Story "Petka in the country" first published in the "Journal for All" in 1899. It was based on the story of the namesake of the writer Ivan Andreev. He was considered the most fashionable hairdresser in Moscow. The story belongs to acute social works. In the center of the story "Petka in the Country" is the fate of a child from a poor family, given by a student to a hairdresser and doing the most difficult and dirty work. Andreev emphasizes the menacing look that the hairdresser Osip Abramovich throws at the boy. At times, he whispers threats that portend punishment. The story has a circular composition. Its action begins and ends with approximately the same scene in a barbershop. Moreover, the quarter where it is located is filled with houses of cheap debauchery. Fights are constantly taking place in it, nasty words are heard, drunkenness reigns. And against the background of this wrong side of life, the childhood of the hero of the story passes in constant work. The writer does not skimp on artistic details, depicting all the vulgarity of the environment. These are the indifferent faces of dirty and strangely dressed visitors, and a picture infested with flies on the wall of a barbershop, and pictures of drunken battles, disgusting in their cruelty. All the horror of the situation emphasizes its hopeless monotony. All days are similar to each other, like brothers. They are even more depersonalized by the same cry: "Boy, water." There are no holidays. Drawing a portrait of the hero, L.H. Andreev shows how such a hopeless life withers the soul of a child. Petka is losing weight, he has bad scabs and fine wrinkles. L.H. Andreev writes that the boy becomes like an aged dwarf. One day, the owner lets Petka go to stay at the dacha where his mother serves as a cook, and he seems to be in paradise: he is resting, bathing, exploring the ruins of an old palace with interest. Outside the city, Petka sees for the first time a clear and wide sky, white joyful clouds that look like angels. This sky becomes a certain symbol of happiness, freedom, peace, the breadth of the world, open to the inquisitive gaze of a child. L.H. Andreev emphasizes how organic this world is for children's consciousness. The boy, who had never been to the dacha before, gets so used to the surroundings in two days that he forgets that Osip Abramovich exists in the world with his hairdresser. But happiness is suddenly cut short: the boy is told to return to his boring, exhausting duties again. The reader unfolds the true tragedy of a child who was deprived of his childhood. Petka boyishly reacts to the situation: he screams and cries. But soon the hero calms down and dutifully returns to his duties. The master and the lady sincerely pity the boy, but instead of real help, they only remember that someone in this world is living even worse now. Then they, with a clear conscience, go to the dance to have fun.
With his story, L.N. Andreev seeks to draw the attention of the progressive public to the position of children in capitalist society. After all, true humanism is not to pity the child, but to help him. However, the power of artistic denunciation of cruel capitalist mores in the work is such that the conclusion suggests itself that it is possible to change the position of children in society only at the state level. Individual patrons will not solve the situation radically. The fate of Petka can be considered typical for that time, the fate of a child from a poor family. It is no coincidence that the figure of another boy is depicted in the story - Nikolka, who is three years older than Petka. Listening to the dirty stories that Nikolka tells about visitors, Petka thinks that one day he will be the same as Nikolka. “But for now, he would like to go somewhere else,” emphasizes L.N. Andreev.
Tale "Judas Iscariot" Leonid Andreeva raises not one, but many problems, both psychological and philosophical, ethical. It is possible to analyze these problems from different angles, respectively, but at the same time not forgetting their interrelation. The psychological problems raised in the story include the problems of betrayal and loneliness. The same problems can be considered from the position of philosophy: can a person be alone? What is the reason for his loneliness? Was Judas really a traitor, or did he act under the guidance of a higher power? (The dogmatic interpretation of the topic of Salvation and Atonement is such that they would not have happened without the suffering and death of Jesus, and therefore without the betrayal of Judas. There are many very different points of view on this matter, which indicates the ambiguity of the problem and the presence of different ways of interpreting this plot). Another of the problems raised in the story is the problem of the relationship between truth and falsehood, truth and untruth. Worldview, worldview Judas is extremely unusual, his logic is different from the logic of ordinary people. A vivid example of such logic is Jude's monologue about the dog. Judas considers it true that everyone is deceiving him, and, based on this, makes the assumption that if he kills the dog, then she will deceive him and in fact become even more alive than before. Perhaps it was this logic that served as one of the reasons for the betrayal: wishing to destroy Jesus, Judas could hope that he would deceive him and, like that dog, would become even more alive. At the same time, Judas could try to deceive himself and perceive betrayal as proof of love and fidelity. Judas is trying to convict himself and the people around him of deceit. He tries to prove to the apostles that their love for Jesus is not sincere, and they do not understand the meaning of His words. Together with the apostles, Judas of all the followers of Jesus is opposed to Jesus himself (the scene with the stolen denarii and the subsequent conversation between Judas and Thomas, the scene when Judas the traitor comes to the apostles and accuses them of dislike for the Teacher, of betrayal). This opposition raises the problem of the discrepancy between the teachings of Christ and the teachings of the official Churches: Jesus suffered, but did not ask to be protected, was meek, humble and did not welcome any violence, rejected and condemned him. The official Churches, having only ceased to be persecuted, have themselves become persecutors, Churches that "possess and flay their skins," venerating the cross, the weapon of murder, and thereby betraying their Teacher. From the point of view of Judas, it was not he who was the traitor, but all those who misinterpreted the teachings of Christ and refused to defend the Teacher.
The story of L. Andreev "Judas Iscariot" is a psychological interpretation of the famous gospel story.
L. Andreev died in Finland, in fact in exile, in 1919. In 1956, he was reburied at the Literary bridges of the Volkov cemetery in St. Petersburg.
M. Gorky completed his literary portrait of L. Andreev - “the only friend among writers” with words that cannot but be recognized as fair: “he was what he wanted and knew how to be - a man of rare originality, rare talent and courageous enough in his search for truth ".
2. JUDAS-MYSTERY OF THE GOSPEL
The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron, one of the most authoritative pre-revolutionary reference publications, says about Judas: “Judas Iscariot is one of the 12 apostles who betrayed his Teacher. He received his nickname from the city of Keriof, from which he was born (Ish-Keriof - a man from Keriof); however, opinions differ on this point. In any case, he was the only Jew among the apostles, who were all Galileans. In the company of the apostles, he was in charge of their cash desk, from which he soon began to steal money, and then, deceived in the hope that Jesus Christ would be the founder of a great earthly kingdom in which all Jews would be princes and drown in luxury and wealth, he sold his Teacher for 30 pieces of silver (or shekels: 3080 k. \u003d 24 rubles gold), but from remorse he hanged himself. There have been many attempts to unravel his transition from apostleship to betrayal...” 1 In the minds of humanity, Judas has become a symbol of the blackest betrayal. Many outstanding works of world literature, primarily the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, secured this "glory" to Judas. Dante's Judas, along with other traitors (Brutus and Cassius, who betrayed Emperor Caesar in Ancient Rome), is in the most terrible place of Hell - in one of the three mouths of Lucifer. What was done by Judas did not allow him to be placed in any of the circles of Hell, since this would be too small a punishment for him:
Anterior [Judas.- V.K.] not teeth are so scary,
How the nails were, all the same
Ripping off the skin from the back.
“The one above, suffering the worst of all,-
The leader said- Judas Iscariot;
Head inside and heels out" 2 .
The "canonical" image of Judas, the idea of the moral essence of his black villainy was fixed in the minds of mankind for many centuries. And in the 19th century, A. S. Pushkin again branded the betrayal of the “world enemy”, the very idea of treason in the poem “Imitation of Italian” (1836):
As a traitor student fell from a tree,The devil flew in, clung to his face,Breathed life into him, soared with his stinking prey
And he threw the corpse alive into the larynx of Gehenna smooth ...
There are demons, rejoicing and splashing, on the hornsAccepted with laughter of the world enemyAnd noisily carried to the accursed lord, And satan, standing up, with joy on his faceWith his kiss, he burned his mouth through and through,On the traitorous night they kissed Christ 3 .
However, in the 19th and 20th centuries, in the context of the general process of de-Christianization of culture, a new trend clearly emerged in world literature and art - to comprehend the motives, penetrate the psychology of the gospel characters, nourish them with “the blood and flesh of the world” (L. Andreev). And this, in turn, led to an unconventional interpretation of canonical biblical stories and images. The image of Judas was also rethought. “Jude - original and translated, in Russian literature there are more than a dozen,” M. Gorky wrote to L. Andreev in 1912. Of course, this trend caused a sharp rejection among the majority of readers brought up in the traditions of Christian culture and morality. Very many perceived the appeal to the image of Judas, to his “trading businessman” negatively, seeing in this only an attempt to justify the traitor. L. Andreev rebelled against such an understanding of the author's position with resentment and was surprised at his misunderstanding of what he wrote: “Or do you also think,” he wrote to one of his correspondents, “that I am justifying Judas, and I myself am Judas, and my children Azefs” 1 .
Meanwhile, the riddle of Judas is generated by the Gospel itself, which lacks the psychological background of this key episode. As you know, the canonical Gospels do not explain the events and actions of the gospel characters, but only state them, tell about them. And, of course, they do not contain psychological motivations. This is the peculiarity of the Old and New Testaments and their mystery. It is a riddle because, despite its brevity, lapidarity, external impartiality, the text of the Holy Scriptures has been exciting and attracting to itself for almost two thousand years. The Bible, in particular, therefore has such an impact on the reader that it does not explain anything, but fascinates with its understatement.
Let us turn to the original source - to the gospel texts, which speak of the villainous act of Judas:
« 21. Having said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit, and testified, and said: Truly, truly, I say to you that one of you will betray me.
22. Then the disciples looked around at each other, wondering who he was talking about...
26. Jesus answered: the one to whom, having dipped a piece of bread, I will serve. And, having dipped a piece, he gave it to Judas Simonov Iscariot.
27. And after this piece, Satan entered into him. Then Jesus said to him: whatever you do, do it quickly.
28. But none of those reclining understood why He said this to him.
29. And as Judas had a box, some thought that Jesus said to him: "Buy what we need for the holiday," or to give something to the poor.
30. He, having taken a piece, immediately went out; but it was night.
31. When he came out, Jesus said, “Today the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him.”
We do not find an answer to the question why Judas betrayed the Teacher, who had such confidence in him, we do not find here. On the contrary, the famous gospel episode raises new questions: what was wrong with Judas? why exactly did Satan enter into him and he betrayed the Teacher? There is an unsolved mystery in this. “And, therefore, this opens up an ideal field for all kinds of hypotheses of biblical scholars and for the creative imagination of artists who saw in the person of Judas not only an individual psychological problem, but also a generalized metaphor, a symbol of some eternal dark sides of the human character,” comments Zenon Kosidovsky .
There is another reason for the increased interest of artists in gospel images - their universal significance, universal humanity, that not only religious, but also cultural trail that has been formed over the centuries. In recent times, mythology (biblical mythology) has turned out to be a capacious language for describing models of personal and universal behavior, since it has a high degree of generalization and symbolism. Gospel characters, mythology allow us to operate with large-scale images, make it possible to expand the spatio-temporal framework of the narrative and go beyond the socio-historical framework into the sphere of ethics and philosophy. At the end of the second millennium, when the need to sum up the results of the path traversed by mankind in the bosom of Christianity began to be realized, this kind of interest in evangelical events is not unexpected.
The appeal of L. Andreev to the gloomy gospel character has its own internal reasons, due to Andreev's concept of man, pessimistic moods in his work. The reality surrounding the writer, the events of Russian history at the beginning of the 20th century (as, in general, of the whole world history) did not allow to be overly optimistic in relation to the moral state of mankind ("but couldn't they be a little better",- the hero of the story L. Andreev will say about people). The writer was disturbed by the gap between lofty ideals and real human actions, and this gap is especially noticeable, “when a person finds himself in a crisis situation in life, a situation of a“ last ”choice ... Andreev considered this moral split not only as a disease of his contemporaries, but also as a universal weakness " of man in general" - a generic property of human nature. That is why the object of the "moral investigation" of the writer in his mature work is increasingly becoming not the concrete historical types of his contemporaries, but "eternal images", moral and psychological "archetypes" that for centuries have served humanity as the "alphabet" of good and evil.
“The story of L. Andreev, which is a free fantasy on a religious and mythological plot, contains many explicit and hidden biblical quotations, allusions, symbols; the nature of the story is parable-like ("And soJudas has come... with its generalization, disregard for everyday details and highlighting the central idea, pathos. Parable, felt both in tone (author's intonation), and in the construction of phrases and the text as a whole, and in the choice of vocabulary, increases the figurative-semantic (philosophical and cultural) capacity of Andreev's text, creates conditions for a multi-variant interpretation of the work.
It is also very important to keep in mind that the story of L. Andreev in the context of the history of world philosophy and literature is not unprepared, but serves as a logical continuation of the line that goes from the first centuries of Christianity. Even Origen of Alexandria in the 3rd century thought about the complexity and inconsistency of the gospel character, he argued: “... is it not clear to everyone that in the soul of Judas, along with the love of money and the evil intent to betray the teacher, the feeling produced in him by the words of Jesus , - that feeling that still contained in him some remnant of a good disposition.
In recent times, Maximilian Voloshin, Anatole France, Clemens Brentano, Thor Gedberg, Vasily Rozanov, Gebgardt, Nikos Kazantzakis, Yuri Nagibin and many others have turned to the image of the apostate-apostle in their works.
3. THE STORY "JUDAS ISCARIOT"IN ASSESSMENT OF CRITICISM
Difficult, hard and maybe heavenlygratefully approaching the mystery of Judas, lay downit’s safer not to notice her, coveringher roses of church beauty.
S. Bulgakov
The story appeared in 1907, but L. Andreev mentions its idea as early as 1902. Therefore, not only the events of Russian history - the defeat of the first Russian revolution and the rejection of revolutionary ideas by many - caused the appearance of this work, but also the internal impulses of L. Andreev himself. From a historical point of view, the theme of apostasy from past revolutionary hobbies is present in the story. L. Andreev also wrote about this. However, the content of the story, especially over time, goes far beyond the specific socio-political situation. The author himself wrote about the idea of his work: “Something on the psychology, ethics and practice of betrayal”, “A completely free fantasy on the topic of betrayal, good and evil, Christ, etc.”. The story of Leonid Andreev is an artistic philosophical and ethical study of human vice, and the main conflict is philosophical and ethical.
We must pay tribute to the artistic courage of the writer, who ventured to turn to the image of Judas, all the more so to try to understand this image. Indeed, from a psychological point of view understand means in some way to accept (in accordance with the paradoxical statement of M. Tsvetaeva understand- forgive, not otherwise). Leonid Andreev, of course, foresaw this danger. He wrote: the story "will be scolded both from the right and from the left, from above and from below." And he turned out to be right: the accents that were placed in his version of the gospel story (“The Gospel According to Andreev”) turned out to be unacceptable for many contemporaries, among whom was L. Tolstoy: “Terrible disgusting, falsehood and lack of a sign of talent. The main thing is why? At the same time, the story was highly appreciated by M. Gorky, A. Blok, K. Chukovsky and many others.
A sharp rejection was also caused by Jesus as a character in the story (“Jesus composed by Andreev, in general Jesus of the rationalism of Renan, the artist Polenov, but not the Gospel, a very mediocre, colorless, small person,” A. Bugrov), and the images of the apostles (“From the apostles approximately nothing should remain. Just wet, "-V. V. Rozanov), and, of course, the image of the central character of" Judas Iscariot "(" ... L. Andreev's attempt to present Judas as an extraordinary person, to give his actions a high motivation was doomed to The result was a disgusting mixture of sadistic cruelty, cynicism and love with anguish. The work of L. Andreev, written at the time of the defeat of the revolution, at the time of black reaction, is essentially an apology for betrayal ... This is one of the most shameful pages in the history of Russian and European decadence ", - I. E. Zhuravskaya). There were so many derogatory reviews about the scandalous work in the criticism of that time that K. Chukovsky was forced to say: “In Russia it is better to be a counterfeiter than a famous Russian writer.”
The polarity of assessments of the work of L. Andreev and his central character in literary criticism has not disappeared even today, and it is caused by the dual nature of the image of Andreev's Judas:
Another point of view is no less widespread. For example, B.S. Bugrov claims: “The deepest source of provocation [Judas. - V.K.) turns out to be not an innate moral depravity of a person, but an inalienable property of his nature - the ability to think. The impossibility of renouncing "seditious" thoughts and the need for their practical verification - these are the inner impulses of Judas' behavior”; P. Basinsky writes in the comments to the story: “This is not an apology for betrayal (as the story was understood by some critics), but an original interpretation of the theme of love and fidelity and an attempt to present the theme of revolution and revolutionaries in an unexpected light: Judas is, as it were, the “last” revolutionary, blowing up the most false meaning of the universe and thus clearing the way for Christ”; R. S. Spivak states: “The semantics of the image of Judas in Andreev's story is fundamentally different from the semantics of the gospel prototype. The betrayal of Andreev's Judas is a betrayal only in fact, and not in essence. And in the interpretation of Yu. Nagibin, one of the modern writers, Judas Iscariot is the "beloved disciple" of Jesus.
The problem of the Gospel Judas and its interpretation in literature and art has two facets: ethical and aesthetic, and they are inextricably linked.
The ethical line was meant by L. Tolstoy, asking the question: “the main thing is why” to turn to the image of Judas and try to understand him, to delve into his psychology? What is the moral meaning of this in the first place? Deeply natural was the appearance in the Gospel not only of a positively beautiful personality - Jesus, the God-Man, but also of his antipode - Judas with his satanic beginning, personifying the universal vice of betrayal. Mankind also needed this symbol for the formation of a moral coordinate system. To try to take a different look at the image of Judas means to attempt to revise it, and, consequently, to encroach on the system of values that has been formed over two millennia, which threatens with a moral catastrophe. After all, one of the definitions of culture is the following: culture is a system of restrictions, self-restraints that prohibit killing, stealing, betraying, etc. In Dante's Divine Comedy, as is well known, the ethical and aesthetic coincide: Lucifer and Judas are equally ugly both ethically and aesthetically - they are anti-ethical and anti-aesthetic. Any innovations in this area can have serious not only ethical, but also socio-psychological consequences. All this gives an answer to the question why the image of Judas was banned for a long time, as if it was tabooed.
On the other hand, to abandon attempts to understand the motives of Judas' act means to agree that a person is a kind of puppet, only the forces of others act in him (“Satan entered” Judas), in this case the person and responsibility for his actions does not carry. Leonid Andreev had the courage to think about these difficult questions, offer his own answers, knowing in advance that criticism would be harsh.
Starting to analyze the story of L. Andreev "Judas Iscariot", it is necessary to emphasize once again: a positive assessment of Judas - the gospel character - of course, is impossible. Here, the subject of analysis is the text of a work of art, and the goal is to identify its meaning on the basis of establishing relationships between different levels of elements of the text, or, most likely, determining the boundaries of interpretation, in other words, the spectrum of adequacy.
4. "AND OTHERS..." IN THE STORY
Well, yes, I spoke badly about them (people),but couldn't they be a little better?
L. Andreev. Judas Iscariot
There is not a single fictional character in the story, the plot (sequence of events) also, in comparison with the Gospel, remains within the canonical limits. But the accents, the meaning of what L. Andreev describes is different from the gospel.
Initially, in her first publication in the "Collection of the partnership "Knowledge"" for 1907, the story was called "Judas Iscariot and others", - obviously, those who are responsible for the death of Christ on the cross. Among the "others" are the apostles - the disciples of Jesus. With malicious irony, Peter is depicted (translated from Greek as a stone), sinful, strong and limited. It is he and another disciple of Jesus, John, arguing about which of them will be in the Kingdom of Heaven next to Jesus. It is Peter who drinks almost all of the wine bought for Jesus "with the indifference of a man who cares only about quantity." Ironic is the assessment of Peter's strength contained in the words of Jude: "OnceIs there anyone stronger than Peter? When he shouts, all the donkeys in Jerusalem think that their Messiah has come, and they also raise a shout. It is Peter, as predicted by Jesus, who thrice denies the Master, who is taken into custody. What can we say about others, if a faithful student renounces the Teacher...
With the same evil irony, John, the beloved, the Disciple of Jesus, is also depicted. In the story of L. Andreev, John is pampered and arrogant, not wanting to give up his place next to Jesus to anyone.
From Jude's point of view, the doubting Thomas is limited and unable to understand irony. This is the author's assessment of the character:
At times Judas felt an unbearable disgustfeeling towards his strange friend and, penetrating himwith a sharp look, spoke irritably, almost with a molecombat:
- But what do you want from me? I told you everythingall.
- I want you to prove how it can begoat your father?- with indifferent perseveranceTew interrogated Thomas and waited for an answer...
What a fool you are, Thomas! What do you see in a dream:tree, wall, donkey?
Many characteristics “and others” were given by Judas, and therefore they cannot be recognized as fair, says L. A. Zapadova: “He, who “mixed truth with lies so skillfully,” cannot be authorized by God. Therefore, he is a false prophet - no matter how passionate and sincere his speech may seem. Of course, the optics of Judas and his assessments are not final in the work. However, it is also obvious that often the author's accusatory voice sounds in unison with the voice of Judas - the judge and accuser of the "others", the physical points of view of the central character and the author-narrator coincide, which is most clearly seen, for example, in the following fragment:
And Judas quietly trailed behind and gradually lagged behindshaft. Here in the distance they mixed up in a motley bunch of walkingand it was impossible to consider which of thesesmall figurines of Jesus. So little Foma turned into a gray dot- and all of a sudden they all disappearedturn.
In this sense, Judas is to some extent still a "prophet" - in the sense that he is authorized by the author to say something very important for the author. And the author's tone of the story about Judas in the key episodes seems to reach the limit in its sorrow and poignant lyricism. In the famous scene of the traitor's kiss, both Judas' mortal sorrow and his paternal tenderness and love for "son, son" are conveyed (as he calls Jesus more than once in the story):
...and mortal sorrow ignited in his heart,like the one that Christ experienced before. Stretching out into a hundred loudly ringing, sobbing strings, he quickly rushed to Jesus and gently kissedshaft him on the cold cheek. So quiet, so gentle, with tawhat painful love and longing that, be Jesusa flower on a thin stalk, he did not swaywould not have dropped him with this kiss and pearl dewfrom pure petals.
A completely different tone, different vocabulary is present in the author's speech when he talks about other students. They fall asleep during Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he asks them to stay awake, to be with him in the hour of trial:
Peter and John exchanged words, almostmeaningless. Yawning from exhaustion, they spoke about how cold the night is and how expensive meat isin Jerusalem, fish are not available at all.
And finally, it was they - the disciples - who did not protect Jesus from the Roman guards during his arrest:
Like a bunch of frightened lambs, the students crowded around, not obstructing anything, but interfering with everyone.- and even samime yourself; and only a few dared to go and actstand apart from others. Pushed from all hundredron, Pyotr Simonov with difficulty, as if having lost all hisstrength, drew a sword from its scabbard and weakly, with an oblique blow, opusthrew it on the head of one of the servants,- but nothingdid no harm. And Jesus, who noticed this,room for him to throw an unnecessary sword ...
The soldiers stuffed the students, and they again collectedcrawled and stupidly crawled under their feet, and this went on untiluntil the contemptuousrage. Here is one of them, frowning his eyebrows, movedto the screaming John; another roughly pushed off hisshoulder hand of Thomas, who was convincing him of something, and to saHis straight and transparent eyes were raised by a huge fist,- and John ran, and Thomas and James ranand all the disciples, no matter how many there were, leaving Jesusuh, run.
L. Andreev removed the words “...and others” from the final version of the title of the story, but they are invisibly present in the text. “And others” are not only the apostles. These are all those who worshiped Jesus and joyfully greeted him at the entrance to Jerusalem:
Jesus had already entered Jerusalem on a donkey, and,making clothes in his way, the people greeted himwith enthusiastic cries: Hosanna! Hosanna! Coming in the nameLord! And so great was the jubilation, so irresistibly in the cries of love rushed to him that Jesus wept ...
And here comes the trial of Jesus. Pilate in the story of L. Andreev addresses the inhabitants of Jerusalem present on the square:
I researched in front of you and did not find this personguilty of nothing of which you accuse him...Judas closed his eyes. Waiting.
And all the people screamed, yelled, howled for a thousandanimal and human voices:
- Death to him! Crucify him! Crucify him!
It must be emphasized that L. Andreev does not go far from the Gospel here. Let's compare the same episode in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 27:
“22. Pilate says to them: What will I do to Jesus, who is called the Christ? Everyone says to him: let him be crucified!
23. The governor said: what evil did he do? But they shouted even louder: let him be crucified!
24. Pilate, seeing that nothing helps, but confusion increases, took water and washed his hands before the people, and said: I am innocent of the blood of this Just One; see you.
25. And answering all the people said, His blood is on us and on our children.
Unlike the gospel Pontius Pilate (as well as Pilate in M. Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita), St. Andrew's Pontius Pilate is released from responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus. The procurator - a character in L. Andreev's story - is struck by the anger of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, demanding the execution of "This Righteous One", and he exonerates himself by defiantly and symbolically washing his hands (which, by the way, seen through the eyes of Judas, are "clean"):
Here he washes his hands- for some reason washes his whites, numberstye, adorned with rings hands- and screams angrilyraising them to the surprised silent people: “NeviI am new in the blood of this righteous man. Look you!”
The procurator of Judea is also involved in the emotional tension of the story, a storm of feelings, who “screams angrily”, but who would be appropriate to speak lofty and full of conscious dignity of power. Judas in a frenzy kisses his hand, repeating: “You are wise!.. You are noble!.. Youwise, wise!” These words of Jude are gratitude for the procurator's refusal to take upon himself the sin for the death of Jesus. Andreev's Judas expected the same from "others."
Andreev's Judas himself acts not only as a traitor, but also, paradoxically, as a judge. On his last day, Judas comes to the apostles to denounce them and equate them with the murderous high priests who sent the innocent Christ to be executed:
- What could we do, judge for yourself,- onceFoma led with his hands.
- Is that what you're asking, Thomas? Well well!-bowed his head to one side Judas of Carioth and suddenly angrilycollapsed:- Who loves does not ask whatdo! He goes and does everything... When your son is drowning, do you go into the city and ask passers-by:"What should I do? my son is drowning!”- instead of throwing yourself into the water and drowning next to your son. Who loves!Peter grimly responded to Judas' frantic speech:
- I drew my sword, but he himself said- no need.
- No need? And did you listen?- Judas laughed.
- Peter, Peter, how can you listen to him! Is it a ponydoes he see anything in people, in the struggle? ..
- Be quiet!- shouted John, rising.- Himselfwanted this sacrifice. And his sacrifice is beautiful!
-Is there a beautiful sacrifice, what do you say, beloved student?
Where there is a victim, there is an executioner, andgivers there! Victim- it's suffering for oneand shame on everyone. Traitors, traitors, what are you doingmessed with the ground? Now look at her from above and belowand laugh and shout: look at this earth, on itcrucified Jesus!
... He took all the sin of the people upon himself. His sacrifice isred!- John insisted.
- No, you took all the sin upon yourself. Beloved student! Is it not from you that the generation of traitors, the breed of cowards and liars will begin ... you will soon kiss the cross on which you crucified Christ.
Why, given that the topic "and others" in the story it sounds completely distinct and unambiguous, L. Andreev refused the name "Judas Iscariot and others" and settled on a more neutral Judas Iscariot? The point, apparently, is that the rejected version of the name was not devoid of straightforwardness; he brought to the fore precisely the theme of responsibility "and others" (since the betrayal of Judas himself was no longer news to the reader). The guilt of “and others” is still a peripheral theme in the story, in the center of it are two characters: Judas Iscariot and Jesus Christ, and their mysterious, mysterious fatal incomprehensible connection, the writer offers his own version of the solution to.
Before moving on to the title character - the image of Andreev's Judas Iscariot, let's turn to the one who is the origin of all events - the image of Christ in the interpretation of Leonid Andreev, assuming that this image here will also be a deviation from the canonical tradition.
5. IMAGE OF JESUS,OR DID CHRIST LAUGH?
S. Averintsev
To understand the artist, and this idea is deeply justified, those "laws" that he - the artist - has set over himself are called upon. Such a “law” for L. Andreev, who ventured to create an artistic image of Jesus Christ, was the following: “I know that God and the Devil are only symbols, but it seems to me that the whole life of people, all its meaning is to endlessly, limitlessly expand these symbols, nourishing them with the blood and flesh of the world” 1 . Andreev's Jesus appears before us just like this - "saturated with the blood and flesh of the world", and this is manifested in the story, in particular, in his laughter.
From a traditional, psychological point of view, open, cheerful laughter does not have any negative connotations, rather it has a positive connotation. However, in the Christian value system, the philosophy of laughter is understood differently. S. S. Averintsev writes about this: “It is always more difficult to make a wise man laugh than a simpleton, and this is because the sage has already crossed the line of liberation, the line of laughter, is already beyond the threshold ... Therefore, the tradition, according to which Christ never laughed, from the point of view of the philosophy of laughter, it seems quite logical and convincing. At the point of absolute freedom, laughter is impossible, because it is superfluous” 2 . From a Christian point of view, the manifestation of the "absolute freedom" of Jesus Christ was his voluntary sacrifice to atone for human sins, any other manifestation of freedom, a demonstration of freedom, including in laughter, would be really superfluous.
But another logic prevails in L. Andreev's story - not religious-mystical, but psychological, cultural-historical, rooted in the world cultural tradition and substantiated by M. Bakhtin. And the laughing Jesus - it would seem a completely insignificant detail - testifies to the fundamental difference between the image of Jesus Christ in L. Andreev and the gospel Jesus, which was also noted by researchers: “Even the one who is thought of as a symbol of the highest ideal wholeness is not free from duality,” says L. A. Kolobaeva, characterizing the image of Jesus Christ. It seems incredible, but L. Andreev's Jesus is not just laughing (which would already be a violation of Christian tradition, the religious canon) - he is laughing:
FROM greedy attention, childishly half-open mouth,laughing in advance with his eyes, Jesus listened to himimpetuous, sonorous, cheerful speechand sometimes laughed so hard at his jokes thathad to stop for a few minutesskaz.
Here is the word laughed- purely Andreev's, other authors, as far as we know, do not cite it in connection with Christ. Andreev himself was in life (as evidenced by the memoirs of memoirists, primarily the literary portrait of L. Andreev, created by M. Gorky) a man of extreme moods: both a romantic lyricist and a paradoxical pessimist. Thus, Jesus in L. Andreev appears not only in his human (not divine) incarnation, but also acquires some primordially Russian national features (lyricism, sentimentality, openness in laughter, which can act as defenseless openness). Of course, L. Andreev's image of Jesus is to some extent a projection of his (Andreev's) artistic, Russian soul. In this regard, let us recall once again the words of the author about the intention of his story "Judas Iscariot" - this is "a completely free fantasy." Fantasy, we note, is determined by the peculiarities of the worldview, the style of the artist.
According to tradition, cheerful laughter is regarded as a liberating principle - an internally free, uninhibited person laughs, for example, a Renaissance man in Francois Rabelais's novel "Gargantua and Pantagruel". “Real laughter, ambivalent and universal, does not negate seriousness, but purifies and replenishes it. It cleanses from dogmatism, one-sidedness, rigidity, from fanaticism and categoricalness, from elements of fear or intimidation, from didacticism, naivety and illusions, from bad one-dimensionality and unambiguity, from stupid exhaustion. Laughter will not allow seriousness to freeze and break away from the unfinished integrity of being. These are the general functions of laughter in the historical development of culture and literature,” argued M. M. Bakhtin. L. Andreev in his story-fantasy about the God-man, even before the appearance of the works of M. M. Bakhtin, intuitively confesses precisely this concept, the philosophy of laughter. L. Andreev sees in Jesus, first of all, a human hypostasis, emphasizing it again and again and thereby, as it were, freeing up space for the affirmation of the human, active principle, equalizing God and Man. In Andreev's concept of Jesus, laughter (“laughter”) is also logical because it equalizes, brings its participants closer, building relationships not along the religious (Gothic) vertical, but along the earthly, human horizontal.
Jesus L. Andreeva, as we see, as well as Judas, is a fantasy on the gospel theme, and he is close in his human manifestation to Bulgakov's Yeshua from The Master and Margarita. This is not a “powerful” (Gospel of Matthew), a God-man who knows about his divine origin and his destiny, but a naive, dreamy artist detached from reality, subtly feeling the beauty and diversity of the world, and his students know this:
John found between the stones a beautiful, bluelizard and in tender palms, laughing softly, brought itJesus; and the lizard stared with its bulging, zagadaughter's eyes into his eyes, and then quickly slippedher cold little body hit his warm hand and quickly carried away her tender, quivering tail somewhere.
Judas gives beautiful flowers to Jesus:
Did you give Jesus the lily that I found in thrah?- Judas turns to Mary...- Did you smilehe?- Yes, he was glad. He said that the smell of the flowerno Galilee.- And you certainly didn't tell him thatDid Judas get it, Judas from Carioth?- You askeddon't speak.- No. no need, no need, of course- Judas sighed.- But you could have spilled the beanswomen are so talkative.
In his essay on L. Andreev, M. Gorky, as you know, stated: “In everything that concerned the dark sides of life, contradictions in the human soul, fermentation in the field of instincts, he was terribly quick-witted.” The inconsistency, understatement of the chosen gospel plot, the mystery of the relationship between the Teacher and the student attracted L. Andreev first of all in his story.
Andrew's Jesus is mysterious, but what is his riddle? It is not so much a religious-mystical as a subconscious-psychological character. The story speaks of a great secret "beautiful eyes" Jesus - why is Jesus silent, to whom Judas mentally appeals with a prayer:
Great is the secret of your beautiful eyes... Lead mestay!.. But you are silent, are you still silent? Mrs.di, Lord, then in anguish and torment I was looking for youall my life, I searched and found! Set me free Take off the heaviness, it is heavier than mountains and lead. Haven't you hearddo you hear how the chest of Judas from Carioth crackles under her?
When reading the story, a logical (in the psychological coordinate system) question arises: why did Jesus bring Judas closer to him: because he is a rejected and unloved, and Jesus did not renounce anyone? If this motivation partly takes place in this case, then it should be regarded as peripheral in the authentically realistic and at the same time not devoid of penetration into the depths of the subconscious story by L. Andreev. Jesus, as the Gospel testifies, prophesied about his forthcoming betrayal by one of the apostles: “... did I not choose you twelve? but one of you is the devil. And He spoke of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was to betray Him” (Gospel of John, ch. 6:70-71). Between Christ and Judas in the story of L. Andreev there is a mysterious subconscious connection, not expressed verbally, but nevertheless felt by Judas and readers. This connection (a premonition of an event that connected both forever) is felt psychologically and Jesus, the God-Man, it could not but find an external psychological expression (in a mysterious silence, in which one feels hidden tension, the expectation of a tragedy), and especially clearly - on the eve of Christ's death on the cross. It would not be logical if this story were otherwise. We emphasize once again that we are talking about a work of art, where attention to psychological motivation is natural and even inevitable, in contrast to the Gospel - a sacred text in which the image of Judas is a symbolic embodiment of evil, a character from the standpoint of artistic depiction is conditional, purposefully devoid of a psychological dimension. The being of the gospel Jesus is being in a different coordinate system.
Gospel sermons, parables, the Gethsemane prayer of Christ are not mentioned in the text, Jesus is, as it were, on the periphery of the events described. This concept of the image of Jesus was characteristic not only of L. Andreev, but also of other artists, including A. Blok, who also wrote about the naivety of "Jesus Christ" (in the poem "The Twelve"), the femininity of the image, in which not his own energy, and the energy of others. Naive (from the point of view of Jesus' contemporaries - the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who renounced the Teacher) and his teaching, which, with the help of his terrible "experiment", as it were, tests and reveals his moral strength. about good. But since the teaching of Jesus is the great truth, why did it turn out to be powerless in relation to him? Why does this beautiful thought not resonate with the inhabitants of ancient Jerusalem? Believing in the truth of Jesus and enthusiastically welcoming him at his entry into Jerusalem, the inhabitants of the city then became disillusioned with her power, became disillusioned with their faith and hope, and all the more forcefully began to reproach the teacher for the failure of his sermons.
The divine and human principles appear in the story of L. Andreev in a heretical interaction: Judas becomes the person who played the greatest role in history for the paradoxical Andreev, and Jesus is presented in his corporality, human flesh, and the corresponding episodes (first of all, the beating of Jesus by the Roman guards) are perceived as excessively naturalistic in relation to Christ, but nevertheless possible in that chain of arguments, motivations, causes and effects that were recreated by the artistic fantasy of the author of Judas Iscariot. This concentration of L. Andreev on the human hypostasis of the God-man turned out to be in demand, widespread in the literature of the 20th century, and, in particular, it determined the concept of the image of Yeshua in the novel The Master and Margarita by M. Bulgakov.
6. JUDAS ISCARIOT IN THE IMAGE
L. ANDREEVA, ANDREEV'S CONCEPTHUMAN
He [Thomas] carefully examinedChrist and Judas, who sat side by side, and this countrynaya proximity of divine beauty and miraclegodly ugliness, a man with a meek eyerum and an octopus with dull, greedy eyesoppressed his mind like an unsolvable riddle.L. Andreev. Judas Iscariot
Judas, perhaps the most mysterious (from a psychological point of view) gospel character, was especially attractive to Leonid Andreev with his interest in the subconscious, in the contradictions in the human soul. In this area, L. Andreev was "terribly quick-witted."
In the center of L. Andreev's story is the image of Judas Iscariot and his betrayal - an "experiment". According to the Gospel, Judas was driven by a mercenary motive - he betrayed the Teacher for 30 pieces of silver (the price is symbolic - this is the price of a slave at that time). In the Gospel, Judas is greedy, he reproaches Mary when she buys precious ointment for Jesus - Judas was the keeper of the public treasury. Andreevsky Judas is not peculiar to the love of money. From L. Andreev, Judas himself buys expensive wine for Jesus, which Peter drinks almost all of.
The reason, the motive for the terrible betrayal, according to the Gospel, was Satan, who entered Judas: “Satan entered Judas, who was called Iscariot, ... and he went and spoke with the high priest” (Gospel of Mark, chapter 14: 1-2). The gospel explanation seems, from a psychological point of view, mysterious: since all the roles were already distributed (both the victim and the traitor), then why did the heavy cross fall on Judas to be a traitor? Why did he then hang himself: could not bear the severity of the crime? Did he repent of his crime? The “crime-punishment” scheme here is so generalized, reduced to a general model, that in principle it allows for various psychological concretizations.
In contrast to Yu. Nagibin's story "Beloved Disciple" published in the early 1990s, where the author's position is expressed definitely (in particular, already in the title itself), L. Andreev's story is contradictory, ambivalent, its "answers" are encrypted and paradoxical, which determines the contradictory, often polar nature of reviews of the story. The author himself spoke about this as follows: “As always, I only pose questions, but I don’t give answers to them ...”
The story is symbolic and parable. Parables are the beginnings: And Judas came... union repetitions and, sounding epic: "And there was evening, and there was evening silence, and long shadows lay on the ground- firstsharp arrows of the coming night ... "
At the beginning of the story, a negative characterization of Judas is given, it is stated, in particular, that "He didn't have any children.and this once again said that Judas- bad person and not hoeven the god of offspring from Judas”, “He himself has been wandering senselessly among the people for many years, .. and everywhere he lies, grimaces, vigilantly looks out for something with his thieves’ eye” etc. From a certain point of view, these characteristics are fair; they are often cited as evidence of the author's negative attitude towards the central character of his story. And yet it must be remembered that these rumors do not belong to the author, but to some “knowing” Judas, as evidenced by the author’s references to the point of view of others: “Jesus Christ many times warned that Judas of Carioth is a man of very bad reputation and must be guarded against...”; This initial knowledge about Judas is further supplemented and corrected by the author.
Intentionally at the beginning of the story, a repulsive portrait of the ugly red-haired Judas is also given:
And then Judas came ... He was thin, goodgrowth, almost the same as Jesus, .. and strong enough in strength, he was apparently, but for some reason he pretended to be frail and sickly ... Short red hair inthe hair did not hide the strange and unusual shapehis skull: as if cut from the back of the head with a double blow of the sword and recomposed, he clearly depoured into four parts and inspired distrust, even threeVogu: behind such a skull there can be no silence and harmony, behind such a skull one can always hear the noise of bloody and merciless battles. The face of Judas also doubled: one side of it, with a black, keenly looking out eye, was lively, mobile, willingly gathering into numerous crooked wrinkles. The other had no wrinkles, and was deathly smooth, flat and frozen; and although it was equal in size to the first, it seemed huge from the wide-open blind eye ...
What was the motive for the villainous act of Judas? With S. Averintsev in the encyclopedia "Myths of the peoples of the world" the main motive is "painful love for Christ and the desire to provoke the disciples and the people to decisive action" 1 .
It follows from the text of the story that one of the motives is not psychological, but philosophical and ethical in nature, and it is associated with the satanic nature of Judas ("Satan enteredto Judas..."). It's about who knows people better: Jesus or Judas? Jesus, with his idea of love and faith in a good beginning in a person, or Judas, who claims that in the soul of every person - "every untruth, abomination and lie", even in the soul of a kind person, if you scrub it well? Who will win this tacit dispute between Good and Evil, i.e. what will be the outcome of the “experiment” set up by Judas? It is important to emphasize that Judas wants not to prove, but to verify his truth, which was rightly noted by L. A. Kolobaeva: “Judas does not need to prove that the disciples of Christ, like people in general, are bad - to prove to Christ, to all people, but to find out for himself what they really are, to find out their real price. Judas must decide the question - is he deceived or right? This is the edge of the problematics of the story, which is of a philosophical and ethical nature: the story asks the question about the basic values of human existence.
To this end, Judas decides on a terrible "experiment". But his burden is painful for him, and he would be glad to make a mistake, he hopes that “others too” will defend Christ: "One hand betraying Jesus, with the other hand Judas diligently sought to frustrate his own plans.
The duality of Judas is connected with his satanic origin: Judas claims that his father is a "goat", i.e. devil. If Satan entered Judas, then the satanic principle should have manifested itself not only at the level of the act - the betrayal of Judas, but also at the level of philosophy, ethics, and also appearance. Judas, with his characteristic (and explained by the author of the story) insight, as if from the outside, sees and evaluates people. The author deliberately gives Judas "serpentine" features: “Judas crawled away”, “And, walking like everyone elsewalk, but feeling as if he was dragging on the ground, In this case, we can talk about the symbolic nature of the story - about the duel of Christ and Satan. This conflict is essentially evangelical, it expresses the opposition between Good and Evil. Evil (including the recognition of ontological evil in the human soul) wins in the story. It could be argued that L. Andreev comes to the idea of the global impotence of man, if (paradox!) It were not for the ability of Judas to repent and self-sacrifice.
L. Andreev does not justify the act of Judas, he is trying to unravel the riddle: what guided Judas in his act? The writer fills the gospel plot of betrayal with psychological content, and the following stand out among the motives:
rebellion, rebelliousness of Judas, an indefatigable desire to unravel the riddle of a person (to find out the price of "others"), which is generally characteristic of the heroes of L. Andreev. These qualities of Andreev's heroes are to a large extent a projection of the soul of the writer himself - a maximalist and rebel, paradoxicalist and heretic;
loneliness, abandonment Jude. Judas was despised, and Jesus was indifferent to him. Judas received recognition only for a short time - when he defeated the strong Peter in throwing stones, but then again it turned out that everyone went ahead, and Judas again trailed behind, forgotten and despised by everyone. By the way, the language of L. Andreev is extremely picturesque, plastic, expressive, in particular, in the episode where the apostles throw stones into the abyss."
Peter, who did not like quiet pleasures, and with himPhilip took up the task of tearing off largestones and let them down, competing in strength ...while they were tearing off the old, overgrown stone from the ground,lifted him high with both hands and let himslope. Heavy, he hit short and dull and onthought for a moment; then hesitantly didfirst jump- and with every touch to the ground,taking from her speed and strength, he became light, ferocious, all-destroying. He no longer jumped, but he flew with bared teeth, and the air, whistling, let him through.blunt, round carcass. Here is the end- smooth afterbirthwith his movement the stone soared upwards and calmly,in heavy thoughtfulness, roundly flew down to the bottominvisible abyss.
The picture is so expressive that we follow the jumps with tension and, finally, the flight of the stone, accompanying each stage of its movement with our eyes. The Messiah completely stopped paying attention to Judas: “to all he (Jesus) was gentle and beautifulflower, and for Judas left only sharpspikes- as if Judas had no heart." This indifference of Jesus, as well as disputes about who is closer to Jesus, who loves him more, became, as a psychologist would say, a provoking factor for Judas' decision;
resentment, envy, immeasurable pride, the desire to prove that it is he who loves Jesus most of all is also characteristic of Andreev's Judas. To the question posed to Judas, who will be the first in the Kingdom of Heaven next to Jesus - Peter or John, follows the answer that amazed everyone: the first will be Judas! Everyone says that they love Jesus, but how they will behave in the hour of trials - Judas strives to check this. It may turn out that “others” love Jesus only in words, and then Judas will triumph. The act of a traitor is the desire to test the love of others for the Teacher and prove their love.
The plot-compositional role of Judas is ambiguous. He is destined by the author to be a catalyst for events in order to highlight and give a moral assessment to the actions of "others". But the plot is also driven by Judas' personal desire to be understood by the Teacher, to induce him to pay attention to him, to appreciate his love. Judas creates an existential situation - a situation of choice, which should become a moment of psychological, moral revelation for all participants in this great test.
At the same time, the personality of Judas becomes independently significant in the story, and a true indicator testifies to its significance - the speech of the central character, in contrast to the speech of "and other" characters. R. S. Spivak discovers the priority of creativity in the story and distinguishes in it (and on the basis of speech too) two types of consciousness: inert, uncreative("faithful" students) and creative, freed from the pressure of dogma (Judas Iscariot):
The inertia and barrenness of the first consciousness - based on blind faith and authority, over which Judas does not tire of mocking - is embodied in the unambiguous, poor, at the everyday level, speech of the "faithful" disciples. The speech of Judas, whose consciousness is focused on the creativity of a free individual, is replete with paradoxes, allusions, symbols, poetic allegories. Replete with metaphors, poeticisms, for example, the appeal of Jude to Jesus' beloved disciple John:
Why are you silent, John? Your words are like golden apples in transparent silver vessels, giveone of them is Judas, who is so poor.
This gave R. S. Spivak grounds to assert that the creative personality in Andreev’s concept of man and in Andreev’s worldview has a central place.
L. Andreev is a romantic writer (with a personalistic, that is, a deeply personal type of consciousness, which was projected onto his works and, above all, determined their character, range of topics and features of the worldview) in the sense that he did not accept evil in the world around him, the most important justification its existence on earth was creativity. Hence the high value of a creative person in his artistic world. In the story of L. Andreev, Judas is the creator of a new reality, a new, Christian era, no matter how blasphemous it sounds for a believer.
Andreevsky's Judas takes on grandiose proportions, he becomes equal with Christ, is regarded as a participant in the re-creation of the world, its transformation. If at the beginning of the story Judas dragged along the ground, like a punished dog”, “Judas crawled away, hesitated hesitantly and disappeared”, then after what he did:
... all the time belongs to him, and he goes slowlylivo, now all the earth belongs to him, and stepshe is firm, like a ruler, like a king, like one whoinfinitely and joyfully alone in this world. noticeis the mother of Jesus and says to her sternly:
- Are you crying mother? Cry, cry, and for a long timeall the mothers of the earth will weep with you. Until then,until we come with Jesus and destroydeath.
Judas understands the situation as a choice: either he will change the world with Jesus, or:
Then there will be no Judas of Carioth. Then there won't beJesus. Then it will...Thomas, stupid Thomas! wantedwill you ever take the earth and lift it up?
Thus, it is about the transformation of the world, no less. Everything in the world yearns for this transformation, nature yearns for it:
And ahead of him [Judas.- V.K.], and from behind, and from allthe walls of the ravine rose on either side, cutting off the edges of the blue sky with a sharp line; and everywhere, digging into the ground, youhuge gray stones- as if a stone rain had once passed here and its heavy drops froze in an endless thought. And this wild desert ravine looked like an overturned, chopped off skull, and each stone in it was like a frozen thought, and there were many of them, and they all thought- hard, boundless, stubborn.
Everything in the world longs for transformation. And it happened - changed the course of time. What are tears?- asks Judas and franticallyshakes motionless time, beats it with his fist, aboutcurses like a slave. It's alien and that's why it's so strangeobediently. Oh, if it belonged to Judas,- but itbelongs to all those crying, laughing, boltayuschim, as in the market; it belongs to the sun; itbelongs to the cross and the heart of Jesus dyingso slow.
And one more important feature of Andreev's hero (Andreev's concept of man) is emphasized by the researchers: “He is a potential rebel, a rebel who challenges earthly and eternal existence. These rebels are very different in their vision of the world, and their rebellions are of different
coloration, but the essence of their existence is one: they die, but do not give up.
Of the artistic features of L. Andreev's story "Judas Iscariot" attracts the attention of literary critics system of paradoxes contradictions, innuendo, which has the most important pictorial function. The system of paradoxes helps to understand the complexity and ambiguity of the gospel episode, constantly keeping the reader in suspense. It reflects the emotional storm that swept over the soul of the betrayer of Christ, and then repentant and hanged Judas.
The paradoxical duality of the appearance and the inner essence of Judas is constantly emphasized by the author. The hero of the story is deceitful, envious, ugly, but at the same time the most intelligent of all the students, and smart with a superhuman, satanic mind: he knows people too deeply and understands the motives of their actions, while for others he remained incomprehensible. Judas betrays Jesus, but he loves him like a son, the execution of the Teacher for him is "horror and dreams." Paradoxical duality gives multidimensionality, ambiguity, psychological persuasiveness of Andreev's story.
In Judas, there is undoubtedly something of the devil, but at the same time, his personal (not from the devil, but from a man) amazing sincerity, the strength of feeling for the Teacher at the hour of his tragic trial, the significance of his personality cannot but affect the reader. The duality of the image lies in the fact that it is inextricably linked with that terrible thing that is assigned to it by the religious and cultural world tradition, and that sublimely tragic that equates it with the Teacher in the image of L. Andreev. It is the author of the story that pierces in meaning and emotional power of the words:
And from that evening until the very death of Jesus, Judas did not see any of his disciples near him; and among all this crowd there were only the two of them, inseparable until death, wildly connected by a community of suffering - the one who was betrayed to reproach and torment, and the one who betrayed him. From the same goblet of suffering, like brothers, both of them, the betrayer and the devotee, drank, and the fiery moisture equally seared clean and impure lips.
In the context of the story, the death of Judas is as symbolic as the crucifixion of Jesus. In a reduced plan, and at the same time as a significant event, rising above ordinary reality and ordinary people, the suicide of Judas is described. The crucifixion of Jesus on the cross is symbolic: the cross is a symbol, a center, a convergence of Good and Evil. Judas hanged himself on a broken, crooked branch of a wind-worn, half-withered tree, but on a mountain, high above Jerusalem. Deceived by people, Judas voluntarily leaves this world after his teacher:
Judas had long ago, during his solitary walks,mapped out the place where he would kill himself after death Jesus. It was on a mountain, high above Jerusalem, and there was only one tree standing there, crooked, tormented by the wind tearing it from all sides, half-withered. It stretched one of its broken crooked branches towards Jerusalem, as if blessing it or threatening it with something, and Judas chose it in order to make a noose on it ... [Judas] muttered angrily:
- No, they are too bad for Judas. Can you hearJesus? Now will you believe me? I am going to you.Meet me kindly, I'm tired. I am very tired. Bythat we are with you, embracing like brothers, verrush to the ground. Good?
Recall that the word brothers has already been uttered in the speech of the author-narrator earlier, and this indicates the closeness of the positions of the author and his hero.
When the hammer was raised to nailto the tree the left hand of Jesus, Judas closed his eyes andI didn’t breathe for all eternity, I didn’t see, I didn’t live, but onlylistened. But now, with a grinding sound, iron struck against iron, and time after time, dull, short, low blows,- you can hear how a sharp nail enters a soft tree, pushing its particles apart ...
One hand. Not too late.
Another hand. Not too late.
leg, other leg- is it all over? Hesitantly opens his eyes and sees how the cross rises, swaying, and is installed in the pit. He sees how, trembling tensely, the hands of Jesus stretch out painfully, expand the wounds- and suddenly goes underribs collapsed belly ...
And again, the author - together with the central character of the story, and as a result of the closest approach to the suffering Jesus, the depicted picture grows to enormous sizes (in reality, Jesus could hardly be seen so close - he was on the cross, the guards did not let him in), reaching an extraordinary expressiveness. The expressiveness, emotional contagiousness of L. Andreev's story prompted A. Blok to say: "The soul of the author is a living wound."
7. FINAL AND ITS READING
Not only man needs God, but God also needs man.
I. Berdyaev
About his position in the story, L. Andreev said: “As always, I only pose questions, but I don’t give answers to them ...”. Of course, the author does not give direct assessments, "answers", and yet he - the author - as you know, cannot but be present in his work. Let us analyze what exactly affects the presence of the author in the finale of the work.
The finale is the last word of this complex, contradictory story by L. Andreev, and therefore it is especially significant:
And on the same evening, all believers already knewabout the terrible death of the Traitor, and the next dayall Jerusalem about her. I learned about her and stonyJudea, and the green Galilee learned about it; and to one sea and to another, which is even further, flewnews of the traitor's death. Neither faster nor quieter, but along with time she walked, and as there is no end to time,so there will be no end to the stories of the betrayal of Judasand his terrible death. And all- good and evil- they will equally curse his shameful memory;and all peoples, which were, which are, will remainhe is alone in his cruel fate- Judas from Ka-riot. Traitor.
In the final Andreevskaya carry the words traitor, betrayal are repeated many times, and, it would seem, they predetermine the pathos of the final, giving it categorical unambiguity, certainty. However, it does not seem that the author turned to the image of Judas just to once again stigmatize him as a traitor. The entire parable nature of the narrative, which has been causing so much controversy for almost a hundred years, warns against interpreting the ending in a similar spirit. In the final words of the story, not only unconditional condemnation is read. Herself epic intonation gives the finale a solemnly tragic scope - it becomes clear that we are talking about something out of the ordinary, in relation to which the epic breadth of the narrative is possible. Of the various interpretations of the ending, the following seems more fair to us: “The high poetic style of the conclusion, the jubilant intonation - the result of understanding what happened in the retrospective of world history - contains information about things that are incomparably more significant for humanity - the advent of a new era, which cannot be separated from the behavior of Judas, because they conditioned."
In the Gospel, Judas is practically absent as a participant in the event, he is only mentioned in passing. He does not deserve more, despite his extremely significant, kind of key role in the entire gospel plot. He gives just a few lines to Judas Iscariot and Dante in his "Divine Comedy", guided by the principle: "Look - and pass." To pay more attention to it, all the more to switch the narrative to a high stylistic register, tragic pathos, would mean making him a significant figure, which, among other things, would violate the ideological, semantic, emotional unity of the gospel narrative, as well as Dante's poems.
The epic scale of the finale of L. Andreev's story would cause a comic effect if it were related to an inconspicuous person who did not play any role in world history. Already in this choice of tone, the author's subjectivity, the author's sympathy for the character, while simultaneously condemning his act, is reflected.
The attitude of the author to his character is read as sympathetic and because the words are repeated many times death, terrible death. These words in ordinary speech are a kind of taboo, sacred vocabulary, i.e. are not used in vain; their repeated repetition also gives the finale a solemn-tragic character.
Finally, the phrase cruel fate is a rather strong, if not direct, marker of the author's subjectivity - the author's sympathy. Dictionary interpretation (Dictionary of the Russian language. In 4 vols. M., 1985-1988) confirms this perception: compare: cruel- 1. "extremely severe, ruthless, merciless" and 2. "very strong, beyond the ordinary"; fate- "the position of someone, something, due to life circumstances; fate, share." This phrase also forms an idea of the meritorious fate of Judas, but to no lesser extent - of his misunderstanding by others, of the ruthlessness and mercilessness of the circumstances in which fate placed the hero (by the way, in the Andreev story there is only him, and, as the original version of the title of the story says , were "and others"). In the end, there was all of humanity as a whole, otherwise the sacrifice of Christ would not have been needed.
Such in meaning - not unconditionally unambiguous - could be the finale of this ambiguous work by L. Andreev.
8. "INTUITION" AND "PSYCHOLOGICALMEANINGS" IN "JUDAS ISCARIOT" L. ANDREEVAND "JUDE ISCARIOT - THE APOSTLE-TRAITOR" S. BULGAKOV
L. Andreev was far from the only one whose soul was embarrassed by the inconsistency of the Holy Scriptures in relation to the traitor apostle, predestination beyond his grave sinful path. Understanding the ingratitude of approaching this ominous mystery, S. Bulgakov admitted: “It is difficult, difficult and, perhaps, ungrateful to approach the mystery of Judas, it is easier and more calm not to notice it, covering it with roses of church beauty. But it is no longer possible, once seeing it and falling ill with it, to hide from it.
Evangelical testimonies, including those of the Apostle John, in which the act of Judas is explained solely by the love of money, S. Bulgakov calls "divine cruelty" and explains his position: "therefore, neither our faith nor theological conscience allows us to accept John's Judaism as exhaustive" 2 . Moral accents (moral denunciation) lead, according to the philosopher, to the fact that "the traitor Judas' own personality is exhausted by his betrayal and, as it were, does not exist outside of him" 3 .
In an effort to comprehend the meaning of the riddle, the religious philosopher relies in his research on "intuition and psychological meaning." In 1930-1931, S. Bulgakov published in the journal "The Way" (Paris) a philosophical and religious essay "Judas Iscariot - Apostle-traitor", in which he builds the scheme "crime - punishment - forgiveness", filling it with content prompted to him by his faith and conscience, as well as the political history of Russia in the 20th century.
Crime of Judas according to S. Bulgakov. In L. Andreev’s story “Judas Iscariot”, created a decade and a half earlier, the protagonist, driven by an all-burning love for Christ, decides to check with the help of his terrible “experiment” - the betrayal of Christ - how great is the love for Jesus proclaimed by others. The hero of the story strives to assert his right to love the Teacher and His attention, and is bitterly convinced that in the soul of every person, if it is well scraped, one can find a dark beginning, including in the souls of the apostles who betrayed the Messiah, who left Him at the moment of accomplishment. sacrificial feat. In this sense, the original title of the story is "Judas Iscariot and others- corresponds to the content of the work to a greater extent than the final title. Moreover, L. Andreev’s words “and others” contain a shade not only of comparison, the inclusion of gospel characters in one row, but also of opposing the rejected apostle to “others”, as a result of which he even evokes reader sympathy, and not just categorical rejection. The same opposition of the apostle-traitor to “others”, but to a much lesser extent and not so emotional, is also found in S. Bulgakov: “All of them, the other apostles, said through the lips of Thomas the Twin: “Let’s go and we will die with him” - however no one died except Judas, who was sent for that, was rewarded with it. The concept of the image and the “work” of Judas in the study FROM. Bulgakov, echoing in external details with the rake tew L. Andreev "Judas Iscariot", fundamentally differs from it both in terms of the main motive and, in general, in the internal content of the image of the protagonist. Based on the point of view that history is the result of the interaction of God's providence (not direct intervention) and human activity, S. Bulgakov places the responsibility for choosing the path of the apostle-traitor primarily on Judas himself, whose act was originally predetermined by Holy Scripture. The human activity of Judas consisted in an attempt, through betrayal, to bring the Kingdom of God on earth closer, to proclaim Jesus the earthly king and thereby “force him to become himself or ... to die, and not raise a dangerous unrest among the people.”
At the same time, S. Bulgakov, as well as L. Andreev in his story, speaks of the greater maturity, intellectual superiority of Judas in comparison with the other apostles: “When Judas was called, apparently, he was mentally older and more mature than the other apostles. He had his own revolutionary messianic outlook and, perhaps, his own political ("revolutionary") work. He was alien to the immediacy and innocence of the children of nature, the Galilean fishermen. In the work of S. Bulgakov, the main and only motive and conflict, therefore, is ideological, political, consisting in the desire to establish the rule of the expected Messiah in Israel. But in his unambiguous interpretation of the plot of Judas, S. Bulgakov repeats the one-sidedness of the explanation of the plot by the apostle John, against whom he himself resolutely rebels. It is unlikely that the entire content of the symbolism of the famous gospel story can be reduced to such unambiguity (to any unambiguity), otherwise it would not have attracted more and more interpreters over the millennia. The concept of the image of the apostle-traitor, and this is obviously brought to life by the philosopher's concern for the fate of Russia (see below), is dictated by a specific political situation, which means that its “validity” is limited to certain time frames.
Punishment. But, having committed betrayal, Judas discovered for himself something more than the earthly Kingdom of the Messiah, than earthly greatness - he discovered the beauty and greatness of the love and sacrificial feat of Jesus. It was revealed to him that for the sake of his utopian goal, he committed an evil deed, violence, as a result of which an innocent suffered ("Innocent Blood"). And “that rebellious self-will with which he wanted to correct the path of the Teacher, forcing Him to fulfill his will, now melted in him, was replaced by unbearable pangs of conscience, hell on earth”, “along with repentance in Judas, the consciousness of the horror of everything he had done was awakened.” Horrified by his crime and repentant, Judas committed suicide, thereby contributing, S. Bulgakov claims, to the glorification of Christ and the shame of the devil: betrayed Christ."
Christ, knowing about the impending betrayal of one of the twelve apostles, condoned his crime (“what are you doing, do it quickly,” he turns to Judas during the Last Supper), so that the apostle-traitor himself was convinced of the falsity of his path and deeply repented of it. In this regard, the refusal of Judas from the 30 pieces of silver that he threw in the temple is, of course, a symbolic act, it meant the renunciation of delusion, meant insight and repentance.
Forgiveness: is it possible? But S. Bulgakov does not reduce only to the responsibility of the “world villain”: “If Judas was deliberately chosen for betrayal,” he writes, “let the Scripture come true, for the fulfillment of the plan of salvation, then he is an unrequited victim of this election.” The philosopher believes that the story of the one-of-a-kind tragedy of Judas will still be written in the language of symbols, artistic images, and the final, “other-worldly” part of it should tell “about the descent into hell of Christ himself and about the meeting of Christ and Judas there.” Judas, therefore, the first of the apostles will meet the Messiah in the world beyond. What should this meeting be like, what should they talk about? The author of a religious-philosophical study about Judas stops in his reflections and questions, because “here the human word fails, but faith, love and hope do not fail: faith in the Redeemer and the universal redemption, accomplished by him - “for all and for all” God's love for man." Forgiveness, according to S. Bulgakov, is also possible because the student has done what was entrusted to him by the Teacher, and because the mercy of Christ is infinite: theomachism and forgive such Christoborstvo? Here is the question. And there can be only one answer to it: yes, it can.
Traitor Apostle and Russia in the Revolution according to S. Bulgakov. As a symbol of the dark sides of the human soul, Judas attracts both L. Andreev and S. Bulgakov in the aspect of "Judas Iscariot and others."
According to L. Andreev, among the "others" are the rest of the apostles, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and all of humanity, which allowed the death of Christ on the cross. This is an ethical, psychological aspect. Bulgakov treats these “other” participants in the gospel events in a somewhat different way on the whole, commenting on their behavior as follows: “the temptations of the apostles, told in the Gospel: ... fear and flight, renunciation, - ... in essence, childishly simple-hearted, these "human - too human" temptations, They do not exceed the average human age.
In the religious and philosophical work of S. Bulgakov there are also “others” - these are the Russian people, who betrayed Christ during the Bolshevik coup and took the place of Judas in the 20th century: “The tragedy of the traitor-apostle, his terrible fate has now become relentlessly before us, because became our own destiny, not personal, but national. For our people, the bearer and guardian of "Holy Russia", it is he who has now taken the place of Judas the apostle-traitor"; “In its secret you look for clues to our own destiny. This is where the problem of Judas rose again in the soul, never ceasing in it, stood up, like a certain hieroglyph of fate, the riddle of the Sphinx, in which you need to unravel about yourself, what it is possible for a person to find out about himself.
The philosopher calls the Russian people Judas because, having renounced Jesus, the Kingdom of Heaven, like the traitor apostle, he was tempted by the Kingdom of Earth - the opportunity to arrange a paradise on earth, to create the Kingdom of the Messiah in his own country, as they dreamed about in ancient Israel. The Russian people during the revolution, according to Bulgakov, was also characterized by faith in the Kingdom of Justice and in the utopian (and therefore tragic) possibility of its imminent implementation.
But this projection of the “case” of Judas, as S. Bulgakov understands it, on the tragic events in Russia in the 20th century appears, first of all, from the point of view of the philosopher himself, who insists on the mystery of the Gospel Judas, as a simplification of the Gospel plot, on the one hand, and on the other hand, it also gives a simplified, unambiguous interpretation of the events that took place in Russia. The analogy of S. Bulgakov also caused rejection among the Russian spiritual intelligentsia. In particular, the religious philosopher Ivan Ilyin resolutely did not accept such an analogy - likening the Russian people to Judas, calling it (in a letter to Archimandrite Konstantin, June 28, 1951) "Bulgakovshina". According to Ilyin, the book "Judas Iscariot - Apostle-Traitor" by S. Bulgakov is "a book in defense of Judas the Betrayer, with an attempt to proclaim Judas the national patron of the Russian people (for "we also betrayed Christ")". But here we need to emphasize how complex and multifaceted the gospel text as a whole and its individual plots in particular are. In each new era they receive a new interpretation, and, indeed, the idea that each era creates its own Gospel, re-reading it, is fair. The inconsistency of the concept of S. Bulgakov. The interpretation of the gospel story in the study "Judas Iscariot - Apostle-traitor", as well as Andreevskaya, is one of the possible interpretations. The psychological and theological research of S. Bulgakov is characterized by elements of figurativeness, but, unlike L. Andreev’s story, Bulgakov’s work is the work of a religious intuitive thinker (in the plot of Judas, “we are left with intuition and psychological meaning,” he claims), giving psychological, in the language of logic, psychology (not images-symbols), a commentary on the Gospel. As a psychological (scientific) commentary, S. Bulgakov's work is not without controversy. First of all, this is the contradiction between the perceived God-chosenness of the traitor apostle (as evidenced by the words of Christ himself: “ Have I not chosen twelve of you? But one of you is the devil”), his unique mission, and at the same time his deep remorse for what he did, that is, the denial of the mission he performed, which is at the same time (the paradox of the Gospel) and the blackest atrocity. Calling Judas "an unrequited victim of his election", the philosopher-psychologist in his fantasy about the afterlife meeting of the student and the Teacher in the mouth of Judas - an active figure puts the words - "... what You commanded, allowed, blessed, sent" to do sooner ", I did it quickly, without delay, and my business, as you need it, is done like this; how, apart from me, it could not have happened. I, despicable and outcast, have become indispensable to you” 1 . Does Judas repent for what he was sent into the world for? what fulfilled the prophecy of Scripture? Indeed, S. Bulgakov is right: “Judas, by his presence near Christ, introduces incomprehensibility, incoherence into the history of the passions of Christ. Both the mind and the heart are equally exhausted by this contradiction. This riddle, one must think, is unsolvable, especially in the language of logic.
About the language of symbols, artistic images and the possibility of expressing the psychological meaning of the gospel story. The research undertaken by S. Bulgakov, suggesting from some fragments of the text, left its author with a feeling of dissatisfaction: he speaks of his own inattention, of what he was given to hear, but not to express the gospel riddle of the apostle-traitor. And the scientist-theologian is affirmed in the thought: “One can tell about Judas only by the power of art, and, moreover, great and high, to which the secrets of the spirit and the sacred language of symbols are accessible” 3 . This great master, S. Bulgakov believes, does not yet exist, but he must appear, and he “will no longer see in Christ and the “beloved” disciple the double face of Gioconda, like Leonardo, in the image of Judas the kleptomaniac, but with the brush and power of Michelangelo, the tragic his inspirations, will tell the world his visions and revelations” 4, he “will make sound what was hidden in the depths of the soul of Judas, will be kindled by the fire of his suffering, .. he will reveal hell and paradise in a loving” human soul, and heaven and hell, death and Resurrection in Christ and with Christ” 5 .
Calling for abandon in the coming masterpiece - the artistic equivalent of the Gospel - from the "doubled face of the Mona Lisa". that is, from the duality in the depiction of the gospel character, S. Bulgakov nevertheless asserts the fundamental impossibility of answering the questions that the Holy Scripture itself generates: “we are standing here before the mystery of God’s watching and judgment, and the ease of affirmation should be replaced by an unanswerable question for a person, which in this case, it is the only worthy and accessible answer for a person” 4 . The Gospel situation, being translated into the language of logical concepts, loses its mystery and ambiguous content. Boolean the comprehension of this mystery is impossible, it is obviously insoluble.
S. Bulgakov is deeply right: only art can come close to comprehending the mystery of the gospel story, with its fundamental inconsistency and ambiguity. Such an attempt was made, as is known, by L. Andreev in his story Judas Iscariot. The path of Andreev is the path of the "intuition" of the writer-artist, the desire to fill the gospel images with the "flesh and blood of the world" with the help of artistic-psychological, figurative fantasy, referring to the language of symbols, to a system of paradoxes that can convey the fundamentally contradictory, dual content of the gospel situation. Nevertheless, the story of L. Andreev, with its scandalous fame, remained outside the mention of S. Bulgakov in his study. Obviously, the whole point here lies in the concept of the hero of Andreev's story, which turned out to be unacceptable for S. Bulgakov: in L. Andreev's story, the motive of personal responsibility, the motive of repentance is muted; artistic and psychological study by L. Andreev - there is as much Judas about wine as “and others”, although in the final version of the name these “and others” are absent. L. Andreev narrates not so much about the repentance of Judas who committed the crime, but about his suffering and, nevertheless, the certainty "that what he committed should have happened in accordance with the prophecy. L. Andreev's narrative is passionate and emotional, it conveys both hell and paradise in the soul of an apostle-traitor, which at one time prompted D. S. Merezhkovsky to write: "In terms of the effect on the minds of readers among modern Russian writers, he has no equal ... They did not infect anyone; he infects everyone. Whether this is good or bad, but this so, and it is impossible not to reckon with criticism.
The story of L. Andreev is a story about Judas as a tragic agent of history, but this concept is fundamentally at odds with the concept of S. Bulgakov.
Judas throughout human history is perceived not only as an evangelical character, but also as a universal metaphor expressing the dark part of the human soul, humanity. And this image-metaphor is brilliantly guessed by the evangelists, it is deeply justified psychologically. Z. Kosidovsky, for example, based on the earlier testimony of the Apostle Paul compared to the Gospels, in which Judas is not mentioned in the description of the Last Supper, suggests that “under Paul, the legend of Judas did not yet exist, this is a legend that arose several decades later.” But even if the legend of Judas is not based on real historical facts, its appearance, regardless of its sacred content, was natural and inevitable from the point of view of the psychology of perception: a “hero” must have his own “anti-hero” in order to realize, embody his inner essence. Outside of this antinomy (confrontation of "light" and "darkness") the hero can exist only in potency. The genius, the spiritualized originality of the mystery of Christ, however, lies in the fact that in this case the “hero” (Christ) strikes his antipode not with the force of a weapon, but with the force of love, with the Innocent Blood.
9. JUDAS AND JESUS CHRIST IN THE STORYYU. NAGIBINA "FAVORITE STUDENT"
In rethinking the gospel image of Judas, Yu. Nagibin went further, “more definitely” L. Andreev in the story “Beloved Disciple”. This story in the form of narration represents a kind of dialogue with L. Andreev's story. Moreover, the dialogue, in fact, in the literal sense: in the story of L. Andreev we hear the voices of the author and Judas, who calls Jesus in his deathbed address to him as a brother: “then we are with you, embracing like a brayea, let's go back to earth. Good?"
Judas Yu. Nagibina is practically devoid of negative qualities: his betrayal is of a forced nature - he must fulfill the will of Christ in the name of boundless love for him. Christ Y. Nagibina is aware of the inferiority of his human existence, he is not quite a man, "the corporeality of life - that's what he was bypassed." None of the disciples of Jesus understood the significance of the events and did not support Jesus in his last hours, during His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane:
Jesus went to the disciples and again found them sleepingmi. They didn't wake up to a loud, cracked earvestry. Jesus left them alone even though he needed them sonow in a sympathetic word. But what to do: peoplesleep, the sky is silent and breathes cold. Judas, only wewith you are doomed to stay awake in this terrible timenun. Judas, my brother and victim, forgive me!
This determined the sacrificial choice of Christ (Yu. Nagibin is definitely talking about choice Jesus to the role of the traitor - Judas). He needed someone to help him fulfill his destiny. This choice doomed to death and the curse of his most faithful disciple - Judas. At the same time, Nagibin's Jesus experiences internal resistance to the decision made. According to Nagibin, there was no betrayal as such, because Judas carried out the will of the Teacher, deliberately dooming himself to death and damnation. Moreover, Christ himself evaluates the imaginary betrayal as the loss of a person who always, unlike the rest of the disciples, understood him, believed him and loved him. The interpretation of the canonical plot by Yu. Nagibin leaves an ambiguous impression due to the prudent moral cruelty of Christ, who knew the subsequent fate of Judas:
Christ did not err in him. Retribution should havefollow right behind the crime otherwise it didn't come truewould be written: Christ will be betrayed, but woe to himwho will betray him. Much is rooted in this: and spirits-nye, and even legal principles. The first whip to informerfrom here. There must be a price in betrayal. Any of the apostles could betray Christ, butonly one Judas could then hang himself. Example Petra- the best proof of this: three timeshe paid for his renunciation with tears, not with a noose.
In Nagibin's interpretation, Judas is an imaginary antagonist and traitor of Christ.
In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that the story of L. Andreev "Judas Iscariot" is a psychological interpretation ( one of the possible) of the famous gospel story. And this interpretation, of course, can be evaluated differently by different readers, causing disputes, polar points of view.
The dialogue of L. Andreev's story with the reader and critics, which began at the beginning of the last century, continues, and it testifies at least to the relevance of the problem and the extraordinary talent of the author of the story "Judas Iscariot" as a phenomenon of Russian fiction. Leonid Andreev himself about this work of his at the end of his life, as if summing up what he had done in literature, said: “There are no stories higher than Judas.”
Bibliography:
1 Andreev L. Sobr. cit.: In 6 volumes / Editorial board: I. Andreeva, Yu-Verchenko, V. Chuvakov / Intro. Art. A. Bogdanov. Between the wall and the abyss: Leonid Andreev and his work. M-. 1990.
2 Andreev L. Judas Iscariot. Diary of Satan. Riga, 1991
3 Averintsev S. S. Judas Iscariot // Myths of the peoples of the world: Encyclopedia: In 2 vols. M., 1990. T. 1.
4 Andreeva V. L. House on the Black River. M., 1980.
5 Arsent'eva N. N. On the nature of the image of Judas Iscariot // Creativity of Leonid Andreev. Kursk, 1983.
6 Babicheva Yu. Leonid Andreev interprets the Bible (God-fighting and anti-church motifs in the writer's work) // Science and Religion. 1969. No. 1.
7 Basinsky P. Poetry of rebellion and ethics of revolution: reality and symbol in the work of L. Andreev // Questions of Literature. 1989. No. 10.
1Mikheicheva E. A. The Artistic World of Leonid Andreev 1998. No. 5. P. 46. 1 A. L. Judas Iscariot // Encyclopedic Dictionary 1890-1907. 2 Dante Alighieri. Divine Comedy 1998 1 Zapadova L. A. Sources of the text and the "secrets" of the story-novel "Judas Iscariot" 1997.
1Bugrov B. S. Leonid Andreev. Prose and dramaturgy. 2000.
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L. Andreev's story is dominated not by religious and mystical logic, but by psychological, cultural and historical logic, rooted in the world cultural tradition and substantiated by M. Bakhtin. And the laughing Jesus - seemingly a completely insignificant detail - testifies to the fundamental difference between the image of Jesus Christ in L. Andreev and the gospel Jesus, which was also noted by researchers: “Even the one who is thought of as a symbol of the highest ideal wholeness, in the image of L. Andreev not free from duality,” says L. A. Kolobaeva Basinsky P. Poetry of rebellion and the ethics of revolution: reality and symbol in the work of L. Andreev // Questions of Literature. 1989. No. 10. S. 58., characterizing the image of Jesus Christ.
Thus, Jesus in L. Andreev appears not only in his human (not divine) incarnation, but also acquires some primordially Russian national features (lyricism, sentimentality, openness in laughter, which can act as defenseless openness). Of course, L. Andreev's image of Jesus is to some extent a projection of his (Andreev's) artistic, Russian soul. In this regard, let us recall once again the words of the author about the intention of his story "Judas Iscariot" - this is "a completely free fantasy." Fantasy, we note, is determined by the peculiarities of the worldview, the style of the artist.
L. Andreev sees in Jesus, first of all, a human hypostasis, emphasizing it again and again and thereby, as it were, freeing up space for the affirmation of the human, active principle, equalizing God and Man. In Andreev's concept of Jesus, laughter (“laughter”) is also logical because it equalizes, brings its participants closer, building relationships not along the religious (Gothic) vertical, but along the earthly, human horizontal.
Jesus L. Andreeva, as we see, as well as Judas, is a fantasy on the gospel theme, and he is close in his human manifestation to Bulgakov's Yeshua from The Master and Margarita. This is not a “powerful” (Gospel of Matthew), a God-man who knows about his divine origin and his destiny, but a naive, dreamy artist detached from reality, subtly feeling the beauty and diversity of the world.
Andrew's Jesus is mysterious, but what is his riddle? It is not so much a religious-mystical as a subconscious-psychological character. The story speaks of the great mystery of the "beautiful eyes" of Jesus - why Jesus is silent, to whom Judas appeals mentally with a prayer.
When reading the story, a logical (in the psychological coordinate system) question arises: why did Jesus bring Judas closer to him: because he is a rejected and unloved, and Jesus did not renounce anyone? If this motivation partly takes place in this case, then it should be regarded as peripheral in the authentically realistic and at the same time not devoid of penetration into the depths of the subconscious story by L. Andreev. Jesus, as the Gospel testifies, prophesied about his forthcoming betrayal by one of the apostles: “... did I not choose you twelve? but one of you is the devil. And He spoke of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was to betray Him” (Gospel of John, ch. 6:70-71). Between Christ and Judas in the story of L. Andreev there is a mysterious subconscious connection, not expressed verbally, but nevertheless felt by Judas and readers. This connection (a foretaste of the event that united both forever) is felt psychologically by Jesus the God-man, it could not help but find an external psychological expression (in mysterious silence, in which there is a hidden tension, the expectation of a tragedy), and it is especially clear - on the eve of Christ's death on the cross. . It would not be logical if this story were otherwise. We emphasize once again that we are talking about a work of art, where attention to psychological motivation is natural and even inevitable, in contrast to the Gospel - a sacred text in which the image of Judas is a symbolic embodiment of evil, a character from the standpoint of artistic depiction is conditional, purposefully devoid of a psychological dimension . The being of the gospel Jesus is being in a different coordinate system.
Gospel sermons, parables, the Gethsemane prayer of Christ are not mentioned in the text, Jesus is, as it were, on the periphery of the events described. This concept of the image of Jesus was characteristic not only of L. Andreev, but also of other artists, including A. Blok, who also wrote about the naivety of "Jesus Christ" (in the poem "The Twelve"), the femininity of the image, in which not his own energy, and the energy of others. Naive (from the point of view of Jesus' contemporaries - the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who renounced the Teacher) and his teaching, which, with the help of his terrible "experiment", as it were, tests and reveals his moral strength the concept of good. But since the teaching of Jesus is great truth, why was it powerless in relation to him? Why does this beautiful thought not resonate with the inhabitants of ancient Jerusalem? Believing in the truth of Jesus and enthusiastically welcoming him at his entry into Jerusalem, the inhabitants of the city then became disillusioned with her power, became disillusioned with their faith and hope, and all the more forcefully began to reproach the teacher for the failure of his sermons.
The divine and human principles appear in the story of L. Andreev in a heretical interaction: Judas becomes the person who played the greatest role in history for the paradoxical Andreev, and Jesus is presented in his corporality, human flesh, and the corresponding episodes (first of all, the beating of Jesus by the Roman guards) are perceived as excessively naturalistic in relation to Christ, but nevertheless possible in that chain of arguments, motivations, causes and effects that were recreated by the artistic fantasy of the author of Judas Iscariot. This concentration of L. Andreev on the human hypostasis of the God-man turned out to be in demand, widespread in the literature of the 20th century, and, in particular, it determined the concept of the image of Yeshua in the novel The Master and Margarita by M. Bulgakov.
Let us now turn directly to the title character of the work - Judas Iscariot.
In the story of Leonid Andreev, Judas appears to the reader in a completely different form compared to the gospel tradition. The traitor stands out from the background of other students even outwardly. However, unlike the same Bulgakov, Andreev endows Judas with a terrible, contradictory appearance. Immediately striking is his skull, face: “as if cut from the back of the head with a double blow of the sword and re-composed, it was clearly divided into four parts and inspired distrust, even anxiety: behind such a skull there can be no silence and consent, behind such a skull one always hears noise of bloody and merciless battles. The face of Judas also doubled: one side of it, with a black, keenly looking out eye, was lively, mobile, willingly gathering into numerous crooked wrinkles. On the other, there were no wrinkles, and it was deathly smooth, flat and frozen, and although it was equal in size to the first, it seemed huge from the wide-open blind eye. Covered with a whitish haze, not closing either at night or during the day, he equally met both light and darkness, but whether it was because he had a living and cunning comrade next to him, he could not believe in his complete blindness. Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: AST Publishing House, 2003. P.29. Andreev’s image of Judas correlates with the traditional idea of a demon, an evil spirit, which is usually depicted in profile, that is, one-eyed (“... and suddenly leaves suddenly, leaving trouble and a quarrel behind - curious, crafty and evil, like a one-eyed demon” Ibid. S. 29), in addition, the writer emphasizes that one eye of Judas was blind. The double appearance of Judas is closely intertwined with the behavior and actions of the Betrayer. Thus, the author through the appearance conveys the inner essence of the hero. Andreev emphasizes the bifurcation in the guise of Judas. The hero combines the dead and the living. The dark side of Andreevsky's Judas is a feigned calmness, which was most often manifested when communicating with the disciples, and the "light" side is a sincere love for Jesus. An interesting detail: the author mentions in the text that Judas had red hair. In mythology, this often means chosen by God, proximity to the Sun, the right to power. Gods of war are often red or on a red horse. Many leaders, famous personalities had this fiery hair color. "Redhead" is an epithet for deities. It is not for nothing that Andreev assigns this particular hair color to the hero, because according to the stories of the Traitor, it always turned out that it was HE who would be the first near Jesus. Judas sincerely believed in his rightness and chosenness, and most importantly, he strove for his goal by any means - betrayal became a way of approaching the Messiah. In addition, Judas several times "saved" Christ from the massacre of the crowd, showing militancy. But the red hair color is also attributed to Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus (for example, in Rembrandt's painting "Simeon in the Temple" - as a sign of his origin from the red, according to legend, the Psalmist King). Perhaps this in this case once again emphasizes the contradictory nature of the character.
Andreev already at the beginning of the text compares Judas with Jesus: “good growth, almost the same as Jesus, who was slightly stooped from the habit of thinking while walking and seemed shorter because of this.” Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: AST Publishing House, 2003. P.29. N. Chuikina notes: “The author’s attitude towards these two characters is indicative, which he reflected in his painting called “Kings of the Jews”, where Jesus and Judas are depicted similar in appearance, but one of them is beautiful, the second is monstrously ugly, and they are connected by one crown of thorns, put on their heads. Chuikina N. Comparison by Leonid Andreev // World of the Russian Word, 2002. P.109. Perhaps, according to Andreev, beauty and ugliness are two components of a single whole. This reflects a special vision of the writer's world, where one is impossible without the other.
In Andreev, as well as in many other authors, Jesus "entrusted the money box" to Judas. Thanks to his skillful handling of his affairs, “Judas soon won the favor of some of the disciples who saw his efforts.” Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: AST Publishing House, 2003. P.31. But, on the other hand, the author depicts Judas as a deceitful contrast, which clearly repels other heroes from him. The traitor wants to fool people, it gives him pleasure. According to Andreev, Judas "knew how to tell everyone what he especially liked." There. P. 31. The author adds a description of the hero's past life to the text. “Judas left his wife a long time ago ... he wandered senselessly among the people for many years ... and lies everywhere, grimaces ... and suddenly leaves suddenly, leaving trouble and a quarrel behind. He had no children, and this once again said that Judas is a bad person and God does not want offspring from Judas. There. P. 32. Thus, the mention of the hero's past adds additional features to his characterization.
Fundamentally for the new concept of Judas, the author ignores the image of God the Father, who, as is known, plays the role of the initiator of all events in the Gospel version. There is no God-Father in Andreev's story. The crucifixion of Christ from beginning to end was thought out and carried out by Judas, and he took full responsibility for what was done. And Jesus does not interfere with his plan, as he submitted in the Gospel to the decision of the Father. The author gave Judas the man the role of the demiurge, God the Father, fixing this role several times by repeating Judas' appeal to Jesus: "son", "son".
One of the methods of conveying the idea, the mood of the hero is the description of the situation, the landscape around him. However, only L. Andreev fully uses this technique in his work. Here are some examples of such use.
Against the backdrop of the landscape, the moment of the devil's entry into Iscariot is also shown. When Judas focused all his fire on Jesus, Christ suddenly “as if rose into the air, as if melted and became as if it consisted entirely of overhead fog, pierced by the light of the setting moon, and his soft speech sounded somewhere far, far away and tenderly. ". This affected the Traitor. And “here he felt his head like a dome, and in the impenetrable darkness it continued to grow huge, and someone was silently working: he was lifting huge things like mountains, laying one on top of the other and lifting it again ...”. Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. M.: Publishing house AST, 2003. S. 113.
After the death of Jesus, the author writes that the earth in the eyes of Judas became small and “he feels all of it under his feet, looks at the small mountains, quietly reddening in the last rays of the sun, and feels the mountains under his feet, looks at the sky, wide open blue mouth, looks at the round sun, unsuccessfully trying to burn and blind - and the sky and the sun feel under their feet. Infinitely and joyfully alone, he proudly felt the impotence of all the forces acting in the world, and he threw them all into the abyss. There. P. 116. Perhaps Andreev calls the abyss the ravine into which people threw the “beautiful” Judas. As a result, with Jesus, and, accordingly, with Iscariot, all the forces operating in the world left.
Andreev's extensive use of stylization and improperly direct speech leads to blurring and mobility of the boundaries of the consciousness of the characters and the narrator. The stylistic pattern of the narrator's consciousness in L. Andreev's story corresponds to the norms of book speech, often artistic, is distinguished by poetic vocabulary, complicated syntax, tropes, pathetic intonation and has the highest potential for generalization. Pieces of text that belonged to the narrator carry an increased conceptual load. Thus, the narrator acts as the subject of consciousness in the above emblematic picture of the Cosmos of Christ and in the depiction of Judas, the creator of a new project of human history. The narrator also marks the sacrificial devotion of Judas to Jesus: “... and mortal sorrow ignited in his heart, similar to that experienced by Christ before this. Stretching out into a hundred loudly ringing, sobbing strings, he quickly rushed to Jesus and tenderly kissed his cold cheek. So quietly, so tenderly, with such painful love that if Jesus had been a flower on a thin stalk, he would not have swayed him with this kiss and would not have dropped pearly dew from clean petals. Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M .: Publishing house AST, 2003. S. 79. In the field of consciousness of the narrator lies the conclusion about the equal role of Jesus and Judas in the turn of history - God and man, bound by common torment: “... and among all this crowd there were only them two, inseparable until death, wildly connected by a community of suffering ... From the same cup of suffering, like brothers, they both drank ... ". There. p.80
The style of the narrator's consciousness in the story has points of intersection with the consciousness of Judas. True, the consciousness of Judas is embodied by means of a colloquial style, but they are united by increased expressiveness and imagery, although different in nature: irony and sarcasm are more characteristic of Judas' consciousness, and pathos is more characteristic of the narrator. The stylistic closeness of the narrator and Judas as subjects of consciousness increases as we approach the denouement. Irony and mockery in Judas' speech give way to pathos, Judas's word at the end of the story sounds serious, sometimes prophetic, and its conceptuality rises. Irony sometimes appears in the voice of the narrator. In the stylistic convergence of the voices of Judas and the narrator, a certain moral commonality of their positions finds expression. In general, repulsively ugly, deceitful, dishonorable Judas is seen in the story through the eyes of characters: students, neighbors, Anna and other members of the Sanhedrin, soldiers, Pontius Pilate, although formally the narrator may be the subject of speech. But as a subject of consciousness (which is closest to the consciousness of the author), the narrator never acts as an antagonist to Judas. The narrator's voice cuts with dissonance into the chorus of general rejection of Judas, introducing a different perception and a different scale of measurement of Judas and his deeds. Such the first significant "clipping" of the narrator's consciousness is the phrase "And here came Judas." Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: AST Publishing House, 2003. S. 54. It is highlighted stylistically against the background of the prevailing colloquial style, which conveys the bad folk rumor about Judas, and graphically: two-thirds of the line after this phrase remains empty. It is followed by a large segment of the text, again containing a sharply negative characterization of Judas, formally belonging to the narrator. But he conveys the disciples' perception of Judas, prepared by rumors about him. The change in the subject of consciousness is evidenced by a change in stylistic tone (biblical aphorism and pathos give way to vocabulary, syntax and intonation of colloquial speech) and direct instructions from the author.
In the future, the narrator more than once reveals the commonality of his point of view on what is happening with the point of view of Judas. In the eyes of Judas, not he, but the apostles - traitors, cowards, nonentities who have no justification. The accusation of Judas is substantiated by the narrator's outwardly impartial depiction of the apostles, where there is no improperly direct speech and, therefore, the narrator is as close as possible to the author: , moved towards the screaming John; the other rudely pushed Thomas’s hand off his shoulder ... and raised a huge fist to his most direct and transparent eyes - and John ran, and Thomas and Jacob ran, and all the disciples, no matter how many of them were here, leaving Jesus, fled. There. P. 107. Judas mocks the spiritual inertia of the "faithful" disciples, with rage and tears falls upon their dogmatism with its disastrous consequences for mankind. The completeness, immobility, lifelessness of the “discipleship” model, which is the attitude of the future apostles to Christ, is also emphasized by the narrator in describing the conversation of Jesus with the disciples in Bethany.
In a number of cases, the consciousness of Judas and the consciousness of the narrator, in the image of Andreev, are combined, and this overlap falls on fundamentally significant pieces of the text. It is this incarnation that Christ receives in the story as a symbol of the consecrated, higher order of consciousness and being, but supra-material, out-of-body, and therefore “ghostly”. At an overnight stay in Bethany, Jesus is given by the author in the perception of Judas: “Iscariot stopped at the threshold and, contemptuously passing the gaze of those gathered, concentrated all his fire on Jesus. And as he looked ... everything around him went out, dressed in darkness and silence, and only Jesus brightened with his raised hand. But now it seemed to have risen into the air, as if it had melted and became as if it consisted entirely of an overhead fog, pierced by the light of the setting moon; and his soft speech sounded somewhere far, far away and tender. And, peering into the wavering ghost, listening to the gentle melody of distant and ghostly words, Judas ... ". Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: Publishing house AST, 2003. P.89. But the lyrical pathos and poetic style of the description of what Judas saw, although they can be explained psychologically by love for Jesus, are much more characteristic of the narrator's consciousness in the story. The quoted piece of text is stylistically identical to the previous emblematic image of the disciples sitting around Christ, given in the perception of the narrator. The author emphasizes that Judas could not see this scene like that: “Iscariot stopped at the threshold and, contemptuously passing by the gaze of those gathered ...”. There. P.91. The fact that not only Judas but also the narrator saw Christ as a “ghost” is also evidenced by the semantic similarity of the images with which Christ is associated in the perception of Judas and, a little higher, in the perception of the disciples, which could be known only to the narrator, but not to Judas. . Compare: “... and his soft speech sounded somewhere far, far away and tender. And, peering into the wavering ghost, listening to the gentle melody of distant and ghostly words, Judas... There. P. 91. “... the students were silent and unusually thoughtful. The images of the path traveled: the sun, and the stone, and the grass, and Christ reclining in the center, floated quietly in my head, evoking soft thoughtfulness, giving rise to vague but sweet dreams of some kind of eternal movement under the sun. The tired body rested sweetly, and all of it thought about something mysteriously beautiful and big - and no one remembered Judas. Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: Publishing house AST, 2003. S. 93.
The consciousnesses of the narrator and Judas also contain literal coincidences, for example, in assessing the attitude towards the Teacher of the "faithful" students who freed themselves from the work of thought. The narrator: "...whether the students' boundless faith in the miraculous power of their teacher, the consciousness of their rightness, or just blindness - the fearful words of Judas were met with a smile ...". Judas: “Blind, what have you done to the earth? You wanted to kill her…” With the same words, Judas and the narrator sneer at such devotion to the work of the Teacher. Judas: “Beloved student! Is it not from you that the race of traitors, the breed of cowards and liars will begin? There. P. 94. Narrator: “The disciples of Jesus sat in sad silence and listened to what was happening outside the house. There was still danger... Near John, to whom, as a beloved disciple of Jesus, his death was especially hard, Mary Magdalene and Matthew were sitting and comforting him in an undertone... Matthew did instructively say the words of Solomon: "The long-suffering is better than the brave ...". There. P. 95. The narrator coincides with Judas in recognizing his monstrous act of high expediency - providing the teachings of Christ with a worldwide victory. "Hosanna! Hosanna!" Iscariot's heart screams. And the narrator's word about the Betrayer Judas sounds in the conclusion of the story with a solemn bearing to the victorious Christianity. But betrayal in it is only a fact fixed by the empirical consciousness of the witnesses. The narrator brings the reader a message about something else. His jubilant intonation, the result of understanding what happened in the retrospective of world history, contains information about things that are incomparably more significant for humanity - the advent of a new era.
The concept of Judas, the creator of a new spiritual reality, is affirmed in Andreev's story and by means of its object organization.
The composition of the work is based on the opposition of two types of consciousness, based on the faith of the majority and the creativity of a free person. The inertia and futility of the consciousness of the first type is embodied in the unambiguous, poor speech of the "faithful" disciples. The speech of Judas is replete with paradoxes, allusions, symbols. She is part of the probabilistic world-chaos of Judas, which always allows for the possibility of an unpredictable turn of events. And it is no coincidence that in the speech of Jude the syntactic construction of the admission (“What if ...”) is repeated: a sign of a game, an experiment, a search for thought, - completely alien to the speech of both Christ and the apostles.
The apostles are discredited by metaphors and parables. Such an allegory, for example, is contained in the picture of the apostles' competition in power. This episode is not in the Gospel, and it is significant in the text of the story. “Straining, they (Peter and Philip) tore off an old, overgrown stone from the ground, lifted it high with both hands and let it go down the slope. Heavy, it struck short and dull and thought for a moment; then hesitantly made the first leap - and with each touch to the ground, taking speed and strength from it, he became light, ferocious, all-destroying. He no longer jumped, but he flew with bared teeth, and the air, whistling, passed his dull, round carcass. Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: Publishing house AST, 2003. P.37. The heightened, conceptual significance of this picture is given by repeated associations with the stone of Peter himself. His second name is a stone, and it is persistently repeated in the story precisely as a name. With a stone, the narrator, although indirectly, compares the words spoken by Peter (“they sounded so firmly ...”), the laughter that Peter “throws on the heads of the disciples”, and his voice (“he rolled around ...”). At the first appearance of Judas, Peter "looked at Jesus, quickly, like a stone torn from the mountain, moved towards Judas ...". Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: AST Publishing House, 2003. P. 38 In the context of all these associations, one cannot help but see in the image of a stupid, devoid of his own will, carrying the potential for destruction to the stone, a symbol of an unacceptable model of life for the author of "faithful" students, in which there is no freedom and creation.
In the text of the story there are a number of allusions to Dostoevsky, Gorky, Bunin, which raise Judas from the level of a miserable greedy and offended jealous man, as he traditionally exists in the memory of an ordinary reader and interpretations of researchers, to the height of the hero of an idea. After receiving thirty pieces of silver from Anna, like Raskolnikov, "Judas did not take the money home, but ... hid it under a stone." There. P. 51. In the dispute between Peter, John and Judas for the primacy in the kingdom of heaven, "Jesus slowly lowered his eyes," and his gesture of non-intervention and silence reminds the reader of the behavior of Christ in a conversation with the Grand Inquisitor. The reaction of the unimaginative John to the inventions of Judas (“John ... quietly asked Pyotr Simonov, his friend: “Are you bored with this lie?”) sounds like an allusion to the indignation of “stupid as bricks,” Bubnov and Baron, with Luka’s stories in Gorky’s play “ At the bottom” (“Here is Luka, ... he lies a lot ... and without any benefit to himself ... (...) Why would he?”, “The old man is a charlatan ...”). Gorky M. Full. coll. cit.: In 25 vols. T. 7. M., 1970. S. 241.
In addition, Judas, considering his plan of struggle for the victory of Christ, in the image of Andreev is extremely close to Bunin's Cain, the builder of Baalbek, the Temple of the Sun.
The new concept of Judas is also revealed in the plot of the work: the author's selection of events, their development, location, artistic time and space. On the night of Christ's crucifixion, the "faithful" disciples of Jesus eat and sleep and argue their right to peace by being faithful to the word of the Teacher. They excluded themselves from the flow of events. The daring challenge that Judas throws to the world, his confusion, mental struggle, hope, rage and, finally, suicide direct the movement of time and the logic of the historical process. According to the plot of the work, it was to him, Judas Iscariot, his efforts, foresight and self-denial in the name of love (“We betray you with the kiss of love” Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot / / Prose. - M .: AST Publishing House, 2003 .. S. 103..) the victory of the new doctrine is assured. Judas knows his people as well as Jesus: the need to worship is stimulated by the possibility of hating someone (to slightly paraphrase the essence of upheavals formulated by Judas, then “the victim is where the executioner and the traitor are”). And he takes on the role of the enemy, necessary in the projected action, and gives him - himself! - the name of a traitor understandable to the masses. He himself was the first to utter his new shameful name for everyone (“he said that he, Judas, was a pious man and became a disciple of Jesus the Nazarene with the sole purpose of convicting the deceiver and betraying him into the hands of the law” Ibid., p. 120.) and true calculated his fail-safe action allowed himself to be lured into a trap. In this regard, the writing by the author of the word "traitor" in the conclusion of the story with a capital letter is of particular importance - as a non-author's, alien in the narrator's speech, a word-quotation from the consciousness of the masses.
The global scale of Judas' victory over the inert forces of life is emphasized by the space-time organization of the work, which is characteristic of the philosophical meta-genre. Thanks to mythological and literary parallels (the Bible, antiquity, Goethe, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Tyutchev, Bunin, Gorky, etc.), the story's artistic time covers the entire time of the Earth's existence. It is infinitely relegated to the past and at the same time projected into the boundless future - both historical and mythological. It is the everlasting present tense of the Bible and belongs to Judas, because it was created by his efforts. Judas at the end of the story also owns the whole new, already Christian, Earth: "Now the whole earth belongs to him ...". There. P. 121. Images of altered time and space are given in the perception of Judas, but stylistically, his consciousness here, at the end of the story, as mentioned above, is difficult to distinguish from the consciousness of the narrator - they coincide. Directly at the conclusion of the story, the same vision of space and time is formulated by the narrator (“The stony Judea, and the green Galilee, learned about it ... and to one sea and to another, which is even further away, the news of the death of the Traitor flew ... and among all peoples what they were, what they are ... "Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot / / Prose. - M .: AST Publishing House, 2003. P. 121 ..). The limiting scale of enlargement of artistic time and space (eternity, the globe) gives the events the character of being and gives them the meaning of their due.
The narrator ends the story with a curse on Judas. But the curse of Judas is inseparable in Andreev from the hosanna to Christ, the triumph of the Christian idea is inseparable from the betrayal of Iscariot, who managed to make mankind see the living God. And it is no coincidence that after the crucifixion of Christ, even "solid" Peter feels "in Judas someone who can command." There. S. 109.
L. Andreev is a romantic writer (with a personalistic, that is, a deeply personal type of consciousness, which was projected onto his works and, above all, determined their character, the range of topics and features of the worldview) in the sense that he did not accept evil in the world around him, the most important the justification for his existence on earth was creativity. Hence the high value of a creative person in his artistic world. In L. Andreev's story, Judas is the creator of a new reality, a new, Christian era, no matter how blasphemous it sounds for a believer.
Andreevsky's Judas takes on grandiose proportions, he becomes equal with Christ, is regarded as a participant in the re-creation of the world, its transformation. If at the beginning of the story Judas “dragged along the ground like a punished dog”, “Judas crawled away, hesitated hesitantly and disappeared”, then after what he did: “... all the time belongs to him, and he walks slowly, now the whole earth belongs to him, and he steps firmly, like a sovereign, like a king, like one who is infinitely and joyfully alone in this world. ”Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: Publishing house AST, 2003. S. 119.
In the context of the story, the death of Judas is as symbolic as the crucifixion of Jesus. In a reduced plan, and at the same time as a significant event, rising above ordinary reality and ordinary people, the suicide of Judas is described. The crucifixion of Jesus on the cross is symbolic: the cross is a symbol, a center, a convergence of Good and Evil. Judas hanged himself on a broken, crooked branch of a wind-worn, half-withered tree, but on a mountain, high above Jerusalem. Deceived by people, Judas voluntarily leaves this world after his teacher.
Conclusion on the third chapter
Judas, perhaps the most mysterious (from a psychological point of view) gospel character, was especially attractive to Leonid Andreev with his interest in the subconscious, in the contradictions in the human soul. In this area, L. Andreev was "terribly quick-witted."
L. Andreev does not justify the act of Judas, he is trying to unravel the riddle: what guided Judas in his act? The writer fills the gospel plot of betrayal with psychological content, and the following stand out among the motives:
* rebelliousness, rebelliousness of Judas, an irrepressible desire to solve the mystery of man (to find out the price of "others"), which is generally characteristic of the heroes of L. Andreev. These qualities of Andreev's heroes are to a large extent a projection of the soul of the writer himself - a maximalist and rebel, paradoxicalist and heretic;
* loneliness, rejection of Judas. Judas was despised, and Jesus was indifferent to him. Judas received recognition only for a short time - when he defeated the strong Peter in throwing stones, but then again it turned out that everyone went ahead, and Judas again trailed behind, forgotten and despised by everyone. By the way, the language of L. Andreev is extremely picturesque, plastic, expressive, in particular, in the episode where the apostles throw stones into the abyss. The indifference of Jesus, as well as disputes about who is closer to Jesus, who loves him more, became the provoking factor for the decision of Judas;
* Resentment, envy, immeasurable pride, the desire to prove that it is he who loves Jesus most of all are also characteristic of St. Andrew's Judas. To the question posed to Judas, who will be the first in the Kingdom of Heaven near Jesus - Peter or John, the answer follows, which amazed everyone: the first will be Judas! Everyone says that they love Jesus, but how they will behave in the hour of trials - Judas strives to check this. It may turn out that “others” love Jesus only in words, and then Judas will triumph. The act of a traitor is the desire to test the love of others for the Teacher and to prove their love.
CONCLUSION
Leonid Andreev has been read for a century. The peak of his popularity came in 1902 - 1908, when the main works were written and published: "The Life of Basil of Thebes" and "Darkness", "Judas Iscariot" and "The Life of a Man". Andreev was one of the most published and widely read authors in Russia. His popularity was comparable to that of Gorky; in terms of circulation, he was hardly inferior to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. But even in the years of his creative flourishing, Leonid Andreev continued to be the object of attacks by critics and various publicists, who ironically denied the quality of his prose and dramaturgy. Andreev was accused of anarchism and godlessness, lack of a sense of proportion and too much attention to psychopathology.
The years that have passed since the death of the writer have shown that interest in him was not an accident, it was not the will of the reader striving for mass culture. Now we can say that Andreev's work is a bridge between the 19th century, primarily the artistic worldview of Dostoevsky, and the creative searches of the 20th century. For many years, literary critics have been trying to terminologically define Andreev's method. He has been called a realist and a symbolic realist, a decadent and an expressionist, an existentialist and a symbolist. Apparently, such a variety of definitions indicates that there is no point in searching for a single term that reflects the essence of poetics. Andreevsky's artistic world is a premonition and foreshadowing of the aesthetic systems of the century, the search and suffering of its heroes is a prophetic sign of impending catastrophes, many of which occur in the sphere of consciousness. The socio-historical and literary-philosophical processes of the past century indirectly justified the paradoxical and largely provocative method of Leonid Andreev, showed that his seemingly artificial tragedy is a property of the time, and not the arbitrariness of the playing artist.
The story of L. Andreev "Judas Iscariot" is a work that certainly deserves serious discussion both in terms of its artistic merits and the relevance of the problems posed there. And a hundred and a thousand years ago we ask ourselves all the same questions: what rules the world, good or evil, truth or falsehood? is it possible, is it necessary to live righteously in an unrighteous world, when you know for sure that it is impossible to strictly observe the beautiful Christian commandments? Before us, therefore, is an interesting artistic study, which is not easy to fully comprehend. For example, because of the "cosmic pessimism" inherent in the author. The peculiarity of the story "Judas Iscariot" lies precisely in the fact that in it the author argues with himself, testing the strength of the "devilish" disbelief in a person by the faith of Jesus Himself. There is another obvious difficulty - the need to know the Primary Source - the Gospel, its interpretations and assessments, popular in those years.
Judas Andreeva is a classic tragic hero, with all the set of signs he should have: a contradiction in his soul, a sense of guilt, suffering and redemption, an extraordinary personality, heroic activity that challenges fate.
The dialogue of L. Andreev's story with the reader and critics, which began at the beginning of the last century, continues, and it testifies at least to the relevance of the problem and the extraordinary talent of the author of the story "Judas Iscariot" as a phenomenon of Russian fiction. Leonid Andreev himself about this work of his at the end of his life, as if summing up what he had done in literature, said: “There are no stories higher than Judas.”
LITERATURE
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He remained in the history of Russian literature as the author of innovative prose. His works were distinguished by deep psychologism. The author tried to penetrate into such depths of the human soul, where no one looked. Andreev wanted to show the real state of things, tore the veil of lies from the usual phenomena of the social and spiritual life of man and society.
The life of the Russian people at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries gave little cause for optimism. Critics reproached Andreev for incredible pessimism, apparently for the objectivity of showing reality. The writer did not consider it necessary to artificially create benevolent pictures, to give evil a decent look. In his work, he revealed the true essence of the unshakable laws of social life and ideology. Causing a flurry of criticism against him, Andreev risked showing a person in all his contradictions and secret thoughts, revealed the falsity of any political slogans and ideas, wrote about doubts about the Orthodox faith in the form in which it is presented by the church.
In the story, Andreev gives his version of the famous gospel parable. He said that he wrote "something on the psychology, ethics and practice of betrayal." The story deals with the problem of the ideal in human life. Jesus is such an ideal, and his disciples must preach his teaching, bring the light of truth to the people. But Andreev makes the central hero of the work not Jesus, but Judas Iscariot, an energetic, active and full of strength.
To complete the perception of the image, the writer describes in detail the memorable appearance of Judas, whose skull was “as if cut from the back of the head with a double blow of the sword and recomposed, it was clearly divided into four parts and inspired distrust, even anxiety ... Judas’ face also doubled.” Eleven disciples of Christ look inexpressive against the background of this hero. One eye of Judas is alive, attentive, black, and the other is motionless, like a blind man. Andreev draws the attention of readers to the gestures of Judas, the manner of his behavior. The hero bows low, arching his back and stretching his lumpy, terrible head forward, and “in a fit of timidity” closes his living eye. His voice, "sometimes courageous and strong, sometimes loud, like an old woman's," sometimes thin, "annoyingly liquid and unpleasant." Communicating with other people, he constantly grimace.
The writer introduces us to some facts of the biography of Judas. The hero got his nickname because he came from Kariot, lives alone, left his wife, he has no children, apparently, God does not want offspring from him. Judas has been wandering for many years, “lies everywhere, grimaces, vigilantly looks out for something with his thieves' eye; and suddenly leaves suddenly.
In the Gospel, the story of Judas is a short account of betrayal. Andreev, on the other hand, shows the psychology of his hero, tells in detail what happened before and after the betrayal and what caused it. The theme of betrayal arose from the writer not by chance. During the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907, he observed with surprise and contempt how many traitors suddenly appeared, "as if they did not come from Adam, but from Judas."
In the story, Andreev notes that the eleven disciples of Christ are constantly arguing among themselves, “who paid more love” in order to be closer to Christ and ensure their entry into the kingdom of heaven in the future. These disciples, who would later be called apostles, treat Judas with contempt and disgust, as they do other vagabonds and beggars. They are deep in matters of faith, engaged in self-contemplation and fenced off from people. L. Andreev's Judas is not in the clouds, he lives in the real world, steals money for a hungry harlot, saves Christ from an aggressive mob. He plays the role of a mediator between people and Christ.
Judas is shown with all the advantages and disadvantages, like any living person. He is quick-witted, modest, always ready to help his companions. Andreev writes: "... Iscariot was simple, gentle and at the same time serious." Shown from all sides, the image of Judas comes to life. He also has negative traits that arose during his vagrancy and search for a piece of bread. This is deceit, dexterity and deceit. Judas is tormented by the fact that Christ never praises him, although he allows him to conduct economic affairs and even take money from the general cash desk. Iscariot declares to the disciples that it is not they, but it is he who will be next to Christ in the kingdom of heaven.
Judas is intrigued by the mystery of Christ, he feels that something great and wonderful is hidden under the guise of an ordinary person. Having decided to betray Christ into the hands of the authorities, Judas hopes that God will not allow injustice. Until the very death of Christ, Judas follows him, every minute expecting that his tormentors will understand who they are dealing with. But the miracle does not happen, Christ endures the beatings of the guards and dies like an ordinary person.
Having come to the apostles, Jude notes with surprise that on that night, when their teacher died a martyr's death, the disciples ate and slept. They grieve, but their life has not changed. On the contrary, now they are no longer subordinates, but each independently is going to carry the word of Christ to people. Jude calls them traitors. They did not defend their teacher, did not recapture him from the guards, did not convene the people for protection. They "huddled together like a bunch of frightened lambs, not interfering with anything." Jude accuses the disciples of lying. They never loved the teacher, otherwise they would have rushed to help and would have died for him. Love saves without doubt.
John says that Jesus himself wanted this sacrifice and his sacrifice is beautiful. To which Judas angrily replies: “Is there a beautiful sacrifice, what do you say, beloved disciple? Where there is a victim, there is an executioner, and there are traitors! Sacrifice is suffering for one and shame for all.<…>Blind, what have you done to the earth? You wanted to destroy her, you will soon be kissing the cross on which you crucified Jesus!” Judas, in order to finally test the disciples, says that he is going to Jesus in heaven in order to persuade him to return to earth to the people to whom he brought light. Iscariot calls on the apostles to follow him. Nobody agrees. Pyotr, who was rushing, also retreats.
The story ends with a description of Judas' suicide. He decided to hang himself on the bough of a tree growing over the abyss, so that if the rope breaks, he would fall on sharp stones and ascend to Christ. Throwing a rope on a tree, Judas whispers, turning to Christ: “So meet me kindly. I am very tired". In the morning Judas' body was removed from the tree and thrown into the ditch, cursing him as a traitor. And Judas Iscariot, the Traitor, remained forever and ever in the memory of people.
This version of the gospel story caused a wave of criticism from the church. Andreev's goal was to awaken people's consciousness, to make them think about the nature of betrayal, about their actions and thoughts.
Topic: about the psychology of the betrayal of Judas, the betrayal of the cowardly disciples of Christ, the masses of the people who did not come out in defense of Christ.
Idea: the paradox of Andreev's story is the unlimited love of Judas for his Teacher, the desire to be constantly near and betrayal, too, as a way to get closer to Jesus. Judas betrays Christ to find out if any of his followers are capable of sacrificing their lives to save the teacher. His betrayal is predetermined from above.
Artistic features: comparison of Judas and Christ. The writer equates two such apparently opposite images, he brings them together. Images of students are symbols.
Peter is associated with a stone, even with Judas he enters into a stone-throwing contest.
Reader's position: Judas - a traitor, betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver - such a name was fixed in the minds of people. After reading Andreev's story, you wonder how to understand the psychology of Judas' act, what made him violate the laws of morality? Knowing in advance that he will betray Jesus, Judas fights against it. But it is impossible to defeat predestination, but Judas cannot but love Jesus, he kills himself. Betrayal is a topical issue at the present time, a time of misunderstanding between people.
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