Unity of suffering and joy

Selected quotes from books and speeches by Grigory Pomeranz

The outstanding philosopher and culturologist Grigory Pomeranz, who died on February 16 at the 95th year of his life, left a rich literary heritage. The original thinker, he was a magnificent interlocutor, a brilliant polemicist. The New Times publishes selected quotes from his books and performances

Grigory Pomeranz. 2004

We are all still unfinished people. The process of manifestation of a person is still ongoing. The person is still going on. And in order for him to work, we need great internal efforts.

I talk to history, glancing with hope at God. And Zina (Zinaida Mirkina is a poet, researcher, wife Grigory Pomeranz. - The New Times) talks to God, glancing with horror at history.

The depth of each great religion is closer to the depths of any other great religion than to its own surface. In the surface, vulgarity reigns, and the truth reigns in the depths.

It is naive to imagine that good and evil go to each other, like two troops with expanded banners. In fact, good does not fight and does not win. It shines at everyone and more willingly holds on the side of the vanquished. And what is fighting is always involved in evil.

The fullness of being is impossible without the unity of suffering and joy. They are all the time shimmer into each other. When we listen to the music of Bach, look at Rublev icons, there is also a transfusion of suffering in joy and joy in suffering everywhere. And we are called upon to keep in ourselves, and this is an excuse for what is happening.

Our hope is unlikely. If you carefully look at history, then all the decisive shifts were unlikely ... not only world religions were born. Everything great was once incredible.

In Swift, the clapers from time to time pounding on the foreheads of the sages there so that they become a little closer to reality. So the events clap us on the head. But our head often turns out to be just a bone, and the most important signals do not reach the center.

The devil begins with the foam on the lips of the angel, which entered the battle for the holy right business. Everything turns into dust - both people and systems. But the spirit of hatred in the struggle for a just cause is eternal. And thanks to him, evil on earth has no end. Since I understood this, I believe that the polemic style is more important than the object of polemics.

What we usually call the people is not a people at all, but philistinism. There are Russian features coming from the heroic eras: breadth, daring, carefree. And there is Russian Kholuy, Russian rudeness. There are features that develop in the church: female meekness, forgiveness. And the features folding on the stable. How will all this gather together? In the war, when the authorities allowed to be brave, the Russian man straightens out and becomes a man. In peacetime, when the bosses do not allow him this, he loses respect for himself, he will come up, drink, and he will curl.

Strange business! For some reason, in Russia, even the path to an open, pluralistic society acquires Arakcheevsky straightforwardness.

All attempts to achieve a harmonic state of society, leaving aside the human personality, soul, infinity of the soul lead only to disappointment, irritation, evil attempts to subjugate the mind of the rebellious nature and, in the end, to such a bacchanalia of violence in which the last remnants of the mind are drowning; The game, nonsense reign, relatively with which the old, unreasonable state of society seems to be the kingdom of reason, goodness and beauty.

All human culture is only the condensation of rhythms spilled in nature ... The units of civilization growing like a tumor destroy a whole culture. And if tomorrow belongs to scientists, then the day after tomorrow is someone else. To those who free us from apocalyptic fear ... fear of emptiness.

Photo: Photo Xpress