authors’ artistic systems, have a common denominator: an Orthodox vision of the world, rooted in the Orthodox type of culture. Both at the level of construction of the text and at the level of completion of the hero, the author observes, as it were, awe in front of the power over the “other” (hero), awe in front of the possibility of the final and final completeness of the world, uncertainty in his right to the role of a judge of his neighbor (even if he acts only in as a fictional character). After all, the said final truth about the “other”, fixed by the text of the work, seems to take away from him the hope of transformation and the possibility of spiritual salvation, which cannot be taken away while the “other” is alive. The claim to the completion of the hero is, as it were, an encroachment on the last Judgment over him, while only God knows the highest and last truth about the personality. Within the limits of the earthly world, recreated in a work of art, the last truth about a person becomes known only after his death. The "equality" of the voices of the author and Dostoevsky's characters, on which M.M. Bakhtin insists, has the same deep roots rooted in Orthodox Russian spirituality. The author and the hero are indeed equal in rights - but precisely in the face of that absolute, and not relative, truth, which only God can know in its entirety. It is in relation to this higher truth that any other is relative, any thought “spoken” on earth, in the words of F.I. Tyutchev, “is a lie”.
Russian literature of the 19th century, in its main spiritual vector, did not oppose the centuries-old Russian Orthodox tradition, as they tried to prove for a long time, but, on the contrary, grew out of this tradition, from the Russian Easter archetype and the idea of catholicity. The literature of the Silver Age is largely determined by the conflict between the artistic trend of preserving the Orthodox system traditional for Russian literature and attempts at a global transformation of the spiritual dominant of Russian culture. However, even in the Russian literature of the Soviet period, one can state the presence of leitmotifs of the Orthodox tradition, although in a latent form (A.P. Platonov, M.M. Prishvin). At the same time, in a number of works of Russian literature of the 20th century, the fullness of this tradition is sometimes polemically explicated (“Summer of the Lord”, 193348, I.S. Shmelev, “Doctor Zhivago”, 1957, B.L. Pasternak).
For many centuries, Orthodoxy has had a decisive influence on the formation of Russian identity and Russian culture. In the pre-Petrine period, secular culture practically did not exist in Russia: the entire cultural life of the Russian people was centered around the Church. In the post-Petrine era, secular literature, poetry, painting and music were formed in Russia, reaching their apogee in the 19th century. Having spun off from the Church, Russian culture, however, did not lose that powerful spiritual and moral charge that Orthodoxy gave it, and up until the revolution of 1917 it maintained a lively connection with church tradition. In the post-revolutionary years, when access to the treasury of Orthodox spirituality was closed, Russian people learned about faith, about God, about Christ and the Gospel, about prayer, about theology and worship of the Orthodox Church through the works of Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky, and other great writers, poets and composers. During the entire seventy-year period of state atheism, Russian culture of the pre-revolutionary era remained the bearer of the Christian gospel for millions of people artificially cut off from their roots, continuing to testify to those spiritual and moral values that the atheistic authorities questioned or sought to destroy.
Russian literature of the 19th century is rightly considered one of the highest pinnacles of world literature. But its main feature, which distinguishes it from the literature of the West of the same period, is its religious orientation, a deep connection with the Orthodox tradition. “All our literature of the 19th century is wounded by the Christian theme, all of it is looking for salvation, all of it is looking for deliverance from evil, suffering, the horror of life for the human person, people, humanity, the world. In her most significant creations, she is imbued with religious thought,” writes N.A. Berdyaev.
This also applies to the great Russian poets Pushkin and Lermontov, and to the writers - Gogol, Dostoevsky, Leskov, Chekhov, whose names are inscribed in golden letters not only in the history of world literature, but also in the history of the Orthodox Church. They lived in an era when an increasing number of intellectuals were moving away from the Orthodox Church. Baptism, weddings and funerals still took place in the church, but attending the church every Sunday was considered almost a bad form among people of high society. When one of Lermontov's acquaintances, having entered the church, unexpectedly found the poet praying there, the latter was embarrassed and began to justify himself by saying that he had come to church on some order from his grandmother. And when someone, having entered Leskov's office, found him praying on his knees, he began to pretend that he was looking for a fallen coin on the floor. Traditional clericalism was still preserved among the common people, but was less and less characteristic of the urban intelligentsia. The departure of the intelligentsia from Orthodoxy widened the gap between it and the people. All the more surprising is the fact that Russian literature, contrary to the trends of the times, retained a deep connection with the Orthodox tradition.
The greatest Russian poet A.S. Pushkin (1799-1837), although he was brought up in the Orthodox spirit, departed from traditional clericalism in his youth, but he never completely broke with the Church and repeatedly turned to the religious theme in his works. Pushkin's spiritual path can be defined as a path from pure faith through youthful disbelief to the meaningful religiosity of a mature period. Pushkin went through the first part of this path during his years of study at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, and already at the age of 17 he wrote the poem “Unbelief”, testifying to inner loneliness and the loss of a living connection with God:
Does he silently enter the temple of the Most High with the crowd
There it multiplies only the anguish of his soul.
At the magnificent triumph of ancient altars,
At the voice of the shepherd, at the sweet choir singing,
His unbelief torment worries.
He does not see the secret God anywhere, nowhere,
With a faded soul, the shrine is ahead,
Cold to everything and alien to tenderness
With annoyance, he listens to the quiet prayer.
Four years later, Pushkin wrote the blasphemous poem "Gavriiliada", which he later retracted. However, already in 1826, the turning point in Pushkin's worldview occurred, which is reflected in the poem "Prophet". In it, Pushkin speaks of the vocation of a national poet, using an image inspired by the 6th chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah:
Spiritual thirst tormented,
In the gloomy desert I dragged, -
And a six-winged seraph
Appeared to me at a crossroads.
With fingers as light as a dream
He touched my eyes.
Prophetic eyes opened,
Like a frightened eagle.
He touched my ears
And they were filled with noise and ringing:
And I heard the shudder of the sky,
And the heavenly angels flight,
And the reptile of the sea underwater course,
And the valley of the vine vegetation.
And he clung to my lips,
And tore out my sinful tongue,
And idle-talking, and crafty,
And the sting of the wise snake
In my frozen mouth
He invested it with a bloody right hand.
And he cut my chest with a sword,
And took out a trembling heart
And coal burning with fire
He put a hole in his chest.
Like a corpse in the desert I lay,
And God's voice called out to me:
“Arise, prophet, and see, and listen,
Do my will
And, bypassing the seas and lands,
Burn people's hearts with the verb."
Regarding this poem, Archpriest Sergei Bulgakov remarks: “If we did not have all the other works of Pushkin, but only this one peak sparkled with eternal snow in front of us, we could clearly see not only the greatness of his poetic gift, but also the entire height of his vocations." The acute sense of the divine vocation, reflected in the "Prophet", contrasted with the bustle of secular life, which Pushkin, by virtue of his position, had to lead. Over the years, he became more and more burdened by this life, about which he repeatedly wrote in his poems. On the day of his 29th birthday, Pushkin writes:
A gift in vain, a gift random,
Life, why are you given to me?
Ile why the fate of the mystery
Are you sentenced to death?
Who got me hostile power
Called out of nothingness
Filled my soul with passion
Doubt aroused the mind? ...
There is no goal in front of me:
The heart is empty, the mind is empty,
And makes me sad
The monotonous noise of life.
To this poem, the poet, who at that time was still balancing between faith, disbelief and doubt, received an unexpected response from Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow:
Not in vain, not by chance
God gave me life
Not without the will of God a mystery
And sentenced to death.
I myself by wayward power
Evil from the dark abyss called,
Filled my soul with passion
The mind was filled with doubt.
Remember me, forgotten by me!
Shine through the dusk of thoughts -
And created by You
The heart is pure, the mind is bright!
Struck by the fact that an Orthodox bishop responded to his poem, Pushkin writes Stanzas addressed to Filaret:
In hours of fun or idle boredom,
It used to be my lyre
Entrusted pampered sounds
Madness, laziness and passions.
But even then the strings of the evil one
Involuntarily, I interrupted the ringing,
I was suddenly struck.
I shed streams of unexpected tears,
And the wounds of my conscience
Your fragrant speeches
The clean oil was rejoicing.
And now from a spiritual height
You extend your hand to me
And with the power of meek and loving
You subdue wild dreams.
Your soul is warmed by your fire
Rejected the darkness of earthly vanities,
And listens to Philaret's harp
In sacred horror the poet.
At the request of censorship, the last stanza of the poem was changed and in the final version it sounded like this:
Your soul burns with fire
Rejected the darkness of earthly vanities,
And listens to the harp of the Seraphim
In sacred horror the poet.
Pushkin's poetic correspondence with Filaret was one of the rare cases of contact between two worlds that were separated by a spiritual and cultural abyss in the 19th century: the world of secular literature and the world of the Church. This correspondence speaks of Pushkin's departure from the unbelief of his youthful years, the rejection of the "madness, laziness and passions" characteristic of his early work. Poetry, prose, journalism and dramaturgy of Pushkin in the 1830s testify to the ever-increasing influence of Christianity, the Bible, and the Orthodox Church on him. He repeatedly rereads the Holy Scriptures, finding in it a source of wisdom and inspiration. Here are Pushkin's words about the religious and moral significance of the Gospel and the Bible:
There is a book by which every word is interpreted, explained, preached in all ends of the earth, applied to all sorts of circumstances of life and events of the world; from which it is impossible to repeat a single expression that everyone would not know by heart, which would not already be a proverb of the peoples; it no longer contains anything unknown to us; but this book is called the Gospel, and such is its ever-new charm that if we, satiated with the world or dejected by despondency, accidentally open it, then we are no longer able to resist its sweet passion and are immersed in spirit into its divine eloquence.
I think that we will never give the people anything better than the Scriptures... Its taste becomes clear when you start reading the Scriptures, because in it you find the whole human life. Religion created art and literature; everything that was great in the deepest antiquity, everything depends on this religious feeling inherent in man, just like the idea of beauty along with the idea of goodness ... The poetry of the Bible is especially accessible to pure imagination. My children will read with me the Bible in the original... The Bible is universal.
Another source of inspiration for Pushkin is Orthodox worship, which in his youth left him indifferent and cold. One of the poems, dated 1836, includes a poetic transcription of the prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian "Lord and Master of my life", read at Lenten services.
In Pushkin of the 1830s, religious sophistication and enlightenment were combined with rampant passions, which, according to S.L. Frank, is a hallmark of the Russian "broad nature". Dying from a wound received in a duel, Pushkin confessed and took communion. Before his death, he received a note from Emperor Nicholas I, whom he knew personally from a young age: “Dear friend, Alexander Sergeevich, if we are not destined to see each other in this world, take my last advice: try to die a Christian.” The great Russian poet died a Christian, and his peaceful death was the completion of the path that I. Ilyin defined as the path “from disappointed unbelief to faith and prayer; from revolutionary rebellion to free loyalty and wise statehood; from dreamy worship of freedom to organic conservatism; from youthful polygamy - to the cult of the family hearth. Having passed this path, Pushkin took a place not only in the history of Russian and world literature, but also in the history of Orthodoxy - as a great representative of that cultural tradition, which is all saturated with his juices.
Another great Russian poet M.Yu. Lermontov (1814-1841) was an Orthodox Christian, and religious themes repeatedly appear in his poems. As a person endowed with a mystical talent, as an exponent of the "Russian idea", aware of his prophetic vocation, Lermontov had a powerful influence on Russian literature and poetry of the subsequent period. Like Pushkin, Lermontov knew the Scriptures well: his poetry is filled with biblical allusions, some of his poems are reworkings of biblical stories, and many epigraphs are taken from the Bible. Like Pushkin, Lermontov is characterized by a religious perception of beauty, especially the beauty of nature, in which he feels the presence of God:
When the yellowing field worries,
And the fresh forest rustles at the sound of the breeze,
And the crimson plum hides in the garden
Under the shade of a sweet green leaf...
Then the anxiety of my soul humbles itself,
Then the wrinkles on the forehead diverge, -
And I can comprehend happiness on earth,
And in the sky I see God...
In another poem by Lermontov, written shortly before his death, the quivering sense of the presence of God is intertwined with the themes of fatigue from earthly life and the thirst for immortality. Deep and sincere religious feeling is combined in the poem with romantic motifs, which is a characteristic feature of Lermontov's lyrics:
I go out alone on the road;
Through the mist the flinty path gleams;
The night is quiet. The desert listens to God
And the star speaks to the star.
In heaven solemnly and wonderfully!
The earth sleeps in the radiance of blue ...
Why is it so painful and so difficult for me?
Waiting for what? do I regret anything?
Lermontov's poetry reflects his prayerful experience, moments of emotion he experienced, his ability to find solace in spiritual experience. Several of Lermontov's poems are prayers in poetic form, three of which are titled "Prayer". Here is the most famous of them:
In a difficult moment of life
Does sadness linger in the heart:
One wonderful prayer
I believe by heart.
There is a grace
In consonance with the words of the living,
And breathes incomprehensible,
Holy beauty in them.
From the soul as a burden rolls down,
Doubt is far away
And believe and cry
And it's so easy, easy...
This poem by Lermontov has gained extraordinary popularity in Russia and abroad. More than forty composers have set it to music, including M.I. Glinka, A.S. Dargomyzhsky, A.G. Rubinstein, M.P. Mussorgsky, F. Liszt (according to the German translation by F. Bodenstedt).
It would be wrong to represent Lermontov as an Orthodox poet in the narrow sense of the word. Often in his work, youthful passion is opposed to traditional piety (as, for example, in the poem "Mtsyri"); in many images of Lermontov (in particular, in the image of Pechorin), the spirit of protest and disappointment, loneliness and contempt for people is embodied. In addition, Lermontov's entire short literary activity was colored by a pronounced interest in demonic themes, which found their most perfect embodiment in the poem "The Demon".
Lermontov inherited the theme of the demon from Pushkin; after Lermontov, this theme will firmly enter Russian art of the 19th - early 20th centuries up to A.A. Blok and M.A. Vrubel. However, the Russian "demon" is by no means an anti-religious or anti-church image; rather, it reflects the shadowy, wrong side of the religious theme that pervades all Russian literature. The demon is a seducer and deceiver, it is a proud, passionate and lonely creature, obsessed with protest against God and goodness. But in Lermontov's poem, goodness triumphs, the Angel of God finally lifts the soul of the woman seduced by the demon to heaven, and the demon again remains in splendid isolation. In fact, Lermontov in his poem raises the eternal moral problem of the relationship between good and evil, God and the devil, Angel and demon. When reading the poem, it may seem that the author's sympathies are on the side of the demon, but the moral outcome of the work leaves no doubt that the author believes in the final victory of God's truth over the demonic temptation.
Lermontov died in a duel before he was 27 years old. If in the short time allotted to him Lermontov managed to become a great national poet of Russia, then this period was not enough for the formation of mature religiosity in him. Nevertheless, the deep spiritual insights and moral lessons contained in many of his works make it possible to inscribe his name, along with the name of Pushkin, not only in the history of Russian literature, but also in the history of the Orthodox Church.
Among the Russian poets of the 19th century, whose work is marked by a strong influence of religious experience, it is necessary to mention A.K. Tolstoy (1817-1875), author of the poem "John of Damascus". The plot of the poem is inspired by an episode from the life of St. John of Damascus: the abbot of the monastery in which the monk labored forbids him to engage in poetic creativity, but God appears to the abbot in a dream and commands to remove the ban from the poet. Against the background of this simple plot, the multidimensional space of the poem unfolds, which includes the poetic monologues of the protagonist. One of the monologues is an enthusiastic hymn to Christ:
I see Him before me
With a crowd of poor fishermen;
He is quiet, on a peaceful path,
Walks between ripening bread;
Good speeches of His joy
He pours into simple hearts,
He is truly a hungry herd
It leads to its source.
Why was I born at the wrong time
When between us, in the flesh,
Carrying a painful burden
He was on his way to life!
Oh my Lord, my hope,
My strength and cover!
I want you all thoughts
Grace to you all song,
And thoughts of the day, and vigil nights,
And every beat of the heart
And give my whole soul!
Don't open up for another
From now on, prophetic lips!
Thunder only in the name of Christ,
My enthusiastic word!
In the poem by A.K. Tolstoy included a poetic retelling of the stichera of St. John of Damascus, performed at the funeral service. Here is the text of these sticheras in Slavonic:
What worldly sweetness is uninvolved in sorrow; what kind of glory stands on the earth is immutable; the whole canopy is weaker, the whole dormouse is more charming: in a single moment, and all this death accepts. But in the light, Christ, of Your face and in the delight of Your beauty, whom thou hast chosen, rest in peace, like a Lover of mankind.
All the vanity of man, the Christmas tree does not abide after death: wealth does not abide, nor glory descends: having come after death, this is all consumed ...
Where there is worldly passion; where there is temporary daydreaming; where there is gold and silver; where there are many slaves and rumors; all the dust, all the ashes, all the canopy...
I remember the prophet cryingly: I am earth and ashes. And I looked at the packs in the tombs, and saw the bones exposed, and rech: then who is the king, or the warrior, or the rich, or the poor, or the righteous, or the sinner? But give rest, O Lord, with the righteous Thy servant.
And here is a poetic transcription of the same text, made by A.K. Tolstoy:
What sweetness in this life
Earthly sadness is not involved?
Whose expectation is not in vain?
And where is the happy among people?
Everything is wrong, everything is insignificant,
What we have gained with difficulty,
What glory on earth
Is it firm and immutable?
All ashes, ghost, shadow and smoke
Everything will disappear like a dusty whirlwind,
And before death we stand
And unarmed and powerless.
The hand of the mighty is weak,
Insignificant royal decrees -
Accept the deceased slave
Lord, blessed villages!
Among the heaps of smoldering bones
Who is the king? who is the slave? judge or warrior?
Who is worthy of the Kingdom of God?
And who is the outcast villain?
O brothers, where are the silver and gold?
Where are the hosts of many slaves?
Among unknown graves
Who is poor, who is rich?
All ashes, smoke, and dust, and ashes,
All ghost, shadow and ghost -
Only with you in heaven
Lord, and harbor and salvation!
Everything that was flesh will disappear,
Our greatness will be decay -
Accept the deceased, Lord,
To Your blessed villages!
Religious themes occupies a significant place in the later works of N.V. Gogol (1809-1852). Having become famous throughout Russia for his satirical works, such as The Inspector General and Dead Souls, Gogol significantly changed the direction of his creative activity in the 1840s, paying increasing attention to church issues. The liberal-minded intelligentsia of his time met with incomprehension and indignation Gogol's "Selected passages from correspondence with friends" published in 1847, where he reproached his contemporaries, representatives of the secular intelligentsia, for ignorance of the teachings and traditions of the Orthodox Church, defending the Orthodox clergy from N.V. Gogol attacks Western critics:
Our clergy is not idle. I know very well that in the depths of monasteries and in the silence of cells, irrefutable writings are being prepared in defense of our Church... But even these defenses will not yet serve to completely convince Western Catholics. Our Church must be sanctified in us, and not in our words ... This Church, which, like a chaste virgin, has been preserved alone from the time of the apostles in its immaculate original purity, this Church, which is all with its deep dogmas and the slightest external rites as would have been taken down straight from heaven for the Russian people, which alone is able to solve all the knots of perplexity and our questions ... And this church is unknown to us! And this Church, created for life, we still have not introduced into our lives! Only one propaganda is possible for us - our life. With our life we must defend our Church, which is all life; with the fragrance of our souls we must proclaim its truth.
Of particular interest are "Reflections on the Divine Liturgy", compiled by Gogol on the basis of interpretations of the liturgy, belonging to Byzantine authors Patriarch Herman of Constantinople (VIII century), Nikolai Cabasilas (XIV century) and St. Simeon of Thessalonica (XV century), as well as a number of Russian church writers. With great spiritual trepidation, Gogol writes about the transformation of the Holy Gifts at the Divine Liturgy into the Body and Blood of Christ:
Having blessed, the priest says: having changed by Your Holy Spirit; the deacon says three times: amen - and the body and blood are already on the throne: transubstantiation has taken place! The Word called forth the Eternal Word. The priest, having a verb instead of a sword, made a slaughter. Whoever he himself is, Peter or Ivan, but in his person the Eternal Bishop Himself performed this slaughter, and He eternally performs it in the person of His priests, as by the word: let there be light, the light shines forever; as in the saying: let the earth bring forth grass, the earth will grow it forever. On the throne is not an image, not a form, but the very Body of the Lord, the same Body that suffered on earth, endured beatings, was spat on, crucified, buried, resurrected, ascended with the Lord and sits at the right hand of the Father. It preserves the form of bread only in order to be a food for man and that the Lord Himself said: I am bread. The church bell rises with the bell tower to announce to everyone about the great moment, so that a person, wherever he is at that time, whether on the way, on the road, whether he cultivates the land of his fields, whether he sits in his house, or is busy with another business, or languishes on sickbed, or in prison walls - in a word, wherever he is, so that he can offer prayer from everywhere and from himself at this terrible moment.
In the afterword to the book, Gogol writes about the moral significance of the Divine Liturgy for every person who takes part in it, as well as for the entire Russian society:
The effect of the Divine Liturgy on the soul is great: it is performed visibly and with one’s own eyes, in the sight of the whole world and hidden ... And if society has not yet completely disintegrated, if people do not breathe complete, irreconcilable hatred among themselves, then the innermost reason for this is the Divine Liturgy, which reminds a person of about the holy heavenly love for a brother... The influence of the Divine Liturgy can be great and incalculable if a person would listen to it in order to bring what he hears into life. Teaching everyone equally, acting equally on all links, from the king to the last beggar, he speaks the same thing to everyone, not in the same language, he teaches everyone love, which is the bond of society, the innermost spring of everything harmoniously moving, writing, the life of everything.
It is characteristic that Gogol writes not so much about the communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ at the Divine Liturgy, but about “listening” to the Liturgy, being present at the divine service. This reflects the practice common in the 19th century, according to which Orthodox believers took communion one or more times a year, usually on the first week of Great Lent or on Passion Week, and the communion was preceded by several days of “fasting” (strict abstinence) and confession. On other Sundays and feast days, believers came to the liturgy only in order to defend, to “hear” it. Such practices were opposed in Greece by collivades, and in Russia by John of Kronstadt, who called for frequent communion as possible.
Among the Russian writers of the 19th century, two colossus stand out - Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Spiritual path F.M. Dostoevsky (1821-1881) in some ways repeats the path of many of his contemporaries: upbringing in the traditional Orthodox spirit, a departure from traditional clericalism in youth, a return to it in maturity. The tragic life path of Dostoevsky, who was sentenced to death for participating in a circle of revolutionaries, but pardoned a minute before the execution of the sentence, who spent ten years in hard labor and in exile, was reflected in all his diverse works - primarily in his immortal novels "Crime and Punishment", "Humiliated and Insulted", "Idiot", "Demons", "Teenager", "The Brothers Karamazov", in numerous novels and stories. In these works, as well as in The Writer's Diary, Dostoevsky developed his religious and philosophical views based on Christian personalism. At the center of Dostoevsky's work is always the human person in all its diversity and inconsistency, but human life, the problems of human existence are considered in a religious perspective, suggesting faith in a personal, personal God.
The main religious and moral idea that unites all of Dostoevsky's work is summarized in the famous words of Ivan Karamazov: "If there is no God, then everything is permitted." Dostoevsky denies autonomous morality based on arbitrary and subjective "humanistic" ideals. The only solid foundation of human morality, according to Dostoevsky, is the idea of God, and it is precisely the commandments of God that are the absolute moral criterion by which humanity should be guided. Atheism and nihilism lead a person to moral permissiveness, open the way to crime and spiritual death. The denunciation of atheism, nihilism and revolutionary moods, in which the writer saw a threat to the spiritual future of Russia, was the leitmotif of many of Dostoevsky's works. This is the main theme of the novel "Demons", many pages of the "Diary of a Writer".
Another characteristic feature of Dostoevsky is his deepest Christocentrism. “Throughout his whole life, Dostoevsky carried the exceptional, unique feeling of Christ, some kind of frenzied love for the face of Christ ... - writes N. Berdyaev. “Dostoevsky's faith in Christ passed through the crucible of all doubts and was tempered in fire.” For Dostoevsky, God is not an abstract idea: faith in God for him is identical with faith in Christ as the God-man and Savior of the world. Falling away from the faith in his understanding is a renunciation of Christ, and a conversion to faith is a conversion, first of all, to Christ. The quintessence of his Christology is the chapter "The Grand Inquisitor" from the novel "The Brothers Karamazov" - a philosophical parable put into the mouth of the atheist Ivan Karamazov. In this parable, Christ appears in medieval Seville, where He is met by a cardinal inquisitor. Taking Christ under arrest, the inquisitor conducts a monologue with Him about the dignity and freedom of man; Throughout the parable Christ is silent. In the monologue of the inquisitor, the three temptations of Christ in the desert are interpreted as temptations by miracle, mystery and authority: rejected by Christ, these temptations were not rejected by the Catholic Church, which accepted earthly power and took away spiritual freedom from people. Medieval Catholicism in Dostoevsky's parable is a prototype of atheistic socialism, which is based on disbelief in the freedom of the spirit, disbelief in God and, ultimately, disbelief in man. Without God, without Christ, there can be no true freedom, the writer asserts through the words of his hero.
Dostoevsky was a deeply ecclesiastical person. His Christianity was not abstract or mental: having suffered throughout his life, it was rooted in the tradition and spirituality of the Orthodox Church. One of the main characters of the novel The Brothers Karamazov is the elder Zosima, whose prototype was seen in St. Tikhon of Zadonsk or St. Ambrose of Optina, but who in reality is a collective image embodying the best that, according to Dostoevsky, was in Russian monasticism . One of the chapters of the novel, "From the conversations and teachings of the elder Zosima", is a moral and theological treatise written in a style close to the patristic. In the mouth of the elder Zosima, Dostoevsky puts his teaching about all-embracing love, reminiscent of the teaching of St. Isaac the Syrian about the “merciful heart”:
Brothers, do not be afraid of the sin of people, love a person even in his sin, for this is the likeness of God's love and is the height of love on earth. Love the whole creation of God, and the whole, and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God. Love animals, love plants, love everything. You will love every thing, and you will comprehend the mystery of God in things. Once you comprehend it, you will tirelessly begin to know it further and more, for every day. And you will finally love the whole world already with a whole, universal love ... Before a different thought, you will become perplexed, especially when you see the sin of people, and you will ask yourself: “Should we take it by force or with humble love?” Always decide: "I will take it with humble love." You will decide so once and for all, and you will be able to conquer the whole world. Humility of love is a terrible force, the strongest of all, and there is nothing like it.
Religious topics are given a significant place on the pages of the Writer's Diary, which is a collection of journalistic essays. One of the central themes of the "Diary" is the fate of the Russian people and the significance of the Orthodox faith for them:
They say that the Russian people do not know the Gospel well, they do not know the basic rules of faith. Of course, so, but he knows Christ and carries Him in his heart from time immemorial. There is no doubt about this. How is a true presentation of Christ possible without a doctrine of faith? This is a different issue. But a heartfelt knowledge of Christ and a true conception of Him fully exist. It is passed down from generation to generation and has merged with the hearts of people. Perhaps the only love of the Russian people is Christ, and they love His image in their own way, that is, to the point of suffering. The name of the Orthodox, that is, the most truly confessing Christ, he is most proud of.
The "Russian idea", according to Dostoevsky, is nothing but Orthodoxy, which the Russian people can convey to all mankind. In this Dostoevsky sees that Russian "socialism" which is the opposite of atheistic communism:
The vast majority of the Russian people are Orthodox and live by the idea of Orthodoxy in fullness, although they do not understand this idea responsibly and scientifically. In essence, in our people, besides this “idea”, there is no one, and everything comes from it alone, at least our people want it that way, with all their heart and deep conviction ... I’m not talking about church buildings now and not about rhymes, I am now talking about our Russian “socialism” (and I take this word opposite to the church precisely to clarify my thought, no matter how strange it may seem), the goal and outcome of which is the nationwide and universal Church, realized on earth, since the earth can contain it. I'm talking about the tireless thirst in the Russian people, always inherent in it, for the great, universal, nationwide, all-brotherly unity in the name of Christ. And if this unity does not yet exist, if the Church has not yet been fully built up, no longer in prayer alone, but in deeds, then nevertheless the instinct of this Church and her tireless thirst, sometimes even almost unconscious, are undoubtedly present in the heart of our many millions of people. The socialism of the Russian people does not lie in communism, not in mechanical forms: they believe that they will be saved only in the end by all-world unity in the name of Christ... And here we can directly put the formula: who among our people does not understand his Orthodoxy and its ultimate goals, he will never understand even our people themselves.
Following Gogol, who defended the Church and the clergy in his Selected Places, Dostoevsky speaks with reverence about the activities of Orthodox bishops and priests, contrasting them with visiting Protestant missionaries:
Well, what kind of Protestant is our people really, and what kind of German is he? And why should he learn German in order to sing psalms? And does not everything, everything he seeks, lie in Orthodoxy? Is it not in him alone that the truth and the salvation of the Russian people, and in future centuries, for all mankind? Is it not in Orthodoxy alone that the Divine face of Christ was preserved in all its purity? And perhaps the most important pre-chosen purpose of the Russian people in the fate of all mankind consists only in preserving this Divine image of Christ in all its purity, and when the time comes, to reveal this image to a world that has lost its ways! .. Well, by the way : what about our priests? What do you hear about them? And our priests, too, they say, are waking up. Our spiritual estate, they say, has long since begun to show signs of life. With tenderness we read the edifications of the lords in their churches about preaching and a fine life. Our shepherds, according to all reports, are determined to write sermons and prepare to deliver them... We have many good shepherds, perhaps more than we can hope for or even deserve.
If Gogol and Dostoevsky came to realize the truth and salvation of the Orthodox Church, then L.N. Tolstoy (1828-1910), on the contrary, departed from Orthodoxy and stood in open opposition to the Church. About his spiritual path Tolstoy says in his "Confession": "I was baptized and brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith. I was taught it from childhood and throughout my adolescence and youth. But when I graduated from the second year of university at the age of 18, I no longer believed in anything that was taught to me. With amazing frankness, Tolstoy talks about the way of life, thoughtless and immoral, which he led in his youth, and about the spiritual crisis that hit him at the age of fifty and almost drove him to suicide.
In search of a way out, Tolstoy immersed himself in reading philosophical and religious literature, communicated with official representatives of the Church, monks and wanderers. Intellectual search led Tolstoy to faith in God and return to the Church; he again, after a long break, began to go to church regularly, observe fasts, go to confession and take communion. However, communion did not have a renewing and life-giving effect on Tolstoy; on the contrary, it left a heavy mark on the writer's soul, which was connected, apparently, with his internal state.
Tolstoy's return to Orthodox Christianity was short-lived and superficial. In Christianity, he perceived only the moral side, while the entire mystical side, including the Sacraments of the Church, remained alien to him, since it did not fit into the framework of rational knowledge. Tolstoy's worldview was characterized by extreme rationalism, and it was precisely this rationalism that prevented him from accepting Christianity in its entirety.
After a long and painful search, which did not end with a meeting with a personal God, with the Living God, Tolstoy came to the creation of his own religion, which was based on faith in God as an impersonal principle that guides human morality. This religion, which combined only separate elements of Christianity, Buddhism and Islam, was distinguished by extreme syncretism and bordered on pantheism. In Jesus Christ, Tolstoy did not recognize the incarnate God, considering Him only one of the outstanding teachers of morality along with Buddha and Mohammed. Tolstoy did not create his own theology, and his numerous religious and philosophical writings, which followed the Confession, were mainly of a moral and didactic nature. An important element of Tolstoy's teaching was the idea of non-resistance to evil by violence, which he borrowed from Christianity, but carried to the extreme and opposed to church teaching.
Tolstoy entered the history of Russian literature as a great writer, author of the novels "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina", numerous novels and short stories. However, Tolstoy entered the history of the Orthodox Church as a blasphemer and false teacher, who sowed temptation and confusion. In his writings written after the Confession, both literary and moral and journalistic, Tolstoy attacked the Orthodox Church with sharp and vicious attacks. His "Study of Dogmatic Theology" is a pamphlet in which Orthodox theology (Tolstoy studied it extremely superficially - mainly from catechisms and seminary textbooks) is subjected to derogatory criticism. The novel "Resurrection" contains a caricature description of Orthodox worship, which is presented as a series of "manipulations" with bread and wine, "meaningless verbiage" and "blasphemous sorcery", allegedly contrary to the teachings of Christ.
Not limiting himself to attacks on the teaching and worship of the Orthodox Church, in the 1880s Tolstoy began to remake the Gospel and published several works in which the Gospel was "cleansed" of mysticism and miracles. In the Tolstoy version of the Gospel, there is no story about the birth of Jesus from the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit, about the resurrection of Christ, many miracles of the Savior are missing or distorted. In a work titled "Combining and Translation of the Four Gospels," Tolstoy presents an arbitrary, tendentious, and at times frankly illiterate translation of selected gospel passages, with a commentary reflecting Tolstoy's personal dislike for the Orthodox Church.
The anti-church orientation of Tolstoy's literary and moral-journalistic activities in the 1880-1890s caused sharp criticism of him from the Church, which only further embittered the writer. On February 20, 1901, by decision of the Holy Synod, Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Church. The resolution of the Synod contained the following formula for excommunication: "... The Church does not consider him a member and cannot consider him until he repents and restores his communion with her." Tolstoy's excommunication from the Church caused a huge public outcry: liberal circles accused the Church of cruelty towards the great writer. However, in his “Response to the Synod” dated April 4, 1901, Tolstoy wrote: “The fact that I renounced the Church that calls itself Orthodox is completely fair ... the grossest superstitions and sorcery, which completely hides the whole meaning of the Christian doctrine. Tolstoy's excommunication was thus only a statement of the fact that Tolstoy did not deny, and which consisted in Tolstoy's conscious and voluntary renunciation of the Church and of Christ, which was recorded in many of his writings.
Until the last days of his life, Tolstoy continued to spread his teaching, which gained many followers. Some of them united in communities of a sectarian nature - with their own cult, which included "prayer to Christ the Sun", "prayer of Tolstoy", "prayer of Muhammad" and other works of folk art. A dense ring of his admirers formed around Tolstoy, who were vigilant to ensure that the writer did not change his teaching. A few days before his death, Tolstoy, unexpectedly for everyone, secretly left his estate in Yasnaya Polyana and went to Optina Pustyn. The question of what attracted him to the heart of Orthodox Russian Christianity will forever remain a mystery. Before reaching the monastery, Tolstoy fell ill with severe pneumonia at the Astapovo postal station. His wife and several other close people came here to see him, who found him in a difficult mental and physical condition. From Optina Hermitage, Elder Barsanuphius was sent to Tolstoy in case the writer wanted to repent and reunite with the Church before his death. But Tolstoy's entourage did not notify the writer of his arrival and did not allow the elder to see the dying man - the risk of destroying Tolstoyism by breaking with Tolstoy himself was too great. The writer died without repentance and took with him to the grave the secret of his dying spiritual throwings.
In Russian literature of the 19th century there were no more opposite personalities than Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. They differed in everything, including in aesthetic views, in philosophical anthropology, in religious experience and worldview. Dostoevsky argued that "beauty will save the world", while Tolstoy insisted that "the concept of beauty not only does not coincide with goodness, but is rather opposed to it." Dostoevsky believed in a personal God, in the divinity of Jesus Christ, and in the salvation of the Orthodox Church; Tolstoy believed in an impersonal Divine Being, denied the Divinity of Christ, and rejected the Orthodox Church. And yet, not only Dostoevsky, but also Tolstoy cannot be understood outside of Orthodoxy.
L. Tolstoy is Russian to the marrow of his bones, and he could have arisen only on Russian Orthodox soil, although he changed Orthodoxy ... - writes N. Berdyaev. - Tolstoy belonged to the highest cultural stratum, which fell away in a significant part from the Orthodox faith, which the people lived ... He wanted to believe, as ordinary people believe, not spoiled by culture. But he did not succeed in the slightest degree ... The common people believed in the Orthodox way. Orthodox faith in the mind of Tolstoy collides irreconcilably with his mind.
Among other Russian writers who paid great attention to religious topics, N.S. Leskov (1831-1895). He was one of the few secular writers who made representatives of the clergy the protagonists of his works. Leskov's novel "Soboryane" is a chronicle of the life of a provincial archpriest, written with great skill and knowledge of church life (Leskov himself was the grandson of a priest). The protagonist of the story "At the End of the World" is an Orthodox bishop sent to missionary service in Siberia. Religious themes are touched upon in many other works by Leskov, including the stories The Sealed Angel and The Enchanted Wanderer. Leskov's well-known essay "Trifles of Bishop's Life" is a collection of stories and anecdotes from the life of Russian bishops of the 19th century: one of the main characters of the book is Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow. The essays “The Sovereign's Court”, “Bishops' Detours”, “Diocesan Court”, “Pastor's Shadows”, “Synodal Persons” and others adjoin the same genre. Peru Leskov owns works of religious and moral content, such as "The Mirror of the Life of a True Disciple of Christ", "Prophecies about the Messiah", "Point to the Book of the New Testament", "Selection of Fatherly Opinions on the Importance of Holy Scripture". In the last years of his life, Leskov fell under the influence of Tolstoy, began to show interest in schism, sectarianism and Protestantism, and departed from traditional Orthodoxy. However, in the history of Russian literature, his name has remained associated primarily with stories and stories from the life of the clergy, which won him reader recognition.
It is necessary to mention the influence of Orthodoxy on the work of A.P. Chekhov (1860-1904), in his stories referring to the images of seminarians, priests and bishops, to the description of prayer and Orthodox worship. The action of Chekhov's stories often takes place on Holy Week or Easter. In The Student, a twenty-two-year-old student of the Theological Academy on Good Friday tells the story of Peter's denial to two women. In the story “In Holy Week,” a nine-year-old boy describes confession and communion in an Orthodox church. The story "Holy Night" tells about two monks, one of whom dies on the eve of Easter. The most famous religious work of Chekhov is the story "Bishop", which tells about the last weeks of the life of a provincial vicar bishop, who recently arrived from abroad. In the description of the rite of the "twelve Gospels" performed on the eve of Good Friday, Chekhov's love for the Orthodox church service is felt:
Throughout all the twelve Gospels, one had to stand motionless in the middle of the church, and the first Gospel, the longest, most beautiful, was read by him himself. A cheerful, healthy mood took possession of him. This first gospel, "Now be glorified the Son of Man," he knew by heart; and as he read, from time to time he raised his eyes and saw on both sides a whole sea of lights, heard the crackling of candles, but there were no people to be seen, as in past years, and it seemed that they were all the same people that were then in childhood and in youth, that they will be the same every year, and until when, only God knows. His father was a deacon, his grandfather was a priest, his great-grandfather was a deacon, and his whole family, perhaps from the time of the adoption of Christianity in Russia, belonged to the clergy, and his love for church services, the clergy, for the ringing of bells was innate, deep in him. , ineradicable; in church, especially when he himself participated in the service, he felt active, cheerful, happy.
The imprint of this innate and ineradicable ecclesiality lies on all Russian literature of the nineteenth century.
MAOU "Molchanovskaya secondary school No. 1"
Research work
"Christian Plots and Images in Russian Literature"
Kritskaya L.I.
Eremina I.V. - teacher of the Russian language and literature, Moscow School of Education No. 1
Molchanovo - 2014
Christian plots and images in Russian literature
Introduction
Our entire culture is built on the basis of folklore, antiquity and the Bible.
The Bible is an outstanding monument. The book of books created by the nations.
The Bible is a source of stories and images for art. Biblical motifs run through all our literature. The main thing, according to Christianity, was the Word, and the Bible helps to return it. It helps to see a person from humanitarian positions. Each time requires truths, and therefore an appeal to biblical postulates.
Literature refers to the inner world of man, his spirituality. The main character becomes a person who lives according to evangelical principles, a person whose main thing in life is the work of his spirit, free from the influence of the environment.
Christian ideas are a source of unfading light, which is served in order to overcome chaos in oneself and in the world with it.
From the very beginning of the Christian era, many books about Christ were written, but the church recognized, that is, canonized, only four Gospels, and the rest - up to fifty in number! - brought either to the list of the renounced, or to the list of apocrypha, allowed not for worship, but for ordinary Christian reading. The Apocrypha were dedicated to both Christ and practically all the people from his inner circle. Once these apocrypha, collected in the Cheti-Minei and retold, for example, by Dmitry Rostovsky, were a favorite reading in Russia. “Consequently, Christian literature has its own Holy Sea and there are streams and rivers flowing into it or, rather, flowing from it.” Christianity, carrying a new worldview that differs from pagan ideas about the origin of the Universe, about the gods, about the history of the human race, laid the foundations of Russian written culture, caused the emergence of a class of literate.
The Old Testament history is the history of trials, falls, spiritual cleansing and renewal, faith and unbelief of individuals and the whole nation - from the Creation of the world to the coming of the Messiah Jesus Christ, with whose name the New Testament is associated.
The New Testament introduces us to the life and teachings of Christ the Savior from his miraculous birth to the crucifixion, appearance to the people and ascension. At the same time, the Gospel must be considered from several angles: religious teaching, ethical and legal source, historical and literary work.
The Bible is the most important (key) ethical and legal work.
At the same time, the Bible is a literary monument, light in the basis of our entire written verbal culture. The images and plots of the Bible inspired more than one generation of writers and poets. Against the backdrop of biblical literary stories, we often perceive today's events. In the Bible we find the beginnings of many literary genres. Prayers, psalms have found continuation in poetry, in hymns...
Many biblical words and expressions have become proverbs and sayings, enriching our speech and thought. Many plots formed the basis of stories, novels, novels by writers of different times and peoples. For example, "The Brothers Karamazov", "Crime and Punishment" by F. M. Dostoevsky, "The Righteous" by N. S. Leskov, "Tales" by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, "Judas Iscariot", "The Life of Vasily Thebesky" by L. Andreev , “The Master and Margarita” by M. A. Bulgakov, “A Golden Cloud Spent the Night”, A. Pristavkin “Yushka” by A. Platonov, “The Block” by Ch. Aitmatov.
The Russian bookish word arose as a Christian word. It was the word of the Bible, liturgy, lives, the word of the Church Fathers and saints. First of all, our writing has learned to speak about God and, remembering Him, to tell about earthly affairs.
Starting from ancient literature to the works of today, all our Russian literature is colored by the light of Christ, penetrating into all corners of the world and consciousness. Our literature is characterized by the search for truth and Good, commanded by Jesus, so it is oriented towards the highest, absolute values.
Christianity introduced a higher principle into literature, gave a special structure of thought and speech. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth" - that's where poetry comes from. Christ is the Logos, the incarnate word contained in itself the fullness of truth, beauty and goodness.
The sounds of biblical speech always gave rise to a lively response in a sensitive soul.
The biblical word is a storehouse of knowledge of God, thousands of years of wisdom and moral experience, because it is an unsurpassed example of artistic speech. This side of Scripture has long been close to Russian literature. “We find many lyrical poems in the Old Testament,” Nikolai Yazvitsky noted in 1915. “In addition to the hymns and songs scattered in the books of Genesis and the Prophets, the whole book of Psalms can be considered a collection of spiritual odes”
Christian motifs enter literature in different ways, receive different artistic development. But they always give creativity a spiritually ascending direction, they orient it towards something absolutely valuable.
All Russian literature of the 19th century was imbued with gospel motifs, ideas about life based on Christian commandments were natural for people of the last century. F. M. Dostoevsky warned our 20th century that the retreat, the “crime” of moral norms leads to the destruction of life.
Christian symbols in the novel "Crime and Punishment" by F. M. Dostoevsky
For the first time, religious themes are seriously introduced by F.M. Dostoevsky. In his work, four main evangelical ideas can be distinguished:
"man is a mystery";
“a low soul, having come out from under oppression, oppresses itself”;
"the world will be saved by beauty";
"ugliness will kill."
The writer knew the Gospel from childhood, and in adulthood it was his reference book. The circumstances of the death penalty of the Petrashevites made it possible to experience a state on the verge of death, which turned Dostoevsky to God. The winter ray of sun from the dome of the cathedral marked the physical embodiment of his soul. On the way to hard labor, the writer met with the wives of the Decembrists. The women gave him a Bible. He did not part with her for four years. Dostoevsky experienced the life of Jesus as a reflection of his own: in the name of what suffering? It is this very copy of the Gospel that Dostoevsky describes in the novel “Crime and Punishment”: “There was some book on the chest of drawers ... It was the New Testament in Russian translation. The book is old, used, leather-bound. This book has a lot of pages covered with pencil and pen marks, some places marked with a fingernail. These marks are an important evidence for understanding the religious and creative quests of the great writer. “I will tell you about myself that I am a child of disbelief and consciousness up to now and even ... to the grave cover ... I have put together a symbol of faith in which everything is clear and holy to me. This symbol is very simple; here it is: to believe that there is nothing more beautiful, deeper, more sympathetic, more reasonable, more courageous and more perfect than Christ, and not only not, but with zealous love I tell myself that it cannot be. Moreover, if someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, then I would rather stay with Christ than with the truth. (from a letter from F. M. Dostoevsky to N. D. Fonvizina).
The question of faith and unbelief became the main one in the life and work of the writer. This problem is at the center of his best novels: The Idiot, Demons, The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment. The works of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky are filled with various symbols and associations; a huge place among them is occupied by motifs and images borrowed from the Bible and introduced by the writer in order to warn humanity, which is on the verge of a global catastrophe, the Last Judgment, the end of the world. And the reason for this, according to the writer, is the social system. The hero of "Demons" Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, rethinking the gospel legend, comes to the conclusion: "This is exactly like our Russia. These demons leaving the patient and entering the pigs are all the sores, all the uncleanness, all the demons and all the demons that have accumulated in our great and sweet patient, in our Russia, for centuries, for centuries!”
For Dostoevsky, the use of biblical myths and images is not an end in itself. They served as illustrations for his reflections on the tragic fate of the world and Russia as part of world civilization. Did the writer see the paths leading to the improvement of society, to the mitigation of morals, to tolerance and mercy? Undoubtedly. The key to the revival of Russia, he considered the appeal to the idea of Christ. The theme of the spiritual resurrection of the individual, which Dostoevsky considered the main one in literature, pervades all his work.
"Crime and Punishment", which is based on the theme of moral decline and spiritual rebirth of man, is a novel in which the writer presents his Christianity. There can be many reasons for the death of the soul, but here is the path that leads to salvation, according to the writer, there is only one - this is the path of turning to God. I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me, even if he dies, will come to life, ”the hero hears the gospel truth from the lips of Sonechka Marmeladova.
Having made Raskolnikov's murder of an old pawnbroker the basis of the plot, Dostoevsky reveals the soul of a criminal who has violated the moral law: "Thou shalt not kill" is one of the main biblical commandments. The reason for the terrible delusions of the human mind, rationally explaining and arithmetically proving the justice and benefit of the murder of a mischievous old woman, the writer sees in the retreat of the hero from God.
Raskolnikov is an ideologue. He puts forward an anti-Christian idea. He divided all people into "rulers" and "trembling creatures." Raskolnikov believed that everything was allowed to the “lords”, even “blood for conscience”, and “trembling creatures” could only produce their own kind.
Raskolnikov tramples on the sacred - unshakable right for human consciousness: he encroaches on a person.
“Do not kill. Do not steal! - written in an ancient book. These are the commandments of mankind, axioms accepted without proof. Raskolnikov dared to doubt, decided to check them. And Dostoevsky shows how this incredible doubt is followed by a host of other agonizing doubts and ideas for those who violate the moral law - and it seems that only death can save him from torment: by sinning with his neighbor, a person harms himself. Suffering affects not only the spiritual sphere of the criminal, but also his body: nightmares, frenzy, seizures, fainting, fever, trembling, unconsciousness - destruction occurs at all levels. Raskolnikov is convinced by his own experience that the moral law is not prejudice: “Did I kill the old woman? I killed myself, not the old woman! Here he slammed himself, forever! The murder turned out to be not a crime for Raskolnikov, but a punishment, suicide, a renunciation of everyone and everything. Raskolnikov's soul is drawn to only one person - to Sonya, to the same, like him, a violator of the moral law, rejected by people. It is with the image of this heroine that the gospel motifs in the novel are connected.
Three times he comes to Sonya. Raskolnikov sees in her a kind of "ally" in crime. But Sonya goes to shame and humiliation for the sake of saving others. She is endowed with the gift of infinite compassion for people, in the name of love for them she is ready to endure any suffering. One of the most important gospel motives in the novel is connected with the image of Sonya Marmeladova - the motive of the victim: “There is no greater love than if someone lays down his life for his friends” (John 15, 13) Like the Savior who endured the torments of Calvary for us, Sonya betrayed himself to a daily painful execution for the sake of a consumptive stepmother and her hungry children.
Sonya Marmeladova is Raskolnikov's main opponent in the novel. She - with her whole fate, character, choice, way of thinking, self-awareness opposes his cruel and terrible life scheme. Sonya, placed in the same inhuman conditions of existence as he, even more humiliated than he, is different. A different system of values was embodied in her life. By sacrificing herself, giving her body to be mocked, she retained a living soul and that necessary connection with the world that the transgressor Raskolnikov breaks, tormented by the blood shed in the name of the idea. In Sonya's suffering is the atonement of sin, without which the world and the person who creates it, lost his way and lost his way to the temple, do not exist. In the terrible world of the novel, Sonya is that moral absolute, the bright pole that attracts everyone.
But the most important thing for understanding the ideological meaning of the novel is the motive of the spiritual death of a person who has fallen away from God and his spiritual resurrection. “I am the vine and you are the branches; whoever abides in Me and I in him bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing... Whoever does not abide in Me will be cast out like a branch and wither; but such branches are collected and thrown into the fire, and they are burned,” the Savior said to his disciples at the Last Supper” (John 15, 5-6). Such a dry branch is similar to the protagonist of the novel.
In the fourth chapter of the 4th part, which is the climax in the novel, the author's intention becomes clear: not only the spiritual beauty of Sonechka, her selflessness in the name of love, her meekness is shown to the reader by Dostoevsky, but most importantly - the source of strength to live in unbearable conditions - faith in God. Sonechka becomes a guardian angel for Raskolnikov: reading in the apartment of the Kapernaumovs (the symbolic character of this name is obvious: Capernaum is a city in Galilee, where Christ performed many miracles of healing the sick) to him an eternal book, namely an episode from the Gospel of John about the greatest miracle performed Savior - about the resurrection of Lazarus, she tries to infect him with her faith, pour her religious feelings into him. It is here that the words of Christ are heard, which are very important for understanding the novel: “I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me, even if he dies, will live. And whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” In this scene, Sonya's faith and Raskolnikov's unbelief collide. The soul of Raskolnikov, "killed" by a perfect crime, will have to gain faith and rise again, like Lazarus.
Sonya, whose soul is full of “insatiable compassion”, having learned about Raskolnikov’s crime, not only sends him to the crossroads (“... bow, kiss the ground you defiled first, and then bow to the whole world, on all four sides, and tell everyone aloud : “I killed!” Then God will send you life again”), but she is also ready to take on his cross and go with him to the end: “Together we will go to suffer, together we will bear the cross! ..” Putting her cross on him, she as if blesses him on the hard path of the torment of the cross, with which only it is possible to atone for what he has done. The theme of the Way of the Cross is another of the gospel motifs of the novel Crime and Punishment.
The hero's path of suffering is his path to God, but this path is difficult and long. Two years later, in hard labor, the hero’s epiphany comes: in nightmares about a pestilence that struck all of humanity, Raskolnikov’s illness is easily recognized; it is still the same idea, but only brought to its limit, embodied on a planetary scale. A person who has fallen away from God loses the ability to distinguish between good and evil and carries a terrible danger for all mankind. Demons, possessing people, lead the world to destruction. But demons will be free where people expel God from their souls. The picture of a man dying from a “terrible pestilence”, seen by Raskolnikov, in illness, in delirium, is the direct cause of the coup that happened to him. These dreams served as an impetus for the resurrection of the hero. It is no coincidence that the disease is timed to coincide with the end of Great Lent and Holy Week, and in the second week after the Resurrection of Christ, a miracle of transfiguration occurs, which Sonya dreamed and prayed for while reading the Gospel chapter. In the epilogue, we see Raskolnikov crying and hugging Sonya's legs. "They were resurrected by love ... he was resurrected, and he knew it ... Under his pillow lay the Gospel ... This book belonged to her, it was the one from which she read to him about the resurrection of Lazarus."
The entire novel "Crime and Punishment" is built on the motif of the resurrection of man to a new life. The path of the hero is the path through death to faith and resurrection.
For Dostoevsky, Christ stood at the center of both being and literature. The idea that if there is no God, then everything is allowed, haunted the writer: "Having rejected Christ, they will flood the whole world with blood." Therefore, gospel motifs occupy an important place in Dostoevsky's prose.
Christian views of LN Tolstoy.
Tolstoy entered Russian literature in the 1950s. He was immediately noticed by critics. N.g. Chernyshevsky singled out two features of the writer's style and worldview: Tolstoy's interest in the "dialectic of the soul" and the purity of moral feeling (special morality).
Tolstoy's special self-consciousness is trust in the world. For him, naturalness and simplicity were the highest value. They had the idea of simplification. Tolstoy himself also tried to lead a simple life, although a count, although a writer.
Lev Nikolaevich came to literature with his hero. A complex of features that were dear to the writer in the hero: conscience (“conscience is God in me”), naturalness, love of life. The ideal of the perfect man for Tolstoy was not a man of ideas, not a man of action, but a man capable of changing himself.
Tolstoy's novel War and Peace was published simultaneously with Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. The course of the novel from artificiality and unnaturalness to simplicity.
The main characters are close to each other in that they are true to the idea.
Tolstoy embodied his idea of folk, natural life in the image of Platon Karataev. “A round, kind person with soothing neat movements, who knows how to do everything“ not very well and not very badly ”, Karataev does not think about anything. He lives like a bird, as freely inwardly in captivity as in freedom. Every evening he says: “Lay, Lord, with a pebble, raise it with a ball”; every morning: "He lay down - curled up, got up - shook himself" - and nothing worries him, except for the simplest natural needs of a person, he rejoices in everything, knows how to find the bright side in everything. His peasant warehouse, his jokes, kindness became for Pierre "the personification of the spirit of simplicity and truth." Pierre Bezukhov remembered Karataev for life.
In the image of Platon Karataev, Tolstoy embodied his favorite Christian idea of non-resistance to evil by violence.
Only in the 70s Tolstoy in his work on the novel "Anna Karenina" refers to the idea of faith. The reason for this appeal was the crisis that Tolstoy experienced in the mid-70s. During these years, literature for the writer is the most disgusting passion. Tolstoy wants to give up writing, he begins to engage in pedagogy: he teaches peasant children, develops his own pedagogical theory. Tolstoy carries out reforms on his estate, brings up his children.
In the 1970s, Tolstoy changed the scale of his artistic interest. He writes about the present. In the novel "Anna Karenina" - the story of two private people: Karenina and Levin. The main thing in it is a religious attitude to the world. For the novel, Tolstoy took an epigraph from their Bible, from the Old Testament: "Vengeance is mine, and I will repay"
At first, Tolstoy wanted to write a novel about an unfaithful wife, but the idea changed in the hall of the work.
Anna Karenina is cheating on her husband, so she is a sinner. It seems to her that she is right, natural, since she does not love Karenin. But by making this little lie, Anna gets caught in a web of lies. Many relationships have changed, and most importantly - with Serezha. But more than anything else, she loves her son, but he becomes a stranger to her. Confused in her relationship with Vronsky, Karenina decides to commit suicide. She will be rewarded for this: secular rumor, legal law and the court of conscience. In the novel, all three of these possibilities for Tolstoy's condemnation of Anna Karenina's act are disputed. Only God can judge Anna.
Karenina decided to take revenge on Vronsky. But at the time of the suicides, she pays attention to small details: “She wanted to fall under the first carriage, which had caught up with her in the middle. But the red bag, which she began to remove from her hand, delayed her, and it was already too late: the middle passed her. We had to wait for the next car. A feeling similar to the one she experienced when, while bathing, she was preparing to enter the water, seized her, and she crossed herself. The habitual gesture of the sign of the cross evoked in her soul a whole series of girlish and childhood memories, and suddenly the darkness that covered everything for her broke, and life appeared to her for a moment with all her bright past joys.
She feels terror under the wheels. She wanted to get up and straighten up, but some force crushed and shredded her. Death Tolstoy portrayed terribly. The measure of sin requires the measure of punishment. Karenina is punished by God in this way and this is revenge for sin. Tolstoy begins to perceive human life as a tragedy.
Only since the 80s did Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy come to the canonical Orthodox faith.
For Dostoevsky, the most important problem was the resurrection. And for Tolstoy, the same problem is interesting as the problem of overcoming death. "The Devil", "Father Sergius" and, finally, the story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich". The hero of this story resembles Karenin. Ivan Ilyich was accustomed to power, to the fact that one stroke of the pen can decide the fate of a person. And it is with him that something unusual happens: he slipped, hit - but this accidental blow turns into a serious illness. Doctors can't help. And the consciousness of imminent death comes.
All relatives: wife, daughter, son - become strangers to the hero. Nobody needs him and suffers for real. There was only a servant in the house, a healthy and handsome guy, as a human being became close to Ivan Ilyich. The guy says: "Why don't you work hard - we will all die."
This is a Christian idea: a man cannot die alone. Death is work, when one dies, all work. To die alone is suicide.
Ivan Ilyich - a man of an atheistic warehouse, a secular man, doomed to inaction, begins to remember his life. It turns out that he did not live on his own. My whole life was in the hands of chance, but I was lucky all the time. This was spiritual death. Before his death, Ivan Ilyich decides to ask his wife for forgiveness, but instead of "forgive me!" he says "miss it!". The hero is in a state of final agony. The wife makes it difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Dying, he hears a voice: "It's all over." Ivan Ilyich heard these words and repeated them in his soul. Death is over, he told himself. “She is no more.” His consciousness became different, Christian. The resurrected Jesus is a symbol of the soul and conscience.
The idea of the resurrection of the soul, as the main idea of Leo Tolstoy's work, became the main one in the novel "Sunday".
The protagonist of the novel, Prince Nekhlyudov, experiences fear and awakening of conscience in court. He understands his fatal role in the fate of Katyusha Maslova.
Nekhlyudov is an honest, natural man. In court, he confesses to Maslova, who did not recognize him, and offers to atone for his sin - to marry. But she is embittered, indifferent and refuses him.
Following the convicted Nekhlyudov goes to Siberia. Here there is a twist of fate: Maslova falls in love with another. But Nekhlyudov can no longer turn back, he has become different.
Having nothing to do, he opens the commandments of Christ and discovers that such suffering has already happened.
The reading of the commandments brought about the resurrection. Nekhlyudov stared at the light of the burning lamp and froze. Remembering all the ugliness of our life, he clearly imagined what this life would be like if people were brought up on these rules. And a delight that had not been experienced for a long time seized his soul. It was as though he, after a long languor and suffering, suddenly found peace and freedom.
He did not sleep all night and, as it happens with many, many who read the Gospel for the first time, while reading, he understood in all their meaning the words, read many times and unnoticed. Like a sponge, he absorbed water into himself that necessary, important and joyful thing that was revealed to him in this book. And everything he read seemed familiar to him, seemed to confirm, brought to consciousness what he had known for a long time, before, but did not fully realize and did not believe.
Katyusha Maslova is also resurrected.
Tolstoy's thought, like Dostoevsky's, is that true insight into God is possible only through personal suffering. And this is the eternal idea of all Russian literature. The result of Russian classical literature is the knowledge of the Living Faith.
Christian motifs in fairy tales M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin
Just like F. M. Dostoevsky and L. N. Tolstoy, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin developed his own system of moral philosophy, which has deep roots in the millennial cultural tradition of mankind. From childhood, the writer knew and understood the Bible perfectly, especially the Gospel, which played a unique role in his self-education, he will remember his contact with the great book in his last novel “Poshekhonskaya Antiquity”: “The Gospel was such a life-giving ray for me ... it sowed the rudiments in my heart common human conscience. In a word, I have already left the consciousness of vegetation and began to realize myself as a man. Not only that: I transferred the right to this consciousness to others. Up to now I have known nothing about the hungry, nor about the suffering and burdened, but I have seen only human beings, formed under the influence of the indestructible order of things; now these humiliated and insulted stood before me, radiant with light, and loudly cried out against the innate injustice, which gave them nothing but fetters, and insistently demanded the restoration of the violated right to participate in life. The writer becomes a defender of the humiliated and offended, a fighter against spiritual slavery. In this relentless struggle, the Bible turns out to be a true ally. Numerous biblical images, motifs, plots, borrowed by Shchedrin from both the Old and New Testaments, make it possible to discover and understand the multidimensionality of Shchedrin's creativity. They figuratively, succinctly and succinctly convey important universal human content and reveal the secret and passionate desire of the writer to enter the soul of every reader, to awaken dormant moral forces in it. The ability to understand precisely the hidden meaning of one's existence makes any person wiser, and his worldview more philosophical. To develop this ability in oneself - to see the eternal, parable content in the external, momentary - helps with his mature creativity - “Tales for children of a fair age” - Saltykov-Shchedrin.
The plot "not just fairy tales, not that were" "Village fire" introduces the peasants-fire victims, with their unfortunate fate and is directly compared with the biblical story of Job, who, by the will of God, went through terrible, inhuman suffering and torment in the name of testing sincerity and strength his faith. The roll call is bitterly ironic. The tragedy of modern Jobs is a hundred times worse: they have no hope for a successful outcome, and the strain of their spiritual strength costs them their lives.
In the fairy tale “The Fool”, the gospel motive “you must love everyone!”, Transmitted by Jesus Christ to people as a moral law, becomes the core one: “Love your neighbor ... love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and persecute you” (Matt., 5 ). The bitter sarcasm and deep sadness of the author are caused by the fact that the hero Ivanushka, who since childhood by nature lives in accordance with this commandment, in human society seems to be a fool, “blissful”. The writer has a tragic feeling from this picture of the moral perversion of a society that has not changed since the time when Jesus Christ came with a sermon of love and meekness. Mankind does not fulfill the promise given to God, the covenant. Such apostasy has disastrous consequences.
In the fairy tale-parable "Hyena" the satirist speaks about one "breed" of morally fallen people - "hyenas". In the finale, the gospel motif arises of the expulsion by Jesus Christ of their possessed man of the legion of demons that entered the herd of pigs (Mark 5). The plot acquires not a tragic, but an optimistic sound: the writer believes, and Jesus strengthens in him the faith and hope that the human will never completely perish and the "hyena" features, demonic spells are doomed to dissipate and disappear.
Saltykov-Shchedrin is not limited to the elementary use of ready-made artistic images and symbols in his works. Many fairy tales relate to the Bible on a different, higher level.
Let's read the fairy tale "The Wise Scribbler", most often interpreted as a tragic reflection on a fruitlessly lived life. The inevitability of death and the inevitability of a moral judgment on oneself, on the life lived, organically introduce the themes of the apocalypse into the fairy tale - the biblical prophecy about the end of the world and the terrible judgment.
The first episode is the story of an old scribbler about how “one day he just didn’t hit his ear a little”. For the piskar and other fish, who were dragged somewhere against their will, all to one place, it really was a terrible judgment. Fear fettered the unfortunate, the fire burned and the water boiled, in which the “sinners” humbled themselves, and only he, the sinless baby, was released “home”, thrown into the river. Not so much the specific images as the very tone of the narrative, the supernatural nature of the event is reminiscent of the apocalypse and makes the reader remember the coming doomsday, which no one can avoid.
The second episode is the sudden awakening of the hero's conscience before his death and his reflections on the past. “The whole life instantly flashed before him. What were his joys? Who did he comfort? To whom did you give good advice? To whom did you say a kind word? Who sheltered, warmed, protected? Who heard about it? Who remembers its existence? And he had to answer all the questions: "No one, no one." The questions that arise in the mind of the scribbler refer to the commandments of Christ, in order to make sure that the life of the hero did not correspond to any of them. The most terrible result is not even that the scribbler has nothing to justify himself from the height of eternal moral values, which he “accidentally” forgot about in his “trembling” for his “belly”. With the plot of the tale, the writer addresses every ordinary person: the theme of life and death in the light of biblical symbolism develops as the theme of the justification of human existence, the need for moral and spiritual perfection of the individual.
Just as organically and naturally close to the Bible is the fairy tale "Konyaga", in which the everyday plot about the plight of a peasant is enlarged to a timeless, universal scale: in the story about the origin of Konyaga and Pustoplyasov from one father, an old horse, a reflection of the biblical story about two sons of one father, Adam, to Cain and Abel. In "Konyaga" we will not find an exact correspondence to the biblical story, but the closeness of the idea, the artistic thought of the two plots is important for the writer. The biblical story introduces into Shchedrin's text the idea of the primordial nature of human sin - mortal enmity between people, which in a fairy tale takes the form of a dramatic division of Russian society into an intellectual elite and an ignorant peasant mass, of the fatal consequences of this internal spiritual break.
In "Christ's Night" the climactic event in sacred history is recreated by poetic means - the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the third day after the crucifixion. The main Christian holiday is dedicated to this event - Easter Saltykov-Shchedrin loved this holiday: the holiday of Christ's bright resurrection brought an amazing feeling of emancipation, spiritual freedom, which the writer so dreamed of for everyone. The holiday symbolized the triumph of light over darkness, spirit over flesh, good over evil.
The same content is guessed in Shchedrin's fairy tale. In it, without hiding, the writer reproduces the gospel myth of the resurrection of Christ: “Rising early on the first day of the week on Sunday, Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom he cast out seven demons. Finally, he appeared to the eleven apostles themselves, who were reclining at the supper ... And he said to them: go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, and whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16)
In Shchedrin's tale, this event was combined and merged with another - the image of the Last Judgment and the picture of the second coming of Jesus Christ. Changes in the gospel text allowed the writer to make not only understandable, but also visible, plastically tangible the ideal theme of the fairy tale - the inevitable resurrection of the human spirit, the triumph of forgiveness and love. To do this, the writer introduced a symbolic landscape into the narrative: the themes of silence and darkness (“the plain becomes numb”, “deep silence”, “snow shroud”, “mourning points of villages”), symbolizing for the writer “terrible bondage”, slavery of the spirit; and the themes of sound and light (“the hum of a bell”, “burning spiers of churches”, “light and warmth”), meaning renewal and liberation of the spirit. The resurrection and appearance of Jesus Christ confirm the victory of light over darkness, spirit over inert matter, life over death, freedom over slavery.
The resurrected Christ meets people three times: with the poor, the rich, and Judas – and judges them. "Peace to you!" - Christ says to the poor people who have not lost faith in the triumph of truth. And the Savior says that the hour of national liberation is near. Then he turns to the crowd of the rich, world-eaters, kulaks. He brands them with a word of censure and opens the way of salvation for them - this is the judgment of their conscience, painful, but fair. These meetings make him remember two episodes of his life: prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane and Golgotha. At these moments, Christ felt his closeness to God and to people who then still, not believing him, mocked him. But Christ realized that they were all embodied in him alone and, suffering for them, he atoned for their sins with his own blood.
And now, when people, having seen with their own eyes the miracle of the resurrection and coming, "filled the air with sobs and fell on their faces," he forgave them, for then they were blinded by malice and hatred, and now the veil has fallen from their eyes, and people have seen the world, bathed in the light of Christ's truth, they believed and were saved. The evil that has blinded people does not exhaust their nature; they are able to heed the goodness and love that the "son of man" came to awaken in their souls.
Only Judas Christ did not forgive the fairy tale. There is no escape for traitors. Christ curses them and dooms them to eternal wandering. This episode caused the most heated debate among the writer's contemporaries. L. N. Tolstoy asked to change the ending of the tale: after all, Christ brought repentance and forgiveness into the world. How to explain such an end to the “Christ night”? For the writer, Judas is the ideological opponent of Christ. He betrayed deliberately, being the only one of all people who knew what he was doing. The punishment of immortality corresponds to the severity of the crime committed by Judas: “Live, damned! And be for future generations a testament to the endless execution that betrayal awaits.
The plot of "Christ's Night" shows that in the center of the fairy-tale world of Saltykov-Shchedrin there has always been the figure of Jesus Christ as a symbol of innocent suffering and self-sacrifice in the name of the triumph of moral and philosophical truth: "Love God and love your neighbor as yourself." The theme of Christian conscience, the gospel truth, which is the leading one in the book, links the individual fairy tales included in it into a single artistic canvas.
The image of social disorders and private human vices turns into a human tragedy under the writer's pen and the writer's testament to future generations to arrange life on new moral and cultural principles.
N.S. Leskov. righteousness theme.
“I love literature as a means that gives me the opportunity to express what I consider to be true and good ...” Leskov was convinced that literature is called upon to raise the human spirit, to strive for the highest, not the lowest, and “evangelical goals” are dearer to her any others. Like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Leskov valued in Christianity practical morality, striving for active goodness. “The universe will someday collapse, each of us will die even earlier, but as long as we live and the world stands, we can and must by all means in our power increase the amount of good in ourselves and around ourselves,” he said. “We will not reach the ideal, but if we try to be kinder and live well, then we will do something ... Christianity itself would be futile if it did not contribute to the multiplication of goodness, truth and peace in people.”
Leskov constantly strived for the knowledge of God. “Religiousness has been in me since childhood, and rather happy, that is, one that early began to reconcile faith with reason in me.” In Leskov's personal life, the angelic divine principle of the soul often encountered ebullition, with the "intolerance" of nature. His path in literature was difficult. Life forces any believer, any seeker, aspiring to God, to solve one main question: how to live according to the commandments of God in a difficult life full of temptations and trials, how to unite the law of heaven with the truth of the world lying in evil? The search for truth was not easy. In the conditions of the abomination of Russian life, the writer began to look for the good and the good. He saw that “the Russian people love to live in an atmosphere of the miraculous and live in the realm of ideas, seeking solutions to the spiritual tasks set by their inner world. Leskov wrote: “The history of the earthly life of Christ and the saints honored by the church is the favorite reading of the Russian people; All other books are still of little interest to him. Therefore, “to promote the development of the people” means “to help the people become Christians, because they want this and it is useful for them.” Leskov confidently, knowingly insisted on this, saying: "I know Russia not in writing ... I was my own person with the people." That is why the writer was looking for his heroes among the people.
“The iconostasis of the righteous and saints” of Russia was called by M. Gorky the gallery of original folk characters created by N.S. Leskov. One of Leskov's best ideas was embodied in them: "Just as a body without a spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead."
Russia Leskov is motley, loud-mouthed, polyphonic. But all the narrators are united by a common generic trait: they are Russian people who profess the Orthodox Christian ideal of active goodness. Together with the author himself, they "love goodness just for the very good and do not expect any reward from it, anywhere." As Orthodox people, they feel like wanderers in this world and are not attached to earthly material goods. All of them are characterized by a disinterested and contemplative attitude to life, which allows them to keenly feel its beauty. In his work, Leskov calls the Russian people to "spiritual progress", moral self-improvement. In the 1870s, he goes looking for the righteous, without whom, according to the popular expression, "not a single city, not a single village stands." “The people, according to the writer, are not inclined to live without faith, and you will not consider the most exalted properties of his nature anywhere, as in his attitude to faith.”
Starting with a vow “I won’t rest until I find at least that small number of three righteous ones, without whom there is“ no hail of standing ”, Leskov gradually expanded his cycle, including 10 works in his last lifetime edition: “Odnodum”, “Pygmy”, “ Cadet Monastery”, “Russian Democrat in Poland”, “Non-lethal Golovan”, “Silverless Engineers”, “Lefty”, “The Enchanted Wanderer”, “The Man on the Watch”, “Sheramur”.
Being a pioneer of the type of righteous man, the writer showed its significance both for public life: “Such people, standing aside from the main historical movement ... make history stronger than others”, and for the civil formation of a person: “Such people are worthy to know and in certain cases of life to imitate them, if they have the strength to contain the noble patriotic spirit that warmed their hearts, inspired the word and guided their actions. The writer asks eternal questions: is it possible to live without succumbing to natural temptations and weaknesses? Can anyone reach God in the soul? Will everyone find their way to the Temple? Does the world need the righteous?
The first of the stories of the cycle conceived by Leskov is Odnodum and the first righteous man is Alexander Afanasyevich Ryzhov. Coming from petty officials, he had a heroic appearance, physical and moral health.
The basis of his righteousness was the Bible. From the age of fourteen he delivered mail, and "neither the distance of the tedious journey, nor the heat, nor the cold, nor the winds, nor the rain frightened him." Ryzhov always had a cherished book with him, he extracted from the Bible "great and solid knowledge, which formed the basis of all his subsequent original life." The hero knew a lot of the Bible by heart and especially loved Isaiah, one of the famous prophets who gave a prediction about the life and deed of Christ. But the main content of Isaiah's prophecy is the denunciation of unbelief and human vices. It was one of these passages that young Ryzhov shouted in the swamp. And biblical wisdom helped him develop moral rules, which he faithfully observed in his life and work. These rules, drawn from the Holy Scriptures and from the conscience of the hero, met both the needs of his mind and conscience, they became his moral catechism: “God is always with me, and besides him, no one is afraid”, “Eat your bread in the sweat of your face” , “God forbids taking bribes”, “I don’t accept gifts”, “if you have a great restraint, then you can get by with a small one”, “it’s not about the dress, but about reason and conscience”, “it’s forbidden to lie by the commandment - I won’t lie” .
The author characterizes his hero: “He honestly served everyone and especially did not please anyone; in his thoughts, he reported to the One, in whom he unfailingly and firmly believed, calling him the Founder and Master of all things”, “pleasure ... consisted in doing one’s duty, served faithfully, in office was“ zealous and serviceable ”,“ was moderate in everyone”, “was not proud”…
So, we see the "biblical eccentric" lives in a biblical way. But this is not a mechanical adherence to established norms, but rules understood and accepted by the soul. They form the highest level of personality, which does not allow even the slightest deviation from the laws of conscience.
Alexander Afanasyevich Ryzhov left behind "a heroic and almost fabulous memory." With a close assessment: "He himself is almost a myth, and his story is a legend" - begins the story "Non-lethal Golovan", which has the subtitle: "From the stories of the three righteous." The hero of this work is given the highest characteristic: a “mythical face” with a “fabulous reputation”. Golovan was nicknamed non-lethal because of the conviction that he is “a special person; a man who is not afraid of death. How does a hero deserve such a reputation?
The author notes that he was a "simple man" from a family of serfs. And he dressed as a “man”, in an age-old, oiled and blackened sheepskin coat, worn both in frost and in heat, but the shirt, although canvas, was always clean, like boiling water, with a long colored tie, and it “informed Golovan’s appearance something fresh and gentlemanly... because he really was a gentleman." In the portrait of Golovan, there is a resemblance to Peter 1. He was 15 inches tall, had a dry and muscular build, swarthy, round-faced, with blue eyes ... A calm and happy smile did not leave his face for a minute. Golovan embodies the physical and spiritual power of the people.
The writer claims that the very fact of his appearance in Orel in the midst of a plague epidemic that claimed many lives is not accidental. In the time of disasters, the people's environment “puts forward heroes of generosity, fearless and selfless people. In ordinary times, they are not visible and often do not stand out from the mass; but he will run into the people of "pimples", and the people single out a chosen one from themselves, and he works miracles that make him a mythical, fabulous, non-lethal face. Golovan was one of those…”
The hero of Leskov is surprisingly capable of any work. He "was in full swing from morning until late at night." This is a Russian man who can handle everything.
Golovan believes in the inherent ability of every person to show goodness and justice at a decisive moment. Forced to act as an adviser, he does not give a ready-made solution, but tries to activate the moral forces of the interlocutor: “... Pray and do it as if you need to die now! Tell me, how would you do it this time?” He will answer. And Golovan will either agree, or say: “And I, brother, dying, that’s how I did it better.” And he will tell everything cheerfully, with his usual smile. People trusted Golovan so much that they trusted him to keep a record of purchases and sales of land. And Golovan died for the people: during the fire, he drowned in a boiling pit, saving someone else's life or someone's property. According to Leskov, a true righteous person does not retire from life, but takes an active part in it, tries to help his neighbor, sometimes forgetting about his own safety. He walks the Christian path.
The hero of the story-chronicle "The Enchanted Wanderer" Ivan Severyanych Flyagin feels some kind of predestination of everything that happens to him: as if someone is watching him and directing his life path through all the accidents of fate. From birth, the hero belongs not only to himself. He is the child promised to God, the praying son. Ivan does not forget about his destiny for a minute. Ivan's life is built according to the well-known Christian canon, concluded in a prayer "for those who swim and travel, in illnesses suffering and captive." According to his way of life, this is a wanderer - a runaway, persecuted, not attached to anything earthly, material. He went through cruel captivity, through terrible Russian ailments, and, having got rid of "all sorrow, anger and need", turned his life to the service of God and the people. According to the plan, behind the enchanted wanderer stands the whole of Russia, whose national image is determined by its Orthodox Christian faith.
The appearance of the hero resembles the Russian hero Ilya Muromets. Ivan has irrepressible strength, which sometimes breaks through in reckless actions. This silushka jumped at the hero in a story with a monk, in a duel with a valiant officer, in a battle with a Tatar hero.
The key to unraveling the mystery of the Russian national character is Flyagin's artistic talent, which is associated with his Orthodox Christian worldview. He sincerely believes in the immortality of the soul and sees in the earthly life of a person only a prologue to eternal life. An Orthodox person keenly feels the short duration of his stay on this earth, he realizes that he is a wanderer in the world. The final pier of Flyagin is a monastery - the house of God.
The Orthodox faith allows Flyagin to look at life disinterestedly and reverently. The hero's view of life is broad and full-blooded, as it is unlimited by anything narrowly pragmatic and utilitarian. Flyagin feels beauty in unity with goodness and truth. The picture of life unfolded by him in the story is God's gift.
Another feature of Flyagin's inner world is also connected with Orthodoxy: in all his actions and deeds, the hero is guided not by his head, but by his heart, an emotional impulse. “A simple Russian God,” said Leskov, “has a simple dwelling -“ in the bosom. Flyagin has the wisdom of the heart, not the mind. From a young age, Ivan has been in love with the life of animals, with the beauty of nature. But a powerful force, not controlled by the mind, sometimes leads to mistakes that have dire consequences. For example, the murder of an innocent monk. The Russian national character, according to Leskov, clearly lacks thought, will, and organization. This gives rise to weaknesses, which, according to the writer, have become a Russian national disaster.
Lesk's hero has a healthy "seed", a fruitful foundation for living development. This seed is Orthodoxy, sown into Ivan's soul at the very beginning of his life's journey by his mother, which grew with the awakening of conscience in the face of a monk who periodically appeared to him and suffered from his mischief.
Loneliness, trial by captivity, homesickness, the tragic fate of the gypsy Grusha - all this awakened Ivan's soul, opened before him the beauty of selflessness, compassion. He goes into the army instead of the only son of the old men. Since then, the meaning of Ivan Flyagin's life has been the desire to help a suffering person in trouble. In monastic seclusion, the Russian hero Ivan Flyagin purifies his soul by performing spiritual feats.
Having gone through an ascetic self-purification, Flyagin, in the spirit of the same folk Orthodoxy, as Leskov understands him, acquires the gift of prophecy. Flyagin is filled with fear for the Russian people: “And tears were given to me, wonderfully plentiful! .. I was crying about my homeland.” Flyagin foresees the great trials and shocks that the Russian people are destined to endure in the coming years, he hears an inner voice: "Arm!" “Are you going to go to war yourself?” they ask him. “But how about it? the hero answers. “Certainly, sir: I really want to die for the people.”
Like many of his contemporaries, Leskov believed that the main thing in the Christian doctrine is the commandment of effective love and that faith without works is dead. It is important to remember God and pray to him, but this is not enough if you do not love your neighbors and are not ready to help anyone who is in trouble. Without good deeds, prayer will not help.
Righteous Leskov - teachers of life. "The perfect love that animates them puts them above all fears."
Alexander Blok. Gospel symbolism in the poem "The Twelve".
The twentieth century. A century of turbulent changes in Russia. The Russian people are looking for the path that the country has to take. And the Church, which for centuries has been the guide of people's moral consciousness, could not but feel the burden of the people's rejection of centuries-old traditions. “The genius gave people new ideals, and, therefore, showed a new path. People followed him, destroying and trampling without hesitation everything that had existed for many centuries, that had been formed and strengthened by dozens of generations,” wrote Leo Tolstoy. But can a person easily and painlessly give up his former existence and go on a new, only theoretically calculated path? Many writers of the 20th century tried to answer this question.
Trying to solve this problem Alexander Blok in the poem "The Twelve", dedicated to October.
What does the image of Jesus Christ in the poem "The Twelve" symbolize?
This is the assessment given to this image by critics and writers in different years.
P. A. Florensky: “The poem“ The Twelve ”is the limit and completion of Blok’s demonism ... The character of the charming vision, the parodic face that appears at the end of the poem“ Jesus ”(note the destruction of the saving name), extremely convincingly proves the state of fear, longing and unreasonable anxiety“ deserving of such time."
A. M. Gorky: “Dostoevsky ... convincingly proved that there is no place for Christ on earth. Blok made the mistake of a half-believing lyricist by placing Christ at the head of the "Twelve"
M. V. Voloshin: “The twelve Red Guards of Blok are depicted without any embellishment and idealization ... there is no data, except for the number 12, to consider them apostles, in the poem. And then, what are these apostles who go out to hunt their Christ? speaks through him.
E. Rostin: “The poet feels that this robber Russia is close to Christ… For Christ came first of all to harlots and robbers and called them the first in his kingdom. And because of this, Christ will be at their head, take their bloody flag and lead them somewhere along their inscrutable paths.
It is quite obvious that the image of Christ is an ideological core, a symbol, thanks to which the "Twelve" acquired a different philosophical sound.
The poem had a huge resonance throughout Russia. She helped to comprehend what was happening, especially since Blok's moral authority was undeniable. Arguing with him, clarifying the ambiguity of the image of Christ, people also clarified their attitude towards the revolution, the Bolsheviks, Bolshevism. It is impossible not to take into account the time, 1918. No one could yet predict how events would develop, what they would lead to.
For many years, Jesus was even perceived as the image of the first communist. It was quite historical. In the first years of Soviet power, the Bolshevik ideas were perceived by the majority precisely as a new Christian doctrine. “Jesus is the pinnacle of humanity, realizing in himself the greatest of all human truths – the truth about the equality of all people ... You are the successors of the work of Jesus,” Academician Pavlov wrote in the Council of People's Commissars, reproaching the Bolsheviks for excessive cruelty, but hoping to be heard.
But did the author of The Twelve share such views? Of course, he was not an atheist, but he separated Christ from the church as a state institution of autocracy. But even the Twelve do without the name of the saint, they do not even recognize him. Twelve Red Guards marching “eh, eh, without a cross” are depicted as murderers who “everything is allowed”, “no regrets” and “drinking blood” is like chewing a seed. Their moral level is so low, and their concepts of life are so primitive, that there is no need to talk about any deep feelings and lofty thoughts. Murder, robbery, drunkenness, debauchery, "black malice" and indifference to the human person - this is the appearance of the new masters of life walking "by sovereign step", and pitch darkness surrounds them for a reason. "God bless!" - exclaim the revolutionaries, who do not believe in God, but call on Him to bless the "global conflagration in the blood" they fanned.
The appearance of Christ with a bloody flag in his hand is the key episode. Judging by the diary entries, this ending did not give rest to Blok, who never commented publicly on the meaning of the last lines of the poem, but from his notes, not intended for publication, it is clear how painfully Blok was looking for an explanation for this: “I just stated the fact: if you look closely into the blizzards along the way, you will see "Jesus Christ." But I myself deeply hate this womanly ghost.” “There is no doubt that Christ is walking with them. The point is not “whether they are worthy of him”, but the terrible thing is that He is again with them, and there is no other yet; do you need another one? "I'm kind of exhausted." Christ "in a white halo of roses" goes ahead of people who create violence and, perhaps, already profess another faith. But the Savior does not abandon His children who do not know what they are doing, who do not keep the commandments given by Him. To stop the wild revelry, to reason and return the murderers to the bosom of God - this is the true work of Christ.
In the bloody chaos, Jesus personifies the highest spirituality, cultural values, unclaimed, but not disappearing. The image of Christ is the future, the personification of the dream of a truly just and happy society. That's why Christ "is unharmed even from a bullet." The poet believes in man, in his mind, in his soul. Of course, this day will not come soon, it is even “invisible”, but Blok has no doubts that it will come.
Leonid Andreev. Old Testament and New Testament parallels in the writer's work.
Like Leo Tolstoy Leonid Andreev passionately opposed violence and evil. However, he questioned Tolstoy's religious and moral idea, never associated with it the liberation of society from social vices. The preaching of humility and non-resistance was alien to Andreev. The theme of the story "The Life of Basil of Thebes" is "the eternal question of the human spirit in its search for its connection with infinity in general and infinite justice in particular."
For the hero of the story, the search for a connection with "infinite justice", that is, with God, ends tragically. In the image of the writer, the life of Father Vasily is an endless chain of harsh, often simply cruel tests of his boundless faith in God. If his son drowns, he drinks his grief out of grief, Father Vasily will remain the same fervently believing Christian. In the field where he went, having learned about the trouble with his wife, he “put his hands to his chest and wanted to say something. The closed iron jaws trembled, but did not give in: gritting his teeth, the priest forced them apart, and with this movement of his lips, similar to a convulsive yawn, loud, distinct words sounded:
I believe.
Lost without an echo in the desert of the sky and the frequent ears of corn was this prayer cry, so insanely similar to a challenge. And as if objecting to someone, passionately convincing and warning someone, he again repeated
I believe".
And then the twelve-pound boar will die, the daughter will fall ill, the expected child will be born an idiot in fear and doubt. And, as before, he will completely drink the popadya and, in desperation, will try to lay hands on himself. Father Vasily will tremble: “Poor thing. Poor. All are poor. Everyone is crying. And there is no help! Ltd!"
Father Vasily decides to take off his dignity and leave. “Their soul rested for three months, and again lost hope and joy returned to their home. With all the strength of the suffering experienced, the priestess believed in a new life ... ”But fate prepared another tempting test for Father Vasily: his house burns down, his wife dies from burns, and a catastrophe broke out. Having given himself over to contemplation of God in a state of religious ecstasy, Father Vasily wants to do for himself what is supposed to be done by the Almighty himself - he wants to resurrect the dead!
“Father Vasily opened the tinkling door and through the crowd ... went to the black, silently waiting coffin. He stopped, raised his right hand imperiously, and hurriedly said to the decaying body:
I'm telling you, get up!"
He utters this sacramental phrase three times, leans towards the hump, “closer, closer, grabs the sharp edges of the coffin with his hands, almost touches the blue lips, breathes in them the breath of life - the disturbed corpse answers him with a stinking, coldly ferocious breath of death.” And the shocked priest finally had an insight: “So why did I believe? So why did you give me love for people and pity - to laugh at me? So why did you keep me captive, in slavery, in chains all my life? Not a free thought! No feeling! Not a breath! Crushed in his faith in God, not finding any justification for human suffering, Father Vasily, in horror and insanity, runs away from the church onto a wide and beaten road, where he fell dead, fell "prone, bony face into the roadside gray dust ... And in his pose he kept he is the swiftness of the run ... as if even the dead he continued to run.
It is easy to see that the plot of the story goes back to that biblical legend about Job, which occupies one of the central places in the reflections and disputes of Dostoevsky's heroes in The Brothers Karamazov about divine justice.
But Leonid Andreev develops this legend in such a way that the story of Basil of Thebes, who lost more than Job, is filled with a godless meaning.
In the story "The Life of Basil of Thebes" Leonid Andreev posed and solved "eternal" questions. What is truth? What is justice? What is righteousness and sin?
He raises these questions in the story Judas Iscariot.
Andreev takes a different approach to the image of the eternal traitor. He portrays Judas in such a way that it is a pity not for the crucified God the Son, but for the suicide Judas. Using biblical legends, Andreev says that the people are to blame for both the death of Christ and the death of Judas, that humanity has in vain blamed Judas Iscariot for what happened. Forcing one to think about the "baseness of the human race", the writer proves that the cowardly disciples of the Prophet are guilty of betraying the Son of God. “How did you allow this? Where was your love? The thirteenth apostle, like Christ, was betrayed by everyone.
L. Andreev, trying to philosophically comprehend the image of Judas, calls to think about the solution of the human soul, which is convinced of the dominance of evil. The humanistic idea of Christ cannot stand the test of betrayal.
Despite the tragic end, Andreev's story, like many of his other works, does not give grounds for concluding that the author is completely pessimistic. The omnipotence of fate concerns only the physical shell of a person doomed to death, but his spirit is free, and no one is able to stop his spiritual quest. The emerging doubt about ideal love - for God - leads the hero to real love - for a person. The abyss that previously existed between Father Vasily and other people is overcome, and the priest finally comes to understand human suffering. He is shocked by the simplicity and truth of the revelations of parishioners at confession; pity, compassion for sinful people and despair from the understanding of his own powerlessness to help them push him to rebellion against God. He is close to the anguish and loneliness of the gloomy Nastya, the throwing of a drunken priest, and even in the Idiot he sees the soul "omniscient and mournful."
Belief in one's own chosenness is a challenge to fate and an attempt to overcome the madness of the world, a way of spiritual self-affirmation and a search for the meaning of life. However, having the makings of a free man, Thebeian cannot but bear the consequences of spiritual slavery that came from the experience of the past and his own forty years of life. Therefore, the method that he chooses to realize his rebellious plans - the accomplishment of a miracle by the "chosen one" - is archaic and doomed to failure.
Andreev poses a two-pronged problem in The Life of Basil of Thebes: he gives a positive answer to the question of the high possibilities of a person, and evaluates the probability of their realization with the help of God's providence negatively.
M. A. Bulgakov. The peculiarity of understanding biblical motifs in the novel "The Master and Margarita".
The 1930s was a tragic period in the history of our country, the years of unbelief and lack of culture. This particular time Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov places in the context of sacred history, comparing the eternal and the temporal. The temporary in the novel is a reduced description of the life of Moscow in the 30s. “The world of writers, members of MOSSOLIT is a mass world, an uncultured and immoral world” (V. Akimov “On the winds of time”). The new cultural figures are untalented people, they do not know creative inspiration, they do not hear the “voice of God”. They do not claim to know the truth. This wretched and faceless world of writers is opposed in the novel by the Master - a personality, creator, creator of a historical and philosophical novel. Through the Master's novel, Bulgakov's characters enter another world, another dimension of life.
In Bulgakov's novel, the gospel story about Yeshua and Pilate is a novel within a novel, being its original ideological center. Bulgakov tells the legend of Christ in his own way. His hero is surprisingly tangible, vital. One gets the impression that he is an ordinary mortal person, childishly trusting, simple-hearted, naive, but at the same time wise and insightful. He is physically weak, but spiritually strong and, as it were, is the embodiment of the best human qualities, a herald of high human ideals. Neither beatings nor punishment can force him to change his principles, his boundless faith in the predominance of the good in man, in the "kingdom of truth and justice."
At the beginning of Bulgakov's novel, two Moscow writers are talking on Patriarch's Ponds about a poem written by one of them, Ivan Bezdomny. His poem is atheistic. Jesus Christ is depicted in it in very black colors, but, unfortunately, as a living, real person. Another writer, Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, an educated and well-read man, a materialist, explains to Ivan Bezdomny that there was no Jesus, that this figure was created by the imagination of believers. And the ignorant but sincere poet "on all this" agrees with his learned friend. It was at this moment that a devil named Woland, who appeared on the Patriarch's Ponds, intervenes in the conversation of two friends and asks them a question: “If there is no God, then, one asks, who controls human life and the whole routine on earth?” "The man himself controls!" Homeless replied. From this moment, the plot of The Master and Margarita begins, and the main problem of the 20th century, reflected in the novel, is the problem of human self-government.
Bulgakov defended culture as a great and eternal universal human value, created by endless human labor, the efforts of the mind and spirit. Continuous efforts. The destruction of culture, the persecution of the intelligentsia, which he considered "the best layer in our country," he could not accept. This made him a "Protestant", a "satiric writer".
Bulgakov defends the idea: human culture is not an accident, but a pattern of earthly and cosmic life.
The twentieth century is the time of all sorts of revolutions: social, political, spiritual, the time of the denial of the old ways of managing human behavior.
“No one will give us deliverance: neither a god, nor a king, nor a hero. We will achieve liberation with our own hand” - this is the idea of time. But managing oneself and other human lives is not so easy.
The mass man, liberated from everything, uses "freedom without a cross" primarily in his own interests. Such a person treats the world around him as a predator. It is incredibly difficult to express new spiritual guidelines. Therefore, objecting to the quick answer to Bezdomny, Woland says: “I’m sorry ... after all, in order to manage, you need to have some kind of plan at least for a ridiculously short period, well, let’s say a thousand years!” A person who has mastered culture and developed his life principles on its basis can have such a ridiculous plan. Man is responsible for the entire routine of life on earth, but the artist is even more responsible.
Here are the heroes who are sure that they control not only themselves, but also others (Berlioz and Homeless). But what happens next? One dies, the other is in a madhouse.
In parallel with them, other heroes are shown: Yeshua and Pontius Pilate.
Yeshua is confident in the possibility of human self-improvement. This Bulgakov hero is associated with the idea of goodness as recognition of the spiritual uniqueness, personal value of each person (“There are no evil people!”). Yeshua sees the truth in harmony between man and the world, and everyone can and should discover this truth; striving for it is the goal of human life. Having such a plan, one can hope for "management" of oneself and "everything in general, the routine on earth."
Pontius Pilate, the viceroy of the Roman emperor in Yershalaim, in his service carrying out violence on the controlled land, lost faith in the possibility of harmony between people and the world. Truth for him is in submission to an imposed and irresistible, albeit inhuman, order. His headache is a sign of disharmony, a split that this earthly and strong person is experiencing. Pilate is alone, he gives all his affection only to the dog. He forced himself to come to terms with evil and is paying for it.
“The strong mind of Pilate parted ways with his conscience. And a headache is a punishment for the fact that his mind allows and supports the unjust arrangement of the world. (V. Akimov "On the winds of time")
Thus, in the novel, the discovery of the “True Truth” takes place, which combines reason and goodness, mind and conscience. Human life is equal to spiritual value, spiritual idea. All the main characters of the novel are ideologists: the philosopher Yeshua, the politician Pilate, the writers Master, Ivan Bezdomny, Berlioz, and even the "professor" of black magic Woland.
But an idea can be inspired from without; it can be false, criminal; Bulgakov knows well about ideological terror, about ideological violence, which can be more sophisticated than physical violence. “You can “hang” human life on a thread of a false idea and, having cut this thread, that is, having convinced yourself of the falsity of the idea, kill a person,” writes Bulgakov. By itself, a person will not come to a false idea, by his good will and sound reasoning he will not accept it into himself, he will not connect his life with it - evil, destructive, leading to disharmony. Such an idea can only be imposed, inspired from outside. In other words, among all violence, the worst is ideological, spiritual violence.
Human strength is only from good, and any other strength is already from the "evil one." Man begins where evil ends.
The novel "The Master and Margarita" is a novel about a person's responsibility for good.
The events of the chapters, which tell about Moscow in the 1920s and 1930s, take place during Holy Week, during which a kind of moral revision of society is carried out by Woland and his retinue. “The moral inspection of the whole society and its individual members continues throughout the novel. Any society should be based not on material, class, political, but on moral foundations. (V. A. Domansky “I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world”) For faith in imaginary values, for spiritual laziness in search of faith, a person is punished. And the heroes of the novel, people of imaginary culture, cannot recognize the devil in Woland. Woland appears in Moscow in order to find out whether people have become better over a thousand years, whether they have learned to manage themselves, to note what is good and what is bad. After all, social progress requires an obligatory spiritual…. But Woland in Moscow is not recognized not only by the townsfolk, but also by people of the creative intelligentsia. Woland does not punish the townsfolk. Let them! But the creative intelligentsia must bear responsibility, it is criminal, because instead of the truth, it propagates dogmas, which means that it corrupts the people, enslaves them. And as it was already said, spiritual enslavement is the most terrible. That is why Berlioz, Bezdomny, Styopa Likhodeev are punished, for "to each will be given according to his faith," "all will be judged according to their deeds." And the artist, the Master, must bear special responsibility.
According to Bulgakov, the writer's duty is to restore a person's faith in lofty ideals, to restore the truth.
Life requires from the Master a feat, a struggle for the fate of his novel. But the Master is not a hero, he is only a servant of the truth. He loses heart, abandons his novel, burns it. The feat is accomplished by Margarita.
Human destiny and the historical process itself is determined by the continuous search for truth, the pursuit of the highest ideals of truth, goodness and beauty.
Roman Bulgakov about the responsibility of a person for his own choice of life paths. It is about the all-conquering power of love and creativity, elevating the soul to the highest heights of true humanity.
The gospel story depicted by Bulgakov in his novel is also addressed to the events of our national history. “The writer is concerned about the questions: what is the truth - following the state interests or focusing on universal values? How do traitors, apostates, conformists appear? one
The dialogues of Yeshua and Pontius Pilate are projected onto the atmosphere of some European countries, including ours in the 30s of the 20th century, when the individual was mercilessly oppressed by the state. This gave rise to general distrust, fear, duplicity. That is why the little people who make up the world of Moscow philistinism are so insignificant and petty in the novel. The author shows various aspects of human vulgarity, moral decay, ridicules those who apostatized from goodness, lost faith in a high ideal, began to serve not God, but the devil.
The moral apostasy of Pontius Pilate testifies that under the conditions of any totalitarian regime, be it imperial Rome or Stalin's dictatorship, even the strongest person can survive and succeed only guided by the immediate state benefit, and not by his own moral guidelines. But, unlike the tradition established in the history of Christianity, Bulgakov's hero is not just a coward or an apostate. He is the accuser and the victim. Having ordered the secret liquidation of the traitor Judas, he takes revenge not only for Yeshua, but also for himself, since he himself may suffer from a denunciation to the emperor Tiberius.
The choice of Pontius Pilate correlates with the entire course of world history, is a reflection of the eternal conflict between the concrete historical and the timeless, universal.
Thus, Bulgakov, using the biblical story, gives an assessment of modern life.
The bright mind of Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov, his fearless soul, his hand, without a shudder or fear, tears off all the masks, reveals all the real guises.
In the novel, life beats with a mighty stream, the creative omnipotence of the artist triumphs in it, defending the spiritual dignity of art in the twentieth century, an artist who, therefore, is subject to everything: God and the devil, the fate of people, life and death themselves.
Ch. Aitmatov. The specifics of Christian images in the novel "The Scaffold".
Twenty years after the first publication of The Master and Margarita, a novel appeared Chingiz Aitmatov"The Scaffold" - and also with an inserted short story about Pilate and Jesus, but the meaning of this device has drastically changed. In the situation of the “perestroika” that has begun, Aitmatov no longer cares about the drama of relations between the writer and the authorities, he shifts the focus to the drama of the people’s rejection of the sermon of the Righteous, drawing a too direct and even, perhaps, blasphemous parallel between Jesus and the hero of the novel.
Aitmatov offered his artistic interpretation of the gospel story - the dispute between Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate about truth and justice, about the appointment of man on earth. This plot once again speaks of the eternity of the problem.
Aitmatov comprehends the famous gospel scene from the standpoint of today.
In what does Aitmatov's Jesus see the meaning of existence on earth? The point is to follow humanistic ideals. Live for the future.
The novel explores the theme of a return to faith. Mankind, having gone through the suffering and punishment of the Last Judgment, must return to simple and eternal truths.
Pontius Pilate does not accept the humanistic philosophy of Christ, because he believes that man is a beast, that he cannot do without wars, without blood, just as flesh cannot do without salt. He sees the meaning of life in power, wealth and power: “People will not be taught either sermons in temples or voices from heaven! They will always follow the Caesars, like herds following the shepherds, and, bowing before power and blessings, they will honor the one who turns out to be merciless and more powerful than all "...
A kind of spiritual counterpart of Jesus Christ in the novel is Avdiy Kalistratov, a former seminarian who was expelled from the seminary for freethinking, because he dreamed of purifying the faith from human passions, from the will of the Caesars, who subjugated the servants of the Church of Christ. He told his father-coordinator that he would seek a new form of God to replace the old one that came from pagan times, he explained the motives for his apostasy as follows: “Really, in two thousand years of Christianity, we are not able to add a single word to what was said not in biblical times? Tired of his own and other people's wisdom, the coordinator practically predicts the fate of Christ to Obadiah: “And in the world you cannot be blown off your head, because the world does not tolerate those who question the fundamental teachings, because any ideology claims to possess the ultimate truth.”
For Obadiah, there is no road to the truth outside of faith in the Savior, outside of love for the God-Man, who gave his life in the name of atonement for the sins of all mankind. The Christ in Obadiah's imagination says: “Vice is always easy to justify. But few people thought that the evil of lust for power, with which everyone is infected, is the worst of all evils, and one day the human race will pay for it in full. Peoples will perish." Obadiah is faced with the question of why people sin so often, if it is known exactly what needs to be done in order to get into the desired kingdom of heaven? Either the predetermined path is wrong, or they are so torn away from the Creator that they do not want to return to him. The question is old and heavy, but it requires an answer from every living soul who is not completely mired in vice. In the novel, only two heroes are true and they believe that people will eventually create a kingdom of goodness and justice: this is Obadiah and Jesus himself. The soul of Obadiah moved back two thousand years in order to see, understand and try to save the one whose death is inevitable. Obadiah is ready to give his life for the one who is dearer to him than anything in the world.
He is not only a preacher, but also a fighter who fights evil for high human values. Each of his opponents has a clearly articulated worldview that justifies his thoughts and actions. In real life, the categories of good and evil have become mythical concepts. Many of them are struggling to prove the superiority of their own philosophy over the Christian one. Take, for example, Grishan, the leader of one of the small gangs, into which Obadiah falls by inscrutable ways. He set out, if not to defeat a specific evil with the word of God, then at least to reveal the reverse side for those who can follow the path of escaping reality into narcotic dreams. And Grishan opposes him as the very tempter who seduces a weak person with a pseudo-paradise: “I enter God,” he says to his opponent, “from the back door. I bring my people closer to God faster than anyone else.” Grishan publicly and consciously preaches the most attractive idea - the idea of absolute freedom. He says: "We are running from the mass consciousness, so as not to be captured by the crowd." But this flight is not capable of bringing deliverance from even the most primitive fear of state laws. Obadiah felt this very subtly: "Freedom is freedom only when it is not afraid of the law." Obadiah's moral dispute with Grishan, the leader of the "messengers" for marijuana, in some ways continues the dialogue between Jesus and Pilate. Pilate and Grishan are united by disbelief in people, in social justice. But if Pilate himself preaches the “religion” of strong power, then Grishan preaches the “religion of high”, replacing the high human desire for moral and physical perfection with drug intoxication, penetration to God “from the back door”. This path to God is easy, but the soul is given to the Devil.
Obadiah, dreaming of the brotherhood of people, the age-old continuity of cultures, appealing to human conscience, is alone and this is his weakness, because in the world that surrounds him, the boundaries between good and evil are blurred, high ideals are trampled, lack of spirituality triumphs. He does not accept Obadiah's preaching.
Obadiah seems powerless before the forces of evil. At first, he is brutally beaten half to death by the "messengers" for marijuana, and then, as Jesus is crucified by the thugs from the "junta" of Ober-Kandalov. Having finally established himself in his faith and convinced of the impossibility of influencing with a holy word those who only outwardly retained their human appearance, who are capable of destroying everything that exists on this long-suffering earth, Obadiah does not renounce Christ - he repeats His feat. And the words of the crucified Obadiah sound like a voice crying out in a real desert: “There is no self-interest in my prayer - I do not ask for even a fraction of earthly blessings and do not pray for the extension of my days. I will not stop crying out only for the salvation of human souls. You, Almighty, do not leave us in ignorance, do not allow us to seek excuses in the closeness of good and evil in the world. The life of Obadiah is not in vain. The pain of his soul, his suffering for people, his moral feat infect others with "world pain", encourage them to join the fight against evil.
A special place in the quest of Obadiah is occupied by his god-building. For Aitmatov, the ideal of humanity is not God-Yesterday, but God-Tomorrow, the one that Avdiy Kalistratov sees him: “... all people taken together are the likeness of God on earth. And the name is that hypostasis God - God-Tomorrow ... God-Tomorrow is the spirit of infinity, and in general it contains the whole essence, the totality of human deeds and aspirations, and therefore, how to be God-Tomorrow - beautiful or bad, kind-hearted or punishing “Depends on the people themselves.”
Conclusion
The return to Christ as a moral ideal does not at all mean that writers strive to please the resurgent religious consciousness of many of our contemporaries. It is conditioned, first of all, by the idea of salvation, the renewal of our world, devoid of the "name of the saint."
Many poets and prose writers sought to find the truth, to determine the meaning of human existence. And they all came to the conclusion that it is impossible to build the happiness of some on the misfortune of others. It is impossible to renounce centuries-old traditions and moral principles and build a universal house of equality and happiness from scratch. This is possible only if one follows the path laid down in man by nature itself. By way of harmony, humanism and love. And the conductors of this truth on earth are people who have managed to feel true, pure and eternal love for people.
More than one generation of writers will turn to gospel motifs, the closer a person is to eternal truths, commandments, the richer his culture, his spiritual world.
Oh, there are unique words
Whoever said them spent too much.
Only blue is inexhaustible
Heavenly and mercy of God. (Anna Akhmatova).
To God - by way of beauty.
Poetry enchantingly beckons us both with its pleasant, musical, ear-caressing form, and with its bright, pictorial and inspiring content. Her sounds, full of wonderful music, detaching from the everyday bustle, attract us to the world of ideal, heavenly beauty. Thanks to poetry, we can feel more deeply the fullness of life with its joys and sorrows, which are necessary for our inner growth. Acting in an uplifting, ennobling way on our hearts, it makes us related to the world of imperishable beauty, in which eternal truth and pure love reign.
The highest beauty is religious feeling. And when poetry embodies this feeling, its impression is irresistible. The poet becomes a prophet, who shows, as it were, the pinnacle of contemplation illuminated by the sun, utters the depths of knowledge and feelings. Therefore, V. A. Zhukovsky is right when he calls poetry the earthly sister of heavenly religion, a bright beacon lit by the Creator Himself, so that in the darkness of worldly storms we do not go astray.
Many paths lead to the Lord. The choice of any of them is given by the Creator to our free will. The hermits of Thebaid and Sinai rushed to the Lord through asceticism, renunciation of earthly temptations, by suppressing the capricious desires of the whimsical flesh. The poets went to the same great and holy goal in a different way. They did not renounce admiration and admiration for the beauties of earthly life, but saw in them not vain tinsel, but a manifestation of the goodness and creativity of the Almighty. They could see the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil. They became tireless and selfless seekers of beauty in poetry. But the beauty of the material world around us for poets was only a step towards the contemplation of another, otherworldly and spiritual beauty.
A. S. Pushkin was convinced that "serving the muses" requires self-deepening, which "does not tolerate fuss," that the poet is "the son of heaven," who is born
Not for worldly excitement,
Not for self-interest, not for battles,
We are born to inspire
For sweet sounds and prayers.
Only those poets whose work is inextricably linked with the contemplation of higher truths can hope that their words, their calls and their decrees will not fade away with the death of their bodies, but will live in the hearts of their descendants. The creative path of such poets is difficult and thorny. They are intended to capture in the hearts of people obscure, barely perceptible sounds, which are sometimes incomprehensible even to their carriers, but are realized by them in the future already from the words of the poet. The poet is obliged to hear these sounds, understand them, cast them into a harmonious form and herald his creative gift with a powerful bell ringing.
Many Russian poets went along the path indicated by Count A. K. Tolstoy: through the knowledge of pure forms of earthly beauty - to spiritual beauty, and from it - to the limit, to the dazzling radiance of heavenly beauty, many Russian poets went. Many of them are similar in their creative direction, despite deep formal differences. Serving beauty and improving the talent of the word given to them from above, our poets served the Lord, as Lev A. Mei vividly expressed it:
I do not believe, Lord, that You have forgotten me,
I do not believe, Lord, that You rejected me:
I did not slyly buried your talent in my soul,
And the predatory thief did not take him out of my depths.
Pure beauty certainly attracts the sublime, the ideal, the heavenly. So, for example, the poet Yakov P. Polonsky, who lived for many years away from God, could not but feel religious enlightenment and at the end of his days wrote:
Life without Christ is an accidental dream
Blessed is he who has been given two hearings -
Who and the church hears the ringing
Those who carefully read the Russian classics - poetry or prose - were amazed at the abundance of moral and religious motives and plots in it. Indeed, Russian poets, from the great to the most modest and now almost forgotten, devoted many of their works to religious themes. The desire for God, the feeling of the spiritual world and the divine foundations of the universe are characteristic of Russian poetry. We place here only a part of the richest poetic material of the 18th-20th centuries, distributing it according to the following topics:
1. God, His majesty and love (pp. 5-14).
2. Biblical and Gospel topics (pp. 14-37).
3. Virtues and the meaning of life (pp. 37-50).
4. Prayer, temple and worship (pp. 50-66).
God, His majesty and love
Great is our Lord
Already a beautiful light
Spread its brilliance over the earth
And opened the works of God.
My spirit, listen with joy,
Wondering such clear rays,
Imagine what the Builder is like.
When would mortals be so high
It was possible to fly
So that our eye is perishable to the sun
Could, approaching, look,
The ever-burning ocean.
There, the shafts of fire strive
And find no shore
There whirlwinds are fiery spinning
Struggling for centuries.
There stones, like water, boil,
The rains are burning there.
This terrible mass
Like a spark before You alone.
Oh, what a bright lamp
By thee, O God,
For our daily activities
What have you commanded us to do?
Freed from the dark night
Fields, mounds, seas and forests
And opened to our eyes,
Full of your wonders.
There, every flesh cries out:
Great is the Builder our Lord.
The light of day shines
Only on the surface of bodies
Knowing no limit.
From the grace of your eyes
The joy of the whole creation is pouring.
Creator, covered with darkness
Stretch out the rays of wisdom,
And anything before You
Always learn to create!
And looking at your creature,
Praise Thee, immortal King!
M. V. Lomonosov (1711-1765)
Morning reflection on God's majesty
Already a beautiful light
Spread its brilliance over the earth
And God's works were revealed.
My spirit, listen with joy!
Wondering only clear beams,
Imagine what the Builder is like!
When only mortals would be high
It was possible to fly
So that our eye is perishable to the sun
Could, approaching, look,
Then it would open from all countries
The ever-burning ocean.
There, the shafts of fire strive
And they do not find shores;
There whirlwinds are fiery spinning,
Struggling for many centuries;
There stones, like water, boil,
The rains are burning there.
This terrible mass
Like a spark in front of you alone.
Oh, bright lamp
By you, God, I'm kindled
For our daily activities
What did you tell us to do?
Freed from the dark night
Fields, mounds, seas and forests
And opened to our eyes,
Full of your wonders
There, every flesh cries out:
Great is the Builder our Lord!
The light of day shines
Only on the surface of bodies;
But Your gaze pierces into the abyss,
Knowing no limit.
From the lightness of your eyes
The joy of the whole creation is pouring.
Creator! covered in darkness
Stretch out the rays of wisdom
And anything in front of you
Always learn to create
And, looking at your creature,
Praise Thee, immortal King.
M. V. Lomonosov (1711-1765)
Evening meditation on the majesty of God at the occasion of the great northern lights
The day hides its face;
The fields were covered with gloomy night;
A black shadow ascended the mountains;
The rays from us leaned away;
The abyss of stars has opened up full;
There is no number of stars, the abyss has no bottom.
A grain of sand, like in the waves of the sea,
How small is the spark in the eternal ice,
Like fine dust in a strong whirlwind,
In fire as fierce as a feather,
So I, deepened in this abyss,
I'm lost, I'm tired of thoughts!
The lips of the wise say to us:
There are many different kinds of lights;
Countless suns burn there,
The peoples there and the circle of centuries:
For the common glory of the Godhead
There is equal force of nature.
But where, nature, is your law?
Dawn rises from midnight countries!
Doesn't the sun set its throne there?
Do not the ice-folk stir up the fire of the sea?
This cold flame covered us!
Behold, the day has entered the night on earth!
O you, whom the swift eye
Pierces into the book of eternal rights,
Which small things sign
Reveals the charter of nature, -
You know the path of all the planets:
Tell me what's bothering us so much?
What does the ray of clear night vibrate?
What thin flame strikes into the firmament?
Like lightning without menacing clouds
Strives from the earth to the zenith?
How can it be that the frozen steam
Fire in the middle of winter?
There argues oily haze with water;
Or the rays of the sun shine,
Leaning through the thick air towards us;
Or the tops of fat mountains are burning;
Or the marshmallow stopped blowing into the sea,
And smooth waves beat the ether.
Your answer is full of doubt
About what is around nearby places.
Tell me, how vast is the light?
And what about the smallest distant stars?
Unknown creatures you end:
Tell me, how great is the Creator?
M. V. Lomonosov (1711-1765)
From the ode "God"
O Thou infinite space,
Alive in the movement of matter,
Eternal with the passage of time,
Without faces in the three faces of the Divine!
Spirit, everywhere existing and one,
Who has no place and no reason
Whom no one could comprehend
Who fills everything with Himself,
Embraces, builds, preserves,
Who do we call God?
… … … … … … ..
I am your creation, Creator!
I am a creature of your wisdom,
Source of life, giver of blessings,
The soul of my soul and the King!
Your truth needed
To cross the abyss of death
My immortal being
So that my spirit is clothed in mortality,
And so that through death I return,
Father, into Thy immortality!
Inexplicable, Incomprehensible!
I know that my soul
Imaginations are powerless
And draw your shadow.
But if you must praise,
That is impossible for weak mortals
Honor you with nothing else
How can they only rise to You,
Lost in the infinite difference
And grateful tears to shed.
G. R. Derzhavin (1743-1816).
Kohl is glorious
How glorious is our Lord in Zion,
Can't explain the language
He is great in heaven on the throne,
In blades of grass on the ground is great,
Everywhere the Lord, everywhere you are glorious,
In the days, in the nights it is equal to the radiance.
You shade mortals with the sun,
You love, O God, us as children;
You fill us with food
And you raise the highest city;
You visit mortals, God
And you are blessed.
Lord! Yes, to your villages
And our singing before You
May it be pure as dew!
We will put an altar in your hearts,
You, Lord, we sing and praise.
M. M. Kheraskov (1733-1807)
Everywhere I see my God
Everywhere I see my God
He is the children of his fathers - and will not leave,
No, it will never reject
In whom faith in the Merciful does not freeze.
The Lord my God is on land, on the waters,
And in a noisy crowd, in worldly excitement,
And in the hut, and in the magnificent chambers,
And in the harbor of the soul - in solitude ...
There is no place that with His beam
He would not illuminate, who is everywhere;
There is no darkness, no eclipse before Him:
Everyone is close to the Blessed and Almighty.
V. K. Kuchelbecker (1797-1846)
Evening song
Night at sunrise with the evening star
quietly shines with a jet of gold
western edge.
Lord, our path is between stones and thorns,
our path is in darkness: You, the Light of the non-evening,
shine us!
In the mist of midnight, in the midday heat,
in sorrow and joy, in sweet peace,
in a tough fight
everywhere the radiance of the Holy Sun,
God's wisdom and power and Word...
Glory to Thee!
A. S. Khomyakov(1804-1860) <
Omnipresent God
The Presence of an Unfathomable Power
Mysteriously hidden in everything;
There is thought and life in the silence of the night,
And in the brilliance of the day, and in the silence of the grave,
In the movement of countless worlds,
In the solemn peace of the ocean,
And in the dusk of pensive forests,
And in the horror of the steppe hurricane,
In the breath of a cool breeze,
And in the rustle of sheets before the dawn,
And in the beauty of a desert flower,
And in the stream flowing under the mountain.
I. S. Nikitin (1824-1861)
When worried
yellowing field
When the yellowing field worries,
And the fresh forest rustles at the sound of the breeze,
And the crimson plum hides in the garden
Under the shade of a sweet green leaf.
When sprayed with fragrant dew,
On a ruddy evening, or in the morning at a golden hour
From under the bush I silver lily of the valley
He nods his head amiably.
When the cold key plays in the ravine,
And, plunging the thought into some kind of vague dream,
Babbling me a mysterious saga
About the peaceful land from which he rushes.
Then the anxiety of my soul humbles itself,
Then the wrinkles on the forehead diverge,
And I can comprehend happiness on earth,
And in the sky I see God.
M. Yu. Lermontov (1814-1841) <
An angel flew across the midnight sky
And he sang a quiet song:
And the moon, and the stars, and the clouds in a crowd
They listened to that song of the saint.
He sang about the bliss of sinless spirits
Under the bushes of paradise gardens,
He sang about the great God, and praise
His was unfeigned.
He carried a young soul in his arms
For a world of sorrow and tears,
And the sound of his song in the soul of a young
Left without words, but alive,
And for a long time she languished in the world
Full of wonderful desire,
And the sounds of heaven could not be replaced
She bored the songs of the earth.
M. Yu. Lermontov
Wisdom of the Supreme Creator
Wisdom of the Supreme Creator
It is not for us to investigate and measure:
In humility of heart one must believe
And patiently wait for the end.
E. A. Baratynsky (1800-1844)
Me, in darkness and dust
Me, in darkness and dust
hitherto dragging shackles,
Lifted wings with love
To the homeland of flame and words.
And brightened my dark eyes,
And I began to see the invisible world,
And hears the ear from now on,
What is elusive for others.
And I descended from the heights
Penetrated all by its rays
And on the wavering valley
I look with new eyes.
And with a prophetic heart I understood
That everything born of the Word
Rays of love are all around,
He longs to return to Him again.
And every stream of life
Love obedient to the law
Strives with the power of being
Unstoppable to God's bosom.
Everywhere there is sound, and everywhere there is light,
And all the worlds have one beginning;
And there is nothing in nature
No matter how love breathes.
A. K. Tolstoy(1817-1875)
God alone is light without shadow,
Inseparably merged in Him
The totality of all phenomena
All radiances are full;
But flowing from God
Strength fights darkness;
In Him is the power of peace,
There is anxiety around Him.
Pushed apart by the universe
Chaos vengeful does not sleep;
Distorted and overturned
God's image in him trembles:
And always full of lies
On the Lord's grace
Dirty splashing waves
He tries to lift
And the efforts of the evil spirit
The Almighty gave freedom
And everything happens again
The dispute of the warring beginnings.
In the battle of death and birth
Founded Deity
The endlessness of creation
Universe continuation,
Eternal life triumph
A. K. Tolstoy
Lord is mighty
Not so, the Lord, mighty, incomprehensible
You are before my restless mind,
That on a starry day your bright Seraphim
A huge ball lit over the universe.
And a dead man with a burning face
He commanded to observe Your laws,
To awaken everything with a life-giving ray,
Keeping their ardor for centuries, millions;
No, you are powerful and incomprehensible to me
The fact that I myself, powerless and instantaneous,
I carry in my chest, like that Seraphim,
The fire is stronger and brighter than the whole universe,
Meanwhile, like me, the prey of vanity,
The plaything of her fickleness,
In me he is eternal, omnipresent, like You,
He knows neither time nor space.
A. A Fet (1820-1892)
Night sky
Look, look at the sky
What secret is sacred in them
Passes silently and shining
And only so revealing
Your night wonders
So that our spirit is torn from captivity
So that it cuts into our hearts,
That there is only evil, deceit, betrayal,
Prey of death, dust, decay,
Bliss is eternal - only there!
A. N. Maikov(1821-1897)
Hymn to God
To you, who raised the abyss,
Sings immortal glory
And the sun and the starry sky
And everything that lives under the sky.
To you who created in darkness
eternal rays of the sun,
And a peaceful olive branch,
And swords of vengeful truth.
To you who cast down into the abyss
haughty demon of darkness,
High thoughts and thoughts,
And full of truth psalms.
To you who sent down the Word
Into our world for the sight of the blind,
Lights, aromas of incense burners,
Prayers forever and ever.
Are you not the one who sets the path?
Are you not the beacon burning?
My spirit is not your breath,
And we are not all in Your spirit?
And You, who do mysteries
In His shining world,
You hear, You see, You love
And your life is in my heart!
K. M. Fofanov (1862-1911) <
Oh my goodness
Oh my god thank you
For giving my eyes
You see the world - Your eternal temple -
And earth, sky and dawn ...
Let torment threaten me, -
Thank you for this moment
For everything that my heart has comprehended,
What are the stars telling me...
Everywhere I feel, everywhere
You, Lord, in the silence of the night,
And in the most distant star
And in the depths of my soul.
… … … … …
I want my life to be
You are silent praise;
You for midnight and dawn,
For life and death, thank you!
D. S. Merezhkovsky (1866-1941)
Everything is fine in the world
As everything in the world is beautiful:
Azure sky,
Sunny and clear day
green-haired forest;
In the night of the moon shine,
fragrance of roses,
And the twinkling of quiet stars
And the charm of the first dreams,
And the breath of the breeze
And the singing of nightingales
And sweet murmur
clear streams,
And in the emerald grass
Flowers bloom…
Is it hard for us to find
Creator of all beauty?
A. Yaroshevskaya
Mighty and wondrous
Mighty and wondrous is the King of heaven
Without measure in graceful creativity!
Do not count the sublime miracles
In His beautiful creation!
He clothed the whole universe,
Like a robe, - wondrous beauty
And commanded to be on the move
By the will of the universe...
And so, at the behest of the Creator,
Movement is everywhere
Planets, stars without end, -
And shine with His beauty.
There is beauty everywhere in nature!
Everywhere harmony in creation!
I bow before her and always
In holy delight, in tenderness!
Will I look to the sky,
I look at the mountains, at the valleys, -
Everywhere I see miracles
Everywhere - magical pictures!
Everywhere with the Lord of heaven,
In all places of His universe,
Miracles are seen
Traces of sacred harmony.
See: bright dawn
Plays with flames from the east;
And from the south a rainbow, shining,
Covers the sky with an arc!
And there, in the south, thunder is heard;
And lightning flashes with it.
And all that is founded by the Creator!
And everything comes from God!
Lord with sovereign hand
Raises storms, hurricanes
Peace is also from God
Fog rolls in from God.
The Lord is the Creator and Leader of everything!
Every manifestation is from God:
Frost, frost, hail and rain.
From God death and resurrection!
Oh, lots of food for the people
Found here: for their judgments,
To illuminate their ideas,
For their high pleasures!
Everywhere in the bosom of latitude
God's wonderful and wonderful!
In the midst of God's wondrous beauty
And one day to live is gratifying!
And all the beauty from nothing
The almighty Creator could create:
From the depths of only His Spirit
He brought to life a beautiful world!
Everywhere I meet around
Great deeds of His appearance
And in a joyful, holy feeling
I sing to Him a song of praise.
D. Yagodkin
Thank you for everything, Lord,
You after a day of anxiety and sadness
Give me the evening dawn
The expanse of fields and the meekness of the blue distance.
I'm lonely and now - as always,
But then the sunset spilled its magnificent flame,
And the evening star melts in it,
Trembling through like a gemstone.
And I am happy with a sad fate,
And there is a sweet joy in the mind,
That I am alone in silent contemplation,
That I am a stranger to everyone and I speak with You.
I. A. Bunin (1870-1953)
"There is God, there is the world. They live forever.
"And the life of people is instantaneous and miserable.
"But a person contains everything in himself,
"Who loves the world and believes in God."
N. S. Gumilyov(1886-1921)
Biblical and Gospel themes.
At midnight, near the stream,
You look at the sky
Are committed far
Miracles in the mountain world.
Nights eternal lamps,
Invisible in the light of day
Hulks walk in harmony there
Inextinguishable fire.
But stare into them with your eyes -
And you will see that in the distance
Beyond the nearest stars
Darkness the stars went into the night.
Look again - and darkness after darkness
Tired of your timid look;
All stars, all lights
The blue abysses are burning.
In the hour of midnight silence,
Drive away the deceptions of dreams,
You look with your soul into the writings
Galilean fishermen, -
And in the volume of a close book
Will unfold before you
Endless vault of heaven
With radiant beauty.
You will see - the stars of thoughts lead
My secret choir is around the earth;
Look again - others rise,
Look again, and there in the distance
Thought stars, darkness after darkness,
Rise, rise without number,
And ignite their fires
The dormant haze of the heart.
A. S. Khomyakov (1804-1860)
New Testament
Exhausted by the harsh life,
More than once I found myself
In the verbs of the Eternal Word
Source of peace and strength.
How the saints breathe their sounds
Divine feeling of love
And hearts of anxious torment
How soon they humble!…
It's all here in a wonderfully compressed picture.
Submitted by the Holy Spirit:
And the world that exists today
And the God who controls it
And the meaning of the world,
Reason and purpose and end
And the birth of the eternal Son,
And the cross, and the crown of thorns.
Reading, praying in silence,
And cry and learn lessons
Of them for the mind and soul!
I. S. Nikitin(1824-1861)
Gospel
reverent hand
I touch prophetic sheets,
And a guiding star
The light of Christ shines on me.
In moments of sorrow and doubt,
In the hours of unshed thoughts,
Where are the coveted permissions
Find a weary mind?
And page after page
I burn with eternal truth,
And everything is here, everything - words and faces -
Gives me peace of mind.
I'm ready to despise life's cold,
Her languishing, vague oppression,
And the heart is fresh and young again
I look forward with hope.
N. Pozdnyakov
(Isaiah 6 ch.)
Spiritual thirst tormented,
In the gloomy desert I dragged myself
And the six-winged Seraphim
He appeared to me at a crossroads.
With fingers as light as a dream,
He touched my apples:
Prophetic eyes opened,
Like a frightened eagle.
He touched my ears
And they were filled with noise and ringing:
And I heard the shudder of the sky,
And the heavenly angels flight,
And the reptile of the sea underwater course,
And the valley of the rose vegetation.
And he clung to my lips
And tore out my sinful tongue,
And idle-talking, and crafty,
And the sting of the wise snake
In my frozen mouth
He invested it with a bloody right hand.
And he cut my chest with a sword,
And took out a trembling heart,
And coal burning with fire
He put a hole in his chest.
Like a corpse, I lay in the desert,
And God's voice called out to me:
"Arise, Prophet, and see and listen,
Do my will
And bypassing the seas and lands,
Burn the hearts of people with the verb!
A. S. Pushkin (1799-1837)
Ever since the Eternal Judge
He gave me the omniscience of the prophet,
I read in the eyes of people
Pages of malice and vice.
I began to proclaim love
And the truth is pure teachings, -
All my neighbors are in me
Rocks were thrown furiously.
I sprinkled ashes on my head,
From the cities I ran a beggar,
And now I live in the desert
Like birds, the gift of God's food.
Keeping the pre-eternal covenant,
The creature is submissive to me there,
And the stars listen to me
Playing joyfully with rays.
When through the noisy hail
I'm rushing through
That the elders say to the children
With a selfish smile:
"Look, here's an example for you!
He was proud, did not get along with us;
Fool - wanted to assure us
That God speaks through his mouth!
Look, children, at him,
How gloomy and thin and pale he is!
See how naked and poor he is,
How they all despise him!"
M. Yu. Lermontov
(Gen. 28:10-19)
Jacob fled before his own blood,
Tired lay down on an earthen bed,
There, laying a stone under the head,
The young man fell into a deep sleep.
And then he had a vision:
Like a golden chain, from heaven to earth
The mysterious staircase shone
And the angels walked along it, turning white.
Now up, then down, with air stops
Barely touching the bright steps,
Exciting the soul, captured by dreams,
A premonition of her days to come.
And at the top of the wonderful ladder,
Like a shadow, there was Someone, the Lord of the angels,
And in the blindness of heavenly joy
Jacob could not overcome the horror.
And he woke up and called to God:
"Holy is this place, the Creator is here!"
And showed Israel the way
To the promised land Father.
He is a stone taken under his head,
Anointed, and raised up, and consecrated
With reverence, awe, love
Ruler of both souls and intelligent Forces.
That first was an exiled Jew
The prototype of the temple and the earthly altar,
Here is the first anointing of oil,
Until now, sanctifying the creature.
M. Lot-Borodina.
(1 Samuel 17:31-58)
Singer David on a feat of arms
I did not take a heavy sword,
No helmet, no damask armor,
Nor the armor of Saul's shoulder;
But overshadowed by the spirit of God,
He took a simple stone in the field,
And the foreign enemy fell,
Sparkling and rattling armor.
And you - when the battle with lies
The truth of the thoughts of the saints will rise, -
Do not lay on the truth of God
The rotten weight of earthly armor.
The armor of Saul is her shackle,
Saul is heavy with a helmet:
Her weapon is God's word
And God's word is God's thunder.
A. S. Khomyakov (1804-1860)
Psalmist David
(1 Samuel 16:21-23)
O king! Your soul mourns
languishes and yearns, -
I will sing: let my song
Your sadness heals.
Let the sound of a golden harp
Holy hymn
Your sad spirit will console
And ease the pain.
Man could not create them, -
Not from myself I sing:
Those songs are inspired by God,
Do not sing them - I can not.
O king! Nor the resounding clang of swords,
No kissing young maidens,
Won't drown out your longing
And burning suffering.
But only the soul of your sick
The holy song will touch, -
Instant sorrow from that song
Tears will shed.
And your gloomy spirit will spring up,
O king! And triumphant
At your feet, my lord,
Let me die for you.
K. R. (Vel. book. Konstantin Konst. Romanov, 1852-1915) <
Psalter of David
(1 Chr. 16:7)
They pour from David's golden strings
Chords of holy hymns,
A radiant wing trembles from them
Harmony sweet genius.
Everything glorifies in them the God of one power:
Streams and abysses and mountains
And they echo the tune of diamond luminaries
Hundred-star slender choirs.
L. I. Palmin(1841-1891)
14th Psalm
To whom, O Lord, are available
Your Zion Heights?
To the one whose thoughts are incorruptible,
Whose dreams are chaste;
Who does his deeds at the cost of gold
Didn't weigh, didn't sell
Didn't contrive against brother
And he did not slander the enemy,
worshiped him with fear,
Wept with love before Him.
And holy, O God, Thy chosen one!
Will he enlist his hand with a sword, -
Messenger of the Lord,
He will crush the giant.
Is he in the crown - his peoples
They will love the truth: all and hail
Rejoice in the joy of freedom
And the fields will boil with gold.
Will he take the harp - with wondrous power
The spirit will be filled with it,
And like a broad-winged eagle,
It will fly up to your sky!
N. M. Yazykov (1803-1847)
18th Psalm
The night of the night reveals knowledge
Day by day speech is transmitted,
To keep the glory of the Lord inviolable,
It is up to His creatures to glorify the Lord.
Everything is from Him - both life and death,
At His feet lay down, the abysses stretched out,
The firmament speaks loudly about His thoughts,
For the glory of His works, the starlight shines.
The sun comes out - a giant,
Like a bridegroom from the bridal chamber,
The bright face of meadows, gardens, valleys laughs,
From end to end of heaven there is a road.
Holy, holy is the Lord, my Builder!
Worries are scattered in front of Your face.
And sweeter than honey, and sweeter than drops of honeycomb
A single moment of life, bestowed by You.
K. D. Balmont (1867-1943)
70th Psalm
I put hope in you
Almighty Lord, always
I'm running to you now,
Yes, I will be saved from shame for a century!
Your holy righteousness
Deliver me from evil hands:
Bow my prayer
And crush the treacherous bow.
My champion and my God wake up
Against striving enemies,
And this mortal and perishable breast
Wall, protection and cover!
Save me from sinful power
And transgressors of Your law.
Don't let me fall into their jaws
Yawning from all sides.
In my patience, Builder,
You were from the youngest days
My Helper and Protector,
The haven of my soul!
M. V. Lomonosov (1711-1765)
Branch of Palestine
Tell me, branch of Palestine,
Where did you grow up, where did you bloom,
What hills, what valley
Were you a decoration?
By the pure waters of the Jordan
The ray of the East caressed you,
Is it a night wind in the mountains of Lebanon
Did he sway you angrily?
Have you read a silent prayer
Ile sang songs of old,
When your sheets were woven
Salem poor sons?
And is that palm tree still alive?
Everything also beckons in the summer heat
She's a passerby in the desert
broad-leaved head?
Or in desolate separation
She withered just like you
And the ashes of the valley lie down greedily
On yellowed sheets? ...
Tell: with a pious hand
Who brought you to this land?
Did he often feel sad for you?
Do you keep a trail of burning tears?
Ile, God's army is the best warrior,
He was with a cloudless brow,
Like you, always worthy of heaven
Before the people and the deity?
We keep a secret with care,
In front of the golden icon
You stand, branch of Jerusalem,
Shrines faithful sentinel.
Transparent dusk, lamp beam,
The kivot and the cross are a symbol of the saint,
Everything is full of peace and joy
Around you and above you.
M. Yu. Lermontov(1814-1841)
On Christmas night
Oh, how I wish, with the fire of blazing faith
And cleansing the mournful soul from sins,
To see the twilight of that wretched cave,
For us, where Eternal Love shone,
Where the Blessed Virgin stood over Christ,
Looking at the Child with eyes full of tears,
As if seeing terrible suffering,
What did Christ accept on the cross for a sinful world!
Oh, how I would like to pour tears over the manger,
Where the Christ Child reclined, and with prayer
Fall down - pray to Him to go out
And malice, and enmity over the sinful earth.
So that a man in passions, embittered, tired,
Tormented by melancholy, cruel struggle,
Forgot centuries of sick ideals
And again imbued with a strong faith of the saint, -
That he too, as humble shepherds,
On Christmas night from heaven
A wonderful star with its sacred fire
She shone, full of unearthly beauty.
About the fact that he, tired, sick,
Like ancient biblical shepherds and magi,
She would always lead on the night of the Nativity of Christ
There, where both Truth and Love were born.
V. Ivanov
God with us
In the darkness of centuries, that night has already receded,
When, tired of anger and anxiety,
The earth in the arms of the sky rested
And in silence God was born with us.
And much is impossible now:
The kings no longer look at the sky,
And the shepherds do not listen in the wilderness,
How do angels talk about God?
But the eternal that was revealed that night,
It is unbreakable by time
And the Word was born again in your soul,
Born before the manger long ago.
Yes! God is with us - not there, in an azure tent,
Not beyond countless worlds
Not in evil fire and not in stormy breathing,
And not in the sleeping memory of centuries.
He is here, now, in the midst of random vanity,
In the stream of muddy life anxieties,
You own the all-joyful secret:
Powerless evil! We are eternal: God is with us!
V. S. Solovyov (1853-1900)
Nativity
Let everything be defiled by centuries of crimes,
Let nothing remain unsullied,
But reproach of conscience is stronger than all doubts,
And that once lit in the soul will not go out.
Great things were not done in vain;
No wonder God appeared among people;
No wonder the sky bowed to the earth,
And the chamber of eternity opened wide.
Light was born in the world, and Light is rejected by darkness,
But He shines in the darkness, where the line between good and evil,
Not by external power, but by truth itself
The prince of the century is condemned and all his deeds.
V. S. Solovyov
Savior
(from the poem "The Sinner")
In His humble expression
No excitement, no inspiration
But the thought is deep
On the essay of a wondrous brow.
That is not the eagle's eye of a prophet,
Not the charm of angelic beauty -
Divided into two halves
His wavy hair;
Falling over the tunic,
Woolen robe is dressed
simple cloth slim growth
In movements He is modest and simple.
Lying down around His beautiful lips,
Slightly bifurcated beard;
Such good and clear eyes
Nobody has ever seen...
… … … … … …
Flaming with love for neighbors,
He taught the people humility,
He is all the laws of Moses
Love obeyed the law.
He does not tolerate anger, nor revenge,
He preaches forgiveness
Orders to pay for evil with good,
There is an unearthly power in Him.
He restores sight to the blind,
Gives strength and movement
The one who was both weak and lame.
He doesn't need recognition.
Heart thinking is unlocked,
His searching gaze
No one has survived yet
Aiming the disease, healing the flour,
Everywhere he was a savior
And extended a good hand to all
And I didn't judge anyone...
A. K. Tolstoy (1817-1876)
(from the poem "John of Damascus")
I see Him before me
With a crowd of poor fishermen,
He is quiet, on a peaceful path,
Walks among the ripening bread.
Good speeches of His joy
He pours into simple hearts,
He is truly a hungry herd
It leads to its source.
Why was I born at the wrong time
When between us, in the flesh,
Carrying a painful burden
Was he on the path of life?
Why can't I bear
Oh my Lord, Your chains
To suffer with your suffering
And accept the cross on your shoulders,
And on the head a crown of thorns?
Oh if I could kiss
Only the edge of Your holy garment,
Just a dusty trace of Your steps.
Oh my Lord, my hope
My strength and cover!
I want you all thoughts
Grace to you all song,
And thoughts of the day, and vigil nights,
And every beat of the heart
And give my whole soul!
A. K. Tolstoy
Temptation in the desert
When the Divine fled human speeches
And their idle talk of pride,
And I forgot hunger and thirst for many days,
Him, hungry, on the crown of gray rocks
The prince of peace endured majestic:
“Here, at Your feet, all the kingdoms,” he said, “
With their charm and glory! -
Recognize only the obvious, fall at my feet,
Keep a spiritual impulse on me, -
And I will give all this beauty, all power to You
And submit in an unequal struggle."
But He answered: "Listen to the Scripture:
Just kneel before God the Lord."
And Satan disappeared - and the angels came
Wait in the wilderness for His command.
A. A. Fet (1820-1892) <
Sermon on the Mount
(Mt. 5-7 ch.)
Oh, who is this man among the people,
Where people's talk froze
Before whom all nature fell silent, -
Whose flow of marvelous words flows?
That word is God, Christ the Savior
Sitting among students
Holy, Great Redeemer
Human innumerable sins.
Christ is quite with the disciples
Conducts a short conversation
With your wonderful lips
He draws the darkness of hearts to Himself.
"Blessed is he who is poor in spirit,"
Thus says the Lord from the mountain,
"he receives the kingdom of heaven
And with him spiritual gifts.
Blessed is he who sheds tears
All lamenting about sins -
The hour of his rest will come,
The Lord will comfort you in heaven.
Blessed is he who lives the days of the earth
Conducts, breathing meekly -
Heiress of the earth is different
His high soul.
Blessed is he who is greedy for the truth,
To whom the liar hurts.
In yourself, who will condemn the untruth, -
The Creator Himself will satisfy him.
Blessed is he who is mercy, alms
Gives to the neighbor - that
For kindness, for compassion
He will have mercy on himself.
Blessed are the pure in heart
If they save their soul
From evil, with spiritual eyes
They will see the Lord in Paradise.
Blessed is he who carries the world with him,
Who gives peace:
The Lord will praise him
And call him the son of God.
Blessed are those who are exiled
Must endure for the truth -
Those can be theirs for suffering
Honor the whole kingdom of God.
Blessed are you, a hundred times happy,
When you are vilified
To slander, to drive is not fair -
Because of me, I don't love you.
Oh, rejoice and be glad:
Your reward is great.
Do not be afraid of grief, do not twist,
How life will not be easy for you.
So from time immemorial and everywhere they drove
Prophets sent by the Creator
And they all endured
Persecution, torment before the end.
"You are the salt of the earth, and lose
If she is strong,
Nothing gives her strength
And salt is not good for anything.
As well as only on trampling -
Get out to throw it to the people;
This example is for your edification,
Tell it to your sons.
You are the light of the world. Can't be,
So that the city, standing on a mountain,
I could hide myself from the eyes,
And everyone who sees it sees.
Under an overturned vessel
Light a candle, they don’t put it on:
So that everyone has light, it will be lit,
Then only, as they set it in a candlestick.
Let it shine so in front of people
Your light for them to see
So that good deeds from you
The Father was glorious all the days."
"In the ancient law you read:
Love all your neighbors
And also learned from it:
You hate the enemies of the earth.
And I tell you: love
And neighbors and enemies,
Do good to those who do not love,
Do not punish them for evil.
Who torments you, who curses you,
Bless that one;
Who drives you and offends
Always pray for him.
Then they will open before you
With all the bliss of heaven,
I say: you will be sons
Then the Heavenly Creator.
Over the good and the bad
without distinguishing between them,
He commands the sun to be
And the same for your goodness
On the righteous and on the people
Rain sends the unrighteous.
If you think you need
Only those who love to love you
What is your reward for that?
So publicans only akin to live.
And what good do you do
Greeting relatives alone;
Look at the life of the pagans,
No better you live them.
So be perfect
How perfect is the Heavenly Father,
To be sons of Jehovah...
Then a glorious end awaits you.
The parable of the greedy rich man
(Luke 12:16-21)
In the field of the rich man there was a harvest of bread,
He thought: "There is nowhere to collect my fruits,
How to prepare the house for such a harvest?
And here's what I'll do: I'll break all the granaries,
I will line up the big ones and gather there
My bread, my good, and then I will say
To my soul: "Soul say goodbye forever with anxiety,
Rest in peace - you have a lot of property
For many years: drive away worries.
Eat, drink and be merry!" - "Madman, this night
They will take your life, said the Lord. - unhappy,
Who will get your house and labor in vain?
D. S. Merezhkovsky(1866-1941)
The parable of birds and lilies
Why about food, about clothes,
Living to take care of the whole century?
Is it not about the soul that you must first
Think, mortal man?
Look at the birds under the sky:
They neither sow nor reap,
But full of God's gifts.
Are you not higher than them on earth?
And who, taking care of himself, can
Give at least an elbow to growth?
And why are you worried
Concern, where to get clothes?
Look at the lilies as in the field
They flaunt, grow;
She is in her humble lot
They don't know labor, they don't spin.
But their dress is majestic
God Himself wove: oh, believe me,
And Solomon in the radiance of glory
Didn't dress like one!
When the insignificant cereal is so removed,
Which will be thrown into the furnace tomorrow, -
Oh, unbelievers! As possible,
So that the Lord does not protect you?
I. Grotto(1812-1893)
Pharisee and Publican
(Luke 18:10-14)
Entered the temple of the Lord to pray
Once a proud Pharisee
And looking up at the sky,
He boasted of his holiness.
"Thank you, O God,
So he said in prayer,
For what is righteous and holy
I have lived my life until now.
I'm not like these people
That drown in sins
Whose days in untruth flow
And in lawless evil deeds.
There is a publican standing at the door.
I don't look like him.
I fast twice a week
I bring tithes to the temple!...
The publican stood with his head bowed
And in the chest with anguish hit:
"Have mercy on the sinner, O God -
So he humbly repeated.
And he was justified by the Lord
And exalted for humility...
The Lord exalts the humble,
And He humbles the proud...
E. Miller
Healing a deaf mute
(Mark 9:17-27)
Was brought to Jesus
Native lad demoniac:
With a rattle and in foam it
Writhed writhing embraced.
"Get out, deaf-mute spirit!"
The Lord said. And an evil demon
He shook him and went out with a cry, -
And the lad understood and heard.
There was an argument among the students about
That that demon was not conquered by him,
And He said, "This generation is stubborn:
Only prayer and fasting
His nature is overcome."
M. A. Voloshin(1877-1931)
Resurrection of Lazarus
(John 11 ch.)
Oh, King and my God! Word of Power
During it you said -
And the captivity of the grave was crushed,
And Lazarus revived and rose.
I pray that the word of power will burst,
Yes, you say "get up!" my soul -
And the dead will rise from the grave,
And it will come out into the light of Your rays.
And come to life, and majestic
Her praise will be heard
To you - the radiance of the Father's glory,
You - who died for us!
A. S. Khomyakov(1804-1860)
Entrance to Jerusalem
(John 12 ch.)
Wide, boundless
Full of wonderful joy
From the gates of Jerusalem
There was a wave of people.
Galilee road
Celebrated:
"You go in the name of God,
You are going to Your royal house!
Honor to you, our humble King,
Honor to you, Son of David!"
So, suddenly inspirational,
The people sang. But there is one
Motionless in the moving crowd,
School pupil gray-haired,
Proud of the wisdom of the book,
He spoke with an evil grin:
"Is this your King, weak, pale,
Surrounded by fishermen?
Why is He in a poor robe,
And why doesn't He run?
Revealing the power of God
All blanketed in black haze,
Flaming and sparkling
Above the trembling ground?"
And centuries passed by,
And the Son of David since then
Secretly ruling their fate
Calming down a violent dispute,
Imposing on excitement
The purpose of love silence
The world lives like a breath
coming spring.
And in the labors of the great struggle
They have warmed hearts
They recognize the steps of the Lord,
Hear the sweet call of the Father.
A. S. Khomyakov
"What is truth?"
(John 18:38)
"What's the truth?" - Pilate told him
And raised his hand high above his head,
And speaking of that, the blind man did not know
That the Truth is before him with bowed head.
In the languor of changeable ways,
Wandering in the dark with tired feet,
We yearn for the truth more strongly,
Not knowing that She is always, everywhere before us.
P. P. Bulygin
(John 19)
There was a crowd around the cross,
And rude laughter sounded at times ...
The blind mob did not understand
Who mockingly stained
With its helpless enmity.
What did He do? Why bother
He is condemned like a slave, like a thief,
And who dared madly hand
Raise your God?
He entered the world with holy love,
Taught, prayed and suffered, -
And peace with His innocent blood
I've stained myself forever...
S. Ya. Nadson (1862-1887)
There is only one beauty in the world -
Love, sorrow, renunciation
And voluntary torment
Christ crucified for us.
K. D. Balmont (1867-1943)
Myrrhbearers at the tomb
Zion sleeps and anger slumbers,
Sleeping in the tomb of the King of kings,
Behind the seal is the stone of the coffin,
There are guards at the door everywhere.
The mute night embraces the garden,
The terrible guard does not sleep:
Her sensitive hearing does not sleep,
She looks far into the distance.
The night has passed. To the tomb of the Messiah
With scents in hand
There were sad Marys; -
Anxiety in their features
And their anxiety saddens:
Who with a mighty hand
A heavy stone will roll them away
From the cave of the tomb.
And they look, both marvel;
The stone is moved, the coffin is open;
And, like the dead at the coffin,
The guard is formidable.
And in a coffin full of light
Someone wonderful, unearthly,
Dressed in white robes,
Sat on a grave stone
Brighter than lightning flash
Shine of the heavenly face!
In fear of the messenger of revolt,
And their hearts flutter!
"What are you, timid ones, in confusion?"
They were told by a holy stranger,
"With the message of peace and salvation
Come back home.
I am heaven sent
I brought wonderful news:
There is no Living with the dead;
The coffin is already empty; Christ is risen!"
And the wives hurry from there,
And with the delight of their lips
Preach to Zion
Resurrection of Christ.
M. Yelenov
Holy holiday
How easy is my soul!
The heart is full of tenderness!
All worries and doubts
Fly away!
The world fills my soul
Joy shines in the eyes
And as if in heaven
The sun is shining brighter...
People are brothers! Has come
Great day, day of salvation!
Bright holiday Sunday
God of truth, God of strength!...
Away from us enmity and malice!
Let's forget everything! We'll forgive everyone!
Let's honor reconciliation
Day of the Risen from the grave!
He did not rage, did not take revenge, -
But with fatherly love
By His all-honored blood
He washed the unworthy of us ...
He is risen! - the time will come
Sundays for us...
We don't know this time...
Why don't we throw off the burden of sins?
Why don't we think about
With what in the moment of rebirth
From nothingness and decay,
Will we stand before Christ?
He is risen! abode of paradise
Reopened to the public...
But there is one way to get there:
Life is sinless, holy!
V. Bazhanov
Praise to the Risen One
Praise the Lord from heaven
And sing incessantly:
The world is filled with His miracles
And glory unspeakable.
Praise the host of incorporeal forces
And angelic faces:
From the darkness of mournful graves
The light shone great.
Praise the Lord from heaven
Hills, cliffs, mountains!
Hosanna! The fear of death is gone
Our eyes light up.
Praise God, the sea is far
And the ocean is endless!
Let all sorrow be silent
And hopeless murmur!
Praise the Lord from heaven
And praise, people!
Risen Christ! Christ is risen!
And trampled death forever!
holy news
Luminous spring -
During the day and at the late hour of the night -
Many songs are distributed
Above the native side.
Lots of wonderful sounds
Over the fields, over the meadows,
In the semi-darkness of dense forests.
Many sounds, many songs, -
But most heard from heaven
The holy news is distributed
Song-news - "Christ is Risen! .."
Leaving your shelter
Above the resurrected earth
Choirs of angels sing;
They echo the angelic stump
Mountains echo, valleys echo,
The dark forests echo, -
Rivers echo, tearing
Your icy chains
Spilling into space
White streams...
There is an old legend
What in spring sometimes -
At the hour when the stars twinkle
Midnight game -
Even the very graves
To the holy hello of heaven
They respond with the words:
"He is truly risen! .."
A. Corinthian
Holy holiday
Escaping jets sang
ringing silver,
That prayer trills
Blue day.
Everything rejoices in the world of light,
Breathing joyfully
Dressed in white robes
Every soul.
Smile! Because everything passes...
Take a break from tears!
A bright holiday descends to us
And Christ is Risen!
Hope L.
God has no dead
Change times, roll into eternity years,
But once the unchanging spring will come.
God lives! Soul alive! And the king of earthly nature,
Man will be resurrected: God has no dead!
N. I. Gnedich(1784-1833)
consolation
One who with eternal love
He repaid evil with good,
Beaten, covered in blood
Crowned with a crown of thorns,
All those who are close to Himself through suffering
In life, the share of the offended,
Oppressed and humiliated
He overshadowed with His cross.
You, whose best aspirations
They perish in vain under the yoke,
Believe, friends, in deliverance,
We are coming to God's light.
You, twisted bent,
You, afflicted with chains,
You, Christ, are buried together,
Resurrect with Christ.
A. K. Tolstoy
Day of Judgment
Oh, what a terrible day that will rise,
When the archangel's trumpet
Over the astonished world will burst
And resurrect the lord and the slave!
Oh, how they, embarrassed, droop down,
The mighty kings of the earth
When to the Supreme Throne
They will appear in ashes and dust!
Strictly examining deeds and thoughts,
The Eternal Judge will sit,
The fatal book will be read,
Where all the secrets of being are inscribed.
Everything that was hidden from human sight,
Will float out from the bottom,
And will not be left without vengeance
Forgotten insult none!
And good, and harmful sowing,
The fruits will be reaped all then.
That will be a day of longing and anger,
That will be a day of despondency and shame!
Without the mighty power of knowledge
And without the pride of the past,
Man is the crown of creation,
Robok will stand before You.
If that inconsolable day
Even the righteous shudder, -
What will he answer - a sinner?
Where can you find a protector?
Everything suddenly clears up
What seemed dark;
flare up, flare up
A conscience that has been asleep for a long time.
And when she points
For earthly existence
What will he say, what will he say
In your justification?
A. N. Apukhtin (1841-1893)
Virtues and the meaning of life.
Life is a mystery
Fate and God's judgment are incomprehensible to us mortals;
A thunderstorm punishes us from cloudless skies,
The best hopes are both false and perverse,
And in pure joys a tear will be found.
Our life is a sacrament; we are strangers, anxious
Under the cloud we go on a path unknown to us.
What to be sad about? What can you be happy about?
We do not know, and we are afraid to look ahead.
Not our blessings - given to us by God;
We are afraid to love what is given to us to love,
What we recognize in the soul as a shrine and a pledge
the coming, and how we rejoice in it.
But suddenly the future and with it all the hopes
Buried with a fatal blow to the dust;
Some ruins of an unfinished building,
And the soul is burdened by unfulfilled dreams.
Life is a mystery! But life is also a sacrifice.
The calling is true to the one who, in the midst of earthly anxieties
Will humbly perform sacred service
And he believes in what he could not comprehend.
Who heals the infirmities of the soul with prayer,
And if the soul is wounded by deceit,
Grieving, without murmuring kisses his heavy cross
And cries on the ground, and looks at the sky.
Book. P. A. Vyazemsky (1792-1878)
An instant gift, a wonderful gift,
Life, why are you given to me?
The mind is silent, but the heart is clear:
Life is given to us for life.
Everything is beautiful in God's world,
The created world is hidden in it,
But He is in feeling, but He is in the lyre,
But He is open in mind.
To know the Creator in creation,
See with the spirit, honor with the heart -
This is the purpose of life
This is what it means to live in God!
I. Klyushnikov
Life is not a toy
Don't say life is a toy
In the hands of a meaningless fate
Careless stupidity revelry
And the poison of doubt and struggle.
No, life is a reasonable aspiration
Where the eternal light burns
Where is man, the crown of creation,
Reigns high above the world.
S. Ya. Nadson(1862-1887)
Misfortune is our teacher
Earthly life is the heavenly heir;
Misfortune is our teacher, not the enemy,
Savingly harsh interlocutor,
Ruthless destroyer of mortal goods,
great understandable preacher,
Hand in hand for the secret life of Prague
It weaves, destroying everything in front of us,
And sorrow making friends with heaven.
Here joys are not our possession;
Flying captors of the earth.
Only along the way they bring us a legend
About the blessings promised to us far away;
Land tenant hopeless - suffering;
To him we were doomed to a part of fate;
Bliss is only a familiar to us by ear;
Earthly life is a pet of suffering.
And how great is the soul of this suffering!
How much joy is darkened with him,
When, saying goodbye freely with hope,
In the majesty of submissive silence,
She is silent before the terrible test,
Then ... then from this bright height
All Providence is visible to her dear;
She is full of God she understands.
V. A. Zhukovsky (1783-1852)
O life! You are a moment, but a beautiful moment,
The moment is irrevocable, dear,
Equally happy and unhappy
They don't want to break up with you.
You are a moment, but given to us from God
Not for grumbling
To your lot, your way
And a priceless gift to curse.
But to enjoy life
But to appreciate it
Don't bow down to fate
Pray, believe, love.
Alexey N. Apukhtin (1841-1893)
How inevitable is your power,
Thunderstorm of criminals, innocent comforter.
O conscience! Our cases are law and accuser, Witness and judge!
V. A. Zhukovsky
There is a feat in the battle,
There is a feat in the struggle,
The highest feat in patience,
Love and prayer.
If the heart ached
Before human malice,
Ile violence seized
You with a steel chain.
If earthly sorrows
Sting into the soul stuck -
Faith vigorous and bold
Take on the feat.
Achievement has wings
And you fly on them
Easily. without effort
Above the darkness of the earth.
Above the roof of the dungeon
Above the malice of the blind
Above the screams and screams
Proud black people.
A. S. Khomyakov(1804-1860)
Do not blame me,
almighty,
Don't blame me Lord
And don't punish me, please
Because the darkness of the earth is grave
With her passions I love;
For something that rarely enters the soul
Your stream of living speeches;
For wandering in delusion
My mind is far from You;
For being the lava of inspiration
It bubbles on my chest;
For what wild excitement
Darken the glass of my eyes;
For the fact that the earthly world is small for me,
Well, I'm afraid to penetrate you,
And often the sound of sinful songs
I, God, do not pray to You.
But extinguish this wonderful flame,
all-burning fire,
Turn my heart to stone
Stop the hungry look; ;
From the terrible thirst for singing
Let, Creator, I will be freed,
Then on the narrow path of salvation
I will turn to you again.
M. Yu. Lermontov (1814-1841)
There is a time...
There is time - the quick mind freezes;
There is a twilight of the soul when the subject
Desires gloomy; lulling thoughts;
Between joy and sorrow half light;
The soul is constrained by itself,
Life is hateful, but death is terrible -
You find the root of torment in yourself
And the sky can not be blamed for anything.
I'm used to this state
But I couldn't express it clearly.
Neither angelic nor demonic language:
They do not know such worries;
In one, everything is pure, and in the other, everything is evil.
Could only be found in a person
Sacred with vicious. All of it
That's where the pain comes from.<
Y. Lermontov
Cup of life
We drink from the cup of life
With closed eyes
Golden wetting edges
With their own tears;
When before death from the eyes
The string falls
And everything that seduced us
With a string disappears;
Then we see that it is empty
There was a golden cup
That there was a drink in it - a dream
And that she is not ours!
Y. Lermontov
< <
All wisdom is
All wisdom lies in joyfully
Sing to the glory of God.
Equally yes it will be sweet
And live and die.
D. S. Merezhkovsky(1866-1941)
Not the flesh, but the spirit has become corrupted in our days,
And the man desperately yearns ...
He rushes to the light from the night shadow
And, having found the light, grumbles and rebels.
We burn with unbelief and wither,
He endures the unbearable...
And he knows his death
And longs for faith ... but does not ask for it -
The century will not say, with a prayer and a tear,
No matter how he mourns before the closed door:
"Let me in! I believe, my God!
Come to the aid of my unbelief"...
F. I. Tyutchev (1803-1873)
They don't see or hear
They live in this world as if in darkness
For them, and the sun, to know, does not breathe,
And there is no life in the sea waves.
The rays did not descend into their souls,
Spring did not bloom in their chest,
With them, the forests did not speak,
And the night was mute in the stars;
And with unearthly tongues.
Thrilling rivers and forests
At night I did not consult with them
In a friendly conversation, a thunderstorm ...
F. I. Tyutchev
Anguish of the Spirit
In our life of the worldly sea,
In our life of earthly vanity
Many tears and unnecessary grief,
Lots of idle, empty fuss.
In the life of noise sometimes languishes
Unquenched soul in the world -
And goes to his temple to pray,
Where is the Lord and His silence.
How wonderful are the spring dawns,
How mysterious is the whisper of the forest,
Silent stars are watching from the sky,
Graceful peace in the soul.
The joy of God flares up,
And withered flowers in the heart
They tell us about eternal rest,
They talk about immortal love.
K. Tomilin
< < < < <
Oh, faith is pure, holy,
You are the door of the soul to the abode of paradise,
You are the life of the future dawn,
Burn in me, lamp of faith,
Burn brighter, don't fade away
Be my faithful companion everywhere
And enlighten the way for me.
K. R. (Vel. Book. Const. Const. Romanov)
Don't say to heaven
Don't say to heaven
Your prayer is not profitable;
Believe like fragrant incense
She is pleasing to the Creator.
When you pray don't waste
redundant words; but with all my heart
Try to recognize with faith
What He hears, that He is with you.
What are words for Him? - About what,
Happy at heart or grieving,
You wouldn't even think about
Does the All-Seeing not know?
Love for the Creator in your soul
It would only burn invariably,
As before the sacred icon
Oil lamps glow.
Faith is the light of life
Slaves of their lack of will -
Confront nothing
We cannot do our vices.
Does the mind save us from them? -
Where there is no faith - there the light went out,
Darkness swept in there...
And the surf of the wave is growing, -
Bridges, dams demolished
Fall - the bottom, passions - no measure;
And stronger than all the temptations network ...
How scary to live ... But to die -
Still, even more terrible without faith ...
A. Corinthian
Blessed is he who by holy faith
raised his spirit, inspired,
and the heart, like steel scolding,
strengthened from the storms of life.
That is not afraid of trials,
neither distance nor depth of the sea;
grief and suffering are not terrible,
and the power of death is not terrible.
A. Ushakov
To us who were born
We, who were born in a terrible time,
We must keep the ancient faith
And bear the eternal burden
On a hard, disgraced path.
Many are called, but few are chosen: -
In the life of the future, the measures are not those
No matter how low you, heart, fell,
There is hope for you in Christ.
In every life over a trifle gray
There are and will be holy places.
I believe in one Trinity
I confess with the heart of Christ.
Trees are known by their fruits,
Hearts are known by deeds.
In these difficult years of nomadism
Let's be clean in the name of the Father.
Vl. Dixon(1900-1929)
I dont believe anyone
I dont believe anyone,
I believe only in God.
I'm not scared alone
Go on the road.
For the Lord is with me everywhere,
He helps me
In the sea, in the sky, on the ground
Extends his hand.
And for that I pray to Him:
Glory to Thee, God!
In the fire of death I'm not afraid
If to be her - well,
I'm ready to accept it
For faith in Christ
And for the Motherland without words,
For everything that is sacred in it.
B. N. Shiryaev(1889-1959)
Faith and Hope
The joys that have passed cannot be returned,
But in sorrow itself there is pleasure for the heart.
Is it all a dream? Is it right to shed tears?
Is our life just a ghost,
And the difficult path leads to nothingness?
Oh no! My dear friend, let's not be hopeless:
There is a sure harbor, there is a serene shore.
There everything that perished before us will come to life;
Invisible hand stretched out over us,
Leads us to one in different ways.
Bliss is our goal; when we get there,
Providence has not revealed this secret to us.
But sooner or later, we will sigh joyfully,
Heaven has given us hope not in vain.
V. A. Zhukovsky (1783-1852)
My spirit! Trust to the Creator!
Take courage, be patient stone!
Isn't He the best ending
He led me through the mortal flame?
On the field of death whose hand
Mysteriously saved me
And the enemy's bloodthirsty sword
And the lead hail reflected?
Who, who gave me the strength to endure
Works, and smoothness, and bad weather,
Souls of sublime freedom?
Who led me from my youthful days
To goodness, the hidden path,
And in a storm of fiery passions
Was my counselor unchanged?
He! He! His all good gift!
He is the source of high feelings,
And pure and deep thoughts!
Everything is His gift, and more beautiful than all
Gifts - the hope of a better life!
When I see a calm shore,
The country of the desired homeland?
When a jet of heavenly blessings
I will quench the desire of love,
I will throw the earthly robe into dust
And renew my existence?
K. N. Batyushkov (1787-1855).
Power of love
Believe in the great power of love...
Holy believe in her victorious cross,
In her light radiantly saving
A world mired in mud and blood...
Believe in the great power of love...
S. Ya. Nadson (1862-1887)
Teach me, God, to love
Teach me, God, to love
With all your mind, with all your thoughts,
To devote my soul to You
And all my life with every heartbeat.
Teach me to keep
Only Your merciful will,
Learn to never complain
To your hard lot.
All who came to redeem
You, by Your Pure Blood,
Selfless, deep love
Teach me, God, to love!
Love is eternal.
Will the heart burn with love,
Oh, don't put out her fire!
Is it not for them to live your life,
How bright is the day by the light of the sun?
Love endlessly, selflessly
With all the fullness of spiritual strength,
Even though love is reciprocal
Nobody repaid you.
Let them say: like everything in creation,
Your love will die with you
Do not believe in wrong doctrine:
The flesh will decay, the blood will cool,
Extinguish within a specified time
Our world, the darkness of worlds will fade away,
But that flame, kindled by the Creator,
Remain in eternity of ages.
< < <
bless you woods
I bless you forests
Valleys, fields, mountains, waters,
I bless freedom
And blue skies.
And I bless my staff,
And this poor bag
And the steppe from edge to edge,
And the sun is light, and the night is darkness,
And a lonely path
Which way, beggar, I go,
And in the field every blade of grass,
And every star in the sky.
Oh, if I could mix my whole life,
To merge my whole soul with you;
Oh, if you could in my arms
I am you, enemies, friends and brothers,
And enclose all nature!
A. K. Tolstoy (1817-1875)
Don't say there's no escape
Don't say there's no escape
That you are exhausted in sorrows;
The darker the night, the brighter the stars
The deeper the sorrow, the closer God...
A. N. Maikov (1821-1897)
moment
There are sacred moments for the soul;
Then she is a stranger to earthly worries,
Enlightened by the ray of transfiguration
And lives the heavenly life.
There is no more struggle; hearts of torment subside;
Harmony and peace reign in it -
And harmoniously life poured into sounds,
And a new world is built from sounds.
And that world shines with rainbow clothes,
They seem to reflect the brilliance of heaven;
Everything breathes in it with love and hope,
He is lit up by faith like the sun.
And then we see the invisible King of creation;
On everything lies His hand's seal;
The soul is bright ... In a moment of inspiration
I would like to stand before God's judgment!
N. V. Stankevich (1813-1840)
The valley is foggy, the air is damp,
A cloud covers the sky
Sadly looks dim world
The wind howls sadly.
Fear not, my traveler,
On earth everything is a battle;
But you have peace
Power and prayer!
N. P. Ogarev (1813-1877)
Be proud...
"Be proud!" - the flatterers told you:
Earth with a crowned brow,
Land of unbreakable steel
Taking half the world with a sword! ...
Your steppes are red attire,
And mountains in the sky rested
And like the seas are your lakes...
Don't believe, don't listen, don't be proud
May your rivers be deep waves,
Like the waves of the blue seas
And the depths of the mountains of diamonds are full,
And the fat fields are full of bread;
Let before your held brilliance
The peoples timidly bow their gaze,
And seven seas with a silent splash
You are sung by a silent choir;
Let it be a bloody thunderstorm
Your peruns swept:
With all this power, this glory,
Don't be proud of all this dust...
Every spirit of pride is fruitless,
Not true gold, steel is fragile,
But the clear world of the shrine is strong,
Strong is the praying hand!...
A. S. Khomyakov
Day of the Baptism of Russia
Life without Christ is an accidental dream.
Blessed is he who has been given two hearings,
Who even the church hears the ringing,
Only the heavens are clear to him,
Who also sees clearly in science
Unknown wonders
And God suspects them...
As the highest ideal
As a true guarantee of salvation, -
Love and selflessness
Christ bequeathed to the nations.
The day we put on
Soul into the incorruption of Christ,
From black deeds we shudder
And, renewed, wake up, -
And lies will not bind our mouths.
Today, on the first day of baptism, -
Perhaps in poor villages,
In the abode of labor and tears,
Not in poor rags Christ
It will do, but with an olive branch,
And he will say: Be happy!
Everyone - wish you all the best! ..
Today is the first day
Vladimir and My Saints
They baptized Russia in the waves of the Dnieper! ..
Prince of Kyiv, once angry,
In alliance with the Greek princess,
In a golden crown and on his
Grand Duke's Throne
For a plowman in a distant field,
For a hussler on the loose
And for a combatant with a spear -
Became a friend and father to all
And the red sun desired ...
Came by Andrew the First-Called
Foretold time:
The whirlpools of the Dnieper surged,
Slavs frightening gods
Crashed on its thresholds
And the heroes trembled,
And the savages fled
Oh, how from the morning dawn
Run, staggering, the shadows of the night,
And the sun pleases our eyes
And illuminates the altars
So on the day of the great Epiphany
Shine on us, faith! Away with doubts!
Russia would never be
Such a great Russia
When she was a stranger
Love bequeathed by the Messiah
Let chilled minds
We are ready to deny everything, - we
Have not yet become poor in heart;
We are also happy to help
To scattered co-religionists
Without us, Hellas would not have risen,
The throne of Rome would not help her,
Napoleon would not collapse
And formidable troops of his bulk.
Under the heavy yoke of Muslims
Without us, the Slavs would be forgotten, -
We carried life to their graves...
Shattering enemy forces
We didn't count our wounds...
We are for heroic deeds
We didn't expect gold and silver...
For the cause of glory and goodness
We didn't ask for a refund...
And if the finger of the Lord again
He will show us a great goal, -
What to do - the heart will tell us
And Christian love!
Russia, call on the faith!..
On this solemn and glorious day,
We are protected by the Sovereign Father
For new exploits of love...
Ya. P. Polonsky (1819-1899)
In a time of trouble
In the time of unrest, despondency and debauchery
Do not condemn your erring brother;
But, having taken up arms with prayer and the cross,
Before pride - humble your pride,
Before malice - know the shrine of love
And execute the spirit of darkness in yourself.
Don't say: "I am a drop in this sea,
My sorrow is powerless in the general grief,
My love will disappear without a trace ... "
Humble your soul - and you will comprehend your power,
Believe in love - and you will move mountains
And tame the abyss of stormy waters.
Gr. A. A. Golenishchev-Kutuzov (1818-1913)
When I grieve in spirit
Chatting with me.
His harmonies charm
Prayerfully pure
They will not dare to repeat
Sinful mouth.
His words are holy
I hear, as in a dream, -
But everything is so clear with him
And so it is clear to me.
And earthly happiness
Then I don't ask
And I know that God
I carry in my chest.
death and time
Death and time reign on earth
You do not call them masters:
Everything, whirling, disappears into the mist,
Only the Sun of love is motionless.
V. S. Solovyov (1853-1900)
Alone again
Alone again, left again
I'm walking the lost path.
May God be forever glorified
Giving faith and a star!
Humiliated by time and body, -
Years and terms I am a stranger.
The soul strives to those limits,
Where the hour is not strong over the soul.
And the soul does not believe in anything, -
Only in the inaccessible Christ,
The grave will measure the body,
But height will take the soul!
Vl. Dixon(1900-1929)
In a coat with an open collar
With bare head
Slowly passing through the city
Uncle Vlas is a gray-haired old man.
On the chest there is a copper icon,
He asks for God's temple, -
All in chains, poor shoes,
There is a deep scar on the cheek;
Yes with iron tip
Long stick in hand
They say a great sinner
He was before. in a man
There was no God. battered
He drove his wife into the coffin;
thieving robbers,
Konokradov sheltered;
In the whole neighborhood of the poor
Buys up bread, and in a black year
Do not believe a penny of copper,
He'll rip off the beggar for the second time!
I took from my native, I took from the wretched,
He was reputed to be a koshchei-man;
The temper was cool, strict.
Finally, thunder struck!
Vlas is bad: they call the healer
Will it help that
Who took off his shirt from the plowman,
Stealing money from a beggar?
It just can't get any worse.
A year has passed, and Vlas lies,
And swears to build a church,
If death escapes.
They say he has visions
Everyone is delirious:
I saw the light show
I saw sinners in hell;
Their nimble demons torment,
The fidget witch stings.
Ethiopians - black in appearance
And like a coal of an eye,
Crocodiles, snakes, scorpions
Bake, cut, burn.
Howling sinners in sorrow
Rusty chains gnaw.
Those are strung on a long pole,
Those hot lick the floor...
There, on the charters are written,
Vlas read his sins...
Vlas saw pitch darkness
And the last one made a vow...
The Lord took heed - and the sinful soul
Returned to the free world.
Vlas distributed his estate,
He himself remained barefoot and naked
And collect to build
Temple of God went.
Since then, the man has been wandering
It's almost 30 years now
It feeds on alms -
Strictly keeps his vow.
The strength of the whole soul is great
Gone to the cause of God
Like wild greed
She was disrespectful...
Full of inconsolable grief,
Dark-skinned, tall and straight,
He walks slowly
Through villages and mountains.
He has no way far:
Was with mother Moscow,
Was at the wide Caspian,
Was at the royal Neva.
Walks with an image and a book,
He speaks to himself
And with an iron chain
Quietly ringing.
Walks in the cold winter
Walking in the heat of summer
Calling Russia baptized
For feasible gifts, -
And give, give passers-by...
So from the mite of labor
Churches of God grow
On the face of the native land ...
Nick. Alex. Nekrasov (1821-1877).
Prayer, temple and worship.
Pray! Gives prayer wings
Soul chained to the ground
And carves the key of abundance
In a rock overgrown with thorns.
She is a cover for us from impotence.
She is a star in the vale of darkness.
On the sacrifice of pure prayer -
Souls imperishable incense,
From an inaccessible village
A bright angel flies to us
With a cool cup of refreshment
Burning with thirsty hearts.
Pray when the snake is cold
Anguish will penetrate your chest;
Pray when in the barren steppe
Your dreams paved the way
And the heart, a rootless orphan,
There is no place to rest.
Pray when a deaf stream
The struggle boils in you;
Pray when before a powerful rock
You are unarmed and weak;
Pray when with a welcoming eye
Fate will please you.
Pray, pray! Souls of all strength
Pour hot prayer into
When your angel is golden-winged,
Tore the veil from your eyes,
Will point them to the image of a darling,
Already dreaming of your soul.
And on a clear day and under a thunderstorm,
Towards happiness or misfortune,
And it will sweep over you
The shadow of a cloud or a ray of a star.
Pray! holy prayer
Secret fruits ripen in us.
Everything is unsteady in this flowing life.
All decay should bring tribute.
And joy must be fragile,
And each rose will bloom.
What will happen - then in the distance of the correspondence,
And what is unreliable.
Prayers alone will not deceive
And tell the secret of life
And tears that with prayer will sink
In a vessel opened by goodness,
Resurrect with living pearls
And the soul will be wrapped in brilliance.
And you, shining so joyfully
A dawn of hope and beauty,
In those days when the soul is young -
Shrine of a virgin dream, -
Earthly flowers of earthly paradise
Don't trust too much.
But believe with childlike simplicity
To the fact that we are not from the earth,
What for the mind is covered with darkness,
But the heart is apparently far away,
And pray to the bright sacraments
They crushed their hopes.
Book. P. A. Vyazemsky (1792-1878)
Forgive me, God, sins
Forgive me, God, sins
And renew my dark spirit.
Let me bear my pain
In hope, faith and love.
I am not afraid of my suffering,
They are the pledge of holy love,
But give me a fiery soul
I could shed tears of repentance.
Look at the hearts of poverty
Give Magdalene a sacred gift,
Give John purity;
Let me carry my perishable crown
Under the yoke of a heavy cross
At the feet of the Savior Christ.
I. I. Kozlov (1779-1840)
Comfort
Dry your tears, clear your darkened heart,
Raise your eyes to heaven: there is the Father Comforter!
There He is your contrite life, your sigh and prayer
Hears and sees. Humble yourself, believing in His goodness,
If you lose the strength of your soul in suffering and fear,
Raise your eyes to heaven: He will give new strength.
V. A. Zhukovsky (1783-1852)
"Our Father"
I heard - in a simple cell
The old man with a miraculous prayer
Prayed silently before me:
"Father of men, Heavenly Father!
Yes, your eternal name
Hallowed by our hearts;
May your kingdom come
May your will be with us
As in heaven, so on earth.
Our daily bread has been sent down to us
With your generous hand;
How do we forgive people?
So us, insignificant before You,
Forgive, Father, Your children;
Don't lead us into temptation
And from crafty seduction
Spare us!.."
Before the cross
So he prayed. lamp light
Flickering in the dark from afar,
And the heart felt joy
From that old man's prayer.
A. S. Pushkin
To the Mother of God
I, the Mother of God, now with a prayer
Before Your image, bright radiance,
Not about salvation, not before the battle,
Not with gratitude or repentance,
I do not pray for my desert soul,
For the soul of a wanderer in the light of the rootless,
But I want to give an innocent virgin
Warm Intercessor of the cold world.
Surround happiness with happiness worthy,
Give her companions full of attention,
Bright youth, calm old age,
Peace of hope for a gentle heart.
Will the hour of farewell draw near,
In a noisy morning, in a silent night,
You perceive went to the sad bed
The best angel - a beautiful soul.
M. Yu. Lermontov
In a difficult moment of life,
Does sadness cramp in the heart;
One wonderful prayer
I repeat by heart.
There is a grace
In harmony with the words of the living
And breathes incomprehensible,
Holy beauty in them.
From the soul as a burden rolls down,
Doubt is far away
And believe and cry
And it's so easy, so easy...
M. Yu. Lermontov
King of Heaven
King of heaven! Calm down
My sick spirit!
Delusions of the earth
Oblivion went to me -
And to your strict paradise
Give strength to your heart.
E. A. Baratynsky (1800-1844)
Before bedtime
I beg you, before the coming sleep, God!
Give people peace, bless
A baby's dream, and a beggar's bed,
And silent tears of love.
Forgive sins, for burning suffering
Breathe calmly…
N. P. Ogarev (1813-1877)
The night fell from the faded heights,
Twilight in the sky, shadows over the earth,
And over the roof of dark silence
There is a host of deceptive visions.
Sanctify the midnight hour with prayer!
God's spirits guard the earth,
The stars shine like God's eyes.
Get up, sleeping brother in the darkness!
Break the nightly deceptions of the network!
In the cities they call in the morning,
God's children go to God's church.
Pray for yourself, for everyone
For whom the earthly battle is hard,
About the slaves of senseless pleasures! ..
Believe that everyone needs your prayer.
Get up, sleeping brother in the darkness!
Let your awakened spirit ignite
Like the stars in the sky are burning
How the lamp is burning in front of the icon.
A. S. Khomyakov (1804-1860)
Pray child
Pray, child: he listens to you
Creator of countless worlds,
And counts the drops of your tears
And I'm ready to answer you.
Maybe your guardian angel
All these tears will collect
And them to the superstellar abode
He will take you to the throne of God.
Pray, child, man with years!
And God forbid, at the time of later years,
With such bright eyes
You look at God's light.
I. S. Nikitin (1824-1861)
Send, Lord, Your consolation
Send, Lord, Your consolation
To the one who in the summer heat and heat,
Like a poor beggar passing by a garden,
Walking along the hot pavement.
Who looks casually through the fence
To the shade of the trees, the grass of the valleys,
To inaccessible coolness
Luxurious light meadows.
Not hospitable for him
The trees have grown into a canopy,
Not for him, like a smoky cloud,
The fountain hung in the air.
Azure grotto, as if from fog,
In vain his gaze beckons,
And the dewy dust of the fountain
His head will not refresh.
Send, Lord, Your consolation
To the one who is the path of life,
Like a poor beggar passing by a garden,
Wandering along the sultry pavement.
F. I. Tyutchev (1803-1873)
How long do I live
The more I live, the more I have experienced,
The more commandingly I constrain the ardor of the heart,
The clearer for me what has not been from the century
Words that illumine brighter than a person.
Our universal Father who is in heaven,
May we keep Your name in our hearts,
Let your kingdom come, let there be will
Yours, both in heaven and in the earthly vale.
Send and now daily bread from labors,
Forgive us a debt: and we forgive debtors,
And do not lead us, the powerless, into temptation,
And deliver self-conceit from the evil one.
A. A. Fet (1820-1892)
Our Father! Heed the son's prayer!
All-penetrating
All-creative
Give us brotherly love on earth!
Son, crucified in the name of love!
fierce,
impoverished
Refresh your heart in us, renew!
Holy Spirit! The source of truth is alive!
Give strength to the suffering!
Mind thirsty
You coveted secrets open!
God! Save you from all chains
Soul awakened
And horrified
Darkness, and evil, and untruth of people!
Hear the prayer of those who have risen to Your voice,
And numb
In laziness ossifying
Wake up life to the holy struggle!
Ya. P. Polonsky (1819-1898)
Save, save me
Save, save me! I wait,
I believe, you see, I believe in a miracle.
I won't shut up, I won't leave
And I will knock on your door.
My blood burns with desire
There is a seed of decay in me.
Oh give me pure love
Oh, give me tears of tenderness!
And forgive the damned
Cleanse my soul with suffering -
And enlighten the dark mind
You are an unfading radiance.
D. S. Merezhkovsky(1866-1941)
Prayer for wings
Prostrate, despondent,
Hopeless, wingless,
In repentance, in tears, -
We lie in dust.
We don't dare, we don't want
We don't believe and we don't know
And we love nothing.
God give us deliverance
Give freedom and aspirations
Give me your joy
Oh, save us from impotence
Give us wings Give us wings
Wings of Your Spirit!
D. S. Merezhkovsky
At the hour of silent sunset
At the hour of silent sunset
Remember those who have gone
Didn't die without a return
That is experienced with love.
Let the blue mist
Night falls on earth
We are not afraid of the darkness of the night,
The heart knows the coming day.
New glory of the Lord
The vault of heaven will light up,
And will reach the underworld
Bright Annunciation of the Resurrection.
V. S. Solovyov (1853-1900)
Pray humbly to God
Pray humbly to God
Ask for forgiveness.
We have little love and a lot
Evil thought.
And do not believe in human knowledge
And in human forces, -
Incorporeal, like a dream
Everything that lived before.
There was a lot of bold will
And great pride -
Everything is gone and burned
Dust and ashes now.
You live in complete ignorance
Goals or deadline
You float like a leaf on the waves
Muddy stream.
Pray humbly to God
Ask for forgiveness
And give away your anxiety
On His decision.
Andrey Bloch
To the Heavenly Guardian
Mira Intercessor, Mother of all singing,
I am before You with a prayer:
Poor sinner, dressed in darkness,
You cover with grace.
If trials befall me,
Sorrow, loss, enemies, -
In a difficult hour of life, in a moment of suffering,
You help me, please.
Spiritual joy, thirst for salvation
Put in my heart;
To the kingdom of heaven, to the world of consolation
Show me the straight path.
Yu. V. Zhadovskaya (1824-1883)
When we are driven by longing
When we are driven by unquenchable longing,
You will enter the temple and stand there in silence.
Lost in the endless crowd
As part of one suffering soul
Involuntarily, your grief will drown in it,
And you feel that your spirit suddenly poured into
Mysteriously in your native sea
And for one with him rushes to heaven ...
Ap. N. Maikov(1821-1897)
I loved as a child
As a child I loved the twilight in the temple,
Loved in the evening
His shining lights
Before the praying crowd.
I loved the all-night vigil,
When in tunes and words
Sounds of submissive humility
And repentance for sins.
Silently, somewhere in the porch,
I stood behind the crowd
I brought with me
In the soul and joy, and sorrow.
And at the hour when the choir sang softly
About the "Quiet Light," - in tenderness
I forgot my worries
And my heart brightened with joy ...
Years passed, hopes passed
Dreams have changed.
In the soul there is no longer, as before,
Such warmth of the heart.
But those holy impressions
Power over the heart and now,
And I'm without tears, without irritation
I go through days of doubt
Days of abuse and loss.
I. A. Bunin.(1870-1953)
Aside
Away from the big cities
In the middle of endless meadows
Behind the village, on a low mountain,
All white, all visible in the moonlight,
The old church seems to me
And on the white church wall
A lonely cross is reflected.
Yes, I see you, God's house!
I see inscriptions along the cornice
And the apostle Paul with a sword,
Clothed in a light robe.
The watchman rises
To your belfry-ruin,
In the shade it is huge
Crossed the entire plain in half.
Get up! And beat slowly
To hear a long buzz
In the silence of the village nights.
These sounds are powerful singing,
If there is a patient in the neighborhood,
He will tremble with them at heart.
And, carefully counting the sounds,
Forget your pain for a moment
Is it a lonely night traveler
He will hear them - he walks more cheerfully,
Their caring plowman considers
And, falling like a cross in a half-asleep,
Asks God for a bucket day.
N. A. Nekrasov(1821-1878)
temple on the mountain
The temple of God flashed on the mountain,
And the childish-pure sound of faith
Suddenly, it smelled.
No denial, no doubt
"Catch a moment of tenderness,
Come in with your head open."
… … … … … … …
"Temple of sigh, temple of sorrow -
Poor temple of your land;
Heavier groans have not heard
Neither the Roman Peter, nor the Colosseum.
Here the people you love
His longing irresistible
He brought the holy burden
And he left relieved.
Come in! Christ will lay hands
And will remove by the will of the saint
From the soul of shackles, from the heart of flour
And ulcers from the conscience of the patient "...
N. A. Nekrasov
church twilight
Church darkness. peaceful chill,
Silent altar.
The flickering light of an unquenchable lamp
Now, how old.
There is no noise here, and the heart beats more muffled
And it doesn't hurt.
Here a lot of grief cried souls
At the ancient plates.
Here people entrusted flour to God,
Here is the eternal trace
Unknown tears, unspeakable sadness
Forgotten years.
An ancient temple - protection from impotence,
Shelter for battles
Where the angel of God gives wings to mortals
For their prayers.
Andrey Bloch
Vespers in the village
Come, you weak
Come, joyous one!
They call for vespers
To the gracious prayer ...
And the sound of peace
Everyone asks in the soul,
Neighborhood calling
It spreads in the fields.
Both old and young will enter:
Pray first,
He bows to the earth,
Bow around...
And slenderly clear
There is singing,
And the deacon is peaceful
Says the announcement
About gratitude
Labor of those praying
About the royal city
About all workers
About those who are in favor
Suffering is given...
And there was smoke in the church
Thick from the palm.
And setting
With strong beams
And sideways shiny
Dusty pillars.
From the sun - God's temple
Burning and glowing
In the open window
Blue smoke is blowing
And the singing is merged ...
They call for vespers
To the gracious prayer ...
Come, you weak
Come, joyous one!
I. S. Aksakov (1823-2886)
Blagovest
Among the oak forest
Shines with crosses
Temple five-domed
With bells.
Their call is calling
Through the graves
Buzzing so wonderful
And so sad.
He pulls himself
Irresistible
Calls and beckons
He is native to the land, -
In the blessed land
Forgotten by me -
And incomprehensible
We mourn.
I pray - and I repent
And I cry again
And I renounce
From the deed of evil.
Wandering far
wonderful dream,
Through the spaces I
I'm flying heavenly.
And the heart is joyful
Trembling and melting
As long as the sound is good
Doesn't freeze.
I. A. Aksakov
bells
The good news is rushing ... How sad and depressing
Bells ring on the foreign side.
Again I remembered the edge of my dear homeland,
And the old longing on the heart leaned.
I see my north with its snowy plain,
And as if I hear our village
Familiar gospel ... And affectionately and gently
Bells are ringing from a distant homeland.
< < <
The girl sang
The girl sang in the church choir
About all the tired in a foreign land,
About all the ships that have gone to sea,
About all those who have forgotten their joy.
And the beam shone on a white shoulder,
And each of the darkness looked and listened,
How the white dress sang in the beam.
And it seemed to everyone that there would be joy,
That all ships are in a safe harbor,
That in a foreign land tired people
They got a bright life.
A. A. Blok (1880-1921)
Lenten Prayer
Desert fathers and blameless wives,
To fly with your heart in the region of correspondence,
To strengthen it in the midst of the valley storms and battles,
Laid down many divine prayers;
But none of them make me happy
Like the one that the priest repeats
In the sad days of Great Lent;
More and more often she comes to my lips -
And the fallen is freshened by an unknown force.
Lord of my days! The spirit of idleness is dull,
Love of command, this hidden serpent,
And give not idle talk to my soul;
But let me see my, oh God, sins,
Yes, my brother will not accept condemnation from me,
And the spirit of humility, patience, love
And revive chastity in my heart.
A. S. Pushkin (1799-1837)
I see your chamber
I see your chamber, my Savior!
He shines with Your glory,
But I dare not enter it,
But I have no clothes
To appear before You.
O Light Giver, Enlighten
You are the sack of the poor soul.
I walked the earthly path as a beggar,
Lots of love and generosity
Count me among your servants.
Book. P. A. Vyazemsky(1792-1878)
In Passion Week
The groom is coming at midnight.
But where is His blessed servant,
Who will he find to keep watch?
And who with a lit lamp
He will enter the marriage feast
In whom the darkness has not swallowed up the light?
Oh yeah get it right like smoke
fragrant censer,
My prayer is before You!
I am inconsolable longing
In tears I look from afar
And I do not dare my eye
Raise up to your chamber.
Where can I get clothes?
Oh God, shine through the clothes
My tormented soul,
Give me hope for salvation
In the days of Your holy Passion.
Hear, Lord, my prayers
And your last supper
And all-honored ablution
Accept me as a communicant.
I will not give out my secrets to my enemies,
Remember I will not give Judas
You in my kiss, -
But I'll be behind the robber
Before your holy cross
Call out on your knees;
Oh remember, Creator of the universe,
me in your kingdom!
trinity day
The buzzing bell calls to prayer,
In the sunny meadows above the fields it rings,
The distance of water meadows is buried in azure,
And the river in the meadows sparkles and burns.
And in the village in the morning there is mass in the temple,
The whole pulpit is strewn with green grass,
An altar shining and adorned with flowers,
Illuminated by the amber brilliance of candles and the sun.
And the choir sings loudly, cheerful and discordant,
And the breeze brings aroma through the windows ...
Your day has come today, tired, meek brother,
Your spring holiday, both bright and calm.
You are now from the labor sown fields
He brought here simple offerings as gifts:
Garlands of young birch branches,
Sorrow is a quiet sigh, prayer - and humility.
I. A. Bunin
prayer for the dead
(From the poem "John of Damascus")
What sweetness in this life
Earthly sadness is not involved?
Whose waiting is not in vain
And where is the happy man?
Everything is wrong, everything is insignificant,
What We Hardly Acquired:-
What glory on earth
Is it firm and immutable?
All ashes, ghost, shadow and smoke
Everything will disappear like a dusty whirlwind,
And before death we stand
And unarmed and powerless.
The hand of the mighty is weak,
The royal decrees are worthless, -
Accept the deceased slave
Lord, blessed villages!
… … … … … … … … … …
All life is the realm of vanity,
And I feel the breath of death,
We fade like flowers
Why are we running in vain?
Our thrones are the tomb,
Our halls of destruction, -
Accept the deceased slave
Lord, to blessed villages.
Among the heaps of smoldering bones
Who is the king, who is the slave, judge or warrior?
Who is worthy of the kingdom of God,
And who is the outcast villain?
Oh, brothers, where is silver and gold,
Among unknown graves
Who is poor, who is rich?
All ashes, shadow and ghost, -
Lord and harbor, and salvation!
Everything that was flesh will disappear,
Our greatness will be decay, -
Accept the deceased servant, Lord,
To Your blessed villages!
And you, the representative of all,
And You, the intercessor of those who mourn,
To You, about the brother lying here,
To Thee, Holy One, we cry!
A. K. Tolstoy(1817-1875)
M. Nadezhdin (1804-1856)
Sounds are a prayer without words,
pouring into the heart calmly and strictly,
gently leading from everyday dreams
to the secrets of the harmony of the world and God.
With them, light spills into the soul
penetrating, distant lamp -
echoes of once tested years
happiness, peace, love and joy
There are also heavy sounds of the earth, children of dry earthly art;
listening, you know: they brought
bitter residue of wingless feeling.
In their mirror is our restless age,
dead ideas and forgotten lessons -
what a person lives today
in the realm of pride and false prophets...
Still I believe that the sounds of prayers
flow like a stream to God's ears,
louder than curses, sobs and battles
the song of victory of the resurrected Spirit!
Mikhail Lermontov. Demon.
Eastern story.
Sad Demon, spirit of exile,
He flew over the sinful earth,
And better days of remembrance
A crowd crowded before him;
Those days when in the dwelling of light
He shone, a pure cherub,
When a running comet
A smile of affectionate greetings
Loved to trade with him
When through eternal fogs,
Greedy for knowledge, he followed
Nomadic caravans
In the space of abandoned luminaries;
When he believed and loved
Happy firstborn of creation!
He knew neither malice nor doubt.
And did not threaten his mind
A barren series of centuries...
And many, many... and everything
He did not have the strength to remember!
Long outcast wandered
In the wilderness of a world without shelter:
After the century, the century fled,
Like a minute a minute
Uniform sequence.
Insignificant dominating the earth,
He sowed evil without pleasure.
Nowhere to your art
He met no resistance
And evil bored him.
And the Demon saw... For a moment
inexplicable excitement
He suddenly felt in himself.
The dumb soul of his desert
Filled with blessed sound -
And again he comprehended the shrine
Love, kindness and beauty!.
And long sweet picture
He admired - and dreams
About the former happiness with a long chain,
Like a star behind a star
They rolled before him then.
Bound by an invisible force
He became familiar with the new sadness;
A feeling suddenly spoke in him
once native language.
Was that a sign of rebirth?
He is the words of insidious temptation
I couldn't find it in my mind...
Forget? I did not give oblivion God:
Yes, he would not have taken oblivion!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
In the space of blue ether
One of the angels of the saints
Flying on golden wings
And a sinful soul from the world
He carried in his arms.
And sweet speech of hope
Dispelled her doubts
And a trace of misconduct and suffering
He washed away her tears.
From afar the sounds of paradise
They reached them - when suddenly,
Free path crossing,
An infernal spirit rose up from the abyss.
He was powerful, like a noisy whirlwind,
Shined like lightning,
And proudly in insane insolence
He says: "She's mine!"
She clung to her protective chest,
Prayer drowned out the horror,
Tamara sinful soul -
The fate of the future was decided
Again he stood before her,
But God! - who would recognize him?
With what an evil look he looked,
How full of deadly poison
Enmity that knows no end -
And breathed grave cold
From a motionless face.
"Disappear, gloomy spirit of doubt! -
The heavenly messenger replied:
You have triumphed enough;
But the hour of judgment has now come -
And God's decision!
The days of testing are over;
With the clothes of the mortal earth
The shackles of evil fell from her.
Find out! we have been waiting for it for a long time!
Her soul was one of those
Whose life is one moment
unbearable pain,
Unattainable pleasures:
Creator from the best ether
Weaved their living strings,
They are not made for the world
And the world was not created for them!
Redeemed at the price of cruel
She has her doubts...
She suffered and loved -
And heaven opened for love!"
And the angel with stern eyes
Looked at the tempter
And with joyful flapping of wings,
I drowned in the radiance of the sky.
And cursed Demon defeated
Your crazy dreams
And again he remained, arrogant,
Alone, as before, in the universe
Aksakov, Ivan Sergeevich (1823-1886) 56
Apukhtin, Alexey Nikolaevich (1841-1893) 35
Balmont, Konstantin Dimitrievich (1867-1943) 20, 32
Baratynsky, Evgeny Abramovich (1800-1844) 9, 49
Batyushkov, Konstantin Nikolaevich (1787-1855) 41
Bazhanov, V. 33
Blok, Alexander Alexandrovich (1880-1921) 5, 58
Bloch, Andrey 53, 56
Lot-Borodina, M. 17
Bulygin, P. P. 31
Bunin, Ivan Alekseevich (1870-1953) 13, 54, 60
Voloshin, Maximilian Alekseevich (1877-1931) 30
Vyazemsky, Prince Pyotr Andeevich (1792-1878) 36, 46, 59
Gnedich, Nikolai Ivanovich (1784-1833) 34
Grot, Yakov Karlovich (1812-1893) 28
Gumilyov, Nikolai Stepanovich (1886-1921) .....
Derzhavin, Gavriil Romanovich (1743-1816) 6
Dixon, Vladimir (1900-1929) 40, 45
Yelenov, M. 32
Zhadovskaya, Yulia Valeryanovna (1824-1883) 53
Zhukovsky, Vasily Andeevich (1783-1852) 37, 41, 48
Ivanov, V. 22
Kozlov, Ivan Ivanovich (1779-1840) 47
Corinthian, A. 40
Klyushnikov, I. 37
Golenishchev-Kutuzov, Count A. A. (1818-1913) 44
Kuchelbecker, Wilhelm Karlovich (1797-1846) 7
L., Hope
Lermontov, Mikhail Yurievich (1814-1841) 8, 17, 21, 48
Lomonosov, Mikhail Vavilievich (1711-1765) 5, 20
Ldov, K. 45
Maykov, Apollon Nikolaevich (1821-1897) 10, 43, 54
May, Lev Alekseevich (1822-1862) 4
Merezhkovsky, Dimitri Serg. (1866-1941) 11, 28, 39, 52
Miller, E. 29
Nadson, Semyon Yakovlevich (1862-1887) 32, 37, 42
Nekrasov, Nikolai Alekseevich (1821-1878) 55
Nikitin, Ivan Savvich (1824-1861) 8, 15, 50
Nihotas 25
Ogarev, Nikolay Platonovich (1813-1877) 44, 49
Palmin, Liodor Ivanovich (1841-1891) 19
Pozdnyakov, N. 15
Polonsky, Yakov Petrovich (1819-1898) 51
Pushkin, Alexander Sergeevich (1799-1837) 16, 48, 59
K. R. (Grand Prince Konstantin Romanov, 1852-1915) 18, 34, 39, 42,
Solovyov, Vladimir Sergeevich (1853-1900) 22, 45, 53
Stankevich, Nikolai Vladimirovich (1813-1840) 44
Tolstoy, Count Alexei Konstantinovich (1817-1875) 9, 23, 25
Tomlin, K.
Tyutchev, Fedor Ivanovich (1803-1873) 39, 50
Ushakov A.
Fet, Afanasy Afanasyevich (1820-1892) 10, 25, 51
Fofanov, Kontantin Mikhailovich (1862-1911) 11
Kheraskov, Mikhail Matfeevich (1733-1807) 7
Khomyakov, Alexei Stepanovich (1804-1860) 7, 14, 18, 30, 38, 50
Shiryaev, Boris Nikolaevich (1889-1959) 41
Yazykov, Nikolai Mikhailovich (1803-1846) 19
Yagodkin, D. 12
