What is an eternal image in literature? System of images, “eternal themes”, “eternal images. See what “eternal images” are in other dictionaries
“Eternal images” in literature and their Russian reflections
R. G. Nazirov
1. Prometheus. The greatest cultural hero.
2. Oedipus (and the Sphinx). Prohibition of incest. - Drama of the Atrids.
3. Pygmalion. The victory of art over matter.
4. Orpheus. The tragedy of creativity.
5. Odysseus. Celebrating adventurism.
6. Elena. Fatal beauty or wisdom of the flesh.
7. Phaedra. (near Phryne). - Additions: Polycrates of Samos.
8. Moses. The myth of the great chosen one.
9. David and Solomon.
10. Herod, Herodias, John the Baptist.
11. Virgin Mary. Heroic mother.
12. Jesus Christ. God-man. Self-sacrifice for people.
13. Mary Magdalene. A repentant sinner. + Mary of Egypt.
14. Holy Grail. Lancelot and Fata Morgana.
15. Agasphere. The myth of the eternal wanderer.
16. Paolo and Francesca. Love is stronger than death.
17. Faust. A deal with the devil, or the demonism of science.
18. Don Juan. Eternal seeker of youth. + Celestina.
19. The Pied Piper of Gammeln.
20. Miser.
21. Hamlet. The executor of personal justice.
22. Don Quixote.
23. Tartuffe! -24. Golem - Before Frankenstein. -! + Robur.
25. Cinderella (+ types of Perrault's fairy tales).
26. Flying Dutchman (+ White Lady). + Ghost groom.
27. Melmoth.
28. Quasimodo.? 29. Bronze Horseman.
30. Tragic jester.
31. King Plague, or the poetry of universal destruction.
32. Achilles, THE INVINCIBLE HERO.
33. Mermaids. Sirens. Melusina. Undine.? 34. Madame Bovary.? 35. Noble robber.
36. Prisoner. Famous prisoners.
37. Perseus and St. Georgy. + Cadm.
38. Dragons.
40. Mephistopheles.
41. Golden age.
42. Vampire.
Topics: Orestes, Hamlet and Raskolnikov.
What are “eternal images”? These are literary images of folklore and mythological origin, which, due to their enormous typicality, are artistic generalizations on a huge scale, a common treasure of art. Their mythological origins ensure their immortality. They can move from country to country, from one national literature to another, since myth is by its nature universal to humanity (myth is a universal stage of culture through which any people passes; myth is necessarily eliminated in all areas of culture except religion and art).
In European culture, the eternal images are Ahasfer, Don Juan, the Flying Dutchman, Faust (and Pan Twardowski), Golem (and Frankenstein), Melmoth, the Miser (Sheilock, Harpagon), Prometheus, Circe, the Noble Robber, Pygmalion (the artist, conquering nature), as well as wizards (the myth of science), avengers, arbiters of justice...
Maybe this is not all, and I will add more.
Oedipus. Sphinx. Ulysses. Orpheus. Helen of Troy.
Cain. Judas. Moses. Herod (Herodias).
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
Christ and the Penitent Magdalene. Cinderella.
Haroun al Rashid. Thief of Baghdad (caliph for an hour).
A clever slave (servant of two masters).
The Pied Piper of Gammeln. Panurge. Paolo and Francesca.
Joseph the Beautiful.
King Plague. See plague in encyclopedias, Edgar Allan Poe, Miscavige.
1. Prometheus (in old Rus' - Promi^ey).
Literally this name means "seer". This was the name of the titan who entered into a fight with Zeus. Having stolen fire from the home of the gods, Prometheus brought it to people. Already Hesiod in “Works and Days” depicted Prometheus as a friend of people, cruelly punished by Zeus: he was chained to a rock, and an eagle flew every day to peck his liver. All elements of this myth have numerous correspondences in the mythological systems of different peoples and go back to ancient times. The comparative historical school considered the birthplace of the world
fa about Prometheus Caucasus, where there were many legends about titans chained to mountains. [The motive of stealing fire is more ancient than obtaining it by friction].
The image of Prometheus, who accepted torment in order to save people from the tyranny of Zeus, was created in the tragedy of Aeschylus. His Prometheus is not only the thief of heavenly fire, but also the mentor of people, who taught them crafts, agriculture, navigation, writing, counting, arts and the domestication of animals. The ancient myth about the struggle of man with the forces of nature gave birth to Prometheus, the creator of culture. It is a profound fact that the creator of culture is also a hero of freedom. Culture is the key to human freedom: this is the rational meaning of the myth1.
Ovid in the Metamorphoses showed Prometheus as the protector of man, creating statues of people “like gods”; the fire he stole brought these statues to life. [Images coming to life]2. At the center of Goethe's unfinished drama Prometheus (1773) is the proud rebel and individualist Prometheus, a hero in the spirit of Sturm und Drang.
Belief in the ultimate triumph of the heroic will distinguishes Byron's Prometheus (1816); Byron calls him "the prophet of goodness."
In Shelley’s drama “Prometheus unbound” (1820), Prometheus, unlike Aeschylus’s, does not reconcile with Zeus after his release.
“Prometids” are romantic heroes, fighters for the freedom of mankind.
In Russia: Ogarev, poetry. “Prometheus” (1841) is an image of a lover of humanity, a call to heroism.
Vyacheslav Ivanov’s poem “Prometheus” (1919) - here the titan is depicted as a rebel, rightly punished for trying to help “despicable humanity.”
1. A. Veselovsky. Sketches and Characteristics, 3rd ed., M., 1907.
2. I. M. Nusikov. The history of a literary hero, M., 1958.
3. E. M. Meletinsky. Ancestors of Prometheus (“Cultural hero in myth and epic”). Bulletin of the History of World Culture, 1958, No. 3.
4. S. Markish. The Myth of Prometheus, M., 1967.
5. L. Zhukovsky. Prometheus, a friend of humanity, almanac “Prometheus”, 1969, No. 7.
2. Oedipus and the Sphinx.3
Oedipus (Oidipus) is a Theban hero, the son of Laius and Jocasta (option: Epicasta). Oedipus' father was predicted to be killed by his own son. When Oedipus was born, Laius pierced his feet (“Oedipus” means “plump-footed,” with swollen feet) and ordered a slave to throw the child in the desert mountains to be devoured by animals. The slave, taking pity on the boy, gave him to the shepherd of the Corinthian king Polybus (according to a more ancient version, Oedipus was abandoned by his father
1 See the finale of “The Formation of Myths...”
2See Nazirov’s theme of images and statues coming to life: The plot of a statue coming to life // Folklore of the peoples of the RSFSR. Vol. 18. Ufa, 1991. pp. 24-37.
3Next to the title there is an inscription in different ink, with a discharge: “Incest.”
into the sea, but escaped and was adopted by the Sikyon king). The motive for the miraculous salvation of the “child” (see also Moses).4
Oedipus grew up believing that he was the son of King Polybus. As a young man, he received a prediction from the Delphic Oracle that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Frightened by the prediction, Oedipus decided to leave Polybus and his wife Merope forever and went to wander. At a crossroads he met Laius and, having entered into an argument with him, killed him and all his companions, with the exception of one, who managed to escape.
Oedipus came to Thebes, which was suffering from the Sphinx, who asked the travelers going to the city a riddle and devoured them, since they could not guess it. Oedipus was the first to solve the riddle of the Sphinx and free the inhabitants from the monster. The grateful Thebans chose Oedipus as king and gave him Laius' widow Jocasta as his wife. From this marriage were born sons Eteocles and Polynices and daughters Antigone and Ismene (option: all children were born by Oedipus’s second wife).
After many years of Oedipus's prosperous reign, famine and plague began in Thebes. The Delphic oracle predicted that these disasters would end when the murderer of King Laius was driven out. Oedipus began to energetically search for the criminal. Having found the only surviving companion of Laius, he learned that he himself was the killer. The only witness to the crime turned out to be a slave who had once handed over the doomed baby to the shepherd Polybus. Now Oedipus learned that the prediction had come true, that he was a parricide and the husband of his mother. Oedipus blinded himself, and Queen Jocasta committed suicide.
There are various legends about the end of Oedipus' life. The most ancient myth tells that blind Oedipus remained Thebes until his death. Later myths speak of the expulsion of Oedipus by his sons. Leaving Thebes, Oedipus cursed his sons, and his father’s curse became the cause of their strife and death. According to another version, the cause of the death of Eteocles and Polyneices was the possession of the necklace of Harmony. Athenian tradition called Colon (a suburb of Athens) the place of the last settlement and death of Oedipus.
The myth of Oedipus is a variant of a legend widespread among many peoples about a child who brings misfortune. The punishment that befell Oedipus reflected the prohibition of marital relations between parents and children, dating back to ancient times. Prohibition of incest = foundation of a family. It was a worldwide revolution.
It is possible that Oedipus was a pre-Greek deity, because. in southern and central Greece, remains of the cult of Oedipus have been preserved.
The myth of Oedipus was brilliantly developed by Sophocles in the tragedies “Oedipus the King”, “Oedipus at Colonus”, later by Seneca, and in modern times by Corneille, Voltaire, Shelley and others - Igor Stravinsky wrote the oratorio “Oedipus”. Sigmund Freud declared the “Oedipus complex” to be the core of the human psyche.
Allegorically, Oedipus means a wise, insightful person. Pushkin in the poem “Who grew Theocritus’s tender roses in the snow?” says: “Here is my riddle: cunning Oedipus, solve it!” - this is connected with a side motif of the myth, with the motif of the Sphinx.
4Sm. See also the corresponding article by Nazirov Child in a basket and signs of the chosen ones. Experience in reconstructing the ethnographic substrate of myths // Nazi archive. 2016. No. 4. P. 11-27.
The Sphinx (Greek strangler) is a winged monster with a lion's body and the head of a woman, the offspring of Typhon and Echidna (or the Chimera and the dog Ortra). The Sphinx lived on a rock near Thebes and killed travelers who could not answer his riddle: “What walks in the morning on four legs, at noon on two, and in the evening on three?” - Oedipus solved the riddle: this is a person in childhood, maturity and old age (two legs and a stick). The Sphinx threw himself from a cliff, and according to another version, he was killed by Oedipus.
The image of the Sphinx was borrowed by the Greeks from ancient Egypt (where it was depicted without wings).
“For these smart eyes and mysterious smile, she was nicknamed the sphinx” (Goncharov, “Literary Evening”).
Addition: Drama of the Atrids, myth of ancestral revenge.
The origin of the drama is the myth of the struggle between the brothers Thyestes and Atreus (king of Mycenae). Thyestes seduced his brother's wife Eropa and, with her help, tried to achieve the throne. Zeus revealed the intrigues of Thyestes to Atreus, and he was expelled from Mycenae. Then Thyestes prepared Plisthenes, son of Atreev, to kill his father. Atreus, not knowing that this was his son, killed Plisthenes. For this grief, Atreus took terrible revenge: when Thyestes came to Mycenae for reconciliation, Atreus slaughtered the sons of Thyestes and fed him (who did not suspect anything) their meat. Eropa was thrown into the sea. For these crimes, the gods cursed the entire family of Atreus.
At the behest of the oracle, Atreus went in search of the fleeing Thyestes and, during his wanderings, married his daughter Pelopia, not knowing that he had “fed” his own niece. Shortly before this, she had a relationship with a stranger, not knowing that this was her father Tiestes. Pelopia gave birth to a son, Aegisthus (the fruit of “double” incest). A number of years later, Atreus ordered Aegisthus to kill Thyestes, but the latter recognized his son, and everything was revealed. Pelopia stabbed herself, and Aegisthus killed Atreus with the same sword. The myth is dominated by the idea of children paying for the sins of their fathers and revenge for the murder of a maternal relative (a reflection of matriarchy).
But the Atrid drama continues. The sons of Atreus are Agamemnon and Menelaus. After the death of Thyestes, who reigned in Mycenae, Agamemnon took his father's throne. Going on the Trojan campaign, he left his wife Clytemnestra (sister of Helen the Beautiful) at home. Upon returning to Mycenae, the king was treacherously killed by Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, son of Thyestes. Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, fled and lived in exile for 8 years, where his friendship with Pylades began. Having reached adulthood, he decided to avenge his father. The Delphic oracle ordered him to kill Clytemnestra and her new husband Aegisthus.
After this reprisal, the Erinnyes pursue Orestes, and he flees to Delphi, to his patron Apollo; he sends him to Athens. There Pallas Athena gathers the Areopagus. Orestes justifies himself by saying that his mother killed her husband, and he was obliged to fulfill the debt of blood feud. They answer Erniya: there is no crime more serious than matricide; revenge should only be taken on “half-blooded” people (relatives on the mother’s side). Clytemnestra “was not related by blood to the husband she killed.” Apollo defends Orestes: the father is more important than the mother (“the child is created not by the mother, but by the father”); Clytemnestra violated the sanctity of marriage
bonds and killed her master husband. The votes of the Athenian elders were divided, and only the white pebble (that is, the acquittal vote) of Athena decided the matter in favor of Orestes. - Athena established in her city the cult of the Erinnyes, who became known as the Eumenides (benevolent).
The scientific interpretation of myths was first given by Bachofen (“Mother’s Right”, 1861); Engels considered his book the beginning of the study of the history of family relationships. The basis of the myth goes back to ancient times and reflects the transition from maternal to paternal right. The Erinnyes (deities older than the Olympian religion) set out the principles of blood feud that are mandatory for the era of the maternal race. Apollo expresses the ideas of the victorious patriarchy. The decision of the Areopagus is the victory of paternal right over maternal right.
Aeschylus - Oresteia trilogy. Sophocles - "Electra". Euripides - “Orestes”, “Electra”. In modern times - Racine, Crebillon, Voltaire, Alfieri, etc.
Hofmannsthal and Hauptmann also talk about Electra.
3. Pygmalion.1
The legendary sculptor, the king of Cyprus, who fell in love with the ivory statue of a beautiful girl he created. Aphrodite fulfilled Pygmalion's prayers and revived the statue, which became his wife [motif of the reviving statue2].
According to another version, the statue was revived by Pygmalion’s love. Another option: Pygmalion sculpted a statue of Aphrodite or Nereid Galatea.
The myth of Pygmalion is apparently associated with the cult of Aphrodite (Astarte), of which he was a priest. In general, the myth reflects one of the ancient stages of religion - fetishism (the cult of things made by man himself).
In a figurative sense, Pygmalion is a man who fell in love with his creation. The meaning of the myth: the victory of art over inert matter, the spiritualization of nature by man.
The plot of the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea is often found in literature and art: for example, Falconet’s statue “Pygmalion” (Hermitage), Gilbert’s play “Pygmalion and Galatea”, Shaw’s comedy “Pygmalion”.
The legend was forgotten in the Middle Ages, came to life again in the Renaissance, and gained unprecedented popularity in the 18th - 19th centuries as a symbol of the animating powers of artistic inspiration.
Falconet “Pygmalion and Galatea”, 1768 (Leningrad).
Francois Boucher "The Triumph of Galatea", 1740 (Versailles Gallery).
George Bendy (!) “Pygmalion”, 1778 (opera).
J.-J. Rousseau, drama "Pygmalion" (1761).
Claris de Feorian, "Galatee", 1783.
A. V. Schlegel, poetry (1796).
1 To the right of the title there is a note in different ink, with discharge: “Fetishism.”
2The story of a statue coming to life // Folklore of the peoples of the RSFSR. Vol. 18. Ufa, 1991. - pp. 24-37.
W. Morris, poems (1868).
Burkard Shaw, Pygmalion.1
Thracian singer, son of the river god Eager and the muse Calliope. According to the most common myth, Orpheus invented music and poetry, so he was sometimes called the son of Apollo. Orpheus' music made plants bend their branches and rocks move; tamed wild animals. Orpheus took part in the Argonauts' campaign and, with his magical playing of the cithara and singing, provided them with many important services (for example, he diverted their attention from the sirens).
Orpheus' wife, the nymph Eurydice, died from a snake bite. To return his wife, he descended into Hades (the descent of a living person into hell - cf. the Babylonian myth of Semiramis). His music tamed Cerberus (Cerberus, the three-headed dog guarding the entrance to Hades), drew tears from the Erinyes and touched Perfesona. The Queen of the Underworld allowed Orpheus to return the deceased Eurydice to earth, but on the condition not to look back at the shadow of his wife and not to speak to her before going out into the daylight. Orpheus violated the ban and lost his wife forever (according to one of the myths, Orpheus returned Eurydice to earth).
He died at the hands of the maenads, angry that he refused to take part in the orgy: after the loss of Eurydice, he began to avoid women (that is, abstinence-guilt against nature). Option - killed at the behest of Dionysus, angry at Orpheus because the singer devoted himself to serving Apollo and neglected the cult of Dionysus (perhaps a reflection of the competition between the two cults). Orpheus' head and liver were thrown into the sea by the maenads.
One of the most popular myths of antiquity. Numerous scenes from it have been preserved on vases, frescoes, etc. - The image of Orpheus, surrounded by obedient and meek animals, is often found in the catacombs: Christianity of the first centuries saw in Orpheus a peacemaker, whose arrival was announced by the Old Testament prophet Isaiah.
The Orphic myth is a myth about music, about the great cleansing power of art. At the same time, Orpheus is a symbol of the absolutism of high art and the danger of its abandonment of life. The tragedy of creativity (the desire for perfection is necessary for art, but contradicts life; the artist always sacrifices life and nature for the sake of art).
The myth of Orpheus inspired Aeschylus and Euripides, Gluck, Haydn, Liszt and Stravinsky.
Tennessee Williams wrote the stunning tragedy “Orpheus Descending”, superimposing the plot of the myth on the life and customs of the American south.
5. Odysseus (from the Romans Ulysses).
Mythical king of Ithaca (small island). He received his wife Penelope as a reward from Tyndareus as a reward for his wise advice. Soon after the birth of his son Telemachus
1 At the bottom right of the page there is a note: “In Greek. Pygmalion = “revitalizing with love.”
agreed to take part in the Greek campaign against Troy, despite unfavorable omens.
At Troy, Odysseus became famous for his courage, enterprise, cunning and intelligence (constant epithets: “experienced”, “cunning”). In the tenth year of the war, he convinced the Greeks to continue the siege, and participated in a conciliatory embassy to Achilles after the latter’s quarrel with Agamemnon. Odysseus sneaked into Troy as a spy several times, usually acting together with one of the heroes. He managed to capture the Trojan spy Dalon and steal (according to later legends) the Palladium, the sacred statue of Pallas, the patroness of Troy. Athena helped Odysseus in all matters.
After the death of Achilles, Odysseus, by decision of the army, received the weapon of the fallen hero. On the advice of Odysseus, the Greeks built a Trojan horse.
After the destruction of Troy, returning to Ithaca, Odysseus experienced many misadventures. First, he visited the land of the Cyconians (Thrace), where he lost 72 companions, and then in the country of lotus eaters, lotus eaters, which gave them oblivion of the past. - After this, Odysseus’s ships arrived at the Cyclopes; Odysseus with 12 companions ended up in the cave of the giant Polyphemus, who gradually ate them. The sage and his surviving comrades barely escaped from there, giving Polyphemus wine and blinding him. Since then, Polyphemus's father Poseidon, the sea god, has been pursuing Odysseus. On the island of the lord of the winds, Aeolus, Odysseus received a tied bag containing all the winds, except for the fair one, which carried the ships almost to Ithaca; However, while Odysseus was sleeping, his companions untied the bag, and the freeing winds drove the ships into the open sea, to the land of the cannibal Laestrygonians, who destroyed all the ships except one. On it, Odysseus reached the island of Ei, where the beautiful sorceress Circe (Circe), the daughter of Helios and Perseid, lived. She turned Odysseus’s companions into pigs, and kept him on Aea for a year (she gave birth to his son Telegon). Only with the help of Hermes did Odysseus manage to return his companions to human form.
Then Odysseus visited the kingdom of the dead, where from the shadow of the soothsayer Tiresias he learned that he and his companions would safely reach Ithaca if they spared the herds of Helios. Having left Aea, the island of Kirki, Odysseus's ship safely passed the islands of Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis and arrived at the island of Thrinacia, where Helios' herds grazed. The hero's hungry companions, breaking their oath, killed and ate the best bulls. As punishment, Zeus struck the ship with lightning, from which only Odysseus escaped.
He spent seven years on the island of Ogygia, in captivity of the beautiful nymph Calypso, who sought to make Odysseus her husband, promising eternal youth and immortality for this. But Odysseus strove to return to his homeland. Athena, in the absence of Poseidon, obtained permission from the gods for the hero to return to Ithaca.
The last time Poseidon crashed Odysseus's raft, but he escaped on the island of Schoria. On the shore he met the beautiful princess Nausicaa, daughter of Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians. Athena, appearing in a dream to Nausicaa, ordered her to go in the morning with her slaves to the seashore. There the princess found Odysseus, dressed him and sent him to the house of Alcinous. She hoped that the hero would become her husband.
When Nausicaä learned of his desire to return to Ithaca, she, saying goodbye to him, asked him to remember the one who saved his life. One of the best episodes of the entire Odyssey, which inspired Sophocles to create the tragedy.
The hospitable and generous king Alcinous helped Odysseus return to Ithaca, where the hero arrived after a 20-year absence.
Odysseus learns that 100 husbands, considering him dead, are looking for the hand of his wife Penelope and are constantly feasting in his house, wasting his property. Penelope promised to choose a new husband for herself after she finished weaving a blanket for the coffin of her father-in-law, the father of Odysseus, Laertes. However, at night she unraveled everything that she managed to weave during the day (“Penelope’s yarn” is an endless job). After the maid's betrayal revealed the deception, the suitors forced Penelope to finish the job. Then she announced that she would marry the one who wins the competition using Odysseus's bow. Faithful Penelope hoped that no one would even be able to pull the heroic bow.
On the decisive day of the competition, Odysseus returned. (A widely spread story in folklore is about the return of a long-absent husband to his wife’s wedding day). He returned disguised as an old beggar, revealing himself only to his slave Eumaeus and his son Telemachus. One of the best, poetic scenes of the Odyssey is the scene of Penelope meeting with Odysseus and identifying him.
Having thought over a plan for revenge on the suitors, Odysseus, Eumaeus and Telemachus came to the palace, where Odysseus had to endure a series of insults from the suitors. When no one could even pull the string, the “beggar” took the bow, easily pulled the string and hit the target, and then, with the help of Eumaeus and Telemachus, killed the suitors.
The post-Homeric legend endows Odysseus with a number of degrading traits (cowardice, deceit, deceit).
The myth of Odysseus is a glorification of adventurism, the spirit of wandering. The image of Odysseus was reflected in the tragedies of Sophocles “Philoctetes” and “Eanthus”, Euripides - “Iphigenia in Aulis” and others. On vases and frescoes (Pompeii) Odysseus was depicted as a bearded man wearing an oval cap, such as was worn by Greek sailors.
Telemachus - a son searching for his father, synonymous with sons of love; in the 17th century, Fenelon wrote a novel based on this plot, “The Adventures of Telemachus,” translated into Russian by Tredyakovsky (“Telemachida”).
The myth of Odysseus and Telemachus formed the basis of Jones's monumental novel Ulysses. A. N. Veselovsky: “... a type of direct folk heroism with its real strength and crafty dexterity, which does not reckon with conscience, like Ulysses. . . "(Historical Poetics, GIHL, Leningrad, 1940) (p. 70).
6. Helen the Beautiful (Helen of Troy Spartan).
Ancient Minoan deity of vegetation; Peloponnesian deity of fertility and light. In later legends - the daughter of Zeus and Leda, wife of Tyndareus, the most popular hero
ina Greek epic. The most beautiful woman in the world. In her youth she was kidnapped by Theseus, but her brothers (Dioscuri) freed her and she returned to Sparta. Many heroes sought Helen's hand, but Tyndareus married her to Menelaus, taking an oath from all the heroes (on the advice of Odysseus) that they would not take up arms against her husband and would help him in everything. Helen gave birth to Menelaus' daughter Hermione.
When Paris kidnapped Helen, Menelaus called on the Greek heroes for help, and they set out on a campaign against Troy. After the death of Paris, Helen married his brother Deiphobus, and on the day of the fall of Troy she handed Deiphobus into the hands of Menelaus, with whom she returned to Sparta.
After the death of Menelaus, Helen, expelled from Sparta, fled to Rhodes, where she was killed.
The cult of Helen existed in Laconia and was associated with ideas about dying and resurrecting nature. Like her brothers Dioscuri, Helen was considered the patroness of sailors. The image of Elena embodies the ancient ideal of passive femininity, purely sensual beauty without thought or will. This beauty is given to the strongest, is unable to love anyone and arouses universal lust, causing terrible strife and war. Elena is a fatal beauty. The cause of the death of Troy and many heroes.
Euripides' tragedy "Helen". The tragedies of Sophocles “The Embassy about Helen” and “The Laconian Woman” have not reached us. Panegyrics of Gorgias and Isocrates.
Goethe in the 2nd part of Faust made Helen the wife of Faust. William Faulkner, influenced by the myth of Helen, created the image of Yula, a fatal, passive woman. Wisdom of the flesh, powerful instinct (without intellect).
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Phryne (Rktuie) is a famous ancient Greek hetaera who flourished in the 4th century. BC She was born in Thespia (Boeotia), at first she was a poor merchant, she was nicknamed “Phryne”, which means “toad”, for her paleness. Going to Athens, Phryne became a famous heterosexual. Her beauty outshone the images of the gods, her charms conquered everyone, and she played musical instruments excellently. During the Elevsinian celebrations, while swimming in the sea, Fina exposed herself and began to publicly compare herself with Aphrodite, saying that she was more beautiful than Aphrodite. Someone reported this and accused Phryne of blasphemy; and so Phryne appeared before the Athenian Areopagus (court of elders) on charges of atheism. She was threatened with the death penalty, but her syndic (defender), the orator Hyperide, saved her by tearing off Phryne's veil and exposing her breasts. The elders justified her for her beauty. Phryne was so rich that, according to legend, she offered to rebuild Thebes, with the condition that an inscription be made on the walls: “Alexander did not allow it, but Phryne restored it.” The offer was rejected. The painter Apelles wrote his Anadyomene from her, the great Praxiteles took his beloved Phryne of Thestia as a model for the statue of Aphrodite of Cnidus. In the face temple, two Praxitelean statues stood side by side: a statue of Aphrodite and a statue of Phryne.
Athenaeus speaks of another hetaera of the same name, famous for her greed.
The second wife of Theseus, mother of Demophon and Acamant, inflamed with love for her stepson Hippolytus. He rejected her passion. Then Phaedra slandered the young man before her father, accusing Hippolytus of violence against her. King Theseus asked Poseidon to punish Hippolytus. When the young man in a chariot raced along the seashore, Poseidon sent a bull from the sea, which frightened Hippolytus' horses; the horses threw Hippolytus to the ground, and the young man died. But Phaedra could not stand this death of a beautiful and innocent young man and committed suicide. - The myth was processed in the tragedy of Euripides (“Hippolytus”), later by Seneca and in the 17th century by Racine in his famous tragedy “Phaedra”.
Addition: Polycrates of Samos, or the insane self-delusion of success. History and legend.1
Polycrates, the tyrant of the island of Samos, seized power around 537: a wealthy artisan, he rose to power using the struggle of the demos against the landed aristocracy. Polycrates ruled wisely, fairly and successfully, developed crafts and trade, built and decorated Samos a lot. According to legend, his friend was the poet Anacreon. Having a significant fleet and mercenary army, Polycrates subjugated a number of islands of the Aegean Sea and exacted a large tribute from them.
According to legend, the Egyptian king Amasis, a friend and ally of Polycrates, wrote to him asking Polycrates to inflict some misfortune on himself in order to warn those who were in store for him. (The meaning of Amasis's advice: constant happiness is dangerous, a sacrifice is needed to ward off the envy of the gods). Polycrates carried out this advice: he threw his most precious ring into the sea. A few days later, the tyrant's cook found the ring in the stomach of a large fish brought to him by fishermen. The gods did not accept Polycrates' sacrifices.
Soon after this, what Amasis feared happened. Despite the alliance with Persia, Polycrates instilled fear in her with his power. Orontes, one of the satraps of Cambyses (or Darius), leading an army with him to Sardis, decided to take Samos. He lured Polycrates to him under the pretext that he wanted to give him part of his treasures so that Polycrates would help him, Orontes, in the rebellion against Cambyses. The selfish Polycrates appeared in Sardis, and Orontes immediately crucified him on the cross (524 or 522 BC). - According to other stories, Orontes captured Samos with a treacherous attack and crucified Polycrates.
The plot was used by Schiller (“Polycrates’ Ring”). - Balzac in “Shagreen Skin” uses the motif of the ominous return of a discarded fetish (Raphael throws the shagreen skin into a well, but the gardener finds it and brings it back).
8. Moses (myth of the lawgiver).2
1 Nazirov R. G. The true meaning of Polycrates’ ring // Humanitarian studies in Eastern Siberia and the Far East. 2010. No. 4. P. 147-149.
2 Nazirov R. G. Child in a basket and signs of the chosen ones. Experience in reconstructing the ethnographic substrate of myths // Nazi archive. 2016. No. 4. P. 11-27.
"The greatest prophet and founder of the Jewish religion", one of the greatest heroes of the Bible. The myth of Moses begins with a miraculous rescue: a newborn baby was allowed to float in a basket on the waves of the Nile, but he was picked up by Pharaoh's daughter and raised. Growing up, Moses became the leader of the Jewish people and, under the leadership of God himself, led the Jews out of Egyptian captivity. The Bible speaks of Moses' constant contact with Jehovah (Yahweh): he is the only person who saw Yahweh.
During the exodus from Egypt, Pharaoh’s army was already overtaking the Jews on the shores of the Red Sea, but at the behest of Moses, the sea parted and the Jews walked along its bottom. When the Egyptians rushed after them, the sea closed again and swallowed them (a reflection of the ebb and flow of the Red Sea). In the desert, the Jews were dying of thirst, but Moses hit the rock with his rod and cut water out of it.
God appeared to Moses in the form of a burning but not consumed bush (“burning bush”). On Mount Sinai, God dictated to Moses the “law” for the Jews (the Pentateuch, otherwise the Torah). The Ten Commandments of Moses are the sum of ancient Jewish religious morality, the sanctification of the norms of an early slave society.
Initially, Moses was revered by the nomadic Jews not as a prophet, but as a deity, but later his cult was absorbed into the cult of Yahweh. The mention in the Bible: “the appearance of his face was horned” confirms that the prototype of Moses is associated with the cult of the bull. Obviously, there was a long competition between the cults of Moses and Yahweh (the former was a god among the Phoenicians, and their mythology is older than the biblical one). The biblical image of Moses is a symbol of a great leader, organizer, miraculous legislator. This is the personification of power and wise, saving power. This is exactly what Michel Angelo’s “Moses” is like. The biblical myths about Moses provided a number of subjects for Poussin and many other artists.
The second king of Israel, a young shepherd boy, killed the giant Goliath with a stone from his sling and cut off his head with his own sword, which led to the great victory of the Jews over their enemies (“Saul killed thousands, and David killed thousands”). The Jews proclaimed the young hero king, and he created a unified state with its capital in Jerusalem. The residence of the “shepherd king” became Zion (a mountain, part of Jerusalem); here was the temple of Yahweh (Zion is the “house of God”).
David killed his military commander Uriah in order to take possession of his beautiful wife Bathsheba, whom the king saw from the roof of his palace while she was bathing in the garden. -But the Bible glorifies David for the fear of God, obedience to priests and prophets. He is credited with the authorship of the psalms.
When David became decrepit and the blood did not warm him, they began to put young girls on his bed, with whom he spent the night, but did not know them (a symbol of senile voluptuousness). - In general, a very multifaceted image.
With the development of faith in the coming of the Messiah in Judaism, prophecies appeared that the Messiah would come from the “house of David,” that is, he would be a descendant of David. In accordance with this, Christianity traces the genealogy of Jesus Christ back to David.
The third king of Israel was Solomon, the son of David, whose name became synonymous with wisdom in the Middle East (Suleiman ibn Daoud among the Arabs). He built a magnificent temple to Yahweh in Jerusalem, but also built temples to Ashtoreth, Molech and other gods. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines. "Song of Songs". Wisdom and voluptuousness.
10. King Herod, Herodias, Salome
The name Herod was borne by several Hellenistic kings of Judea under Roman rule. Herod the Great - king of Judea from 39 to 4 years before the birth of Christ, he was supported by the Romans; he was credited with beating up infants. The name of this king became synonymous with cruelty. In Pushkin, the holy fool says to Boris Godunov: “You cannot pray for King Herod, the Mother of God does not command.”
His son was Herod Philip, he died in 34 AD. The latter's brother, Herod Antipas, was tetrarch of Galilee from 4 BC. e. until 39 AD e.; he tried Jesus Christ and ordered the beheading of John the Baptist.
John the Baptist (aka the Forerunner) is a prophet who predicted the imminent coming of the Messiah (Christ) and baptized many Jews in the Jordan River. He is considered the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. John baptized Jesus himself and presented him to the people as the messiah. When Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, married Herodias, the widow of his brother Herod Philip, John sharply condemned this marriage before the people and denounced Herodias as a harlot. He was captured and kept in captivity, but Antipas did not dare touch him. Then Herodias trained her daughter from Herod Philip, the beautiful Salome; At the feast, the girl with her dancing aroused the insane delight of her uncle Antipas, and he, in front of everyone, ordered her to ask for any reward that she wished. Salome, at the instigation of her mother, asked for the head of John the Baptist. Antipas was forced to keep his word; John's head was cut off, which Salome presented to her mother on a platter. - Christian histories date this to 31 AD. e.
Josephus Flavius in “Jewish Antiquities” says that John the Baptist lived under the tetrarch Herod Antipas, by whom he was executed. Thus, John is a historical figure, one of the many Jewish prophets of that turbulent era; Apparently, the cult of John the Baptist entered Christianity as a result of the assimilation of a previously existing Jewish sect that revered this prophet. Traces of the beliefs of this sect have survived to this day: the Mandaeans, a small number of which survive in Iran and Iraq, venerate John the Baptist (they call him Yahya), and view Jesus as an impostor (for them, Moses, Abraham, Jesus are false prophets).1
1 See Nazirov’s novel “Star and Conscience”: Nazirov R. G. Star and Conscience. Fantastic novel // Nazi archive. 2016. No. 1. P. 16-114
The dramatic legend of the execution of John the Baptist was developed by Gustave Flaubert in the short story “Herodias”.
11. Virgin Mary, Mother of God1
According to the Gospel, the daughter of Saint Joachim and Saint Anne, the wife of Joseph (who did not know her) and the mother of Jesus Christ. In Greek it was called theotokos, theometer; in Latin mater dei.
In ancient times, the cult of the Mother of God was widespread among many peoples of the Middle East, especially agricultural ones. Among the Mother of God were the Egyptian Isis, the Babylonian Ishtar, the Phoenician Astarte, and the Asia Minor Cybele. The Greek Demetreia is also close to them. The cult of the mother goddess was closely connected with the circle of ideas about the dying and resurrecting deity. It is no coincidence that the listed virgins were also considered fertility deities.
In Christianity, the cult of the Mother of God developed under the obvious influence of similar pagan cults. The evolution of Christian ideas about the Mother of God went parallel to the development of the myth about the God-man Christ. In the oldest Christian work, “The Revelation of John,” the mother of the Lamb appears, depicted as a purely cosmic being: “a woman clothed with the sun; under her feet is the moon, and on her head is a crown of twelve stars”; she flies away on eagle wings from the Serpent and hides in the desert for a long time. As the myth of the incarnation of deity in man developed, the image of the Mother of God acquired more and more human features. The Gospel of Luke describes in detail the conversation of the Archangel Gabriel with Mary (“annunciation”), describes her four-month stay with Elizabeth, etc., which is not in the other gospels.
The Gospel story about the immaculate conception of Jesus Christ by Mary finds many analogies in the much earlier myth about the conception of Buddha by the virgin Mayya. Early Christian images of the Virgin and Child are very similar to images of Isis with Horus and Maya with Buddha.
Officially, the church recognized Mary as the Mother of God only at the Third Ecumenical Council (Ephesus, 431). The cult of the Mother of God, the Ever-Virgin, the Most Pure One, became extremely widespread. The “Holy Family” (Joseph, Mary, Jesus) turned out to be more understandable for believers than the abstract trinity (God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit). The Mother of God, who practically became the female hypostasis of a deity for the people, was perceived as a universal intercessor and giver of benefits (in the beliefs of the peasants, the giver of fertility and harvest).
The Church, fearing to argue with the powerful traditions of pagan myths, took an ambivalent position regarding the popular cult of the Mother of God: the Mother of God was recognized as bodily ascended to heaven as the intercessor of people before God the Father and Christ, many holidays were established in honor of her, her image became the ideal of love for people and the meek humility.
1 Nazirov R.G. Myth and sense of history. To the paradox of the Virgin Mary // Nazirovsky archive. 2015. No. 4. pp. 32-42.
At the same time, the church cautiously opposes the open deification of the Virgin Mary, since this is at odds with the dogma of the Trinity.
The Greek Orthodox Church condemns the Catholic Church for allowing excesses in the cult of the Madonna, rejects the dogma of the immaculate conception of Mary by Anna and argues that Mary, along with other people, bore the burden of original sin.
The image of the meek comforter (“quench my sorrows”) had a huge influence on the literature and art of all Christian peoples. Raphael created the immortal image of the meek and heroic Mother in his “Sistine Madonna.” The greatest poets wrote about Mary with love and respect. Pushkin has both an erotic parody of the myth of the “immaculate conception” (the poem “Gabriiliad”), and a serious image of the Madonna (for example, in the poem “Once upon a time there lived a poor knight”; however, the medieval mystical love of a knight for the Virgin Mary is more depicted here).
The image of Mary is of great importance in the works of Dostoevsky. One of his characters says: “The Mother of God is the raw mother earth.” Thus, here there is an identification of Mary with the pagan peasant cult of the Earth, which is a return to the origins of the myth (Vetlovskaya is myopic, in fact Dostoevsky is a heretic, his religion is older than Christianity, like the religion of the Russian people).
“There is no sinner whom the Mother of God would not cover with Her omophorion, so long as we do not escape from under Her cover with our cold deeds and nasty thoughts.”
A popular chant of one of the services: “Save your servants from troubles, Mother of God.”
12 Jesus Christ
In the III - II centuries BC. e. in Judaism, due to the collapse of hopes for the restoration of an independent Jewish kingdom and the increasing exploitation of the people of Judea, the ideology of messianism was formed, the belief in the coming of the Messiah, in Hebrew “mashiach” - “anointed one”; this is the “divine savior” whom God will send to the people. Messianism especially intensified in Judea after the establishment of Roman rule. Jewish messianism was one of the sources of the formation of the messianic myth about Jesus Christ.
The Greek christos means “anointed one,” “messiah.” According to the gospel myth, Jesus Christ is the son of God, the God-man, the “savior” of people, who was immaculately conceived by the Virgin Mary, was born in Bethlehem in 749 from the founding of Rome, preached a new religion in Palestine, performed many miracles, was crucified on the cross, and on the third day after death he was resurrected and by the end of 40 days he ascended to heaven, and in the future his second coming to earth will take place for the final victory over the forces of evil, for the resurrection of the dead in the flesh and the subsequent Last Judgment, at which both the righteous and the righteous will be rewarded according to their deserts. wicked.
In the earliest New Testament writing, the Revelation of John, Jesus is called the Lamb, since he is “the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world.” This Lamb of God is depicted as a cosmic being and sometimes appears as a special fantastic character: here he is a god, and not a god-man, as he is presented in the gospels. Scientists believe that the Christian myth developed not along the line of the deification of man, but along the line of humanizing the deity. Therefore, the source of the Gospel story about Christ could not be the memories of the real “founder of Christianity.”
The true source of the myth about Christ was, first of all, the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah. Large collections of prophecies were found among papyri in Oxyrhynchus (Egypt), and they are also found in the Qumran manuscripts. The genealogy of Jesus, his place of birth, his flight into Egypt, his entry into Jerusalem and his death are all presented in the gospels in such a way as to create the impression that Jesus was the messiah foretold by the prophets.
The second source of the gospel myth, in particular the story of the martyrdom of Christ and his resurrection, is the mass Afro-Asian ideas about the dying and rising god (Adonis, Attis and others) and the fact that the voluntary death of a god or his son atones for the sins of believers and fellow tribesmen. Traces of such beliefs are found in the legends about the death of the Athenian king Codrus, about the suffering and victorious messiah in the Talmud, in the Qumran ideas about the “mentor of righteousness,” etc.
There is quite a lot of evidence about the pre-Christian cult of the god Jesus (Yeshua); this cult, apparently, was also one of the sources of the gospel myth.
Some elements of the myth (the birth of Christ) are associated with the myths of Mithras. Originating in the last centuries BC. e. in Iran, Mithraism became widespread and competed with Christianity, the formation of which was greatly influenced. In Mithraism, communal meals with bread and wine were reminiscent of the Christian sacrament of communion. Fasting and self-flagellation were similar to the institutions of Christian asceticism. Meetings in caves and dungeons resembled rituals in Christian catacombs. Even the “sacred sign” of Mithra in the form of diverging rays is comparable to the eight-pointed cross of Christians.
Mithraism already contained teachings about the virgin birth of Mithras, the end of the world and the afterlife. The holiday of the Nativity of Christ goes back to the Mithraic teaching about the rebirth of the Sun on December 25 (the day of the winter solstice). Unlike Christianity, Mithraism almost did not spread among women, remaining primarily a soldier’s religion in the Roman Empire. As a result of a stubborn struggle in the 4th - 5th centuries, Mithraism was defeated by Christianity.
Members of the Qumran sect on the shores of the Dead Sea already in the middle of the 1st century BC. They believed that the “master of justice,” executed by the wicked high priest, would rise again and judge all nations. This is probably another (and perhaps the most important) source of the myth about Christ.
Christ was born in Bethlehem, a city near Jerusalem; David was born in the same Bethlehem, and in the Old Testament it was predicted that the coming Messiah would be born here. Christmas
Christ's celebration took place on December 25 (the birthday of Mithras among the Mithraists and the day of the winter solstice). He was born in the manger of a stable, the bull and donkey warmed him with their breath, and the “Star of Bethlehem” shone above the stable.
At the moment of Jesus’ birth, his mother, the Virgin Mary, heard the voice of an angel from heaven: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” (No, the shepherds heard it. Luke, 2, 14).
Soon after the birth of Jesus, his parents - the adoptive father Joseph, the carpenter, and the Virgin Mary - fled with the baby to Egypt, because the angel who appeared to him in a dream ordered Joseph to do so: for King Herod the Great was looking for a child who had already been born in Bethlehem in order to destroy him. In the Gospel of Matthew, it is directly said about the flight of Joseph with his wife and son to Egypt: “And until the death of Herod, that what was spoken of the Lord by the prophet might be fulfilled, saying: Out of Egypt I called my son.” (Prophet Hosea).
Then an angry Herod ordered the death of all the little boys in Bethlehem, two years old and under. (Massacre of the innocents).
When Herod died, an angel appeared in a dream to Joseph, who was in Egypt, and ordered him to return to Israel, for he who sought the soul of the youth had died. Joseph went to his homeland, but hearing that Archelaus, the son of Herod, was reigning in Judea, he was afraid to return to Judea, and went to Galilee (the northern region of Israel, near Lake Gennesarst), where he settled in the city of Nazareth. (That's why Jesus was called Galilean, Nazarene, Nazarene).
During these days, John the Baptist was already preaching in the Judean desert: “Repent, the kingdom of heaven is approaching.” Crowds of people from all over the country flocked to him, confessed their sins, and he baptized them in Jordan, saying that he was coming after him who was stronger than him and to whom he, Johann, was not worthy to bear the boots: “the one you baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire." “He will have a spade in his hand, and he will clear away his threshing floor, and he will gather his wheat into the barn, and he will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
Jesus came to Johann and was baptized by him, and when Jesus came out of the water; The heavens opened above him, and the holy spirit flew down in the form of a dove, and a voice in the sky said: “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” (All above is the Gospel of Matthew).
The Gospel of Luke tells that Simeon, a resident of Jerusalem, was predicted that he would not die until he saw Christ. One day, having come to the temple where his parents had brought the baby Jesus, Simeon took him in his arms and said: “Now do you let your servant go, lord, according to your word in peace...” (this became the dying prayer “Now do you let go”, in Latin “Mipe & t1Shv”; in everyday language, the exclamation “now you let go” was used when achieving something that had been expected for a very long time).
After the baptism of Jesus (the feast of baptism on January 6), the spirit took him into the desert “to be tempted by the devil.” Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, after which the tempter appeared to him
and said: “If you are the son of God, O Rtsy, let this bread be made of stone.” But Jesus answered the first temptation: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.”
Second temptation. The devil carried him to Jerusalem and, placing him on the wing of the temple, suggested that he throw himself down: the angels would pick him up in their arms. Jesus answered: “It is written again: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”
Third temptation. The devil carried Jesus to a huge mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory and said to him: “I will give all this to you if you fall and worship me.” (“I will give all this to you if you fall and worship me”). Jesus responded with a third quotation from Scripture: “Worship the Lord thy God and serve him only.” - And the devil left Jesus.
Meanwhile, he heard about the arrest of John the Baptist, left Nazareth and moved to Capernaum, a city on the shore of Lake Gennesaret (Tiberias). This is a lake in Galilee through which the Jordan River flows; it is named after the city of Tiberias on its shore. Here he began to preach and met two brothers - fishermen throwing nets into the lake, Andrew and Simon, nicknamed Peter. He said to them: “He is coming after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” (“Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men”). These were his first two students, Peter and Andrei the First-Created. The next two apostles, James and John, are also fishermen. Jesus walked all over Galilee, preaching and healing all kinds of diseases.
This is followed by his famous Sermon on the Mount: Matthew chapters 5 - 7, Luke chapter 6. According to Matthew, it was delivered on the mountain and was addressed to the first four apostles. This is a concise statement of the basic moral principles of early Christianity and at the same time a direct polemic against the commandments of the Old Testament, which Jesus quotes and refutes.
“You cannot serve God and mammon” = “you cannot serve (at the same time) God and mammon.” He urged them not to think about food or clothing. “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all this will be added to you. Do not worry about the morning, for the morning one worries about himself: his wickedness prevails over the day.”
“Judge not, lest ye be judged.
You judge by them, they judge you, and you measure according to the same measure, and it will be measured to you.
What do you see, the bitch that is in your brother’s eye, and the log that is in your eye, do not you sense?”
“Do not give the holy one to dogs, do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet. . . »
When Jesus came down from the mountain, he healed a leper with a touch of his hand and with one word (“clean himself”); in Capernaum, with his will alone, he healed a sick boy, the son of a centurion, without even entering the house; later, with one touch he healed Peter’s mother-in-law, drove out evil spirits from possessed people with a word, etc.
When one of his disciples asked him to go and bury his father, Jesus replied: “Follow me and let the dead bury their dead.”
He called the tax collector Matthew to follow him as a disciple, seeing him sitting on the tollhouse. (Publicans (Latin: tax collectors) are tax collectors, the most despicable profession in Israel at that time).
The twelve apostles: Andrew and his brother Peter, James and his brother Noann, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the Publican, James (son of Alpheus) and Levway, nicknamed Thaddeus, Simon the Canaanite (that is, a resident of Cana) and Judas Iscariot, “like and betray him."
“Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (In other words, proletarians of all countries, unite!)
“My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
The enemies of Jesus are the scribes and Pharisees. Scribes are Jewish teachers who explained the Old Testament law. The Pharisees were a religious-political sect or chevra (that is, “fellowship”) that was in opposition to the temple nobility, but despised the common people as “unclean.” The people mocked their ostentatious piety and called them “painted” (that is, hypocrites). In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you eat widows’ houses and hypocritically pray for a long time.” He called them “brood of vipers.” He predicted eternal damnation for them.
Next, Matthew has an episode of the execution of John the Baptist at the request of Salome, at a feast on the birthday of Herod the Tetrarch (that is, the tetrarch of Galilee). Jesus, having learned about this, withdrew into the desert, where the people came for him; here he healed, and then fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fish, and 12 baskets were also filled with the leftover food.
This is followed by the second miracle - walking on the water of Lake Tiberias.
Then he goes to the city of Magdala on the same lake, then to Caesarea. Here he announced to his disciples that he was Christ (that is, the Messiah), that he needed to go to Jerusalem, suffer a lot from the elders, bishops and scribes, “be killed and rise on the third day.” And six days later Jesus took Peter, the brothers John and James, led them to a high mountain and was transformed before them: his face became like the sun, and his vestments became white like light. The three apostles saw Elijah and Moses talking to Jesus. Then a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from it said: “This is my beloved son; The apostles fell on their faces in fear, Jesus touched them, saying: “Rise up and do not be afraid.” He was alone, and there was no one else with him. According to legend, this took place on Mount Tabor; In honor of the event, the Christian Church later established the holiday of “Transfiguratio” on August 6. Russians also call him “the second Savior.”
Jesus forbade the three apostles to tell about this miracle until he rose from the dead. Here he said that John the Baptist was Elijah the prophet himself.
After this, Jesus went to Judea. Particularly noteworthy here is his meeting with a rich young man who was looking for the kingdom of heaven. Jesus said to him: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor; and have treasure in heaven, and come after me.” The rich young man went away mourning, and Jesus said to the disciples: “It is easier to believe.”
for a dish to pass through the eye of a needle, rather than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” And he predicted that in another life many of the first will be last, and the last will be first. [Evangelical Socialism]
“Many are called, few are chosen.”
When he entered Jerusalem, people spread their clothes and tree branches in front of him: “Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!
In Jerusalem, Jesus expelled the traders from the temple, overturned the “meals” of the traders in the temple (the tables of the money changers and merchants were called meals) and the seats of the sellers of doves. He said: “It is written: my temple will be called the temple of prayer, but you made it a den of thieves (you will also make a den of thieves).”
Then he left the city to Bethany and settled there (in Bethany there was the house of Martha and Mary Magdalene, if I’m not mistaken). Here he rested and again went to Jerusalem.
One day the Pharisees asked him (wanting to convict him of inciting against Rome): “Is it worthy to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Jesus ordered a coin to be given to him and asked: “Whose image and writing is this?” - “Caesarean.” Then he said: “Render then the things that are Caesar’s that are Caesar’s, and the things that are God’s that are God’s.” Caesar's denarius. Moral: Obey all worldly authority.
Soon the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection of souls, tried to catch him with a tricky question: there were seven brothers, the eldest died childless, his widow, according to the law of Moses, was married by the second brother, then he died, and so on until the seventh, after all the wife died; So whose wife will she be in the resurrection, “for I have everything”? - Jesus answered: “In the resurrection they neither marry nor commit violence, but are like the angels of God in heaven.”
For hypocrisy and the murder of the prophets, Jesus curses the Pharisees, scribes, and “blind leaders”: “Snakes, brood of vipers, how will you escape from the judgment of Gehenna?”
The elders, bishops and scribes gather in the courtyard of the bishop (high priest) Caiaphas. A conspiracy is drawn up against Christ, and then Judas Iscariot comes to them (a distortion of the Greek Issachariot - a man from the family of Issachar or a descendant of Issachar). He says: “Give me whatever you want, and I will deliver it to you.” They give Judas thirty pieces of silver. It was on Easter holiday.
Jesus arranges a supper (festive dinner) with his disciples and, reclining at the table, announces: “One of you will betray me.” Everyone asked: “Isn’t it me, Lord?” Judas also asked: “Isn’t it me, Rabbi?” Jesus replied, “You said.”
He took the bread, blessed it and broke it and gave it to the disciples: “Take, eat, this is my body.”
Then he took the cup and, having given praise, gave it to the disciples: “Let us all drink from it, for this is my blood of the new testament, which is poured out for many for the remission of sins.” So at the Last Supper he established the rite of communion (Eucharist), the most important in the Christian church along with baptism.
What follows is one of the most powerful pages of Matthew - the last night with the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane. Taking Peter, John and James with him, he went aside with them to pray. He began to grieve and be sad: “My soul is grieving to death, wait here and watch with me.”
Jesus fell on his face, praying: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, but let it happen, not as I want, but as you want.”
Returning to the students, whom he had left a few steps away, he found them sleeping.
He prayed two more times. The students were sleeping. Finally, he said: “Get up, let's go. The one who betrayed me has approached.”
Judas entered Gethsemane with many armed men. He agreed with them on the signal: “Whoever I kiss is the one, take him.” - Then he approached Jesus with the words: “Rejoice, Rabbi!” - and kissed him.
Jesus answered, “Friend, is this why you came?” And he was immediately captured by those who came.
One of the apostles pulled out a sword and struck the bishop’s servant with it, cutting off his ear. Jesus commanded: “Put your sword back in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Or do you imagine that I cannot even now beg my father? He will present to me more than twelve legions of angels. But it must be so that the scriptures may be fulfilled.”
The disciples left him and fled. The soldiers took Jesus to the high priest Caiaphas, where the scribes and elders were already waiting. They spat in his face, hit him on the cheeks and “whack him,” mockingly asking: “Prophesy to us, O Christ, who is the one who hit you?” [Child Game]
In the morning, Jesus was delivered into the hands of the Roman governor (hegemon, that is, hegemon) Pontius Pilate.
The scene of the arrest of Christ, this entire chapter is one of the best in world literature, including Peter’s threefold denial that night. The kiss of Judas (“the kiss of Judas”) and the image of Judas itself are symbols of betrayal.
So, that night the Sanhedrin, meeting at Caiaphas, decided to execute Jesus. "Guilty of death!" - they said. But the Sanhedrin (Greek council) was the highest hierocratic institution, and to implement its verdict, a civil court and the sanction of the Roman authorities were necessary. Therefore, Jesus was handed over to the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, who in the gospels is called by the Greek title of hegemon.
[The historical Pontius Pilatus was procurator of Judea from 26 to 36 AD. e., was known for cruelty, extortion and contempt for the local population; recalled to Rome due to the general indignation of the province against his rule].
The Gospel of John tells in detail about Pilate’s conversation with Christ, who was brought to the governor in Praetorium. Pilate asked: “Are you the king of the Jews?” And then: “What have you done?” Jesus' answer: "My kingdom is not of this world."
Pilate asked again: “So you are a king?” Jesus answered: “You say that I am a king; I was born and came into the world to testify to the truth: everyone who is of the truth will listen to my voice.”
Pilate asked again: “What is truth?” (Obviously a rhetorical question from a skeptical and indifferent Roman, since he does not expect an answer). And he immediately went out to the Jews who were waiting outside the building and said to them: “I do not find any guilt in him. It is your custom that I should have mercy on one of you at Passover: therefore, do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?” In response, there was a unanimous cry: “Not him, but Barabbas!” -Barabbas was a robber.
Then Jesus was beaten, and then the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and dressed him in a scarlet robe (that is, in purple, a sign of royal power). They said: “Rejoice, King of the Jews!” - and hit him on the cheeks. Pilate came out again and said to those waiting: “Behold, I am bringing him out to you so that you understand that I do not find any guilt in him.”
Jesus was brought out wearing royal purple and a crown of thorns. Touched by his patience and calmness, Pilate said: “Behold a man.” (Latin: “Ecce homo!”)
The bishops and their servants shouted: “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate replied: “Take him and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.”
They answered him: “We have a law, and according to our law he must die, for he created himself the son of God.” Pilate was afraid and asked Jesus: “Where are you from?” Jesus didn't answer. Pilate hesitated, not wanting Jesus to die, but the Jews began to shout to him: “If you let him go, you are not a friend of Caesar: everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.”
(This was, of course, a terrible threat: the suspicious and bloodthirsty Tiberius was still living out his days on Caprea, the Romans trembled before him).
Pilate sat down at the courthouse, in a place called Gavvatha, in Greek Liphostroton. It was the 5th day of Easter, about 6 o'clock. Pilate said, “Here is your king.” - “Take him, take him, crucify him!” - “Shall I crucify your king?” -But the bishops answered: “We have no king except Caesar.”
Then Pilate gave Jesus to them, and they led him away. Carrying his cross, he went to the place of executions called Golgotha. Here he was crucified in the middle between two criminals.
On the cross was written (on a tablet) in Hebrew, Greek and Latin by Pilate: “Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews.” The Jerusalem bishops indignantly pointed out the mistake; it should have been written: “who calls himself the king of the Jews.” But Pilate replied: “As soon as I wrote, I wrote (what I wrote, I wrote).”1
At the cross stood the mother of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, her sister and Mary Magdalene, as well as one of his favorite disciples. At the moment of nailing or already on the cross, Jesus prayed to God for his tormentors: “Father! let them go without knowing what they are doing.” (Gospel of Luke).
Matthew talks about the abuse of Christ, about how, upon his arrival at Golgotha, he was given vinegar mixed with bile to drink, and after drinking a little, he rejected it. “If you are the son of God, come down from the cross!” “He saved others, but can’t he save himself? If he is the king of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in him!” Even the robbers who were crucified with him reviled him. From the 6th hour to the 9th hour there was darkness over the whole land. At the 9th hour Jesus cried out in a great voice: “Either, or, lima sabachtani” (“My God, my God, why did you
1 According to Matthew, after the trial, Pilate took water, washed his hands in front of the people and said: “I am innocent of his blood.”
left!”). One of the execution assistants soaked a sponge in vinegar, stuck it on a cane, and gave Jesus a drink. And soon Jesus, with another loud cry, gave up the ghost. At the same time an earthquake occurred; the frightened centurion and the guards who were with him at the execution exclaimed: “Truly he was the son of God.” A little later, Pilate gave the body of Jesus for burial to Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man who also studied with Jesus.
Mark basically describes all this as Matthew, but the famous lament on the cross is: “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani.”
Luke tells us that one of the two thieves crucified with Christ blasphemed him, saying: “If you are the Christ, save yourself and us!” Another reproached him for this, saying that the two of them were being executed “for reasons”, and Jesus had not done any evil; then he said to Jesus: “Remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus answered, “Amen, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” - Next is a description of darkness throughout the earth and an eclipse of the sun. Jesus cried out: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” And with these words he died.
According to John, his last word was: “It is finished.”
Joseph of Arimathea, a disciple of Jesus, who hid his faith, “for fear of the Jews,” took the body of Jesus with the permission of Pilate; Nicodemus supplied aromas (a mixture of myrrh and aloes), the body was dressed in funeral clothes and buried in a coffin.
But three days later the coffin was empty. Jesus has resurrected. He appeared to Mary Magdalene, the eleven apostles, and later to 500 brothers gathered at the behest of the apostles... He commanded the apostles: “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” (Mark xvi. 15). Then the phenomena stopped. He ascended to heaven at the end of 40 days.
The image of Jesus Christ, the fruit of the contamination of Jewish traditions with Mithraism, the cult of Dionysus, etc., the end result of the Hellenistic mixture of cultures, had a huge influence on the literature and art of Europe.
Poetry of Dante, Milton and many others.
In Russian literature, his direct portrayal was given by Dostoevsky in “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” and Mikhail Bulgakov in the novel “The Master and Margarita.”
The Legend of the Devastation of Hell and the Medieval Image of Christ
In the Middle Ages, the story of the destruction of hell was enormously popular: how Jesus, between his crucifixion and resurrection, destroyed hell, freeing the souls of the dead from torment.
In some versions, Jesus delivers the departed righteous from torment, in others - all souls in hell. There is nothing like this in the canonical Bible; the legend goes back to a detailed account of this in the apocrypha “Gospel of Nicodemus.”
Numerous versions of the legend, from medieval miracles to Langland's poem "Peter Plowman", depict Christ as the defender of the oppressed, who conquers death and saves souls from prison; he is given the features of a partly barbarian epic hero, he appears in the form of a warrior, although he arrives on a donkey; he breaks down the gates of Hell, which
depicted as a typical feudal castle, protected by powerful barons. Christ destroys and plows up Hell.
13. Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene - Mary from the city of Magdala1, a very beautiful harlot, extremely vicious. Jesus healed her by casting out seven demons, after which she repented of her depraved life and became one of his faithful followers.
The Gospel of Luke contains the following story about Magdalene: “One of the Pharisees prayed to him that he would eat with him; and he entered the house of the Pharisee and lay down. And so a woman of this city, who was a sinner and who found out that he was reclining in the house of a Pharisee, brought ala-vastra of peace and stood at his feet from behind, weeping, began to wash his feet with tears and wipe them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed with myrrh.
Seeing this, the Pharisee who invited him said to himself: “If he were a prophet, he would know who and what kind of woman is touching him: for she is a sinner.”
And in response Jesus said to him: “Simon, I have something to tell you.” He answered: “Speak, teacher.”
Jesus said: “Two men owed money to a certain creditor, one five hundred denarii, the other fifty; since they could not pay, he forgave the debts of both. Which of them, tell me, will love him more?”
Simon replied: “I think that the one to whom I forgave more.” Jesus said to him: “You have judged rightly.”
And turning to the woman, he said to Simon: “Do you see this woman? I entered your house, but you did not allow water to wash my feet, but she wet my feet with tears and wiped them with the hair of her head.”
“You didn’t give me a kiss; as soon as I entered, she didn’t stop kissing my feet.”
“You did not anoint my head with oil; she anointed my feet with oil.”
“For this reason, I tell you, her many sins are forgiven, for she loved much; and to those who love less, little is left.”
And he said to her: “Your sins are forgiven.”
(This episode from Luke served as the theme of a large painting by Rubens and Van Dyck, “The Feast of Simon the Pharisee,” in the Leningrad Hermitage).
The famous painting by Titian “The Penitent Magdalene”, paintings by Correggio, Guido Reni and others.
According to the gospel accounts, Magdalene was on Calvary at the time of the crucifixion; buried Jesus after his death; and he was the first to appear to her after the resurrection. The apocryphal Gospel of Thomas says that Jesus loved Mary of Magdala more than all his disciples and often kissed her on the lips.
1 Magdala is a city in Galilee, on the shores of Lake Tiberias, where Christ preached.
Magdalene is the sister of Martha and Lazarus, resurrected by Jesus (but Lazarus lived in Bethany, not Magdala).
The image of a sinner, whose repentance is even more captivating than her previous sin, has always retained a certain ambiguity: the relationship between Christ and Magdalene is the secret sexual-psychological motive of the gospel (love desire, suppressed by religious reverence, degenerates in Magdalene into extreme masochism).
This image of the legend was brilliantly developed by Dostoevsky in the novel “The Idiot” (Prince Myshkin and Nastasya Filippovna).
14. Holy Grail
The Gospel legend in the Middle Ages, contaminating with many Celtic and Germanic myths, gave rise to a lot of apocrypha and folk Christian legends. One of the first such legends was the legend of the Holy Grail.
Its origins are in the gospels; it tells about the noble Pharisee Nicodemus, deprived of his dignity for the burial of Christ, and about the wealthy resident of Jerusalem, Joseph of Ari-mathea, a disciple of Christ, who hid his conversion “for fear of the Jews.” Joseph demanded the body of Christ from Pilate after the Passion and buried it along with Nicodemus in his garden. That's all the gospels say.
According to the legends of the Middle Ages, Joseph of Arimathea sailed by sea from Judea to Provence, and from here he headed to Britain, where he brought the Christian faith and the Holy Grail. He carried this relic from country to country, preaching Christianity. Grail (Old French word) is the name of a mysterious cup made of a single stone - emerald; it was brought to earth by angels, and Christ drank wine from it at the Last Supper. During the Passion, Joseph of Arimathea collected in this cup the blood flowing from the wound in the side of the crucified Christ, where he was pierced with a spear by a centurion. The Holy Blood Grail gave its owner the ability to perform miracles, but could only be achieved by a virgin knight. Legends about the search for the Holy Grail form an important part of the Arthurian cycle (when the Grail was lost, the Knights of the Round Table made several expeditions to find it).
The most famous of the Knights of the Round Table is Lancelot del Lac. He was raised by the fairy of the lake, hence his nickname. Lancelot is the lover of Queen Guinevere, wife of King Arthur. In vain he participates in the search for the Holy Grail: the sin of adultery weighing on him prevents him from obtaining the great relic. Lancelot is a victim of the magical spell of the false Ginevra. The son of Lancelot, Gilead, pure from sin, takes possession of the Holy Grail.
Lancelot's repentance and death complete his turbulent fate. Fata Morgana (that is, the fairy Morgana) - in the Breton legend, the half-sister of King Arthur, the rejected lover of Lancelot; this is a sorceress who lives at the bottom of the sea, in a crystal palace; she
deceives sailors with ghostly visions and destroys them. In a figurative sense, “Fata Morgana” is a deceptive vision, a mirage.
A knight going in search of the Grail must go to the Chapel of Perils and ask magical questions there that make him the owner of the cup and spear and free the country from the spell. As he approaches the Chapel of Peril, the Grail Knight is besieged by horrors, including bats with the heads of babies.
The English folklorist Jessie L. Weston, in her book “From Ritual to Chivalric Romance,” undertook a reconstruction of the legend of the Holy Grail. In her opinion, the Grail is a magical talisman that lifts the spell of infertility cast on the fairy-tale land of the Fisher King, a character in a number of “fertility myths.” The legend of the search for the Grail is based on one of these ancient myths, associated with the cult of the dying and resurrecting god and with the primitive rite of initiation (cruel tests during initiation into manhood). Thus, the legend of the Holy Grail is at its very core pagan, ancient, and not Christian at all.
15. Agasphere, or punishment by immortality
Ahasferus (Ahasverus) - aka the Eternal Jew, le Juif Errant. Another later legend added to the Christian myth. According to this legend, Ahasferus was the name of a shoemaker in Jerusalem who did not accept Jesus, who wanted to rest with him on the way to Golgotha; according to other versions, Agaspherus was the name of Pilate’s servant (Cartaphilus), who struck Jesus after the trial. Generally speaking, Agasfer (“prince”) is the word used in the Bible to refer to the Median and Persian kings.
They said that Jesus, carrying his cross and bending under its weight, wanted to rest in front of the door of the shoemaker Agasfer, but he rudely drove him away. Jesus said, “I want him to remain until I come.” (Or: “You will wander the earth until I come”). Thus, Agasfer was condemned to wander the earth until the second coming of Christ. For him there is no death, but there is no rest. This punishment of eternal immortality and eternal wandering symbolizes the fate of the Jewish people, condemned to wander around the world far from their homeland.
According to versions of the legend, Agasferus immediately walked away after Christ’s words and could no longer stop.
The legend developed in the 13th century and gained wide popularity. In various European countries, especially in the 17th century in German cities, rumors spread about the appearance here and there of the wandering Ahasfer, about meetings of people with him. In the library of the city of Bern they even showed Agasfer's shoes and cane.
At the same time, a number of folk books about Agasphere appeared in Germany, published in French and ancient languages. In the 18th century, the folk song “La complainte du Juif Errant” (“The Complaint of the Eternal Jew”) gained enormous popularity in England and Belgium.
The widespread popular popularity of the legend, due to the fact that the fate of Agasfer was symbolically associated with the fate of all those deprived of their homeland, who were in “dispersal”
research" of the Jewish people, gave rise to numerous adaptations in the literature of almost all European peoples. There are over 60 German adaptations alone. The plot of Agasphere was of keen interest to German “stormy geniuses” (Schubart’s poem) and romantic poets in general (Shelley, Lenau, Zhukovsky, etc.). Young Goethe learned the legend of Agasphere from folk books and began to write a broadly conceived poem about him, wanting to “depict the most outstanding moments in the history of religion and the church.” In his famous autobiography, Dichtung und Wahrheit, Goethe details his plan to “rework the story of the Wandering Jew in an epic way.” Excerpts from Goethe's unwritten poem were published in 1836. (Is it true?)
Agasferus was portrayed as a minor but detailed character by Jan Potocki in his famous novel “The Manuscript Found in Saragossa.” Pushkin knew and loved this book, which D.D. Blagoy does not take into account in his study “Pushkin’s Creative Path”.
In 1823, the French historian Edgard Quinet published a satirical poem “Tablettes du Juif Errant” (“Notes of the Eternal Jew”), close to the progressive views of Madame de Staël and Benjamin Constant and directed against religious dogma and superstition. Kiene was interested in German philosophy and studied it in Heidelberg. He translated from German, he tried to imitate Wolfgang Goethe in his philosophical drama “Ahasverus” (1833), embodying the freedom-loving spirit of humanity in the legendary image of the Eternal Jew.
Eugene Sue described the adventures of Agasfer in the form of an adventure novel “Juif Errant” (“The Wandering Jew”, 1844), directed against the Jesuits. Bérenger's song under the same name became widely known in France. Artistic adaptations of the legend continued until the 20th century.
As Blagoy found out, Pushkin’s unfinished sketch “There is a lamp in a Jewish hut” (Boldino autumn 1830) represents the beginning of a poem or a long poem about Agasphere, not written by the poet. Franciszek Malevsky, at an evening with N.A. Polevoy, heard Pushkin’s story about this plan: “A child dies in a Jew’s hut. Amid the crying, the man says to his mother: “Don’t cry. Not death, life is terrible. I am a wandering Jew. I saw Jesus carrying the cross, and I mocked.” A hundred and twenty year old man dies in his presence. This impressed him more than the fall of the Roman Empire.” Malevsky's diary became known among us only in 1952.
In their novel “The Golden Calf,” Soviet writers Ilf and Petrov created an original “completion” of the legend of Agasphere: according to the story of Ostap Bender, the Eternal Jew was killed by the Makhnovists (or Petliurists?) during the civil war in Ukraine.
More about the origin of the legend. In Eastern folklore and the Koran, the theme of punishing a sinner with immortality is already encountered; the legend finally took shape in the era of the Crusades, pilgrimages to Palestine, the vagrancy of beggars ruined by feudal lords, and the persecution of Jews in medieval Europe.
One of the first European versions of the legend is given by the Italian astrologer Guido Bonatti (Astronomical Treatise, published in 1491).
Provençal and Italian legends of the 15th century told of an immortal Jew who wandered through the cities of Italy. Having experienced a lot, he gave wise advice to ordinary people. The rulers tried to execute him, but he remained invulnerable.
A Jewish shoemaker, punished with eternal wanderings, appears in a German folk book of 1602.
The mysterious image of Agasfer, an eternal wanderer, forever living among people, observing their mistakes, suffering and joys and not finding peace anywhere, inspired many writers.
Schubart - “The Eternal Jew”, 1783.
Goethe - “The Eternal Jew”, 1773.
Zhukovsky -
Jan Potocki - “Manuscript found in Saragossa”, 1804.
Edgar Quinet - “Notes of the Eternal Jew”, 1823.
Pushkin - “There is a lamp in a Jewish hut”, 1830.
Edgar Quinet - drama "Ahasfer", 1833.
Lenau - “The Eternal Jew”, 1833.
Eugene Sue - “The Wandering Jew”, 1844.
Beranger - "The Wandering Jew".
In Hoffmann's story “The Choice of a Bride,” the Eternal Jew is the owner of a trading business in Berlin.
The poem by V. K. Kuchelbecker “Agasver” (1832-1844), which depicts the strange tragedy of a dying world.
16. Paolo and Francesca
In the 13th century, the “lord” (that is, tyrant) of the city of Ravenna, Guido da Polenta, had a beautiful daughter named Francesco da Polenta. Her father married her to the noble and rich, but ugly and rude Lanciotto, son of Malatesta, “signor” of the city of Rimini. Lanciotto's younger brother was a wonderful young man, Paolo. Francesca fell in love with him; Lanciotto caught them together and killed them both.
This story was made famous by Dante. In his “Hell” (canto V), the poet devoted about 70 verses to depicting the boundless love of Francesca and Paolo. Dante's attention is attracted by two embracing shadows, which rush together in a hellish whirlwind, not being separated even in the midst of torment. In the name of love, Dante calls them to himself. Francesca is deeply touched by his compassion and talks about her only love, which brought him here. One day they read with Paolo about the love of Launcelot and Queen Ginevra. When they read that Launcelot kissed Ginevra, Paolo kissed Francesca - “And on this
We didn’t read anymore for a day.” And in hell (says Francesca) “he still doesn’t leave me.” Love will last forever, just as punishment will last forever. And the poet, seized by pity, falls unconscious. In the spirit of medieval asceticism, Dante placed these passionate lovers in hell, but he himself sang them and expressed his ardent sympathy for them.
The image of Francesca da Rimini later inspired painters and musicians (including P. I. Tchaikovsky). Silvio Pellico wrote a tragedy about this love, and Byron translated it into English. In the 19th century, the room where Paolo and Francesca were killed was still shown in Rimini.
17. Faust. Deal with the devil
Doctor Johann Faust is a historical figure, a warlock who wandered through Germany at the beginning of the 16th century. His legendary biography took shape already in the era of the Reformation and became a great theme in European literature.
The historical Faust was born, apparently, around 1480 in the city of Kkittlingen; in 1508, through Franz von Sickengen, he received a position as a teacher in Kreuznach, but had to flee persecution from his fellow citizens. As a warlock and astrologer, Faust traveled around Europe, posing as a great scientist and boasting that he could perform all the miracles of Jesus Christ. In 1539 his trace was lost. During the Renaissance, when faith in magic and miracles was still alive, and on the other hand, science was achieving outstanding victories, the figure of Doctor Faustus quickly acquired legendary shape and wide popularity.
In 1587 in Germany, in the publication of Spies, the first literary adaptation of the legend appeared - a folk book about Faust: “Historai von Dr. Johann Fausten, dem weitbeschreite Zauberer und Schwartzkunstler etc.” - The book contains episodes that were once associated with various sorcerers (Simon the Magus, Albert the Great, etc.) and attributed to Faust. The author, apparently a Lutheran cleric, portrays Faust as a daring wicked man who entered into an alliance with the devil for the sake of acquiring great knowledge and power (“Faust grew eagle wings and wanted to penetrate and explore all the foundations of heaven and earth”). The final chapter of the book tells of Faust’s “terrible and terrifying end”: he is torn apart by demons and his soul goes to hell. It is characteristic that Faust is given the features of a humanist.
These features are noticeably strengthened in the 1589 edition: Faust lectures on Homer at the University of Erfurt, at the request of students, he evokes the shadows of heroes of classical antiquity; The love of humanists for antiquity is realized in the book as a “godless” connection between the lustful Faust and the Beautiful Helen. Despite the author’s desire to condemn Faust for his atheism and pride, his image is still shrouded in a well-known heroism; it reflected the Renaissance era with its inherent thirst for limitless knowledge, the cult of unlimited personal capabilities, and the rebellion of medieval quietism.
The English playwright Christopher Marlowe used the folk book about Faust to create the first dramatic adaptation of the legend. This is his tragedy “The tragical history of the life and death of Doctor Faustus”, 1588-1589, published in 1604. Marlowe knew the book Description, it was translated into English in 1588. Knowledge for the hero of the English tragedy is above all, and for this he rebels against religion. Marlowe's tragedy about Faust is the pinnacle of his humanistic dramaturgy, although Faust needs knowledge only as a means of achieving power and wealth.
Marlowe enhanced the heroic features of the legend, turning Faust into the bearer of the heroic elements of the Renaissance. He depicts a titan consumed by a thirst for knowledge, wealth and power. From the folk book, Marlowe inherited the alternation of serious and comic episodes, as well as the tragic ending of the legend, expressing the condemnation of Faust and his daring breakthroughs.
Apparently, at the beginning of the 17th century, Marlowe’s tragedy was brought by English traveling comedians to Germany, where it was transformed into a puppet comedy, which gained considerable popularity (by the way, Goethe also owed a lot to it when creating his “Faust”).
The folk book also underlies Widmann's lengthy work on Faust, published in Hamburg in 1598; Widman strengthened the moralistic and clerical-didactic tendencies of the folk book; he created a narrative about the “terrible and disgusting sins and deeds” of the famous warlock. Pfitzer followed in Widmann's footsteps, publishing his adaptation of the folk book about Faust in 1674.
The Faustian theme gained exceptional popularity in Germany in the second half of the 18th century (“Sturm and Drang”). Lessing left fragments of an unrealized play about Faust. Friedrich Muller (artist and poet, he called himself “Maler Muller” and went down in history as “Muller the painter”) left an unfinished tragedy “The Life of Faust” (“Fausts Leben dramatisiert”, 1178); his titanic image of Faust turned out to be too one-sided, because Muller made only a thirst for pleasure as the reason for his union with Mephistopheles. The description of hell contains sharply satirical sketches of contemporary morals of Müller. In 1791, Friedrich Maximilian Klinger published his philosophical novel “Fausts Leben, Thaten und Hollenfart” (“The Life of Faust, Deeds and Death in Hell”), in which he combined the legend with sharp criticism of absolutism and feudal society (the arbitrariness of the feudal lord, the crimes of monarchs and clergy , depravity of the ruling classes, portraits of Louis XI, Pope Alexander Borgia, etc.).
The greatest peak of this tradition was Goethe’s tragedy “Faust” (more on it later). It was created from 1774 to 1831.
Faust appears as a traveling charlatan of the 16th century in Arnim’s novel “Die Kronenwatcher” (“The Guardians of the Crown”, 1817). The legend of Faust was developed by Grubbs (Don Juan und Faust, 1829), Lenau (Faust, 1835-1836) and Heine (Der Doctor Faust. Ein Tazpoem, 1851).
In Russia, Pushkin - “Scene from Faust”; We find echoes of Goethe’s “Faust” in A. K. Tolstoy’s “Don Juan” (prologue, Faustian features of Don Juan) and in the epistolary story
Turgenev "Faust". - Ivan Karamazov from Dostoevsky’s last novel was called “Russian Faust”. In the 20th century - Bryusov and Lunacharsky (reading drama “Faust and the City”).
"Faust" by Goethe, or the spirit of eternal quest
Goethe's tragedy is the pinnacle of all German literature. In processing the plot, the poet relied on the folk book about Faust (1587), on the texts of this book in the edition of Pfitzner (1674) and under the title “Believing Christian” (anonymous, 1725), as well as on the puppet drama.
The first version (the manuscript was discovered in 1887) is called “Urfaust” (“Prafaust”, arose in 1773-1775); it remained unfinished. Revolting against the “dust and decay” of book scholasticism, striving for the fullness of life, Faust here expresses only a vague impulse characteristic of the era of “Storm and Drang”.
Having somewhat smoothed out the historical style, Goethe published a fragment from Faust in 1790.
The most intensive work on Faust (June 1797 - January 1801) was associated with the understanding of the French Revolution. During these years, the philosophical concept of the tragedy was formed, its first part (published in 1808) was completed. The second part was written in 1825-1831, with the exception of the episode with Elena, which arose in 1800.
If in “Prafaust” the tragedy is still fragmentary, then with the advent of the prologue “In Heaven” (written in 1797) it takes on the grandiose outline of a humanistic mystery, the numerous episodes of which are connected by the unity of a great artistic concept. In the spirit of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, Goethe raises the question of the dignity and purpose of the individual, of its liberation from the social and ethical norms of the Middle Ages. He overthrows the church concept of the insignificance of man and the powerlessness of reason. The image of Faust embodies faith in the limitless creative possibilities of man.
Faust's inquisitive mind and daring are contrasted with the fruitless efforts of the dry pedant Wagner, who fenced himself off from life, from practice, from people. Goethe expresses his thought in the famous Faustian aphorism: “Sulphur is theory, my friend. But the tree of life is ever green.” Overcoming the contemplation of German social thought, Faust puts forward action as the basis of being. He does not accept the biblical statement: “In the beginning was the work.” He is a tireless seeker of the “right path”, alien to peace; its distinguishing feature is constant dissatisfaction, die Unzufriedrnheit.
The tragedy reflected the brilliant insights of dialectics. In Goethe, the metaphysical opposition of good and evil is removed. Denial and skepticism, embodied in the image of Mephistopheles, become the driving force that helps Faust in his search for truth. The path to creation passes through destruction - this is the conclusion to which, according to Chernyshevsky, Goethe comes, summarizing the historical experience of his era. The first part of the tragedy reproduces specific features of German life. Gretchen's story becomes an important link in the process of Faust's quest. The tragic situation arises as a result of the insoluble contradiction between the ideal of the natural man, as Fa-
mouth Margarita, and the real appearance of a limited bourgeoisie. At the same time, Margarita is a victim of social prejudices and dogmatism of church morality. (The meek sinner is also an eternal image).
I remember the first appearance of Mephistopheles in the form of a black poodle, the story with the pentagram on the threshold, drunken burshis in the legendary Auerbach tavern, Mephistopheles' song about the flea, the famous Walpurgis Night (the Sabbath on Mount Brocken), where the witches are naked, and with every word a red witch flies out of the witch's mouth mouse... Everything is amazing in this great tragedy!
In the second part, the concreteness of everyday scenes gives way to a string of episodes of a symbolic-allegorical nature. Scenes at the imperial court suggest the imminent collapse of the feudal system. In an effort to establish the humanistic ideal, Faust turns to antiquity. The marriage of Faust and Helen becomes a symbol of the unity of two eras. Ancient beauty enters into a synthesis with new poetry: Helen learns from Faust to speak in rhyme. She gives birth to Fausta's wonderful son, Euphorion (Byron). When the young man dies, Elena disappears, and only her clothes remain in the hands of Faust. The union with ancient beauty turns out to be only an aesthetic appearance.
Faust is trying to create artificial life by growing a little man in a retort - that’s what he was called in Latin Iotipsi1i8; This is a small asexual creature endowed with supernatural powers of a magical kind...
The result of Faust's quest is the conviction that the ideal must be realized on real earth. At the same time, Goethe already understands that the new bourgeois society being created on the ruins of feudal Europe is far from ideal.
Robbery, trade and war.
Does it really matter? Their goal is one! -
Mephistopheles declares. Through his lips, Goethe reveals the other side of bourgeois progress. But for him, unlike the romantics, he is characterized not by disappointment and tragic discord with the bourgeois world, but by faith in the possibility of overcoming social evil on earth. Faced with the complex set of problems of the 19th century, Goethe retains his Enlightenment optimism, but turns it towards future generations when free labor on a free land becomes possible. In the name of this future, a person must act and fight without knowing peace:
Only he is worthy of life and freedom,
Who goes to battle for them every day!
The tragedy is imbued with the pathos of creativity. Everything in her is in motion, in development; a powerful creative process that reproduces itself at ever higher levels.
At the end of the tragedy, the decrepit and already blind Faust is the beneficent ruler of a free land. His minister, Mephistopheles, deceives Faust: on his orders, the grave
the lemurs dig a grave for Faust, and the blind man imagines that it is his people, on his orders, who are digging a canal. He is deeply happy with the victory of his plan, the triumph over the elements (the reconquest of the land from the sea); blind, he already sees the kingdom of freedom and general labor prosperity. Intoxicated with joy, Faust utters the fateful words stipulated in the agreement with Mephistopheles: “Stop, just a moment, you are beautiful!”
And falls dead. According to the terms of the pact, at the moment of satisfaction, his soul becomes the property of Mephistopheles.
But in the symbolic finale, a battle is played out between demons and angels for the soul of Faust. Mephistopheles took possession of it by deception and has no right to it. Angels defeat the forces of evil by striking them with roses. The deceased Faust is awarded a “cosmic” apotheosis: angels lift his soul to the abode of bliss, and along the way it (the soul) talks with Gretchen’s soul.
Faust's creative spirit merged with the creative forces of the universe. “The eternally feminine calls us upward!”
Such a gigantic work inevitably gave rise to a lot of interpretations and different approaches.
The greatest development of the theme since Goethe is Nicholas Lenau's dramatic poem Faust (1836). The Austrian poet was a pessimistic romantic, ein Weltschmerzer, and his Faust is the hero of intellectual rebellion. Lenau's poem is fragmentary: an epic narrative, lyrical monologues, dramatic scenes - episodes from the life of a thinker who despises the world of oppressors and courtiers, but rushes about in search of abstract truth. This Faust is incapable of creative activity; he is an ambivalent, wavering, doomed rebel. He dreams in vain of “uniting the world, God and himself”; the inability to defeat the dark forces plunges him into despair. Unlike Goethe's tragedy, in Lenau it is not Faust who wins, but Mephistopheles - denial without affirmation, without creativity, evil and corrosive skepticism (he is similar to Goethe's Mephistopheles). The spirit of denial and skepticism triumphs over the rebel, over the Faustian spirit. With Lenau's poem the disintegration of the humanistic concept of the legend of Faust begins.
In The Decline of Europe (1918-1922), Oswald Spengler rejects the optimism embodied in Goethe's Faust and calls senile retirement and the philosophy of weariness "Faustian."
Nowadays, the Faustian principle (the spirit of quest) is opposed to Asian passivity and is put forward as an innate difference between Eupropianism.
The original understanding of the great tradition was expressed in Thomas Mann's famous novel Doktor Faustus (1947), in which the idea of an alliance with the devil for the sake of creativity is debunked as a tragic mistake leading to the death of the artist. Antifaust.
The source of the entire Faustian tradition is the people's fearful admiration for the Wizards of Science, the myth of the demonism of science, which arose as a result of the religious ban on knowledge of the world.
The predecessor of Faust in European mythologies is the wise wizard Merlin (evil will and terrifying longevity).
Byron's Manfred is called the "Romantic Faust".
Lewis's "Monk".
"Melmoth the Wanderer."
18. Don Juan
Spanish medieval legend created the image of Don Juan, a daring violator of moral and religious norms, a seeker of sensual pleasures. The legend has developed around a historical figure - Don Juan Tenorio, a courtier of the Castilian king, he is mentioned in the chronicles and in the list of knights of the Order of the Garter. According to legend, Don Juan for a long time debauched with impunity, but one day he killed the commander of the order, who was defending the honor of his daughter; then the Franciscan monks lured him into the monastery garden and killed him, spreading the rumor that Don Juan had been cast into hell by the statue of the commander he had insulted.
The image of an all-powerful feudal lord who devoted his life to seducing women and fighting turned out to be so typical of the era that he soon became one of the heroes of all European literature. One of the first adaptations of the legend was written by Tirso de Molina. This was the pseudonym of the monk Gabriel Telles (1571 - 1b48), a prominent playwright from the school of Lope de Vega. He wrote the play “The Mischievous Man of Seville, or the Stone Guest” (“El burlador de Sevilla y Convidado de piedra”, 1b30), where the hero, out of mischief, invites the statue of Anna’s father, whom he killed, to dinner, and only the shaking of the stone hand inspires horror and repentance in him; Having violated ethical standards, Don Juan falls into the underworld.
Tirso de Molina's play was not distinguished by particularly great artistic merit, but the type of Don Juan had such social significance that it immediately gained enormous popularity. Emerging on the brink of the Renaissance, the image of Don Juan was at the same time generated by a humanistic protest against church dogmas about the sinfulness of everything earthly. In this regard, Don Juan looks like a freethinker, a hero breaking the shackles of medieval ascetic morality. This is why the legend of Don Juan has given rise to so many literary offspring.
The plot migrated to Italy: the comedies of G. Cicognini (about 1b50) and Giliberto (1b52), commedia dell'arte (1b57-1b58). The tragicomedies of Dorimon (1b58) and de Villiers (1b59) appeared in France. In 1bb5, the premiere of Moliere’s comedy “Don Juan ou Festin de pierre” (“Don Juan, or the Stone Feast”) took place at the Palais Royal Theater in Paris. Moliere's Don Juan is both a freethinker and a corrupted, cynical aristocrat. It is not surprising that already in 1600, Moliere’s comedy was removed from the stage for many years. Moliere created a classic version of the type.
In 1669, "Le nouveau festin de pierre, ou l"athee foudroyé" was published in France; the author was Rosimok-Klad Larose (pseudonym Jean-Baptiste Du Mesnil). In 1677, Thomas Corneille created his "Le Festin de Pierre"; it was his brother the great Pierre Corneille, but without his genius.
In the same era, the plot moves to England: Th. Shadwell, "The Librrtine", 1676.
In 1736, Goldoni, a Venetian playwright, created Don Giovanni Tenorio ossia il Dissoluto. He was still relatively young, his thing was not of great importance.
In 1787, Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni” was staged in Prague, written on a libretto by the Italian playwright Lorenzo da Ponte “Il dissoluto puinto ossia il Don Giovanny”„1787. Mozart's music emphasized the humanistic features of the image of Don Juan, uncontrollably surrendering to the joys of life. Mozart replaced the conflict (individual - society) characteristic of previous interpretations with a tragic conflict of doom of subjectivistic, albeit daring, arbitrariness in the face of objective necessity and death. Mozart's understanding of Don Giovanni led to the interpretation of him as a lonely rebel, a doomed seeker of an ideal in the spring of youth and femininity. It was this interpretation that was developed by the romantics of the 19th century.
Bourgeois society gave rise to criticism of philistinism and praise of individualism, which gave rise to a whole galaxy of disappointed and titanic Don Juans. Hoffmann, in his short story “Don Giovanni” (1814), gives a purely romantic interpretation of Mozart’s opera, creating his plot as a “superstructure” over the plot of the opera. Christian Dietrich Grubbs, the son of a prison warden, a “drunken genius” from Detmold, wrote the tragedy Don Juan and Faust (1829), which depicts the conflict between the desire for knowledge and the cult of pleasure.
Byron, himself a loner rebel and passionate lover, could not ignore this plot. His satirical poem “Don Juan” (published 1819-1823) remained unfinished; but this magnificent panorama of 18th-century Europe has achieved enormous and well-deserved fame. Bayro-Nrvsky's Don Juan is a Spanish nobleman, headstrong and flighty, violating the prohibitions of sanctimonious morality, but quite moral during the difficult moments of life (the episode with Haidi, the rescue of a Turkish girl after the capture of Izmail by Suvorov, etc.). The skepticism of Byron's hero is caused by the depravity of society, Don Juan's disappointment is a harbinger of social rebellion in the name of individual rights.
Byron's poem is one of the best works about Don Juan in world history; this piece, which influenced “Eugene Onegin,” is comparable only to Moliere’s comedy and Mozart’s immortal opera.
The plot received great development in France. Honore de Balzac used it in a completely original way in the short story “L" elixir de longue vie" (1830). Alfred de Musset wrote the poem "Namuna" (1832), Alexander Dumas the father - "Don Juan de Marana ou la Chute d"un ange "(1836). Prosper Merimee in the short story “The Souls of Purgatory” tried to explain the depravity of Don Juan by the peculiarities of life and environment.
A remarkable image of the indifferently proud Don Juan, who does not humble himself even after death, even in Charon’s boat, was created by Charles Baudelaire in the poem “Don Juan aux Enfers” (1857); in the first, magazine edition it was called “Unrepentant”.
The concepts of the romantics were developed by Barbet d'Aurevilly (The Most Beautiful Love of Don Juan, 1874). Already in the 20th century, the eternal plot was developed by the subtle esthete, academician Henri de Regnier (Don Juan au tombeau, 1910).
Among the works of other literatures, the Spanish “Don Juan Tenorio” (1844), written by Zorrilla y Moral, should be noted; Lenau’s dramatic poem “Don Juan” (1844), the most interesting philosophical and aesthetic lyric by Sørey Kierkegaard “Mozart’s Don Juan”.
In Russia, already at the very beginning of the 18th century, in the first public theater organized by Peter I in Moscow, “The Comedy about Don Jan and Don Pedra” was staged. It was a Russian adaptation of the French translation of the comedy by the Italian Giliberto (1b52), who, in turn, remade the play by Tirso de Molina. This production apparently did not attract much attention, and in Russia at that time the “Don Juan tragedy” did not take root.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the immortal play by Moliere, two ballets about Don Juan and an opera by Mozart were staged in theaters in St. Petersburg and Moscow; Byron's poem is becoming quite widely known. From this time on, the image of Don Juan became firmly established in Russian everyday life. In 1830, Pushkin created his brilliant “little tragedy” “The Stone Guest”. Having recreated the real Spain of the Renaissance, Pushkin showed “Don Guan” (he tried to Spanishize this Frenchized name) as a living hero of this era.
Don Guan is brave, charming, spiritually gifted, cheerful, but full of selfish impulses; striving for pleasure, he spares no one. The traditional conflict between the individual and society in Pushkin’s humanistic interpretation develops into a tragedy of passions. Having violated human laws, Don Guan is doomed to death.
B. M. Tomashevsky thoroughly proved that Pushkin knew all the major works about Don Juan: of course, Moliere’s comedy, Byron’s poem, Lorenzo da Ponte’s libretto for Mozart’s opera, and - very likely - Hoffmann’s short story, and much more ( see Tomashevsky's commentary in the 7th volume of the Complete Collection of Works, Ans USSR, 1935, pp. 184-185).
Alexey Tolstoy wrote the dramatic poem “Don Juan” (1859), Alexander Blok - the poem “Steps of the Commander” (1912). Lesya Ukrainka’s drama “The Stone Master” (1912) is directed against Nietzschean philosophy, against individualism.
Don Juan is an eternal seeker of love, not finding an ideal in any woman. His tragic death (the motif of the statue coming to life) expresses the doom of the “search for the absolute” in love. The image that, after romanticism, was canonized in the European consciousness is the image of a seeker of the absolute, like all indomitable seekers, like Balzac’s Claes (“Search for the Absolute”). Absolute love is impossible, just like absolute knowledge.
Leporello (in Molière's tradition, Sganarelle) is Don Juan's servant and constant companion, an accomplice in all his seductions and love affairs.
In Spain, the homeland of Don Juan, the Seville seducer, whom Zorilla popularized and even decided to save, was almost always treated with admiration and sympathy. From the famous "generation of '98" two writers wrote about Don Juan: Ramiro Maeztu, who declared him, along with Don Quixote and Celestina, one of the embodiments of the "Spanish soul" (famous essay "Don Quijote, don Juan y la Celestina" ), and Dr. Gregorio de Maranon, who interprets the figure of Don Juan from a scientific point of view, attributing to him homosexual tendencies.
In 1970, the first woman wrote about Don Giovanni: Mercedes Saenz Alonso, a famous cultural figure from San Sebastian; her book “Don Juan y el donjuanismo” received an award from the province of Guipuzkoa in the Basque Country. Mercedes Saenz Alonso opposes the interpretation of Dr. Gregorio de Marañon, working out all sorts of hypotheses about homosexuality. She writes: “Dear Don Juan, from the moment he stops looking for pleasure from a prostitute, from the first female he comes across, leads him to search for a woman, to meet a woman, exactly the one he will like... Walking blindly towards the only woman, Don Juan signifies and emphasizes his will to subordinate sex to the possession of this particular woman. . . And here the fact that his inconstancy pushes him every time to another woman who should give him satisfaction does not play any role. However, not the satisfaction that the first person you meet can give. . . »
She writes about the lives of genuine Don Juans, such as Maragni (known from Merimee's story), Vilmedina and others who could inspire poets, and ends with modern Don Juans, like Rudolph Valentino and James Bond. In her opinion, the ideal Don Juan, the most worthy of love, was the Marquis de Bradomin, the hero of Valle Inclan. - There is little original in the book.
Ramon Maria del Valle-Inclan (18b9 - 183b) - a talented romanticist from the “generation of 1898”; in 1902 - 1905 he created a series of novels with one hero, the Marquis de Bradomin, “the knight of the dream that saves the heart,” a uniquely meaningful image of the irreconcilable enemy of the bourgeois philistinism.
19. The Pied Piper of Gammeln
A wonderful German legend, reflected in the poetry of different countries and finding a second meaning in the 20th century. In the Middle Ages, a story arose about how in the city of Gammeln there was a terrifying number of rats that ate all the supplies and threatened death by starvation. The magistrate announced a huge reward for anyone who rids the city of rats. Then an unknown man appeared with a knapsack over his shoulders; he took a pipe (or flute) out of his knapsack and played it. The rats began to come running to this melody and followed the flutist as if spellbound; They dragged old, sick rats on themselves. All the rats of Gammeln followed the musician, but he did not stop playing. So he reached the Weser River; swayed near the shore
boat, he stepped into it, without ceasing to play, pushed off and floated down the river. And the entire countless horde of rats followed him and drowned in the Weser (a reflection of a well-known biological fact - mass migrations of rodents, for example, lemmings).
When the Pied Piper returned to the city he had saved for his reward, the magistrate either refused him or offered him the same amount in silver instead of the promised gold. Then the mysterious stranger went out into the street and played a different melody on his pipe. Obeying her alluring power, all the children of Gammeln followed him. The magic musician left the city with them, entered the cave - they followed him; The entrance to the cave was closed, and the inhabitants of the city never saw their children again. - The meaning of this sad legend is didactic: you cannot break this promise. Against greed.
But in the 20th century, a more eerie meaning of the legend was “revealed”; the emphasis was placed on a wizard luring children like rats (his music has no effect on adults). The Pied Piper of Gammeln is fascism.
About the Pied Piper, see: Roman Belousov, “What the Books Were Silent About.”
The Legend of the Pied Piper is based on historical fact. Back in the 14th century, a certain Johannes Pomarius, referring to legend, wrote the book “The Death of the Children of Gammeln”; Since then, a huge amount of research has been written about this. But at the heart of it all is an entry in the old Hamelin chronicle: “In 1284, on the day of Johann and Paul, which was the 26th day of the month of June, a flute player dressed in colorful veils led out of the city one hundred and thirty children born in Hamelin to Kopen near Kalwaria, where they disappeared." The details of the tragedy have not reached us, because those who survived it mostly died a few years later during the plague. It is possible that both the children and the flute player drowned in a swamp near the village of Koppenbrugge behind Mount Kalvarienberg. Subsequently, a prehistory about rats was added to this historically based legend; Hameln's neighbors were jealous of the city's wealth and wanted to shame the treachery and greed of the Hamelin city council. In the 17th century, the legend took on its canonical form. Oral tradition and folk ballad spread throughout Germany.
The street song about the Pied Piper, according to Goethe, was devoid of grace, and he composed a famous ballad on this plot. He was followed by Heinrich Heine and Prosper Merimee (“Chronicle of the times of Charles IX,” where the legend is told by a cheerful maiden traveling with the reiters), Robert Browning (“The Flute Player from Hamelin,” poem, translated by S. Marshak), Valery Bryusov (“The Pied Piper” ), Marina Tsvetaeva (poem on the same topic), Victor Dyka (Czechoslovakian poet; fairy tale), composer Friedrich Hoffmann (opera).
At the end of the 16th century, in Martkirch, by order of one of the burgomasters of Hamelin, a stained glass window was installed, which has not survived to this day, but is described more than once (including in Browning’s poem). According to what is depicted on the stained glass window, these were not children, but teenagers who were persuaded by a certain recruiter to move to other lands. Suddenly, a tribe that spoke German appeared far away in Transylvania.
Hermann Kaulbach painted the famous painting “The Children's Departure from Hamelin.”
In Hameln there is to this day the “Pied Piper’s House” and the “Silent Street”, on which it has long been prohibited to play musical instruments.
The history of literature knows many cases when the works of a writer were very popular during his life, but time passed and they were forgotten almost forever. There are other examples: the writer was not recognized by his contemporaries, but the true value of his works was discovered by subsequent generations.
But there are very few works in literature, the importance of which cannot be overestimated, since they create images that excite every generation of people, images that inspire the creative search of artists of different times. Such images are called “eternal” because they are carriers of traits that are always inherent in a person.
Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra lived out his life in poverty and loneliness, although during his lifetime he was known as the author of the talented, vivid novel “Don Quixote.” Neither the writer himself nor his contemporaries knew that several centuries would pass, and his heroes would not only not be forgotten, but would become “the most popular Spaniards,” and their compatriots would erect a monument to them. That they will emerge from the novel and live their own independent lives in the works of prose writers and playwrights, poets, artists, composers. Today it is even difficult to list how many works of art were created under the influence of the images of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza: Goya and Picasso, Massenet and Minkus turned to them.
The immortal book was born from the idea of writing a parody and ridiculing the chivalric romances that were so popular in Europe in the 16th century, when Cervantes lived and worked. But the writer’s intention grew, and on the pages of the book his contemporary Spain came to life, and the hero himself changed: from a parody knight he grows into a funny and tragic figure. The conflict of the novel is both historically specific (it reflects the writer’s contemporary Spain) and universal (for it exists in any country at all times). The essence of the conflict: the clash of ideal norms and ideas about reality with reality itself - not ideal, “earthly”.
The image of Don Quixote has also become eternal due to its universality: always and everywhere there are noble idealists, defenders of goodness and justice, who defend their ideals, but are unable to really assess reality. Even the concept of “quixoticism” arose. It combines a humanistic striving for the ideal, enthusiasm, lack of selfishness, on the one hand, and naivety, eccentricity, adherence to dreams and illusions, on the other. Don Quixote's inner nobility is combined with the comedy of her external manifestations (he is able to fall in love with a simple peasant girl, but sees in her only a noble Beautiful Lady.
The second important eternal image of the novel is the witty and down-to-earth Sancho Panza. He is the complete opposite of Don Quixote, but the heroes are inextricably linked, they are similar to each other in their hopes and disappointments. Cervantes shows with his heroes that reality without ideals is impossible, but they must be based on reality.
A completely different eternal image appears before us in Shakespeare’s tragedy “Hamlet”. This is a deeply tragic image. Hamlet understands reality well, soberly assesses everything that happens around him, and firmly stands on the side of good against evil. But his tragedy is that he cannot take decisive action and punish evil. His indecisiveness is not a sign of cowardice; he is a brave, outspoken person. His hesitation is the result of deep thoughts about the nature of evil. Circumstances require him to kill his father's killer. He hesitates because he perceives this revenge as a manifestation of evil: murder will always remain murder, even when a villain is killed. The image of Hamlet is the image of a person who understands his responsibility in resolving the conflict between good and evil, who stands on the side of good, but his internal moral laws do not allow him to take decisive action. It is no coincidence that this image acquired a special resonance in the 20th century - an era of social upheaval, when each person solved for himself the eternal “Hamlet question”.
We can give several more examples of “eternal” images: Faust, Mephistopheles, Othello, Romeo and Juliet - they all reveal eternal human feelings and aspirations. And each reader learns from these images to understand not only the past, but also the present.
The history of literature knows many cases when the works of a writer were very popular during his life, but time passed and they were forgotten almost forever. There are other examples: the writer was not recognized by his contemporaries, but the real value of his works was discovered by subsequent generations. But there are very few works in literature, the importance of which cannot be exaggerated, since they create images that excite every generation of people, images that motivate artists of different times to creative searches. Such images are called “eternal”, since they are carriers of traits that are always inherent in a person.
Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra lived out his age in poverty and loneliness, although during his life he was known as the author of the talented, vibrant novel “Don Quixote.” Neither the writer himself nor his contemporaries knew that several centuries would pass, and his heroes would not only not be forgotten, but would become “popular Spaniards”, and their compatriots would erect a monument to them. That they will emerge from the novel and live their own independent lives in the works of prose writers and playwrights, poets, artists, composers. Today it is even difficult to count how many works were artificially created under the influence of the images of Don Quixote and Sancho Panches: Goya and Picasso, Masske and Minkus turned to them.
The immortal book was born from the idea of writing a parody and ridiculing the chivalric romances that were so popular in Europe in the 16th century, when Cervantes lived and wrote. And the writer’s plan expanded, and on the pages of the book his contemporary Spain came to life, and the hero himself changed: from a parody knight he grows into a funny and tragic figure. The conflict of the novel is at the same time historically specific (it reflects the writer’s contemporary Spain) and universal (since it exists in any country at all times). The essence of the conflict: the clash of ideal norms and ideas about reality with reality itself - not ideal, “earthly”. The image of Don Quixote has also become eternal due to its universality: there are always and everywhere noble idealists, defenders of goodness and justice who defend their ideals, but are unable to really assess reality. Even the concept of “quixoticism” arose. It unites a humanistic striving for the ideal, enthusiasm, selflessness, on the one hand, and naivety, eccentricity, favor for dreams and illusions, on the other. Don Quixote's inner nobility is combined with the comedy of her external manifestations (he is able to fall in love with a simple peasant girl, but sees in her only a noble, beautiful lady).
The second important eternal image of the novel is the witty and down-to-earth Sancho Panchez. He is the complete opposite of Don Quixote, but the heroes are inextricably linked, they are similar to each other in their hopes and disappointments. Cervantes shows with his heroes that reality without ideals is impossible, but they must be based on reality. A completely different eternal image appears before us in Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet. This is a deeply tragic image. Hamlet understands reality well, soberly assesses everything that happens around him, and firmly stands on the side of good against evil. But his tragedy lies in the fact that he cannot take decisive action and punish evil. His indecisiveness is not a manifestation of cowardice; he is a brave, outspoken person. His indecisiveness is a consequence of deep thoughts about the nature of evil. Circumstances require him to kill his father's killer. He hesitates because he perceives this revenge as a manifestation of evil: murder will always remain murder, even when a villain is killed.
The image of Hamlet is the image of a person who understands his responsibility in resolving the conflict between good and evil, who stands on the side of good, but his internal moral laws do not allow him to take decisive action. It is no coincidence that this image acquired a special resonance in the 20th century - a time of social upheaval, when each person solved for himself the eternal “Hamlet question”. Several more examples of “eternal” images can be given: Faust, Mephistopheles, Othello, Romeo and Juliet - they all reveal eternal human feelings and aspirations. And each reader learns from these images to understand not only the past, but also the modern.
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Eternal images are artistic images of works of world literature in which the writer, based on the vital material of his time, was able to create a lasting generalization applicable in the life of subsequent generations. These images acquire a nominal meaning and retain artistic significance right up to our time. These are also mythological, biblical, folklore and literary characters who clearly expressed moral and ideological content that is significant for all mankind and were repeatedly embodied in the literature of different peoples and eras. Each era and each writer puts their own meaning into the interpretation of each character, depending on what they want to convey to the outside world through this eternal image.
An archetype is a primary image, an original; universal human symbols that form the basis of myths, folklore and culture itself as a whole and are passed down from generation to generation (stupid king, evil stepmother, faithful servant).
In contrast to the archetype, which primarily reflects the “genetic”, original characteristics of the human psyche, eternal images are always a product of conscious activity, have their own “nationality”, time of occurrence and, therefore, reflect not only the universal human perception of the world, but also a certain historical and cultural experience embodied in an artistic image. The universal character of eternal images is given by “the kinship and commonality of the problems facing humanity, the unity of the psychophysiological properties of man.
However, representatives of different social strata at different times invested their own, often unique, content into “eternal images,” i.e., eternal images are not absolutely stable and unchanging. Each eternal image has a special central motif, which gives it the corresponding cultural meaning and without which it loses its significance.
One cannot but agree that it is much more interesting for people of a particular era to compare an image with themselves when they themselves find themselves in the same life situations. On the other hand, if an eternal image loses significance for the majority of a social group, this does not mean that it disappears forever from that culture.
Each eternal image can experience only external changes, since the central motive associated with it is the essence that forever assigns a special quality to it, for example, Hamlet has the “fate” of being a philosophizing avenger, Romeo and Juliet - eternal love, Prometheus - humanism. Another thing is that the attitude towards the very essence of the hero can be different in each culture.
Mephistopheles is one of the “eternal images” of world literature. He is the hero of J. V. Goethe’s tragedy “Faust”.
Folklore and fiction from different countries and peoples often used the motive of concluding an alliance between a demon - the spirit of evil and a person. Sometimes poets were attracted by the story of the “fall”, “expulsion from paradise” of the biblical Satan, sometimes by his rebellion against God. There were also farces that were close to folklore sources; in them the devil was given the place of a mischief maker, a cheerful deceiver who often got into trouble. The name "Mephistopheles" has become synonymous with a caustic and evil mocker. This is where the expressions arose: “Mephistophelian laughter, smile” - sarcastic and evil; “Mephistophelian facial expression” - sarcastic and mocking.
Mephistopheles is a fallen angel who has an eternal debate with God about good and evil. He believes that a person is so corrupt that, succumbing to even a slight temptation, he can easily give his soul to him. He is also confident that humanity is not worth saving. Throughout the entire work, Mephistopheles shows that there is nothing sublime in man. He must prove, using the example of Faust, that man is evil. Very often in conversations with Faust, Mephistopheles behaves like a real philosopher who follows human life and its progress with great interest. But this is not his only image. In communication with other heroes of the work, he shows himself from a completely different side. He will never leave his interlocutor behind and will be able to maintain a conversation on any topic. Mephistopheles himself says several times that he does not have absolute power. The main decision always depends on the person, and he can only take advantage of the wrong choice. But he did not force people to sell their souls, to sin, he left the right of choice to everyone. Each person has the opportunity to choose exactly what his conscience and dignity allow him to do. eternal image artistic archetype
It seems to me that the image of Mephistopheles will be relevant at all times, because there will always be something that will tempt humanity.
There are many more examples of eternal images in literature. But they have one thing in common: they all reveal eternal human feelings and aspirations, try to solve eternal problems that torment people of any generation.
Goethe and Schiller wrote about Don Quixote, and the German romantics were the first to define it as a work of deep and comprehensive philosophical perception of the world.
Don Quixote is one of the most famous “eternal images”. It has a long history of interpretation and reinterpretation.
Eternal images are literary characters that have been repeatedly embodied in the art of different countries, different eras and have become “signs” of culture: Prometheus, Don Juan, Hamlet, Don Quixote, Faust, etc. Traditionally, mythological, biblical, and legendary characters are considered eternal images (Napoleon, Joan of Arc), if these images were used in literary works. Often those characters whose names have become generalized names for certain phenomena, human types are included in the “eternal images”: Plyushkin, Manilov, Cain.
Key concepts: chivalric romances, moral obligation, humanist, Renaissance, ideals.
G. Gogol, working on “Dead Souls,” was guided by this novel. F. Dostoevsky called it a book that “... is given to humanity one at a time every few hundred years.”
Cervantes was a great humanist, the high ideals of the Renaissance were close to him, but he lived and created at a time when illusions about the revival of the “golden times” were melting. In Spain this process was perhaps more painful. Therefore, the novel about Don Quixote is also a kind of revaluation of Renaissance values that have not stood the test at times. Noble dreamers failed to transform the world. The prose of life prevailed over beautiful ideals. In England, William Shakespeare showed this as a tragedy; in Spain, Cervantes portrayed it in his funny and sad novel “Don Quixote.” Cervantes does not laugh at his hero’s desire to act, he only shows that isolation from life can nullify all the efforts of the “idealist and enthusiast.” At the end of the novel, common sense wins: Don Quixote abandons his knightly romances and his plans. But the reader will forever remember the hero who tries “to do good to everyone and not to do evil to anyone.”
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