The Remains of the Poet [Russia] Solzhenitsyn

The earlier ancient city of Origov, now the village of Rigovo, is located on a high cliff on the banks of the Oka River: in those days, in addition to the flowing water for drinking, Russians The second favorite thing is beauty.

After Ingvar Igorevich miraculously escaped the knife stabbed by his brother, he built the Dormition Monastery here to commemorate his rescue.

On a clear day, you can see very far away from the river beach. 35 miles away, on the same cliff, is the tall bell tower of John's Monastery.

Superstitious Batu did not destroy these two monasteries.

Yakov Petrovich Polonsky also took a fancy to this place and regarded it as his only place to go, and his will was to bury him here. We always think that our souls will fly above the grave and look around the quiet wilderness.

But - there is no church dome, and there is no church. Half of the stone wall is left, and a wooden fence wrapped with barbed wire has been built. Above the entire historic site is The telephone poles were ugly scarecrows, they all looked very familiar... very familiar... The door of the monastery was the duty room. A poster: "For peace among all ethnic groups!" 》——A Russian worker holds an African child in his hands.

We don’t seem to understand anything. In the guard shed, an off-duty guard in a shirt explained to us:

"There was a monastery here, the second one in the world. The first one seemed to be in Rome and Moscow That one was the third one. There was a children's reformatory here, and the children, out of spite, tore down the walls and smashed the icons. Later, the collective farm bought it for 40,000 rubles. The pictures of the two churches are of bricks, because the farm wanted to build a six-row cowshed. I still remember that a whole brick cost 50 kopecks, and half of the bricks were sold for 20 kopecks, but the bricks were difficult to pry open because they were all stuck with concrete. They were in a ball. A senior monk was found lying in an underground tomb under the church. The monk was already a skeleton, but the robe was still in good condition. We both pulled at the robe, but did not tear it apart..."

"Excuse me, the tomb of the poet Polonsky is marked on this map. Where is the tomb?"

"You can't go to Polonsky's place. It's a restricted area. It's forbidden to go there. What's there to see there? Look at the bare monument there." The guard turned to his wife, "Polonsky seems to have been poached?"

"Yes, he was dragged to the beam. Thank you." My wife stood on the steps, eating melon seeds and nodded.

The guard himself felt ridiculous:

"In other words, he was released..."

The beginning of the day

Sunrise At midnight, about 30 young people ran to the clearing in the forest, sparsely lined up with their faces toward the sun, and began to bend down and bend their bodies, shaking their heads and tails, stretching their arms, and pulling their legs. They were busy for a quarter of an hour.

Looking from a distance, I thought they were praying.

In our day and age, no one would be surprised to see a person taking care of his body with patience and attention every day.

However, if he serves his spirit in the same way, he may be attacked.

No, this is not a prayer. This is just morning exercise.

An elm log

We were sawing firewood. We lifted an elm log and couldn't help but scream: This tree was cut down last year and dragged out with a tractor. , cut the trunk into several sections, then transported it by car and boat, covered it with canvas, and piled it on the ground. But to this day, these elm logs have still not surrendered!

Its body sprouts fresh young buds, which will be a complete tree or a dense branch.

We have placed the log on the stand, as if lowering it on the guillotine, but we cannot make up our mind to saw it at the neck: How can we bear to saw it? It also wants to live! It even wants to live more than we do!

In Yesenin’s hometown

Four similar small villages are lined up along the road. There is no garden. There is no forest nearby either. Rows of slender fences. There are rough, brightly colored wooden carved window lintels in many places. A majestic pig weighing several pounds was tickling the faucet in the middle of the street. The well-proportioned formation of the geese was suddenly disrupted by a speeding bicycle, and the geese unitedly issued a battle cry to the silhouette of the car. Busy chickens pecked the streets and backyards looking for food.

The business pavilion in Konstantinovo Village looks like a small chicken shed. Herring. Department stores. Sticky rectangular filled candies that no one else eats anywhere else 15 years ago. The iron-hard big black bread is twice as heavy as the ones in the city. It cannot be cut with a knife, but with an axe.

In the small wooden house of Yesenin's family, the simple rooms are separated by wooden walls that are only one person high. There are several small rooms, like storage rooms, and none of them can even be called one. Room. There is a doorless hut in the garden. There used to be a bathhouse here. Sergei often came here to hide in the darkness and wrote his first poems. Beyond the haystack is an ordinary wheat field.

I strolled through the village. There are many such villages, and even now, all the residents in these villages are still busy with food, savings, and vanity in facing their neighbors. As I was walking, I suddenly became excited: The holy fire from the sky suddenly fell here one day, and it is still burning my cheeks at this moment. I walked to the high bank of the Oka River and looked into the distance. I was surprised: could this long dark bush be magically said to be "the clear cry of grouse in the forest"? Could it be that the grassland beside the quiet Oka River can be said to be "the accumulation of sunshine in the embrace of water"?

What kind of cube of genius did the Creator throw here, into this cabin, into the heart of this quarrelsome country boy, so that he was excited by the fireside and in the corral? , found so many materials in the threshing floor and at the edge of the village to express beauty, to express the beauty that people have trampled on for thousands of years but have not noticed?

We will not die

We have become most afraid of dead people and death.

If someone dies, we always try our best not to write letters or visit: we don’t know how to talk about death...

We even regard the cemetery as a kind of It's embarrassing to talk about serious things. No one at work would say, "I don't have time on Sunday. I might go to the cemetery to visit my relatives." Is it considered a thing to visit people who don't know how to eat or drink?

Want to transport the dead from one city to another? ——Don’t be crazy, no one will provide a carriage for this. Nowadays, there are no funeral bands in the city. If you are a small person, you just have to be pulled around by a truck.

I don’t know when, in our cemetery on Sunday, people walked among the graves, singing happily, and the portable incense burners exuded a rich fragrance. My mood became calmer, and the pain of being destined to die no longer stirred my heart. The deceased seem to be smiling at us through the green tombs: "Nothing!...Nothing!"

Today, if the cemetery is still open, a notice will be hung: "Grave owners! To avoid fines Please remove last year’s trash!” More often, graves are moved and bulldozed next to the stadium, and next to the Cultural Park.

And those who died for their country - you and I can still die that way.

Previously, our church listed a holiday for these people - Memorial Day for the Fallen. The British commemorate their martyrs on Mark's Day.

Every nation has such a festival to remember those who died for us. And for us, for whom the most people have died, we don’t have such a festival.

Looking at all the victims, who will come to contribute? We lost countless husbands, sons and fiancés in the three wars - you disgusting people, just hide behind those painted wooden posts and don't disturb our lives!

And we, we will never die!

Traveling along the Oka River

After walking through the rural roads in the heart of Russia, you begin to understand where the key to the peaceful Russian scenery lies.

The key lies in the church. They climbed up the hills and crossed the hills, like white or red princesses walking towards the broad river. Bell towers with different proportions and heights rise above the mediocre thatched houses and wooden houses. They greet each other from a distance, rising to the same sky from the scattered villages that do not look at each other. Whether you are walking in the wilds or in the pastures far away from people, you will never be alone: ??above the thick wall-like forest, above the stacks of hay, above the April fields, there is always Lovetz. The round top of the bell tower of the Basilica, Ljubich Church or Gavrilovsky Church beckons to you.

But when you walk into the village, you will find that it is not the living people, but the dead who greet you from a distance. The cross has long been knocked down or tilted; the church dome is riddled with holes, exposing its rusty brackets; weeds grow between the roof and the walls; the cemeteries around the church are rarely preserved, and even if they are still there, the cross has been It was toppled and its grave was dug; the icon behind the altar had been washed away by rain for decades and was covered with obscene words.

There is a large oil drum on the steps in front of the church, and the tractor comes here to refuel. Or it could be a truck, its body rubbing against the door, driving in to load sacks. In that church the machines trembled; in this one there was silence with iron chains. Another one, and another one, became a club, with slogans such as "Capture high milk yields!", "Epic of peace", "Great feats" and so on.

People are always selfish and often malicious. But there are evening bells that ring and float over the villages, fields and forests.

It reminds people that it is time to get rid of the trivial matters of the world and to devote some time or thinking to eternity. This bell is now the only ancient sound left for us, which can free people from surrendering to reality.

In these bricks and stones and in these bell towers, our ancestors built all their good wishes and all their understanding of life.

Dig quickly, Wichika! Try harder, don't be afraid!

The movie will be shown at 6 o'clock, and the dance party will start at 8 o'clock...

Bonfire and ants

I threw a dead branch into the bonfire without noticing the dead branch. There is a nest full of ants living in the branches.

The branches were on fire and crackling. A swarm of ants emerged and ran in despair. They ran over the branches, twitching from the flames. I pulled out a branch and placed it at the very edge of the fire. In this way, many ants can be saved. They can crawl toward sandy areas and toward piles of pine needles.

But strangely, they don't run away from the campfire.

Just after overcoming their fear, they turned over again and turned in circles. There was an invisible force dragging them backwards, returning to their lost motherland! Many of the ants climbed up the burning branches again, ran around on the branches, and finally died there.

Sharik

In our yard, there is a little boy who has a dog named Sharik. It has been chained since it was a cub.

Once, I took some chicken bones to it. The chicken bones were still steaming and fragrant. At this moment, the boy let the poor dog roam in the yard. There was thick snow in the yard, and Sharik jumped like a rabbit, sometimes landing on his front feet and sometimes his back feet, running from one corner of the yard to another, getting his head covered with snow.

The furry dog ??ran up to me, touched my hand, sniffed the bones, and then ran away with its belly rubbing against the snow!

It seems to be saying: I don’t need your bones, all I want is freedom!

(Translated by Liu Wenfei)

Notes:

Batu (1208-1255): The grandson of Genghis Khan, Taizu of the Yuan Dynasty of China, who led an expedition in the 13th century Europe.

Polonsky (1819-1898): Russian poet, corresponding member of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

Put: Russian unit of weight. One pood equals 16.38 kilograms.

Sergey: The name of the Soviet poet Yesenin (1895-1925).

The quotation is a poem by Yesenin.

The quotation is a poem by Yesenin.

There was originally a sentence at the end: "This is the pinnacle of philosophy in the 20th century." It was later deleted by the author.

Appreciation

Russian writer Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn's essay "The Remains of the Poet" is a microcosm of the social changes in the Soviet period. In the form of a travelogue, it describes the changes in the earlier ancient city of Origov - now the village of Rigovo in the process of Russian social transformation, and focuses on two churches in the area. Solzhenitsyn traced the footprints of two local poets, Polonsky and Yesenin, and cleverly interspersed a large number of metaphors and symbols to vividly outline a picture of how traditional Russian religious spirit and poetic qualities are being transformed. A picture of being swallowed up by worldly values ??of pleasure and utilitarianism.

Political alienation allowed Solzhenitsyn to clear away the fog of ideology, find spiritual resources from Russian traditional religion, and use the poet's unique vision to look at the absurdity and cruelty that happened at that time Everything - churches were destroyed, sacred things were broken; poetry was abandoned, poets were exiled; people indulged in material life, or simply created more material wealth for pleasure. This is a universal modern picture, whether in the East or the West. Max Weber called this process the "disenchantment of the world", the disintegration of the integrated religious interpretation of the world, and the secularization process of the social spiritual structure. This process is commonly felt in the West and has been explained countless times by theorists. In the Soviet Union, only a few outstanding writers like Solzhenitsyn could clearly feel it. His sensitive Russian soul always touches a few nerves when he faces reality. When he came to the countryside of Rigovo, he saw only ruins of the two monasteries that had stood there for thousands of years - people demolished them just to get the strong bricks. He saw the remains of the poet Polonsky being destroyed. People were dragged to the provinces at will, and seeing the majestic pigs and geese occupying the streets, he felt deeply that the traditional religious values ??of Russia were completely destroyed, and people were completely occupied by the material needs of life itself. "No one in our time would be surprised to see a person who takes care of his body with patience and attention every day." "But if he takes care of his spirit in the same way, he may be abused. * . "The "poet's remains" have been exhumed and gone to the provinces, and where will the spiritual remains of the entire Russian religious tradition be placed?

Solzhenitsyn also broke people's general imagination of Soviet society. This is not the West, but it does not reject and even has a hidden consciousness that welcomes naked materialism - wives eating melon seeds, people doing morning exercises, pigs and chickens on the streets of the poet's hometown, churches converted into workshops, "The movie will show at 6 o'clock and the party will start at 8 o'clock." One section of the article is titled "We Will Not Die." If the value of life lies in material enjoyment itself, if man rejects his historical existence and solidifies the meaning of life in the eternal and happy present moment, then man should not die, although "we have become most afraid of the dead." and death”.

In his Harvard speech, he expressed his views - "Humanism says that life is only for enjoyment. If this is right, then people should not die after birth..." "We will never You will die!" The hedonists in both the West and the Soviet Union shouted. They all believe in this "philosophy of the 20th century."

Due to his "Gulag Archipelago", Solzhenitsyn has always been regarded as a very political writer, and his works are attributed to being good at ideological and political commentary. However, the prose "The Remains of the Poet" gives us a new perspective in reading. The brilliance of the text makes us discover that the political perspective is not the only dimension to measure his works, or even the main dimension. He is like his great predecessors. , belonging to the spiritual tradition of Russian literature. This reminds us of his call for the spiritual structure of society in his famous Harvard speech: “We need to be baptized by spiritual fire, to have a higher vision, to have a new level of life, so that our carnal nature , so that we will not be cursed like in the Middle Ages; more importantly, our spiritual life will not be trampled like in the modern century.” We can’t help but think of his acceptance speech at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony: He said about Thomas. Toyevsky's reinterpretation of "Beauty Saves the World" and his call for "dedicating some time or thinking to eternity" in the article "Traveling along the Oka River" all show that he transcends the limitations of politics and will Criticism is based on an understanding of what has eternal value.

Solzhenitsyn tried to discover his close spiritual connection with Russia, and tried to return to the literary tradition of that glorious and great northern land. He guarded a little "spiritual fire" alone. Facing such writers, our reading sometimes seems too easy, but in any case, we have seen a Russian named Solzhenitsyn, who did his best to do something that belongs to the truth. matter.

(Qu Peihui)