Translated material
Easter and silence
Easter this year is unusual - difficult. And a familiar cry - Christ is risen! - freezes in the air if it is addressed to a friend, for example, in Kyiv.
After all, by exclaiming like this, we are actually saying: die. Then yes, then you will be resurrected. Now go away. So, is it working out? Even the loftiest words lose their meaning; in our situation they mean something completely different from what we mean in them.
From silence, if it is filled with inner depth, a word will be born. At least that's what the holy fathers teach. And it was not by chance that the poet remarked: “The longer the silence, the more amazing the speech.”
But our silence has no way out. It comes from powerlessness. The spiritual foundations of life have been devalued. And the changes follow one after another.
The language in which we can tell the truth is disappearing. It always turns out sideways, turning to the speech practices of the past - and blindness in the present.
“Do something!” - comes a cry from the innocent victim. And pictures of Holy Week float before us.
Pilate weakly resisted the execution of an innocent man. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, influential men and friends of Jesus, did not go to the Sanhedrin to save him. The women stood at a distance and did not actively protest.
History is full of examples of innocent victims, and there is nothing we can do about it. Just pray. Just try to hear what God tells us.
And here we enter a space where questions are raised about collective guilt, collective responsibility and popular repentance.
Yes, I personally am not guilty of anything. The very concept of collective guilt, in my opinion, is delusional. But no one has canceled collective responsibility. Hannah Arendt writes a lot about her.
According to Arendt, you can avoid it if you go into emigration, become a refugee. I do not do this. So it’s my fault. How guilty I was during the Soviet years for the fact that there were headless churches all around.
But much more serious, in my opinion, is the question of popular repentance, since it is precisely with this that the problem of revising the national narrative is connected. The philosopher Gregory Gutner clearly writes about this in his posthumously published book “Selected Articles.” There is some guile in the attempt to reduce repentance to a purely individual act, Gutner argues. After all, an individual act can have public significance.
For the first time, the philosopher recalls, the theme of repentance was heard among the first wave of emigrants. There is a small but important article by Georgy Fedotov with the expressive title “On National Repentance.”
The main idea of the article: the Bolshevik revolution is the result of the aversion of the majority of the people from genuine Christianity, adopted by Russia in the Kyiv font. The ideal of Christianity was sacrificed for glory and power. Xerxes, stylized in the Orthodox style, became the ideal of the Orthodox Tsar and of all Russian pseudo-Christian nationalism.
Fedotov, notes Gutner, is trying to reconsider tradition, to identify in it the source of future evil. However, according to the author, Fedotov was mistaken in the nature of the imperial-messianic narrative, since it was not national and was shared only by a small group belonging to the educated stratum.
The national narrative, according to Gutner, took shape during the Soviet years. The revolution and all the wars in which the USSR participated fit into this series of events. It also includes the pantheon of national heroes, including Lenin and Stalin.
It was this narrative that shaped our identity and partly continues to shape it to this day. But sticking to it today is a morally flawed position.
National repentance, according to Gutner, is a change in narrative, replacing it with a fundamentally different one. But now even the possibilities of this narrative are difficult to imagine. Speaking about this, Gutner recalls Heidegger’s famous phrase, said, however, on a slightly different occasion: “Only God can save us.”
And a few more words about muteness. I find speech when I address the destinies of specific people. This is not the language of geopolitics and ideology. This is the language of human solidarity. For me, this language is associated with poetry, so below I will give some texts written in it:
simple program
"Orthodox"
and a virus is launched into it
and that's all
nothing Christian that is:
one avatar
+
I represent
horror of man
before clearing the city
I can't help him:
heart in trouble
+
under his window
big puddle
and a fragment flew into her
fortunately,
didn't hurt anyone
+
what does a person mean
without this and that
both?
what does a person mean
naked
on the billiard table
and defenseless
from the blow?
+
he gave a lecture on Kant
in a bomb shelter
during the raid,
I won't say anything more
remembered
the sparkles of his eyes
and a slightly trembling voice
+
Etc. I am very happy,
The sun is shining on the parade,
The sun is shining, be healthy,
I'm coming, I'm ready.
.
Photo: EJ archive
.