The purpose of the lesson: to analyze Andreev’s story, to identify the features of the writer’s creative style and to identify the originality of the author’s interpretation of the biblical plot. (Slide 2)

During the classes

It's hard, it's hard and maybe
it is ungrateful to approach the mystery of Judas,
it’s easier and calmer not to notice her,
covering it with roses of church beauty.
S. Bulgakov
(Slide 3)

1. Organizing time
2. Teacher's opening speech

Does the plot of the story correspond to the legend from the New Testament? Through the images and motifs of the New Testament, L. Andreev presents to readers his own concept of history, which consists of the interaction of three forces:

• New idea;
• a people who are devoid of any ideas;
• some force connecting the first and second.

1. Conversation with the class

How do you understand the epigraph of our lesson? (Slide 3)

Why is it not Jesus, but Judas, who becomes the main character? (Slide 4)

Jesus represents a new idea, but the people do not heed the Savior. And in this situation Judas appears, who, through betrayal and curse, saves the cause of Christ forever and ever.

Judas Iscariot is the main anti-hero of the gospel story, which is known to all readers, from the time of L. Andreev. What exactly could they know about the traitor of Jesus Christ, what “foundation” did the author rely on?

Let's clarify (Slide 5)

The Gospel says that at the moment of betrayal “Satan entered into him” (John 13:27; Luke 22:3)

But these words in no way justify Judas, because the devil tempts and provokes everyone, but the person himself commits his actions and is still responsible for them, for “the gap that makes him accessible to the devil’s suggestions” is his own vices.

Judas's betrayal was not the result of an emotional outburst, it was a conscious act; he himself came to the high priests, and then waited for an opportune moment to fulfill his plan. Therefore, even the repentant Judas remained in the memory of people as a traitor, in contrast to Peter, who showed momentary weakness. Thus, according to the Christian tradition, neither the devil’s “obsession” nor the predetermination of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is for Judas Iscariot a justification for his action.

Find a description of the appearance of Judas Iscariot. What is unusual about his portrait?

“Short red hair did not hide the strange......, I couldn’t believe in his complete blindness.”

First, let us note the unusualness of the selected details of the portrait. Andreev describes the skull of Judas, the very shape of which inspires “mistrust and anxiety.”

Secondly, let us pay attention to the duality in the appearance of Judas, emphasized several times by the writer. Duality is not only in the words “double”, “doubled”, but also in pairs of homogeneous members, synonyms: “strange and unusual”; “mistrust, even anxiety”; “silence and harmony”; “bloody and merciless” - and antonyms: “cut... and put together again”, “living” - “deadly smooth”, “moving” - “frozen”, “neither night nor day”, “neither light nor darkness” .

What can we call such a portrait?

Psychological, because he conveys the essence of the hero - the duality of his personality, the duality of behavior, the duality of feelings, the exclusivity of his fate.

Is it only appearance that turns people away from Judas?

No. Many knew him, but “there was no one who could say a good word about him. And if the good ones reproached him, saying that Judas was selfish, cunning, inclined to pretense and lies, then the bad ones... reviled him with the most cruel words,” saying that “thieves have friends, and robbers have comrades, and liars there are wives to whom they tell the truth, and Judas laughs at thieves, as well as at honest ones, although he himself steals skillfully, and in his appearance is the ugliest of all in Judea.”

In short, Judas was an outcast, but not because of his ugly appearance. His soul was ugly. It was she who determined people’s attitude towards him.

So, maybe Judas is the devil himself in the form of a man, or, more precisely, the son of the devil, as Thomas calls him?

Judas really lies like the devil (in ancient Greek, “slanderer”), he sees the vices of every person and easily plays on them, he is prone to provocations and temptations, he always knows exactly who and what to say, or rather, what they want to hear from him. These are his dialogues with all the characters in the story (except for Christ - he never directly speaks to him). Like Satan (in ancient Greek “contradictory”, “adversary”). Judas bows before the Almighty, but opposes him on the main issue - his attitude towards people, towards the human race. But Satan only recognizes the power and primacy of God. Judas sees only evil in the world, and he suffers from the “lack of understanding” of his Teacher.

2. Teacher's word. (Slide 6,7,8)

Judas himself repeats more than once: “My father is not the devil, but a goat.” Why? In the Gospel, the contrast between “goats” and “lambs” serves as an allegory (to speak vaguely, in hints) of good and evil people, whom the Son of Man will separate from each other at the Last Judgment (Matt. 25:31-32). Maybe Judas meant this?

Perhaps, Judas, demonstrating his own insignificance, wins people over (a weak man and vain), but at the same time remains “on his own mind.”

Or maybe he is the son of a “scapegoat”? In the Bible, this was the name given to one of the sacrificial goats, on whose head “on the great day of the feast, on the day of atonement...the high priest, coming out of the Holy of Holies, laid his hands,” confessed the sins of the whole people over him and drove him into the wilderness: “And the goat carried it to - says the Bible - "all their iniquities into an impassable land, and he will let the goat go into the wilderness" (Lev. 16:22). Perhaps Judas was thereby hinting at his special position among people: as a “scapegoat” he decided to bear all the sins of the human race.

3. Conversation with the class:

The most noticeable feature of Judas: he constantly lies, often without any apparent benefit to himself. But what follows from this? Are lies always worse than the truth?

Thomas complains to Judas that he sees “very bad dreams” and asks: “What do you think: should a person also be responsible for his dreams? And Judas explains: “Does anyone else see dreams, and not himself? What does it mean? Is Judas playing tricks on his truthful friend or is he being serious?

Conclusion: If you look at the law, then actions, not thoughts, are subject to condemnation, and, therefore, Judas is lying. That is, the moral standard for a disciple of Christ is higher than the legal one, and, therefore, Judas is right. But we, like a hundred years ago, know that although a dream characterizes a person, it is not under his control, and, therefore, Thomas is not to blame.

By the way, in the Bible there is no commandment “thou shalt not lie,” there is a commandment “thou shalt not bear false witness” (Ex. 20:14), i.e. Do not harm others with your lies (for example, in court). What is important is not the lie as such, but the reason for which it is told.

Why didn't Jesus immediately drive Judas away as soon as he appeared?

L. Andreev himself answers this question: Judas was one of the “rejected and unloved,” i.e. one of those whom Jesus never rejected. So Jesus wanted to help Judas find himself, overcome, as we would now say, an inferiority complex, the dislike of others.

So why did Judas come to Christ?

Judas, an outcast despised by everyone, whom, perhaps for the first time in his life, someone smiled at, sincerely sympathized with. You don’t just feel gratitude for someone like that, you love him selflessly, sometimes even more than your own life.

Does Judas love Christ?

Hardly. For him, to love means, first of all, to be understood, appreciated, recognized. The favor of Christ is not enough for him; he still needs recognition of the correctness of his assessments, justification for the darkness of his soul. He probably came to Jesus because he understood: his rightness will become absolute only when Christ Himself recognizes it. So is his love. Yes, he loves Christ, but only him and no one else. He knew the truth about the sinful, dark essence of people and wanted to find the power that could transform this essence.

How did the relationship between Judas and Jesus Christ develop? (Slide 9)

At first, Judas tries to get closer to his disciples, which is encouraged by Jesus. Judas begins to tell various fables, from which, however, it always follows that everyone around him is a deceiver, that he himself does not love anyone, not even his own parents.

The next stage: Judas tries to prove to Christ that he is right. First, he proves to the straightforward Thomas that the inhabitants of one village are “evil and stupid people,” because after listening to Jesus’ sermon, they easily believed that Jesus could steal a kid from an old woman. And from that day on, Jesus’ attitude towards him changed somehow strangely. And before, for some reason, it was the case that Judas never spoke directly to Jesus, and he never directly addressed him, but he often looked at him with kind eyes, smiled at some of his jokes, and if he did not see him for a long time, he asked: where is Judas? And now he looked at him, as if not seeing him, although he was still - and even more stubbornly than before - looking for him with his eyes. And no matter what he said, even if today it’s one thing and tomorrow something completely different, even if it’s even the same thing that Judas thinks, it seemed, however, that he was always speaking against Judas.”

Another time, Christ and his disciples were already in direct danger. They would probably have been stoned if not for Judas of Kariot. “overwhelmed by an insane fear for Jesus, as if already seeing drops of blood on his white shirt... the raised hands with stones fell down”

Judas was right again. He was waiting for praise. But Jesus was angry, and the disciples, instead of gratitude, “drove him away with short and angry exclamations. As if he didn’t save them all, as if he didn’t save the Teacher whom they love so much.” Why? Because he lied, Foma explained.

What does Judas conclude from this?

Judas cannot understand why for Christ and his disciples a lie, even when it saves their lives, is worse than the truth? Why doesn't the end justify the means? Would it really have been better, more just, if Christ had been killed? For the smart, cunning Judas, this is an insoluble contradiction. For Christ - no.

Judas understands the main thing: Jesus and his disciples are other people, living according to some other laws that are incomprehensible to him, and he is a stranger to them.

Judas seeks recognition within the framework of their “rules of the game”, defeats everyone in a fair competition, even Peter himself: he throws a stone off a cliff that no one could move.

Is he the best among them now?

No, just the strongest in this type of wrestling. “Everyone praised Judas, everyone recognized that he was a winner, everyone chatted with him in a friendly manner, but Jesus did not want to praise Judas this time either... Judas the strong one trudged along behind, swallowing dust.” He is a stranger to them again.

Jesus is trying to help him understand what is happening, to explain his attitude towards him with the help of the parable of the barren fig tree.

Let's clarify (Slide 10)

We are talking about a parable here, not about the incident when Jesus cut down the barren fig tree (otherwise it would seem that he was threatening Judas). The parable told by Christ in the Gospel sounds differently: “... someone had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and came to look for fruit on it, and did not find it; and he said to the vinedresser, “Behold, I have come for the third year to look for fruit on this fig tree and have not found it; cut it down: why does it occupy the land? But he answered him: Master! Leave it this year too, while I dig it up and cover it with manure, see if it bears fruit; if not, then next year you will cut it down” (Luke 13:6-9). That is, the parable definitely “indicates how God deals with every sinful soul.” He is not in a hurry to cut from the shoulder, but “desires the repentance of sinners”, gives them the opportunity to improve.

Why is Judas so sure that Jesus must perish (“...now he will perish, and Judas will perish with him”)? Because he was offended and was already about to betray him?

No. He simply understands that it is impossible to live like Jesus lives in this world. And in this Judas is right. Therefore, for Judas Iscariot, the death of Christ, like the death of himself, is inevitable.

Judas makes a new attempt to save Jesus Christ, demonstrating to Him what His closest disciples are worth: he steals (in front of Thomas!) several denarii from the general treasury and does not particularly resist when the angry Peter drags him by the collar to Jesus. “But Jesus was silent. And looking at him carefully, Peter quickly blushed and unclenched his hand that was holding the collar.” And John, leaving the Teacher, exclaimed: “... The Teacher said that Judas can take as much money as he wants... And no one should count how much money Judas received. He is our brother, and all his money is like ours... and you have seriously offended him, - that’s what the Teacher said... Shame on us, brothers!

What could Jesus say to John?

It is unlikely that Jesus allowed His disciples not to observe the Old Testament commandment “thou shalt not steal.” He probably simply reminded John of his preaching of universal equality, including property equality.

But the main thing is still different. Judas was clearly testing whether Christ's most faithful and devoted disciples were able to follow his commandments.

But was Judas’s provocation successful?

No. “When a strong wind blows,” he says to Foma, “he picks up rubbish. And stupid people look at the rubbish and say: that's the wind! And this is just rubbish... donkey droppings trampled underfoot. So he met a wall and quietly lay down at its foot, and the wind flew on.” That is, it is not their choice, and therefore Judas again does not recognize the rightness of Jesus Christ.

And then Judas decides to betray Christ. Why? (Slide 11,12)

The betrayal of Judas was for him the last argument in his dispute with Jesus. He knew for sure that everything would be exactly as he expected, but he did not want and was afraid of it. Maybe he even hoped for a miracle.

Judas commits betrayal in order to save Jesus, who is doomed to death in this world. There is a scene in the story that is incomparable with Holy Scripture: Judas, grimacing and humiliating himself, tries to get Pilate to pardon Christ.

For what? For the sake of “purity of experiment”?

No. Rather, it is a gesture of despair, a natural human impulse, when you no longer have the strength to remain an outside observer, seeing the suffering of the One Whom you love more than yourself.

A painful love for Christ and a desire to provoke disciples and people to take decisive action.

Undoubtedly, there was a desire to provoke. Just for what? For what?

By betraying Christ, Judas wants to break the universal kingdom of lies by deception, so that all people, both apostles and the mighty of the world This, they were horrified, and shame and remorse would lead them to Christ.

So why does St. Andrew's Judas betray Christ?

For Judas, betrayal was indeed a natural stage and the final argument in his dispute with Jesus about man. He won? L. Andreev writes: “The horror and dreams of Iscariot have come true.” Judas proved to the whole world and to Christ Himself that people are not worthy of the Son of God, there is nothing to love them for. And only he, a student and an outcast, the only one who retained his love and devotion, should rightfully sit next to Him in the Kingdom of Heaven and administer Judgment, merciless and universal, like the Flood.

That's what Judas thinks. But here important question: the author thinks the same?

L. Andreev told Gorky: “I... don’t like Christ and Christianity, optimism is a disgusting, completely false invention.” If we correlate these words with the content of the story, it turns out that both the author and his hero consider the appearance of Christ to be of no use to anyone, because his “False optimism” is not capable of changing human nature.

Judas is a tragic person because, unlike the apostles of Christ, he understands all this, but, unlike Anna and others like him, he is also capable of being captivated by the unearthly purity and kindness of Jesus Christ. The paradox is that the righteous are disproportionately further from Christ than Judas.

6.Final speech from the teacher

Let us remember the final and, perhaps, most powerful pages of it. “Judas has long been on his lonely walks... cats and other carrion.”

Don't you think this passage contains a lot of accurate estimate Judas and his betrayals? Does it match the one we cited above? How do we, today's readers, perceive St. Andrew's Judas?

Judas cannot be called a winner. The Sanhedrin ridiculed him because they knew who was being crucified - Judas did not deceive them. But for the disciples of Christ, he remained what he essentially was - a traitor, guilty of the death of their Teacher. Judas reproaches the apostles: “Why are you alive when he is dead? You took on all the sin.” But this is the truth of Judas, who believed that both the wind and the rope were deceiving him. And then, we must not forget that the Gospel does not end with the death of Iscariot. And the final texts of the New Testament and the Sacred Traditions are precisely dedicated to the history of Christianity, which was started by the disciples of Christ, and most of them paid for their missionary death with martyrdom. This means that they are not “dirty blown up by the wind,” as St. Andrew’s Judas believed.

This approach to the text of the story is quite legitimate, because all of L. Andreev’s readers of that time knew the Gospel. By the way, when he called Christianity “optimistic” and “false invention,” M. Gorky did not agree with him and, in our opinion, was right.

The cynic Judas destroyed this system. The point is not that people are weak and sinful, but how they relate to their own and others’ vices. And here, we agree, L. Andreev’s hero was wrong: when everything is built on a lie, there is no shame.

The ideological impasse also predetermined the personal tragedy of Judas Iscariot. We sympathize with the smart, strong man who was able to love, empty, only Jesus. But the love of a cynic, like the kiss of a demon, ultimately turned out to be fatal for Christ. The death of Judas did not touch anyone, which means that no one needed his life.

Judas is a tragic figure. He believes that in order for the dark, poor in spirit crowd to believe in the ideal, in Christ, they need a miracle. This miracle will be the resurrection of Christ after martyrdom.

Judas also chose his cross. By betraying Christ, he dooms himself to eternal damnation, forever securing for himself the shameful nickname of a traitor.

Homework: students are invited to express in writing their own attitude to the work of L. Andreev (Slide13)

List of used literature

1. http://www.obsudim.net/andreev.htm Brodsky M.A. “JUDAS’ LAST ARGUMENT.”

History of creation and analysis of the story's problems

The work was written in 1907, although the idea appeared 5 years earlier. Andreev decided to show betrayal based on his own thoughts and fantasies. At the center of the composition is the narration of a new take on the famous biblical parable.

Analyzing the problems of the story “Judas Iscariot”, one can notice that the motive of betrayal is being considered. Judas envies Jesus, his love and kindness towards people, because he understands that he is not capable of this. Judas cannot contradict himself, even if he behaves inhumanly. The general theme is the philosophical theme of two worldviews.

The main characters of the story “Judas Iscariot”

Judas Iscariot is a two-faced character. His portrait causes hostility among readers. He is shown either courageous or hysterical. Unlike the other disciples, Judas is depicted without a halo and even outwardly uglier. The author calls him a traitor, and in the text there are comparisons of him with a demon, a freak, an insect.

The images of other students in the story are symbolic and associative.

Other details of the analysis of the story “Judas Iscariot”

Judas's entire appearance coincides with his character. But his external thinness brings him closer to the image of Christ. Jesus does not distance himself from the traitor, because he must help everyone. And he knows that he will betray him.

They have mutual love, Judas also loves Jesus, listening to his speeches is breathy.

The conflict occurs when Judas accuses people of depravity and Jesus moves away from him. Judas feels and perceives this quite painfully. The traitor believes that those around Jesus are liars who curry favor with Christ; he does not believe in their sincerity. He also does not believe in their experiences after the death of Jesus, although he himself suffers.

Judas has the idea that after dying, they will meet again and be able to get closer. But it is known that suicide is a sin and the teacher is not destined to meet his student. It is with the death of Jesus that the betrayal of Judas is revealed. Judas committed suicide. He hung himself on a tree growing over an abyss, so that when the branch broke off, he crashed on the rocks.

An analysis of the story “Judas Iscariot” would not be complete if we did not note how the Gospel narrative fundamentally differs from the story “Judas Iscariot”. The difference between Andreev’s interpretation of the plot and the Gospel is that Judas sincerely loved Christ and did not understand why he experienced these feelings and the other eleven disciples had them.

This plot traces Raskolnikov’s theory: using the murder of one person to transform the world. But, of course, it cannot be true.

Undoubtedly, the work was criticized by the church. But Andreev put in the following essence: an interpretation of the nature of betrayal. People need to think about their actions and put their thoughts in order.

We hope the analysis of the story “Judas Iscariot” was useful to you. We recommend reading this story in its entirety, but if you wish, you can also read

INTRODUCTION…3

CHAPTER I. Formation of the artistic method of L. Andreev

1.1. The life path of a writer...8

1.2. The place of the story “Judas Iscariot” in the works of L. Andreev...18

CHAPTER 2. Origins and interpretation of the plot of the betrayal of Judas Iscariot in world culture

2.1. The biblical basis of the plot, archetypal features of images and their symbolic function...27

2.2. Reinterpretation of the Gospel idea and the image of the traitor Judas in the literary tradition...38

CHAPTER 3. Specifics of philosophical problems and the system of images of L. Andreev’s story “Judas Iscariot”

3.1. The main moral ideas of the story and the nature of their presentation in the story...47

3.2. The originality of the image system of “Judas Iscariot”...56

CONCLUSION...76

LITERATURE...78

INTRODUCTION

The work of L. Andreev is relevant for any time and any era, despite the fact that the peak of his popularity was in the distant years 1902 - 1908, when the main works were written and published: “The Life of Vasily of Thebes” and “Darkness”, “Judas Iscariot” and "Human Life". There is no doubt that the writer was one of the most published and read authors in Russia. His popularity was comparable to that of Gorky; in terms of circulation, he was hardly inferior to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. But even during the years of his creative heyday, Leonid Andreev continued to be the object of attacks from critics and a variety of publicists, who accused him of anarchism and godlessness, lack of a sense of proportion and too close attention to psychopathology.

Time has put everything in its place, and descendants and today’s researchers of L. Andreev’s work have no doubts about either the artistic value of his work or the depth of the philosophical, moral and ethical issues raised in them. Literary critics note the originality of the writer’s aesthetic method: his artistic world is a premonition and harbinger of the aesthetic systems of the century, the quest and suffering of his heroes is a prophetic sign of future catastrophes, many of them occur in the sphere of consciousness. The socio-historical and literary-philosophical processes of the past century indirectly justified the paradoxical and largely provocative method of Leonid Andreev, showing that his seemingly artificial tragedy is a property of time, and not the arbitrariness of the playing artist. Therefore, the philosophical problems touched upon by the writer and the characters depicted are both a reflection of the time and era in which he lived and worked, and also carry the concept of “eternal” themes and universal ideas. This characterizes the relevance of our work, since in the short story “Judas Iscariot,” as the title suggests, these topics are central.

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Leonid Andreev is one of the writers whose work gives rise to discrepancies that are not removed by time.

One of the writer’s most controversial works is the story Judas Iscariot and others. Controversial - not only because its interpretations are polemical in relation to each other, but also because, in my opinion, all are, to one degree or another, unconvincing and fragmentary.

The history of misunderstanding of L. Andreev’s story began from the moment of its publication and was predicted by Gorky: “A thing that will be understood by few and will make a lot of noise.”/1/ L. Andreev’s contemporaries focused on the author’s skill, discrepancies with the Gospel and the peculiarities of psychology central hero. Most researchers of our time reduce the content of the story to the author’s condemnation or justification of the betrayal of Judas.

Against the background of the established tradition of interpreting the story purely from a moral and psychological aspect, the interpretations proposed by S. P. Ilyev and L. A. Kolobaeva /2/ stand out, based on the authors’ understanding of the philosophical and ethical nature of the problematics of the work. But they also seem to me subjective, not fully confirmed by the text. Andreev's philosophical story is about the enormous role of the creative free mind in the destinies of the world, about the fact that the greatest idea is powerless without the creative participation of man, and about the tragic substance of creativity as such.

The main plot opposition of L. Andreev’s story: Christ with his “faithful” disciples and Judas - has, as is typical for a philosophical metagenre, a substantial character. Before us are two worlds with fundamentally different life attitudes: in the first case - on faith and authority, in the second - on a free, creative mind. The perception of the plot-forming opposition as substantial is facilitated by the cultural archetypes embedded by the author in the images that make up the opposition.

In the image of Judas, we recognize the archetype of Chaos, marked by the author with the help of pronounced expressionist (i.e., openly conventional and rigidly conceptualized) imagery. It is repeatedly embodied in the description of the head and face of Judas, as if divided into several parts that disagree and argue with each other /4/, the figure of Judas, now likening him to a gray pile, from which arms and legs suddenly protrude (27), now causing the impression , that Judas had “not two legs, like all people, but a whole dozen” (25). “Judas shuddered... and everything about him - his eyes, arms and legs - seemed to run in different directions...” (20). Jesus illuminates with the lightning of his gaze “the monstrous heap of wary shadows that was the soul of Iscariot” (45).

In these and other sketches of the appearance of Judas, the motifs of disorder, lack of formality, changeability, inconsistency, danger, mystery, and prehistoric antiquity, which are assigned by cultural consciousness to chaos, are persistently repeated. The ancient mythological Chaos appears in the darkness of the night, which usually hides Judas, in the repeated analogies of Judas with reptiles, a scorpion, an octopus.

The latter, perceived by the disciples as a double of Judas, recalls the original watery Chaos, when the land had not yet separated from the water, and at the same time represents the image of a mythological monster inhabiting the world in times of Chaos. “Looking intently at the fire of the fire... stretching out his long, moving arms towards the fire, all shapeless in a tangle of arms and legs, trembling shadows and light, Iscariot muttered pitifully and hoarsely: “How cold!” My God, how cold it is! So, probably, when fishermen leave at night, leaving a smoldering fire on the shore, something crawls out of the dark depths of the sea, crawls up to the fire, looks at it intently and wildly, reaches out to it with all its limbs...” (45).

Judas does not deny his connection with the demonic forces of Chaos - Satan, the devil. Unpredictability, mystery of Chaos, secret work elemental forces, invisibly preparing their menacing release, reveals itself in Judas by the impenetrability of his thoughts to those around him. Even Jesus cannot penetrate the “fathomable depths” of his soul (45). It is also no coincidence that, in terms of association with Chaos, images of mountains and deep rocky ravines are associated with Judas. Judas either lags behind the entire group of disciples, then moves to the side, rolls off a cliff, peeling off the stones, disappears from sight - the space is rugged, lying in different planes, Judas moves in a zigzag manner.

The space in which Judas is inscribed varies the image of a terrible abyss, the dark depths of Hades, a cave, closely associated with Chaos in the ancient consciousness. “He turned, as if looking for a comfortable position, put his hands, palm to palm, on the gray stone and leaned his head heavily against them. (...) And in front of him, and behind him, and on all sides, the walls of the ravine rose, cutting off the edges of the blue sky with a sharp line; and everywhere, digging into the ground, huge gray stones rose... And this wild desert ravine looked like an overturned, severed skull...” (16). Finally, the author directly gives keyword to the archetypal content of the image of Judas: “... all this monstrous chaos trembled and began to move” (43).

In the description of Jesus and his disciples, all the main attributes of the archetype of the Cosmos come to life: orderliness, certainty, harmony, divine presence, beauty. Accordingly, the spatial organization of the world of Christ with the apostles is semanticized: Christ is always in the center - surrounded by disciples or in front of them, setting the direction of movement. The world of Jesus and his disciples is strictly hierarchical and therefore “clear,” “transparent,” calm, and understandable.

The figures of the apostles most often appear to the reader in the light of the sun's rays. Each of the students has an established, integral character. There is harmony in their relationship to each other and to Christ, and each one is in agreement with himself. Even the crucifixion of Christ did not shake him. There is no room for mystery here, just like individual work struggling in contradictions and searching for thoughts. “...Thomas... looked so straight with his transparent and clear eyes, through which, as through Phoenician glass, one could see the wall behind him and the dejected donkey tied to it” (13). Everyone is true to himself in every word and action, Jesus knows the future actions of the disciples.

In the story, the image of Jesus’ conversation with his disciples in Bethany, in the house of Lazarus, appears as a kind of emblem of the Cosmos: “Jesus spoke, and the disciples listened to his speech in silence. Maria sat motionless, like a statue, at his feet and, throwing back her head, looked into his face. John, moving close, tried to make sure that his hand touched the teacher’s clothes, but did not bother him. He touched it and froze.And Peter breathed loudly and strongly, echoing with his breath the words of Jesus” (19).

The following frame of the picture corresponds to an important cosmogonic act - the separation of Earth and Heaven and the rise of Heaven above the Earth: “... everything around... was dressed in darkness and silence, and only Jesus brightened with his raised hand. But then he seemed to rise into the air, as if he had melted and became as if he were all made of super-lake fog...” (19).

But in the author's concept of the story, archetypal parallels take on an unconventional meaning. In mythological and cultural consciousness, creation is more often associated with ordering and together with the Cosmos, and much less often Chaos receives a positive assessment. Andreev develops a romantic interpretation of ambivalent Chaos, whose destructive force at the same time represents a powerful vital energy, seeking the opportunity to be molded into new forms. It is rooted in one of the ancient concepts of Chaos as something living and life-giving, the basis of world life, and the ancient Jewish tradition of seeing the God-fighting principle in Chaos.

Russian cultural consciousness of the early twentieth century often emphasizes the creative principle in the idea of ​​Chaos (V. Solovyov, Blok, Bryusov, L. Shestov) - “the dark root of world existence.” /5/ And in Andreev’s Judas, Chaos declares itself with the powerful force of subjectivity, manifested in brilliant logic and daring creative thought, crushing will and sacrificial love of a free rebel.

It is no coincidence that the author of the story describes the process of the birth of Judas’s plan in the images of Chaos, connecting the “horror and dreams” of the hero (53). Thoughtful Judas is no different from the stones that “ thought - hard, limitless, persistent " He sits “not moving... motionless and gray, like the gray stone itself,” and the stones in this abyss-ravine look “as if a rain of stones had once passed here and endless thought its heavy drops froze. (...) ... and every stone in it was like a frozen thought...” (16) (Here and below it is emphasized by me. - R.S.).

In this regard, the author’s attitude towards Judas in Andreev’s story is fundamentally different from the attitude of evangelists and recognized authors of theological works (D. F. Strauss, E. Renan, F. V. Farrara, F. Mauriac) - as an assessment of his role in the history of mankind, and the very problematic of his image.

Judas’s opposition to Christ and the future apostles is not identical to the antithesis between evil and good suggested by the Bible. As for other disciples, for Judas Jesus is the moral Absolute, the one whom he “sought in anguish and torment... all... his life, sought and found!” (39). But St. Andrew's Jesus hopes that evil will be defeated by humanity's faith in his Word and does not want to take reality into account. Judas's behavior is dictated by knowledge of the real complex nature of man, knowledge formed and tested by his sober and fearless mind.

The story constantly emphasizes the deep and rebellious mind of Judas, prone to endless revision of conclusions and accumulation of experience. Among his students, he is given the nickname “smart”; he constantly “moves quickly around” with his “live and keen eye”, and tirelessly asks the question: who is right? — teaches Maria to remember the past for the future. His “betrayal,” as he conceives it, is a last desperate attempt to interrupt the sleep of reason in which humanity resides, to awaken its consciousness. And at the same time, the image of Judas does not at all symbolize a naked and soulless diet.

Judas's internal struggle with himself, painful doubts about his righteousness, the stubborn illogical hope that people will see the light and the crucifixion will be unnecessary, are generated by love for Christ and devotion to his teaching. However, Judas contrasts blind faith as the engine of moral and historical progress and proof of fidelity with the spiritual work of liberated thought, the creative self-awareness of a free personality, capable of taking full responsibility for a non-standard decision. In his eyes, he is the only companion of Jesus and a faithful disciple, while in the literal adherence of the other disciples to the Word of the Teacher, he sees cowardice, cowardice, stupidity, and in their behavior - true betrayal.

Its subjective organization is specific and complex. Andreev’s widespread use of stylization and improperly direct speech leads to blurring and mobility of the boundaries of the consciousness of the characters and the narrator. Subjects of consciousness are often not formalized as subjects of speech. However, upon careful examination, each subject of consciousness, including the narrator, has his own stylistic portrait, which allows him to be identified. The position of the artistic author at the level of the subjective organization of the work finds expression most of all in the consciousness of the narrator. /6/

The stylistic drawing of the narrator’s consciousness in L. Andreev’s story corresponds to the norms of book speech, often artistic, is distinguished by poetic vocabulary, complicated syntax, tropes, pathetic intonation and has the highest potential for generalization. Pieces of text that belonged to the narrator carry an increased conceptual load. Thus, the narrator acts as a subject of consciousness in the above emblematic picture of the Cosmos of Christ and in the image of Judas, the creator of a new project of human history.

One of these “spiritual” portraits of Judas is also quoted above. The narrator also marks Judas’ sacrificial devotion to Jesus: “...and a mortal sorrow was kindled in his heart, similar to that which Christ had experienced before. Stretching out into a hundred loudly ringing, sobbing strings, he quickly rushed to Jesus and tenderly kissed his cold cheek. So quietly, so tenderly, with such painful love that if Jesus had been a flower on a thin stem, he would not have shaken it with this kiss and would not have dropped the pearly dew from the pure petals” (43). In the narrator’s field of consciousness lies the conclusion about the equal role of Jesus and Judas in the turn of history - God and man, tied by common torment: “... and among this whole crowd there were only the two of them, inseparable until death, wildly connected by a common suffering... From one cup suffering, like brothers, they both drank..." (45).

The style of the narrator’s consciousness in the story has points of intersection with the consciousness of Judas. True, the consciousness of Judas is embodied by means of a conversational style, but they are united by increased expressiveness and imagery, although different in nature: the consciousness of Judas is more characteristic of irony and sarcasm, the narrator - pathos. The stylistic closeness of the narrator and Judas as subjects of consciousness increases as we approach the denouement. Irony and ridicule in Judas' speech give way to pathos; Judas's word at the end of the story sounds serious, sometimes prophetic, and its conceptuality increases.

Irony sometimes appears in the narrator's voice. In the stylistic convergence of the voices of Judas and the narrator, a certain moral commonality of their positions is expressed. In general, Judas is seen in the story as repulsively ugly, deceitful, and dishonest through the eyes of the characters: students, neighbors, Anna and other members of the Sanhedrin, soldiers, Pontius Pilate, although formally the subject of speech may be the narrator. But only - speeches! As a subject of consciousness (closest to the author’s consciousness), the narrator never acts as an antagonist of Judas.

The narrator's voice cuts dissonance into the chorus of general rejection of Judas, introducing a different perception and a different scale of measurement of Judas and his actions. The first significant “cutting” of the narrator’s consciousness is the phrase “And then Judas came.” It stands out stylistically against the backdrop of the prevailing colloquial style, conveying the bad popular rumor about Judas, and graphically: two thirds of the line after this phrase is left blank.

This is followed by a large section of text, again containing sharply negative characterization Judas, formally belonging to the narrator. But he conveys the disciples' perception of Judas, prepared by rumors about him. A change in the subject of consciousness is evidenced by a change in stylistic tone (biblical aphorism and pathos give way to vocabulary, syntax and intonation of colloquial speech) and direct instructions from the author.

“He came, bowing low, arching his back carefully and timidly stretching his ugly lumpy head forward - just the way those who knew him imagined him. He was thin good growth... and he was quite strong in strength, apparently, but for some reason he pretended to be frail and sickly and had a changeable voice: sometimes courageous and strong, sometimes loud, like an old woman scolding her husband...(...) Judas’s face also became double... (...) Even people completely devoid of insight clearly understood, looking at Iscariot, What such a person cannot bring good, but Jesus brought him close and even next to himself - next to himself planted Judas" (5).

In the middle of the above passage, the author placed a sentence that we omitted: “Short red hair did not hide the strange and unusual shape of his skull: ... it was clearly divided into four parts and inspired distrust, even anxiety: behind such a skull there cannot be silence and harmony, behind such the skull always hears the noise of bloody and merciless battles.”

Let's pay attention to this proposal. He has one subject of speech, but two subjects of consciousness. The disciples' perception of Judas in the last part of the sentence gives way to the narrator's perception. This is indicated by the increasing change in stylistic register from the second part of the sentence and the graphic division of the sentence by means of a colon. And the narrator, this is clearly visible, as a subject of consciousness contrasts his view of Judas with the common philistine one: the narrator’s view differs from the philistine one by recognizing the significance of the figure of Judas and respect for his personality - the creator, the seeker of truth.

Subsequently, the narrator more than once reveals the commonality of his point of view on what is happening with the point of view of Judas. In the eyes of Judas, not he, but the apostles are traitors, cowards, nonentities for whom there is no justification. Judas’s accusation is substantiated in the outwardly impartial portrayal of the apostles by the narrator, where there is no improperly direct speech and, therefore, the narrator is as close as possible to the author: “The soldiers pushed the disciples aside, and they gathered again and stupidly crawled under their feet... Here one of them, frowning his eyebrows, moved to the shouting John; the other roughly pushed Thomas’s hand off his shoulder... and brought a huge fist to his straightest and most transparent eyes - and John ran, and Thomas and James ran, and all the disciples, no matter how many of them were here, left Jesus and fled” (44) .

Judas mocks the spiritual inertia of the “faithful” disciples, and with rage and tears attacks their dogmatism with its disastrous consequences for humanity. The completeness, immobility, and lifelessness of the “discipleship” model, which is manifested by the attitude of the future apostles to Christ, is emphasized by the narrator in the above-quoted description of Jesus’ conversation with his disciples in Bethany. This Gospel episode has been cited and commented on an infinite number of times in theological and scientific literature, but in such a way that the focus of attention, as in the Gospels, is always the actions (precisely the actions!) of Mary: she comes, approaches Christ, brings a vessel of ointment, stands behind at His feet, cries, pours ointment on His head, pours His feet with tears, wipes Him with hair, kisses Him, anoints Him with ointment, breaks the vessel.

At the same time, some students grumble. In Andreev’s story, the narrator reveals to our eyes an emphatically static picture. The emblematic character of the image is achieved by likening Christ surrounded by disciples to a sculptural group, and this analogy is deliberately emphasized: “Motionless, like a statue... He touched it and froze” (19).

In a number of cases, the consciousness of Judas and the consciousness of the narrator, in Andreev’s depiction, are combined, and this overlap occurs on fundamentally significant pieces of the text. It is precisely this incarnation that Christ receives in the story as a symbol of the sanctified, higher order of consciousness and being, but supramaterial, extracorporeal and therefore “ghostly.” While spending the night in Bethany, Jesus is given by the author in the perception of Judas: “Iscariot stopped at the threshold and, looking contemptuously at those gathered, all his fire was focused on Jesus. And as he looked... everything around him went dark, became covered in darkness and silence, and only Jesus brightened with his raised hand.

But then he seemed to rise into the air, as if he had melted and became as if he all consisted of above-the-lake fog, permeated with the light of the setting moon; and his soft speech sounded somewhere far, far away and tender. And, peering into the wavering ghost, listening to the tender melody of distant and ghostly words, Judas...” (19). But the lyrical pathos and poetic style of describing what Judas saw, although explainable psychologically by love for Jesus, are much more characteristic of the narrator’s consciousness in the story.

The quoted piece of text is stylistically identical to the previous emblematic image of the disciples sitting around Christ, given in the perception of the narrator. The author emphasizes that Judas could not see this scene like that: “Iscariot stopped at the threshold and, contemptuously passing the gaze of those gathered..." The fact that not only Judas, but also the narrator saw Christ as a “ghost” is also evidenced by the semantic similarity of the images with which Christ is associated in the perception of Judas and, a little higher, in the perception of the disciples, which could only have been known to the narrator, but not to Judas . Compare: “...and his soft speech sounded somewhere far, far away and tender. And, peering into the wavering ghost, listening to the tender melody of distant and ghostly words, Judas...” (19). “...the students were silent and unusually thoughtful. Images of the path traveled: the sun, the stone, the grass, and Christ reclining in the center, quietly floated in my head, evoking soft thoughtfulness, giving rise to vague but sweet dreams of some kind of eternal movement under the sun. The tired body rested sweetly, and it was all thinking about something mysteriously beautiful and big - and no one remembered Judas” (19).

The consciousnesses of the narrator and Judas also contain literal coincidences, for example, in the assessment of the attitude towards the Teacher of the “faithful” students who freed themselves from the work of thought. Narrator: “... is the students’ boundless faith in the miraculous power of their teacher, is it the consciousness of their rightness or just blinding- Judas’ fearful words were met with a smile...” (35). Judas: “Blind people, what have you done to the land? You wanted to destroy her…” (59). With the same words, Judas and the narrator mock such devotion to the Teacher’s cause. Judas: “Beloved disciple! Is it not from you that a race of traitors, a race of cowardly and liars will begin?” (59).

Narrator: “The disciples of Jesus sat in sad silence and listened to what was happening outside the house. There was still danger... Near John, to whom, as the beloved disciple of Jesus, his death was especially difficult, Mary Magdalene and Matthew sat and consoled him in a low voice... Matthew instructively spoke in the words of Solomon: “The patient is better than the brave...” (57). The narrator also agrees with Judas in recognizing his monstrous act as highly expedient—ensuring the teaching of Christ a worldwide victory. "Hosanna! Hosanna!" - Iscariot’s heart cries. And at the conclusion of the story, the narrator’s words about the Traitor Judas sound like a solemn hosanna to victorious Christianity. But betrayal in it is only a fact recorded by the empirical consciousness of witnesses.

The narrator brings the reader news about something else. His jubilant intonation, the result of understanding what happened in the retrospective of world history, contains information about things that are incomparably more significant for humanity - the advent of a new era. (Let us remember that Judas himself did not see betrayal in his behavior: “Having lowered his hands, Thomas asked in surprise: “...If this is not betrayal, then what is betrayal?” “Another, something else,” Judas said hastily.” (49) /7/

The concept of Judas - the creator of a new spiritual reality is affirmed in Andreev’s story and through the means of its object organization.

The composition of the work is based on the opposition of two types of consciousness, based on the faith of the majority and the creativity of a free individual. The inertia and sterility of the consciousness of the first type is embodied in the unequivocal, poor speech of the “faithful” disciples. Judas's speech is replete with paradoxes, hints, and symbols. She is part of the probabilistic world-chaos of Judas, which always allows for the possibility of an unpredictable turn of events. And it is no coincidence that in the speech of Judas the syntactic construction of admission (“What if...”) is repeated: a sign of play, experiment, search for thought—completely alien to the speech of both Christ and the apostles.

Metaphors and allegories serve to discredit the apostles. Such an allegory, for example, is contained in the picture of the competition of the apostles in strength. This episode is not in the Gospel, and it is significant in the text of the story. “Tensing themselves, they (Peter and Philip) tore off an old, overgrown stone from the ground, lifted it high with both hands and let it down the slope. Heavy, it struck short and bluntly and pondered for a moment; then he hesitantly made the first leap - and with each touch to the ground, taking from it speed and strength, he became light, ferocious, all-crushing. He no longer jumped, but flew with bared teeth, and the air, whistling, passed his blunt, round carcass” (17).

An increased conceptual meaning is given to this painting by repeated associations with the stone of Peter himself. His middle name is stone, and it is persistently repeated in the story precisely as a name. The narrator, albeit indirectly, compares the words spoken by Peter with a stone (“they sounded so firmly…” - 6), the laughter that Peter “throws on the heads of the disciples,” and his voice (“he rolled around...“ - 6). At the first appearance of Judas, Peter “looked at Jesus, quickly, like a stone torn from a mountain, moved towards Judas...” (6). In the context of all these associations, one cannot help but see in the image of a stupid stone, devoid of its own will, carrying the potential for destruction, a symbol of a model of life of “faithful” students that is unacceptable to the author, in which freedom and creativity are absent.

In the text of the story there are a number of allusions to Dostoevsky, Gorky, Bunin, which raise Judas from the level of a pathetic self-seeker and offended jealous person, as he traditionally exists in the memory of the average reader and in the interpretations of researchers, to the height of the hero of an idea. After receiving thirty pieces of silver from Anna, like Raskolnikov, “Judas did not take the money home, but... hid it under a stone” (32).

In the dispute between Peter, John and Judas for primacy in the kingdom of heaven, “Jesus slowly lowered his gaze” (28), and his gesture of non-intervention and silence reminds the reader of Christ’s behavior in a conversation with the Grand Inquisitor. The reaction of the unimaginative John to the inventions of Judas (“John... quietly asked Peter Simonov, his friend: “Aren’t you tired of this lie?” - 6) sounds like an allusion to the indignation of the “dumb as bricks”, Bubnov and Baron, by the stories of Luke in Gorky’s play At the bottom(“Here is Luka, ...he lies a lot... and without any benefit to himself... (...) Why would he?” “The old man is a charlatan...”)./8/

In addition, Judas, pondering his plan to fight for the victory of Christ, in Andreev’s depiction is extremely close to Bunin’s Cain, the builder of Baalbek, the Temple of the Sun. Let's compare. Andreev: “…started to build something huge. Slowly, in deep darkness, he raised some mountain-like masses and smoothly laid one on top of the other; and raised it again, and put it on again; and something grew in the darkness, expanded silently, pushed the boundaries” (20). Bunin:

Rod comes, goes,
But the earth remains forever...
No, he builds, erects
Temple of the Immortal Tribes - Baalbek.
He's a damned killer
But he boldly stepped out of paradise.
Embraced by the fear of Death,
Still, he was the first to look at her face.
But even in the darkness he will glorify
Only Knowledge, Reason and Light -
He will build a tower of the sun,
It will press an unshakable mark into the ground.
He hurries, he throws,
He piles rock upon rock. /9/

The new concept of Judas is also revealed in the plot of the work: the author’s selection of events, their development, location, artistic time and space. On the night of Christ’s crucifixion, the “faithful” disciples of Jesus eat and sleep and argue for their right to peace of mind by being faithful to the word of the Teacher. They excluded themselves from the flow of events. The daring challenge that Judas poses to the world, his confusion, mental struggle, hope, rage and, finally, suicide direct the movement of time and the logic of the historical process. According to the plot of the work, it was they, Judas Iscariot, his efforts, foresight and self-denial in the name of love (“With the kiss of love we betray you.” - 43) the victory of the new teaching was ensured.

Judas knows his people no worse than Anna: the need to worship is stimulated by the opportunity to hate someone (if we slightly paraphrase the essence of revolutions formulated by Judas, then “the victim is where the executioner and the traitor are” - 58). And he takes on the role of the enemy necessary in the designed action and gives it to him - to himself! - a name for a traitor that is understandable to the masses. He himself was the first to pronounce his new shameful name for everyone (“he said that he, Judas, was a pious man and became a disciple of Jesus the Nazarene with the sole purpose of convicting the deceiver and delivering him into the hands of the law.” - 28) and correctly calculated his trouble-free action , so that even old Anna allowed himself to be lured into a trap (“Are you offended by them?” - 28). In this regard, the author’s writing of the word “traitor” at the conclusion of the story with capital letter- as a non-author, alien in the narrator’s speech, a word-quote from the consciousness of the masses.

The global scale of Judas's victory over the inert forces of life is emphasized by the spatio-temporal organization of the work, characteristic of the philosophical metagenre. Thanks to mythological and literary parallels (the Bible, antiquity, Goethe, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Tyutchev, Bunin, Gorky, etc.), the artistic time of the story covers the entire existence of the Earth. It is infinitely pushed back into the past and at the same time projected into the limitless future - both historical ("...and as time has no end, so there will be no end to the stories of the betrayal of Judas..." - 61) and mythological (the second coming of the Messiah: "...for a long time yet "All the mothers of the earth will weep. Until we come with Jesus and destroy death."—53). It is the eternally lasting present tense of the Bible and belongs to Judas, since it was created through his efforts (“Now all time belongs to him, and he walks leisurely...” - 53).

At the end of the story, Judas also owns the entire new, already Christian, Earth: “Now the whole earth belongs to him...” (53). “Here he stops and with cold attention examines the new, small land” (54). Images of changed time and space are given in the perception of Judas, but stylistically his consciousness here, at the end of the story, as mentioned above, is difficult to distinguish from the consciousness of the narrator - they coincide. Immediately at the conclusion of the story, the same vision of space and time is formulated by the narrator (“Stony Judea and green Galilee learned about it... and to one sea and to another, which is even further, the news of the death of the Traitor flew... and among all the nations that were, what are…” - 61). The maximum scale of enlargement of artistic time and space (eternity, Earth) gives events the character of being and gives them the meaning of what should be.

The narrator ends the story with a curse on Judas. But Andreev’s curse on Judas is inseparable from his hosanna to Christ, the triumph of the Christian idea from the betrayal of Iscariot, who managed to force humanity to see the living God. And it is no coincidence that after the crucifixion of Christ, even the “firm” Peter feels “in Judas someone who can command” (59).

This sense of the plot movement of the author’s thought in Andreev’s story might not seem so shocking to the writer’s contemporaries, given that Russian cultural society knew the work of Oscar Wilde, who gave a close interpretation of the death of Christ back in 1894. In a prose poem Teacher Wilde talks about a beautiful young man weeping bitterly in the Valley of Despair at the grave of a righteous man.

The young man explains to his comforter: “It’s not for him that I shed tears, but for myself.” And I turned water into wine, and I healed lepers, and I restored sight to the blind. I walked on waters and cast out demons from those living in caves. And I fed the hungry in deserts where there was no food, and I raised the dead from their cramped abodes, and at my command, before the eyes of a great multitude, the barren fig tree withered. Everything that this man did, I did too. And yet I was not crucified.”/10/

The memoirs of V.V. Veresaev testify to L. Andreev’s sympathy for O. Wilde./11/

Andreev’s concept of Judas does not allow us to agree with the conclusion of the author of one of the most serious interpretations of the story of recent times, that the meaning of the work “is an unequivocal conclusion about the global powerlessness of man.” /12/ The story really “asks the question, as the researcher writes, what a person is capable of,” but he also answers differently. The cry of Judas about the absence of man on earth is so angry because, contrary to popular belief, Judas has an idea of ​​the high destiny of man (“Are these people?” he complained bitterly about the disciples... “These are not people! (...) Are I “Have you ever spoken ill of people?” Judas wondered, “Well, yes, I spoke ill of them, but couldn’t they have been a little better?” - 36).

And this idea of ​​the essential capabilities of man, in principle, was not shaken by the unworthy behavior of those around him: otherwise Judas would not have sounded a furious rebuke, but lamentation. But the main thing is Judas himself. After all, he, Judas Iscariot, is Man with all his complexity, confusion of thoughts and feelings, weakness, but who defeated “all the forces of the earth” that interfered with “truth.” True, it would have been better for Judas himself, as stated in the Gospel, not to have been born. His victory is “terrible,” and his fate is “cruel,” according to the author’s definition.

Judas Andreeva is a classic tragic hero, with all the attributes required of him: contradiction in the soul, a sense of guilt, suffering and redemption, an extraordinary scale of personality, heroic activity that defies fate. The paradigm of the image of Judas in Andreev’s story includes the motif of inevitability, which is always associated with substantial quantities. "God! - he said. -God! (...) Then he suddenly stopped crying, moaning and gnashing his teeth and began to think heavily... looking like a person who listens. and for so long he stood, heavy, determined and alien to everything, like fate itself” (33).

“Silent and stern, like death in his greatness, stood Judas of Kariot...” (43). And the tragic hero is great - in spite of everything. And the author, as he approaches the denouement of events, enlarges the figure of Judas, emphasizes decisive role him, Man, in a state of peace, persistently developing the theme of the closeness of Judas and Christ, Man and God. They are both surrounded by an aura of secrecy and silence, both are in unbearable “pain,” each is experiencing the same “deadly sorrow” (“... and a mortal sorrow was kindled in his heart, similar to that which Christ experienced before this” - 43, 41). Having accomplished his plan, Judas “steps... firmly, like a ruler, like a king...” (53).

Let us remember that Christ called himself the King of the Jews. The vector of space in which Andreev inscribes Judas is directed upward, into the sky, where Jesus rises as a “ghost”. “And, peering into the wavering ghost..., Judas... began to build something huge... he lifted some kind of bulk... and smoothly stacked one on top of the other; and raised it again, and laid it down again; something was growing in the darkness. He felt his head like a dome…” (20). Having carried out his plan, Judas sees a new, “small” land, the whole “ under your feet; looks at small mountains... and mountains feels under your feet; looks at the sky... - both the sky and the sun feels under your feet“ (54). Judas thoughtfully meets his death “on a mountain high above Jerusalem” (60), where he ascends difficultly but persistently, like Christ ascending Golgotha. His eyes on his dead face “relentlessly look into the sky” (61).

During his earthly wanderings with the Teacher, Judas painfully experiences his coldness, but after committing what people called “betrayal,” he feels like a brother of Jesus, inextricably linked and equalized with him by common suffering, purpose, and the role of the Messiah. “I’m coming to you,” Judas mutters. “Then we, together with you, hugging like brothers, will return to earth” (60). The narrator also sees Christ and Judas as brothers: “...and among this entire crowd there were only the two of them, inseparable until death, wildly bound by a community of suffering - the one who was betrayed to reproach and torment, and the one who betrayed him. From the same cup of suffering, like brothers, they both drank, the betrayer and the traitor, and the fiery moisture equally scorched clean and unclean lips” (45). Two equal sacrifices, according to Andreev, were made to humanity by Jesus and Judas, and their equality in the plot of the story equates Man and God in their creative capabilities./13/ It is no coincidence that Judas insists that man himself is the master of his soul (“... why do you need a soul, if you don’t dare throw it into the fire whenever you want!“ ?58).

It is fundamental for the new concept of Judas that the author ignores the image of God the Father, who, as is known, plays the role of the initiator of all events in the Gospel version. There is no God the Father in Andreev's story. The crucifixion of Christ from beginning to end was thought out and carried out by Judas, and he took full responsibility for what was accomplished. And Jesus does not interfere with his plan, just as he submitted to the Father’s decision in the Gospel. The author gave Judas the man the role of the demiurge, God the Father, consolidating this role several times by Judas’ repeated appeal to Jesus: “son,” “son” (46, 48).

The betrayal of Judas in Andreev’s story is a betrayal in fact, but not in idea. Andreev's interpretation of Judas' betrayal once again exposed the problem of the relationship between ends and means, which had been relevant since the 19th century for Russian public consciousness, and which seemed to have been closed by Dostoevsky. Ivan Karamazov's poem about the Grand Inquisitor unequivocally refused to justify immoral means by any high purpose - it refused both from the person of the author and of Christ. The plot of the poem revealed a terrifying picture of human happiness in an inquisitorial style. The Grand Inquisitor himself appeared on the scene after the burning of hundreds of heretics. Christ's farewell kiss was a kiss of compassion to a person so morally hopeless that Christ considered it pointless to object to him. His quiet and meek kiss was a merciless sentence to the Elder.

Unlike the Grand Inquisitor, Judas believes in Jesus. The Grand Inquisitor threatens Christ with the fire for coming, but Judas swears that even in hell he will prepare the coming of Christ to earth. The Grand Inquisitor decided to “lead people consciously to death and destruction.”/14/ The betrayal of Judas has the goal of coming “together with Jesus” to earth and “destroying death.”

The plot of Andreev's story contains a historical justification for Judas' betrayal. And the silence of St. Andrew’s Christ is different from the silence of Dostoevsky’s Christ. The place of meekness and compassion in him was taken by a challenge - a reaction to an equal. It seems that Christ almost provokes Judas into action. “Everyone praised Judas, everyone recognized that he was a winner, everyone chatted with him in a friendly manner, but Jesus—but Jesus did not want to praise Judas this time either...” (19).

Like Judas himself and the narrator, unlike the other disciples, Christ sees in Judas a creator, a creator, and the author emphasizes this: “... Judas took his whole soul into his iron fingers and... silently, began to build something huge. Slowly, in the deep darkness, he raised some huge masses, like mountains, and smoothly placed one on top of the other... and something grew in the darkness... expanded silently, pushing the boundaries. (...) So he stood, blocking the door... and Jesus spoke... But suddenly Jesus fell silent... (...) And when they followed his gaze, then they saw... Judas “(20). The silence of St. Andrew's Jesus, who understood Judas's plan, conceals deep thought ("...Jesus did not want to praise Judas. He walked silently ahead, biting a plucked blade of grass..." - 19) and even confusion ("But suddenly Jesus fell silent - with a sharp, unfinished sound... (...) And when they followed his gaze, they saw... Judas..." (20). "Jesus walked straight to Judas and carried some word on his lips - and passed by Judas..." (20).

Silence covers some kind of ambiguity in Christ’s reaction to Judas’s plan - ambiguity for Judas, for the reader. But perhaps also for Christ himself? This ambiguity also suggests the possibility of secret agreement with Judas (especially due to at least a remote analogy of the reaction of the Gospel Christ to the decision of God the Father). “Do you know where I’m going, Lord? I am coming to deliver you into the hands of your enemies. And there was a long silence... - Are you silent, Lord? Are you ordering me to go? And again silence. -Let me stay. But you can't? Or don't you dare? Or don't you want to? “ (39).

But silence can simultaneously mean the possibility of disagreement with Judas, or rather, the impossibility of agreement, for the fact of betrayal of love, even in the name of love (“love crucified by love” - 43), with all its historical expediency, remains for the author and Christ incompatible with the moral and the aesthetic essence of life (“...you can’t? Or don’t you dare?”). It is no coincidence that Christ “illuminates with the lightning of his gaze” the “monstrous pile of shadows that was the soul of Iscariot” and its “monstrous” chaos. The corpse of Judas, in the perception of the narrator, looks like a “monstrous” fruit. Many times in the story the name of Judas is adjacent to death. And the author repeatedly reminds that Judas’s creative thought matures in “immense darkness,” “impenetrable darkness,” “in the deep darkness” of his soul (19, 20).

Andreev's Christ, like Dostoevsky's Christ, also does not allow himself to break the silence, but for a different reason: he does not consider it moral to canonize any one (for all and forever) solution to the problem.

In the minds of contemporaries silver age the eternal problem of the relationship between ends and means was transformed into an opposition: creativity - morality. This is how it is set in Andreev’s story. There is no reason to absolutize in the Russian social, philosophical and artistic consciousness of the early twentieth century the feelings of powerlessness, doom and despair of the individual before eternity and history, as modern researchers often do. On the contrary, one cannot help but notice in the philosophy, ideology, and art of this period, an attitude, sometimes stage-setting, towards the active creative intervention of man in all spheres of earthly life and his ability to change the world./15/ Such an attitude makes itself felt in the enormous authority of Nietzsche, with his campaign against morality, attempts to modernize religion, family, art, in the recognition of the theurgic function of art, the spread of atheistic motives in literature, the popularity of the idea of ​​​​social transformations of Russian reality, the attention of literary criticism to the hero-activist, etc. The concept of creativity was opposed to morality, slavery , in general, tradition, passivity and acted in close connection with ideas about freedom, innovation, love and life, individuality.

The very substance of creativity, traditionally viewed by world culture most often in a tragic way, in the cultural consciousness of the Silver Age showed a tendency to transform into heroic. Let us take, for illustration, the statements of two representatives of Russian culture of this time, strikingly different in their creative individuality and attitude - M. Gorky and L. Shestov. In 1904, Gorky wrote to L. Andreev: “...despite the knowledge of future destruction... - he (man) works everything, creates everything and does not create in order to avert this death without a trace, but simply out of some kind of proud stubbornness. “Yes, I will perish, I will perish without a trace, but first I will build temples and create great creations. Yes, I know, and they will die without a trace, but I will create them all the same, and yes, that’s what I want! “Here is a human voice.”/16/

In the book by L. Shestov The apotheosis of groundlessness, published a year later, we read: “Nature imperatively demands individual creativity from each of us. (...) Why, in fact, shouldn’t every adult be a creator, live at his own expense and have his own experience? (...) Whether a person wants it or not, sooner or later he will have to admit the unsuitability of all kinds of templates and start creating on his own. And is... this already so terrible? There are no generally binding judgments—we’ll make do with non-generally binding ones./17/ “…the first and essential condition of life is lawlessness. Laws are restorative sleep. Lawlessness is creative activity.”/18/

Against the background of the tendency to glorify the creative act, Andreev returns to the concept of the tragic nature of creativity, revealed in its relation to morality. In Andreev’s depiction of the betrayal of Judas Iscariot, the well-known romantic motifs of mental confusion, madness, rejection and death of the creator, the secrets surrounding him, and his infernality come to life.

Unlike the betrayal of the apostles, which belongs to the empiricism of life (it was not even noticed by eyewitnesses of the events), the betrayal of Judas is placed by the author in the sphere of the substantial. The depiction of Judas' betrayal in Andreev's story bears all the signs of tragedy recorded by the well-known aesthetic systems of Hegel, Schelling, Fischer, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche.

Among them is the death of the hero as a consequence of his guilt, but not a denial of the principle in the name of which he dies, and as a sign of victory for the “moral substance as a whole”; the contradiction between the desire for freedom and the need for stability of the whole with equal justification; the strength and certainty of the character of the hero, who in the tragedy of modern times replaces fate; historical justification of the hero's guilt and the hero's resignation as a consequence of enlightenment through suffering; the value of the self-aware reflective subjectivity of the hero in a situation of moral choice; the struggle of the Apollonian and Dionysian principles, etc.

The listed features of the tragedy are marked by different aesthetic systems, sometimes denying each other; in Andreev’s story they serve one whole, and their synthesis is characteristic of the writer’s creative method. But a tragic collision does not imply an unambiguous moral assessment - justification or accusation. It is characterized by a different system of definitions (majestic, significant, memorable), which emphasize the large scale of the events that make up the tragic collision and the special power of their impact on the fate of the world.

The tragic collision with which the betrayal of Judas Iscariot appears before the reader in Andreev’s story is not an example to follow and not a lesson of warning; it is not in the sphere of action, but internal work spirit, an eternal subject of comprehension in the name of human self-knowledge. It is no coincidence that the author of the work himself reminded many times: “I am a man of inner, spiritual life, but not a man of action.” /19/ “By nature, I am not a revolutionary... in general, I am not good for anything in action. On the other hand, I like to think in silence, and in the field of thought, my tasks, as they seem to me, are revolutionary. I still want to say a lot - about life and about the God I am looking for.”/20/
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Notes

/1/ Archive of A. M. Gorky, T. IX. M., 1966. P. 23.

/2/ Ilyev S. P. Prose by L. N. Andreev of the era of the first Russian revolution. Author's abstract. dis. for the job application scientist step. Ph.D. Philol. Sci. Odessa, 1973. P. 12-14; Kolobaeva L. A. M., 1990. S. 141-144.

/3/ See: Spivak R. Russian philosophical lyrics. Problems of genre typology. Krasnoyarsk, 1985. P. 4-71; Spivak R. Architectonic form in the works of M. Bakhtin and the concept of metagenre // Bakhtin and the Humanities. Ljubljana, 1997. pp. 125-135.

/4/ As A.F. Losev points out, in ancient philosophy Chaos is understood as a disordered state of matter. In Ovid, the image of Chaos is found in the form of a two-faced Janus ( Myths of the peoples of the world. T. 2. M., 1982. P. 580). Compare: “... and here Thomas for the first time vaguely felt that Judas from Kariot had two faces.” Andreev L. Novels and stories: In 2 volumes. T. 2. M., 1971. P. 17. In the future we quote from this edition indicating the page in the text.

/5/ Soloviev V. S. Poetry of F. I. Tyutchev// Same. Literary criticism. M., 1990. P. 112. See in the same place: “This presence of a chaotic, irrational principle in the depths of being imparts to various natural phenomena that freedom and strength, without which there would be no life and beauty itself” (P. 114). See also about Chaos in the works of L. Shestov: “In fact, chaos is the absence of any order, and therefore of that which excludes the possibility of life. (...) ...in life... where order reigns, there are difficulties... absolutely unacceptable. And those who know these difficulties will not be afraid to try their luck with the idea of ​​chaos. And, perhaps, he will be convinced that evil does not come from chaos, but from space...” (Shestov L. Op..: In 2 vols. T. 2. M., 1993. P. 233.

/6/ See: Korman B.O. Study Workshop work of art . Izhevsk, 1977. P. 27.

/7/ L. Andreev said to Gorky: “Have you ever thought about the variety of motives for betrayal?” They are infinitely varied. Azef had his own philosophy...” ( Literary legacy. T. 72. Gorky and Leonid Andreev. Unpublished correspondence. M., 1965. P. 396.

/8/ Gorky M. Full collection Op.: In 25 volumes. T. 7. M., 1970. S. 153, 172.

/9/ Bunin I. A. Collection Op.: In 9 volumes. T. 1. M.: Hood. lit., 1965. P. 557.

/10/ Wilde O. Full collection Op.; 4 vols. T. 2. St. Petersburg: Publishing House of A. F. Marx, 1912. P. 216.

/11/ Veresaev V.V. Memories. M.-L., 1946. P. 449.

/12/ Kolobaeva L. A. The concept of personality in Russian literature at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. M.: Moscow State University Publishing House, 1990. P. 144.

/13/ This interpretation of the author’s concept receives support in various statements by Andreev himself: “No matter how different my views are from the views of Veresaev and others, we have one common point, to refuse which would mean putting an end to all our activities. This is the kingdom of man that should be on earth. Hence, calls to God are hostile to us” (Andreev to A. Mirolyubov, 1904 Lit. archive, 5 M.-L., 1960. P. 110). “Do you know what I love most now? Intelligence. To him is honor and praise, to him is all the future and all my work." (Andreev to Gorky, 1904 Literary. inheritance. P. 236). “You curse that very sectarianism that has always existed among the people in its ugliest forms only through the will to creativity and freedom, through unfading rebellion...” (Andreev to Gorky, 1912. Literary. inheritance. P. 334).

/14/ Dostoevsky F. M. Collection op..: In 15 volumes. T. 9. L.: The science, 1991. P. 295.

/15/ On the formation of the concept of man as the creator of life in Russian culture at the beginning of the twentieth century, see: Spivak R.S. Historical prerequisites for the strengthening of the philosophical principle in Russian literature of the 1910s. // Literary work: word and being. Donetsk, 1977. pp. 110-122.

/16/ Literary legacy. P. 214.

/17/ Shestov L. Selected Works. M., 1993. P. 461.

/18/ Ibid. P. 404.

/19/ Literary legacy. P. 90.

/20/ Ibid. P. 128.

Spivak Rita Solomonovna, Doctor of Philology, Professor of the Department of Russian Literature at Perm State University.

Publ.: “Sine arte, nihil.” Collection of scientific works as a gift to Professor Milivoje Jovanovic” - Editor-compiler Cornelia Icin. “The Fifth Country”, Belgrade-Moscow, 2002, 420 p. („ Latest research Russian culture“, first issue. — ISBN 5-901250-10-9)