Beauty will not save the world. Will beauty save the world? “Beauty will save the world” - who owns this statement? “Spread the thought along the tree”

04.02.2019

The truth is not in the wine! There is no healthy spirit in healthy body! But there are popular expressions, the meaning of which we actually don’t know.

There is an opinion that for real educated person distinguished by the ability to choose the right words in any situation. This is extremely difficult to do if you do not know the meaning of certain words. The same thing happens with famous catchphrases: Some of them have been so widely circulated with false meanings that few people remember their original meaning. The most common misconceptions are collected in this material.

“Work is not a wolf - it won’t run away into the forest”

Wrong context: The work isn’t going anywhere, let’s put it aside.
Correct context: The work will have to be done in any case.

Those who pronounce this proverb now do not take into account that the wolf was previously perceived in Rus' as an animal that could not be tamed, which was guaranteed to run away into the forest, while the work would not disappear anywhere and would still have to be done.

"A healthy mind in a healthy body"

Wrong context: By keeping the body healthy, a person maintains mental health.
Correct context: We must strive for harmony between body and spirit.

This is a quote from Juvenal taken out of context: “Orandum est, ut sit mens sana in corpore sano” - “We must pray to the gods that a healthy spirit may be in a healthy body.” It's about about the need to strive for harmony between body and spirit, since in reality it is rarely found.

"Beauty will save the world"

Wrong context: Beauty will save the world
Correct context: Beauty will not save the world.

This phrase, attributed to Dostoevsky, was actually put into the mouth of the hero of “The Idiot,” Prince Myshkin. Dostoevsky himself, during the development of the novel, consistently demonstrates how wrong Myshkin turns out to be in his judgments, perception of the surrounding reality and, in particular, this maxim.

"Life is short, art is eternal"

Wrong context: True art will remain for centuries even after the death of the author.
Correct context: Life is not enough to master all the art.

IN Latin phrase « Ars longa, vita brevis“art is not “eternal”, but “long”, that is, “extensive”: the point here is that you will have to devote your whole life to studying art, but, most likely, you still won’t have time to read all the books.

"And you, Brutus?"

Wrong context: Surprise, turning to a trusted traitor.
Correct context: Threat, “you’re next.”

According to one version, Caesar adapted the words of a Greek expression that became a proverb among the Romans. The full phrase should sound like this: “And you, my son, will feel the taste of power.” Having uttered the first words of the phrase, Caesar seemed to be conjuring Brutus, foreshadowing his violent death.

“Spread the thought along the tree”

Wrong context: Speak/write in a confusing and lengthy manner; without limiting your thoughts in any way, go into unnecessary details.
Correct context: See from all points of view.

In “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” this quote looks like this: “My thoughts spread across the tree, gray wolf on the ground, like a gray eagle under the clouds.” Mouse is a squirrel.

"The people are silent"

Wrong context: People are passive, indifferent to everything.
Correct context: The people refuse to accept what is imposed on them.

At the end of Pushkin’s tragedy “Boris Godunov” the people are silent not because they are not concerned about pressing problems, but because they do not want to accept the new tsar: “Masalsky: People! Maria Godunova and her son Fyodor poisoned themselves (The people are silent in horror). Why are you silent? Shout: long live Tsar Dimitri Ivanovich!

The people are silent."

“Man is created for happiness, like a bird is created for flight”

Wrong context: Man is born for happiness.
Correct context: Happiness is impossible for a person.

This catchphrase belongs to Korolenko, in whose story “Paradox” it is pronounced by an unfortunate disabled person from birth, without arms, who earns food for his family and himself by writing sayings and aphorisms. In his mouth, this phrase sounds tragic and refutes itself.

"The Truth is in the Wine"

Wrong context: A drunk man speaks the truth.
Correct context: There may be truth in wine, but health is in water.

But the fact is that only part of the translation is quoted Latin proverb"In vino veritas, in aqua sanitas." It should read in full: “In wine there is truth, in water there is health.”

“The Moor has done his job, the Moor can leave”

Wrong context: About Shakespeare's Othello.
Correct context: Cynical about a person whose services are no longer needed.

This expression has nothing to do with Shakespeare, since it was borrowed from F. Schiller’s drama “The Fiesco Conspiracy in Genoa” (1783). This phrase is uttered there by the Moor, who turned out to be unnecessary after he helped Count Fiesco organize a Republican uprising against the tyrant of Genoa, Doge Doria.

"Let a hundred flowers bloom"

Wrong context: The wealth of options and variety is good.
Correct context: Let the critics criticize.

The slogan “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools compete” was put forward by Emperor Qin Shihuang, who unified China. The campaign to encourage criticism and publicity turned out to be a trap when it was announced that the slogan was part of another campaign called "Let the snake poke its head out."

Writer Tatyana Moskvina - about the synthesis of beauty and intelligence

I don’t like freaks... L-l-I love everything b-beautiful...” muttered a character named Pig in the film “Country of the Deaf.” This formula is absolutely accurate: freaks, cripples, ugly and ugly people, as well as everyone who feels like such, are not indifferent to beauty. As for handsome men and beauties... Do you really value what you have? A beauty can pay attention even to an ugly man, and a handsome man can marry a girl of modest appearance. So the screenwriters of bad films do not show much imagination: this is reality. True, they usually focus on the fact that the chosen one/chosen one of a beautiful hero/heroine has high moral virtues, but this is crap.
According to my observations, beautiful people attract only two things - money and intelligence, both of which are real power. I personally am sensitive to beauty, I repent with sadness - I know that it is a temptation, but what to do? My taste is terrible, like an Armenian sugar daddy. For example, I like boys who dance in ballets, but by the way, men from Hitchcock films with square chins and gray three-piece suits are also good. In general, you need to work on yourself and stop admiring and groaning. No, no, the essence of the world is not beauty. By the way, keep in mind that Dostoevsky never wrote that “beauty will save the world.” In the novel “The Idiot,” Ippolit Terentyev, a consumptive boy, addressing Prince Myshkin, says: “Prince, it seems you once said that beauty will save the world.” That's it. Fyodor Mikhailovich was a great mind who at times saw the truth. That’s why I gave this maxim about beauty to the naive, spiritually confused hero. On his own behalf, he could not say such nonsense.
If we take only the physical beauty of a person, then it is obvious from Dostoevsky’s novels: it can completely destroy. To save is only when it is combined with truth and goodness, that is, in the case of the Savior. We have been waiting for this opportunity for more than two thousand years with unrelenting tension. It’s very interesting to see what it’s like when everything is different and suddenly together. So that the creature would be intelligent, and beautiful, and bright, and love other creatures. And in isolation from everything else, physical beauty as the principle of organizing form is indifferent and even hostile to the world. In “The Idiot,” in fact, her incarnation appears - a woman of fantastic attractiveness, Nastasya Filippovna, who destroyed everything around her. “Oh, if only she were kind! Everything would be saved...” - Prince Myshkin dreams at the beginning of the work, looking at the portrait of the fatal lady. Nevertheless, we do not see such a combination in the space of the novel. Divine properties are not combined within human limits! Those who are beautiful in appearance are evil, those who are kind are ugly, and those who are smart are generally on their own. This is often the case in life: you have to choose what is more expensive, more beloved and preferable.
I personally am on the side of the mind. It is useful and the most interesting thing to do with it. Moreover, modern world busy with the industrial overproduction of beauty. There is so much of it that it makes you sick. Beautiful women it's time to drown in a bucket like an annoying cat's litter. If earlier noses and lips were released by nature strictly according to schedule, now some women cut their faces, trying to get closer to some idiotic ideal, destroying individual charm, which often rests on some “extra” millimeter of the epidermis. Alas, mass ideas about beauty are formed by shoddy, opportunistic standards.
And you say – beauty. It would be nice to add a little more intelligence to the world. Bye plastic surgery the thing is expensive and painful, there is at least some barrier in the form of natural fear and lack of money, but what would happen to a woman’s appearance if changing herself was as easy as editing a picture on a computer? Along the streets
cities, there would be regiments of identical beauties of six or seven main types in orderly rows. As for the good... let's not talk about the sad.

Beauty won't save the world

Writer Tatyana Moskvina - about the synthesis of beauty and intelligence

I don’t like freaks... L-l-I love everything b-beautiful...” muttered a character named Pig in the film “Country of the Deaf.” This formula is absolutely accurate: freaks, cripples, ugly and ugly people, as well as everyone who feels like such, are not indifferent to beauty. As for handsome men and beauties... Do you really value what you have? A beauty can pay attention even to an ugly man, and a handsome man can marry a girl of modest appearance. So the screenwriters of bad films do not show much imagination: this is reality. True, they usually focus on the fact that the chosen one/chosen one of a beautiful hero/heroine has high moral virtues, but this is crap.

According to my observations, beautiful people are attracted to only two things - money and intelligence, both of which are real strength. I personally am sensitive to beauty, I repent with sadness - I know that it is a temptation, but what to do? My taste is terrible, like an Armenian sugar daddy. For example, I like boys who dance in ballets, but by the way, men from Hitchcock films with square chins and gray three-piece suits are also good. In general, you need to work on yourself and stop admiring and groaning. No, no, the essence of the world is not beauty. By the way, keep in mind that Dostoevsky never wrote that “beauty will save the world.” In the novel “The Idiot,” Ippolit Terentyev, a consumptive boy, addressing Prince Myshkin, says: “Prince, it seems you once said that beauty will save the world.” That's it. Fyodor Mikhailovich was a great mind who at times saw the truth. That’s why I gave this maxim about beauty to the naive, spiritually confused hero. On his own behalf, he could not say such nonsense.

If we take only the physical beauty of a person, then it is obvious from Dostoevsky’s novels: it can completely destroy. To save is only when it is combined with truth and goodness, that is, in the case of the Savior. We have been waiting for this event for more than two thousand years with unrelenting tension. It’s very interesting to see what it’s like when everything is different and suddenly together. So that the creature would be intelligent, and beautiful, and bright, and love other creatures. And in isolation from everything else, physical beauty as the principle of organizing form is indifferent and even hostile to the world. In “The Idiot,” in fact, her incarnation appears - a woman of fantastic attractiveness, Nastasya Filippovna, who destroyed everything around her. “Oh, if only she were kind! Everything would be saved...” - Prince Myshkin dreams at the beginning of the work, looking at the portrait of the fatal lady. Nevertheless, we do not see such a combination in the space of the novel. Divine properties are not combined within human limits! Those who are beautiful in appearance are evil, those who are kind are ugly, and those who are smart are generally on their own. This is often the case in life: you have to choose what is more expensive, more beloved and preferable.

I personally am on the side of the mind. It is useful and the most interesting thing to do with it. Moreover, the modern world is busy with the industrial overproduction of beauty. There is so much of it that it makes you sick. It's time to drown beautiful women in a bucket, like annoying cat litter. If earlier noses and lips were released by nature strictly according to schedule, now some women cut their faces, trying to get closer to some idiotic ideal, destroying individual charm, which often rests on some “extra” millimeter of the epidermis. Alas, mass ideas about beauty are formed by shoddy, opportunistic standards.

And you say – beauty. It would be nice to add a little more intelligence to the world. While plastic surgery is an expensive and painful thing, there is at least some barrier in the form of natural fear and lack of money, but what would happen to a woman’s appearance if changing herself was as easy as editing a picture on a computer? Along the streets

cities, there would be regiments of identical beauties of six or seven main types in orderly rows. As for the good... let's not talk about the sad.

From the book Articles, speeches author Mironov Boris Sergeevich

NATIONALISM WILL SAVE US ABOUT RUSSIAN IDEOLOGY Whether we were afraid ourselves or who skillfully imposed on us a rejection of ideology, we no longer try to talk about it at all, shying away from the word itself, although since the times of the ancient Greeks ideology has meant genuine, true image existence, comprehension

From the book Not a Day Without a Thought author Zhukhovitsky Leonid

MAYBE A JOKE WILL SAVE? There are coincidences! It’s as if hackers are working secretly at ATV, and one of them got into my computer at night, which no one needs but me. They called from Vremechka and invited me to a discussion about violence on television. Does this affect the audience or not? Recruitment of guests

From the book SobakaRu author Moskvina Tatyana Vladimirovna

Beauty will not save the world Writer Tatyana Moskvina - about the synthesis of beauty and intelligence I don’t like freaks... L-l-I love everything b-beautiful...” muttered a character named Pig in the film “Country of the Deaf.” This formula is absolutely accurate: freaks, cripples, ugly and ugly people, as well as

From the book Newspaper Day of Literature # 71 (2002 7) author Literature Day Newspaper

Vladimir Bondarenko “BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD” Still, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky is our national saint. Moreover, he was ahead of his time by exactly a century. Today everyone came out of Dostoevsky’s overcoat: Prokhanov and Mamleev, Lichutin and Limonov, young Krusanov and Shargunov and

From the book Literary Newspaper 6273 (No. 18 2010) author Literary Newspaper

The family will save the world Front page The family will save the world On May 15, the world celebrates Family Day. For the sixteenth time. This international holiday was established at the end of the 20th century, because humanity finally realized: civilization is destroyed not only by bloody wars. More dangerous than war

From the book Literary Newspaper 6277 (No. 22 2010) author Literary Newspaper

Will the “common cause” save us Society Will the “common cause” save us CONTROVERSY “NATIONAL CHARACTER – MYTH OR REALITY?” Formerly a man could think about himself only after his affairs with the state and with God were arranged Writer Andrei Stolyarov (“Complex

From the book Will Putin Save Russia? author Kozenkov Yuri Evgenievich

4. Will Putin save Russia? 1.Many sociologists and analysts wrote tons of paper in 2000, describing the shortcomings and merits of President V. Putin, but did not consider the main nuances, either due to the paucity of life baggage, or because of a purposeful

From the book Consumerism [The Disease That Threatens the World] by Vann David

Design will save the planet If a toaster is designed well, it makes our lives better because a piece of bread comes out of it with golden crust, and the device itself looks so stylish! If a toaster can be repaired if it breaks, that’s very good, but if it’s used

From the book Signs of Attention (collection) author Rubinshtein Lev Semyonovich

The world will be saved by a booth When I went to stand in the “White Ring”, I was afraid that there would be few people, that many were tired of the stormy, cheerful and crowded, but devoid of material result, standing and walking. I was afraid that I would have to stand in a liquid chain of silent

From the book Newspaper Tomorrow 990 (47 2012) author Zavtra Newspaper

From the book Reports from High Heels author Golubitskaya Zhanna

Will beauty save the world? All my attempts to comprehend the logic of beautiful, ugly and ordinary and carry out comparative analysis boiled down to a simple summary. And, alas, this is not news: being born handsome is not at all necessary to be happy. You just have to be born smart. Or at least try

From the book Newspaper Tomorrow 451 (29 2002) author Zavtra Newspaper

“BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD” Vladimir Bondarenko July 15, 2002 0 29(452) Date: 07/16/2002 Author: Vladimir Bondarenko “BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD” Still, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky is our national saint. Moreover, he was ahead of his time by exactly a century. Today everyone came out of Dostoevsky’s overcoat:

From the book Should Russia Be Afraid of China? author Bezzubtsev-Kondakov Alexander

Who will save the Far East? Not so long ago, in those parts, the first facts of the official suppression of the “grabbing” activities of eastern businessmen on our land finally appeared. Rosselkhoznadzor conducted an inspection and found high degree toxic pollution

From the book Literary Newspaper 6454 (No. 11 2014) author Literary Newspaper

Family will save the world! Photo: RIA Novosti At a meeting of the Presidium of the State Council, President Putin named the protection of motherhood and childhood, strengthening the family, and creating conditions for an increase in the birth rate as the main social tasks. An effective measure to improve demographic

From the book These Twenty Killing Years author Rasputin Valentin Grigorievich

Who will save the lighthouse? “Meanwhile, both on television and radio we are witnessing such monstrous deformations that make millions of people very uncomfortable. However, some people think that this is “uneasy” and is good. For example, do you listen to radio Mayak? – A lot

From the book But you still have to rock the boat author Krugosvetov Sasha

Russia will be saved by the province. How tired of these streams of lies, lies, popular culture, voiceless pop music, painted, tuning, fake “beauty”, how tired of these endless mediocre, artificial, celluloid, glamorous Viagra, Shiny, Factories. Life on display. AND

"The Great Beauty" (La grande belezza) by Paolo Sorrentino was awarded the Oscar for best non-English film of the year. Film critics - whether they liked the film or not, it doesn’t matter - unanimously call it a modern version, a remake, a sequel, a declaration of love and almost a parody of the film." Sweet life"Federico Fellini.


MIKHAIL TROFIMENKOV


Russian critics are equally unanimous in believing that any translation of the title, for example “Beauty,” would be better than the amorphous and insensitive theatrical version.

If it were up to me, I would translate the title, and at the same time retell the film in stanzas by Osip Mandelstam: “I will tell you with final directness: All just nonsense, sherry-brandy, my angel. Where beauty shone for the Hellenes, To me from black holes there was shame."

Sorrentino's "great beauty" shone not to the Hellenes, but to the ancient Romans. However, as it shone, it still shines, worn out, but also ennobled by centuries. But the new Romans living inside this “beauty” yearn for it as sadly as the St. Petersburg Warsaw resident, a graduate of Heidelberg and the Sorbonne Mandelstam “yearned for world culture,” which was the ideology of Acmeism.

The poet ended his life as a “man of the Moskoshway era.” The heroes of the film are people of the Armani era. But beauty is neither here nor there.

Even for 65-year-old society columnist Jep Gambardella (Tony Servillo), even though he lives in a mansion overlooking the Colosseum, and transiting flamingos have their afternoon snack on his terrace, an encounter with beauty is possible only as an underground foray, if not an underground miracle. He needs a nocturnal, almost otherworldly guide, a master of master keys to all Roman museums.

The new Romans, having switched from sherry brandy to cocaine-heroin, turned the “beauty” into a decoration of shame, which Jep contemplates, moving from a party to a brothel, from an anniversary to a vernissage - on duty, out of the curiosity of an entomologist. Only an expert on insects can maintain sanity in a world of freaks: fat carcasses, dwarfs, weak-minded Jesuses, girls in hellish makeup. However, a girl, if you undress her, may turn out to be a true Venus, but it doesn’t happen just once.

The most shameful shame - contemporary art, which (according to Sorrentino, and it’s hard to disagree with him) is appropriate to talk about rough tongue Soviet agitprop, which branded modernism as a “crisis of ugliness.” Eh, haven't seen it Soviet professors Lifshitz and Reinhardt of postmodernism.

A lilac naked conceptualist a la Marina Abramovic, having drawn a hammer and sickle on her pubic area and wrapping a cloth around her head, runs headlong into the support of the viaduct. A tiny girl cries out loud, but makes millions by splashing paint on a giant canvas.

Church and politics are the same tavern.

About the cardinal, with whom one of the freaks “met at a carnival, where he was dressed up as an escort girl,” they say that he has “the reputation of the best exorcist,” with the same intonation with which they remind the writer that at the university she was reputed to be the best blowjob girl

Now she trumps class consciousness, to which she has dedicated 11 books, not counting a book on the history of the Communist Party and a play - it’s scary to think what it is - “The Maiden Farm”. They remind her in time that all this waste paper saw the light of day only thanks to her connection with the Secretary General of the IKP.

Sorrentino clearly indicates the age of the heroes - the general secretary can mean (well, not Palmiro Togliatti) only the noble and tragic handsome Enrico Berlinguer, who was overtaken by death right at the rally: a film dedicated to farewell to him ("Farewell to Enrico Berlinguer", 1984) by a team of 64 leading directors of Italy. If Italian cinema has a long-standing love-hate relationship with the church, then ridicule of the Communist Party is not just something new, it is blasphemy, unthinkable in the days of La Dolce Vita.

Sorrentino literally forces a flattering comparison of his film with the 1960 masterpiece. Not content with a lot of visual rhymes, he puts into Jep’s mouth a morning invitation to a beauty successfully photographed the day before to go to the coast “to look at sea ​​monster". That same miracle fish-whale that Fellini's heroes stared at.

As a result, of course, we didn’t go: it was worth throwing away invitations.

It would be better and more honest if Sorrentino turned La Dolce Vita into a musical, as they did on Broadway and then in Hollywood with Nights of Cabiria (Sweet Charity by Bob Fosse, 1969) and 8? ("Nine" by Rob Marshall, 2009). Although in terms of the degree of not only misunderstanding, but lack of feeling, Fellini’s “The Great Beauty” is quite a musical.

Pretentious slackers and charlatans, secular idiots and freaks are the same at all times. If Fellini was only interested in emptiness, as he is interested in Jep, who is half-heartedly inspired by Flaubert’s idea to write a novel “about nothing,” and Sorrentino himself, who made a film “about nothing,” “La Dolce Vita” would not have been a great, mysterious poem, perhaps best film Fellini.

The "Dolce vita" of the 1950s wasn't just a 24-hour party for social slime. This is the unbridled worship of the goddess of life as such. The war ended only yesterday. And everyone who screwed up with Fellini came from that war, which seemed to forever kill the very joy of life. The accent word is not “sweet”, but “life”. And the stream of life, according to Blok “empty, insane and bottomless,” overwhelms both the American starlet splashing in the Trevi Fountain and the last paparazzi. It is life that prevents Marcello (Mastroianni) from writing his novel.

Jep wrote his novel called “The Human Apparatus” a long time ago and has since hung his supposed talent—which Sorrentino asks you to take at his word—on a hook. In 1968 he was 20 years old: it must be assumed that that stormy year, the greatest in the history of Italy after 1945, did not affect him in any way. His own emptiness cannot be explained even by disappointment in the revolution. Frustration is a very creative feeling.

It is assumed that Jep is not only talented, but also sincere and has a sober mind, but masks these virtues with cynicism. There would be something to disguise. Sorrentino borrowed evidence of his tragic, lonely humanity from the thrift store of feelings.

At Fellini's human history Rather than being buried under grotesque vignettes, Sorrentino passes off the vignettes as history. Fellini's final catharsis is replaced by Sorrentino with a scene in the genre of "Show me your boobs!" Jep remembers as the brightest experience of his life how a girl showed him her breasts on the beach of his youth. “Boobs” in the context of the film are youth, love, and creativity. And mom, probably.

However, the difference between Sorrentino and Fellini is no less than between the Hellenes and the Romans. Beauty Ancient Rome was no less vulgar and depraved than the beauty of secular orgies. And, in all honesty, it is not for Italian directors to lament the shame, ruling ball on ancient stones.

"Great Beauty" 2013

"Great Beauty" 2013

Paolo Sorrentino (pictured) made the film with some help storylines, invented by Federico Fellini

The new Romans, switching from sherry brandy to cocaine-heroin, turned the “beauty” into a decoration of shame, which the hero contemplates, moving from a party to a brothel, from an anniversary to a vernissage

We need to find out once and for all what is really going on with this false quote, but it is unlikely that we will succeed: our people are stubborn. Who said that beauty will save the world? Dostoevsky? Or one of his heroes? We open the beginning of the 5th chapter of the third part of the novel “The Idiot”.

“Is it true, Prince, that you once said that the world would be saved by “beauty”? “Gentlemen,” he shouted loudly to everyone, “the prince claims that the world will be saved by beauty!” And I claim that the reason he has such playful thoughts is that he is now in love. Gentlemen, the prince is in love; Just now, as soon as he came in, I was convinced of this. Don’t blush, prince, I’ll feel sorry for you...”

This monologue belongs to Ippolit Terentyev, a 17-year-old boy mortally ill with tuberculosis, who, following this scene, tries to shoot himself and generally stands out for his extravagance among the already extraordinary heroes of “The Idiot.” We have not heard anything like this from the prince, and in general no connection can be traced between these words of Ippolit and the previous content of the novel, with the exception perhaps of annoying reminders of the unique feminine virtues of Nastasya Filippovna, because of which the prince subsequently loses his mind, and she herself loses her life .

However, the author returns to the “thesis about beauty” once again - only once, when the unfortunate prince is already approaching his natural ending. Aglaya Epanchina, a girl who loves the prince and evokes sympathy and trust in the reader, reminds us of him.

“Listen, once and for all,” Aglaya finally could not stand it, “if you talk about something like death penalty, or about the economic state of Russia, or that “the world will be saved by beauty,” then... I, of course, will rejoice and laugh very much, but... I warn you in advance: do not appear in front of me later! Listen: I'm serious! This time I'm serious!

She really seriously she uttered her threat, so that something extraordinary was heard in her words and glimpsed in her gaze, which the prince had never noticed before and which, of course, did not resemble a joke.”

Let us also listen to this serious voice and stop hanging on Dostoevsky the ridiculous canard thrown by one eccentric character to another. I would like to know who takes the initiative; suspicion, of course, falls on his “poor relative” V.V. Rozanov, an unfortunate bigamist who got married a second time without receiving a divorce from the great writer’s beloved Apollinaria Suslova.

It's not beauty that saves the world, Christ saves the world, God crucified and risen, and saves with our active participation: “We are fellow workers (fellow associates) with God” (1 Cor. 3:9). But with this, the aesthetes and intellectuals of the era “ silver age“Well, we couldn’t agree. That’s why they clung to the beauty: what if they take it out... Soft-boiled boots would have suited them, if only they themselves would not be disturbed with moral standards.

But don’t rush to push our classic into the shadows when it comes to beauty. His pen contains a judgment much deeper, more serious and mature than the random phrase of the nervous Hippolytus. It is, of course, well known, but in all kinds of aesthetic works it is quoted much less often, and if it is quoted, it is evasive, fits and starts, bashfully, as if they are trying not to reveal, but to hide its content. Rozanov’s trace is visible here too, it was not for nothing that Berdyaev said: “Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov himself sometimes philosophized through the mouth of Rozanov.”

So, Mitya Karamazov - in the preface to his confession to his brother Alyosha: “For insects - voluptuousness! I, brother, am this very insect, and this is specifically said about me. And we, Karamazovs, are all the same, and in you, angel, this insect lives and will give birth to a storm in your blood. These are storms, because voluptuousness is a storm, more than a storm! Beauty is a terrible and terrible thing! Terrible, because it is indefinable, but it is impossible to determine, because God gave only riddles...

Beauty! Moreover, I cannot bear that another person, even higher in heart and with a lofty mind, begins with the ideal of the Madonna, and ends with the ideal of Sodom. Even more terrible is someone who, already with the ideal of Sodom in his soul, does not deny the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart burns from it and truly, truly burns, as in his young, blameless years.

No, the man is wide, too wide, I would narrow it down. The devil knows what it even is, that's what! What seems disgraceful to the mind is pure beauty to the heart. Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe that it is in Sodom that she sits for the vast majority of people - did you know this secret or not? The terrible thing is that beauty is not only a terrible, but also a mysterious thing. Here the devil is fighting with God, and the battlefield is the hearts of people.”

Beauty, like freedom, is complex and incomprehensible philosophical problem- at least in this Mitya Karamazov was not mistaken. And it is important for us, first of all, to realize the subordinate place of beauty in relation to love and to others moral values. Beauty doesn't save the world but it can promote our salvation - or counteract it.

Nikolai Zabolotsky dedicated perhaps his most remarkable poem to beauty. I would like it to be learned by heart - just completely, and not in fits and starts, as in the popular book about “what every girl needs to know” - all those parents, teachers and preachers who find it necessary to promise hell to girls for earrings and beads , for lipstick, mascara, for a pocket mirror and in general for interest in your appearance.

Among other children playing
She resembles a frog.
A thin shirt tucked into panties,
Rings of reddish curls
Scattered, long mouth, crooked teeth,
Facial features are sharp and ugly.
To two boys, her peers,
The fathers each bought a bicycle.
Today the boys, in no hurry for lunch,
They drive around the yard, forgetting about her,
She runs after them.
Someone else's joy is just like your own,
It torments her and breaks out of her heart,
And the girl rejoices and laughs,
Captivated by the happiness of existence.

No shadow of envy, no evil intent
This creature doesn't know yet.
Everything in the world is so immensely new to her,
Everything is so alive that for others is dead!
And I don’t want to think while watching,
What will be the day when she, sobbing,
She will see with horror that among her friends
She's just a poor ugly girl!
I want to believe that the heart is not a toy,
It is hardly possible to break it suddenly!
I want to believe that this flame is pure,
Which burns in its depths,
He will overcome all his pain alone
And will melt the heaviest stone!
And even if her features are not good
And there is nothing to seduce her imagination -
Infant grace of the soul
It already shows through in any of her movements.
And if this is so, then what is beauty?
And why do people deify her?
She is a vessel in which there is emptiness,
Or a fire flickering in a vessel?

The poem ends with a question that is far from rhetorical and urgently requires an answer. In the figurative context of the poem, it naturally hangs in the air, but we can easily answer it: of course, beauty has both a formal side and a substantive one. However, let's pay attention to the previous line: deifying beauty in one form or another, we guarantee ourselves a moral catastrophe.

An unforgivable error (literally unforgivable: our children will not forgive us for it) would be to identify formal beauty, a vessel that is empty in itself, with a sinful, “worldly” perception of it, and meaningful, deep - with grace-filled, spiritual, “church”. A terrible and mysterious thing - the Sodomite ideal of beauty, a storm of voluptuousness, which Mitya sees in his heart and transfers to the “vast majority of people” and which in the end destroyed Mitya himself - it is that same fire, not so much flickering, how much is blazing, “and the heart burns from it,” and if we, having forgotten Christ, deify fire, then, like moths, we burn in it.

In confirmation of what has been said, let us call Pushkin as a witness. Everyone, of course, remembers the lines from the 8th chapter of “Eugene Onegin” about the poet’s youth in Tsarskoe Selo: “In those days when in the gardens of the Lyceum / I blossomed serenely...” But the years passed, and the time had come for the poet to reassess the past, and at the same time, give the clearest description of “deified beauty”:

At the beginning of my life I remember school;
There were a lot of us, careless children;
An uneven and playful family.
Humble, poorly dressed,
But the appearance of a majestic wife
She kept strict supervision over the school.
Surrounded by our crowd,
In a pleasant, sweet voice, it used to be
She talks to the babies.
Her brow I remember the veil
And eyes as bright as heaven,
But I didn’t delve into her conversations much.
I was embarrassed by the strict beauty
Her brow, calm lips and eyes
And full of holy words.
Avoiding her advice and reproaches,
I misinterpreted myself
The clear meaning of truthful conversations,
And often I sneaked away
Into the magnificent darkness of someone else's garden,
Under the arch is artificial porphyry rocks.
The coolness of the shadows sheltered me there;
I dreamed my young mind,
And it was a joy for me to think idle.
I loved the bright waters and the noise of the leaves,
And white idols in the shade of trees,
And in their faces is the stamp of motionless thoughts.
Everything is marble compasses and lyres,
Swords and scrolls in marble hands,
On the heads of laurels, on the shoulders of porphyry -
Everything inspired some sweet fear
On my heart; and tears of inspiration,
At the sight of them, they were born before our eyes.
Other two wonderful creations
They attracted me with magical beauty:
They were images of two demons.
One (Delphic Idol) young face
He was angry, full of terrible pride,
And he breathed with unearthly power.
Another effeminate, voluptuous,
A dubious and deceitful ideal,
The magical demon is deceitful, but beautiful.
I forgot myself before them;
The young heart beat in the chest - cold
He ran over me and raised my curls.
Unknown pleasures dark hunger
I was tormented by despondency and laziness
I was chained - in vain I was young.
Among the youths I am silent all day long
Wandered gloomy - all the idols of the garden
They cast a shadow on my soul.

As you can see, Mitya Karamazov had someone to look to for help in solving his moral and aesthetic problems. And we need to draw a conclusion: to defeat the devil (who fights, of course, not with God, but with man), to distinguish the divine principle from the Sodomite in the ideal of beauty, he and only he is able distinguishes truth from lies, because the devil is the father of lies, and the truth makes us free.



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