Which is more precious than all holy things.
Now what is written must come true,
Let it come true. Amen.
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more...
Revelation of John the Evangelist
The poetic cycle of B. Pasternak "Poems of Yuri Zhivago", which became the final, 17th part of the novel "Doctor Zhivago", ends with the poem "Gethsemane Garden".
Earlier, tracing the main events of the earthly life of Christ ( birth → entry to Jerusalem→ the miracle of the fig tree→ judgment of the Pharisees), Pasternak strictly followed the gospel chronology. In the Garden of Gethsemane, this chronology is deliberately violated. The prophecy about the Second Coming, which sounds at the end, refers the reader not to the corresponding chapters of the Gospels, the 14th from Mark, the 18th from John and the 26th from Matthew, to which the poem is oriented in general - plot and partly lexically - but to Revelation of John the Theologian: “And he said to me: do not seal the word of the prophecy of this book; for the time is at hand.<…>Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to each according to his deeds” (Rev. 22:10-12). The poet "assembles" the fragments of the texts of the original source in such a way that they begin to complement each other, to be perceived as a single text. Wed:
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Twinkling distant stars indifferently At the end was someone's garden, put on the land. |
They came to a village called Gethsemane... (Mark 14:32). ... Jesus went out with His disciples beyond the Kidron stream, where there was a garden<…>(John, 18: 1) ... and says to the disciples: sit here while I go and pray there. And<…>began to mourn and mourn. Then Jesus said to them: My soul is grieving to death; stay here and watch with me. And, leaving a little,<…>prayed and said: My Father! if possible, let this cup pass from me (Matthew 26:36-39). |
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Prayer softened the languor of death, He woke them up: “The Lord has vouchsafed you And just said, no one knows where |
Rising from prayer, He came to the disciples, and found them sleeping from sorrow, and said to them: why are you sleeping? stand up and pray that you do not fall into temptation. While He was still speaking this, a crowd appeared, and in front of them was one of the twelve, called Judas, and he came up to Jesus to kiss Him. For he gave them such a sign: Whom I kiss, he is (Luke 22:45-47). |
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Is it really the darkness of the winged legions |
Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it, and struck the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear.<…>(John 18:10). Then Jesus said to him, Return your sword to its place,<…>Or do you think that I cannot now implore My Father, and He will present Me more than twelve legions of angels? (Matthew 26:52-53). |
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But the book of life came to the page |
How will the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so? (Matt. 26:54) ... it must be fulfilled on me and on this that is written: "and numbered among the evildoers." For what is about me comes to an end (Luke 22:37). |
These clarifications enrich the plot with a number of artistically significant details.
In the 5th stanza, the spatio-temporal coordinates of the action are clarified, a concept-forming opposition is formed: ‘[ uninhabited] Universe ' and correspondingly, '[ depopulated] Earth ' - and - '[ being at that moment the center of life] Garden of Gethsemane ’: “Night distance now seemed to be the edge / Destruction and non-existence. / The expanse of the universe was uninhabited, / And only the garden was a place to live” (IV, 547).
The images of the Mount of Olives and the “gray-haired silver olives” trying to “step into the distance through the air” were apparently inspired by R. M. Rilke’s poem “Der Ölbaum-Garten” (“The Olive Garden”) from the collection “Neue Gedichte” (“ New Poems"), published in 1907:
Er ging hinauf unter dem grauen Laub
ganz grau und aufgelöst im Ölgelände
und legte seine Stirne voller Staub
tief in das Staubigsein der heißen Hande.
Nach allem dies. Und dies war der Schluss.
Jetzt soll ich gehen, während ich erblinde,
und warum willst Du, daß ich sagen muß
Du seist, wenn ich Dich selber nicht mehr finde.
Ich finde Dich nicht mehr. Nothing in the world, nein.
Nothing in den Andern. Nothing in diem Stein.
Ich finde Dich nicht mehr. Ich bin allein.
Ich bin allein mit aller Menschen Gram,
den ich durch Dich zu lindern unternahm,
der Dunichtbist. O namenlose Scham…
Später erzählte man: ein Engelkam -
Warum ein Engel? Ach es kam die Nacht
und blätterte gleichgültig in den Bäumen.
Die Junger rührten sich in ihren Traumen.
Warum ein Engel? Ah es kam die Nacht.
Die Nacht, die kam, war keine ungemeine;
so gehen hunderte vorbei.
Da schlafen Hunde und da liegen Steine.
Ach eine traurige, ach irgendeine,
die wartet, bis es wieder Morgen sei.
Denn Engel kommen nicht zu solchen Betern,
und Nächte werden nicht um solche groß.
Die Sich-Verlierenden läst alles los,
und sie sind preisgegeben von den Vätern
und ausgeschlossen aus der Mütter Schooß.
(Climbing the mountain by a gray path,
he himself is gray, like the trunks of olives on the slope,
he dropped his dusty forehead
on the dustiness of the hot palms.
So here it is. My term has expired.
It's time for the blind to wander in the desert.
Why do you want me to say:
"You are"? I can't find you from now on.
I can't find. I have only emptiness.
And so it is in others. And in the stone by the bush.
I can't find. I am alone, an orphan.
One. But I must share people's grief,
that through You I thought to quench.
You are not. How embarrassing for me!
“There was an angel,” they began to say afterwards.
Why an angel? The night has just gone
and under her hand the sheets rustled.
The students lay in an uneasy sleep.
Why an angel? The night has just passed.
That night was like nights:
darkness passes by.
The dogs sleep peacefully and the stones too.
A mournful night, a night that is similar to everyone,
what awaits when the darkness gives way to the light.
Angels do not heed such prayers,
and the night does not conceive them.
Those who lose themselves cannot be helped:
because their fathers, rejecting, do not accept,
their mothers' wombs will vomit away.)
But the hero of Der Ölbaum-Garten is by no means the gospel Christ. it human faced with the need to choose, not finding support from others and therefore involuntarily correlating his mental suffering with the languor of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. New Testament realities practically lose their original "objective" essence and significance in Rilke's poem, they become only an illustrative and allegorical background; the action takes place in the empty soul of the lyrical hero. The experience of universal loneliness, "emptiness" develops into a feeling of complete "God-forsakenness", which - we note this especially - having reached its climax, is not resolved by anything.
In Pasternak’s poem, the New Testament plot is primary: “the severity of doom is highlighted<…>faith in the Resurrection." Existential associations, of course, inevitably arise when reading the Garden of Gethsemane: mental emptiness , death (=godlessness ) → « overcoming death », gaining immortality (=spiritual enlightenment ). But they are perceived here in a slightly different way - as one of the many semantic planes of the plot-symbol.
"The Garden of Gethsemane" is associated with many Zhivagov poems, and above all with "".
It is interesting to follow how the contextual semantics of the lexeme “chalice”, which verbalizes one of the concepts of “Hamlet”, is transformed in the Garden of Gethsemane:
... If only it is possible, Abba Father,
Carry this cup past (IV, 515).
The "chalice" in "Hamlet" is the future life path hero; this is cup of life ; symbol fate, fate. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the symbolism of the “chalice” is already as close as possible to the gospel source:
And, looking into these black holes,
Empty, without beginning or end
So that this cup of death is over,
In a bloody sweat, He prayed to the Father (IV, 547).
See: “My Father! if possible, let this cup pass from me; however, not as I will, but as You” (Matthew 26:39). It's really cup of death , a symbol of Golgotha, martyrdom, the way of the cross, voluntary self-sacrifice in the name of redemption and immortality. The poems of the gospel (micro) cycle, ending with "The Garden of Gethsemane" ("", "", "Bad days", "(I)", "Magdalene (II)"), testify to quite definite changes in the worldview of Yuri Zhivago. " Hamletism" (i.e. awakening, elemental, "undirected" spirituality) and Christian sacrifice- archetypal "poles": the worldview of the hero of the novel gravitates towards them at different stages of his spiritual, moral and creative evolution (the vector of this evolution completely coincides with the main vector of the plot-compositional dynamics of the Zhivagov cycle).
Some episodes storylines, explicit or "hidden" thematic (latest) motifs of the novel acquire their authenticity in the Garden of Gethsemane, alien meaning. First of all, this is related to the topic resistance to evil generated by the "plot" dispute between Zhivago and Strelnikov. This dispute gradually develops into a dialogical interaction of two antagonistic consciousnesses and ideas, which is embodied in several associative-archetypal invariant images and plots.
I. Smirnov drew attention to the fact that in the scene of Zhivago's interrogation (Chapter 31 of part 7) there is a marked reference to F. M. Dostoevsky's novel "The Brothers Karamazov", more precisely, to "Ivan's poem" about the Grand Inquisitor. Intertextual communication does not arise, of course, by chance. Pavel Antipov-Strelnikov is a riddle for Zhivago. At first, in the perception of Yuri Andreevich, he appears mainly in an "inquisitorial" guise - a sincere, fanatical neophyte of Bolshevism, an ideologist of revolutionary violence, "evil for good." Strelnikov not only justifies revolutionary violence, but almost absolutizes it:
"-…Now Last Judgment on the ground, your Majesty, creatures from the Apocalypse with swords and winged beasts, and not quite sympathetic and loyal doctors ”(IV, 251-252).
And this is by no means a metaphorical association, and certainly not a rhetorical device. AT this case Strelnikov does not think about any rhetoric at all, he is extremely frank (just like Zhivago, who "opposes" him). The words about the "Last Judgment" indicate that the Commissar looks like the apocalypse, but - terrestrial, so to speak, an apocalypse without Christ. The marked reference to The Brothers Karamazov, revealed by I. Smirnov, performs a double function. On the one hand, it reveals parallels:
Strelnikov ↔ Grand Inquisitor
“interrogation of Zhivago ↔ interrogation of Christ”, -
developing into a kind of metatextual trope; on the other hand, it additionally emphasizes the already obvious conventionality dialogue of antagonist characters. It doesn't matter at all where an action takes place (Pasternak’s carriage is exactly the same “decoration” as Dostoevsky’s tavern, where Ivan Karamazov retells his “poem” to Alyosha). It is unlikely that any of the real-life commissars of the times of the Revolution and civil war, interrogating the arrested, spoke so abstractly and with such pathos referred to the Apocalypse ...
It is clear that the interrogation scene should be considered not from the point of view of its correspondence/non-compliance with life - that is, historical - reality, but in the context of Pasternak's aesthetic and philosophical concept, which in this episode (and in a number of other episodes and narrative lines of the novel) , correlating his artistic world with the artistic world of Dostoevsky, clearly proceeds from the principle of polyphonic dialogism. The hero of Dostoevsky, according to Bakhtin, is “a full-fledged word, a pure voice; we don't see it, we hear it; everything that we see and know, besides his word, is not essential and is absorbed by the word. In a polyphonic novel, there are two main dialogic planes: 1) external, verbal (verbally formalized dialogue that is directly related to the plot of the work, as if generated by it), and 2) off-plot, ideological (internal - including "non-verbal" - speech, thinking, in general, everything that enters the sphere of "pure", non-objectivable ideology, that same "full-fledged word" that Bakhtin speaks of). These plans are not standalone; they interact with each other. Particularly interesting are the cases of mutual transition, interference, when through the external dialogue, conditioned by eventual realities, a genuine, non-eventful dialogue suddenly begins to emerge. Silent man - speaks idea which he is the spokesman for. During the conversation between Alyosha and Ivan in the tavern, this happens more than once. The dialogue between the Grand Inquisitor and Christ almost completely goes beyond the plot of the "poem". And we do not doubt for a moment that this is a dialogue, although formally we have before us only a monologue of the inquisitor. Evades from the dispute and Zhivago. AT in a certain sense his concise answer to Strelnikov is also silence(as dialogic-intentional as the silence of Christ):
“- I know everything that you think of me. For your part, you are absolutely right. But the controversy into which you want to involve me, I have been mentally leading all my life with an imaginary accuser, and, presumably, I had time to come to some kind of conclusion. You can't say that in two words. Allow me to leave without explanation if I am really free, and if not, dispose of me. There is nothing for me to justify before you” (IV, 252).
This parallel in the highest degree symbolic. The concept of the world order, which the Grand Inquisitor professes and which, we recall, is based on the principles of totalitarian theocracy and the denial of freedom (as a “burden”, allegedly unbearable for weak human souls), is compared in Doctor Zhivago with the practice of Bolshevik terror and its ideological justification. Rejecting the commandment to love God, the Grand Inquisitor, according to K. Mochulsky, “becomes a fanatic of the commandment to love one's neighbor. His mighty spiritual forces, which used to go to the veneration of Christ, are now turning to the service of humanity. But godless love inevitably turns into hatred» . Zhivago feels that he who sacredly believes in the rightness of the punisher sword Antipov-Strelnikov at some point does not stand up and becomes blind a tool of evil.
In the future, however, the emphasis in perception shifts. In many ways - thanks to Lara, who knows well who is really hiding under the guise of a revolutionary fanatic-"inquisitor", and who understands true reason tragedy of Pavel Pavlovich Antipov:
“-… It’s as if something abstract entered this appearance and discolored it. The living human face became the personification, the principle, the image of the idea.<…>I understood that this was the result of the forces into whose hands he gave himself up, sublime forces, but deadly and ruthless” (IV, 399).
For Antipov, as for Zhivago, the fate of Lara is inseparable from the historical fate of Russia:
“-... All the themes of the time, all his tears and insults, all his motives, all his accumulated revenge and pride were written on her face and in her posture, in a mixture of her girlish bashfulness and her bold harmony. The accusation of the century could be made on her behalf, through her mouth ”(IV, 459), -
asserts Antipov in his last confessional monologue.
This passionate monologue fits into the archetypal context of the poems "", "Magdalene (I)" and "Magdalene (II)", the plot symbolism of which is directly or indirectly related to the theme of the fight against evil / death. The princess is in the power of the dragon; Magdalene speaks of a "demon" tormenting her. fairy tale monster and seductive spirit are, of course, generalized poetic images. But they are also associated with a very real "prototype", lawyer Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky, one of the characters in the novel. Komarovsky is the "monster of vulgarity" and truly the "demon" of Lara. It embodies both concrete-empirical (social) and metaphysical evil. "Etymologically" the surname "Komarovsky" apparently goes back to A. L. Shtikh. Translated from German, Stich means ‘prick’, ‘bite’. insect or snakes'. Thus, this surname turns out to be doubly meaningful and “speaking”: behind the “mosquito” is a “snake”, traditionally personifying malice and deceit. Serpent Satan turns around in Eden; over the dragon (= kite) victorious is the horseman-serpent fighter, the hero of the "Tale", who still needs to be freed from the soul-fettering, deadly stupor, i.e. wake up and resurrect… “Overcoming death” is the conceptual core and thematic leitmotif of Doctor Zhivago. It is it that determines the dynamics of the development of a non-eventful plot that links together the prosaic and poetic parts of the novel and sets the tone for the entire narrative, starting from the first lines of the 1st chapter of part 1 (“Five o'clock ambulance”):
"Walked and walked and sang" Eternal memory”, and when they stopped, it seemed that her legs, horses, and breaths of the wind continued to sing it according to the routine.
Passers-by missed the procession, counted the wreaths, crossed themselves" (IV, 6), -
and ending with prophecies about the resurrection of Christ, the Second Coming, and the Judgment of time/history (in the final stanzas of the Garden of Gethsemane, which are discussed below). This through suggestive plot, sharpening and even more dramatizing the antagonism of the worldview concepts of Zhivago and Strelnikov, also reveals the genetic kinship these concepts, and - most importantly - their dialogic mutual orientation, which gives the "plot" dispute between the heroes-ideologists a very special meaning, emphasized by the potential ambiguity and / or variation of plot-archetypal parallels. The symbolism of the same "Fairy Tale", for example, is created by the individual author's transformation of the archetypal, "hagiographic" plot and the correlation of the poetic plot with specific realities"prosaic" reality. The rider-serpent fighter is, of course, first of all the "author" and the lyrical hero of the poem, Yuri Andreevich Zhivago. However, this role in the novel may well be claimed by his eternal “antipode” Antipov, who at one time helped Lara to free herself from the fetters of Komarovsky who seduced her and then, already under the name of Commissar Strelnikov, passed his “verdict of the century” that is not subject to appeal. There is no contradiction here: archetypization in the novel is one of the means of creating a multifaceted polyphonic discourse. The presence of a common ideal The prototype of the Christian poet and the revolutionary fanatic opposing him in this case testifies to the purity of thoughts and aspirations inherent in these heroes. Zhivago and Strelnikov agree on the main thing - in the rejection of evil (although they have different ideas about evil and, accordingly, about ways to fight evil). And therefore, it is far from accidental that both of them appear "in the book of fate on the same line," as Zhivago says, recalling the words of Shakespeare (IV, 398). Their destinies intersect several times, and each time the ideological antagonism is balanced by an underlying desire hear and understand each other - is indicated more and more sharply.
"The Garden of Gethsemane" actualizes " New Testament» The invariant of the dispute is climactic in every sense. The life choice of Pavel Antipov, who believed in the possibility of a violent reorganization of the world, correlates with the actions of the Apostle Peter at the time of Christ's arrest:
Peter rebuffed the thugs with a sword
And cut off the ear of one of them.
But he hears: “The dispute cannot be resolved with iron,
Put your sword back in place, man.
Is it really the darkness of the winged legions
Wouldn't my father have sent me here?
And, without touching a hair on me,
Enemies would have dispersed without a trace…” (IV, 547).
Note: Peter's spiritual nobility is not questioned; however, his act is unequivocally condemned. Why? Obviously, because Peter, losing the sharpness of spiritual vision in a fit of righteous anger, takes effects angry for him root cause. He is right, of course; but his truth is transient, just like the unconditional - within the plot of the novel - Strelnikov's "correctness": this is earthly, historical truth, which fades in the light of the universal, timeless Truth proclaimed by Christ.
Here we come close to one of the most important aspects problems of correlation between prose and poetry in "Doctor Zhivago" - the question of the conceptual content of Christian symbols. It is clear that New Testament reminiscences, allusions (in the prose narrative) and plots (in the gospel (micro) cycle) create a special timeless chronotopic plan - eternity, absorbing earth time and allowing you to look at what is happening in history, detached, from the outside, that is, from metahistorical points of view.
The originality of Pasternak's historiosophy and eschatology is most clearly manifested when comparing the poem "The Garden of Gethsemane" with Blok's poem "The Twelve" (although this, of course, is a separate topic that goes far beyond the scope of this book). In Blok's poem, "current events and ideas are clearly projected onto gospel images and situations." The revolution seems to be sanctified by the image of Christ:
... And invisible behind the blizzard
And unharmed by a bullet
With a gentle step over the wind,
Snowy scattering of pearls,
In a white corolla of roses -
Ahead - Jesus Christ.
According to F. Stepun, the image of Christ equally embarrassed “both the enemies of the Revolutionary Blok, once his closest friends, and his new friends, the Bolsheviks. Strange interpretations of the poem began. Meanwhile, Christ of the "Twelve" least of all owes his appearance to the actual Christian, evangelical tradition and Orthodox iconography. This is a character-symbol, only remotely resembling the gospel prototype. But this is by no means a disembodied ghost. He is quite real- to the extent that the blizzard itself is real in the poem, the product and embodiment of which it is. “I was only stating a fact: if you look into the pillars of a blizzard on this way, then you will see “Jesus Christ” ”, Blok once remarked.
Blizzard, winter storm in "Doctor Zhivago" genetically goes back to Blok's symbolism of a spontaneous uprising. This parallel is marked in the 1st and 2nd verses of the 1st stanza " winter night":" It's snowy, it's snowy all over the earth, / To all limits" (recall the beginning of Blok's poem: "... Wind, wind - / On everything God's light!"). But in Pasternak, the raging elements have nothing to do with Christian symbolism. In the prose text of the novel and the poems of the Zhivagov cycle, Christ appears exclusively in his divine-human, gospel hypostasis - as the Savior of the world and the Supreme Judge:
“... But the book of life came to the page,
Which is more precious than all holy things.
Now what is written must come true,
Let it come true. Amen.
You see, the course of centuries is like a parable
And it can catch fire on the go.
In the name of her terrible greatness
I will go into the coffin in voluntary torment.
I will go down to the grave and on the third day I will rise,
And, as rafts are rafted down the river,
Centuries will float out of the darkness” (IV, 548).
In this “free” verse transcription of the relevant fragments of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (Matt. 26:54; Luke 22:37) and the Revelation of John we have already quoted earlier, the metaphorical “book of life” is identified with the very real Holy Scripture. However, the most interesting and surprising lies elsewhere. According to Christ, "the course of the ages is like a parable." This poetic comparison clearly echoes Vedenyapin's "prosaic" reasoning about those "parables from everyday life" that Jesus tells his disciples, "explaining the truth with the light of everyday life" (IV, 44). The earthly, historical "being-in-time" initially reflects what it aspires to in accordance with the Creator's plan - the universal, all-united "Being-in-Eternity". The place of action again becomes space, the universe. But this is not the universe that was at the beginning: it is already spiritualized, full of life, meaning. Everything that happens in it does not happen due to a random combination of circumstances and is not subject to a fatal inevitability that deprives a person of the right to choose. The one who realizes this simple truth contained in the Gospel and begins to freely follow his predestination is no longer dominated by any fate.
This image is one of the most significant in Pasternak's poetry. Evidence of how important it was for the poet to convey to the reader the hidden meaning of the final stanza of the Garden of Gethsemane, even at the cost of some deviation from the norms of style and poetic "harmony", we find in the memoirs of A. Voznesensky: "Someone from him (Pasternak. - A.V.) friends were confused by the double metaphor in the stanza:
And, as rafts are rafted down the river,
To me for judgment, like caravan barges,
Centuries will float from the darkness.
He corrected: "... the centuries will tirelessly float out of the darkness..."
I asked him to leave the original. It can be seen that he himself was inclined to this - he restored the line. It was impossible to persuade him to do something against his will.
Pasternak preferred the original, relatively speaking, less "correct" version of the final stanza, since it was this version that was more in line with his plan. earthly limited space becomes part of the boundless Cosmos; historical time - tends to its metahistorical limit. It is noteworthy that almost leading role extremely “concrete” everyday associations play in the formation of these “abstract” concepts. The "cosmic" trope, organizing and structuring the stanza, is based on a double, or rather even triple, metaphorical assimilation. The smooth flow of time is first likened to an alloy " rafts", then - the movement" barge caravan which, in turn, are associated with barges floating down the river, and with camel caravan moving in desert. Extra-spatial, super-temporal eschatological dynamics penetrates literally into all spheres of being, bringing them together and uniting them to such an extent that under its influence, through today’s, imperfect and disharmonious, the world begins to show the features of a future harmonious total unity, in certain moments opening to the inside spiritual vision person. Semantics of rigorous natural movement to the intended goal is also accentuated at the phonetic level - with the help of lexical repetitions and alliterations (in the final stanza, deaf and voiced plosives and sonorous sounds are repeated, unevenly alternating " to», « P», « t», « d», « l», « R»: «… toato With pl av l yat P about R e to e pl about t s, ko pl e to court to a to ba R zhi to a R avana, one hundred l etya by pl get out of those pl oty").
The Garden of Gethsemane is the key to understanding Doctor Zhivago. it final, "closing" poem: it completes and "closes" Pasternak's novel simultaneously on three textual and compositional levels- the gospel (micro) cycle, the poetic cycle "Poems of Yuri Zhivago" and the work as a whole. Gospel (micro) cycle - semantic "core" poetic part- gradually becomes a conceptual, and to some extent, a compositional center works as an artistic whole. The author brings the two genre forms, two types of narration and, if you like, two chronotopes (objectively “epic” and subjectively “lyrical”). The appeal to New Testament themes and plots in the final verses of the Zhivagov cycle allows him to consider historical events, the witness and participant of which is the hero-protagonist, in existential and metahistorical contexts and additionally emphasize the religious-philosophical, Christian-eschatological problems of the novel. Victory over evil in any of its manifestations, “overcoming death”, carried out by the “effort of Sunday”, - this, according to the poet, is the main, symbolically-timeless meaning of each human life and throughout human history. It is no accident that Pasternak used the words from the Revelation of St. Apostle John the Theologian: There will be no death».
Cm.: Smirnov I.P. Mystery novel "Doctor Zhivago". M .: New Literary Review, 1996. S. 189.
This idea is somewhat consonant with some provisions philosophical concept N. A. Berdyaeva. Compare: “A revolution is a small apocalypse of history, like a judgment within history.<…>In the revolution there is a judgment on the evil forces that do wrong, but the judging forces themselves do evil; in the revolution, good is also carried out by the forces of evil, since good forces were powerless to realize their good in history" Berdyaev N. A. The origins and meaning of Russian communism // Berdyaev N. A. Works. M.: Raritet, 1994. S. 360.
K. Yun-Ran wrote about the peculiar "polyphony" of Pasternak's novel, corresponding to the "general global trend of the modern world literary process". In his opinion, “monocentric lyricism prevails in the organization of the narrative in Doctor Zhivago.” But, despite this, "the narrative structure of the novel is quite complex, diverse and emotionally rich" ( Yun-Ran K. About the features of the organization of the narrative in the novel by B. L. Pasternak "Doctor Zhivago" // Bulletin of the Moscow University. Ser. 9. Philology. 1997. No. 3. S. 22, 30-31). "The main feature of the Pasternak style<…>is the erasing of opposite poles. “Actually different subjective spheres (author and characters) are mutually displaced. At the same time, the author is not always “above” the characters”: often he “directly merges with one of his favorite characters.<…>, and sometimes simply from the outside, “objectively” observes them. The author's voice is often heard in the voices of the characters, and sometimes suddenly the author speaks openly in his own voice. Thus, his (author. - A.V.) the place in the narrative is constantly moving” (Ibid., pp. 22, 23).
Bakhtin M. M. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics // Bakhtin M. M. Sobr. op. T. 6. M .: Russian dictionaries; Languages of Slavic Culture, 2002, p. 63.
Mochulsky K.AT. Dostoevsky. Life and work // Mochulsky KV Gogol. Solovyov. Dostoevsky. M.: Respublika, 1995. S. 533.
symbolism sword, strong "both in its non-extraction and in its suppressing blow", the philosopher I. Ilyin paid much attention: "... While in human soul evil lives, the sword will be needed<…>. But the sword will never be either creative, or the last, or the deepest manifestation of the struggle. The sword serves external fight, but in the name of the spirit, and therefore, as long as spirituality is alive in a person, the calling of the sword will be that his struggle be religiously meaningful and spiritually pure ”( Ilyin I. A. On resistance to evil by force // Ilyin I. A. Sobr. op. in 10 vols. T. 5. M .: Russian book, 1996. S. 176. Italics I. Ilyin).
Cm.: Smirnov I.P. Mystery novel "Doctor Zhivago". pp. 42-43.
Strelnikov's symbolic connection with the Apostle Peter in the poem "The Garden of Gethsemane" is already the third associative-archetypal parallel. But Strelnikov, apparently, is closely connected with another founder of historical Christianity - the apostle Pavel. This is indicated by the name of the commissioner - Pavel, as well as a kind of "doubling" of his patronymic - Pavlovich. The combination of consonants ow”, arising due to the “loss” of the vowel “ e» ( Pa in e l - Pa ow ovich) reinforces this association even more, forcing us to remember the first name of the apostle: Sa ow . Considering that in the art world Pasternak, there are no random names or surnames, all of them are semantic, meaningful to one degree or another, then this parallel also seems to be symbolic, especially since, according to P. Florensky, in the cultural consciousness of all Christian (and not only Christian) peoples “the name Pavel inseparable from the Apostle of the tongues", and "among the names, perhaps, one cannot find another, so closely associated with a certain bearer of it" ( Florensky P. A. Names // Priest Pavel Florensky. Small collection. op. Issue. 1. 1993. S. 220).
Let us recall some episodes of the novel related to the biography of this character. Chapter 9 of part 4 (“Immediate inevitability”) tells about his imaginary death (which may well be associatively correlated with what Saul experienced on the way to Damascus, who later became the apostle Paul). Recovered from concussion and released from German captivity ensign Antipov will "resurrect" in the following chapters of the novel - already in a completely different image and even under a different name. All future life Commissar Strelnikov, up to the tragic death, will be subordinated to sincere, fanatical service new Army and a new idea. However, the archetypal parallel we have drawn is not as simple and unambiguous as it seems at a superficial glance: outwardly similar circumstances (a shock and the acquisition of a new name) emphasize the difference in the characters and aspirations of the two Pauls - the New Testament apostle and the non-party Bolshevik, the hero of the novel.
Site section: Orthodox poems.
At the bottom of the page there is a video for listening to the verse.
In it, he addresses the theme of the Savior's sacrifice on the cross and describes those gospel events that preceded it. Today our task is to try to feel how the poet imagined that very evening in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Twinkling distant stars indifferently
The turn of the road was illuminated.
The lawn was cut off in half.
Behind her was the Milky Way.
Gray silver olives
At the end was someone's garden, put on the land.
Leaving students behind the wall,
He told them: “The soul is grieving to death,
Stay here and watch with Me."
The night distance now seemed the edge
Destruction and non-existence.
And, looking into these black holes,
Empty, without beginning or end
So that this cup of death is over,
In a bloody sweat, He prayed to the Father.
Prayer softened the languor of death,
He went over the fence. On the ground
Students, overpowered by slumber,
They rolled in a roadside feather grass.
He woke them up: “The Lord has vouchsafed you
To live in My days, you are sprawled like a layer.
The hour of the Son of Man has struck.
He will betray Himself into the hands of sinners.”
And just said, no one knows where
A crowd of slaves and a crowd of vagabonds,
Lights, swords and ahead - Judas
With a treacherous kiss on his lips.
Peter rebuffed the thugs with a sword
And cut off the ear of one of them.
But he hears: “The dispute cannot be resolved with iron,
Put your sword back in place, man.
Is it really the darkness of the winged legions
Wouldn't Father have equipped Me here?
And then without touching a hair on me,
Enemies would scatter without a trace.
But the book of life came to the page
Which is more precious than all holy things.
Now what is written must come true,
Let it come true. Amen.
You see, the course of centuries is like a parable
And it can catch fire on the go.
In the name of her terrible greatness
I will go into the coffin in voluntary torment.
I will go down to the grave and on the third day I will rise,
Centuries will float out of the darkness.”
Maundy Thursday. The gospel events of this day are the Last Supper and the following Prayer for the Chalice. At first glance, Pasternak's poem is a fluent retelling of the second plot, very fluent. Only attention here is somehow shifted to the landscape.
One could consider the Garden of Gethsemane a landscape sketch, however, as we already know from Magdalene, Pasternak's landscape is dynamic. If you look closely, here the scale of the image changes from quatrain to quatrain. And, in the end, the landscape turns out to be not quite a landscape.
However, the poem really begins as a specific sketch: night, a river, a turn in the road.
The road went around the Mount of Olives,
Beneath it flowed Kedron.
As an accent, let's pay attention here to the "indifferently distant" stars. But then, literally before our eyes, the image begins to transform.
It turns out that there are not just stars in the sky, there is the Milky Way. That is, the road, which began on earth, seems to continue in the sky. The leaves of wild olives - grayish by nature - in the moonlight can really resemble stars. But this path drawn by the eye from the earth to the sky is divided by a cliff. And it takes effort to put it together.
Gray silver olives
Tried to step into the distance through the air.
The expanse of the universe was uninhabited,
And only the garden was a place to live.
Such a transformation does not happen suddenly, but immediately after Christ tries to look at the world through the eyes of a mere mortal:
He refused without a fight
As from things borrowed
From omnipotence and wonderworking,
And he was now as mortal as we are.
And then the night ceases to be just a night, turning into "black gaps, empty without beginning or end." Turning to the Father, Christ struggles with death. He has to restore the universe anew.
... the course of the ages is like a parable
And it can catch fire on the go.
Who among us has ever seen how centuries burn? However, the poet immediately answers this question:
And, as rafts are rafted down the river,
To me for judgment, like caravan barges,
Centuries will float from the darkness.
Before us - again the river, and a string of lights on the dark water. Or maybe it's the Milky Way? Or is it just one without any effort passes into another?
Maundy Thursday. The most important thing is ahead of us.
Listen to the poem "The Garden of Gethsemane" video 5 minutes
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"And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death; there will be no more mourning, no outcry, no more pain"
-Apocalypse 21:4
"And the packs of the one to come with glory to be judged by the living and the dead, his kingdom will have no end"
-Symbol of faith
The poem "The Garden of Gethsemane" was published in 1958, becoming the end of Boris Pasternak's novel "Doctor Zhivago". In "Poems by Yuri Zhivago" (so called the last part novel) Pasternak included a whole cycle of works on the gospel theme. Of the twenty-five poems, six are about the life and death of Jesus Christ: "The Christmas Star", "The Miracle", "Bad Days", "Magdalene" (parts I and II) and "The Garden of Gethsemane". The first five tell of the birth of Christ, the miracle of the fig tree, the entry into Jerusalem, and His crucifixion, respectively. The last, sixth poem is knocked out of the general chronology of the Four Gospels: the poet violates it deliberately, because in addition to the reminiscence to the 14th chapter of the Gospel of Mark, the 18th of John and the 26th of Matthew, the poem contains another and the most important reference - to Revelation of John the Theologian: "Do not seal the word of the prophecy of this book; for the time is near (...) Behold, I am coming quickly, and My retribution is with Me, to give to everyone according to his deeds" (Apocalypse, 22:10-12) - "Now what is written must come true / Let it come true.
But this is the end of the work; let's go back to the beginning. From the very first line, the poet sets a chronotope, and the scenery of the scene seems quite ordinary, even if it is poeticized: “the twinkling of stars”, “the turn of the road is illuminated” ... The poet even uses toponyms, naming a specific Mount of Olives and the Kidron River flowing at its foot . The most interesting thing begins in the second stanza, the landscape undergoes changes, "the lawn was cut off", and "halfway through": the author emphasizes how suddenly the familiar place has changed, using parceling. The first personification appears, "the olives tried to step into the distance through the air." The painting comes to life. In the third quatrain, Pasternak turns the reader's gaze from heaven to earth, narrowing the circle of visibility to a garden, but this is not just a garden, but "someone's" "put on the land." The concept of belonging to some unknown person of the place in which the fate of the Son of God will be decided sharply contrasts with the images of the mountain and the river from the first stanza, and even more so with space landscapes and live olives from the second.
In the fifth stanza, the spatio-temporal coordinates of the action are clarified - "The expanse of the universe was uninhabited / And only the garden was a place to live": (uninhabited) Universe, (depopulated) Earth - and only that very garden from the "land allotment" turns into the center of the whole earth (and extraterrestrial!) life. Rapid change, isn't it? Following the end of the sixth stanza again returns the reader to the gospel narrative. “And, having gone a little way, he fell to the ground and prayed that, if possible, this hour would pass for Him; and he said: Abba, father, everything is possible for You; take this cup away from Me; but not what I want, but what You ... ", - says the Gospel of Mark, 14: 35-36. The poet transforms the text of Scripture by adding artistic detail, he writes that Jesus prays "in sweat of blood"; "He ... was now like mortals, like us," the stanza was written earlier, and in the book of Genesis one can read such a phrase addressed by the Creator God Sabaoth to a man expelled from paradise: "In bloody sweat you will get your bread." The image of bloody sweat can be found, for example, in Nadezhda Gorbatyuk's poem "And the Church is Dancing": "Jesus prayed to his father on his knees / Bloody sweat streamed down his cheeks." Thus, the epithet "bloody sweat" becomes a kind of metatextual trope and links many works devoted to the comparison of man and Jesus.
The transformation of the lexeme "chalice" in the cycle "Poems of Yuri Zhivago" is interesting. So, in the poem "Hamlet" we read: "If possible, Abba Father / Carry this Cup past." But if in "Hamlet" the image of the cup is considered as a cup of life ("to live life is not to cross a field"), then in the "Garden of Gethsemane" it is a cup of death, a cup of torment, which the Son of God has to drink for the sins of mankind. "Hamlet" is Zhivago's first poem, "The Garden of Gethsemane" is the last; Hamletism as spontaneous spirituality, the hesitation of the seeker is directly opposite to Christian highly spiritual sacrifice, Yuri Zhivago's consciousness gravitates to different "poles" of worldview as it develops (as far as one can determine from the cycle of his poems).
But let's move on with the text. In the seventh quatrain, we again see the opposition of the motives of the earth and the cosmos: the gaze turns away from the "black holes" of the uninhabited universe and turns to the earth, where the disciples of Christ "lyed" (intentional reduction in vocabulary). Another and most striking opposition can be found in the ninth stanza: "it is not known where / A crowd of slaves and a crowd of vagabonds." It is this "no one knows where" that attracts attention: in the transcendental-cosmic worldview of the lyrical hero there is no place for people, "slaves" and "vagrants" (which, by the way, contradicts the orthodox dogma about accepting one's neighbor and loving him). Judas appears as the crown and leader of the crowd of traitors, which in fact turned out to be the pastoral "God's flock." "Crowd" - that's a word with a reduced vocabulary used in relation to the crowd. And with this word, the archaisms "kiss" and "mouth" coexist, which further emphasizes the antinomy that permeates the entire poetic fabric.
The genre of the poem resembles a ballad; that is why it is possible to single out not one, but two chronotopes at once - "lyrical" and "epic". The abundance of inversions creates the feeling that it was extremely difficult for the author to fit everything that should have been contained there into the framework of iambic pentameter, but still the technique is surprising. Unusual rhymes are impressive ("uninhabited edge", "iron-thugs", "touching legions"), the whole text contains only one (and also non-standard!) verbal rhyme ("strike - vouchsafed"). the main idea The work says that "the dispute cannot be resolved with iron" (Pasternak resorts to Tyutchev's aphoristic narration, which is unusual for him), but it is not located at the end of the text and does not serve as a conclusion. The poem ends with a gradation of tremendous power: "rafts-caravan-centuries." As rafts and barges float on a river, so a caravan of camels floats in the desert, and centuries converge along the river of time for the Last Judgment.
The last and closing image of the poem is darkness - dust, from which, according to the gospel canon, everything began and to which everything will return. Despite the fact that the events of the work are tragic, there is no death in it - there is only this darkness; It is no coincidence that Pasternak used a quote from the Revelation of John the Theologian as a working title for the novel Doctor Zhivago: "There will be no death."
Garden of Gethsemane
Twinkling distant stars indifferently
The turn of the road was illuminated.
The road went around the Mount of Olives,
Beneath it flowed Kedron.
The lawn was cut off in half.
Behind her was the Milky Way.
Gray silver olives
Tried to step into the distance through the air.
At the end was someone's garden, put on the land.
Leaving students behind the wall,
He told them: “The soul is grieving to death,
Stay here and watch with Me."
He refused without a fight
As from things borrowed
From omnipotence and wonderworking,
And he was now like mortals, like us.
The night distance now seemed the edge
Destruction and non-existence.
The expanse of the universe was uninhabited,
And only the garden was a place to live.
And, looking into these black holes,
Empty, without beginning or end
So that this cup of death is over,
In a bloody sweat, He prayed to the Father.
Prayer softened the languor of death,
He went over the fence. On the ground
Students, overpowered by slumber,
They rolled in a roadside feather grass.
He woke them up: “The Lord has vouchsafed you
To live in My days, you are sprawled like a layer.
The hour of the Son of Man has struck.
He will betray Himself into the hands of sinners.”
And just said, no one knows where
A crowd of slaves and a crowd of vagabonds,
Lights, swords and ahead - Judas
With a treacherous kiss on his lips.
Peter rebuffed the thugs with a sword
And cut off the ear of one of them.
But he hears: “The dispute cannot be resolved with iron,
Put your sword back in place, man.
Is it really the darkness of the winged legions
Wouldn't Father have equipped Me here?
And then without touching a hair on me,
Enemies would scatter without a trace.
But the book of life came to the page
Which is more precious than all holy things.
Now what is written must come true,
Let it come true. Amen.
You see, the course of centuries is like a parable
And it can catch fire on the go.
In the name of her terrible greatness
I will go into the coffin in voluntary torment.
I will go down to the grave and on the third day I will rise,
And, as rafts are rafted down the river,
To me for judgment, like the barges of a caravan,
Centuries will float out of the darkness.”
(Boris Pasternak, 1949)
Other articles in the literary diary:
- 03/30/2013. Leonid Filatov. At fifteen, blown in the wind
- 03/22/2013. Anna Akhmatova. Somehow managed to separate
- 17.03.2013. Boris Pasternak, Garden of Gethsemane
- 03/02/2013. Konstantin Romanov
We see that Pasternak directly follows the plot and images of the gospel story, includes quotes from it in his poem. From the very beginning, earthly events are closely connected with general structure universe, a high tone is set, consciousness of the greatest importance occurring event. Christ, who in the poem is designated only by the pronouns He and I, appears against the backdrop of this majestic landscape and turns out to be even more significant than everything around, even nature. His speech is majestic and simple: "The soul mourns to death, / Stay here and watch with Me." lofty words characterizing Christ, contrasted with words with reduced coloring, through which students are shown, - lay in the roadside feather grass, as well as a crowd of slaves and a crowd of tramps, cutthroats and Judas with a treacherous kiss on their lips. And at the same time, he has an earthly and human Christ - the same, as mortals as we are. A number of abstract words convey a state of anxiety, mortal sorrow, a sense of the inevitability of suffering and death - that which is destined for Christ. This feeling is then expressed in the words: "So that this cup of death should pass, / In bloody sweat, He prayed to the Father." FROM the thought of history is not at all fatal, and man is not a weak-willed grain of sand. He has the right to choose: to passively obey someone else's will or to accomplish a feat, to contribute to history. But this feat is accomplished not by the sword, but by self-sacrifice. This means that the course of centuries has not only meaning, but also value, it has a page that is more precious than all the shrines . From one act history may catch fire while driving. Words are dearer than all sacred things; in the name of its terrible greatness, they are clearly evaluative, they speak of the highest degree of greatness, the holiness of the voluntary sacrifice of Christ, which brings salvation to all mankind. In order for man and the world to become perfect, this great sacrifice was made, which changed the course of history. So says the poet main value- the strength of the spirit capable of resisting evil, the freedom of the individual, courageously choosing hard way sacrificing herself for the sake of high purpose. Read the last stanza of the poem: "To me for judgment, like barges of a caravan, / Centuries will sail from the darkness." Here it is, the course of history: from now on, its entire movement will be measured by the greatness of the sacrifice of Christ. And, as always with Pasternak, high thought is conveyed through a concrete picture, the eternal through the ordinary and modern.
