"I believe in individual people"

Fifteen old quotes about new times

1. When I think about the specifics of the “dialogue” of our current state with a protest movement, I constantly recall Daniil Harms, who once wrote a seemingly completely different reason:

"Let's fight, sorcerer, you are in a word, I am with your hand."

1. When I hear that the majority is always right, because it is the majority, I cannot help but remember the words that the biblical Moses from the first, so to speak, has heard very long time:

"Do not follow the majority for evil and do not solve the litigation, retreating most of the truth."

1. When they talk about serfdom and its heavy heritage, when they say, it is completely fair, that the freedom that they give and do not take, there is no freedom at all, and so-something like conditionally aid liberation, that what they give is easily and taken away, at hand is Anton Pavlovich and a beloved, terrible place from Kashtanka, which is sometimes considered to be a childish Reading:

“The following focus was especially painful: Fedyushka tied a piece of meat on the thread and gave it to the chestnut, then, when she swallowed, he pulled him back from her stomach with a loud laughter. And the brighter the memories, the louder and more dreary she whined. ”

1. In our days, I generally recall Chekhov more and more often, because, observing public pathology gaining momentum, it is impossible not to seek advice to one of the best domestic diagnosticians. Yes, at least from the "gooseberry":

“The change of life for the better ... develops a conceit in a Russian person, the most arrogant. Nikolai Ivanovich, who was once afraid to have his own views in the state ward even in the state ward, now said only truths in such a tone, just a minister: “Education is necessary, but for the people it is premature,” “Forsy punishments are generally harmful, but in some cases they are useful and indispensable.”

1. And also Chekhov. The story "Steppe":

"Our mother Rasia to the whole world of Ga-la-va!" - Suddenly sang Kiryuha with a wild voice, choked and fell silent. The steppe echo picked up his voice, suffered, and, it seemed, stupidity itself rolled along the steppe on heavy wheels. ”

Well, yes, patriotism, but how.

1. Leo Tolstoy has about patriotism:

“Patriotism in the simplest, most clear and undoubted meaning is nothing else for the rulers, as an instrument for achieving power -loving and selfish goals, and for managed - renunciation of human dignity, mind, conscience and slave subordination of themselves to those who are in power. So it is preached wherever patriotism is preached. ”

1. And Shchedrin is very striking, so already today that you are directly shuddering:

“They began to push patriotism. Apparently, they stuck. "

"

I believe in individual people, I see salvation in individuals scattered in Russia and there - intellectuals they or men - they have power, although there are few of them

"

1. When the criminal nature of the Russian authorities becomes more and more obvious, poisoning different layers of society with its specific morality, including the so -called intelligentsia, after all, it has long been said about it. Barlam Shalamov, for example, knew about this, frankly, firsthand:

“Hundreds of thousands of people who have been in prison are corrupted by thieves' ideology and ceased to be people. Something thieves forever settled in their souls, thieves, their morality forever left in the soul of any indelible trace. The boss is rude and cruel, lying the teacher, the doctor is unscrupulous, but all this is trifles in comparison with the corrupting power of the thieves world. Those still people, and no, no, and will see the human in them. The thieves are not people / ... / the intellectual turns into a coward, and his own brain tells him the justification of his actions. He can persuade himself to anything, join any of the parties in the dispute. ”

1. When I feel the distinctly painful inflection of loyal -native intonations, which entered in a certain environment into a kind of fashion, this immediately pops up from my memory:

“The undersigned judicial doctors came together in determining the complete mental dullness and the innate cretinism of the Schweik Joseph, who was cretinism that appears from the statement“ Long live the emperor Franz Joseph, which was quite enough, which is quite enough to determine the mental state of Joseph Schweik as a clear idiot ”.

1. When I hear conversations about how the evil West only thinks, as if the overwhelming of great Russia, I immediately recall from Dead Souls:

“I know, I know you, darling; If you want, I’ll tell you the whole story: you studied with a German who fed you all together, beat you with a belt on the back for sloppiness and did not let you go to the street, and you were a miracle, not a shoemaker, and did not praise the German, speaking with his wife or comrad. And how your teaching ended: “Now I will start with my Domk,” you said, “but not like a German, that it stretches out of a penny, and suddenly get rich.” And so, having given the master a decent quitter, you started a shop, having scored a bunch of orders, and went to work. I took out somewhere Veteashev’s nitrous skin and won, for sure, half on every boot, and after two weeks your boots shoveled for two weeks, and chose you in a mean way. And then your nap is desolate, and you went to drink and wallow through the streets, saying: “No, bad in the world! There is no life for a Russian person, all Germans interfere. ”

1. When I think about the features of the attitude of local society to local authorities, I recall the smart Russian writer Prishvin, who wrote in his diary:

“Thinking about the current cynical attitude of the people towards the leaders, I come to the conclusion that it was village ethics to spread to the state, in the Russian village people, they look at all their close authorities as the necessary evil, and the last person goes to the bosses.”

1. When mental laziness and intellectual cowardice are masked by considerations such as “how much can be about it. This is not interesting to anyone, ” - the dialogue from the Gogol" Theater Transfer "is immediately recalled:

“First: no; Yes, this is not a subject for comedy, my dear! This already concerns the government. As if there are no other items, what can you write about?

Second: what other items?

First: Well, do you never have any funny secular cases? Well, let's put it, for example, I went to a walk to the pharmacist island, and the coachman suddenly brought me there to the Vyborg or Smolny Monastery. How many funny clutches are there? "

And really, you never know any interesting in life.

1. When I observe the irrational, but energetic aggression with which archaic society is fighting off from contemporary art, I repeat to myself and unconditionally share the words of the great and wise composer John Cage:

“I don’t understand why people are afraid of new ideas. The old ones scare me. "

And about the extremely inappropriate in this case, but nevertheless endless conversations on the topic "What art is this?" I would quote Borges, who once noticed that "the literary tastes of God are not known to anyone."

1. When it is said that “nothing can be changed, because we are very few and we are fragmented”, I recall Chekhov again, who said this:

“I believe in individual people, I see salvation in individuals scattered in Russia and there - they are intellectuals or men - they have power, although there are few of them.”

And I believe in it, imagine.

1. And when I try to explain to myself the reasons for my little motivated optimism, I repeat the important words of Harms, from which I started:

"Life defeats death in an unknown science in a way."

Photo: Mitya Aleshkovsky