«…Не запечатывай слов пророчества книги сей…». Библейские мотивы в древне-русской книжной миниатюре, русской поэзии и живописи

Abstract

В книге предпринята попытка показать красоту и величие замечательного библейского памятника «Откровение Иоанна Богослова» (Апокалипсис) на примере образцов русской классической поэзии и старообрядческой книжной миниатюры. Такая подача материала позволяет лучше понять и прочувствовать мир Апокалипсиса. В кратком очерке о развитии живописи XIX — начала XX в. в историческом контексте прослеживается развитие русского искусства как единого целостного потока, объединенного культурным полем православной традиции. Книга адресована широкому кругу читателей, интересующихся русской историей и духовной культурой. Она может быть интересна и профессиональным исследователям — историкам, филологам, искусствоведам.

This book is dedicated to the manifestation of narratives from the last book of the Bible, the Apocalypse of John the Theologian, in poetry and the fine arts. In the first chapter, we attempt to present this remarkable biblical book by joining the two artistic worlds of poetical imagery and book graphics, here represented by Russian classical poetry and Old Believer manuscript miniatures. The ideas of the Book of the Apocalypse, which show the internal human need to achieve the Kingdom of Heaven through repentance and many centuries of prayer, are reflected in the works of the Church Fathers, religious philosophers, and theologians. To a different extent, these same ideas were close to those of secular artists, such as Russian poets, writers, and painters, since many of their works were created in an apocalyptic spirit. Truly great poetry can push the boundaries of our consciousness, helping us to better understand and feel the entire story of the Biblical Apocalypse and become aware of the eternal problems of human existence: this, perhaps, allows us to draw parallels with some contemporary issues and thus comprehend them. Russian poets of the Golden Age (the 19th century) created both verse sketches and larger poetical arrangements on the theme of the Apocalypse. The poets of the Silver Age (the end of the 19th — beginning of the 20th centuries), searching for a Christian understanding of life and answers to the most essential problems of the day, offered vivid poetic illustrations of pictures from the Apocalypse. The artistic world of the Apocalypse has continued to find a reflection in the works of modern authors. Miniatures in old manuscripts, combining a range of apocalyptic images and poetic expressions, offer a visual Christian representation of the awe-inspiring Day of Judgment and human fate. Old Believer illuminated manuscripts from the 18th and 19th centuries maintained the tradition of medieval Russian book culture. Over the course of centuries, Old Believer culture carefully guarded the old traditions of icon painting and decorative art for manuscripts and printed books. Many historical sources were also preserved, such as Byzantine and Russian compositions, which were carefully copied out by generations of craftsmen. Thanks to the representatives of Old Believer culture, we now have the opportunity to appreciate the artistic beauty of old Rus’. We hope that revealing the artistic world of the Apocalypse through poetry and book illustrations will allow for the discovery of some new facets of perception when it comes to this biblical artefact. The scholar Dmitry Likhachev wrote: “The national ideas of the Russian people are most fully expressed in the works of two of its geniuses: Andrey Rublev and Aleksandr Pushkin. It is precisely in their oeuvres that the dreams of the Russian people… about ideal human beauty are most clearly enunciated...”. This striving to express beauty via imagery and the poetry of words, via icons, monumental paintings, book miniatures, folk art, spiritual verses, popular tales, singing, and classical Russian poetry, has been for centuries one of the particularities of Russian culture. Representing the biblical text of the Apocalypse via poetic and visual language is an attempt to discover new limits for perceiving and understanding this part of the Bible while also demonstrating wonderful images belonging to the spiritual heritage of Russian culture. In the second chapter, we emphasise the main distinctive peculiarities of Russian painting as a phenomenon of national culture. In the changing historical conditions of the 19th century, Russian painting was engaged in a constant search for its own form of national self-representation. Formed at the beginning of the 18th century, the division between secular and spiritual culture had mostly been levelled by the end of the 19th century. This epoch of ‘historicism’ in painting and innovative tendencies among the avant-garde led to an understanding of art as a single stream, unifying the aspirations of disparate people. The bridge for creative revelation was medieval Russian art and its spiritual core, the Christian faith. Artists at the beginning of the 20th century proved by way of their creativity that authentic art is created through the accumulation of cultural values, the assimilation of all that is best from previous periods. With the turn to national sources and the use of cultural experience in new conditions, art transitioned to a new phase. Against the background of a changing epoch and revolutionary transformations, Orthodox traditional culture remained the same spiritual beacon which had always preserved the nation from destruction.