Translated material
The old marvelous world
In society
The old marvelous world
November 7, 2013 Anatoly Bershtein
Zakhar Prilepin continues to improve in the epistolary genre. Now he wrote the next, this time a very short “letter” , published on the “rain” under the heading “Letters of the Motherland”.
The first paragraph of this thought, consisting of only two paragraphs, is devoted to the thesis that we ourselves are to blame for everything. Notice - not foreigners. And "we ourselves." Already good.
But in the second, Prilepin contrasts today's bet on universal hedonism “Methodology for the preservation of Russia”, tested for centuries and based on three virtues - austerity, work and valor. “And to the current quasi -eagles, other people, other people, another aristocracy - warriors, monks, book culture, who set the goal of not the tenderness of human weakness, but overcoming this weakness, overcoming clay, should replace the current self -proclaimed monetary aristocracy.
Yes, it sounds fascinating, I would even say dizzying. But somehow strange. A bunch of questions immediately arise. For example, which means: "All of them were more than people ..."? And who are epic heroes, demigods?
So Lermontov wrote: “Yes, there were people in our time, not like the current tribe: heroes are not you!” This is understandable: the previous "tribe" always seems so. But still "people".
Now about the "reading warriors" (here it turns out close to Oxymoron). The Strugatsky in “It’s hard to be a god” wrote that after the “gray” “black templars” come. Prilepin about them? ..
In general, it seems that the author of the “Letter of the Motherland” has found some very old chest and is now sorting through everything that lies in it since time immemorial, and is trying to try on and, characteristic, one or the other on us.
Regarding the asuza, I recalled from the “Buddenbrooks”: “... and, of course, a strict diet, mistress of the consultant , very strict (allocated by A.B.): a piece of a dove, a slice of a French roll ...”
My friend had a different, much more successful literary allusion, from Alice. Remember, when she drank a drink from the bubble, reminiscent of taste - "cherry pie with cream, pineapple, fried turkey, creamy lipstick and hot croutons with butter."
It is clear that Prilepin, not without reason, criticizes the dominant consumer-entertainment model of mass consciousness. And trying to offer an alternative. More precisely, to recall the past: Russia was preserved by the efforts of the warriors who defended it, the work of its working population and by the former spiritual scrapers. And, as usual, he offers a whip triad: by the type of “autocracy, Orthodoxy, nationality”, “Stalin, Beria, Gulag”. Now a new saving mythologized formula: "Valor, labor, asceticism."
So what is it about? Valor, labor ... Who will argue? It is quite common values. In particular, Protestant. ASSKAYAS? .. Well, this is a very ancient conversation, since the time of Epicurus and the Stoics. If only to consider it as an antithesis to hedonism? As a vector towards the priority of spiritual development? Maybe. But the topic is too serious to be designated in a publicist replica.
Well, as for monasticism ... even if you understand this as an image of service, we still live in the world. Secular. Where, by the way, there can be no austerity by definition. Otherwise, Zakhar Prilepin should have abandoned both the family and the social situation. But that would already be another state and another society.
By the way, but “worldly priests” have long been living among us. Only by this phrase, Sergei Yursky implies the true Russian intelligentsia, which Prilepin stigmatized in his previous “letters”.
In short, there are no complaints to valor, work or even voluntary asuza - by itself, taken separately, but to everything together as a combined national idea, as the only alternative to hedonist morality. As with the fact that all this completely rejects another view of the world. And this means that if the “ascetes” are pulled by the rope, then they will force their orders forcibly to the rest - decisively and uncompromisingly.
And history already knows his cruel righteous: Torquemad, Savonarol, Calvina ...