Sergey Romashko. Olympic Elegy

The usual Olympic information hysteria is unfolding this time somehow sluggishly and discordantly. I will leave it to those who deal with this specifically to understand the reasons for this and draw appropriate lessons - their responsibility (although the result gives some idea of ​​​​the general atmosphere and its state, tense, despite the tradition of the summer holiday lull in politics and economics). I once again remembered the ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes , who lived at the turn of the 6th and 5th centuries BC. He was a rather stern man and in his elegiac poems he most often criticized everything he saw around him. The only positive response to reality that has reached us is his description of the joys of the feast, translated into Russian by the young Pushkin:

The floor is shiny and clean; glass bowls sparkle;
All the guests have already been crowned; another smells, closing his eyes,
Frankincense sweet smoke; another opens an amphora,
The smell of cheerful wine spilling far away...

1

In other respects, as far as public life was concerned, Xenophanes was more sarcastic. He was not afraid of any authorities. The Olympic athletes, who at that time were people surrounded by honor and respect, also got it from him. This is precisely what Xenophanes did not like:

If anyone wins with the speed of his feet /in the race/,
Or in the pentathlon - where Zeus is the sacred destiny,
At the Pisian shores in Olympia - or in Borenia
/He will be the first to come out/, otherwise in a heavy fist fight,
Or in a terrible competition, which is called "pancratius",
He will immediately become much more glorious in the eyes of the townspeople,
He will sit in front in a visible place in the agony,
He will receive rations at public expense
The state will give him a valuable gift as a keepsake.

2

Xenophanes believed that the wisdom that he and his fellow intellectuals possessed was much more important for society, and therefore should be glorified and rewarded more. Because, he argued, society will not become better because someone runs fast or is strong in wrestling. And here it is difficult to disagree with Xenophanes, just as it is not difficult to be convinced that quite little has changed since then in this regard. This was recalled, for example, by the figures of rewards that our authorities have just announced that Olympic medalists will receive: young writers, artists or scientists can only dream of such prizes. There is, however, a certain logic in this relationship: the artist will do his job anyway... It turns out very convenient.

However, in one thing, Xenophanes clearly missed the mark. Wanting to completely nail down the presumptuous athletes, he found, as it seemed to him, a murderous argument:

Here he made a mistake. He could not predict that the time would come when sports competitions (after the politics that had cooled towards them ceased to support them) would become not only celebrations, but also a business. And it’s a serious business. A modern athlete is actually an entrepreneur, and a sports club and other sports institutions are firms, including large corporations. All this turned out to be possible in today’s situation of untethered money, mediacracy and the merging of big business and politics. As a result, paradoxical situations arise when sports clubs, in an embrace with beer producers (a symbol of modern sports!), explain to us that if something is wrong, then there will be nothing to watch on TV. It's only the beginning.

I doubt whether society will become better from the monetization of sports . Will the real economy grow in this way (and not another financial bubble, of which there are already so many that a little more will take off - to hell) - let economists answer, but somehow I don’t believe in this either. If anything, it appears the sports market has overheated. Perhaps that is why the upcoming Olympic Games do not attract too many spectators. This turns out to be a normal consumer reaction. Ah, Xenophanes, Xenophanes...

Notes:

1 About this translation and its original, see the article by M.L. Gasparov: “From Xenophanes of Colophon” by Pushkin. From poetics to worldview. (Gasparov M. L. About Russian poetry. Analyzes. Interpretations. Characteristics. - M., 2001. - P. 75-95).

2 Since I, like Xenophanes, am on a journey, I have to use the text that I managed to get from the Internet - from the “Fragments of Early Greek Philosophers” prepared by A.V. Lebedev.