The Law of God and The Chronicles of Narnia. More about The Chronicles of Narnia

Deacon Andrei Kuraev. the law of God and "The Chronicles of Narnia".

What I'm about to do falls into the category of not the most rewarding pursuits. Translate poetry into prose and talk about "what did the artist mean by this image" - It's too schooly.

But it is the features of our school education and urge me to take up the interpretation of the tales of C. S. Lewis from the series "The Chronicles of Narnia" published in several editions.

Clive Staples Lewis himself (like his compatriots and contemporaries Chesterton and Tolkien) wrote for people who had the opportunity to study "Law of God" At school. On the one hand, this is an acquaintance with the plots sacred history allowed them to recognize allusions and allusions at a glance. With another, school acquaintance with the Bible, it too often condoned the strengthening of the worst kind of unbelief - that is, that dry and rational half-faith, which more reliably shields the conscience from the reproaches of the Gospel, the more firmly it memorized the biblical texts.

It is clear that in such a case it is impossible to preach too obtrusively and one must look for an opportunity to testify to the Truth, without in any way evoking the intonation of a school teacher of the law. And so, in order to turn English conservatism not to the conservatism of sin, but to the conservatism of evangelical values, Chesterton writes detective stories about Father Brown, and Tolkien writes stories about hobbits. For the same purpose, Lewis writes fairy tales about such a land of Oz, in which at every step the reader unexpectedly meets something that he did not expect to meet - allusions not to yesterday's parliamentary gossip, but to those sensational events that, it would seem, are hopelessly outdated and long ago. became of no interest to anyone (for the reason that they did not take place in London, but in Palestine, and not even the day before yesterday, but many centuries ago).

In these books, written by an Englishman and a Protestant, we, Russians and Orthodox, need most of all. The point is not only that we have practically disappeared Christian literature for children. More importantly, these tales fill an empty niche in the temple of Orthodox culture.

Our tradition of preaching and spiritual education has always been didactic and instructive. But a person sometimes becomes painful from the abundance of strict and cleverly self-confident teachings. He sometimes really needs to just sit next to him and keep quiet about something. Or joked, or talked as an equal.

Lewis's books are effective in that they do not immediately betray their secret: they preach without instructing. The reader first falls in love with the author, with the world of his thoughts and heroes, and only then begins to guess where the light that fills the entire volume comes from. Lewisland. They are written with love about the Book of Love - about the Gospel.

Lewis has achieved what anyone dreams of spiritual writer: he not only conveys his thoughts about a person’s meeting with God, he awakens in a person’s heart the response of that Joy that once visited him or is already knocking at him. That Christian "midwife art" which brings forth prayer from the soul of man. And this is the highest success of a theological book if, in the course of its reading, a faceless "He" theology is replaced by living "You" prayers.

This book was written in a society where it is customary to be a Christian. And it was written so that a person would fall in love with what he had previously only believed in.

For the Russian reader in this regard, read "Chronicles" easier: for its perception "good news from Jerusalem" still quite fresh. On the other hand, it is more difficult: not only children, but even their parents are hardly so familiar with the Gospel as to immediately catch the transparent hints of Lewis and Aslan.

Today it is not difficult for us to explain to an unbelieving person what are the grounds for religious conviction in the existence of God and Christ. But extremely difficult "compel understanding" connections between a distant supracosmic God and a small private human existence. "Yes, let there be, but what is it to me ?!" - this is the question on which the most brilliant sermons and the most logical and profound theological lectures crash.

Lewis's answer to this question is tangible: living with God is joyful and difficult. To live without Him is, in the end, also difficult, but also gray, as gray and hopelessly stable in its isolation is hell in a fairy tale. "Divorce".

It is difficult to live according to the commands of Aslan, because He - "not a tame lion" . It cannot be used as a guarantor or guardian of your home well-being. His friendship and help cannot be bribed. One cannot have false hopes for His help, which would abolish the active action of the person himself. He comes when he wants; and yet desires to be called.

The meeting with God is still difficult, because one cannot leave it unchanged. Aslan can breathe gently, or he can hurt. We all walk in the skins of the Dragon - and until we take it off ourselves (the Apostle Paul calls this "put off the old man" ), we do not understand the Intention that the Creator has about us.

But besides "natural" of our ossification, there are also cultural shells that steal the sky from us. How, for example, to look into Aslan's eyes and think about "human rights" ? Rights - before Him? .. It was already once in human history in the days of Job. Lewis also reminds us of what the ancient sufferer and God-seeker understood then. And the great prophets of old remind us that God has no obligations. Everything is a gift to Him. And Aslan also reminds of this, sending children to the country of the sorceress.

"The Chronicles of Narnia"consists of seven stories. By accident or intentionally, Lewis got this completely biblical number - I don’t know. But just as in the Bible seven days are seven epochs of world history, so in Lewis the whole history of Narnia - from its creation to death - is given in seven episodes.

However, there are no direct borrowings from the Bible in Lewis's tales. Is it in the habit of naming children "sons of Adam" And "Daughters of Eve" .

The creator's name is Aslan, not Yahweh or Christ. In the first chronicle ("The Wizard's Nephew") Aslan, who appears to children in the form of a golden shining lion, creates the world.

He makes song. Lewis envisions the creation of the universe this way: "Far away in the darkness, someone sang. There were no words. There was no melody. There was just a sound, inexpressibly beautiful. And then two miracles happened at once. First, a myriad of voices began to echo the voice - no longer thick, but sonorous, silvery, tall.Secondly, countless stars dotted the darkness ... The lion walked up and down the new world and sang new song. It was softer and more solemn than the one with which he created the stars and the sun, it flowed, and green streams seemed to flow from under his paws. It was growing grass. In a few minutes, it covered the foot of the distant mountains, and the newly created world became more welcoming. Now the wind rustled in the grass. Soon patches of heather appeared on the hills, in the valley - some green dots, brighter and darker. When these dots - no, already sticks - appeared at Digory's feet, he saw short spikes on them, which grew very quickly. The sticks themselves also stretched upward, and after a minute or two Digory recognized them - they were trees. .

In the 4th century, St. Basil the Great wrote very similarly about the origin of the world: "Imagine that, according to a small saying, cold and barren land suddenly approaches the time of birth, and, as if throwing off his sad and sad clothes, puts on a light robe, rejoices in his decoration and brings into the world thousands of plants. .

Both texts assume that the reader remembers the original Bible verse: "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruitful trees. And the earth brought forth..." (Gen. 1:11).

There is no oparinsky dead and meaningless here "broth" who spits life out of himself in some accidental catastrophe; there is also no motionless, creatively mediocre matter of Plato, which can only suffer in the hands of the Demiurge, but is powerless to do anything on its own. Here is a joyful dialogue: on "Fiat!" ("Let it be!") The whole world responds to the Creator with a creative effort.

The modern cosmologist in this connection is not averse to talking about "directed evolution" And "anthropic factor" ...

The church speaks of poetry. That's what God is called "A symbol of faith": "I believe in the One God the Father, the Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth" ... "Creator" in the original Greek "Poetos" ... And in the prayer at the Great Blessing of Water, it is said about the emergence of the world - "You, Lord, from the four elements compose the whole creation" . Indeed, what else can be done with "elements" , whose naming still comes from the Greek verb "stiheo" (go in rows, match rows; "ranks" - in Slavic), how not co fix. In contrast to the Russian understanding "spontaneity" for the Greek ear "elements" harmony, harmony and consonance of that "space" , the echo of which reached our "cosmetics" .

What "The Chronicles of Narnia" do not explain the origin of evil does not mean that they put up with them. Christian thought does not explain the source of evil precisely for this reason, in order to make it easier to fight evil. For, by virtue of our ineradicable philosophical habit, it seems to us that "explain" Means "understand" , A "understand" Means "accept" . If I found the cause of some event, then I thereby came to the conclusion that it could not have happened. No, not in "cause and effect" , not in the laws "karma" or in "dialectic of unity" evil is rooted. It is in the mystery of freedom. Not in secret-mystical and huge "the laws of the universe ", but in our seemingly so small freedom. It was man who once let the cold into the universe, warmed by the breath of the Creator. And to us, accustomed to the cold, the breath of the same Love now seems too burning, too painful.

In our freedom we have nurtured death. It was death that the forces of magic wanted to separate us from God. But the Creator of life Himself entered the space of death. And now through death we can see the face of the Conqueror of death.

So in next fairy tale speech goes already about Redemption: Aslan gives himself to death "according to the laws ancient magic" . But according to the laws "even older" magic - resurrects and destroys the curse.

God always requires people to change. And one day, to make it easier for them to do this, He Himself sacrificed His love for people - not only in order to give them an example, but also in order to truly redeem them and rescue them from power. "ancient spells" and unite with Himself to give them a share in His own life, in His own Love. But for this, all the more, a person must become what he has not been before.

Gospel Foundation "Chronicles of Narnia" obvious. In them, one can also find direct polemics with atheism, whose arguments are very similarly presented by the Sorceress to drugged children in the Underdark. ("The Silver Chair"). And you can find a very transparent parable about repentance (Aslan ripping off dragon skins from Eustace in "Lord of the Dawn").

But that is why it is so important to point out the Old Testament origins of the traits that Lewis gives to Aslan. In modern Protestantism (and, more broadly, in modern Western style spirituality) "Friend Jesus" displaced the formidable Yahweh. But evangelical love does not cancel the love of the Old Testament. The God of the prophets loves people - and therefore is demanding of them: demanding, because he is not indifferent (Lewis wrote about this in the book "Suffering").

The moral vision of a person is somewhat like the eye of a frog. Just as she sees only what is moving and does not notice motionless objects, so a person, while resting in place, does not distinguish the vector along which his life should rush. But having made a spiritual effort, denying himself something for the sake of his neighbor, having once done good, having suffered, he becomes sharper.

I hope it is permissible to explain this idea not on Lewisian material - after all, many parents and teachers who will read this book to children will themselves know a little more about Christianity than their children. So, one of the wonderful Christian preachers - Vladimir Martsinkovsky, who lived a generation before Lewis, in his work "Meaning of life" recounts the case of a rich young Parisian who, having had enough of life, came to the Seine embankment... And just before the last step, he suddenly remembered that he had a purse in his pocket with money that he would no longer need. And he had an idea - to give this money to some poor man. He walks down the street and finds people living in great need. The young man gives them all his money. And suddenly a joy greater than that of these poor people bursts into his heart. The secret of life, which he tried to subtract or eavesdrop, itself lit up in his soul.

So and "bad boy" It seems to Eustace that he is accidentally, senselessly, almost out of spite thrown into the world of Narnia. And only through grief, repentance and the first attempts to take care of others does he understand that he is not doomed to life, but life has been given to him. Understanding that, according to the laws of Narnia, you can only die alone, but you can only survive together.

In the story "The Horse and His Boy" there is a wonderful explanation of how the secrets of Providence are known. The girl (in the happy epilogue) wants to know what the fate of her friend is. "I tell everyone only his story" , - she hears from Aslan an answer that cools her curiosity.

Thus, a limit is placed on one temptation that is very common among religious people. The fact is that the spiritual adulthood of a person is determined by the extent to which he is ready to justify the suffering that has befallen him. But with your understanding ("Worthy according to my deeds I will accept") You have to be very careful when entering someone else's life. If I say: "My disease grew out of my sins" - it will be quite sober. But if I decide to go to a sick neighbor to explain to her that yesterday she broke her leg because she didn’t go to church the day before yesterday, then it’s time to remember Aslan’s warning. In addition, it is very reminiscent of what happened with Reverend Anthony Great: he once asked : "Lord, why do some live a little while others live to a ripe old age? Why are some poor and others rich?". The answer Antony received was simple: "Antony! pay attention to yourself!" And the answer that we all received once and for all was given at Golgotha: The Creator did not explain evil or justify its inevitability, He simply went to the cross...

From Job to the present day, a person keeps the understanding that the answer to this question cannot (and should not) be expressed in words, because this answer is heard not with the ears, but with the heart.

"You are the one who meekly destroys us

What we are building

For us to see the sky

That's why I'm not complaining" (Eichendorff).

In the world of Christian thought, suffering and joy, life and death are not absolutely opposed to each other. I beg your pardon for the shocking wording, but in its depths Christianity really insists on the inevitability of suicide: a person should not live for himself, he is called to give himself. “Truly, truly, I say to you, if a grain of wheat that falls into the ground does not die, it will remain alone; but if it dies, it will bear much fruit. soul loving his will destroy her; but he who hates his soul, in this world will keep it to eternal life" (John 12:24-25).

Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said that in the Gulag there is only one way to survive, namely to give up any hope of saving yourself. Only in this way, having buried himself, can a person leave the camp as a person. Another example from secular literature is Pasternak's lines:

Life is also just a moment

Only the dissolution of ourselves

In all other

How would they give a gift ...

Like a man came out

And he carried out and opened the ark,

And gave everything to the thread ...

Love, which, according to the apostle, "not looking for his" , also takes out the center of aspirations, worries and hopes of a person outside of him. Christian love is giving, not consuming: the cross always shines through in its depths.

In the spiritual world, he speaks of the same "inverted perspective" icon painting. A person must renounce egocentrism, the habit of measuring everything according to himself, he must place his life center outside himself. And then he will not consider a certain value as part of his life, but will begin to think of himself as belonging and serving Supreme Value. And then he will be afraid not for himself, but for his fidelity to the Truth. And, as the Scripture says, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also... Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth... Grow rich in God" .

The only way to truly survive is through sacrifice. Only what we give away remains ours forever... Tsvetaeva called it "law of grain" :

Soldiers! One step to heaven

By the law of grain - into the ground!

If a person acts in accordance with this Law of God, the words of Christ will come true over him, and he "will never see death" . Word "assumption" in all Christian languages is the antonym of death. Death is just a door (well, yes, the same door from the last Chronicles). But going through it, you can be "right hand" or "oshyuyu" .

And here I have to apologize for the risky comparison a second time. Christianity lives on high speculation. Costs and profits are clearly of different orders. Malaya "mite" can turn into the acquisition of such a treasure that the whole world is not worth ...

There is no death - everyone knows that.

It was boring to repeat it.

And what is - let them tell me ...

And there is Easter. And there are few books in the world, even of Christian culture, which would be so permeated with Easter light as the books of Lewis. Their meaning is in the affirmation of what deserves life and will live because what cannot die will not die. And if life is more perfect than death, then death must be conquered. The calling of man "find your eternity" , and that's why, "to understand a person means to understand his relationship to God" (B.P. Vysheslavtsev).

How children need this Easter! For them, what adults then cease to understand is obvious: a person can leave, but he cannot disappear.

And it is quite easy for children to understand that the result of human life is not summed up physiologically (by a broken blood vessel in the brain or cardiac arrest), but morally. Life does not end, it is fulfilled. And a person, unlike animals, as a spiritual, moral and responsible being, must also give a moral answer about what his life was the fulfillment of, whether he fulfilled the Law in temporal life, without which it is impossible to live in Eternity.

Man was created for eternity. A person cannot enter it without an invitation and help. The Creator does not just open the Door for us: He Himself becomes one of us and pays the maximum price to give us the freedom to be sons of God, and not sons of sin and tributaries of death. He brought us a gift. The gift must also be accepted. Objectively Perfect "for us for the sake of man and for our sake of salvation" one must also make it one's inner, subjective reality in the act of choosing one's faith, Communion. And God, who came into the world to people, calls us not to escape from the world, but to fulfill our human duty in the world of people. Christ does not allow the apostles to stay on Tabor. Aslan helps so that people can continue their further struggle. The heart that loves God, but does not love and has no mercy on the world and people created by God, has not understood the breadth of God's commandment. What is accepted and then given to people and God does not disappear, is not taken away. In the world where we came from and where we will go, every drop of local goodness responds with an incommensurably greater cup of joy. But every grief that we have caused prepares for us the coming bitterness.

Such is the Law. And this Law is not opposed to mercy. He took her into himself and says of her: "judgment without mercy to those who have shown no mercy" .

About this Law amazing books Lewis. About him, and only about him. And therefore I simply implore readers: do not spoil this book! Don't squeeze her into the world school rules, where, according to N. Trubnikov, "with the help of well-fitted private truths, a general lie is so easily formed" . Don't pretend it's just a fairy tale. Do not hide from yourself and from the children the gospel basis and atmosphere of these fairy tales. And it would be quite sad if children began to explain this connection in such a spirit that, they say, one, more ancient tale formed the basis for another. And Lewis came up with his own fairy tales, just like Matthew once did, and Moses before him ... And the Lion is just a cat enlarged by the imagination, and the Sun is a light bulb projected onto the sky. And there is no world but the Underdark. And there is no Easter. And there was no Christmas.

But I don't want to think about this sad possibility.

"The Chronicles of Narnia"certainly not a catechism. They were written for people who studied (or are studying) catechism in school. Therefore, by no means all the principles of Christianity found their allegory in these tales.

In general, there is a lot of gospel stuff in Narnia. There is no explicit presence in it of only two gospel mysteries: the Trinity and the Eucharist. In my opinion, it was Lewis's remarkable tact. The mystery of the Trinity is more than difficult to clearly explain. And, thank God, there is no three-headed lion in Narnia. There are only two hints: once Aslan is called "Son of an overseas emperor" . And another time ("Horse and his boy") Aslan considers it necessary to confirm his consubstantiality with the world he came to save: like the resurrected Christ in the Gospel, Aslan assures the talking animals of Narnia that he is not a ghost: "Touch me, smell me, I, like you - an animal" .

The absence of the miracle of the Eucharist - the main miracle of the Gospel - is also understandable. In the world of Narnia, where there are already too many miracles, church sacraments (and the most important among them - the miracle of Communion with God) would look too ordinary, inevitably reduced to ritual magic.

Reading "Chronicles" It is useful to remember the gospel. But when reading the Gospel, it would be impermissible to remember Aslan instead of Christ. Since this will most likely be the first book about spiritual life for children, they need to be reminded from time to time that in the human, and not the symbolically fairy-tale world, prayer should be directed to the One Who allowed Himself to be called Jesus, and not Aslan.

It is all the more important to avoid this naming confusion because in modern world Religious relativism and syncretism are aggressively advertised. The monster named Tashlan is by no means invented. After all, we are no longer indignant and do not even laugh when some regular TV sorcerer promises to create "synthesis" Christianity and paganism. The last story with Tashlan reminds us that, according to the word of the apostolic sermon, "there is no other name under the sky, given to people by which we should be saved" , except "name of Jesus Christ" (Acts 4:12).

Lewis decided to start a conversation about what is least commonly talked about today in "Christian society" and in "Christian culture" - about the last one. About the end of the world. About Antichrist.

On the very threshold of the 20th century, Vladimir Solovyov recalled that earthly history could not do without this character, and that for years and centuries the work of many "subjects historical process" brings closer the moment when a decisive substitution will take place in the history of Christian mankind - and it will happen almost imperceptibly ... We will soon see how the twentieth century ends, but just in the middle of it appears "Last fight" Lewis. If I would say about the rest of Lewis's tales that one must first read the Gospel (at least in a retelling for children) in order to fully understand them, then about "Last battle" I will say differently: this story should be read before picking up "Apocalypse". In general, for the Christian consciousness it is somehow almost obvious that we live in a world to which the seventh is closest, last book "Chronicle".

The Bible itself ends with the Apocalypse, and the Apocalypse on the verge of human history sees not the Kingdom of Christ here: on earth, in life, in politics, in culture, in relations between people, but the kingdom of Antichrist. Christ, speaking about the signs of His Second Coming, about the signs of the end of history and the end of the world, finds only one consolation for the apostles: yes, it will be hard, but take comfort in the fact that this is the end. It's not for long.

Christianity is probably the only belief system in the world that initially warns about its Not triumph. Earthly history ends not with the establishment of the Kingdom of Christ, but with the establishment of the dominion of the Antichrist. As part of earth history The path of mankind ends not in the Kingdom of Christ, but in the kingdom of Antichrist. This "kingdom" matures in the structures of human history for years, perhaps centuries, in which such a way of life and thought develops that deprives a person of his main and most essential freedom - the freedom of choice: with Christ he or not. For the very concept "life with Christ" ultimately becomes a non-religious symbol and begins to be understood as a purely ethical or even political regulator. To be a Christian means then to be simply "kind person" . In this case, however, as Lewis explains in his book "Just Christianity", word "Christian" simply loses its meaning, becoming an unnecessary double. And then religious life man is no less confused than the religious feelings of unfortunate animals at the sight of "Tashlana" .

It happened in Narnia "Last Confusion" . And it began not with mysterious and sinister conspiracies, but with "too human" misdeeds of a monkey who, at any cost, wanted what we so often and so habitually desire ... Lewis likes to repeat that the surest road to hell lies not through egregious crimes, but through gradual self-mortification human soul through addiction to spiritual petrification.

Of course, Lewis had in mind not only the Revelation of St. John, but also the very specific realities of cultural movements. post-war Europe. For me, the most recognizable and most terrible of all is a terrible ghost "Tashlana" , a fake that stole the name from Aslan and squeezed it into the nickname of the eastern goddess Tash. Khomyakov warned about the coming of this ghost in the last century: "The world has lost faith and wants to have some kind of religion; it demands religion in general" . It is this form "some" religiosity is increasingly asserting itself in today's Russia: people preach on the air every day who are convinced that they managed to cross "spirituality of Orthodoxy" With "spiritual wisdom of the East" . The unwavering confidence of the Soviet "educated" in that every "spirituality" - good, will contribute to the triumph of the cause "Tashlana" ...

Yes, the seventh book chronicle, closest to our life, but also the most difficult for the perception of a modern person. And all the more important in this apocalyptic book is the joy of the gospel. After all, Christ said about the signs of the end: "When all this begins to come true, rise up, for your deliverance is near" .

" Vos bow" , that is, you, now crouched to the ground, tired of the usual God-forsakenness, vos bend down, rise up, rise up.

Christians are now in the habit of praying for a respite of the end. But the Apocalypse and the entire Bible end with the cry: "Hey, come Lord Jesus!" And in the coming of God, the main thing is that He came, and not that which nevertheless collapsed with His coming.

As a man whose creative gift is very much in tune with Lewis said - "Christendom underwent many upheavals, and each of them led to the fact that Christianity was dying. It has died many times and resurrected many times – our Lord knows how to get out of the grave... From time to time the shadow of death touched the immortal Church, and every time the Church would perish if it could perish. Everything that could perish in it perished ... And we also know that a miracle happened - the young believed in God, although the old ones forgot him. When Ibsen said that the new generation was knocking on doors, he could not even think that it was knocking on church doors. Yes, many times - under Aria, under the Albigenses, under the humanists, under Voltaire, under Darwin - faith, of course, went to hell. And every time the devils died" .

What a pity that I did not read these books as a child. And how good it is that these fairy tales still exist in the world and are now included in the circle of all-Russian reading. In conclusion, I would like to appeal to parents: when you open Lewis and read it with the kids - please do not tell them that this is, they say, a fabulous retelling of some more ancient tales. Do not hide the gospel from them - if you dream that you will never have to be afraid of your children. Let's hope that children will still grow up in Russia who know how to carol and pray. Children who know that Gerda entered the guarded castle Snow Queen just by reading "Our Father". Children who consider the temple the brightest and most beautiful part of their home. Children who know what lives inside a person strange creature by name "soul" - what hurts in a person when his whole body is healthy, what can rejoice when all external circumstances induce a person to mourn. Children to whom we will not be afraid to entrust our old age.

The text is taken from the site ORTHODOXY AND THE WORLD http://www.pravmir.ru/

Before writing The Chronicles of Narnia, Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was already quite famous in England. religious writer. Direct Christian allegories are also imbued with his most famous seven-book work to the Russian reader. It is curious that Lewis came to Christianity from almost complete disbelief and at a fairly mature age.

It is known that the formation of Lewis's religiosity was strongly influenced by his friend and classmate at Oxford, J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973). Once Lewis, Tolkien and another friend of theirs were talking about Christianity until late in the evening. About what happened the next day, Lewis himself admitted: “When we went to the zoo, I still did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, but when we got there, I already believed.” True, to the chagrin of the zealous Catholic Tolkien, Lewis became an Anglican, as were his parents.

It is hardly coincidental that the full realization of his faith came to Lewis in the zoo, no matter how strange and even blasphemous such a comparison may seem to someone. This is in direct connection with the role that the writer gave to animals in The Chronicles of Narnia - the role of rational beings. Such a connection can be explained, for example, by the fact that in the behavior of all living beings Lewis saw the beginnings of a spark of God - the soul. It is also possible that Lewis was simply not indifferent to our smaller brothers and wished that at least in the world he invented they would be spared from persecution and cruel suffering, to which many of them are subject in our world ruled by people. It doesn't matter in the end. The paths to God are purely individual, and if the contemplation of the living creatures of the Lord suddenly helped one of the people to realize the main truth of Christianity - what's wrong with that?

The world that occupies a central place in The Chronicles of Narnia is unlike ours in the first place in its animation. I would even say - spirituality. True, another will object - not with spirituality, but with rationality. I do not agree. Is the ability to articulate speech, which many animals in Narnia are endowed with, a sign of the mind, and not the spirit? What is the mind without the spirit - this Lewis emphasizes constantly. Recall that Professor Andrew Ketterley, who did not have the appropriate spiritual attitude, was unable to understand either the song of the Lion or the speech of animals addressed to him. Mind without spirit is nothing, it is a sleeping, barren mind. The spirit that the Creator in the guise of a Lion put into the inhabitants of Narnia at the dawn of time allowed them to perceive the beauty of the universe in its entirety, and from here they already had what a rational person used to call "mind".

Almost as "reasonable" as Professor Ketterley was at first the boy Eustace, nicknamed Byaka. But still not quite. The spell that turned him into a dragon, but did not take away the ability to understand the environment, through suffering helped awaken the dormant spirit in him. When Eustace the dragon regained the ability to empathize, the spell fell at the will of the Lion. And vice versa, the Red cat, who turned out to be on the side of the forces of Evil in the Last Battle, did he lose his mind when he saw the demon Tash? No, he was “just” speechless. And this happened as a logical consequence of the fact that even earlier he killed the spirit in himself, given to him from birth by Leo. Why did he side with Evil? In Narnia, the insignificance of that “reason” that we used to put at the forefront of all our earthly affairs, before the power of the Spirit and its main derivatives - Goodness and Beauty, is clearly expressed.

Lewis constantly ridicules "progressive" trends. Especially full of such satire on modern society the fifth book "Hurrying to Sunrise, or a Campaign to the End of the World". It begins with a mockery of the "new family relationships”: “He called his parents not dad and mom, but Harold and Alberta, and they didn’t mind a bit, because they considered themselves very modern ...” Gradually it turns out that the boy Eustace, brought up by such “modern” parents, turns out to be stuffed with whatever practical information other than the usual human feelings fellowship and understanding of beauty. He has to go through considerable trials and hardships in order for these feelings to awaken in him.

King Caspian, arriving on the Lonely Islands and wishing to exercise his sovereign rights, finds a usurper there, embodying all the tinsel greatness, complacency and conceit of the modern state bureaucracy. “At the far end of the room, surrounded by secretaries, assistants and advisers, sat His sufficiency Gumpas, the governor of the Lonely Islands himself ... Glancing at the newcomers, he again buried himself in his papers and muttered: “Admission only by appointment. Registration in the office. Reception day is the second Saturday of every month. Reception hours are nine to ten.

Usurpers are versed in everything that concerns economic benefits states. Except for one thing - elementary Good.

“... - You met us not in the way you should greet your rightful sovereign. Before you is the King of Narnia.
- I did not receive a written notice on this score, - the governor croaked, - I did not even receive an oral one. Nowhere in the protocols is there any mention of any royal visit. It's not by the rules. I am ready to consider the notice in full form ...
- We arrived without warning, - Caspian did not let him finish. - ...Most of all, we are interested in two questions. The first is this: as we have been able to find out, the Lonely Islands have not paid taxes to the royal treasury for one hundred and fifty years.
“The matter may be brought before the Council next month,” said Gumpas. - If the proposal is supported, we will establish a working commission to study the current situation, which will prepare a report on the status of the financial debt of the Islands for the current year by the first meeting of the next year, after which ...
- The current law says, - the king interrupted his ranting again, - that in case of non-payment of tribute, the debt is reimbursed at the expense of the personal funds of the governor ...
- It must be, Your Majesty deign to joke! .. Such a decision, made without taking into account objective economic conditions! ..
“Secondly,” Caspian continued, “we want to know why you allow an unnatural, shameful slave trade to flourish on the islands, contrary to our primordial customs and laws?”
- It is dictated by economic necessity, - the governor answered. - The branch of trade you indicated underlies our current well-being ... Slaves are the most important article of our export. We carry out large deliveries... Of course, it is not easy for you to grasp the essence of the economic processes taking place in our country like this, on the move. But I have charts and statistical tables…”

What happens next is as it should be in a good fairy tale. The king, without any charts and statistical tables, overthrows the usurper, and with him, his bureaucracy with parliamentarism, and restores justice, law and order. Produces a conservative revolution. Alas, so far this can only be found in fairy tales. The satire of modernity continues in the sixth book, The Silver Chair, in a story about a newfangled education:

“It was an “experimental school of co-education” or, to put it more simply, a “mixed school”, that is, one where boys and girls were “mixed”, not to say “mixed up”, but most of all mixed and confused was in the minds of those who led this experiment. Their main principle was this: let the children do whatever they want. Unfortunately, a dozen or one and a half senior students decided that it was their pleasure to mock others, and all sorts of dirty deeds and deeds that regular school discovered and eradicated in no time, flourished here. Moreover, the perpetrators were not only not expelled from the school, but were not even punished. On the contrary, the headmistress herself with the words “Oh, what an interesting psychological incident!” called them into her office and talked with them sometimes for several hours in a row. And whoever contrived at such an interview also to get along with the authorities became a favorite.

By the way, Lewis was especially sensitive to the issues of proper upbringing and gender relations. In one of his more early works- "The Foulest Power", which completes the trilogy of the so-called "Extraterrestrial Tales", - the greatest evil is done by men who look like women, and women who look like men. But back to Narnia. At the end of The Silver Chair, the heroes, having returned to our world, of course, shamed (with the help of the Lion) the headmistress. “Then the friends of the headmistress realized that the headmistress was not fit to be the headmistress, and arranged for her to be the chief inspector over other directors. When it turned out that she was not capable of that, she was pushed into parliament, where she happily resides to this day "...

Narnia is not the entire Lewis alternate universe, but only one of many parallel, interpenetrating worlds. And not even one the whole world but only one country in one of the worlds. But the country is central. A kind of promised land, where the Creator's plan was most fully embodied. But promised not to a chosen tribe from among people, but to many living creatures. There are few people among them. In Narnia, they are destined to reign if they meet this high destiny. Or, sooner or later, they are vomited out of it, as happened with the Telmarines.

Around Narnia there are big lands, entire Empires (Calormen) inhabited by humans. The writer in rare cases explains how they got there, leaving readers to guess for themselves: either these are the descendants of the very first royal couple that ruled Narnia who fell into barbarism, or, like the Telmarines, people from our world who got into the Narnian Universe at the time . Proximity to Narnia, although not always, has an ennobling effect on people (Archenland).

For a person obsessed with the phenomena of our world, Narnia appears to be nothing more than a dream of children hiding in an old closet and inventing a whole world supposedly located on the other side of the closet. As they grow older, even the eldest of the four children - Susan - loses sensitivity and susceptibility to signals from parallel world, is fond of the temptations of our universe, calls on the brothers and sister to "stop playing childish games." At the end of time, she finds herself outside the true Narnia, reborn after the death of the original Narnia ...

In all acts of cleansing Narnia from evil (especially from the Telmarines at the end of the fourth book "Prince Caspian"), performed by Leo, there is a division of people (and spiritualized animals) into those who are able to accept the grace bestowed by Leo, and those who receive it. rejects and becomes a reject himself. The attainment of the highest good is, in principle, accessible to everyone, as the story of the rescue of the Calormenian Emeph in The Last Battle shows. He carried within himself his high idea of ​​the deity, although he identified (verbally) him with the Calormenian demon Tash, familiar to him from childhood. Thanks to this, he was able to see the noble appearance of the Lion and recognize in him the Creator and Master of the Universe. However, what role did own will Emeph himself, and which one - the Lion's craft, the reader is given a wide scope for independent judgments. The characters in the book are constantly given freedom of choice. But they choose themselves, or the Creator's plan every time predetermines their choice - the book, as if, does not contain a ready answer to this question.

What I'm about to do falls into the category of not the most rewarding pursuits. Translating poetry into prose and discussing “what the artist wanted to say in this way” is too schoolwork. But it is precisely the peculiarities of our school upbringing that compels me to take up the interpretation of the fairy tales of C. S. Lewis from the Chronicles of Narnia cycle, which have already been published in several editions.

Clive Staples Lewis himself (like his compatriots and contemporaries Chesterton and Tolkien) wrote for people who had the opportunity to study the "Law of God" at school. On the one hand, this familiarity with the plots of sacred history allowed them to recognize allusions and hints at a glance. On the other hand, school acquaintance with the Bible too often condoned the strengthening of the worst kind of unbelief - that is, that dry and rational half-faith, which more reliably shields the conscience from the reproaches of the Gospel, the more memorable the biblical texts are.

It is clear that in such a case it is impossible to preach too obtrusively and one must look for an opportunity to testify to the Truth, without in any way evoking the intonation of a school teacher of the law. And so, in order to turn English conservatism not to the conservatism of sin, but to the conservatism of evangelical values, Chesterton writes detective stories about Father Brown. For the same purpose, Lewis writes fairy tales about such a land of Oz, in which at every turn the reader unexpectedly meets something that he did not expect to meet - allusions not to yesterday's parliamentary gossip, but to those sensational events that, it would seem, are hopelessly outdated and have long become of no interest to anyone (for the reason that they took place not in London, but in Palestine, and not even the day before yesterday, but many centuries ago).

In this regard, the Russian reader finds it easier to read the Chronicles: for his perception, the “good news from Jerusalem” is still quite fresh. But on the other hand, it is more difficult: not only children, but even their parents are hardly so familiar with the Gospel as to immediately catch the transparent hints of Lewis and Aslan. The Chronicles of Narnia consists of seven tales. By accident or intentionally, Lewis got this completely biblical number, I don’t know. But just as in the Bible seven days are seven epochs of world history, so in Lewis the whole history of Narnia - from its creation to death - is given in seven episodes.

However, there are no direct borrowings from the Bible in Lewis's tales. Is that - in the habit of calling children "sons of Adam" and "daughters of Eve." The creator's name is not Yahweh and not Christ - Aslan. In the first chronicle ("The Magician's Nephew") Aslan, who appears to children in the guise of a golden shining lion, creates the world. He makes song.

This is how Lewis imagines the creation of the universe: “Far away in the darkness, someone sang. There were no words. There was no melody. It was just a sound, unspeakably beautiful. And then two miracles happened at once. First, a myriad of voices began to echo the voice - no longer thick, but sonorous, silvery, high. Secondly, the darkness was dotted with countless stars... The lion walked up and down the new world and sang a new song. It was softer and more solemn than the one with which he created the stars and the sun, it flowed, and green streams seemed to flow from under his paws. It was growing grass. In a few minutes, it covered the foot of the distant mountains, and the newly created world became more welcoming. Now the wind rustled in the grass. Soon spots of heather appeared on the hills, in the valley - some green dots, brighter and darker. When these points, no, already sticks, appeared at Digory's feet, he saw short spikes on them, which grew very quickly. The sticks themselves also stretched upwards and after a minute or two Digory recognized them - they were trees.

In the 4th century, St. Basil the Great wrote very similarly about the emergence of the world: “Imagine that, according to a small saying, the cold and barren earth suddenly approaches the time of birth, and, as if shedding off her sad and sad clothes, puts on a light robe, rejoices in her decoration and produces thousands of plants.

Both texts assume that the reader is remembering the original Bible verse: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruitful trees. And the earth brought forth…” (Gen. 1:11). There is no Oparinsky dead and meaningless "broth" here, which, in some random catastrophe, spits life out of itself; there is also no motionless, creatively mediocre matter of Plato, which can only suffer in the hands of the Demiurge, but is powerless to do anything on its own. Here is a joyful dialogue: on "Fiat!" (“Let it be!”) The whole world responds to the Creator with a creative effort. In this regard, a modern cosmologist is not averse to talking about “directed evolution” and the “anthropic factor” ...

The church speaks of poetry. This is exactly what God is called in the “Symbol of Faith”: “I believe in the One God the Father, the Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth”… The “Creator” in the original Greek is “Poetos”… Lord, from the four elements the whole creation is composed. And indeed - what else can be done with the “elements”, the name of which nevertheless comes from the Greek verb “stiheo” (to go in rows, conjugate rows; “ranks” - in Slavonic), how not to compose. In contrast to the Russian understanding of “spontaneity”, for the Greek ear, in the “element” one could hear the harmony, harmony and consonance of that “cosmos”, the echo of which reached our “cosmetics”.

So in the next story we are talking already about Redemption: Aslan gives himself up to death "according to the laws of ancient magic", but according to the laws of "even more ancient" magic, he is resurrected and destroys the curse. In the "Chronicles of Narnia" one can also find a direct polemic with atheism, whose arguments are very similarly presented by the Sorceress to drugged children in the Underdark ("Silver Chair"). One can find a very transparent parable about repentance (Aslan ripping off dragon skins from Eustace in The Lord of the Dawn). In the story "The Horse and His Boy" there is a wonderful explanation of how the secrets of Providence are known. The girl (in the happy epilogue) wants to know what the fate of her friend is. “I tell everyone only his story,” she hears from Aslan's answer, cooling her curiosity.

Thus, a limit is placed on one temptation that is very common among religious people. The fact is that the spiritual adulthood of a person is determined by the extent to which he is ready to justify the suffering that has befallen him. But with your understanding (“I will accept what is worthy according to my deeds”), one must be extremely careful to enter someone else’s life. If I say "My illness grew out of my sins" - it will be quite sober. But if I decide to go to a sick neighbor to explain to her that yesterday she broke her leg because she didn’t go to church the day before yesterday, then it’s time to remember Aslan’s warning.

In addition, it is very reminiscent of the incident with St. Anthony the Great: he once asked: “Lord! Why do some people live a little while others live to a ripe old age? Why are some poor and others rich? The answer Antony received was simple: “Antony! take care of yourself!" And the answer that we all received once and for all was given on Calvary: The Creator did not explain evil or justify its inevitability, He simply went to the cross ... From Job to the present day, a person keeps the understanding that the answer to this question cannot be ( and should not) be expressed in words, because this answer is heard not with the ears, but with the heart.

“You are the one who meekly destroys us
What we are building
For us to see the sky
So I'm not complaining."
(Eichendorff)

In general, there is a lot of gospel stuff in Narnia. There is no explicit presence in it of only two gospel mysteries: the Trinity and the Eucharist. The mystery of the Trinity is more than difficult to clearly explain. And, thank God, there is no three-headed lion in Narnia. There are only two hints: once Aslan is called the "Son of the Overseas Emperor." And another time (“The Horse and His Boy”) Aslan considers it necessary to confirm his consubstantiality with the world that he came to save: like the resurrected Christ in the Gospel, Aslan assures the talking animals of Narnia that he is not a ghost: “Touch me, smell, I like you, an animal. The absence of the miracle of the Eucharist - the main miracle of the Gospel - is also understandable, for in fairyland this miracle would look too ordinary.

And finally, Lewis starts talking about what is the least talked about today in "Christian society" and in "Christian culture" - about the end of the world. Christianity is probably the only belief system in the world that predicts its final defeat from the outset. Earthly history ends not with the establishment of the Kingdom of Christ, but with the establishment of the dominion of the Antichrist. On the very threshold of the 20th century, Vladimir Solovyov recalled that earthly history could not do without this character, and that for years and centuries the work of many “subjects of the historical process” has been bringing closer the moment when a decisive substitution will occur in the history of Christian mankind - and it will happen almost imperceptibly...

We shall soon see how the 20th century ends, but just in the middle of it, Lewis's The Last Battle appears. If I would say about the rest of Lewis's tales that one must first read the Gospel (at least in a retelling for children) in order to fully understand them, then I will say differently about The Last Battle - this story should be read before picking up " Apocalypse". Of course, Lewis had in mind not only the Revelation of St. John, but also the very specific realities of the cultural movements of post-war Europe.

For me, the most recognizable and most terrible of all is the terrible ghost of "Tashlan", a fake that stole Aslan's name and squeezed him into the nickname of the eastern goddess Tash. Khomyakov warned about the coming of this ghost back in the last century: “The world has lost its faith and wants to have some kind of religion; he demands religion in general.”

It is this form of "some" religiosity that is increasingly asserting itself in today's Russia: it is difficult to find a school teacher or a journalist who does not declare herself that she has found a way to cross the "spirituality of Orthodoxy" with the "spiritual wisdom of the East." The works of the Roerichs and Blavatsky are the usual perversion of Christianity under the guise of respect for it... From under the lion's skin only occasionally emerges something that is by no means incompatible with either Aslan or Christ: embodied bipeds,” write the great “humanists”.

Christ taught about love for one's neighbor. Nietzsche, one of those who tried on the mask of the Antichrist, spoke of love for the distant… But the unshakable confidence of Soviet “educated people” that any “spirituality” is good will contribute to the triumph of the “Tashlan” cause. We Christians will lose in this world. No one wants to listen to the warnings of the Church that her faith and her prayer are incompatible with the pseudo-religiousness of the Roerichians, psychics, Moonites... Any speech, any attempt to talk about the banality of Roerichism or about historical falsifications, which "pilgrims to the East" do not disdain at every step, draws immediate accusations of "narrowness" and "fanaticism." But efficiency is not the only criterion of life and preaching.

In The Chronicles of Narnia, the rules of Christian ethics were expressed with the utmost clarity by one of the warriors of the Last Battle: “I was with him in his last hour, and he gave me a commission to Your Majesty to remind you that the worlds come to an end, and a noble death is a treasure, and each of us is rich enough to buy it.

In conclusion, I would like to appeal to parents: when you open Lewis and read it with your children, please do not tell them that this is, they say, a fairy tale retelling of some older tales. Please listen, if you dream that you will never have to be afraid of your children.

Deacon Andrei Kuraev.

Subjective notes about the film, the book and its author

In December of the past year, a screening began in Russian cinemas feature film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, directed by Andrew Adamson at Walt Disney Studios. The release of the picture was eagerly awaited: the book by the Englishman Clive Staples Lewis, on which the script was written, is loved by many in Russia. At the same time, it was not without anxiety: what if the filmmakers cannot convey to the viewer the meaning of the Christian fairy tale? But the most important fear was in vain: the film turned out wonderful. A real Christmas present.

From the closet to Narnia and back

"Lion, Witch and Wardrobe"- this is the name of one of the parts of the book by Clive Lewis" The Chronicles of Narnia ", on which the film was made. The director almost in everything followed the author of the fairy tale, in which deep meaning. To understand it, you need to know the content of the story, although retelling the plot is a thankless task. But in short - for those who have not yet had time to read Lewis's book or watch Adamson's film - the story is as follows.

The four Pevensie children - Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy - are sent away from danger, deep into England, to the house of the mysterious Professor Kirk during the bombing of London. Here, the youngest of the family, Lucy, finds an ordinary wardrobe with fur coats in one of the many rooms. Fleeing from the professor's housekeeper, the children hide in it and unexpectedly fall into snowy forest. This is the land of Narnia. The White Witch has been ruling here for a hundred years, which canceled Christmas and keeps all the inhabitants in constant fear. The guilty turn to stone. Everyone in Narnia knows the prophecy that if two "sons of Adam" and two "daughters of Eve" appear in the country, then the curse of the evil sorceress will disappear. Talking animals are eagerly waiting, namely they inhabit Narnia, the arrival of the lion Aslan, who alone can frighten the White Witch. When he appears in a fairyland, Christmas comes, and then the eternal snows begin to melt ...

The four children are the same "sons of Adam" and "daughters of Eve." A variety of adventures await them in Narnia, the help of kind talking animals, a meeting with Aslan and the White Witch... But that's not the main thing. The main thing is the choice between good and evil, life and death, love and betrayal that children make.

Edmund betrays his brother and sisters at the beginning of the story: the Sorceress promises him power and the fulfillment of his cherished desire - to eat at least a piece of magical Turkish delight. With the course of history, the veil falls from his eyes, he returns to his relatives with repentance. But in Narnia there is an ancient spell: the traitor must be put to death by the White Witch. Aslan sacrifices himself: he dies for Edmund at the hands of a villain. However, he, unlike the Sorceress, knows an even more ancient spell: the one who dies innocent for betraying another will rise again and defeat death ...

At the end of the story, the resurrected Aslan helps the Pevensie children defeat the White Witch and, having crowned them to the kingdom in Narnia, leaves. He is "not a tame lion", he has many worries ... And Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy rule happily for several years until they accidentally come across fur coats among the trees in the forest, and then they leave the closet in the professor's house in the old good england...

Doesn't the story of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" remind readers of anything?

The story of Narnia speaks of Christ

"Chronicles" consists of seven parts. In the first, which is called "The Magician's Nephew", Aslan creates the world with a song. In the second, on which the film was made, he sacrifices himself and defeats the White Witch. In the seventh, "The Last Battle", Narnia dies, but continues to live in eternity ... Clive Lewis, writing "The Chronicles of Narnia", allegorically translated the main events of the Bible into the language of literature for children.

On March 5, 1961, he wrote to a small reader: "The whole story of Narnia is about Christ. In other words, I asked myself: 'What if there really was a world like Narnia and happened to our world)? What would happen if Christ came to save that world (as He saved ours)"? These stories serve as my answer. I reasoned that since Narnia is a world of talking animals, He too would become a Talking Animal, just as He became a Man in our world. I have depicted Him as a lion, because: the lion is considered the king of beasts, in the Bible Christ is called "the lion of the tribe of Judah."

The Chronicles of Narnia is written in a very simple and clear language. This is preaching, but not moralizing. All characters are alive and close. The reader, who has never even taken the Gospel in his hands, understands some Christian allusions and motives, because it is clear Whom Lewis portrayed in the image of the lion Aslan...

The Chronicles of Narnia is a kind and wise fairy tale that helps children to love God. As Deacon Andrey Kuraev writes: “Lewis succeeded in what any spiritual writer dreams of: he not only conveys his thoughts about a person’s meeting with God, he awakens in a person’s heart the response of that joy that once visited him or is already knocking at his door” .

Under the Russian cross

A professor of Cambridge, a member of the British Academy of Sciences, a researcher of English literature, Clive Lewis once ardently believed in God and became known as the author of many apologetic books. One distinguishes them characteristic. Being an orthodox Anglican by religion, Lewis, interpreting Christian teaching, says nothing about confessional differences. In particular, in the book "Mere Christianity" he writes: "We must defend Christianity itself - the faith preached by the apostles, witnessed by the martyrs, expressed in the Creed, explained by the Fathers of the Church."

The Orthodox are very fond of the books of Clive Lewis. In England, for example, there are bookstores that sell only Orthodox books, with one exception: Lewis. And although outwardly he has very little connection with Orthodoxy (several times he attended Orthodox services, the whole course of which amazed and surprised him), Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia calls him "anonymous Orthodox."

Clive Lewis knew that God cannot be rationally comprehended. The closest we come to Him is through symbols. That is why the English professor expresses his deepest insights in fairy tales and parables. For him, faith is not so much that we have been convinced by arguments, but that we have made a choice. Lewis writes about this in The Chronicles of Narnia. Close to him is the idea of ​​repentance. In the story "The Treader of the Dawn" (also a Narnian cycle), the bad boy Eustace turns into a dragon. He tries to tear off his dragon skin, but under the first layer there is a second, even more vile one ... Aslan saves Eustace. Man cannot cope with sin without God's help...

Clive Lewis died in 1963. All his close friends attended his funeral, including Nikolai Mikhailovich Zernov, one of the founders of the Russian Christian Movement. His wife, Milica Zernova, brought a cross of white flowers, but she was told that there would be no flowers in the church. The wreath was put on the coffin only in the cemetery... One Englishman later wrote: "Who would have thought? ... Lewis is buried under the Russian cross."

Favorite Book of Actors

One of my acquaintances watched the film three times during the screening of The Chronicles of Narnia in the cinema. He brought his acquaintances with children, godchildren, to the screenings. And every time I asked them: "What do you think about "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"?". The answer was one: "The film is a love story."

What is the secret to the success of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? Maybe it's because for the majority of actors who played wonderfully, The Chronicles of Narnia is one of the most important books of childhood.

Surprisingly, but true: those who watched the film on pirated copies could not fully appreciate it. Reviews of such viewers were frankly negative. The Chronicles of Narnia should be seen at least once on the big screen or in good quality. Only in this way will the truth of this film be seen, but first the truth of the Love story written by Lewis.

What I'm about to do falls into the category of not the most rewarding pursuits. Translating poetry into prose and discussing “what the artist wanted to say in this way” is too schoolwork.

But it is precisely the peculiarities of our school upbringing that compels me to take up the interpretation of the fairy tales of C. S. Lewis from the Chronicles of Narnia cycle, which have already been published in several editions.

Clive Staples Lewis himself (like his compatriots and contemporaries Chesterton and Tolkien) wrote for people who had the opportunity to study the "Law of God" at school. On the one hand, this familiarity with the plots of sacred history allowed them to recognize allusions and hints at a glance. On the other hand, school acquaintance with the Bible too often condoned the strengthening of the worst kind of unbelief - that is, that dry and rational half-faith, which more reliably shields the conscience from the reproaches of the Gospel, the more firmly it memorized the biblical texts.

It is clear that in such a case it is impossible to preach too obtrusively and one must look for an opportunity to testify to the Truth, without in any way evoking the intonation of a school teacher of the law. And so, in order to turn English conservatism not to the conservatism of sin, but to the conservatism of evangelical values, Chesterton writes detective stories about Father Brown, and Tolkien writes stories about hobbits. For the same purpose, Lewis writes fairy tales about such a land of Oz, in which at every step the reader unexpectedly meets something that he did not expect to meet - allusions not to yesterday's parliamentary gossip, but to those sensational events that, it would seem, are hopelessly outdated and long ago. became of no interest to anyone (for the reason that they did not take place in London, but in Palestine, and not even the day before yesterday, but many centuries ago).

In these books, written by an Englishman and a Protestant, we, Russians and Orthodox, need most of all. It's not just that Christian literature for children has practically disappeared in our country. More importantly, these tales fill an empty niche in the temple of Orthodox culture.

Our tradition of preaching and spiritual education has always been didactic and instructive. But a person sometimes becomes painful from the abundance of strict and cleverly self-confident teachings. He sometimes really needs to just sit next to him and keep quiet about something. Or joked, or talked as an equal.

Lewis's books are effective in that they do not immediately betray their secret: they preach without instructing. The reader first falls in love with the author, with the world of his thoughts and heroes, and only then begins to guess where the light that fills the entire volume of Lewisland comes from. They are written with love about the Book of Love - about the Gospel.

Lewis succeeded in what any spiritual writer dreams of: he not only conveys his thoughts about a person’s meeting with God, he awakens in a person’s heart the response of that Joy that once visited him or is already knocking at him. That Christian “midwifey art”, which plucks prayer from the soul of a person. And this is the highest success of a theological book if, in the course of reading it, the faceless “He” of theology is replaced by the living “You” of prayer.

This book was written in a society where it is customary to be a Christian. And it was written so that a person would fall in love with what he had previously only believed in.

In this regard, the Russian reader is easier to read the "Chronicles": for his perception of the "good news from Jerusalem" is still quite fresh. On the other hand, it is more difficult: not only children, but even their parents are hardly so familiar with the Gospel as to immediately catch the transparent hints of Lewis and Aslan.

Today it is not difficult for us to explain to an unbelieving person what are the grounds for religious conviction in the Existence of God and Christ. But it is extremely difficult to "force to understand" the connection between the distant supracosmic God and a small private human existence. “Yes, let it be, but what is it to me ?!” - this is the question on which the most brilliant sermons and the most logical and profound theological lectures crash.

Lewis's answer to this question is tangible: living with God is joyful and difficult. To live without Him is, in the end, also difficult, but also gray, as hell is gray and hopelessly stable in its isolation in the fairy tale “Dissolution of Marriage”.

It is difficult to live according to the commands of Aslan, because He is “not a tame Lion”. It cannot be used as a guarantor or guardian of your home well-being. His friendship and help cannot be bribed. One cannot have false hopes for His help, which would abolish the active action of the person himself. He comes when he wants; and yet desires to be called.

The meeting with God is still difficult, because one cannot leave it unchanged. Aslan can breathe gently, or he can hurt. We all walk in the skins of the Dragon - and until we take it off ourselves (the Apostle Paul calls it “taking off the old man”), we will not understand the Intention that the Creator has about us.

But in addition to our “natural” ossification, there are also cultural shells that steal the Sky from us. How, for example, to look Aslan in the eye and think about “human rights”? Rights - before Him?.. This was already once in human history - in the days of Job. Lewis also reminds us of what the ancient sufferer and God-seeker understood then. And the great prophets of old remind us that God has no obligations. Everything is a gift to Him. And Aslan also reminds about it, sending children to the country of the sorceress.

The Chronicles of Narnia consists of seven tales. By accident or intentionally, Lewis got this completely biblical number - I don’t know. But just as in the Bible seven days are seven epochs of world history, so in Lewis the whole history of Narnia - from its creation to death - is given in seven episodes.

However, there are no direct borrowings from the Bible in Lewis's tales. Is that - in the habit of calling children "sons of Adam" and "daughters of Eve."

The creator's name is Aslan, not Yahweh or Christ. In the first chronicle (“The Magician's Nephew”), Aslan, who appears to children in the form of a golden shining lion, creates the world.

He makes song. This is how Lewis imagines the creation of the universe: “Far away in the darkness, someone sang. There were no words. There was no melody. It was just a sound, unspeakably beautiful. And then two miracles happened at once. Firstly, a myriad of voices began to echo the voice - no longer thick, but sonorous, silvery, high. Secondly, the darkness was dotted with countless stars... The lion walked up and down the new world and sang a new song. It was softer and more solemn than the one with which he created the stars and the sun, it flowed, and green streams seemed to flow from under his paws. It was growing grass. In a few minutes, it covered the foot of the distant mountains, and the newly created world became more welcoming. Now the wind rustled in the grass. Soon patches of heather appeared on the hills, in the valley - some green dots, brighter and darker. When these dots - no, already sticks - appeared at Digory's feet, he saw short spikes on them, which grew very quickly. The sticks themselves also stretched upwards and after a minute or two Digory recognized them - they were trees.

In the 4th century, St. Basil the Great wrote very similarly about the origin of the world: “Imagine that, according to a small saying, the cold and barren earth suddenly approaches the time of birth, and, as if throwing off sad and sad clothes, puts on a bright robe, rejoices in its decoration and produces thousands of plants.”

Both texts assume that the reader is remembering the original Bible verse: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruitful trees. And the earth brought forth…” (Gen. 1:11).

There is no Oparinsky dead and meaningless “broth” here, which in some random catastrophe spits out life from itself; there is also no motionless, creatively mediocre matter of Plato, which can only suffer in the hands of the Demiurge, but is powerless to do anything on its own. Here is a joyful dialogue: on “Fiat!” (“Let there be!”) The whole world responds to the Creator with a creative effort.

In this regard, a modern cosmologist is not averse to talking about “directed evolution” and the “anthropic factor” ...

The church speaks of poetry. This is exactly what God is called in the “Symbol of Faith”: “I believe in the One God the Father, the Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth”… The “Creator” in the original Greek is “Poetos”… Lord, from the four elements you composed the whole creation. And indeed - what else can be done with the “elements”, the naming of which nevertheless comes from the Greek verb “stiheo” (to go in rows, conjugate rows; “ranks” - in Slavonic), how not to compose. In contrast to the Russian understanding of “spontaneity”, for the Greek ear, in the “element” one could hear the harmony, harmony and consonance of that “cosmos”, the echo of which reached our “cosmetics”.

Just because The Chronicles of Narnia doesn't explain the origins of evil doesn't mean they put up with it. Christian thought does not explain the source of evil precisely for this reason, in order to make it easier to fight evil. Indeed, by virtue of our ineradicable philosophical habit, it seems to us that "explain" means "understand", and "understand" means "accept". If I found the cause of some event, then I thereby came to the conclusion that it could not have happened. No, it is not in “causes and effects”, not in the laws of “karma” or in the “dialectic of unity” that evil is rooted. It is in the mystery of freedom. Not in the secret-mystical and huge "laws of the universe", but in our, seemingly so small, freedom. It was man who once let the cold into the universe, warmed by the breath of the Creator. And for us, accustomed to the cold, the same Love's breath now seems too burning, too painful.

We have grown in our freedom. It was death that the forces of magic wanted to separate us from God. But the Creator of life Himself entered the space of death. And now through death we can see the face of the Conqueror of death.

So, in the next tale we are talking about Redemption: Aslan gives himself to death "according to the laws of ancient magic." But according to the laws of “even more ancient” magic, it resurrects and destroys the curse.

God always requires people to change. And one day, to make it easier for them to do this, He Himself sacrificed His love for people - not only in order to give them an example, but also in order to truly redeem them and rescue them from the power of “ancient spells” and connect with Himself to give them participation in His own Life, in His own Love. But for this, all the more, a person must become what he has not been before.

The gospel basis of The Chronicles of Narnia is obvious. In them, one can also find direct polemics with atheism, whose arguments are very similarly presented by the Sorceress to drugged children in the Underdark (“Silver Chair”). And you can find a very transparent parable about repentance (Aslan ripping off dragon skins from Eustace in The Lord of the Dawn).

But that is why it is so important to point out the Old Testament origins of the traits that Lewis gives to Aslan. In modern Protestantism (and, more broadly, in the modern Western style of spirituality), “friend Jesus” has supplanted the formidable Yahweh. But evangelical love does not cancel the love of the Old Testament. The God of the prophets loves people - and therefore is demanding of them: demanding, because he is not indifferent (Lewis wrote about this in the book "Suffering").

The moral vision of a person is somewhat like the eye of a frog. Just as she sees only what is moving and does not notice motionless objects, so a person, while resting in place, does not distinguish the vector along which his life should rush. But having made a spiritual effort, denying himself something for the sake of his neighbor, having once done good, having suffered, he becomes sharper.

I hope it is permissible to explain this idea not on Lewisian material - after all, many parents and teachers who will read this book to children will themselves know a little more about Christianity than their children. So one of the wonderful Christian preachers, Vladimir Martsinkovsky, who lived a generation earlier than Lewis, in his work “The Meaning of Life” tells the story of a rich young Parisian who, fed up with life, came to the Seine embankment ... And already before the last step, he suddenly remembered that in his pocket he has a purse with money that he will no longer need. And he had an idea - to give this money to some poor man. He walks down the street and finds people living in great need. The young man gives them all his money. And suddenly a joy greater than that of these poor people bursts into his heart. The secret of life, which he tried to subtract or eavesdrop, itself lit up in his soul.

So it seems to the “bad boy” Eustace that he is accidentally, senselessly, almost out of spite thrown into the world of Narnia. And only through grief, repentance and the first attempts to take care of others does he understand that he is not doomed to life, but life has been given to him. Understanding that, according to the laws of Narnia, you can only die alone, but you can only survive together.

In the story “The Horse and His Boy” there is a wonderful explanation of how the secrets of Providence are known. The girl (in the happy epilogue) wants to know what the fate of her friend is. “I tell everyone only his story,” she hears from Aslan's answer, cooling her curiosity.

Thus, a limit is placed on one temptation that is very common among religious people. The fact is that the spiritual adulthood of a person is determined by the extent to which he is ready to justify the suffering that has befallen him. But with your understanding (“I will accept what is worthy according to my deeds”), one must be extremely careful to enter someone else's life. If I say: "My illness grew out of my sins" - it will be quite sober. But if I decide to go to a sick neighbor to explain to her that yesterday she broke her leg because she didn’t go to church the day before yesterday, then it’s time to remember Aslan’s warning. In addition, it is very reminiscent of what happened to St. Anthony the Great: he once asked: “Lord! Why do some people live a little while others live to a ripe old age? Why are some poor and others rich? The answer Antony received was simple: “Antony! take care of yourself!” And the answer that we all received once and for all was given at Golgotha: The Creator did not explain evil or justify its inevitability, He simply went to the cross...

From Job to the present day, a person keeps the understanding that the answer to this question cannot (and should not) be expressed in words, because this answer is heard not with the ears, but with the heart.

“You are the one who meekly destroys us
What we are building
For us to see the sky
Therefore, I do not complain. ”(Eichendorff).

In the world of Christian thought, suffering and joy, life and death are not absolutely opposed to each other. I beg your pardon for the shocking wording, but in its depths Christianity really insists on the inevitability of suicide: a person should not live for himself, he is called to give himself. “Truly, truly, I say to you, if a grain of wheat, falling into the ground, does not die, it will remain alone; and if he dies, he will bear much fruit. He who loves his soul will destroy it; but he who hates his soul will keep it in this world for eternal life” (John 12:24-25).

Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said that in the Gulag there is only one way to survive, namely to give up any hope of saving yourself. Only in this way, having buried himself, can a person leave the camp as a person. Another example from secular literature is Pasternak's lines:

Life is also just a moment
Only the dissolution of ourselves
In all other
How would they give a gift ...
Like a man came out
And he carried out and opened the ark,
And gave everything to the thread ...

Love, which, in the words of the Apostle, is “not one's own”, also brings the center of a person's aspirations, worries and hopes out of him. Christian love is giving, not consuming: the cross always shines through in its depths.

In the spiritual world, the “inverted perspective” of icon painting speaks of the same. A person must renounce egocentrism, the habit of measuring everything according to himself, he must place his life center outside himself. And then he will not consider a certain value as part of his life, but will begin to think of himself as belonging to and serving the Highest Value. And then he will be afraid not for himself, but for his fidelity to the Truth. And, as the Scripture says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also… Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth… Grow rich in God.”

The only way to truly survive is through sacrifice. Only what we give away remains ours forever ... Tsvetaeva called this the “law of grain”:

Soldiers! One step to heaven
By the law of grain - into the ground!

If a person acts in accordance with this Law of God, the words of Christ will come true over him, and he "will never see death." The word "assumption" in all Christian languages ​​is the antonym of death. Death is just a door (well, yes, the same door from the last Chronicle). But going out through it, you can find yourself “on the right” or “on the left”.

And here I have to apologize for the risky comparison a second time. Christianity lives on high speculation. Costs and profits are clearly of different orders. A small “mite” can turn into the acquisition of such a treasure that the whole world is not worth ...

There is no death - everyone knows that.
It was boring to repeat it.
And what is - let them tell me ...

And there is Easter. And there are few books in the world, even of Christian culture, which would be so permeated with Easter light as the books of Lewis. Their meaning is in the affirmation of what deserves life and will live because what cannot die will not die. And if life is more perfect than death, then death must be conquered. The vocation of a person is “to find his eternity”, and therefore, “to understand a person means to understand his attitude towards God” (B.P. Vysheslavtsev).

How children need this Easter! For them, what adults then cease to understand is obvious: a person can leave, but he cannot disappear.

And it is quite easy for children to understand that the result of human life is not summed up physiologically (by a broken blood vessel in the brain or cardiac arrest), but morally. Life does not end, it is fulfilled. And man, unlike animals, as a spiritual, moral and responsible being, must also give a moral answer about what his life was the fulfillment of, whether he fulfilled the Law in temporal life, without which it is impossible to live in Eternity.

Man was created for eternity. A person cannot enter it without an invitation and help. The Creator does not just open the Door for us: He Himself becomes one of us and pays the maximum price to give us the freedom to be sons of God, and not sons of sin and tributaries of death. He brought us a gift. The gift must also be accepted. The objectively accomplished “for the sake of man and ours for the sake of salvation” must also be made its inner, subjective reality in the act of choosing faith, Communion. And God, who came into the world to people, calls us not to escape from the world, but to fulfill our human duty in the world of people. Christ does not allow the apostles to stay on Tabor. Aslan helps so that people can continue their further struggle. The heart that loves God, but does not love and has no mercy on the world and people created by God, has not understood the breadth of God's commandment. What is accepted and then given to people and God does not disappear, is not taken away. In the world where we came from and where we will go, every drop of local goodness responds with an incommensurably greater cup of joy. But every grief that we have caused prepares for us the coming bitterness.

Such is the Law. And this Law is not opposed to mercy. He took it into himself and speaks of her: “judgment is without mercy to those who have not shown mercy.”

Lewis' amazing books are about this Law. About him, and only about him. And therefore I simply implore readers: do not spoil this book! Do not squeeze it into the world of school rules, where, according to N. Trubnikov, "with the help of well-fitted private truths, a general lie is so easily formed." Don't pretend it's just a fairy tale. Do not hide from yourself and from the children the gospel basis and atmosphere of these fairy tales. And it would be quite sad if children began to explain this connection in such a spirit that, they say, one, more ancient tale formed the basis of another. And Lewis invented his own fairy tales, just like Matthew once did, and Moses before him ... And the Lion is just a cat enlarged by the imagination, and the Sun is a light bulb projected onto the sky. And there is no world but the Underdark. And there is no Easter. And there was no Christmas.

But I don't want to think about this sad possibility.

The Chronicles of Narnia is, of course, not a catechism. They were written for people who studied (or are studying) catechism in school. Therefore, by no means all the principles of Christianity found their allegory in these tales.

In general, there is a lot of gospel stuff in Narnia. There is no explicit presence in it of only two gospel mysteries: the Trinity and the Eucharist. In my opinion, it was Lewis's remarkable tact. The mystery of the Trinity is more than difficult to clearly explain. And, thank God, there is no three-headed lion in Narnia. There are only two hints: once Aslan is called "Son of the Overseas Emperor". And another time (“The Horse and His Boy”) Aslan considers it necessary to confirm his consubstantiality with the world that he came to save: like the resurrected Christ in the Gospel, Aslan assures the talking animals of Narnia that he is not a ghost: “Touch me, smell, I just like you are an animal.”

The absence of the miracle of the Eucharist - the main miracle of the Gospel - is also understandable. In the world of Narnia, where there are already too many miracles, church sacraments (and the most important among them - the miracle of Communion with God) would look too ordinary, inevitably reduced to ritual magic.

Reading the Chronicles, it is useful to remember the Gospel. But when reading the Gospel, it would be impermissible to remember Aslan instead of Christ. Since for children this will most likely be the first book about spiritual life, they must be reminded from time to time that in the human, and not the symbolic fairy-tale world, prayer should be directed to the One Who allowed Himself to be called Jesus, and not Aslan.

It is all the more important to avoid this naming confusion, since religious relativism and syncretism are being persistently advertised in the modern world. The monster named Tashlan is by no means invented. After all, we are no longer indignant and do not even laugh when some regular TV sorcerer promises us to create a “synthesis” of Christianity and paganism. The last story with Tashlan reminds us that, according to the apostolic sermon, “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” than “the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 4:12).

Lewis ventured to talk about what is the least talked about today in "Christian society" and in "Christian culture" - the latter. About the end of the world. About Antichrist.

On the very threshold of the 20th century, Vladimir Solovyov recalled that earthly history could not do without this character, and that for years and centuries the work of many “subjects of the historical process” has been bringing closer the moment when a decisive substitution will occur in the history of Christian mankind - and it will happen already. almost imperceptibly... How the twentieth century will end - we will soon see, but just in the middle of it, Lewis's "Last Battle" appears. If I would say about the rest of Lewis's tales that one must first read the Gospel (at least in a retelling for children) in order to fully understand them, then I will say differently about The Last Battle: this story should have been read before picking it up. Apocalypse". In general, for the Christian consciousness it is somehow almost obvious that we live in a world to which the seventh and last book of the Chronicles is closest.

The Bible itself ends with the Apocalypse, and the Apocalypse on the verge of human history sees not the Kingdom of Christ here: on earth, in life, in politics, in culture, in relations between people, but the Kingdom of the Antichrist. Christ, speaking about the signs of His Second Coming, about the signs of the end of history and the end of the world, finds only one consolation for the apostles: yes, it will be hard, but take comfort in the fact that this is the end. It's not for long.

Christianity is probably the only belief system in the world that initially warns of its non-triumph. Earthly history ends not with the establishment of the Kingdom of Christ, but with the establishment of the dominion of the Antichrist. Within the framework of earthly history, the path of mankind ends not in the Kingdom of Christ, but in the kingdom of Antichrist. This “kingdom” matures in the structures of human history for years, perhaps centuries, in which such a way of life and thought takes shape that deprives a person of his main and most vital freedom - the freedom to choose whether he is with Christ or not. For the very notion of “life with Christ” ultimately becomes a non-religious symbol and begins to be understood as a purely ethical or even political regulator. To be a Christian means then to be simply a "good man." In this case, however, as Lewis explains in Mere Christianity, the word "Christian" simply loses its meaning, becoming an unnecessary double. And then the religious life of a person is no less confused than the religious feelings of unfortunate animals at the sight of "Tashlan".

It was in Narnia that the “final confusion” took place. And it began not with mysterious and sinister conspiracies, but with the “too human” misdeeds of a monkey who, at any cost, wanted what we so often and so habitually desire ... Lewis likes to repeat that the surest road to hell does not lie through egregious crimes but through the gradual self-mortification of the human soul, through getting used to spiritual petrification.

Of course, Lewis had in mind not only the Revelation of St. John, but also the very specific realities of the cultural movements of post-war Europe. For me, the most recognizable and most terrible of all is the terrible ghost of “Tashlan”, a fake that stole Aslan's name and squeezed him into the nickname of the eastern goddess Tash. Khomyakov warned about the coming of this ghost back in the last century: “The world has lost faith and wants to have some kind of religion; he demands religion in general.” It is this form of “some kind of” religiosity that is increasingly asserting itself in today’s Russia: people preach on the air every day who are convinced that they have managed to cross the “spirituality of Orthodoxy” with the “spiritual wisdom of the East.” The unshakable confidence of Soviet “educated people” that any “spirituality” is good will contribute to the triumph of the “Tashlan” cause ...

Yes, the seventh book of the Chronicles is closest to our life, but it is also the most difficult for a modern person to perceive. And all the more important in this apocalyptic book is the joy of the gospel. After all, Christ said about the signs of the end: “When all this begins to come true, rise up, for your deliverance is near.”

“Bow down,” that is, you, who are now bowed down to the ground, tired of the usual God-forsakenness, rise up, rise up, rise up.

Christians are now in the habit of praying for a respite of the end. But the Apocalypse and the entire Bible end with the cry: “Yes, come, Lord Jesus!” And in the coming of God, the main thing is that He came, and not that which nevertheless collapsed with His coming.

In the words of a man whose creative gift is very much in tune with Lewis's, “Christendom has undergone many upheavals, and each of them led to the fact that Christianity was dying. It died many times and rose again many times – our Lord knows how to get out of the grave… From time to time the shadow of death touched the immortal Church, and every time the Church would perish if it could perish. Everything that could perish in it perished ... And we also know that a miracle happened - the young believed in God, although the old ones forgot him. When Ibsen said that the new generation was knocking on doors, he could not even think that it was knocking on church doors. Yes, many times - under Aria, under the Albigenses, under the humanists, under Voltaire, under Darwin - faith, of course, went to hell. And every time the devils perished.”

What a pity that I did not read these books as a child. And how good it is that these fairy tales still exist in the world and are now included in the circle of all-Russian reading. In conclusion, I would like to appeal to parents: when you open Lewis and read it with the kids - please do not tell them that this is, they say, a fabulous retelling of some more ancient tales. Do not hide the gospel from them - if you dream that you will never have to be afraid of your children. Let's hope that children will still grow up in Russia who know how to carol and pray. Children who know that Gerda entered the guarded castle of the Snow Queen only after reading the Lord's Prayer. Children who consider the temple the brightest and most beautiful part of their home. Children who know that a strange creature lives inside a person called “soul” - that which hurts in a person when his whole body is healthy, which can rejoice when all external circumstances induce a person to mourn. Children to whom we will not be afraid to entrust our old age.