Summary of the lesson on the story of L. Andreev

"Judas Iscariot"

Goals:

• educational : comprehension of the idea of ​​the work through the disclosure of the images of the characters, their perception of the world and the author; observation of the language of a work of art as a means of characterizing the characters and realizing the writer's intention; consolidation of the distinctive features of expressionism as a literary movement; improving text analysis skills;
• developing: development of logical thinking (the ability to analyze actions, draw conclusions, explain, prove one's point of view); development of monologue speech of students; development of creative abilities of students, their ability to self-learning (group tasks of a creative nature);
• educational: education of moral values ​​and a critical attitude towards evil in the work on the text;
• Equipment: multimedia system
• Preliminary homework:1. Compare the text of any Gospel with the text of L. Andreev. 2. Prepare an artistic retelling of the episode "Jesus with Pontius Pilate". 3. Individual tasks.

Epigraph of the lesson:

Go alone and heal the blind
To know in the dark hour of doubt
Pupils gloating mockery
And the indifference of the crowd.

A. Akhmatova. 1915

During the classes.

1. Announcement of the topic of the lesson.
2. Introductory speech of the teacher

In the life of every person there comes a time when he wants to understand what is happening in the world and with people ... Today, our culture is developing in a new intellectual space, when myths go away and forgotten names return, when dogmas are destroyed and the concept of Good returns to the minds of people , Mercy, Humanity and Repentance. We are increasingly talking about spirituality, about the spiritual renewal of man. And in today's lesson we will talk about something very important: about Good and Evil, about Conscience and Faith - and I really want a miracle to knock on your every heart and make you even kinder and purer ...

The theme of gospel motifs in Russian literature appears from time to time as a kind of sign of the times. And today, turning to the work of Leonid Andreev, we will try to understand the universal, philosophical, moral problems of his work. The struggle between good and evil is the most difficult moral problem of mankind. Rooted in the distant past, for a number of centuries it has attracted the attention of philosophers, poets, prose writers. The primary source is, of course, the Bible. But this problem was raised in ancient Russian hagiographic literature, in the works of Pushkin and Lermontov, L. Tolstoy and F. M. Dostoevsky, M. Bulgakov and L. Andreev.

1. Word about L.N.Andreev

(Slide 1. Portrait of L. Andreev)Message from a student who independently prepared a story about the life and work of the writer.

1. Exchange of impressions among students on the comparison of the gospel text with the story of L. Andreev.

Students note differences in content:

• Judas in the story looks more monstrous than in the Bible, while the work itself shocks and outrages;
• in L. Andreev, Judas betrays Christ of his own free will, in the Bible - “but the devil seduced him, and he began to hate the Savior”;
• in the Bible, the disciples intercede for Christ: “They who were with Him, seeing what was going on, said to Him: “Lord! Shall we strike with a sword?” And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear. Then Jesus said, leave it alone. And, touching his ear, he healed him”… Peter denies Jesus 3 times… The disciples run away, but this act is a momentary weakness, since then they preached the teachings of Christ, for many of them they paid with their lives. So in the Bible. Andreev's students are traitors;
• both in the Bible and in the story, Judas in the community of Christ performed the duties of a treasurer, but “he did not so much take care of the poor, but ... was a thief”;
• in L. Andreev, Jesus Christ is mostly silent and always in the background, the main character is Judas;

common in the language of works:

• parables, Christian instructions;
• quotes from the Bible in the story: “And numbered among the villains” (ch. 7), “Hosanna! Hosanna! Coming in the name of the Lord” (ch. 6);
• often sentences in the Bible and in the story begin with conjunctions and, a, which gives the texts a colloquial character: “And Judas believed him - and he suddenly stole and deceived Judas ... And everyone deceives him”; “And they laughed at me… and gave it to me to eat, and I asked for more…”;
• in the Bible and in the story there is a stylistic device - inversion: “they spread their cloaks on the ground”, “the people welcomed him”. But unlike the Bible, Andreev has many unusual figurative comparisons;
• L. Andreev uses obsolete forms of the word in the story: “And quietly biya chest”, “And, suddenly changing the speed of movements slowness…”

Problem statement:

Why is the writer doing this? What is the idea of ​​the piece? We will try to answer these questions in our lesson.

v. Analysis of the story "Judas Iscariot".

L. Andreev was not the first to address the theme of Judas' betrayal. So, for example, there is Judas the hero and great martyr in M. Voloshin:

God, I believe deeply

That Judas is your oldest and most faithful

The student that he took upon himself

The burden of all the sins and shame of the world,

That when You return to judge the earth,

And the sun will darken from Your wrath,

And the stars will fall from the sky in horror,

He will rise like a smoky coal from the abyss,

Scorched by all the leprosy of the world,

And sit next to you!

And in the “Biography of Judas” by Susan Gubar, which appeared in the middle of the twentieth century, he is “the perfect villain in everything.” In the story of H.L. Borges “Three versions of the betrayal of Judas” proved, and quite ingeniously, that Judas is the J. Christ. There are many other reconstructions of the image of Judas and the motives for his betrayal, but their number and variety only confirms the fact that Judas has long ceased to be only a character in Holy Scripture, having become an eternal image of world artistic culture.

What kind of Judas does L. Andreev have?Let's turn to the story.

Acquaintance with Judas begins even before his appearance on the pages of the work.

• How and what do we learn about it?

We learn about Judas from stories about him among the people: he is “a man of very bad reputation”, “selfish”, “steals skillfully”, therefore “he must beware”. That is, the peaceful life of the city and the Christian community was violated by rumors that frightened. So from the first lines in the work, the motive of anxiety begins to sound.

• How does nature react to the appearance of Judas? (Read out)
• What feelings does the description of nature evoke?(Anxiety again.)
• How does the author convey this feeling?(Lexical repetitions - “heavy”, “heavy”; antithesis: white - red; alliteration: hissing, hardness [t]).

At this time, Judas appears: the end of the day is night, as if hiding from people. The time of the appearance of the hero is also alarming.

• What does Judas look like? (Read out). Slide number 2 "Judas"
• What can be said about the hero by his description of appearance?

Contradictory appearance - contradictory and behavior, two-faced. The contradictions of the hero are given through a poetic device - opposition, antithesis.

• What feeling does the description of appearance evoke?

• What is the name of this artistic technique by L. Andreev?(Expressive imagery.)

Judas has not yet done anything, but the atmosphere of the story is heating up more and more.

• What is the name of the character in the story? Who?

Pupils often call Judas, and “ugly, “punished dog”, “insect”, “monstrous fruit”, “severe jailer”, “old deceiver”, “gray stone”, “traitor” - this is what the author calls. It is typical for L. Andreev that he often calls the hero not by name, but by metaphors, concepts that have a generalized meaning.

• Tell me why? (In the spirit of expressionism. This is how he expresses his feelings.
• What is the author's attitude towards Judas?(Negative.)

But we must not forget that the work is based on a biblical story.What does the name mean in the Bible?Let's try to understand some biblical concepts:

Pupil: in religion there is a cult of the name. There is even a religious direction - name glory, name and essence of a person coincide. For example, Christ is both a name and a divine essence. Evil will never be in the name of something. Therefore, criminals, as a rule, have nicknames. The name is a value. Judas had no home, no family, no children, because "Judas is a bad man and God does not want offspring from Judas." He is often referred to in a derogatory manner rather than by his first name.

• Why did Jesus bring such a terrible person closer to him?

"The spirit of bright contradiction attracted him to the rejected and unloved." Those. Jesus' actions are guided by love for people. (A table is drawn up on the board.)

• How does Judas feel about Jesus?(Loves.)
• Why does Jesus' attitude towards him change? (Read out).
• What event preceded that?(Judas was right when he said bad things about people. This was confirmed: the woman accused Jesus of stealing a goat, which she later found entangled in the bushes.)
• Does this fact mean that Judas understands people? What does he say about people? (Read out).

We write in the table: does not like people, because. in them he sees the source of evil.

• What next event intensified the spat between Judas and Jesus?Saves the life of Jesus.
• What does Judas expect for his act?Praise, thanks.
• What did you get? More wrath of Jesus.
• Why? Lied.
• What is the position of Christ?To tell the truth. (We fill in table No. 1 and conclude: two worldviews collide, this is the conflict of the work, and it is of an atheistic nature.)

Ideological conflict

God-fighting character

• What is the lexical meaning of the word "theomachy"? (Fight with God)
• Who wrestles with God? (Judas)
• How? (Trying to prove to Jesus that only he is right)
• Why is Judas? (Wants to be understood and appreciated by a person, a person who is loved)
• And what is your opinion, which is better: the truth that kills, or the lie that saves? (The reasoned opinions of students are listened to)
• And what is the position of the author on this philosophical issue? (the author's position coincides with the views of Judas. Students prove this statement by quoting the text)
• Guys, which of the disciples of Christ in the story is given a significant place? Why? (To John, Peter, Thomas. Using examples from the text, the guys prove this)
• Where do the events in the story take place?
• (Slide 3. Palestine in the era of Christ. Slide 4. Jerusalem in the era of Christ)

Teacher. These cards represent the events of the last days of Jesus' earthly life. The path that began with the solemn entry into Jerusalem is a mournful path. It ended with Golgotha.

(Slide 5. The Last Supper)

• What do you guys know about this picture? How is it related to the story? (Selective retelling based on the transmission of the content of the fragment)

• Consider how the disciples feel about Jesus and Judas. Let's compare their words and deeds and fill in the table number 2

God-fighting motives

• Who wrestles with God? (Author)

• Tell the parable of the fig tree. Why does Jesus tell Judas?

The parable indicates how God deals with sinners. He is not in a hurry to chop off the shoulder, but gives us a chance to improve, “desires the repentance of sinners.”

• But does Judas consider himself a sinner?

No. And he is not going to change his views. However, he understands that Jesus will never agree with him. It was then that Judas decided to take the last step: "And now he will perish, and Judas will perish with him."

• How does he behave when he visits Anna?Ambiguous: does not dissuade Jesus from traveling to Jerusalem and betrays).
• How does he betray? (Kissing). slide 6
• Why kiss? (Loves).
• Let us prove that his actions are driven by love for Jesus. (He surrounded the teacher with tenderness and attention, warned of danger, brought 2 swords, urged to take care of Jesus.)
• On the way to Golgotha, Jesus appears before the Sanhedrin.
• From here, in a huge and noisy crowd, everyone moved to Pontius Pilate for the last interrogation and trial.(Slide 7. Pontius Pilate)
• What is Judas experiencing during the interrogation of Jesus? The shameful glory of Judas began. He was hated and feared. But he was indifferent.

VI. Artistic retelling of the episode. (Individual homework).

- Guys, one of the most terrible pictures of the story is, in my opinion, the beating of Jesus Christ.

VII. An expressive reading of the episode "Jesus Goes to His Execution".

(Slide 8-9. Crucifixion)

• Why does Judas betray? Wants Jesus to die? ( Not).
• What does he want? ( Judas created, like Raskolnikov, his own theory, according to which all people are bad, and wants to test the theory in practice. He hopes to the last that people will intercede for Christ. (Read passages to support this.)
• How does the author reveal the psychology of the hero in this episode? (Repetitions of events and lexical repetitions increase tension. The antithesis of Judas' expectations to what the people are doing is disturbing. The painful feeling of expectation is conveyed by dots. Again the duality of Judas: it waits for the people to save Christ, and everything in them sings: “Hosanna!” - and rejoices when his theory is confirmed: "Hosanna!" Shouts of joy in exclamation marks, in the oxymoron “joyfully lonely”)
• Judas proved the theory. Why did he hang himself? (He loved Christ, wanted to be with him).
• True love is sacrificial. What does Judas sacrifice? (Dooms himself to eternal shame).
• Why else did you hang yourself? 9I saw the inevitability of evil on earth, the lack of love, betrayal. (Referring to the epigraph of the lesson.)
• The psychologism of the last pages of the story reaches its highest intensity. How does the author convey this?In the words of the author: “Judas asked hoarsely…”, “And Iscariot wept loudly”, “terrible words tearing his throat”.The excitement of Judas is conveyed in punctuation (ellipsis, exclamation points, rhetorical questions); through deeds - throws pieces of silver in the faces of the high priest and judges; in antithesis: the excitement of Judas is opposed by the indifference of Anna, the calmness of the disciples. Lexical repetitions make one resent.
• How is Judas transformed outwardly?"... his gaze was simple, and direct, and terrible in its naked truthfulness." Duplicity disappears - there is nothing to hide. The author emphasizes his directness and truth with alliteration: [pr], [p].
• Who is Judas: the winner or the vanquished?He is the winner, too. his theory was confirmed. He is defeated, because. his victory came at the cost of death.
• This is the contradiction of L. Andreev: evil is ugly, therefore his Judas is terrible, and the author is hostile towards him, but agrees with his judgments. The name of Judas has become a household name. Means "traitor". The story ends with the word "traitor", symbolizing the collapse of human relations.
• What is your attitude towards Judas?There is something to respect: he is smart, understands people, sincerely loves, is able to give his life. You feel sorry for him, but at the same time you despise him. He was two-faced, and feelings for him were twofold.

In 2006, the partially reconstructed Gospel of Judas was published for the first time - the gospel on. Unlike canonical gospels , in this gospelJudas Iscariot shown as the only authenticstudent who committed betrayal at the will of HimselfJesus Christ . (Slide 10)

The main plot difference between this gospel and the canonical ones is the assertion that Judas was not a traitor, and betrayed Christ to the Romans at His own request. Judas, on the contrary, was the most successful disciple and the only one who fully and completely understood the plan of Christ, and that is why he agreed to play this important role in it, renouncing everything - the glory of the ages, the recognition of his gospel and even life itself. I would also like to note that in order to leave the right mark on history, Judas decided to kiss Christ at the moment when he brought the soldiers to him, but we know that it was this kiss that played a negative role in relation to Judas.

Now let's try to answer the question posed at the beginning of the lesson: why does the author present us with the image of Judas, which is traditionally interpreted as negative, in a different way? What message does he want to convey to us?

The image of Judas, created by L. Andreev, is the only one in world art with an equally unique extravagant interpretation of the plot. And very persuasive. During his lifetime, L. Andreev called the Kingdom of Heaven “nonsense”. The author boldly reshapes two-thousand-year-old images in order to make the reader resent the revealed nonsense. The story reflected the contradictions of the era in which L. Andreev lived. He is concerned with eternal questions: what rules the world: good or evil, truth or falsehood, is it possible to live righteously in an unrighteous world. And what do you think?

IV. Homework:answer this question in writing.

Dvurechenskaya Yulia Viktorovna

MBOU "Secondary School No. 1 named after. Ya.Vasilenko" p.Purpe

The famous Russian writer of the Silver Age L. Andreev remained in the history of Russian literature as the author of innovative prose. His works were distinguished by deep psychologism. The author tried to penetrate into such depths of the human soul, where no one looked. Andreev wanted to show the real state of things, tore the veil of lies from the usual phenomena of the social and spiritual life of man and society.

The life of the Russian people at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries gave little cause for optimism. Critics reproached Andreev for incredible pessimism, apparently for the objectivity of showing reality. The writer did not consider it necessary to artificially create benevolent pictures, to give evil a decent look. In his work, he revealed the true essence of the unshakable laws of social life and ideology. Causing a flurry of criticism against him, Andreev risked showing a person in all his contradictions and secret thoughts, revealed the falsity of any political slogans and ideas, wrote about doubts about the Orthodox faith in the form in which it is presented by the church.

In the story "Judas Iscariot" Andreev gives his version of the famous gospel parable. He said that he wrote "something on the psychology, ethics and practice of betrayal." The story deals with the problem of the ideal in human life. Jesus is such an ideal, and his disciples must preach his teaching, bring the light of truth to the people. But Andreev makes the central hero of the work not Jesus, but Judas Iscariot, an energetic, active and full of strength.

To complete the perception of the image, the writer describes in detail the memorable appearance of Judas, whose skull was “as if cut from the back of the head with a double blow of the sword and recomposed, it was clearly divided into four parts and inspired distrust, even anxiety ... Judas’ face also doubled.” Eleven disciples of Christ look inexpressive against the background of this hero. One eye of Judas is alive, attentive, black, and the other is motionless, like a blind man. Andreev draws the attention of readers to the gestures of Judas, the manner of his behavior. The hero bows low, arching his back and stretching his lumpy, terrible head forward, and “in a fit of timidity” closes his living eye. His voice, "sometimes courageous and strong, sometimes loud, like an old woman's," sometimes thin, "annoyingly liquid and unpleasant." Communicating with other people, he constantly grimace.

The writer introduces us to some facts of the biography of Judas. The hero got his nickname because he came from Kariot, lives alone, left his wife, he has no children, apparently, God does not want offspring from him. Judas has been wandering for many years, “lies everywhere, grimaces, vigilantly looks out for something with his thieves' eye; and suddenly leaves suddenly.

In the Gospel, the story of Judas is a short account of betrayal. Andreev, on the other hand, shows the psychology of his hero, tells in detail what happened before and after the betrayal and what caused it. The theme of betrayal arose from the writer not by chance. During the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907, he observed with surprise and contempt how many traitors suddenly appeared, "as if they did not come from Adam, but from Judas."

In the story, Andreev notes that the eleven disciples of Christ are constantly arguing among themselves, “who paid more love” in order to be closer to Christ and ensure their entry into the kingdom of heaven in the future. These disciples, who would later be called apostles, treat Judas with contempt and disgust, as they do other vagabonds and beggars. They are deep in matters of faith, engaged in self-contemplation and fenced off from people. L. Andreev's Judas is not in the clouds, he lives in the real world, steals money for a hungry harlot, saves Christ from an aggressive mob. He plays the role of a mediator between people and Christ.

Judas is shown with all the advantages and disadvantages, like any living person. He is quick-witted, modest, always ready to help his companions. Andreev writes: "... Iscariot was simple, gentle and at the same time serious." Shown from all sides, the image of Judas comes to life. He also has negative traits that arose during his vagrancy and search for a piece of bread. This is deceit, dexterity and deceit. Judas is tormented by the fact that Christ never praises him, although he allows him to conduct economic affairs and even take money from the general cash desk. Iscariot declares to the disciples that it is not they, but it is he who will be next to Christ in the kingdom of heaven.

Judas is intrigued by the mystery of Christ, he feels that something great and wonderful is hidden under the guise of an ordinary person. Having decided to betray Christ into the hands of the authorities, Judas hopes that God will not allow injustice. Until the very death of Christ, Judas follows him, every minute expecting that his tormentors will understand who they are dealing with. But the miracle does not happen, Christ endures the beatings of the guards and dies like an ordinary person.

Having come to the apostles, Jude notes with surprise that on that night, when their teacher died a martyr's death, the disciples ate and slept. They grieve, but their life has not changed. On the contrary, now they are no longer subordinates, but each independently is going to carry the word of Christ to people. Jude calls them traitors. They did not defend their teacher, did not recapture him from the guards, did not convene the people for protection. They "huddled together like a bunch of frightened lambs, not interfering with anything." Jude accuses the disciples of lying. They never loved the teacher, otherwise they would have rushed to help and would have died for him. Love saves without doubt.

John says that Jesus himself wanted this sacrifice and his sacrifice is beautiful. To which Judas angrily replies: “Is there a beautiful sacrifice, what do you say, beloved disciple? Where there is a victim, there is an executioner, and there are traitors! Sacrifice is suffering for one and shame for all.<…>Blind, what have you done to the earth? You wanted to destroy her, you will soon be kissing the cross on which you crucified Jesus!” Judas, in order to finally test the disciples, says that he is going to Jesus in heaven in order to persuade him to return to earth to the people to whom he brought light. Iscariot calls on the apostles to follow him. Nobody agrees. Pyotr, who was rushing, also retreats.

The story ends with a description of Judas' suicide. He decided to hang himself on the bough of a tree growing over the abyss, so that if the rope breaks, he would fall on sharp stones and ascend to Christ. Throwing a rope on a tree, Judas whispers, turning to Christ: “So meet me kindly. I am very tired". In the morning Judas' body was removed from the tree and thrown into the ditch, cursing him as a traitor. And Judas Iscariot, the Traitor, remained forever and ever in the memory of people.

This version of the gospel story caused a wave of criticism from the church. Andreev's goal was to awaken people's consciousness, to make them think about the nature of betrayal, about their actions and thoughts.

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"Psychology of betrayal" - the main theme of L. Andreev's story "Judas Iscariot" -. The images and motives of the New Testament, the ideal and reality, the hero and the crowd, true and hypocritical love - these are the main motives of this story. Andreev uses the gospel story about the betrayal of Jesus Christ by his disciple Judas Iscariot, interpreting it in his own way. If the focus of the Holy Scriptures is the image of Christ, then Andreev turns his attention to the disciple, who betrayed him for thirty pieces of silver into the hands of the Jewish authorities and thereby became the culprit of the suffering on the cross and the death of his Teacher. The writer is trying to find a justification for Judas' actions, to understand his psychology, internal contradictions that prompted him to commit a moral crime, to prove that there is more nobility and love for Christ in Judas's betrayal than among faithful disciples.

According to Andreev, by betraying and assuming the name of a traitor, “Judas saves the cause of Christ. True love is betrayal; the love for Christ of the other apostles is a betrayal and a lie.” After the execution of Christ, when “the horror and dreams came true”, “he walks slowly: now the whole earth belongs to him, and he steps firmly, like a ruler, like a king, like one who is infinitely and joyfully alone in this world.”

Judas appears in the work differently than in the gospel narrative - sincerely loving Christ and suffering from the fact that he does not find understanding for his feelings. The change in the traditional interpretation of the image of Judas in the story is complemented by new details: Judas was married, left his wife, who wanders in search of food. The episode of the competition of the apostles in throwing stones is fictitious. Opponents of Judas are other disciples of the Savior, especially the apostles John and Peter. The traitor sees how Christ shows great love towards them, which, according to Judas, who did not believe in their sincerity, is undeserved. In addition, Andreev depicts the apostles Peter, John, Thomas being in the power of pride - they are worried about who will be the first in the Kingdom of Heaven. Having committed his crime, Judas commits suicide, as he cannot bear his act and the execution of his beloved Teacher.

As the Church teaches, sincere repentance allows one to receive the forgiveness of sin, but the suicide of Iscariot, which is the most terrible and unforgivable sin, forever closed the doors of paradise before him. In the image of Christ and Judas, Andreev confronts two philosophies of life. Christ dies, and Judas seems to be able to triumph, but this victory turns into a tragedy for him. Why? From Andreev's point of view, the tragedy of Judas is that he understands life and human nature more deeply than Jesus. Judas is in love with the idea of ​​goodness, which he himself debunked. The act of betrayal is a sinister experiment, philosophical and psychological. By betraying Jesus, Judas hopes that in the sufferings of Christ the ideas of goodness and love will be more clearly revealed to people. A. Blok wrote that in the story - "the soul of the author - a living wound."

The originality of the system of images of "Judas Iscariot"

Initially, in her first publication in the "Collection of the partnership "Knowledge"" for 1907, the story was called "Judas Iscariot and others", - obviously, those who are responsible for the death of Christ on the cross. L. Andreev removed the words “...and others” from the final version of the title of the story, but they are invisibly present in the text. “And others” are not only the apostles. These are all those who worshiped Jesus and joyfully greeted him at the entrance to Jerusalem:

Many characteristics of “and others” are given by Judas, and therefore they cannot be recognized as fair, claims L. A. Zapadova: “He who “so skillfully mixed truth with lies” Zapadova L. A. Sources of the text and the “secrets” of the story story "Judas Iscariot" // Russian literature. - 1997. - N 3. P.105., God cannot be authorized. Therefore, he is a false prophet - no matter how passionate and sincere his speech may seem. Of course, the optics of Judas and his assessments are not final in the work. However, it is also obvious that often the author's accusatory voice sounds in unison with the voice of Judas - the judge and accuser of the "others", the physical points of view of the central character and the author-narrator coincide.

To reveal the essence of betrayal, the author, along with Judas, introduces such heroes as Peter, John, Matthew and Thomas, and each of them is a kind of image-symbol. Each of the students emphasizes the most striking feature: Peter the stone embodies physical strength, he is somewhat rude and “uncouth”, John is gentle and beautiful, Thomas is straightforward and limited. Judas competes with each of them in strength, devotion and love for Jesus. But the main quality of Judas, which is repeatedly emphasized in the work, is his mind, cunning and resourceful, capable of deceiving even himself. Everyone thinks Judas is smart. Peter tells Iscariot: “You are the smartest of us. Why are you so mocking and angry?” Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: Publishing house AST, 2003. S. 45.

A completely different tone, different vocabulary is present in the author's speech when he talks about other students. They fall asleep during Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he asks them to stay awake, to be with him in the hour of trial:

Peter and John exchanged words that almost made no sense. Yawning from exhaustion, they talked about how cold the night was, and how expensive meat was in Jerusalem, but fish was not available at all.

And finally, it was they - the disciples - who did not protect Jesus from the Roman guards during his arrest:

Like a bunch of frightened lambs, the disciples huddled together, not hindering anything, but hindering everyone - and even themselves; and only a few dared to walk and act separately from the others. Pushed from all sides, Peter Simonov with difficulty, as if having lost all his strength, drew his sword from its scabbard and weakly, with an oblique blow, lowered it on the head of one of the servants, but did no harm. And Jesus, who noticed this, ordered him to throw away the unnecessary sword...

The soldiers crammed the students, and they again gathered and stupidly climbed under their feet, and this continued until a contemptuous rage seized the soldiers. Here one of them, raising his eyebrows, moved towards the screaming John; the other rudely pushed the hand of Thomas from his shoulder, who was convincing him of something, and raised a huge fist to his most direct and transparent eyes, - and John ran, and Thomas and Jacob and all the disciples, no matter how many of them were here, leaving Jesus, run.

Why, despite the fact that the theme “and others” in the story sounds quite distinct and unambiguous, L. Andreev abandoned the title “Judas Iscariot and Others” and settled on the more neutral “Judas Iscariot”? The point, apparently, is that the rejected version of the name was not devoid of straightforwardness; he brought to the fore precisely the theme of responsibility "and others" (since the betrayal of Judas himself was no longer news to the reader). The guilt of “and others” is still a peripheral theme in the story, in the center of it are two characters: Judas Iscariot and Jesus Christ, and their mysterious, mysterious fatal incomprehensible connection, the writer offers his own version of the solution.

Before moving on to the title character - the image of Andreev's Judas Iscariot, let's turn to the one who is the origin of all events - the image of Christ in the interpretation of Leonid Andreev, assuming that this image here will also be a deviation from the canonical tradition.

To understand the artist, and this idea is deeply justified, those "laws" that he - the artist - has set over himself are called upon. Such a “law” for L. Andreev, who ventured to create an artistic image of Jesus Christ, was the following: “I know that God and the Devil are only symbols, but it seems to me that the whole life of people, all its meaning is to endlessly, limitlessly expand these symbols, nourishing them with the blood and flesh of the world.” Basinsky P. Poetry of rebellion and ethics of revolution: reality and symbol in the work of L. Andreev // Questions of Literature. 1989. No. 10. P. 58. It is in this way - “saturated with the blood and flesh of the world” - that Andreev's Jesus appears before us, and this is manifested in the story, in particular, in his laughter.

L. Andreev's story is dominated not by religious and mystical logic, but by psychological, cultural and historical logic, rooted in the world cultural tradition and substantiated by M. Bakhtin. And the laughing Jesus - seemingly a completely insignificant detail - testifies to the fundamental difference between the image of Jesus Christ in L. Andreev and the gospel Jesus, which was also noted by researchers: “Even the one who is thought of as a symbol of the highest ideal wholeness, in the image of L. Andreev not free from duality,” says L. A. Kolobaeva Basinsky P. Poetry of rebellion and the ethics of revolution: reality and symbol in the work of L. Andreev // Questions of Literature. 1989. No. 10. S. 58., characterizing the image of Jesus Christ.

Thus, Jesus in L. Andreev appears not only in his human (not divine) incarnation, but also acquires some primordially Russian national features (lyricism, sentimentality, openness in laughter, which can act as defenseless openness). Of course, L. Andreev's image of Jesus is to some extent a projection of his (Andreev's) artistic, Russian soul. In this regard, let us recall once again the words of the author about the intention of his story "Judas Iscariot" - this is "a completely free fantasy." Fantasy, we note, is determined by the peculiarities of the worldview, the style of the artist.

L. Andreev sees in Jesus, first of all, a human hypostasis, emphasizing it again and again and thereby, as it were, freeing up space for the affirmation of the human, active principle, equalizing God and Man. In Andreev's concept of Jesus, laughter (“laughter”) is also logical because it equalizes, brings its participants closer, building relationships not along the religious (Gothic) vertical, but along the earthly, human horizontal.

Jesus L. Andreeva, as we see, as well as Judas, is a fantasy on the gospel theme, and he is close in his human manifestation to Bulgakov's Yeshua from The Master and Margarita. This is not a “powerful” (Gospel of Matthew), a God-man who knows about his divine origin and his destiny, but a naive, dreamy artist detached from reality, subtly feeling the beauty and diversity of the world.

Andrew's Jesus is mysterious, but what is his riddle? It is not so much a religious-mystical as a subconscious-psychological character. The story speaks of the great mystery of the "beautiful eyes" of Jesus - why Jesus is silent, to whom Judas appeals mentally with a prayer.

When reading the story, a logical (in the psychological coordinate system) question arises: why did Jesus bring Judas closer to him: because he is a rejected and unloved, and Jesus did not renounce anyone? If this motivation partly takes place in this case, then it should be regarded as peripheral in the authentically realistic and at the same time not devoid of penetration into the depths of the subconscious story by L. Andreev. Jesus, as the Gospel testifies, prophesied about his forthcoming betrayal by one of the apostles: “... did I not choose you twelve? but one of you is the devil. And He spoke of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was to betray Him” (Gospel of John, ch. 6:70-71). Between Christ and Judas in the story of L. Andreev there is a mysterious subconscious connection, not expressed verbally, but nevertheless felt by Judas and readers. This connection (a foretaste of the event that united both forever) is felt psychologically by Jesus the God-man, it could not help but find an external psychological expression (in mysterious silence, in which there is a hidden tension, the expectation of a tragedy), and it is especially clear - on the eve of Christ's death on the cross. . It would not be logical if this story were otherwise. We emphasize once again that we are talking about a work of art, where attention to psychological motivation is natural and even inevitable, in contrast to the Gospel - a sacred text in which the image of Judas is a symbolic embodiment of evil, a character from the standpoint of artistic depiction is conditional, purposefully devoid of a psychological dimension . The being of the gospel Jesus is being in a different coordinate system.

Gospel sermons, parables, the Gethsemane prayer of Christ are not mentioned in the text, Jesus is, as it were, on the periphery of the events described. This concept of the image of Jesus was characteristic not only of L. Andreev, but also of other artists, including A. Blok, who also wrote about the naivety of "Jesus Christ" (in the poem "The Twelve"), the femininity of the image, in which not his own energy, and the energy of others. Naive (from the point of view of Jesus' contemporaries - the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who renounced the Teacher) and his teaching, which, with the help of his terrible "experiment", as it were, tests and reveals his moral strength the concept of good. But since the teaching of Jesus is great truth, why was it powerless in relation to him? Why does this beautiful thought not resonate with the inhabitants of ancient Jerusalem? Believing in the truth of Jesus and enthusiastically welcoming him at his entry into Jerusalem, the inhabitants of the city then became disillusioned with her power, became disillusioned with their faith and hope, and all the more forcefully began to reproach the teacher for the failure of his sermons.

The divine and human principles appear in the story of L. Andreev in a heretical interaction: Judas becomes the person who played the greatest role in history for the paradoxical Andreev, and Jesus is presented in his corporality, human flesh, and the corresponding episodes (first of all, the beating of Jesus by the Roman guards) are perceived as excessively naturalistic in relation to Christ, but nevertheless possible in that chain of arguments, motivations, causes and effects that were recreated by the artistic fantasy of the author of Judas Iscariot. This concentration of L. Andreev on the human hypostasis of the God-man turned out to be in demand, widespread in the literature of the 20th century, and, in particular, it determined the concept of the image of Yeshua in the novel The Master and Margarita by M. Bulgakov.

Let us now turn directly to the title character of the work - Judas Iscariot.

In the story of Leonid Andreev, Judas appears to the reader in a completely different form compared to the gospel tradition. The traitor stands out from the background of other students even outwardly. However, unlike the same Bulgakov, Andreev endows Judas with a terrible, contradictory appearance. Immediately striking is his skull, face: “as if cut from the back of the head with a double blow of the sword and re-composed, it was clearly divided into four parts and inspired distrust, even anxiety: behind such a skull there can be no silence and consent, behind such a skull one always hears noise of bloody and merciless battles. The face of Judas also doubled: one side of it, with a black, keenly looking out eye, was lively, mobile, willingly gathering into numerous crooked wrinkles. On the other, there were no wrinkles, and it was deathly smooth, flat and frozen, and although it was equal in size to the first, it seemed huge from the wide-open blind eye. Covered with a whitish haze, not closing either at night or during the day, he equally met both light and darkness, but whether it was because he had a living and cunning comrade next to him, he could not believe in his complete blindness. Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: AST Publishing House, 2003. P.29. Andreev’s image of Judas correlates with the traditional idea of ​​a demon, an evil spirit, which is usually depicted in profile, that is, one-eyed (“... and suddenly leaves suddenly, leaving trouble and a quarrel behind - curious, crafty and evil, like a one-eyed demon” Ibid. S. 29), in addition, the writer emphasizes that one eye of Judas was blind. The double appearance of Judas is closely intertwined with the behavior and actions of the Betrayer. Thus, the author through the appearance conveys the inner essence of the hero. Andreev emphasizes the bifurcation in the guise of Judas. The hero combines the dead and the living. The dark side of Andreevsky's Judas is a feigned calmness, which was most often manifested when communicating with the disciples, and the "light" side is a sincere love for Jesus. An interesting detail: the author mentions in the text that Judas had red hair. In mythology, this often means chosen by God, proximity to the Sun, the right to power. Gods of war are often red or on a red horse. Many leaders, famous personalities had this fiery hair color. "Redhead" is an epithet for deities. It is not for nothing that Andreev assigns this particular hair color to the hero, because according to the stories of the Traitor, it always turned out that it was HE who would be the first near Jesus. Judas sincerely believed in his rightness and chosenness, and most importantly, he strove for his goal by any means - betrayal became a way of approaching the Messiah. In addition, Judas several times "saved" Christ from the massacre of the crowd, showing militancy. But the red hair color is also attributed to Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus (for example, in Rembrandt's painting "Simeon in the Temple" - as a sign of his origin from the red, according to legend, the Psalmist King). Perhaps this in this case once again emphasizes the contradictory nature of the character.

Andreev already at the beginning of the text compares Judas with Jesus: “good growth, almost the same as Jesus, who was slightly stooped from the habit of thinking while walking and seemed shorter because of this.” Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: AST Publishing House, 2003. P.29. N. Chuikina notes: “The author’s attitude towards these two characters is indicative, which he reflected in his painting called “Kings of the Jews”, where Jesus and Judas are depicted similar in appearance, but one of them is beautiful, the second is monstrously ugly, and they are connected by one crown of thorns, put on their heads. Chuikina N. Comparison by Leonid Andreev // World of the Russian Word, 2002. P.109. Perhaps, according to Andreev, beauty and ugliness are two components of a single whole. This reflects a special vision of the writer's world, where one is impossible without the other.

In Andreev, as well as in many other authors, Jesus "entrusted the money box" to Judas. Thanks to his skillful handling of his affairs, “Judas soon won the favor of some of the disciples who saw his efforts.” Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: AST Publishing House, 2003. P.31. But, on the other hand, the author depicts Judas as a deceitful contrast, which clearly repels other heroes from him. The traitor wants to fool people, it gives him pleasure. According to Andreev, Judas "knew how to tell everyone what he especially liked." There. P. 31. The author adds a description of the hero's past life to the text. “Judas left his wife a long time ago ... he wandered senselessly among the people for many years ... and lies everywhere, grimaces ... and suddenly leaves suddenly, leaving trouble and a quarrel behind. He had no children, and this once again said that Judas is a bad person and God does not want offspring from Judas. There. P. 32. Thus, the mention of the hero's past adds additional features to his characterization.

Fundamentally for the new concept of Judas, 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-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 done. And Jesus does not interfere with his plan, as he submitted in the Gospel to the decision of the Father. The author gave Judas the man the role of the demiurge, God the Father, fixing this role several times by repeating Judas' appeal to Jesus: "son", "son".

One of the methods of conveying the idea, the mood of the hero is the description of the situation, the landscape around him. However, only L. Andreev fully uses this technique in his work. Here are some examples of such use.

Against the backdrop of the landscape, the moment of the devil's entry into Iscariot is also shown. When Judas focused all his fire on Jesus, Christ suddenly “as if rose into the air, as if melted and became as if it consisted entirely of overhead fog, pierced by the light of the setting moon, and his soft speech sounded somewhere far, far away and tenderly. ". This affected the Traitor. And “here he felt his head like a dome, and in the impenetrable darkness it continued to grow huge, and someone was silently working: he was lifting huge things like mountains, laying one on top of the other and lifting it again ...”. Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. M.: Publishing house AST, 2003. S. 113.

After the death of Jesus, the author writes that the earth in the eyes of Judas became small and “he feels all of it under his feet, looks at the small mountains, quietly reddening in the last rays of the sun, and feels the mountains under his feet, looks at the sky, wide open blue mouth, looks at the round sun, unsuccessfully trying to burn and blind - and the sky and the sun feel under their feet. Infinitely and joyfully alone, he proudly felt the impotence of all the forces acting in the world, and he threw them all into the abyss. There. P. 116. Perhaps Andreev calls the abyss the ravine into which people threw the “beautiful” Judas. As a result, with Jesus, and, accordingly, with Iscariot, all the forces operating in the world left.

Andreev's extensive use of stylization and improperly direct speech leads to blurring and mobility of the boundaries of the consciousness of the characters and the narrator. The stylistic pattern 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 the subject of consciousness in the above emblematic picture of the Cosmos of Christ and in the depiction of Judas, the creator of a new project of human history. The narrator also marks the sacrificial devotion of Judas to Jesus: “... and mortal sorrow ignited in his heart, similar to that experienced by Christ before this. 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 stalk, he would not have swayed him with this kiss and would not have dropped pearly dew from clean petals. Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M .: Publishing house AST, 2003. S. 79. In the field of consciousness of the narrator lies the conclusion about the equal role of Jesus and Judas in the turn of history - God and man, bound by common torment: “... and among all this crowd there were only them two, inseparable until death, wildly connected by a community of suffering ... From the same cup of suffering, like brothers, they both drank ... ". There. p.80

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 colloquial style, but they are united by increased expressiveness and imagery, although different in nature: irony and sarcasm are more characteristic of Judas' consciousness, and pathos is more characteristic of the narrator. The stylistic closeness of the narrator and Judas as subjects of consciousness increases as we approach the denouement. Irony and mockery in Judas' speech give way to pathos, Judas's word at the end of the story sounds serious, sometimes prophetic, and its conceptuality rises. Irony sometimes appears in the voice of the narrator. In the stylistic convergence of the voices of Judas and the narrator, a certain moral commonality of their positions finds expression. In general, repulsively ugly, deceitful, dishonorable Judas is seen in the story through the eyes of characters: students, neighbors, Anna and other members of the Sanhedrin, soldiers, Pontius Pilate, although formally the narrator may be the subject of speech. But as a subject of consciousness (which is closest to the consciousness of the author), the narrator never acts as an antagonist to Judas. The narrator's voice cuts with dissonance into the chorus of general rejection of Judas, introducing a different perception and a different scale of measurement of Judas and his deeds. Such the first significant "clipping" of the narrator's consciousness is the phrase "And here came Judas." Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: AST Publishing House, 2003. S. 54. It is highlighted stylistically against the background of the prevailing colloquial style, which conveys the bad folk rumor about Judas, and graphically: two-thirds of the line after this phrase remains empty. It is followed by a large segment of the text, again containing a sharply negative characterization of Judas, formally belonging to the narrator. But he conveys the disciples' perception of Judas, prepared by rumors about him. The 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.

In the future, 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 - traitors, cowards, nonentities who have no justification. The accusation of Judas is substantiated by the narrator's outwardly impartial depiction of the apostles, where there is no improperly direct speech and, therefore, the narrator is as close as possible to the author: , moved towards the screaming John; the other rudely pushed Thomas’s hand off his shoulder ... and raised a huge fist to his most direct and transparent eyes - and John ran, and Thomas and Jacob ran, and all the disciples, no matter how many of them were here, leaving Jesus, fled. There. P. 107. Judas mocks the spiritual inertia of the "faithful" disciples, with rage and tears falls upon their dogmatism with its disastrous consequences for mankind. The completeness, immobility, lifelessness of the “discipleship” model, which is the attitude of the future apostles to Christ, is also emphasized by the narrator in describing the conversation of Jesus with the disciples in Bethany.

In a number of cases, the consciousness of Judas and the consciousness of the narrator, in the image of Andreev, are combined, and this overlap falls on fundamentally significant pieces of the text. It is this incarnation that Christ receives in the story as a symbol of the consecrated, higher order of consciousness and being, but supra-material, out-of-body, and therefore “ghostly”. At an overnight stay in Bethany, Jesus is given by the author in the perception of Judas: “Iscariot stopped at the threshold and, contemptuously passing the gaze of those gathered, concentrated all his fire on Jesus. And as he looked ... everything around him went out, dressed in darkness and silence, and only Jesus brightened with his raised hand. But now it seemed to have risen into the air, as if it had melted and became as if it consisted entirely of an overhead fog, pierced by 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 gentle melody of distant and ghostly words, Judas ... ". Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: Publishing house AST, 2003. P.89. But the lyrical pathos and poetic style of the description of what Judas saw, although they can be explained 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 by the gaze of those gathered ...”. There. P.91. 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 be known only 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 gentle melody of distant and ghostly words, Judas... There. P. 91. “... the students were silent and unusually thoughtful. The images of the path traveled: the sun, and the stone, and the grass, and Christ reclining in the center, floated quietly 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 all of it thought about something mysteriously beautiful and big - and no one remembered Judas. Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: Publishing house AST, 2003. S. 93.

The consciousnesses of the narrator and Judas also contain literal coincidences, for example, in assessing the attitude towards the Teacher of the "faithful" students who freed themselves from the work of thought. The narrator: "...whether the students' boundless faith in the miraculous power of their teacher, the consciousness of their rightness, or just blindness - the fearful words of Judas were met with a smile ...". Judas: “Blind, what have you done to the earth? You wanted to kill her…” With the same words, Judas and the narrator sneer at such devotion to the work of the Teacher. Judas: “Beloved student! Is it not from you that the race of traitors, the breed of cowards and liars will begin? There. P. 94. 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 a beloved disciple of Jesus, his death was especially hard, Mary Magdalene and Matthew were sitting and comforting him in an undertone... Matthew did instructively say the words of Solomon: "The long-suffering is better than the brave ...". There. P. 95. The narrator coincides with Judas in recognizing his monstrous act of high expediency - providing the teachings of Christ with a worldwide victory. "Hosanna! Hosanna!" Iscariot's heart screams. And the narrator's word about the Betrayer Judas sounds in the conclusion of the story with a solemn bearing to the victorious Christianity. But betrayal in it is only a fact fixed by the empirical consciousness of the witnesses. The narrator brings the reader a message 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.

The concept of Judas, the creator of a new spiritual reality, is affirmed in Andreev's story and by 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 person. The inertia and futility of the consciousness of the first type is embodied in the unambiguous, poor speech of the "faithful" disciples. The speech of Judas is replete with paradoxes, allusions, 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 Jude the syntactic construction of the admission (“What if ...”) is repeated: a sign of a game, an experiment, a search for thought, - completely alien to the speech of both Christ and the apostles.

The apostles are discredited by metaphors and parables. Such an allegory, for example, is contained in the picture of the apostles' competition in power. This episode is not in the Gospel, and it is significant in the text of the story. “Straining, they (Peter and Philip) tore off an old, overgrown stone from the ground, lifted it high with both hands and let it go down the slope. Heavy, it struck short and dull and thought for a moment; then hesitantly made the first leap - and with each touch to the ground, taking speed and strength from it, he became light, ferocious, all-destroying. He no longer jumped, but he flew with bared teeth, and the air, whistling, passed his dull, round carcass. Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: Publishing house AST, 2003. P.37. The heightened, conceptual significance of this picture is given by repeated associations with the stone of Peter himself. His second name is a stone, and it is persistently repeated in the story precisely as a name. With a stone, the narrator, although indirectly, compares the words spoken by Peter (“they sounded so firmly ...”), the laughter that Peter “throws on the heads of the disciples”, and his voice (“he rolled around ...”). At the first appearance of Judas, Peter "looked at Jesus, quickly, like a stone torn from the mountain, moved towards Judas ...". Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: AST Publishing House, 2003. P. 38 In the context of all these associations, one cannot help but see in the image of a stupid, devoid of his own will, carrying the potential for destruction to the stone, a symbol of an unacceptable model of life for the author of "faithful" students, in which there is no freedom and creation.

In the text of the story there are a number of allusions to Dostoevsky, Gorky, Bunin, which raise Judas from the level of a miserable greedy and offended jealous man, as he traditionally exists in the memory of an ordinary reader and 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." There. P. 51. In the dispute between Peter, John and Judas for the primacy in the kingdom of heaven, "Jesus slowly lowered his eyes," and his gesture of non-intervention and silence reminds the reader of the behavior of Christ in a conversation with the Grand Inquisitor. The reaction of the unimaginative John to the inventions of Judas (“John ... quietly asked Pyotr Simonov, his friend: “Are you bored with this lie?”) sounds like an allusion to the indignation of “stupid as bricks,” Bubnov and Baron, with Luka’s stories 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 ...”). Gorky M. Full. coll. cit.: In 25 vols. T. 7. M., 1970. S. 241.

In addition, Judas, considering his plan of struggle for the victory of Christ, in the image of Andreev is extremely close to Bunin's Cain, the builder of Baalbek, the Temple of the Sun.

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 their right to peace by being faithful to the word of the Teacher. They excluded themselves from the flow of events. The daring challenge that Judas throws 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 to him, Judas Iscariot, his efforts, foresight and self-denial in the name of love (“We betray you with the kiss of love” Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot / / Prose. - M .: AST Publishing House, 2003 .. S. 103..) the victory of the new doctrine is assured. Judas knows his people as well as Jesus: the need to worship is stimulated by the possibility of hating someone (to slightly paraphrase the essence of upheavals formulated by Judas, then “the victim is where the executioner and the traitor are”). And he takes on the role of the enemy, necessary in the projected action, and gives him - himself! - the name of a traitor understandable to the masses. He himself was the first to utter 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 betraying him into the hands of the law” Ibid., p. 120.) and true calculated his fail-safe action allowed himself to be lured into a trap. In this regard, the writing by the author of the word "traitor" in the conclusion of the story with a capital letter is of particular importance - as a non-author's, alien in the narrator's speech, a word-quotation from the consciousness of the masses.

The global scale of Judas' victory over the inert forces of life is emphasized by the space-time organization of the work, which is characteristic of the philosophical meta-genre. Thanks to mythological and literary parallels (the Bible, antiquity, Goethe, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Tyutchev, Bunin, Gorky, etc.), the story's artistic time covers the entire time of the Earth's existence. It is infinitely relegated to the past and at the same time projected into the boundless future - both historical and mythological. It is the everlasting present tense of the Bible and belongs to Judas, because it was created by his efforts. Judas at the end of the story also owns the whole new, already Christian, Earth: "Now the whole earth belongs to him ...". There. P. 121. Images of altered 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. Directly at the conclusion of the story, the same vision of space and time is formulated by the narrator (“The stony Judea, and the green Galilee, learned about it ... and to one sea and to another, which is even further away, the news of the death of the Traitor flew ... and among all peoples what they were, what they are ... "Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot / / Prose. - M .: AST Publishing House, 2003. P. 121 ..). The limiting scale of enlargement of artistic time and space (eternity, the globe) gives the events the character of being and gives them the meaning of their due.

The narrator ends the story with a curse on Judas. But the curse of Judas is inseparable in Andreev from the hosanna to Christ, the triumph of the Christian idea is inseparable from the betrayal of Iscariot, who managed to make mankind see the living God. And it is no coincidence that after the crucifixion of Christ, even "solid" Peter feels "in Judas someone who can command." There. S. 109.

L. Andreev is a romantic writer (with a personalistic, that is, a deeply personal type of consciousness, which was projected onto his works and, above all, determined their character, the range of topics and features of the worldview) in the sense that he did not accept evil in the world around him, the most important the justification for his existence on earth was creativity. Hence the high value of a creative person in his artistic world. In L. Andreev's story, Judas is the creator of a new reality, a new, Christian era, no matter how blasphemous it sounds for a believer.

Andreevsky's Judas takes on grandiose proportions, he becomes equal with Christ, is regarded as a participant in the re-creation of the world, its transformation. If at the beginning of the story Judas “dragged along the ground like a punished dog”, “Judas crawled away, hesitated hesitantly and disappeared”, then after what he did: “... all the time belongs to him, and he walks slowly, now the whole earth belongs to him, and he steps firmly, like a sovereign, like a king, like one who is infinitely and joyfully alone in this world. ”Andreev L.N. Judas Iscariot // Prose. - M.: Publishing house AST, 2003. S. 119.

In the context of the story, the death of Judas is as symbolic as the crucifixion of Jesus. In a reduced plan, and at the same time as a significant event, rising above ordinary reality and ordinary people, the suicide of Judas is described. The crucifixion of Jesus on the cross is symbolic: the cross is a symbol, a center, a convergence of Good and Evil. Judas hanged himself on a broken, crooked branch of a wind-worn, half-withered tree, but on a mountain, high above Jerusalem. Deceived by people, Judas voluntarily leaves this world after his teacher.

Conclusion on the third chapter

Judas, perhaps the most mysterious (from a psychological point of view) gospel character, was especially attractive to Leonid Andreev with his interest in the subconscious, in the contradictions in the human soul. In this area, L. Andreev was "terribly quick-witted."

L. Andreev does not justify the act of Judas, he is trying to unravel the riddle: what guided Judas in his act? The writer fills the gospel plot of betrayal with psychological content, and the following stand out among the motives:

• * rebelliousness, rebelliousness of Judas, an irrepressible desire to solve the mystery of man (to find out the price of "others"), which is generally characteristic of the heroes of L. Andreev. These qualities of Andreev's heroes are to a large extent a projection of the soul of the writer himself - a maximalist and rebel, paradoxicalist and heretic;
• * loneliness, rejection of Judas. Judas was despised, and Jesus was indifferent to him. Judas received recognition only for a short time - when he defeated the strong Peter in throwing stones, but then again it turned out that everyone went ahead, and Judas again trailed behind, forgotten and despised by everyone. By the way, the language of L. Andreev is extremely picturesque, plastic, expressive, in particular, in the episode where the apostles throw stones into the abyss. The indifference of Jesus, as well as disputes about who is closer to Jesus, who loves him more, became the provoking factor for the decision of Judas;
• * Resentment, envy, immeasurable pride, the desire to prove that it is he who loves Jesus most of all are also characteristic of St. Andrew's Judas. To the question posed to Judas, who will be the first in the Kingdom of Heaven near Jesus - Peter or John, the answer follows, which amazed everyone: the first will be Judas! Everyone says that they love Jesus, but how they will behave in the hour of trials - Judas strives to check this. It may turn out that “others” love Jesus only in words, and then Judas will triumph. The act of a traitor is the desire to test the love of others for the Teacher and to prove their love.

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INTRODUCTION

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

1.1 Life path of the writer

1.2 The place of the story "Judas Iscariot" in the work of L. Andreev

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

2.1 Biblical fundamental principle of the plot, archetypal features of images and their symbolic function

2.2 Rethinking the gospel idea and the image of the traitor Judas in the literary tradition

CHAPTER 3

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

3.2 The originality of the system of images of "Judas Iscariot"

CONCLUSION

LITERATURE

INTRODUCTION

The work of L. Andreev is relevant for any time and any era, despite the fact that the peak of his popularity fell on the distant 1902 - 1908, when the main works were written and published: "The Life of Vasily Thebes" and "Darkness", "Judas Iscariot" and Human Life. There is no doubt that the writer was one of the most published and widely 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 in the years of his creative flourishing, Leonid Andreev continued to be the object of attacks by critics and various 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 the descendants and today's researchers of L. Andreev's work do not doubt either his artistic value of his work, or their depth of 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 foreshadowing of the aesthetic systems of the century, the search and suffering of his heroes is a prophetic sign of impending catastrophes, many of which 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, showed that his seemingly artificial tragedy is a property of the time, and not the arbitrariness of the playing artist. And 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 they carry the concept of “eternal” themes and universal ideas. This is what characterizes the relevance of our work, since in the short story "Judas Iscariot", as the title implies, these topics are central.

A lot of works have been written about Andreev. During the life of Andreev, they wrote about him very often, especially in 1903-1908, when his talent reached its culminating height. In our work, we relied primarily on studies devoted to the philosophical problems of the works of L. Andreev and his direct story "Judas Iscariot".

These are, first of all, articles by Merezhkovsky, Voloshin and Blok, in whose works philosophical problems also occupy a prominent place.

Merezhkovsky, seeing in Andreev an important sign of the times, devoted two articles to his work.

The first is "In monkey paws" (1907). Here are considered "The Life of Basil of Thebes", "Judas Iscariot", as well as three dramas - "To the Stars", "Sava" and "The Life of a Man". In the thought of the nihilism of Andreev's world, Merezhkovsky is strengthened by the consideration of "Judas Iscariot" as a story about the unresurrected Christ and the coming of the Antichrist in the form of Judas.

M. Voloshin, in his works devoted to the work of L. Andreev, criticizes his approach to the gospel stories in the stories "Eleazar" and "Judas Iscariot". “An artist has no right to torture his reader with impunity and senselessly,” writes Voloshin, who categorically disagrees with the transformation of a bright gospel tragedy into a phenomenon of “the horror of a corpse” (“Eleazar”) and “Christ-dummy” (“Judas Iscariot”). Voloshin M. Leonid Andreev and Fedor Sologub // Faces of creativity. L., 1988. - S.448

Alexander Blok is more correct in his judgments. He writes about Andreev (“In Memory of Leonid Andreev”) in 1919 after the death of the writer, at the end of his life, finally, after the revolution had taken place in Russia and managed to manifest itself, putting a person before the real tragedy of history.

Soviet literary criticism (late 50s - 80s), despite the forced sociological and ideological contexts, strove for the most objective reading of Leonid Andreev's work and, on the whole, assessed him as a talented artist who quite adequately experienced the crisis of his time and reflected it in complex , contradictory images on the border of realism and modernism. This idea is most interestingly and succinctly expressed in the work of V.A. Keldysh “Realism and Modernism”. In addition, we can note the works of K.D. Muratova, Yu.A. Babicheva, V.I. Bezzubova, S.Yu. Yasensky, L.A. Jezuitova, Yu.N. Chirvy, M.Ya. Ermakova.

The work of L. Andreev was also intensively studied in the 90s of the last century. The most complete picture of it is given by the interuniversity collection of scientific papers “Aesthetics of dissonances. About the work of L.N. Andreev, published in Orel for the 125th anniversary of the writer's birth in 1996. Its content allows us to judge the main trends in the study of Andreev's work. These are: Andreev's work in the context of Russian classics; Andreev and the 20th century: the problem of influences and typological contacts; Andreev and foreign literature: the problem of a single ideological and aesthetic space; philosophical foundations of the Andreev method; religious subtext of Andreev's creativity; poetics and its linguistic aspects; Andreev's creativity in the modern Russian school.

The philosophical problems of L. Andreev's works during this period are considered in his work "Leonid Andreev and the pantragic in the culture of the 20th century" by I.Yu. Iskrzhitskaya. Directly the story "Judas Iscariot" makes N.N. Arsentiev in one of the chapters called "The Concept of Utopian Consciousness in the Works of Leonid Andreev", his monograph "The Formation of the Anti-Utopian Genre in Russian Literature".

Andreev's work is being actively studied by Oryol scientists. Conferences were held here and interuniversity collections were published in the 70s and 80s; on the basis of the Oryol Pedagogical Institute, a monograph by E.A. Mikheicheva "On the psychologism of Leonid Andreev".

The fact that recently the problem of philosophical searches in the work of Leonid Andreev has been raised more and more often is also evidenced by a voluminous chapter in the monograph by L.A. Kolobaeva "The concept of personality in Russian literature at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries." Here Andreev finds himself in an interesting and natural context: Shestov, Remizov, Camus.

However, despite the abundance of works, we believe that Leonid Andreev is an artist whose work cannot be studied to the end, just as it is impossible to capture at once the entire philosophical depth of his works. Therefore, we have chosen for analysis one of his stories "Judas Iscariot" as the most indicative of the writer's artistic and moral system.

Thus, the purpose of our work is to analyze the story of Leonid Andreev (1898-1907) "Judas Iscariot" in the context of philosophical problems and a comprehensive examination of the system of images in the work, subject to the expression of the moral position of the author.

The object of study is the philosophical problems and organization of the system of images in L. Andreev's story.

The subject is the formulation of moral questions in the work.

The study of the main periods of L. Andreev's work and the identification of the place in it of the story "Judas Iscariot";

Consideration of the gospel sources of the problems of the story and their refraction in world culture;

Identification of the specifics of the figurative system of the writer's story;

Analysis of the features of the moral position of the author in the story;

Synthesis of conclusions about the artistic and philosophical value of "Judas Iscariot".

The practical significance of our work lies in the fact that the materials and main provisions set forth in it can be used in the development of lecture and practical courses and special courses devoted to the study of literature of the early 20th century. The archetypal problems of the work may be of interest to specialists in the field of cultural studies, religious studies, philosophy and psychology.

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

1.1 Writer's life

For a long time, the work and personality of the writer L. Andreev were forgotten, his “second coming” occurred in 1930 with the release of a collection of short stories. Grigoriev A.L. Leonid Andreev in the world literary process // Russian Literature. 1972. No. 3. P. 31. Meanwhile, the multifaceted philosophical system of the writer and his undoubted artistic talent clearly do not deserve neglect. In addition, from the first steps in literature, Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev aroused a keen and heterogeneous interest in himself. Having begun to be printed from the end of the 1890s, by the middle of the first decade of the 20th century. he reached the zenith of fame, became almost the most fashionable writer of those years. But the fame of some of his writings was almost scandalous: Andreev was accused of a penchant for pornography, psychopathology, and a denial of the human mind. Iezuitova L. A. Creativity of Leonid Andreev (1892-1906). L .: Publishing house Leningrad. un-ta, 1976. S. 27.

There was another erroneous point of view. In the work of the young writer, they found indifference to reality, "aspiration to space." Whereas all the images and motives of his works, even conditional, abstract ones, were born from the perception of a particular era.

This feature of the writer's individuality was to a certain extent due to the circumstances of his life. He was the eldest in a large family of an Oryol official. They lived more than modestly. As a young man, Andreev was bold and energetic (on a dare he lay between the rails under the train rumbling above him). However, already in those years he was visited by bouts of depression. Apparently, the bleak situation was painfully responding: the vulgar province, the humiliation of poverty, the petty-bourgeois life in his own home. In a difficult moment, Andreev even decided to die: chance saved him. A rare spiritual intimacy with her mother, Anastasia Nikolaevna, who firmly believed in the chosen path, the lucky star of her son, helped to overcome the painful state of health. This mutual tender affection continued until the last days of Andreev. Anastasia Nikolaevna simply refused to accept his death as a reality and a year later followed dear Lenusha. Iezuitova L. A. Creativity of Leonid Andreev (1892-1906). L .: Publishing house Leningrad. un-ta, 1976. S. 28.

The complexity of his own experiences, the contrasts of inner motives gave Andreev the first idea of ​​the ups and downs of the human soul. There are painful questions about the essence of life, interest in philosophy, especially the works of A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche, E. Hartmann. Their bold reasoning about the contradictions of will and reason in many ways reinforces Andreev's pessimistic worldview, nevertheless causing polemical reflections in favor of man.

Interest in the social sciences leads after graduating from the Oryol gymnasium to the law faculty of Moscow University. By that time, Andreev (after the death of his father) becomes the head of the family. At the end of the course (1897), he practiced law and published judicial essays, feuilletons, more often in the newspaper Courier.

From the end of the 1890s. Andreev makes contacts with writers. His first story "Bargamot and Garaska" (1898) was highly appreciated by M. Gorky, attracted the author to cooperate in the well-known magazines "Life", "Journal for All", introduced him to members of the literary circle, called "Environments". Here Andreev became close to his peers N. Teleshov, Iv. Bunin, A. Kuprin, becoming one of the most active participants in these meetings. Andreev also successfully entered the creative team grouped by Gorky under the auspices of the Znanie publishing house.

And yet, it cannot be said that Andreev has found true comrades-in-arms. The warm friendship that began with Gorky very soon turned into sharp ideological differences between them. Bunin, Kuprin, too, turned out to be alien to the artistic searches of Andreev. For some period, his work excited A. Blok; They got to know each other, but there was no close communication. The writer began to clearly feel the emptiness around him. “Who am I?” he would ask later. “For noble-born decadents, a contemptible realist; for hereditary realists, a suspicious symbolist." Bogdanov A.V. "Between the wall and the abyss." Leonid Andreev and his work / / Andreev L.N. Sobr. cit.: In 6 volumes. T.1.M.: Khudozh. lit., 1990. P.8. Andreev's confusion was understandable: he highly appreciated many writers of a realistic direction - Chekhov, Garshin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky - as his teachers; but he also acutely felt his isolation from the literary traditions of the nineteenth century. The new era - the era of despair and hope - dictated a new content to his work and demanded new forms for this content. But social upheavals were not the main source of that anxiety, that "madness and horror" that filled Andreev's works. The quintessence of Andreev's mentality is the tragedy of a lonely person, whom the loss of faith in God - the greatest loss of this era - put in the face of the Absurd.

Even on "Wednesday" Andreev was given a well-aimed nickname, "relocated" at his own request from the "Newly Designed Lane" to the "Vagankovo ​​Cemetery". Thus, the writer's interest in the problems of death and new literary forms was recorded. No less deeply than the otherworldly, he felt the mystery of life. There. C.8.

In Andreev's early prose, they immediately saw Chekhov's tradition in the depiction of the "little man". According to the choice of the hero, the degree of his deprivation, the democratism of the author's position, Andreev's stories such as "Bargamot and Garaska", "Petka in the Country" (1899), "Angel" (1899), are quite comparable with Chekhov's. But the youngest of his contemporaries, Andreev, spoke more than once about the manifestation of “human depths unexpectedly for ourselves”, about the “deep secret” of life itself Bogdanov A.V. "Between the wall and the abyss." Leonid Andreev and his work / / Andreev L.N. Sobr. cit.: In 6 volumes. T.1.M.: Khudozh. lit., 1990. P.9. . But he connected the deep, secret in his work with the spiritual atmosphere of the time, “verifying” some of its tendencies in the experiences of the individual. The hero's soul became a receptacle for certain common sufferings, darings, and motives. Andreev remained indifferent to social processes, he was interested in their reflection in the inner being of people. Therefore, the writer was reproached for an abstract interpretation of important social events. And he created the psychological document of the era.

V. L. Andreev, the eldest son of the writer, conveyed the words of his father, uttered in 1916: “There are things that cease to operate at certain periods of history. For example, now the Red Laughter should not act and does not act in the same way as it did in 1904. There. C.9. In this story, all faces and scenes are given in a generalized way, as a symbol of the senseless slaughter, the general madness of its participants, the whole earth that has lost "songs and flowers." There are no facts of the Russo-Japanese war, but there is an expressively expressed general feeling of horror, moreover, an anticipation of the crimes of militarism - the red, bloody laughter of death. The story truly struck contemporaries of the events of 1903-1904. painful emotions, frightening colors of blazing fire, festering wounds, corpses. And the image of “red laughter”, having overcome the boundaries of a specific time, became a symbol of the madness of any bloodshed. Andreev's story Judas Iscariot

With faith in the infallible perfection of the builders of a new life, in their effective influence on the unconscious human mass, Andreev accepted the first Russian revolution. He wrote to V. Veresaev: “And the blessed rain of the revolution. Since then you have been breathing, since then everything is new, not yet realized, but huge, joyfully terrible, heroic. New Russia. Everything is in motion." Bogdanov A.V. "Between the wall and the abyss." Leonid Andreev and his work / / Andreev L.N. Sobr. cit.: In 6 volumes. T.1.M.: Khudozh. lit., 1990. P.10. The explosion of a dead, stagnant atmosphere was welcomed by the writer. And he himself enthusiastically took part in demonstrations and rallies. Sympathizing with the liberation movement, Andreev gave his apartment to the members of the Central Committee of the RSDLP for a meeting, for which he was arrested and imprisoned in the Taganka prison. While there, he responded with joyful surprise to the events in the northern capital: "How well the St. Petersburg workers are holding on - where so much endurance, incorruptibility, political sense." There. C.10.

The hopes of the writer seemed to come true. This feeling, however, proved unstable. He expected too serious an internal change in the people's consciousness from the revolution. Much later (1911), summing up his impressions of her, Andreev wrote: “It is not the moment that is dramatic when the worker goes out into the street, but the one when the verbs of the new life touch his ears for the first time, when his still timid, inglorious and inert thought suddenly rears up like an angry horse, with a single leap carries the rider into a luminous wonderland. There. P. 11. Miracles of spiritual rebirth in the revolutionary struggle of 1905-1907. Did not happen. And the dark element of hatred, destruction, according to Andreev, has increased. These sad observations were painful. Nevertheless, he did not stop his search for the rational forces of the revolution. Creativity has acquired a dual sound.

In February 1906, Andreev witnessed the May Day demonstration in Helsingfors, spoke out against the autocracy at the July rally, and watched the congress of the Finnish Red Guard. The suppression of the Sveaborg uprising intensified the pessimistic mood, which he explained to Gorky: “And, as everywhere, on the one hand, the weak, ragged, mentally underdeveloped proletariat, and on the other, the stupid, fat and strong bourgeoisie ...” Ibid.S. eleven. There could be no other reaction, since Andreev understood the rebirth of the people as maximalist (universal, unprecedentedly deep) and textbook (freedom, equality, fraternity). The outcome of 1906 was generally unbearably painful for the writer, he lost his beloved wife (Alexandra Mikhailovna Veligorskaya). The feeling of the "kingdom of darkness" (A. Lunacharsky) grew to the limit and resulted in the darkest work - "Tsar Hunger".

Soon, in February 1907, Andreev finished the story "Judas Iscariot and Others", where a radically revised biblical story expressed his idea of ​​the meaning and nature of the development of the world. The connection “with the common, human” took place, although the unrest of the current time was not forgotten. Andreev created an unusually deep, passionate and very complex thing. Rightly attributed it to the literary masterpieces Lunacharsky. Blok again said most penetratingly about Judas Iscariot: “The soul of the author is a living wound” Blok A. In memory of Leonid Andreev // Blok A. Sobr. op. In 6 vols. T. 5. M., 1971. S. 198. . And the writer himself suggested that the story "will be scolded from the left, from above and from below." Bogdanov A.V. "Between the wall and the abyss." Leonid Andreev and his work / / Andreev L.N. Sobr. cit.: In 6 volumes. T.1.M.: Khudozh. lit., 1990. P.13. Why? The reasons will be discussed further in the second part of this chapter.

In the further work of Andreev in the late 1900s. there are no large, to match "Judas Iscariot" things. However, even in this period of time, the previous trend is visible - a combination of extremely “cruel” (“Darkness”) works with enlightened, even romantic ones (“From a story that will never be finished”, “Ivan Ivanovich”). Both were caused by reflections on the revolution.

The appearance in the play “Black Masks” (1908) of the messengers of darkness and the “clothing in darkness” of the soul of the protagonist Andreev interpreted himself. Shortly before his death, he wrote to N. Roerich: “Here it is, the Revolution, lighting fires in the midst of darkness and waiting for those invited to its feast. Here she is, surrounded by the Called...or the Uninvited?" There. P.13. In a conditionally generalized drama, Andreev conveyed the fear and pain of the dark, instinctive urges of people that increased in difficult years of upheaval. However, even here the original bright idea is not forgotten - the lit fires, the lamps of the revolution.

The first Russian revolution brought Andreev deep - not without reason - disappointments, at the same time sated his dream, thoughts about the world and man with new content, and creativity with bright achievements.

In the last decade before his early death, Andreev experienced many severe mental hardships. One of the most, apparently, painful experiences was caused by a noticeable decline in interest in his writings of critics and readers. This fact, I think, can be explained by the changing demands of the era.

The tense time differentiated the social forces. Andreev occupied a certain intermediate position. The revolution as an approximation to the ideal of the future continued to excite the writer. But his doubts about the viability of the liberation movement grew. He penetrated deeper and deeper into the "sphere of sophisticated" mental processes, comprehending very important phenomena of human existence, avoiding, however, both the topic of the day and direct access to his contemporary. This search was appreciated by a few (old friends - no).

Andreev's separation from his former literary environment was facilitated by some moments of the writer's personal biography. He married a second time - to Anna Ilyinichna Denisevich, settled in St. Petersburg. This marriage was not happy, like the first, although Anna Ilyinichna idolized her husband. The new family led a secular lifestyle, leaving for summer cottages in Finland. Akin to the locality, Andreev bought land on the Black River and built a large house, where he spent many months of the year, and with the outbreak of the First World War he lived almost constantly.

The world cherished by the writer inexorably disintegrated, the former bright ideas receded. The inhumane wave in literature was painfully received. In 1912, he wrote to Gorky about V. Ropshin's novel: “This penitent bomber with his sour eructations is disgusting to me. I would prefer his worst romance to the magnificent truth. In the same year, he said in an interview: “We had a holy hero, whom even the reaction recognized ... I'm talking about a revolutionary. But the authors, similar to Ropshin, tried to soil this hero too ”Bogdanov A.V. "Between the wall and the abyss." Leonid Andreev and his work / / Andreev L.N. Sobr. cit.: In 6 volumes. T.1.M.: Khudozh. lit., 1990. P.14. . For Andreev, a difficult time of new self-determination was coming. He returned to the theme of the popular movement that worried him from new positions in the novel Sashka Zhegulev (1911).

Andreev's stories in the 1910s multi-dark. He wrote about the origins of inner devastation or endless fatigue (“Ipatov”, 1911; “He”, 1912; “Two letters”, 1916), about the death of beauty in an atmosphere of selfishness and vulgarity (“Flower under the foot”, 1911; “German and Marta, 1914), about the perverse fate of a person (“Suitcases”, 1915), created an poignantly ironic sketch of the “Lilliputian” environment of the great Tolstoy (“Death of Gulliver”, 1910).

Andreev sympathized with Russia's participation in the First World War. Having entered into a controversy that was conducted around Gorky's article "Two Souls" (1915), he called for "encouragement of the people", "who one way or another, whether badly or well, is fighting for their lives" Ibid. P.14. At the beginning of hostilities, he spoke "not for the Russia of facts, but for the Russia of dreams and ideals." Much later (March 1917) he explained this judgment in the following way: “It is only spelled “war”, but is called a revolution. In its logical development, this "war"<...>will end<....>European revolution" Ibid. P. 14. . It seemed to Andreev that the battle against German militarism would unite everyone for the “common good and sacred goal: humanity.” Ibid. P.14.

Considerations of such a high order nevertheless led the writer to an openly chauvinistic position. In "Letters on War" (November-December 1914), he advocated liberation from the "evil spells of Germanism." He sharply opposed the "not patriotic enough" writers - "Let the poets not be silent!" (October 1915). Andreev became an active contributor to the chauvinist newspaper Russkaya Volya, glorifying the exploits of his compatriots, the “new beauty of wrinkled faces” of soldiers “called for blood” (January 1917). And during the period of defeats of the Russian army (summer 1917), Bogdanov A.V. accused her of betrayal and cowardice. "Between the wall and the abyss." Leonid Andreev and his work / / Andreev L.N. Sobr. cit.: In 6 volumes. T.1.M.: Khudozh. lit., 1990. P.14. .

Such sentiments of Andreev were closely connected with his fear of a new wave of mass liberation movement. In the March days of 1917, he glorified the “resurrection of Russia from the face of dead peoples” Ibid. S.15, and on October 10 he proposed bringing an English squadron to St. Petersburg, fearing a civil war: “brotherly blood would be shed” in the “father’s house” Ibid. P.16. From Andreev's point of view, the front united the country, class battles divided it.

The duality of the writer's views was overcome to a certain extent on the pages of the story The Yoke of War (1916), which exposed the contradictions of wartime.

During the five years from 1912 to 1916 Andreev wrote eleven multi-act plays and a number of satirical miniatures. Most of them reflected the tense moments of the inner life of the characters. In a number of cases, disease states were reported to have a self-contained significance. The impact of vulgar everyday life on the human soul has acquired cosmic dimensions.

During L. N. Andreev's lifetime, he was called a decadent, a symbolist, a neo-realist - the nature of the artistic world comprehension was not defined. Decades later, the writer began to be brought closer to the expressionists. B.V. Mikhailovsky saw in his works “confusion of the subject”, plunged into the “sphere of abstract thinking” and “deforming the object” Bezzubov V.I. Leonid Andreev and the traditions of Russian realism. Tallinn, 1984. P.32. . Such judgments sounded almost accusatory. V. A. Keldysh expressed a different view: Andreev “interpreted the concept of reality in a purely “essential” spirit.” Bezzubov V.I. Leonid Andreev and the traditions of Russian realism. Tallinn, 1984. P.24. The dual aesthetic nature of the "artist's work" was established on the verge of realism and modernism.

Andreev's legacy, constantly subjected to sharp, accusatory assessments, is an integral part of Russian culture. And the writer himself, living in Finland and being in exile, could not exist outside the native atmosphere. “There is no Russia, there is no creativity either ... And it’s so creepy, empty and scary for me without my kingdom ...” Grigoriev A.L. Leonid Andreev in the world literary process // Russian Literature. 1972. No. 3. P. 33. - he wrote to N. Roerich. Anguish hastened his death.

L. Andreev was and remains a poetic, romantic, emotionally impulsive nature, an original and controversial artist-thinker who created his own unique artistic world. And we will note one more of his inalienable qualities - intolerance to dogmas, independence and freedom of thought - heresy. It manifested itself in creativity - in the choice of plots, themes, characters, in their interpretation, and in life - in behavior, relationships with loved ones, friends.

Leonid Nikolaevich was talented by nature, organically talented, his intuition was amazingly sensitive. In everything that concerned the dark sides of life, contradictions in the human soul, fermentation in the field of instincts, he was terribly quick-witted.

M. Gorky completed his literary portrait of L. Andreev - “the only friend among writers” with words that cannot but be recognized as fair: “he was what he wanted and knew how to be - a man of rare originality, rare talent and courageous enough in their search for truth” Gorky M. Poln. coll. cit.: In 25 vols. T. 7. M., 1970. P. 118. .

1.2 The place of the story "Judas Iscariot" in the work of L. Andreev

At the beginning of the 20th century, humanistic traditions of the 19th century were alive in Russian literature, which has always been distinguished by high spirituality. From the point of view of the ideological, worldview, the Silver Age, relying on the achievements of the realism of the 19th century, denied the gross materialism and aesthetic nihilism of the "sixties", protested against the simplified motivation of the individual's behavior, where everything is explained by social conditions, "environment"; against ideological schematism and frontal political radicalism, which was adhered to first by the Russian revolutionary democrats, then by the populists and, finally, by the Russian revolutionaries. The Silver Age rehabilitated "pure art", denied by the "sixties" intellectuals, and gave it a new meaning - philosophical, moral, religious (in addition to the actual aesthetic). The attention of writers to the aggravated philosophical and religious problems was innovative, because, we repeat, at turning points in history, there is always an increasing interest in understanding one's time from the standpoint of the eternal, imperishable. Religious quests were now recognized not only as not refuted by science, but even confirmed by it; Religion and art converged: religion was seen as its creative and aesthetic nature, and art was seen as a symbolic language of religious and mystical revelations Zapadova L.A. - 1997. - N 3. S. 103. .

The work of L. Andreev and his spiritual, philosophical foundations make it possible to identify many trends in the literary and artistic life of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. Andreev can be called one of the brightest figures of his time, he left an original mark on culture. In his creative method, traditional and innovative, realism and the latest trends are intricately intertwined; the artistic path of the writer reflected all the main signs of his era, which sought to develop an integral worldview, restore the broken "connection of times". “He is the synthesis of our era,” said his contemporary K.I. Chukovsky, - under the strongest magnifying glass. Iskrzhitskaya I.Yu. Leonid Andreev and the Pantragic in the Culture of the 20th Century // Aesthetics of Dissonances. About the work of L.N. Andreeva. Interuniversity collection of scientific papers for the 125th anniversary of the birth of the writer. Eagle, 1996. P. 119. Indeed, such features of Andreev's creativity as the desire for the integration of literature and philosophy, the attraction to parable and mythology, the complete denial of the canons of existing aesthetic systems, allow us to speak of the Andreev phenomenon of synthetism, which at the same time expresses the essential trends of all art at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries. The organic connection of Andreev's artistic searches with the art of his time became one of the reasons that determined the interest of modern scientists in his figure.

In creative terms, Andreev attracted attention with the first book of his stories, published in 1902. A young writer then appeared before the public, fully formed, having developed his own artistic form and his own figurative language. Only later, already in 1906, was the third volume published, which collected stories from approximately the same period, allowing us to judge how Andreev the artist developed. First of all, it should be noted that most of these stories of the third volume are extremely weak and forced. The author, obviously, groped for the way in which his talent could most freely develop.

First, he falls under the influence of the ethical-humanistic trend, so successfully expressed in the stories of V. Korolenko and partly - although in a different area - found a place for himself in M. Gorky. But this genre is so alien to L. Andreev that only weak, strained, non-artistic gizmos turned out. The author was also unlucky in another attempt - to learn the characteristic manner of A.P. Chekhov. This bad experience gave rise to a number of short stories: "The First Fee", "The Biter", "The Book", "The City" and especially "The Original Man". Obviously, only through long unsuccessful experiments did Andreev, who began his career, manage to find the genre that is so completely and completely presented in the first book of his stories.

In the first book of short stories by L. Andreev, the foundations of the peculiar development that the author had to go through were already laid. The themes developed here, as was indicated, later found a monstrously ugly development, but in the first book of stories they are still clothed in blood and whips, embedded in the living environment of living people, and interpreted quite realistically.

But by the second period, both artistic images and the language itself change quite dramatically. And they change in an original way. The realist artist, who was originally Andreev, embodied his thoughts in images of real life, in full pictures of life, where, along with the important and essential, the secondary is also given, where the perspective of the great and the small, the tragic and the ridiculous, the eternal and the transient is observed. And then, gradually, from this complete picture of real life, L. Andreev began to cut out and discard everything that seemed to him secondary, unimportant, unnecessary for the clarity and brightness of his thought, and what actually constituted this fullness and reality of the image. Thus, reducing the content of a work of art to the most necessary provisions for the development of thought and action, he at the same time potentiates these provisions, emphasizing and highlighting them and giving them a meaning greater than they have in real life. In this double way, L. Andreev created a special style of writing - very convex and bright, depressingly bright, but unnatural, hyperbolized, pretentious. And this pretentiousness of images also needed a pretentious language. By choosing mutually reinforcing expressions into condensed sentences, where image is piled on image, he achieves the special effect of hammering his thoughts into the reader's head.

In general, Andreev's manner of composition and style - although they were created under various influences - adapted to the main mood of the author; both this mood itself and his creative methods are painful, pretentious, unstable, with sharp jumps from vivid realism to wild fantasy, from tragic to caricature, from richness of images to skinny artificial schematization.

The story was written in a difficult time for Andreev, which also undoubtedly influenced the depth of his ideological and problematic plan. It was completed in 1907, and a little earlier - on November 28, 1906 - the beloved wife of the writer Alexander Mikhailovna died. Just a few words of dedication tell us a lot about what this woman meant in Andreev's life. Here is how Andreev V.V. Veresaev describes his life in Capri, where he left in December 1906: deeper. There are ties that cannot be destroyed without irreparable damage to the soul. Iezuitova L. A. Creativity of Leonid Andreev (1892-1906). L .: Publishing house Leningrad. un-ta, 1976. P.25.

The first thing Andreev wrote in Capri was the story "Judas Iscariot", the idea of ​​which he had been hatching for a long time - since 1902. Therefore, not only the events of Russian history - the defeat of the first Russian revolution and the rejection of revolutionary ideas by many - caused the appearance of this work, but also the internal impulses of L. Andreev himself. From a historical point of view, the theme of apostasy from past revolutionary hobbies is present in the story. L. Andreev also wrote about this. However, the content of the story, especially over time, goes far beyond the specific socio-political situation. The author himself wrote about the concept of his work: “Something on the psychology, ethics and practice of betrayal”, “A completely free fantasy on the topic of betrayal, good and evil, Christ and so on.” Iezuitova L. A. Creativity of Leonid Andreev (1892-1906). L .: Publishing house Leningrad. un-ta, 1976. P. 216. . The story of Leonid Andreev is an artistic philosophical and ethical study of human vice, and the main conflict is philosophical and ethical.

If you build the heroes of Andreev in genealogical chains, then the direct predecessor of Judas should be called King Herod (“Sabbas”), who brought himself closer to Christ with the torments of self-torture, eternal and terrible penance as punishment for the murder of his own son. But Judas is more difficult than Herod. He does not just want to be the first after Christ to revel in the grief of his betrayal. He wants to stand at least next to Christ, putting under his feet a world unworthy of him. “He, brother, is a bold and intelligent man, Judas,” Andreev said to Gorky. “... You know, if Judas were convinced that Jehovah himself was before him in the person of Christ, he would still betray him. To kill God, to humiliate him with a shameful death - this, brother, is not a trifle! There. P.216.

In the story, created according to the evangelical plot, Andreev's reaction to the events of the current time is easily read. The writer conveys his feelings in all their sharpness: hatred of the cruel and cunning authorities in politics (High Priest Anna and his henchmen), painful perception of the dark unconscious townspeople and villagers, irony in relation to part of the intelligentsia, looking only for themselves a place under the sun (disciples of Jesus ), and the dream of ascetics sacrificing themselves for the salvation of mankind. But concrete-temporal accents are only a fraction of the generalizations achieved in the story.

We must pay tribute to the artistic courage of the writer, who ventured to turn to the image of Judas, all the more so to try to understand this image. Indeed, from a psychological point of view, to understand means in some way to accept (in accordance with the paradoxical statement of M. Tsvetaeva, to understand is to forgive, not otherwise). Leonid Andreev, of course, foresaw this danger. He wrote: the story "will be scolded both from the right and from the left, from above and from below." Bogdanov A.V. "Between the wall and the abyss." Leonid Andreev and his work / / Andreev L.N. Sobr. cit.: In 6 volumes. T.1.M.: Khudozh. lit., 1990. P.10. And he turned out to be right: the accents that were placed in his version of the gospel story (“The Gospel According to Andreev”) turned out to be unacceptable for many contemporaries, among whom was L. Tolstoy: “Terrible disgusting, falsehood and lack of a sign of talent. The main thing is why? There. P.11. At the same time, the story was highly appreciated by M. Gorky, A. Blok, K. Chukovsky and many others.

Jesus as a character in the story also evoked sharp rejection (“Jesus composed by Andreev, in general the Jesus of Renan’s rationalism, the artist Polenov, but not the Gospel, a very mediocre, colorless, small person,” A. Bugrov Brodsky M.A. “Judas Iscariot” Leonida Andreeva (Material for discussion), M., 2000, p. 56.), and images of the apostles (“There should be approximately nothing left of the apostles. Only wet,” V. V. Rozanov Ibid., p. 76 ), and, of course, the image of the central character of “Judas Iscariot” (“... L. Andreev’s attempt to present Judas as an extraordinary person, to give his actions a high motivation was doomed to failure. The result was a disgusting mixture of sadistic cruelty, cynicism and love with anguish. The work L. Andreeva, written at the time of the defeat of the revolution, at the time of black reaction, is essentially an apology for betrayal... This is one of the most shameful pages in the history of Russian and European decadence,” I. E. Zhuravskaya Ibid., p. 76 ). There were so many derogatory reviews about the scandalous work in the criticism of that time that K. Chukovsky was forced to declare: “In Russia it is better to be a counterfeiter than a famous Russian writer” Ibid. S. 76. .

An unconditionally negative assessment of the image of Judas is given, for example, by L. A. Zapadova, who, having analyzed the biblical sources of the story “Judas Iscariot”, warns: “Knowledge of the Bible for a full perception of the story-tale and comprehending the “secrets” of “Judas Iscariot” is necessary in various aspects . It is necessary to keep in mind biblical knowledge, .. - in order not to succumb to the charm of the snake-satanic logic of the character, whose name the work named "Zadova L.A. / Russian literature. - 1997. - N 3. S.102. ; M. A. Brodsky: “The rightness of Iscariot is not absolute. Moreover, by declaring the shameful natural, and conscientiousness superfluous, cynicism destroys the system of moral guidelines, without which it is difficult for a person to live. That is why the position of Andreev's Judas is diabolically dangerous." Brodsky M.A. The last argument of Judas: // Russian literature. - 2001. - N 5. P.39.

Another point of view is no less widespread. For example, B.S. Bugrov states: “The deepest source of provocation [of Judas] is not the innate moral depravity of a person, but an inalienable property of his nature - the ability to think. The inability to get rid of "seditious" thoughts and the need for their practical verification - these are the internal impulses of Judas' behavior. - 1998. - N 5. P.39. ; P. Basinsky writes in the comments to the story: “This is not an apology for betrayal (as the story was understood by some critics), but an original interpretation of the theme of love and fidelity and an attempt to present the theme of revolution and revolutionaries in an unexpected light: Judas is, as it were, the “last” revolutionary, blowing up the most false meaning of the universe and thus clearing the way for Christ” Basinsky P.V. Comments // Andreev L.N. Prose. Publicism, - M .: OOO "Firma" Publishing House AST, 1999.- (Series "School of the Classics" - to the student and teacher). P.108. ; R. S. Spivak states: “The semantics of the image of Judas in Andreev's story is fundamentally different from the semantics of the gospel prototype. The betrayal of Andreev's Judas is a betrayal only in fact, and not in essence ”Spivak R.S. The phenomenon of creativity in understanding Russian literature of the early twentieth century: (“Judas Iscariot” and “Samson in chains” by L. Andreev) // Philological Sciences. - 2001. - N 6. P.90. . And in the interpretation of Yu. Nagibin, one of the modern writers, Judas Iscariot is the “beloved disciple” of Jesus Nagibin Yu. Favorite disciple // Stories of the blue frog .- M .: Moscow, 1991.

Conclusions on the first chapter

The incessant controversy, albeit with excesses in assessments, testified to the imperious attraction to Andreev. At the same time, of course, about the ambiguity of his artistic world.

The work of L. Andreev and his spiritual, philosophical foundations make it possible to identify many trends in the literary and artistic life of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. Andreev can be called one of the brightest figures of his time, he left an original mark on culture. In his creative method, traditional and innovative, realism and the latest trends are intricately intertwined; the artistic path of the writer reflected all the main signs of his era, which sought to develop an integral worldview, restore the broken "connection of times".

The story "Judas Iscariot" occupies a special place in the writer's work, it was his many contemporaries, colleagues and critics who recognized the writer's artistic pinnacle.

We must pay tribute to the artistic courage of the writer, who ventured to turn to the image of Judas, all the more so to try to understand this image. He wrote: the story "will be scolded both from the right and from the left, from above and from below." And he turned out to be right: the accents that were placed in his version of the gospel story (“The Gospel According to Andreev”) turned out to be unacceptable to many contemporaries.

CHAPTER 2. Origins and interpretation of the plot of betrayal

Judas Iscariot in world culture

2.1 Biblical fundamental principle of the plot, archetypal features

images and their symbolic function

For many centuries, one of the most solid moral guidelines for world literature has been such an ideological and ethical doctrine as Christianity. Undoubtedly, biblical themes and images can be classified as "eternal", due to the inexhaustibility of their spiritual content and universal, universal meaning.

Jude is traditionally regarded by researchers as "eternal" images. By origin - this is a biblical character.

Many biblical images, which artists, poets, and musicians have repeatedly referred to in their work for many centuries, are usually classified as “eternal”. The definitions of "eternal images" emphasize their recurrence (they are found in the works of writers of different eras and cultures) and symbolism, that is, the inexhaustibility of the spiritual content and the universal, universal meaning. Moving from work to work, getting into new contexts, they are rethought each time anew - depending on the time, era, culture that "sheltered" them. “Wandering” from text to text, they enrich the content of the new text, introducing into it the meanings “acquired” in previous contexts, and on the other hand, the new context inevitably affects the further understanding of this image.

Some researchers attribute "eternal images" to "supertypes" and even "archetypes", understanding the latter as the fundamental original schemes of representations, schemes of the human spirit, and, accordingly, artistic images that most fully reproduce human types. “Such universal symbols, prototypes, motives, schemes and patterns of behavior, etc., which underlie myths, folklore and culture itself as a whole, pass from generation to generation as “images of the collective unconscious” (K. Jung)” Nyamtsu A .E. Myth. Legend. Literature (theoretical aspects of functioning). Chernivtsi: Ruta, 2007. P.192. . Their symbolic function also points to the archaic roots of “eternal images”: “There is always something archaic in a symbol. Each culture needs a layer of texts that perform the function of archaism. The condensation of symbols here is usually especially noticeable. There. P.192. Such texts undoubtedly include the Bible, which exists in the mind of the reader/writer in two of its plans at once - as a cultural text, and as a religious, sacred text, which is also reflected in relation to the biblical images themselves.

Any appeal to biblical images and plots is perceived primarily against the background of the religious tradition, and then it is already “overgrown” with cultural associations and interpretations. And therefore, undoubtedly important is a good knowledge of the fundamental principle - the biblical myth, the original interpretation of the image of Judas in it.

In the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron, one of the most authoritative pre-revolutionary reference publications, it is said about Judas: “Judas Iscariot is one of the 12 apostles who betrayed his Teacher. He received his nickname from the city of Keriof, from which he was born (Ish-Keriof - a man from Keriofa); however, opinions differ on this point. In any case, he was the only Jew among the apostles, who were all Galileans. In the company of the apostles, he was in charge of their cash desk, from which he soon began to steal money, and then, deceived in the hope that Jesus Christ would be the founder of a great earthly kingdom in which all Jews would be princes and drown in luxury and wealth, he sold his Teacher for 30 pieces of silver (or shekels: 3080 k. \u003d 24 rubles gold), but from remorse he hanged himself. There were many attempts to unravel his transition from apostleship to betrayal ... ". Arsent'eva N. N. On the nature of the image of Judas Iscariot // Creativity of Leonid Andreev. Kursk, 1983. P.21.

According to the Gospels, Judas was the son of a certain Simon (John 6:71; 13:2, 26) and, probably, the only native of Judea among the disciples of Jesus, immigrants from Galilee (Galil) - the northern part of the Land of Israel (see Eretz Israel) . In the community of the disciples of Jesus, I. I. was in charge of the general expenses, that is, he was the treasurer and carried with him a “cash box” for alms. It is with this duty that Judas is associated with his greed, which served as a kind of loophole for diabolical suggestion. This is especially evident in the interpretation of the Gospel of John. Thus, when Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, anointed the feet of Jesus with precious nard oil, J. Jude said: “Why not sell this ointment for three hundred denarii and give it to the poor?” (John 12:5). According to the evangelist, “he said this not because he cared for the poor, but because there was a thief: he had a money box with him and carried what was put into it” (John 12:6).

According to the Gospels, Judas went to the “high priests” (Matt 26:14; historically there was only one high priest in the Jerusalem Temple) and offered to give Jesus away for a certain reward: “And he said: what will you give me, and I will betray him to you? They offered him thirty pieces of silver...” (Matt 26:15; compare Mar 14:10; Luke 22:4-5). However, researchers have long drawn attention to a certain paradox: thirty pieces of silver is too insignificant an amount at that time to satisfy greed, and even at the cost of such an act; moreover, Judas' act itself turns out to be strangely insignificant in order to be subject to payment in general, for Jesus was not difficult to seize, since He, proceeding from the Gospels themselves, was well known to the "high priests and" scribes, "especially the latter, for in many ways they his eyes were in contact with those of the preacher from Galilee.

According to the Gospels, from the moment of his agreement with the "high priests", Judas was looking for an opportunity to betray (Matt. 26:16) his Teacher. Such a case presented itself in connection with the approach of the Jewish Passover and some of the laws of its meeting. At the Last Supper, which is the first festive meal in Jerusalem, where it is forbidden to openly gather to celebrate the holiday (therefore, the evening meal, that is, the supper, is a mystery that takes place in a special place; it is also further understood by Christianity as a secret in the sense of revealing special Sacraments), Jesus and the apostles reclined, as was the custom of the Jews of that time (and the custom of the entire civilized ancient world), on special couches around the banquet table. Apparently, Judas is in the closest proximity to Jesus, as well as one of the disciples "whom Jesus loved" and who "lay at the breast of Jesus" (John 13:23); Church tradition unanimously identifies the latter with John the Theologian. Simon Peter asks this disciple, “whom Jesus loved,” to ask the Master whom He had in mind, uttering bitter and terrible words: “... truly, truly, I say to you that one of you will betray me” (John 13:21 ). The student, "crouching to his chest" (i.e., inaudibly to the others), asks: "Lord, who is this?" (John 13:25). The answer is heard by Judas, who is nearby, and it is to him that Jesus gives a dipped piece of bread, indicating the traitor: “Jesus answered: the one to whom I, having dipped a piece of bread, will serve. And he dipped a piece and gave it to Judas Simon Iscariot” (John 13:26). According to the rest of the synoptic gospels, Jesus does not point to a traitor, but simply says that he is one of the Twelve who are at the same table with Him (Matt. 26:21-23; Mark 14:18-21). At the same time, Jesus again mysteriously says that this is how it should be (“the Son of Man goes as it is written about Him” - Matt 26:24; Mar 14:21), i.e. the betrayal of one of the closest disciples is a necessary link in the general plan of Salvation, but “woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed: it would have been better for this man if he had not been born” (Matt. 26:24; cf. Mar. 14:21). Thus, the gospel text itself sets a strangely disturbing dialectic of the “benefit” of betrayal and the “programmed” act of Judas, which will further cause contradictory and rather “seditious” interpretations. According to the Gospel of John, it is after Jesus’ specific indication of a traitor, inaudible to others, that the devil’s plan finally matures in the soul of the annoyed Judas, and Jesus reads in his soul and even encourages him to act as quickly as possible: “And after this piece Satan entered into him. Then Jesus said to him: whatever you do, do it quickly. // But none of those reclining understood why He said this to him” (John 13:27-28). Judas gets up from the banquet table and goes into the night. Then, while Jesus and the rest of his disciples are already in Gethsemane, Judas leads a whole crowd to the place known to him - “a multitude of people with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and elders of the people” (Matt 26:47; cf. Mar 14:43; Luke 22:47, 52; John 18:3) -- and betrays him with a kiss (the proverbial Judas kiss). However, this episode also contains a certain amount of paradox and even illogicality: it was hardly necessary to point out Jesus among the Twelve by any sign to the people, for the people already knew Him; Perhaps it was necessary to indicate for the Roman legionnaires, for for them all these Jews were "on the same face."

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History of creation and analysis of the problems of the story

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. In the center of the composition is the narrative of a new look at the famous biblical parable.

Analyzing the problems of the story "Judas Iscariot", one can notice that the motive of betrayal is being considered. Judas is jealous of 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 in an inhuman manner. The general theme is the philosophical theme of the two worldviews.

The main characters of the story "Judas Iscariot"

Judas Iscariot is a two-faced character. Readers' dislike is caused by his portrait. He is shown either courageous or hysterical. Unlike the rest of the disciples, Judas is depicted without a halo and even outwardly uglier. The author calls him a traitor, and in the text there are comparisons 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"

The whole appearance of Judas coincides with his character. But, 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, listen to his breathy speeches.

The conflict occurs at the moment when Judas accuses people of depravity and Jesus moves away from him. Judas feels and perceives this quite painfully. The traitor believes that the entourage of 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 when they die, 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 hanged himself from a tree growing over a precipice, so that when the branch broke off, he would smash against the rocks.

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

In this story, Raskolnikov's theory can be traced: with the help of the murder of one person, transform the world. But, of course, it cannot be true.

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

We hope that the analysis of the story "Judas Iscariot" was useful to you. We recommend that you read this story in its entirety, but if you wish, you can also get acquainted with

Difficult, hard and maybe ungrateful
to approach the mystery of Judas, easier and calmer
not notice her, covering her with roses of church beauty.
S. Bulgakov 1

The story appeared in 1907, but L. Andreev mentions its idea as early as 1902. Therefore, not only the events of Russian history - the defeat of the first Russian revolution and the rejection of revolutionary ideas by many - caused the appearance of this work, but also the internal impulses of L. Andreev himself. From a historical point of view, the theme of apostasy from past revolutionary hobbies is present in the story. L. Andreev also wrote about this. However, the content of the story, especially over time, goes far beyond the specific socio-political situation. The author himself wrote about the concept of his work: "Something on the psychology, ethics and practice of betrayal", "A completely free fantasy on the theme of betrayal, good and evil, Christ and so on." The story of Leonid Andreev is an artistic philosophical and ethical study of human vice, and the main conflict is philosophical and ethical.

We must pay tribute to the artistic courage of the writer, who ventured to turn to the image of Judas, all the more so to try to understand this image. Indeed, from a psychological point of view understand means in some way to accept (in accordance with the paradoxical statement of M. Tsvetaeva understand- forgive, not otherwise). Leonid Andreev, of course, foresaw this danger. He wrote: the story "will be scolded both from the right and from the left, from above and from below." And he turned out to be right: the accents that were placed in his version of the gospel story ("The Gospel According to Andreev") turned out to be unacceptable for many contemporaries, among whom was L. Tolstoy: "Terrible disgusting, falsehood and lack of a sign of talent. The main thing is why ?" At the same time, the story was highly appreciated by M. Gorky, A. Blok, K. Chukovsky and many others.

Jesus as a character in the story also evoked sharp rejection ("Jesus composed by Andreev, in general the Jesus of Renan's rationalism, the artist Polenov, but not the Gospel, a very mediocre, colorless, small person," - A. Bugrov 2), and the images of the apostles ("From the Apostles approximately nothing should remain. Just wet," - V.V. Rozanov), and, of course, the image of the central character of "Judas Iscariot" ("... L. Andreev's attempt to present Judas as an extraordinary person, to give his actions a high motivation was doomed to failure "The result was a disgusting mixture of sadistic cruelty, cynicism and love with anguish. L. Andreev's work, written at the time of the defeat of the revolution, at the time of black reaction, is essentially an apology for betrayal ... This is one of the most shameful pages in the history of Russian and European decadence," I.E. Zhuravskaya). There were so many derogatory reviews about the scandalous work in the critics of that time that K. Chukovsky was forced to declare: "In Russia it is better to be a counterfeiter than a famous Russian writer" 3 .

The polarity of assessments of the work of L. Andreev and his central character in literary criticism has not disappeared even today, and it is caused by the dual nature of the image of Andreev's Judas.

An unconditionally negative assessment of the image of Judas is given, for example, by L.A. Zapadova, who, after analyzing the biblical sources of the story "Judas Iscariot", warns: "Knowledge of the Bible for a full perception of the story-story and comprehending the "mysteries" of "Judas Iscariot" is necessary in different aspects. at least not to succumb to the charm of the serpentine-satanic logic of the character whose name the work is named" 4 ; M. A. Brodsky: "The rightness of Iscariot is not absolute. Moreover, by declaring the shameful natural, and conscientiousness superfluous, cynicism destroys the system of moral guidelines, without which it is difficult for a person to live. That is why the position of Andreev's Judas is devilishly dangerous." 5

Another point of view is no less widespread. For example, B.S. Bugrov argues: “The deepest source of provocation [of Judas. - V.K.] is not the innate moral depravity of a person, but an inalienable property of his nature - the ability to think. Jude" 6; P. Basinsky writes in the comments to the story: “This is not an apology for betrayal (as the story was understood by some critics), but an original interpretation of the theme of love and fidelity and an attempt to present the theme of revolution and revolutionaries in an unexpected light: Judas is, as it were, the“ last ”revolutionary, blowing up the most false meaning of the universe and thus clearing the way for Christ" 7 ; R.S. Spivak states: "The semantics of the image of Judas in Andreev's story is fundamentally different from the semantics of the gospel prototype. The betrayal of Andreev's Judas is a betrayal only in fact, not in essence" 8 . And in the interpretation of Yu. Nagibin, one of the contemporary writers, Judas Iscariot is Jesus' "beloved disciple" (see Yu. Nagibin's story "The Beloved Disciple" below).

The problem of the Gospel Judas and its interpretation in literature and art has two facets: ethical and aesthetic, and they are inextricably linked.

L. Tolstoy had in mind the ethical line when he asked the question: "the main thing is why" to turn to the image of Judas and try to understand him, to delve into his psychology? What is the moral meaning of this in the first place? Deeply natural was the appearance in the Gospel not only of a positively beautiful personality - Jesus, the God-Man, but also of his antipode - Judas with his satanic beginning, personifying the universal vice of betrayal. Mankind also needed this symbol for the formation of a moral coordinate system. To try to somehow look at the image of Judas differently means to attempt to revise it, and, consequently, to encroach on the system of values ​​that has been formed over two millennia, which threatens with a moral catastrophe. After all, one of the definitions of culture is the following: culture is a system of restrictions, self-restraints that prohibit killing, stealing, betraying, etc. In Dante's Divine Comedy, as is well known, the ethical and aesthetic coincide: Lucifer and Judas are equally ugly both ethically and aesthetically - they are anti-ethical and anti-aesthetic. Any innovations in this area can have serious not only ethical, but also socio-psychological consequences. All this gives an answer to the question why the image of Judas was banned for a long time, as if a taboo (ban) was imposed on it.

On the other hand, to give up trying to understand the motives of Judas’ act means to agree that a person is a kind of puppet, only the forces of others act in him (“Satan entered” into Judas), in this case the person and responsibility for his actions does not carry. Leonid Andreev had the courage to think about these difficult questions, offer his own answers, knowing in advance that criticism would be harsh.

Starting to analyze the story of L. Andreev "Judas Iscariot", it is necessary to emphasize once again: a positive assessment of Judas - the gospel character - of course, is impossible. Here, the subject of analysis is the text of a work of art, and the goal is to identify its meaning on the basis of establishing relationships between different levels of elements of the text, or, most likely, determining the boundaries of interpretation, in other words, the spectrum of adequacy.

A few words about Leonid Andreev

Once, in the Russian National Library, I happened to get acquainted with the first issue of the journal Satyricon, which, as is well known, came out in 1908. The reason was the study of the work of Arkady Averchenko or, more likely, the collection of materials for writing a novel in which the action of one of the chapters takes place in St. Petersburg in 1908. On the last page of the Satyricon a portrait caricature of Leonid Andreev was located. The following was written:

“Rejoice that you are holding a number of the Satyricon in your hands. Rejoice that such a person is your contemporary... He once looked into the Abyss, and horror froze forever in his eyes. And since then he has laughed only with blood-curdling Red laughter.

The cheerful magazine was ironic over the gloomy-prophetic image of Leonid Andreev, referring to his stories "The Abyss" and "Red Laughter". Leonid Andreev was very popular in those years: his elegant style, expressiveness of presentation, and bold subject matter attracted the reading public to him.

Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev was born on August 9 (21 n.s.) 1871 in the city of Orel. His father was a tax surveyor, his mother was from the family of a bankrupt Polish landowner. Learned to read at the age of six “and read extremely much, everything that came to hand”. At the age of 11 he entered the Oryol Gymnasium, from which he graduated in 1891. In May 1897, after graduating from the law faculty of Moscow University, he was going to become a barrister, but unexpectedly received an offer from a lawyer friend to take the place of a court reporter in the Moskovsky Vestnik newspaper. Having received recognition as a talented reporter, two months later he had already moved to the Kurier newspaper. Thus began the birth of the writer Andreev: he wrote numerous reports, feuilletons, and essays.

Literary debut - the story "In the cold and gold" (zh. "Star", 1892, No. 16). At the beginning of the century, Andreev became friends with A.M. Gorky and together with him joined the circle of writers united around the Znanie publishing house. In 1901, the St. Petersburg publishing house "Knowledge", headed by Gorky, publishes "Stories" by L. Andreev. In the literary collections "Knowledge" also published: the story "The Life of Vasily of Thebes" (1904); the story "Red Laughter" (1905); the dramas "To the Stars" (1906) and "Sava" (1906); the story "Judas Iscariot and Others" (1907). In "Rosehip" (an almanac of a modernist orientation): the drama "The Life of a Man" (1907); the story "Darkness" (1907); "The Tale of the Seven Hanged Men" (1908); pamphlet "My Notes" (1908); drama Black Masks (1908); the plays "Anfisa" (1909), "Ekaterina Ivanovna" (1913) and "The One Who Gets Slaps" (1916); story "The yoke of war. Confessions of a Little Man About Great Days (1916). Andreev's last major work, written under the influence of the World War and the Revolution, is Notes of Satan (published in 1921).

I. Repin. Portrait of L. Andreev

Andreev did not accept the October Revolution. At that time, he lived with his family in a dacha in Finland, and in December 1917, after Finland gained independence, he ended up in exile. The writer died on September 12, 1919 in the village of Neivola in Finland, in 1956 he was reburied in Leningrad.

More detailed biography of Leonid Andreev can be read , or , or .

L. Andreev and L. Tolstoy; L. Andreev and M. Gorky

With L.N. Tolstoy and his wife Leonid Andreev mutual understanding is not found. "He scares me, but I'm not afraid" - So Lev Tolstoy spoke about Leonid Andreev in a conversation with a visitor. Sofia Andreevna Tolstaya in a “Letter to the editor” of Novoye Vremya accused Andreev of “ loves to enjoy the meanness of the manifestations of vicious human life". And, contrasting the works of Andreev with the works of her husband, she called " to help those unfortunates come to their senses, from whom they, gentlemen Andreevs, knock off their wings, given to everyone for a high flight to the understanding of spiritual light, beauty, goodness and ... God". There were other critical reviews of Andreev's work, they made fun of his gloominess, as in the above micropamphlet from the Satyricon, he himself wrote: “Who knows me from the critics? It seems no one. Loves? Nobody either."

Interesting statement M. Gorky , very closely acquainted with L. Andreev:

« Andreev, a person seemed to be spiritually poor; woven from the irreconcilable contradictions of instinct and intellect, he is forever deprived of the opportunity to achieve any inner harmony. All his deeds are "vanity of vanities", decay and self-deception. And most importantly, he is a slave of death and all life

The story of Leonid Andreev is also "Gospel of Judas" since the Betrayer is the main character there and performs the same function as in the heretical treatise, but the interaction between Judas and Jesus takes place more subtly:

Jesus does not ask Judas to betray him, but by his behavior compels him to do so;

Jesus does not tell Judas about the meaning of his atoning sacrifice, and therefore dooms him to the pangs of conscience, i.e., to put it in the language of the secret services, “uses the dark” unfortunate Judas. Andreev's "shifters" are not limited to this:

Judas not only overshadows many heroes of the gospel narrative, since they are clearly more stupid and primitive than him, but also replaces them with himself. Let's take a closer look at Andreev's "gospel inside out".

Illustration by A. Zykina.

The appearance of Judas in the text of the story does not bode well: “Jesus Christ was warned many times that Judas of Carioth is a man of very bad reputation and must be guarded against. Some of the disciples who were in Judea knew him well themselves, others heard a lot about him from people, and there was no one who could say a good word about him. And if the good ones condemned him, saying that Judas was greedy, cunning, inclined to pretense and lies, then the bad ones, who were asked about Judas, reviled him with the most cruel words ... And there was no doubt for some of the disciples that in his desire to approach Jesus was hiding some secret intention, there was an evil and insidious calculation. But Jesus did not listen to their advice, their prophetic voice did not touch his ears. With that spirit of bright contradiction, which irresistibly attracted him to the rejected and unloved, he resolutely accepted Judas and included him in the circle of the elect.».

The author at the beginning of the story tells us about some oversight of Jesus, excessive gullibility, hindsight, for which he had to pay later, and that his disciples were more experienced and far-sighted. Enough, but is he God after this, to whom the future is open?

Three options:

either he is not God, but a beautiful-hearted inexperienced person;

either He is God, and specially brought close to Himself a person who would betray Him;

or he is a man who does not know the future, but for some reason it was necessary to be betrayed, and Judas had a corresponding reputation.

The discrepancy with the Gospel is obvious: Judas was an apostle from among the twelve, he, like the other apostles, preached and healed; he was the treasurer of the apostles, however, a money-lover, and the apostle John directly calls him a thief:

« He said this not because he cared for the poor, but because there was a thief. He had a cash box with him and wore what was lowered there"(John 12, 6).

AT it is explained that

« Judas not only carried the donated money, but also took it away, i.e. secretly took a significant part of them for himself. The verb standing here (?????????), in Russian translated by the expression "carried", is more correctly translated "carried away". Why was a box of money entrusted to Judas by Christ? It is very likely that by this manifestation of trust, Christ wanted to influence Judas, to inspire him with love and devotion to Himself. But such trust did not have favorable consequences for Judas: he was already too attached to money and therefore abused the trust of Christ.».

Judas was not deprived of free will in the Gospel, and Christ knew in advance about his betrayal and warned about the consequences: “ However, the Son of Man goes as it is written about Him; but woe to that man through whom the Son of Man is betrayed: it was better that man would not be born » (Matthew 26, 24). This was said at the Last Supper, after Judas visited the high priest and received thirty pieces of silver for betrayal. At the same Last Supper, Christ said that the traitor was one of the apostles sitting with Him, and the Gospel of John says that Christ secretly pointed him to Judas (John 13, 23-26).

Earlier, even before entering Jerusalem, referring to the apostles, “ Jesus answered them: Have I not chosen twelve of you? but one of you is the devil. He spoke about Judas Simonov Iscariot, for this one wanted to betray Him, being one of the twelve "(John 6, 70-71). AT "Explanatory Bible" A.P. Lopukhin given the following interpretation of these words: So that the apostles do not fall into excessive arrogance in their position as constant followers of Christ, the Lord points out that among them there is one person who, by his disposition, is close to the devil. Just as the devil is in a constant hostile mood towards God, so Judas hates Christ as destroying all his hopes for the foundation of the earthly Messianic Kingdom, in which Judas could take a prominent place. This one wanted to betray Him. More precisely: "this one had - he was going, so to speak, to betray Christ, although he himself was not yet clearly aware of this intention of his" ».

Further on in the plot of the story, St. Andrew's Jesus constantly keeps Judas at a distance, forcing him to envy other disciples who are objectively more stupid than Judas, but enjoy the favor of the teacher, and when Judas is ready to leave Christ or the disciples are ready to expel him, Jesus brings him closer to himself, does not let him go. There are many examples, let's highlight a few.

The scene when Judas is accepted as one of the apostles looks like this:

Judas came to Jesus and the apostles, he tells something, obviously false. “John, without looking at the teacher, quietly asked Pyotr Simonov, his friend:

Are you tired of this lie? I can't take it any longer and I'm out of here.

Peter looked at Jesus, met his gaze, and quickly stood up.

- Wait! he said to a friend. Once again he looked at Jesus, quickly, like a stone torn from a mountain, moved towards Judas Iscariot and loudly said to him with wide and clear affability:

“Here you are with us, Judas.”.

Andrew's Jesus is silent. He does not stop the clearly sinning Judas, on the contrary, he accepts him as he is, among the disciples; moreover, verbally he does not call Judas: Peter guesses his desire and formalizes it in word and deed. In the Gospel, it was not so: apostolate was always preceded by a clear call by the Lord, often by the repentance of the one called, and always a radical change in life immediately after the call. So it was with the fisherman Peter: “ Simon Peter fell on Jesus' knees and said, Get out of me, Lord! because I am a sinful man... And Jesus said to Simon: Do not be afraid; from now on you will catch people "(Luke 5, 8, 10). So it was with the publican Matthew: Passing from there, Jesus saw a man sitting at the toll booth named Matthew, and he said to him, Follow me. And he got up and followed Him» (Matthew 9, 9).

Leonardo da Vinci. Last Supper

But Judas does not leave his way of life after the calling: he also lies and makes faces, but for some reason Andreev's Jesus does not speak out against it.

« Judas lied all the time, but they got used to it, because they didn’t see bad deeds behind a lie, and she gave Judas’ conversation and his stories a special interest and made life look like a funny, and sometimes terrible fairy tale. He readily admitted that sometimes he himself was lying, but assured with an oath that others lie even more, and if there is anyone in the world who is deceived, it is he, Judas.". Let me remind you that the gospel Christ spoke quite definitely about lies. He characterizes the devil thus: When he speaks a lie, he speaks his own, for he is a liar and the father of lies "(John 8, 44). But for some reason, Judas of St. Andrew's Jesus allows him to lie - except for the case when Judas lies for salvation.

To protect the teacher from the angry crowd, Judas flatters her and calls Jesus a mere deceiver and a vagabond, diverts attention to himself and lets the teacher go, saving Jesus' life, but he gets angry. There was no such thing in the Gospel, of course, but they really wanted to kill Christ for preaching more than once, and this was always resolved safely solely thanks to Christ himself, for example, by exhortation:

« Many good works have I shown you from my Father; for which of them do you want to stone me?” (John 10, 32) or just a supernatural departure away:« When they heard this, everyone in the synagogue was filled with rage, and they got up and drove him out of the city and led him to the top of the mountain on which their city was built to overthrow him; but he passed through the midst of them and withdrew"(Luke 4, 28-30).

Andrew's Jesus is weak, cannot cope with the crowd on his own, and at the same time condemns the man who made great efforts to save him from death; The Lord, as we remember, “welcomes intentions”, i.e. white lie is not a sin.

In the same way, Andrew's Jesus refuses to help Peter defeat Judas in throwing stones, and then pointedly does not notice that Judas defeated Peter; and he is angry with Judas, who proved the ingratitude of people in the village where Jesus preached earlier, but for some reason allows Judas to steal from the money box ... He behaves very contradictory, as if tempering Judas for betrayal; he inflates the pride and love of money of Judas and at the same time wounds his vanity. And all this is silent.

“And for some reason it used to be that Judas never spoke directly to Jesus, and he never directly addressed him, but on the other hand he often looked at him with kind eyes, smiled at some of his jokes, and if he had not seen him for a long time, he would ask : where is Judas? And now he looked at him, as if not seeing him, although as before, and even more stubbornly than before, he looked for him with his eyes every time he began to speak to his students or to the people, but either sat with his back to him and threw words over his head. his own against Judas, or pretended not to notice him at all. And no matter what he said, even if today it is one thing, and tomorrow it is completely different, even if it is the very thing that Judas also thinks, it seemed, however, that he always speaks against Judas. And for everyone he was a delicate and beautiful flower, a fragrant Lebanese rose, and for Judas he left only sharp thorns - as if Judas had no heart, as if he had no eyes and nose and no better than everyone else, he understands the beauty of tender and immaculate petals.

Naturally, Judas eventually grumbled:

« Why is he not with Judas, but with those who do not love him? John brought him a lizard - I would have brought him a poisonous snake. Peter threw stones - I would turn a mountain for him! But what is a venomous snake? Here a tooth is pulled out from her, and she lies like a necklace around her neck. But what is a mountain that can be torn down with hands and trampled underfoot? I would give him a Judas, a brave, beautiful Judas! And now he will perish, and Judas will perish with him.". Thus, according to Andreev, Judas did not betray Jesus, but took revenge on him for inattention, for dislike, for a subtle mockery of the proud Judas. What love of money is there! .. This is the revenge of a loving, but offended and rejected person, revenge out of jealousy. And Andrew's Jesus acts as a completely conscious provocateur.

Until the last moment, Judas is ready to save Jesus from the inevitable: With one hand betraying Jesus, with the other hand Judas diligently sought to frustrate his own plans". And even after the Last Supper, he tries to find an opportunity not to betray the teacher, he directly addresses Jesus:

"Do you know where I'm going, sir? I am going to deliver you into the hands of your enemies.

And there was a long silence, the silence of the evening and sharp, black shadows.

Are you silent, sir? 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?

And again silence, huge as the eyes of eternity.

“But you know that I love you. You know everything. Why are you looking at Judas like that? Great is the secret of your beautiful eyes, but is mine less so? Order me to stay!.. But you are silent, are you still silent? Lord, Lord, then, in anguish and torment, I searched for you all my life, searched and found! Set me free Take off the heaviness, it is heavier than mountains and lead. Do you not hear how the breasts of Judas of Carioth are cracking under her?

And the last silence, bottomless, like the last look of eternity.

- I'm going.

And who betrays whom here? This is an “inside-out gospel,” in which Jesus betrays Judas, and Judas prays to Jesus in the same way that Christ in the present Gospel prays to His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane to take the cup of suffering away from him. In the present Gospel, Christ prays to His Father for disciples, while St. Andrew's Jesus dooms the disciple to betrayal and suffering.

The Prayer for the Chalice icon by Caravaggio. Kiss of Judas

Even in the Gnostic "Gospel of Judas," Jesus is not so cruel:

Video clip 2. National Geographic. Gospel of Judas"

In general, Judas in Andreev often replaces both the disciples, and Christ, and even God the Father. Let's look at these cases briefly.

We have already said about the prayer for the cup: here Judas replaces the suffering Christ, and Andrew's Jesus acts as the Sabaoth in the Gnostic sense, i.e. like a cruel demiurge.

Well, according to Andreev, it is Judas who contextually acts as a loving “father God”: it is not for nothing that he, observing the sufferings of Jesus, repeats: “Oh, it hurts, it hurts a lot, my son, son, son. It hurts, it hurts a lot."

Another substitution of Judas for Christ: Judas asks Peter who he thinks Jesus is. " Peter whispered in fear and joy: "I think he is the son of the living God." And the Gospel says: Simon Peter answered Him: Lord! who should we go to? You have the words of eternal life: and we believed and knew that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God"(John 6, 68-69). The highlight is that Peter's gospel remark is addressed to Christ, not Judas.

Appearing after the death of Jesus to the apostles, Andrew's Judas again creates an inverted situation and replaces the resurrected Christ. "The disciples of Jesus sat in sad silence and listened to what was happening outside the house. There was still a danger that the revenge of the enemies of Jesus would not be limited to them alone, and everyone was waiting for the guards to invade ... At that moment, slamming the door loudly, Judas Iscariot entered».

And the gospel describes the following: On the same first day of the week in the evening, when the doors of the house where His disciples gathered were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the middle, and said to them: Peace be with you! "(John 20, 19).

Here the quiet and joyful appearance of the risen Christ is replaced by the noisy appearance of Judas, denouncing His disciples.

Judas' denunciations are permeated by this refrain: "Where was your love? ... Who loves ... Who loves! .. Who loves! Compare with the Gospel: “While they were eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter: Simon of Jonas! do you love me more than they do? Peter says to Him: Yes, Lord! You know I love you. Jesus says to him, feed my lambs. Another time he says to him: Simon Jonin! do you love me? Peter says to Him: Yes, Lord! You know I love you. Jesus says to him, feed my sheep. Says to him for the third time: Simon Jonin! do you love me? Peter was sad that he asked him for the third time: do you love me? and said to Him: Lord! You know everything; You know I love you. Jesus says to him, feed my sheep."(John 21:15-17).

Thus, after His resurrection, Christ restored the apostolic dignity to Peter, who had denied Him three times. In L. Andreev we see an inverted situation: Judas denounces the apostles three times for not loving Christ.

Same scene: “Judas fell silent, raising his hand, and suddenly noticed the remnants of the meal on the table. And with a strange astonishment, curiously, as if for the first time in his life he saw food, looked at it and slowly asked: “What is this? You ate? Perhaps you also slept? Compare: " When they still did not believe for joy and wondered, He said to them: Do you have any food here? They gave Him a piece of baked fish and honeycomb. And he took and ate before them"(Luke 24, 41-43). Again, Judas repeats exactly the opposite of the actions of the risen Christ.

« I'm going to him! - said Judas, stretching up his imperious hand. “Who is behind Iscariot to Jesus?” Compare: " Then Jesus said to them directly: Lazarus is dead; and I rejoice for you that I was not there, that you might believe; but let's go to him. Then Thomas, otherwise called the Twin, said to the disciples: let's go and we will die with him."(John 11, 14-16). To the courageous statement of Thomas, who, like the other apostles, could not confirm his deed on the night when Judas betrayed Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, L. Andreev contrasts the same statement of Judas, and Judas fulfills the promise, showing greater courage than other apostles.

By the way, Andreev's apostles are shown as fools, cowards and hypocrites, and against their background Judas looks more than profitable, he overshadows them with his sharp paradoxical mind, sensitive love for Jesus. Yes, this is not surprising: Thomas is stupid and cowardly, John is arrogant and hypocritical, Peter is a complete donkey. Jude describes him thus:

« Is there anyone stronger than Peter? When he shouts, all the donkeys in Jerusalem think that their Messiah has come, and also raise a shout". Andreev fully agrees with his favorite hero, as can be seen from this passage: “A rooster crowed, resentfully and loudly, as during the day, a donkey woke up somewhere, and reluctantly, with interruptions, fell silent.

The motif of the rooster crow in the night is associated with Peter's denial of Christ, and the roaring donkey, obviously, correlates with Peter weeping bitterly after the denial: And Peter remembered the word that Jesus had spoken to him: Before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times; and started crying» (Mark 14, 72).

Judas replaces even Mary Magdalene. According to Andreev, it was Judas who bought the myrrh with which Mary Magdalene anointed the feet of Jesus, while in the Gospel the situation is absolutely opposite. Compare: " Mary, taking a pound of pure precious ointment, anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the world. Then one of His disciples, Judas Simonov Iscariot, who wanted to betray Him, said: Why not sell this world for three hundred denarii and give it to the poor?"(John 12, 3-5).

Sebastian Richie. Mary Magdalene washing the feet of Christ

And in the light of what has been said above, the trick of Judas does not look at all strange, who, in response to the public question of Peter and John about which of them will sit next to Jesus in the Kingdom of Heaven, answered: “I! I'll be with Jesus!"

One can, of course, also talk about the inconsistency of the image of Judas, which was reflected in his behavior, and in his speeches, and even in his appearance, but the main intrigue of the story is not in this, but in the fact that the silent Andreevsky Jesus, without uttering a word , was able to make this intelligent, contradictory and paradoxical person become a great Traitor.

« And all - good and evil - will equally curse his shameful memory, and among all the peoples, what they were, what they are, he will remain lonely in his cruel fate - Judas from Kariot, the Traitor". The Gnostics, with their theory of "gentleman's agreement" between Christ and Judas, never dreamed of such a thing.

Soon, a domestic film adaptation of Andreev's story "Judas Iscariot" - "Judas, a man from Kariot" - should be released. I wonder what accents the director made. For now, you can only watch the trailer for the film.

Video fragment 3. Trailer "Judas, a man from Kariot"

M. Gorky recalled the following statement by L. Andreev:

“Someone argued to me that Dostoevsky secretly hated Christ. I don't like Christ and Christianity either, optimism is a nasty, thoroughly false invention... I think that Judas was not a Jew - a Greek, a Greek. He, brother, is an intelligent and daring man, Judas... You know, if Judas had been convinced that Jehovah himself was before him in the face of Christ, he would still have betrayed Him. To kill God, to humiliate Him with a shameful death - this, brother, is not a trifle!

It seems that this statement most accurately defines the author's position of Leonid Andreev.

The era of modernism, which came at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, was marked by the desire of many writers to give their own interpretation of the "eternal" plots and image that underlie all European culture. These are not only images of world literature - Prometheus, Hamlet, Don Quixote, Don Juan, but also images that have come to us from the pages of Holy Scripture - a book that provides answers to the most important spiritual questions of mankind. Artists of previous centuries relied on canonical plots and interpreted eternal truths in their own words. Modernist writers tried to change the traditional view of biblical imagery. One of these images turned out to be Judas, whose very name became a household name, meaning the highest degree of a person's moral fall - betrayal. Leonid Andreev, the most popular prose writer of the turn of the century, gave his understanding of the reasons that pushed one of the apostles of Christ to a monstrous act.

The theme of the story "Judas Iscariot" (1907) is one of the most relevant and exciting topics for everyone who survived the bloody events of the revolution of 1905-1907. Unlike his contemporary, the writer Fyodor Sologub, Leonid Andreev could not accept the idea that the nature of evil is petty and vile, that there is little grandiose, demonic in the guise of earthly evil. Being strongly influenced by the works of F. M. Dostoevsky, L. Andreev sought to find the ideological prerequisites underlying the Judas sin.

Judas and Christ

It immediately attracts attention that Judas is simultaneously opposed in the story to both Christ and the apostles. However, this opposition is different in the first and in the second case. It's not just about appearance: Jesus is an amazingly whole person who knows no doubt in his words and actions. In the guise of Judas, as well as in his speeches, gestures, deeds, duality is constantly emphasized. Even Judas' face doubles.

In the interpretation of L. Andreev, Judas committed the first betrayal long before the Garden of Gethsemane. Let us recall an incident that occurred in one of the villages, in which the preaching of Jesus was received with hostility and even wanted to stone him and his disciples. Judas, with lies and slanders against his teacher, begged for mercy from the angry inhabitants, but instead of gratitude, he met the wrath of Christ and the apostles. This episode clarifies the nature of Judas' relationship to Jesus: his love for his teacher is earthly love, and Judas values ​​a mortal man in Christ more than the immortal God the Son. Jesus was ready to pay for the truth of his teaching at the cost of his life.

The originality of the author's position in the story

Any interpretation, in contrast to a holistic analysis, is based on the fact that its author formulates his point of view, relying only on a number of facts that allow him to create a fairly convincing and internally consistent concept. That is exactly what L. Andreev did. It is no coincidence that, according to memoirists, he was even proud that, while working on the first edition of the story, he did not read not only other writers who devoted their works to a similar topic, but also did not reread the Gospel, which, by the way, in the initial version of the story was a lot of mistakes. Therefore, in the interpretation of the writer, Jesus will wait for his disciples to intercede for him, and will reject their defense only when he is convinced of its futility.

Another thing is also noteworthy: for a long time, the words of Christ in the story sound only in the retelling of the narrator or his disciples. And the first words of Jesus, sounded in the work from his own lips, will be the words about the coming threefold denial of Peter. In the future, if in the story he says "Christ" in the first person, then these will be words of condemnation of the disciples and sorrow, taken by the author directly from the text of the Gospel. Thus, Leonid Andreev seems to want to convince us that Jesus needed such a person as Judas, who was capable of laying down his life and soul for him. The image of Judas receives in the story, especially in its finale, a truly tragic decision: having destroyed with his love the one who was his only justification and protection, Judas doomed himself to death.