What never ceases to amaze me is the rigidity and, in my opinion, even the cruelty of the priesthood in matters that seem to me not even secondary, but simply unimportant. Fathers may not give communion to a child if he was sitting on the Gospel, came in shorts, or the girl came without a headscarf. A person may not be allowed to confess if he has not fasted in a certain way a certain amount of days. I regularly ask people at Confession whether they are fasting, but it would never occur to me to ask them for gastronomic details, and even more so, on the basis of these details, to decide on the readiness of a person to participate in the Sacraments. Climbing into someone else's post seems to me as unethical as climbing into someone else's bed with your questions, which, by the way, is also not uncommon. I allowed one parishioner to enter the temple after work in trousers, because. she works almost all the time and has to wear trousers at work, but she walks past the church to work and is afraid to go in. In short, she burst into tears and began to kiss my hands, saying that none of the priests had ever been so kind to her. I tried to analyze the priests who live by these prohibitions, but I can’t understand what unites them. Among them are old and young, educated and uneducated, long-serving and recently ordained. It seems to me that this is a crookedly read Gospel plus something in the psyche ...
How difficult it is to communicate with a person with a "formed worldview." Absolute closeness to other experience. For some reason, there are especially many of these among the Orthodox. Apparently they confused the dogmatic correctness of the Church with their own infallibility in their views on life. As Schopenhauer wrote: "they take the end of their horizons for the end of the world." Church pride is a disease that leads to the crucifixion of Christ. At least that's what happened in the gospel story.
***
Incomprehensible ancient clothes and the name Jesus, sacred for many centuries, help our consciousness to hide the God-man again far away into heaven, to make the incarnation of God the property of hoary and almost fabulous antiquity. However, Christ wore the normal clothes of the time, as he would now wear jeans and a T-shirt or trousers and a pullover. And the name Jesus is also common, like the usual Petya, Kolya or Boris Ivanovich. He ate, drank and could appreciate good joke without ceasing to control the universe. But for such a Christ, we are too afraid, and suddenly be defiled by our humanity. It is more reliable to allocate a sacred "zone" to Him, let him be there. The Monophysite temptation is so close to our hearts...
And be to her the appearance of an angel ...
A familiar father said:
One of our parishioners became pregnant. Shortly thereafter, she dreamed of an angel who said that she would give birth to a boy and that he should be named Michael. There is no need to explain that she immediately put her husband, all her relatives on the ears, “got sick” of all the priests, etc. What was going on in her head and in her soul all this time only she knows. I think you already guessed about the final :) A girl was born ...
About Mary of Egypt
She was saved. And not just saved, but achieved holiness. The pinnacle of holiness. Without regular confessions and communion, without church services, without the New Testament, without the Psalter, akathist books and the prayer book "Shield of the Orthodox Woman", in short, without everything without which it seems unthinkable for us to be saved. There was only God and her longing for him. What am I talking about? About the fact that if we subtract from us everything that we call piety and that we often manage to take credit for ourselves, then what will be in the dry residue? Will we have enough for at least a 10-minute live conversation with God at the end of which it will not become boring? Isn't our "godliness", right in its place, often a smokescreen hiding a gaping emptiness in a personal relationship with God?
Stalker
For many years now I have wanted to learn from the feast of the Nativity of Christ, that weakness in which "the power of God is perfected." I don’t know how anyone, but it is the complete defenselessness of the Born that will shock me in the upcoming holiday. And yesterday I was rewatching "Stalker" and was struck by the words of the protagonist, right in tune with my thoughts before the holiday: "When a person is born, he is weak and flexible, when he dies, he is strong and callous. When a tree grows, it is gentle and flexible, and when it is dry and hard, it dies. Callousness and strength are the companions of death, flexibility and weakness express the freshness of being. Therefore, what is hardened will not win." Words worthy of the holy fathers. There will be something to say at the sermon :)
Priest Roman Matyukov,
Reviews
"Education is what remains when we have already forgotten everything we were taught" - George Halifax (XVIII century); "Education is what remains when everything learned is forgotten" - Berres Frederick Skinner (XX century). So, I spent more than ten years trying to simply forget everything I learned! As a result of this, I have what I have!
And SOCRATES is the wisest of the wisest philosophers, because he did not evade an unfair trial in a democratic society, but paid with his LIFE for the LAW, which is unshakable in the Universe, because according to this principle it develops everywhere, but with different individual approaches and opportunities.
Hi Valera. Here, you know, about old age ... Many authors complain on literary sites, everyone is good, but one drawback is old age. Then, apparently, they decide to turn their main flaw into a virtue, as they often teach in life. And they do what they want on the sites. They have nothing to lose, you see! And the second youth opens ...
It all reminds of the post-Chernobyl events, when young people from that zone were sent to camps ... Many people fucked with might and main, we will die and experience nothing in life! Ambulances they were on duty around the clock ... Abortions, abortions ... After the 4th year, we also worked in the same camp in the Odessa region with children, youth from Pripyat. True, this was not the case. At first there were only these children, but when the locals arrived at the camp ... Mamma Mia, the children were cooler, where there was Chernobyl ...
Oh, okay, forget it, I write all sorts of crap ...
The article is a reflection on Andrei Tarkovsky's film "Stalker", one of the facets of the theme of the issue.
Children of their time
What's wrong with prayer? You say it out of pride...
Agree, this remark, which sounded in the film “Stalker” in response to the squeamish “how shameful it all is - to humiliate yourself, dissolve snot, pray ...”, is perceived as a sign that defines the hero with Christian worldview. And when we're talking about Christian motives in fiction and cinema, we approach the “Stalker” ... it would seem that here it is - finished material for a sermon. But suddenly it turns out that not everything is so simple. Because the script for this film was written by the Strugatsky brothers.
The role of the Strugatskys in national culture The 20th century is huge. However, the scale of the talent of writers must correspond to the scale of their spiritual responsibility for the printed word. The way in which the names and concepts sacred to Christians are touched upon in the works of the Strugatskys cannot be a simple negligence of the authors - this is their clearly expressed attitude towards Christianity.
It began with the story “Monday begins on Saturday”: there an episodic magician character is called Sabaoth (one of the Old Testament names of God) with a patronymic and surname, for which the names of pagan deities are borrowed. And for a Christian, this is outright blasphemy. But the culmination of the Strugatskys' anti-Christianity is the novel Burdened with Evil, or Forty Years Later, the last major work, written by the brothers together (a few years before the death of the eldest, Arkady Natanovich). There is such a character in the novel - “Demiurge”, who is both God and Satan, and the appearance of himself and his “retinue” is demonstratively (with a number of allusions and reminiscences) written off from Bulgakov Woland and others like him. One of the associates of this Satan-demiurge is identified with the apostle of love, John the Theologian, revered in Christianity for his virginal purity; in the Strugatskys, such sexual abominations are attributed to this hero, which the tongue will not dare to retell. It makes no sense to justify the blasphemy by the fact that it is not pronounced by the authors on their own behalf, but sounds in some kind of virtual “artistic” world: someone who treats Christian shrines with even the slightest respect would not raise his hand to create such a virtual world.
However, the conclusion about the Satanism of the authors, which suggests itself from the plot of "Burdened with Evil", will not be true: in all other works they defend universal human values. In fact, they are just children of their era - materialists.
... And suddenly we dare to talk about the film, shot by Andrei Tarkovsky according to the script of the Strugatsky brothers, as Christian work. Paradox?
Path of pure souls
The simplest way to explain this paradox is that Tarkovsky misrepresented the author's intent of the screenwriters in an unacceptable way. Such an accusation is popular among Strugatsky fans. But even here everything is not so simple. The director's accusers are based on a comparison of the film with the novel Roadside Picnic. And in vain: "Picnic" and "Stalker" - two various works Strugatsky. One version of the work that became a film was published in the collection of selected screenplays by the Strugatsky brothers “Five Spoons of Elixir”. Yes, and there are discrepancies between this "Stalker" and Tarkovsky's film. But the 1977 version was published, and Arkady Natanovich and Boris Natanovich continued to work on the script in accordance with the director's recommendations in the summer of 1978. By the way, in the article about Tarkovsky “How I Knew Him,” Arkady Natanovich gives an example of these “recommendations”:
- ... and most importantly: Stalker should be completely different.
- What kind? I hurried.
- How should I know. But that this bandit of yours was not in the script.
But one should not at all draw a conclusion from this about the confrontation between Tarkovsky and the Strugatskys: “In general, even before the start of work, it became clear to my brother and me: if Andrei Tarkovsky is even wrong, then his mistakes are brilliant and are worth dozens of correct decisions of ordinary directors,” writes in the same article Arkady Natanovich. And here is what Tarkovsky said about the final version of the Strugatsky script: “For the first time in my life I have my script.”
However, although there was no confrontation, the unanimity described by Arkady Natanovich was apparently not achieved immediately. One can speculate about the authors' initial differences in vision of Stalker based on the differences between the 1977 script and the film, which was completed in 1979.
You can immediately highlight the most noticeable motifs and signs that make reference to the Christian context. Almost all of them are missing from the 1977 script. The New Testament texts that sound in the film (Rev. 6.12-17 and Luke 24.13-18); the face of Christ under water after the sounded text of Revelation; the blasphemy of the Writer, with the words “do not flatter yourself: I will not forgive you”, who put a crown of thorns on his head, stopped by the disturbing voice of the Stalker: “But this is not necessary!”; the dialogue I quoted above about prayer and a number of other points more or less clearly connected with Christianity. If you look closely at the building in which the heroes' goal is located - the room where wishes come true - you can see a clearly non-random similarity with Orthodox church: a quadrangle with outbuildings - left, higher, but small in area - clearly an altar apse, the “refectory” with a lower roof goes to the right. And when travelers from the "meat grinder" - the corridor of death - go into this building, they need to go through immersion in water. The association with baptism here can not even be commented on.
However, it would be incorrect to conclude that religious motives The film is completely inspired by Tarkovsky. In the script, the Stalker prays twice: in the very first episode, he “gets dressed, then kneels in front of the bath and begins to pray in an undertone”; then, in the Zone, after resting along the way, “he obviously chooses one of the two and does not know who to choose. An expression of bewilderment appears on his face. And then he begins to pray, as he did in the bathroom just now. His lips move, but the words are almost inaudible. But there is no hint of who the Stalker's prayer is addressed to. Both of these scenes are missing from the film. True, the Stalker in the film pronounces the text, the beginning of which, just like the text of the prayer in the bathroom in the script, begins with the word “let”, but this text is read by a voice-over, and it is not clear whether the hero is addressing Someone or simply meditates: “Let that which is planned be fulfilled. Let them believe. And let them laugh at their passions. After all, what they call passion is not really soul energy, but only friction between the soul and the outside world. And most importantly - let them believe in themselves and become helpless, like children. Because weakness is great, and strength is negligible.” The following phrases of this Stalker monologue - famous quote from Lao Tzu: “When a person is born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is strong and callous. When a tree grows, it is tender and flexible. And when it is dry and hard, it dies. Callousness and strength are the companions of death. Flexibility and weakness express the freshness of being. Therefore, what is hardened will not win.”
What is usually called self-confidence is more often self-confidence, and in the Christian understanding, self-confidence is one of the derivatives of pride. And then suddenly “let them believe in themselves and become helpless, like children.” The paradoxical nature of these words is not noticed with an inattentive perception of the film. But those who are hooked by them, perhaps, will remember that state of spiritual helplessness and thirst, about which it is said “blessed are the poor in spirit” ... And one more - more direct - association: “Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven”(Matthew 18:3).
It must be said that in the text of 1977 there is an episode that evokes associations with the last gospel quotation. Dialogue at the beginning of the walk through the Zone. Tarkovsky did not include it in the film, perhaps because it is too straightforward for a parable:
Stalker. I always stop here. This is very instructive. Look: from there (he gestures behind his back) you can get here. For example, the way we went. But from there (he points to the terrace) you won't get here. No one has ever returned here on their way back. It's like time - it always flows in one direction ... The distance here seems to be fifty meters, but it's impossible to go straight, you have to go far around. And straight the road goes clean souls. That's what the stalkers call her. […]
Professor. Are you saying that the physical distance to the terrace is more than fifty meters? […] If I throw a pebble now, will it reach the terrace?
Stalker. You do not understand. Will a stone fly from here to tomorrow?
Professor. Are you saying that there is no space here?
Stalker(shrugs). How do I know? I know that this is the path of pure souls. I know that you can’t throw anything here ... I know that you and I can’t get through here. Physics has nothing to do with it. And geometry has nothing to do with it ... Here is a miracle!
“The writer almost runs along the slope to the terrace, then his steps slow down, his legs begin to tangle, he grabs his head with both hands, describes an intricate curve and, staggering like a drunk, comes back and sits down on a piece of concrete.” In the script here, he delivers the monologue that in the film sounds after leaving the corridor called the "meat grinder" - a monologue that he addresses to his imaginary interlocutors, ending with the words: "I tried to remake you, but you remade me - in your own image and likeness…”.
Their eyes were held
“We wrote a script-parable. They go to the Zone for the fulfillment of their cherished desires fashion writer and a significant Scientist, but they are led by the Apostle of the new creed, a kind of ideologue.”
So Arkady Strugatsky actually denotes the religious meaning of this work. The attitude of the Strugatsky brothers towards Christianity has already been said; but the outlook of Tarkovsky was different. He was never an atheist. True, his “seeking for God” was not without occult costs, but his search was sincere, and he died seven years after the filming of “Stalker” as a Christian, taking communion before the end. Orthodoxy was familiar to him from childhood: his father, Arseniy Alexandrovich, was a believer. Therefore, by the way, the commentary of Deacon Andrei Kuraev to the poem by Arseny Tarkovsky (“So the summer has passed ...”), which the Stalker reads in the film, is fully justified: the refrain “only this is not enough” is about spiritual hunger, about the insatiability of the human spirit with earthly goods. It is incomprehensible how the works of Andrei Tarkovsky broke through the artistic councils of the Brezhnev era: the words of the New Testament sound in his films.
Where Stalker prays in the 1977 script, in the film he utters the lines of the Gospel of Luke, but omits all the names and titles in the Gospel text:
“On the same day, two of them went to a village sixty stages away from ... (Jerusalem) called ... (Emmaus). And Jesus Himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were restrained, so that they did not recognize Him. And he said to them, What are you discussing among yourselves as you walk, and why are you sad? One of them, named…”
The path of the three, about which Luka narrates, Stalker remembers clearly not by chance. Did the author really want the Stalker in the film to be associated with Christ Himself? At first glance, such an interpretation seems to follow naturally from the quote, but, knowing about Tarkovsky's worldview, it is hard to believe that this was the director's intention. Almost the cynicism of the Stalker in relation to the friend of the Writer, whom he tried to take with him to the Zone; his words about himself at the time when the Professor is preparing a bomb: "No one can help them, but I - a nit - can!"; his despair at the end - these details contradict such an association, but are quite consistent with the words of the Stalker from the 1977 script, which were not included in the film: “I am no fate, I am only the hand of fate.” The Stalker is not Christ Himself, but the one with whom Christ is, through whom Christ can guide other people. He is rather associated with a Christian priest.
And in vain Arkady Natanovich calls his hero "the apostle of the new dogma." For a Christian, Stalker does not say anything fundamentally new. Just about the authors of the script, their hero could say these words from the Gospel: "their eyes were restrained." And isn't it about them in the last monologue of the Stalker, a paraphrased quote from Bunin's essay "The Liberation of Tolstoy" - about the "organ that is believed"?
Trusted body
The main difference between the film and the 1977 script is a different, with a completely different meaning, ending. And thanks to this, the film has a completely different problem. In the script, the Professor abandons his decision to destroy the Zone after a dispute between the Writer and the Stalker, ending with the Stalker's desperate words: “I put my whole life here ... I don’t have anything else ... Why am I going to live now? ... and they did not come here for the sake of money ... as to church ... as to God ... ".
And the Professor, analyzing, breaking a mine, reflects: “Probably, today's person really does not know how to use the Zone. She came to us at the wrong time, like so many other things. […] Everything changes. Everything will change.
And maybe in a century people will grow up to the Zone and learn how to extract happiness from it, just as they learned how to extract energy from coal. Or will there be such a shock, such a catastrophe on the globe that we will have no hope of salvation, except for the Zone. Let us not yet have time to use it, but we will have hope. A person can do without everything. But he must always have hope.”
The voice of the Stalker's wife sounding in the film reads the lines from the Revelation of John the Theologian, telling about the Day of the Lord's Wrath, when the Lamb opens the sixth seal (this place is traditionally understood as a prophecy about environmental disasters in the end earth history). They bring into the fabric of the film the feeling of a “catastrophe on the globe” that has already happened or is taking place, when there remains last hope for salvation. Moreover, in the context of the Apocalypse, the very concept of salvation can only sound like a Christian, soteriological one, and not in the meaning of saving humanity from disasters in earthly history.
The film does not contain the Professor's reflections on the need for hope for the future of mankind. And he disassembles the bomb for a completely different reason.
The theme of the film is the issue of faith. Even in the middle of the journey, in the monologue of the Stalker I have already quoted, the words “let them believe” are heard. Another monologue of the Stalker, sounding near the Room itself (which is the goal of the path), is both in the 1977 script and in the film, but in the film it is one phrase longer: “And most importantly, believe ...”. To the professor who is about to plant the bomb, the Stalker shouts: “After all, you have come! Why are you killing faith?!” And then - the culmination of the spiritual tragedy of the heroes. On the threshold of the Room, the Writer suddenly declares: “And then… Who told you that this miracle actually exists?”
It was after these words that the Professor, thinking, with the words “Then I don’t understand anything at all ... What is the point of going here at all?” – begins to dismantle his bomb. For the only reason: there is no miracle here, and there is no need to blow up this place ...
And here is the Stalker monologue, which is not in the 1977 script. In his apartment, lying first on the floor, then in bed, Stalker is talking to his wife:
Stalker. They also call themselves intellectuals. These writers, scientists! They don't believe in anything. They have this organ, which they believe, has atrophied! For uselessness. My God, what kind of people...
Wife. Relax, it's not their fault. You have to feel sorry for them, but you get angry.
Stalker. You saw that their eyes are empty. After all, they think every minute about how not to sell too cheap. To sell yourself more. To pay for everything, every spiritual movement. They know that they were not born in vain, that they are called. After all, they only live once. Can they really believe in anything? Nobody believes, not just these two. None. Who should I take there? Lord ... And the worst thing is that no one needs it. Nobody needs this Room. And all my efforts are for nothing.
Wife. Well, do you want me to go there with you? Do you think I have nothing to ask?
Stalker. No. This is impossible.
Wife. Why?
Stalker. No no. What if you don't get anything either...
The words about “the organ that is believed” are usually quoted for some reason with reference to Ivan Bunin. And these words are indeed from Bunin's essay "The Liberation of Tolstoy", but only their author is not Ivan Alekseevich himself. The essay contains the memoirs of the writer Ekaterina Mikhailovna Lopatina, who retells the words of her brother Vladimir (both of them were friends with Lev Nikolaevich): “Tolstoy is experiencing a terrible tragedy, which consists, first of all, in the fact that one hundred people are sitting in him, completely and only one is missing: the one who can believe in God. By virtue of his genius, he wants and must believe, but he is not given an organ that is believed.”
The hero of the film talks about the lack of faith in a different way. After all, if simply “this organ” had not been given to someone from above, there would be no guilt on this person, there would be no responsibility. In fact, everything is scarier. “They have an organ that they believe has atrophied as unnecessary.” In desperation, the Stalker is afraid to bring even the person closest to him into the Room: what if she doesn’t have faith either ... When her voice reads the lines of the Apocalypse about the opening of the sixth seal, strange chuckles sound after these terrible words. What does this laugh mean?
Joy about the approaching Second Coming - or vice versa, a grin of disbelief? Don't know. But after the Stalker's words that no one believes and there is no one else to take into the Room, it becomes clear how important apocalyptic motives are in the film. “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8).
Tarkovsky's works are characterized by the symbolism of alternating black-and-white and color images. Film “Andrei Rublev” black and white; and after this black-and-white world, the saturated colors of Rublyov's icons suddenly shock the eye. The icons run out, and the rainy landscape of the real world reappears - but now it's also in color. This is already a different vision of the world - a vision purified through the perception of spiritual reality.
AT ordinary world the film “Stalker” also has no colors: everything is not even black and white, but some kind of ... hopelessly brown. And the color zone. Here it is, the real world. But even in the world that is outside the Zone, there are color shots. This is footage of the Stalker's daughter, Monkey. She cannot walk: all stalkers' children are born with congenital physical defects. And so, at the end of the film, after the despair of the Stalker, who had lost faith in people, after the piercing monologue of his suffering and loving wife("Now you probably understand - he is blissful...”), Monkey, a child of the Zone, sits at the table and reads Tyutchev. He moves his eyes around the glasses on the table.
It is not worth discussing here about our attitude to telekinesis in real world: in the art world"Stalker" the problem of the occult is not posed, here it is just a manifestation supernatural power characteristic of a girl. While the remnants of faith atrophy in the surrounding world, while the Stalker himself falls into despair, the power of the Zone begins to act through the child. And the disabled girl, a helpless creature with a pure soul, calmly comprehends the power given to her.
“Unless you turn and become like children…”
The article uses footage from the movie "Stalker".
A. and B. in film format
Critics often draw attention to the paradox: the less a movie based on the Strugatsky books resembles the original text, the better it turns out.
Classical examples: two completely wrong similar friend on the other side of the film - the musical comedy fairy tale "Magicians" and the philosophical parable "Stalker". Both of these works are well known to the viewer, they are remembered, loved and appreciated, but they have only a distant resemblance to the original books.
On the other hand, "It's hard to be a god" and "Hotel "At the dead climber" as close as possible to the text passed almost unnoticed on the screens of the country.
Today, after a pause that arose in the 90s, directors are again turning to the work of the Strugatskys. So, Konstantin Lopushansky released the film “Ugly Swans” in 2006, Alexei German is preparing to release a new adaptation of “It's Hard to Be a God”, and Fyodor Bondarchuk started shooting a film based on the novel “Inhabited Island”.
To date, the filmography of the Strugatsky brothers is as follows:
"Stalker", 1979, Mosfilm, 163 minutes.
“Hotel “At the dead climber””, 1979, Talinfilm, 84 minutes.
"Magicians", 1982, Odessa film studio commissioned by the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, 147 minutes.
“Letters dead man”, 1986, Lenfilm, 88 minutes. Boris Strugatsky acted here exclusively as one of the co-authors of the script, but it was this film that brought him State Prize USSR.
“Days of Eclipse”, USSR, 1988, Lenfilm and the film studio “Troitsky Bridge”, 133 minutes. Free adaptation of the book “A billion years before the end of the world”.
“It's hard to be a god”, 1989, Hallelujah film studio (Germany), film studio im. A. Dovzhenko (USSR), 135 minutes.
“Temptation B”, 1990, Film Studio “Laterna”, 84 minutes. Screen version of the story "Five spoons of elixir".
"Ugly Swans", 2006, "Proline-film", "CDP FILMS" (France) with the support of Roskultura and the participation of the Gorbachev Foundation, CNC TV channel, International Green Cross, 105 minutes.
This list does not include two films that were filmed abroad in the 1990s but never saw wide release. It's about about the Czech film adaptation of the book “Baby” and the Polish TV show “Hotel at the Dead Climber”. A few more films based on the books of the Strugatskys were not even started, although they were actively preparing for their shooting.
Weakness is great, strength is negligible. When a man is born, he is weak and flexible; when he dies, he is strong and callous. When a tree grows, it is soft and tender, and when it is dry and hard, it dies. Callousness and strength are the companions of death. Flexibility and weakness express the freshness of being. Therefore, what has hardened will not win.
Chapter first
In the reign of Emperor Theodosius the Great lived in Constantinople alone noble person, "patrician and eparch", named Hermias. He was rich, noble and distinguished; had a direct and honest character; he loved the truth and hated pretense, and this did not at all match the time in which he lived.
At that distant time in Byzantium, or in present-day Constantinople, and in the whole kingdom of Byzantium, there were many disputes about faith and piety, and behind these disputes passions flared up among people, strife and quarrels arose, and from this it turned out that although everyone cared about piety but in reality there was neither peace nor piety. On the contrary, in the lower people then there were many of the worst vices, about which it is shameful to speak, but in high officials reigned universal terrible hypocrisy. Everyone pretended to be God-fearing, while they themselves lived in a completely un-Christian way: everyone held a grudge, hated each other, and had no compassion for the lower, poor people; themselves drowned in luxury and were not in the least ashamed of the fact that the common people at that very time were tormented by excruciating needs. The impoverished were taken into bondage or slavery, and it often happened that poor people even starved to death at the very doors of the feasting nobles. At the same time, commoners knew that eminent people themselves were constantly at enmity with each other and often destroyed each other. They not only slandered one another to the king, but even poisoned each other with poisons at formal feasts or in own houses, through bribing cooks and other henchmen.
As from above, so from below, the whole society was filled with corruption.
Chapter Two
The mentioned Hermias had a soul peaceful, and besides, he strengthened her in love for people, as Christ commanded in the Gospel. Hermias wanted to see real piety, and not feigned piety, which does not benefit anyone, but serves only for magnification and deception. Hermias said: if you believe that the Gospel is divine and reveals how to live in order to destroy evil in the world, then you must do everything as it is shown in the Gospel, and not in such a way as to consider it good and right, but start it yourself contrary to it. it’s quite another: to read “forgive us our debts, as we leave them too,” and instead leave nothing to anyone, but for any offense to be angry and exasperate debts from your neighbor, sparing neither his strength nor his stomach.
For this, all the other nobles began to joke and laugh at Hermias; they said to him: “It’s true that you want everyone to become beggars and stand naked and throw each other’s shirt over. This is not possible in the state." He answered: "I'm not talking about the state, but only about how to live according to the teachings of Christ, which you all call divine." And they answered: “You never know what is good, but impossible!” And they argued, and then they began to put him before the king, as if he had become stupid and was not fit in his place.
Hermias began to notice this and began to think: how difficult it really is to remain in honor and lead a life according to Christ's teaching?
And as soon as Hermias began to delve deeper into this, it began to seem to him that it was not even possible to combine this completely together, but one must choose from the two either one: either leave Christ's teaching, or leave nobility, because together they do not converge at all, but if you bring them together by force for an hour, they will not get along for long and will again disperse further than before. “One demon will leave and return again, and bring seven more with him.” And looking from the other side, Hermias also thought that if he began to denounce everyone and argue with everyone, then he would enter into the coldness of everyone, and other nobles would then slander him before the king, call him a traitor to the state and destroy him.
“I will please some,” he thinks, “I will not please others: if I go with the cunning, I will darken my soul, and if I become simple, then I will not help them, but I will make trouble for myself. They will present me as a malicious person who sows unrest, but I can not endure slander, but I will justify myself, and then my soul will go wild, and I will begin to accuse my accusers and become as evil as they are. No, don't let it be. I do not want to shame or reproach anyone, because all this is contrary to my soul; but it’s better that I put an end to this completely: I’ll go to the king and beg him to allow me to lay down all power and live my life peacefully somewhere as a simple person.
Chapter Three
As Hermias conceived, so he did according to his reasoning. He did not complain to Tsar Theodosius about anything and did not accuse anyone before him, but only asked to be dismissed from his affairs. The king persuaded Hermias to remain in office, but then he let him go. Hermias received a complete resignation (“put aside all power from yourself”). And at the same time, Hermia's wife died, and the former nobleman, left alone, began to reason differently:
“Is this not an indication to me from above? Ermi thought. - The Tsar let me go from official cares, and the Lord allowed me from marriage. My wife is dead, and I don't have anyone in my family for whom I would have to work on my estates. Now I can go faster and further towards the goal of the gospel. What do I need wealth? There are always inevitable worries with him, and although I have stepped aside from official affairs, however, wealth will force me to take care of him and again drag me into such matters that are not suitable for someone who wants to be a disciple of Christ.
And Hermias had a lot of wealth (“because he had a rich wealth”) - he had houses, and villages, and slaves, and all kinds of jewelry.
Hermias set free all his slaves, and sold all the rest of the "poly-substantial wealth" and divided the money among needy poor people.
He did so because he wanted to “be perfect”, and to those who wish to achieve perfection, Christ briefly and clearly indicated one way: “Give everything you have and follow me.”
Hermias fulfilled all this exactly, so that he did not even leave a little for himself, and was glad that it did not seem to him at all pitiful and difficult. Only the beginning was expensive to do, and then it became pleasant to distribute everything yourself, so that nothing confuses and nothing prevents you from going light to highest goal gospel.
Chapter Four
Freed from both power and wealth, Hermias secretly left the capital and went to look for a secluded place where no one would interfere with him to protect himself in purity and holiness for the passage of a charitable life.
After long way committed on foot and bare feet, Hermias came to the remote city of Edessa and, quite unexpectedly for himself, found here "a certain pillar." It was a high stone rock, and with a crevice, and in the middle of the crevice there was a place as soon as one person could be established.
“Here,” thought Ermiy, “this is a place ready for me.” And immediately he climbed up this pillar along a dilapidated log, which someone had attached to the rock, and pushed the log away. The log rolled far into the abyss and broke, but Hermias remained standing and stood on the pillar for thirty years. During all this time, he prayed to God and wished to forget about the hypocrisy and other evils that he saw and with which he was painfully indignant.
With him, Hermias took only one long twine to the rock, with which he clung when he climbed, and this twine was useful to him.
In the first days, how else did Ermiy forget to remove this twine, a shepherd boy who came here to feed the kids noticed it. The shepherd began to tug at this string, and Ermiy began to call him and said to him:
Bring me some water, I'm very thirsty.
The boy picked up his pumpkin pacifier with water and says:
“Drink and keep the pumpkin for yourself.”
He also gave him a basket with a handful of black tart berries.
Ermiy ate the berries and said:
“God sent me a breadwinner.
And as soon as the boy drove a herd of kids to the village in the evening, he immediately told his mother that he saw an old man on the rock, and Shepherd's mother went to the well and began to tell other women about it, and so people became aware of the new stylite, and people from the villages ran to Hermias and brought him more lentils and beans than he could eat. And so it went on.
Only Ermiy lowered a wicker basket and a hollowed pumpkin from above on a long string, and people already put cabbage leaves and dry, not boiled seeds in this basket, and filled his pumpkin with water. And the former Byzantine nobleman and rich man Hermias ate this for thirty years. He did not eat bread or anything cooked on fire, and he forgot the taste of boiled food. According to the then concepts, they found that it was pleasant and pleasing to God. Ermiy did not regret his distributed wealth and did not even think about it. He had no conversations with anyone and seemed strict and stern, imitating his Elijah in silence.
The villagers considered Hermias capable of performing miracles. He didn't tell them that, but they believed it. The sick came, stood in its shadow, which the sun cast from the pillar to the ground, and departed, finding that they felt relieved. And he kept silent, fixing his mind on prayer or reciting from memory three million verses by Origen and two hundred and fifty thousand verses by Gregory, Pierius and Stephen.
So Hermias spent his days, and in the evening, when the scorching heat fell off and the coolness refreshed Hermias's face, he, having finished his prayers and thoughts about God, sometimes thought about people. He pondered how, during these thirty years, evil in the world must have multiplied, and how, under the cover of hypocrisy and empty sanctity, replacing the real teaching with their inventions, now all true virtue has probably dried up in people and only form without content remains.
The impressions made by the pilgrim from the hypocritical capital he left were so unfavorable that he despaired for the whole world and did not notice that through this despair he humiliated both the plan and the goal of creation and considered himself alone to be the most perfect.
He repeats Origen by heart, and he himself thinks: “Well, so be it - let the whole earthly world stand for eternity, and the people in it, like schoolchildren at school, prepare to appear in eternity and there show their successes in the local school. But what success will they show when they live selfishly and evilly, and do not learn anything from Christ, and do not forget their pagan habits? Won't eternity be wasted?" Let Origen console him that the creator could not have fallen into error, having seen “like all good is green”, if it is really good for nothing, but Hermias still thinks that “the whole world lies in evil”, and his mind in vain he tries to see clearly: “what are those who please God and improve eternity?”
In no way can Hermias imagine those who would be worthy of eternity, they all seem to him thin, all have come into life with an evil inclination, but here, living on earth, they have spoiled even worse.
And the stylite finally took despair that eternity would be empty, because there were no people worthy to go into it.
Chapter Five
And then one day, when, with the falling cover of night, the stylite “strongly moved with the thought to take away: the katsy are those who please God,” he bowed his head to the edge of the crevice of his rock, and an unusual thing happened to him: a quiet, even breath of air blew over him, and with that the following words came to his ear:
- In vain, Hermias, you grieve and are horrified: there are dancers who please God well and are inscribed in the book of eternal life.
“Lord, if I have found mercy in your eyes, then let me see at least one such, and then my spirit will rest for all earthly creation.
And subtle breathing again breathes into the ear of the old man:
“To do this, you need to forget about those whom you knew, and get off the pillar and look at the man Pamphalon.
With this, his breath dropped, and the elder raised himself and thought: did he really hear this, or was it inspired by a dream? And now the cold night passes again, the hot day passes, and new twilight sets in, and again Hermias bowed his head and heard:
- Go down, Hermias, to the ground, you need to go look at Pamphalon.
“Who is he, this Pamphalon?”
“But he is one of those that you want to see.”
“And where does this Pamphalon live?”
He lives in Damascus.
Hermias again started up and again was not sure that he heard this not in a dream. And then he decided in his mind to try this matter again, up to three times, and if the third time the same intelligible speech about Pamphalon comes to him, then no longer doubt, but get off the cliff and go to Damascus.
But as soon as he decided to find out in detail: what kind of Pamphalon is this and how to look for him in Damascus.
The sultry day passed again, and with the evening coolness the name of Pamphalon sounded again in the spirit of the coldness of the tonka.
“Why are you delaying, old man, why don’t you get down to earth and go to Damascus to watch Pamphalon?” And the old man replies:
How can I go and look for a person unknown to me?
The person has been named to you.
- A man was named Pamphalon for me, but in such a great city as Damascus, is there only Pamphalon? Which one should I ask?
And in the spirit of coldness, the tonka sounds again:
“That's none of your concern. You just get down as soon as possible and go to Damascus, and there everyone already knows this Pamphalon, whom you need. Ask the first person you meet, everyone will show it to you. He is known to everyone.
* Stalker: ...Let that which is planned be fulfilled. Let them believe. And let them laugh at their passions. After all, what they call passion is not really soul energy, but only friction between the soul and the outside world. And most importantly, let them believe in themselves and become helpless, like children. Because weakness is great, and strength is negligible. When a person is born, he is weak and flexible; when he dies, he is strong and callous. When a tree grows, it is tender and pliable, and when it is dry and hard, it dies. Callousness and strength are companions of death, flexibility and weakness express the freshness of being. Therefore, what has hardened will not win ...
* Stalker: The Zone is... a very complex system... of traps, or something... and all of them are deadly! I don’t know what happens here in the absence of a person, but as soon as people appear here, everything starts to move here .. Former traps disappear - new ones appear. Safe places become impassable, and the path becomes either simple and easy, or becomes confusing to the point of impossibility! This is the Zone. It may even seem that she is capricious, but at every moment she is what we ourselves made her ... with our condition. I will not hide, there were cases when people had to return halfway, not slurping salty. There were also those who… died at the very threshold of the Room. But everything that happens here does not depend on the Zone, but on us!
* Writer: How do I know what to call what... what I want? And how do I know that I don't really want what I want? Or shall we say that I really don't want what I don't want? These are all some kind of elusive things: as soon as they are named, their meaning disappears, melts, dissolves ... like a jellyfish in the sun. Ever seen? My consciousness wants the victory of vegetarianism all over the world, and my subconscious is languishing bit by bit juicy meat. What do I want?
* Writer: Is that why you think Porcupine hanged himself?
* Stalker: He came to the zone with a mercenary purpose, and ruined his brother in a meat grinder, that's why he hanged himself.
* Writer: I understand that, but why did he hang himself? Why didn't you go to the Zone again, this time not for money, but for your brother? How did you repent?
* Stalker: He wanted, he... I don't know, he hanged himself a few days later
* Writer: After all, here he realized that not just desires, but innermost desires are fulfilled ... Yes, here everything that corresponds to your nature, essence, will come true! About which you have no idea, but it will take and manifest itself ... It was not greed that defeated the porcupine. Yes, he was crawling on his knees at this puddle, begging for his brother. And he got a lot of money. And I couldn't get anything else. Because Porcupine - Porcupine. And quarrels, mental anguish - it's all invented, from the head.
* Writer: ...Here's another experiment. Experiments, facts, ultimate truth. And there are no facts at all, and even more so here. Here everything is invented by someone. All this is someone's idiotic invention, don't you feel it? And you, of course, desperately need to know whose. And why? What is the use of your knowledge? Whose conscience will hurt them? My? I have no conscience, I have only nerves: some bastard scolds - a wound, another bastard praises - another wound. If you invest your soul, if you invest your heart, they will devour both the soul and the heart. You take out the abomination from the soul - they eat the abomination! They are all literate without exception, they all have sensory starvation, and they all swirl around: journalists, editors, critics, some kind of continuous women. And everyone demands: "Come on! Come on!" What the hell am I a writer if I hate to write! If for me it's torture, a painful, shameful occupation, something like squeezing hemorrhoids. After all, I used to think that from my books someone becomes better! Yes, no one needs me, I will die, and in two days they will forget me and start eating someone else. After all, I thought to remake them, but they remade me! In your own image and likeness! Previously, the future was only a continuation of the present, and all the changes loomed somewhere over the horizon. And now the future has merged with the present! Are they ready for this?! They do not want to know anything, they only eat! ..
* Stalker: You saw that their eyes are empty. After all, they think every minute about how not to sell too cheap. To sell yourself more. To pay for everything, every spiritual movement. They know that they were not born in vain, that they are called. After all, they only live once. Can they really believe in anything? Nobody believes, not just these two. None. Who should I take there?
P.s. When a person is born, he is weak and flexible; when he dies, he is strong and callous. When a tree grows, it is tender and flexible, and when it is dry and hard, it dies. Callousness and strength are companions of death, flexibility and weakness express the freshness of being. Therefore, what has hardened will not win. (Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, § 76)
