12/08/2022
More about culture. I will repeat the main theses about the existence of culture. Culture, art are immortal. When the creator of certain cultural values dies, the culture lives on. Leaders, kingdoms, empires, ideologies die. But, since the culture does not belong to them, it lives on. Culture breaks away from its carrier (time, historical events, hooting crowd) and lives as a symbol of eternity. Genuine culture is not Russian, German, French. She is universal. Tyrants, crowds, often falling into various forms of banditry (crusaders, religious wars, long knives) often try to attribute culture to themselves. But this is incredible totalitarian stupidity (also a form of banditry). Art, culture belong to the Planet and are its main features. Moreover, not to the crowd (this is again stupidity, the real never belonged to the crowd). What is in common between the lonely unhappy rushing about Mussorgsky, his cosmogony "Pictures at an Exhibition" - (a musical story about the life and death of civilizations) and rampant mud? There is as much Russian in this music as French, mythological, Jewish. There are the Roman catacombs and the Limoges market, there is ancient Kyiv and the tragedy of the enslavement of man by man, there is Paris of the 19th century and a medieval troubadour. Because this planetary genius lived in Russia, should we immediately stop listening to him? And who is to be punished? new generations of the planet? So what? Will they become freer, happier? In the 20th century, the Germans unleashed a terrible war (I write historically not very correctly, but now it’s not up to that). So what? Is German culture dead? Have we stopped reading Faust and listening to Beethoven's symphonies? Culture is more likely to die because of poor-quality humanitarian education. But that's another story. Beethoven dedicated the Third Symphony to Napoleon, whose name and deeds were on everyone's lips. Then he removed the dedication. Since then "Heroic". Napoleon ended ingloriously. And "Heroic" is one of the main symbols of the Planet. If your children and grandchildren stop watching and listening to The Nutcracker, will you punish the marauders with this, the most insignificant product of more than a century of crooked development in Russia. And, by the way, not a century. Here is a fragment from Pushkin, where he characterizes Russia during the time of Onegin with a few phrases (he himself removed these lines from the novel in verse. But Tchaikovsky used them in another generation in the opera. These lines are sung in his aria by Tchaikovsky's creation, Prince Gremin. The best characterization of society it is already impossible to give: Among the crafty, cowardly,
Crazy, spoiled children,
Villains and funny and boring
Dumb, affectionate judges,
Among the pious coquettes,
Among voluntary servants,
Among everyday, fashionable scenes,
Courteous, affectionate betrayals,
Among the cold sentences
cruel vanity,
In the midst of the desolate emptiness
Calculations, thoughts and conversations,
In this pool, where I am with you
Swim, dear friends.
