The name of Ivan Esaulov is well known to any philologist. Doctor of Philology, professor of the Literary Institute, author of 12 monographs and hundreds of articles, enriched science with the concepts of catholicity and paschalism of Russian literature. At the same time, Esaulov’s ideas can be easily understood by non-specialists: in his publications and interviews, he talks about the revival of the national spiritual forces of our country. On the eve of the holiday of Christ’s Resurrection, the MK correspondent found out from Esaulov why Easter is so important for our culture? How in the USSR they tried to replace the cross with a star, and why a quarter of a century after the collapse of the Union, a return to a 1000-year history, by and large, did not happen.
– Ivan Andreevich, let’s start with the main thing: why is Easter important for our literature?
– Russian literature in its origins is Christian (Orthodox) literature, therefore what we usually call “Old Russian literature” is actually better called Orthodox literature, the purpose of which was the churching of a person, and ultimately the salvation of his immortal soul as main purpose of human life. The Paschal hope (that human life does not end “here”, on earth, that it has its Paschal continuation) is the core of the Russian idea, as “the conciliar inner experience of our people” understands it. I quoted the poet Vyacheslav Ivanov, with whom – in this case – I completely agree.
– That is, we proceed from the premise that Easter is “a celebration of celebrations”?
The Resurrection of Christ is the main event of the church year for all Christians. However, it was in Rus’ (and then in Russia) that its celebration became the dominant feature not only of the actual church year, but also of culture. Apparently, the decisive Easter victory over Death is not only somehow especially acutely experienced by our native culture, but in many ways it also formed its very spiritual core. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol remarkably expressed the meaning of Easter in the final chapter of his “Selected passages from correspondence with friends”: on this feast of holidays “all of Russia is one person.”
Whereas in the culture of the Western world, Easter seems to fade into the shadow of Christmas. But Russian literature “restores” the true hierarchy: for example, when Aleksey Khomyakov translated Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol into Russian, he transforms the English Christmas theme into a Russian Easter one. As a result, the events of the Christmas story are transferred to Russia, the characters live an Orthodox life, christen, and the story itself becomes Khomyakov’s Easter story “The Bright Resurrection of Christ.” In classical Russian literature, the Christocentrism of Orthodox literature has gone mainly into its subtext, but has not completely disappeared. That is why Thomas Mann called Russian literature “holy”.
– Orthodoxy and the life of the Russian people – how close is the connection between us?
– In pre-Petrine times, the “symphony” between spiritual and secular authorities (and the special relationship between the Patriarch and the Tsar), and the Orthodox calendar itself, obviously organized the daily life of a Russian person. Then, from the era of Peter and later, the time came for the transformation of the Kingdom into an Empire. But it is unacceptable to ignore the fact that this is not just an Empire, but also an independent Orthodox Empire, which, while allowing the existence of various confessions on its territory, nevertheless – after the fall of Byzantium – conceived its mission as the protection of the Orthodox people throughout the world of that time. And seeing his task in being an indestructible state bastion of Orthodoxy. What, by the way, was the “Catherine’s project” – to restore the path “from the Varangians to the Greeks”, having strengthened in the Crimea, as Peter “with a firm foot” stood at another sea – the Baltic. With its Christian spirit, this Empire was the only one that truly resisted the revolutionary all-European turmoil (here I am in complete solidarity with Fyodor Tyutchev’s article “Russia and the Revolution”).
The country lived according to the Christian calendar, its separate civilizing feature was emphasized by following the Julian (and not the Gregorian) calendar. And it was precisely this connection between Orthodoxy and Russian culture (in fact, the main thing in the national picture of the world) that the Bolsheviks tried to destroy. Especially brutal – in the first decades of Soviet power, and then – during the years of Khrushchev’s persecution of the Church. However, despite all efforts, the Bolsheviks failed to completely destroy this connection over all Soviet decades. And I will formulate my thought radically: if this connection is completely destroyed, then Russian culture (and Russian literature as part of it) will cease to be Russian.
– Have you discovered the internal laws of Russian literature: catholicity and Easter, the second term is semantically connected with Easter?
– I propose not just some purely theoretical “concept”, but also proceed from the history of Russian literature, the first original work of which is Metropolitan Hilarion’s Paschal sermon “The Sermon on Law and Grace”, in which the Law of Moses and the Grace of Christ are compared. This beginning, the very source of our literature, largely determined its inner core, it is inextricably linked with Easter. It is no coincidence that the Gospel of John, the very one on which Metropolitan Hilarion relies in his sermon, and which is read at the first Paschal service, is a favorite among the Russian people (it was precisely this that was preferred, for example, by Dostoevsky). The great Paschal mystery, the mystery of Holy Pascha, the transition from death to life, from the slavery of earthly cares to freedom, from the old man in himself to the new man pervades our literature. I believe that it was the indestructible living connection with the Resurrection that eventually led to the fact that it became a world cultural heritage.
– In the 90s in rock poetry, literature, journalism, the theme of the national revival of Russia sounded, but instead it turned out to be the restoration of the USSR at the level of a cargo cult. Why?
– I insist that Easter is the core of our cultural unconscious. As Dostoevsky rightly noted, our people have no other “idea” (except Orthodoxy). And when faith is destroyed at the state level (and it turned out to be almost destroyed when, for example, Khrushchev threatened to show the “last priest” on TV), then it is in Russia, whose spiritual ideal is Holy Russia, that this leads to very difficult spiritual consequences … And what was destroyed, as it turned out, is more difficult to restore than simply to rebuild church buildings … After all, in many ways, our attempts to “reclaim Russia for ourselves” were not based on a living tradition that no longer existed, but were built artificially, everyone offered his own recipe, who what a lot…
Alas, in the Soviet decades, starting directly from the Bolshevik revolution, the voluntary sacrifice generated by the Easter archetype (in imitation of the free sacrifice of Christ) was too often used to achieve goals that can hardly be called Christian. Rather, anti-Christian, like the “world revolution”. There was a transformation of the Easter archetype into the Christmas archetype, which, as more and more secularized, from the idea of saving the immortal human soul led to the utopian construction of “heaven on earth”. So the Star, leading to “high” goals (but “here”, on earth) replaced the Cross in the mass consciousness. In this case, it is also necessary to remember your spiritual origins. If the state finally takes care of this, well, I will be very happy. But do not replace the idea with a violent “ideology”: after all, this has already been in our country for most of the twentieth century – and ended in failure.
– In that case, how can our great classical literature help us in our national revival?
– We must finally understand that “dead souls” are not “they” (Gogol’s landowners and the whole world of “tsarist” Russia), “dead souls” are actually us. In the great time of Russian culture, Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov wrote not only for “them” (their contemporaries), but also for us. We must read our great works in such a way as to look into the mirror of Russian literature and recognize ourselves in its sinful heroes. In the end, Gogol from the audience of The Government Inspector sought exactly this. And only realizing that this is about us, sinners, and not just about “them”, that this is us, and not just “they”, we will have an unguaranteed, but a chance for our Resurrection. And if it does not exist, there will be no revival of true Russia.