Topic: about the psychology of the betrayal of Judas, the betrayal of the cowardly disciples of Christ, the masses of people who did not come out in defense of Christ.
Idea: the paradoxical nature of Andreev’s story is Judas’s unlimited love for his Teacher, the desire to be constantly nearby, and betrayal is also a way to get closer to Jesus. Judas betrays Christ to find out whether any of his followers are capable of sacrificing their lives to save their teacher. His betrayal is predetermined from above.
Artistic features: comparison of Judas and Christ. The writer equates two such apparently opposite images, he brings them together. The images of the students are symbols.
Peter is associated with a stone, even with Judas he enters into a stone-throwing competition.
Reader's position: Judas is a traitor, he betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver - this name is fixed in the minds of people. After reading Andreev’s story, you wonder how to understand the psychology of Judas’s act, what made him violate moral laws? Knowing in advance that he will betray Jesus, Judas struggles with this. But it is impossible to defeat predestination, but Judas cannot help but love Jesus, he also kills himself. Betrayal is a pressing issue at the present time, a time when people misunderstand each other.
Updated: 2017-09-30
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Betrayal, for a long time, has been and remains a relevant theme for works of art. This issue is especially acute in difficult days of lack of mutual understanding between people. Perhaps it is for this reason that Leonid Andreev’s story, written at the beginning of the 20th century, “Judas Iscariot,” is so popular today. Particularly interesting is the assessment that the author gives in his work about the motives of betrayal.
The plot of the story is based on the gospel story about the betrayal of Jesus Christ by one of his disciples, Judas. It is interesting that Leonid Andreev, taking the Gospel as a basis, did not read it himself, and, therefore, conveyed the plot rather subjectively.
Throughout the narrative, the words “Judas the Traitor” are repeated. With the help of such a well-established nickname in people's minds, the author positions Judas as a symbol of betrayal. Even at the beginning of the story, the reader understands the vicious essence of Jesus: his ugliness is noted, his unpleasant appearance is emphasized - the disproportion of his facial features is emphasized, his voice is strange and changeable. His actions are surprising in their inconsistency and inexpediency; for example, in conversations he is either silent for a long time or overly kind, and this alarms most people. Judas did not talk to Jesus for a long time, but he loved all his disciples without exception, despite the fact that Judas was unworthy of this, because... often lied, looked stupid and insincere. During the course of the story, the author compares Judas and Jesus, thus elevating two images that are absolutely opposed to each other to the same rank, but he deliberately brings them closer together.
The sinful act committed by Judas may well be due to the nature of its origin. Thus, Judas was jealous of Jesus’ purity, his integrity and boundless kindness towards people, i.e. all those qualities that he himself was not capable of. And yet Judas loves Jesus infinitely. In those moments when Jesus moves away, Judas takes everything very close, he worries that he is only emphasizing his love and reverence for his Teacher. Having committed his sinful act, he blames the rest of the disciples for this, he reproaches them for the fact that they can eat, sleep, and continue to live as before without their Teacher. For Judas himself, life after the death of Jesus seemed to have lost all meaning.
It becomes clear that it was not greed that prompted Judas to commit betrayal. Judas is the chosen one, who suffered the same fate as Jesus - to sacrifice himself. He, knowing in advance that he will commit a serious sin, fights, but his soul is unable to withstand, because... It is impossible to defeat predestination.
Judas is the personification of a paradoxical combination of betrayal and the manifestation of the best human qualities. The problem of betrayal in the story “Judas Iscariot” is revealed through the struggle of an individual with a predetermined mission.
Option 2
Andreev’s story “Judas Iscariot” is interesting in its content, complex, and sometimes contradictory. The author took as a basis the well-known biblical story about Jesus Christ, his apostles-disciples and, in particular, the betrayal of Christ by Judas. However, as can be seen from the title, he brought to the fore not Christ at all, but his traitor, Judas Iscariot.
Andreev managed to create a complex image of the apostle, full of contradictions. His appearance alone inspires hostility in the reader; Judas can be called ugly, based on the description of his appearance. His appearance also inspires a sense of danger and mistrust in the other apostles. Much more controversial, however, is the domestic porter of Judas Iscariot. On the one hand, he is terribly straightforward, even cruel towards those around him, sarcastic to them, openly talking about other people’s vices, but he notices all this quite rightly. We see him as a vile, deceitful person, but at the same time, his other side is also open to us. Through his actions, the hero tries to eradicate the human vices that he sees around himself and his teacher. In addition, Judas Iscariot became the only disciple of Jesus who was able to truly love him. We see that he really loves his teacher very much, he is sincere in his feelings. However, his love is very unhealthy: in the end, it is Judas who sells Jesus to his enemies, and after his death commits suicide.
Andreev tried to understand the motives of Judas, creating his own interpretation of the biblical story. Many critics believe that he failed to do this; the image of Judas Iscariot was too complex and full of contradictions. The hero is clearly not a role model; his rightness is very relative. However, the author raised serious philosophical problems in his work, and brought the issue of betrayal to the fore. It is for this reason that Judas is brought to the fore, and not Christ or one of his other disciples. To consider the motives for Judas’s actions, Andreev makes him the main character of his work. As noted earlier, the character turns out to be very controversial and ambiguous, and the entire biblical story appears in a new light. Some people have a completely negative attitude towards the resulting image of Judas, others feel sorry for him, but, in general, we can conclude that the hero’s fate is deeply tragic, however, this does not justify his essence. In fact, Judas’s struggle for his ideals turned out to be lost to him.
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This work was written by the author in 1907 in an interpretation unusual for believers. There were too many discrepancies with the Gospel. The image and characterization of Judas Iscariot from Andreev’s story “Judas Iscariot” with quotes will help the reader understand what motivated the main character when he betrayed the one he loved more than life itself.
Image
Judas had no family. Several years ago he left his wife. Since then, her fate has not bothered him. There were no children in the marriage. Apparently it was God's will; he did not want offspring from him.
Judas's appearance made a repulsive impression. In order to perceive it normally, it was necessary to get used to its appearance. Tall, thin. A little stooped. An incomprehensible skull, decorated with red hair. One half of the face was alive, with a black eye and active facial expressions, and was dotted with wrinkles. The other half of the face is deathly smooth, without wrinkles. The blind eye was always open, day and night. The voice is disgusting, just like him. Iscariot knew how to change it from shrill and feminine to courageous and strong.
Red-haired and ugly Jew...
He came, bowing low, arching his back, carefully and timidly stretching his ugly lumpy head forward...
He was thin, of good height, almost the same as Jesus...
...he was quite strong in strength, apparently, but for some reason he pretended to be frail and sickly and had a changeable voice: sometimes courageous and strong, sometimes loud, like an old woman scolding her husband, annoyingly thin and unpleasant to the ear...
Short red hair did not hide the strange and unusual shape of his skull: as if cut from the back of the head with a double blow of a sword and put back together again, it was clearly divided into four parts and inspired mistrust, even anxiety...
... Judas’s face also doubled: one side of it, with a black, sharply looking eye, was alive, 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 turbidity, not closing either at night or during the day, it equally met both light and darkness...
Characteristic
Contradictory. Judas seems to be woven from contradictions. For some reason, a strong, strong man constantly pretended to be frail and sickly. He took on household responsibilities, and in between, he stole from the common treasury. He told the apostles colorful stories from supposedly his life, and then admitted that he had made it all up.
Corrupt. Mercantile. Sold the Teacher for 30 pieces of silver.
Smart. He was distinguished by his quick wit and intelligence in comparison with the rest of Christ’s disciples. He, like no one else, knew people deeply and understood the motives of their actions.
False. Envious. The speech is replete with lies, which were either funny or unpleasant.
Purposeful. He sincerely believed in his rightness and chosenness, and most importantly, he strived in every way to achieve the goal he had set for himself. Betrayal has become the only way to get closer to the spiritual leader.
Warlike. Fearless. Judas more than once showed fearlessness in defending his teacher. He took the blow upon himself, risking his life and making it clear that he was ready to go to the end if he had to.
Furiously and blindly rushed into the crowd, threatened, shouted, begged and lied
Experiences real emotions: hatred, love, suffering, disappointment.
Thief. He makes a living by stealing. He constantly carries bread, and that’s what he eats.
Cunning. While the other apostles are fighting in an attempt to take first place next to Christ, Judas tries to be with him all the time, becoming indispensable and useful, if only they would pay attention to him and distinguish his efforts from the crowd.
Vulnerable. I was sincerely offended by the Teacher when he stopped paying attention to him.
Emotional. Until the last minute, Judas firmly believed that love and loyalty to Jesus would prevail. His people and disciples were supposed to save the Teacher, but this did not happen. Iscariot was sincerely worried and did not understand why the apostles fled in fear, leaving Christ in the hands of Roman soldiers. He called them cowards and murderers, incapable of action. At that moment, he was motivated by sincere love for the Teacher.
Selfless. He sacrificed his life to prove the power of love by fulfilling the destiny assigned to him.
(3)
The Gospel story of the betrayal of Jesus Christ by Judas Iscariot could have interested Leonid Andreev as a writer because it could be “literaryized,” that is, brought into line with the principles of depicting and evaluating a person in his own work, while relying on the traditions of Russian literature of the 19th century (Leskov , Dostoevsky, Tolstoy) in the processing of works of educational literature.
Just like his predecessors, Andreev saw in the situations of didactic literature a significant tragic potential, which two geniuses - Dostoevsky and Tolstoy - so impressively revealed in their work. Andreev significantly complicated and deepened the personality of Judas, making him an ideological opponent of Jesus, and his story acquired all the signs of the genre of spiritual drama, examples of which were known to the reader from Dostoevsky’s novels of the 1860-1870s and the works of the late Tolstoy.
The author of the story follows the plot of the gospel story selectively, while preserving its key situations, the names of its characters - in a word, creates the illusion of its retelling, but in fact offers the reader his own version of this story, creates a completely original work with an existential characteristic characteristic of this writer (a person in world) problems.
In Andreev’s story, the ideological beliefs of the characters are polar (faith - disbelief) - in accordance with its genre specificity; at the same time, the intimate, personal element (likes and dislikes) plays a decisive role in their relationship, significantly enhancing the tragic pathos of the work.
Both main characters of the story, Jesus and Judas, and especially the latter, are clearly hyperbolized in the spirit of expressionism professed by Andreev, which presupposes the gigantism of the heroes, their extraordinary spiritual and physical abilities, the intensification of tragedy in human relationships, ecstatic writing, that is, increased expressiveness of style and deliberate convention images and situations.
Andreev’s Jesus Christ is spirituality embodied, but this artistic embodiment itself, as happens with ideal heroes, lacks external specifics. We hardly see Jesus, we don’t hear his speeches; his mental states are episodically presented: Jesus can be complacent, welcoming Judas, laugh at his jokes and Peter’s jokes, be angry, sad, grieving; Moreover, these episodes mainly reflect the dynamics of his relationship with Judas.
Jesus Christ, a passive figure, is a supporting hero in the story - compared to Judas, the real protagonist, an active “character”.
It is he, in the vicissitudes of his relationship with Jesus, from the very beginning to the end of the story that is in the center of attention of the narrator, which gave the writer the basis to name the work after him. The artistic character of Judas is significantly more complex than the character of Jesus Christ.
Judas appears before the reader as a complex riddle, as, indeed, for the disciples of Jesus, and in many ways for their teacher himself. He is all “encrypted” in a certain way, starting with his appearance; it is even more difficult to understand the motives of his relationship with Jesus. And although the main intrigue of the story is clearly described by the author: Judas, who loves Jesus, betrays him into the hands of his enemies, the allegorical style of this work makes it much more difficult to understand the subtle nuances of the relationship between the characters.
The allegorical language of the story is the main problem of its interpretation. Judas is presented by the narrator - on the basis of a kind of plebiscite - as a person rejected by all people, as an outcast: “and there was no one who could say a good word about him.”
However, it seems that Judas himself does not particularly favor the human race and does not particularly suffer from his rejection. Judas evokes fear, shock, and disgust even among Jesus’ disciples “as something unprecedentedly ugly, deceitful and disgusting,” who do not approve of their teacher’s act of bringing Judas closer to them. But for Jesus there are no outcasts: “with that spirit of bright contradiction that irresistibly attracted him to the outcasts and unloved, he decisively accepted Judas and included him in the circle of the elect” (ibid.). But Jesus was guided not by reason, but by faith, making his decision, inaccessible to the understanding of his disciples, by faith in the spiritual essence of man.
“The disciples were worried and grumbled restrainedly,” and they had no doubt that “in his desire to get closer to Jesus there was hidden some secret intention, there was an evil and insidious calculation. What else can you expect from a person who “staggers senselessly among the people... lies, makes faces, vigilantly looks out for something with his thief’s eye... curious, crafty and evil, like a one-eyed demon”?
Naive but meticulous Thomas “carefully examined Christ and Judas, who were sitting next to each other, and this strange proximity of divine beauty and monstrous ugliness ... oppressed his mind like an unsolvable riddle.” The best of the best and the worst of the worst... What do they have in common? At least they are able to sit peacefully next to each other: they are both of the human race.
Judas’s appearance testified that he was organically alien to the angelic principle: “short red hair did not hide the strange and unusual shape of his skull:
as if cut from the back of the head with a double blow of a sword and reassembled, it was clearly divided into four parts and inspired distrust, even anxiety: behind such a skull there cannot be silence and harmony, behind such a skull one can always hear the noise of bloody and merciless battles.”
If Jesus is the embodiment of spiritual and moral perfection, a model of meekness and inner peace, then Judas, apparently, is internally split; one can assume that by vocation he is a restless rebel, always looking for something, always lonely. But isn’t Jesus himself alone in this world?
What is hidden behind the strange face of Judas? “The face of Judas also doubled: one side of it, with a black, sharply looking eye, was alive, 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
the first, but it seemed huge from the wide open blind eye. Covered with a whitish turbidity, not closing either at night or during the day, it equally met both light and darkness; but was it because there was a living and cunning comrade next to him that one could not believe in his complete blindness.”
The disciples of Jesus soon became accustomed to the external ugliness of Judas. The expression on Judas’s face was confusing, reminiscent of a mask of an actor: either a comedian or a tragedian. Judas could be a cheerful, sociable, good storyteller, although he somewhat shocked listeners with his skeptical judgments about a person, however, he was also ready to present himself in the most unfavorable light. “Judas lied constantly, but they got used to it, because they did not see bad deeds behind the lie, and it gave special interest to Judas’ conversation and his stories and made life look like a funny and sometimes scary fairy tale.” This is how a lie, in this case an artistic fiction, a game, is rehabilitated.
As an artist by nature, Judas is unique among Jesus' disciples. However, Judas not only amused his listeners with fiction: “According to Judas’ stories, it seemed as if he knew all the people, and every person he knew had committed some bad act or even a crime in his life.”
What is this - a lie or the truth? What about Jesus' disciples? What about Jesus himself? But Judas avoided such questions, sowing confusion in the souls of his listeners: was he joking or was he speaking seriously? “And while one side of his face was writhing in buffoonish grimaces, the other was swaying seriously and sternly, and his never-closing eye looked wide.”
It was this, either blind, dead, or all-seeing eye of Judas that instilled anxiety in the souls of Jesus’ disciples: “while his living and cunning eye moved, Judas seemed simple and kind, but when both eyes stopped motionless and the skin gathered into strange lumps and folds on his convex forehead - there was a painful guess about some very special thoughts, tossing and turning under this skull.
Completely alien, completely special, having no language at all, they surrounded the pondering Iscariot with a dull silence of mystery, and I wanted him to quickly begin to speak, move and even lie. For the lie itself, spoken in human language, seemed like truth and light in front of this hopelessly deaf and unresponsive silence.”
Lies are being rehabilitated again, because communication - the way of human existence - is by no means alien to lies. Weak man. Jesus’ disciples understand this kind of Judas; he is almost one of them. The tragic mask of Judas exuded cold indifference to man; This is how fate looks at a person.
Meanwhile, Judas clearly sought to communicate, actively infiltrating the community of Jesus’ disciples, winning the sympathy of their teacher. There were reasons for this: over time it would turn out that he had no equal among Jesus’ disciples in intelligence, in physical strength and willpower, and in the ability for metamorphosis. And that's not all. Just look at his desire to “someday take the earth, raise it and, perhaps, throw it away,” Judas’s cherished desire, similar to mischief.
So Judas revealed one of his secrets in the presence of Thomas, however, with the full understanding that he obviously would not understand the allegory.
Jesus entrusted Judas with the cash drawer and household chores, thereby indicating his place among the disciples, and Judas coped with his responsibilities excellently. But did Judas come to Jesus to become one of his disciples?
The author clearly distances Judas, who was independent in his judgments and actions, from the disciples of Jesus, whose principle of behavior is conformism. Judas treats Jesus’ disciples with irony, who live with an eye on the teacher’s assessment of their words and actions. And Jesus himself, inspired by faith in the spiritual resurrection of man, does he know a real, earthly man, the way Judas knows him - at least in himself, a fidget with a quarrelsome character, ugly in appearance, a liar, a skeptic, a provocateur, an actor, for whom as as if nothing is sacred, for whom life is a game. What is this strange and even somewhat scary man trying to achieve?
Unexpectedly, demonstratively, in the presence of Christ and his disciples, obscenely arguing about a place near Jesus in paradise, listing their merits before the teacher, Judas reveals another of his secrets, declaring “solemnly and sternly,” looking straight into the eyes of Jesus: “I! I will be near Jesus." This is no longer a game.
This statement of Judas seemed to the disciples of Jesus to be a daring trick. Jesus “slowly lowered his gaze” (ibid.), like a man considering what he had said. Judas asked Jesus a riddle. After all, we are talking about the highest reward for a person, which must be earned. How does Judas, who behaves as if he consciously and clearly opposes Jesus, expect to deserve it?
It turns out that Judas is as much an ideologist as Jesus. And Judas’s relationship with Jesus begins to take shape as a kind of dialogue, always in absentia. This dialogue will be resolved by a tragic event, the cause of which everyone, including Jesus, will see in the betrayal of Judas. However, betrayal also has its motives. It was the “psychology of betrayal” that interested Leonid Andreev primarily, according to his own testimony, in the story he created.
The plot of the story “Judas Iscariot” is based on “the story of the human soul,” of course, Judas Iscariot. The author of the work shrouds his hero in secrets by all means available to him.
This is the aesthetic attitude of the avant-garde writer, who entrusts the reader with the difficult task of unraveling these mysteries. But the hero himself is in many ways a mystery to himself.
But the main thing - the purpose of his coming to Jesus - he knows firmly, although he can entrust this secret only to Jesus himself, and even then in a critical situation for both of them - unlike his disciples, who constantly and importunately, in rivalry with each other, assure teachers in their love for him.
Judas declares his love for Jesus intimately, without witnesses and even without the hope of being heard: “But you know that I love you. “You know everything,” the voice of Judas sounds in the evening silence on the eve of the terrible night. - Lord, Lord, was it then that in “anguish and torment I searched for You all my life, I searched and found you!”
Did Judas's acquisition of the meaning of existence with fatal inevitability lead him to the need to hand Jesus over to his enemies? How could this happen?
Judas understands his role near Jesus differently than Jesus the teacher himself. There is no doubt that the word of Jesus is the holy truth about the essence of man. But is the word capable
to change his carnal nature, which makes itself felt constantly, in the eternal struggle with the spiritual principle, crushingly reminding itself of the fear of death?
Judas himself experiences this fear in a village in which its inhabitants, angry at Jesus’ denunciations, were ready to throw stones at the accuser himself and his confused disciples. It was Judas’s fear not for himself, but for Jesus (“overwhelmed by an insane fear for Jesus, as if already seeing drops of blood on his white shirt, Judas furiously and blindly rushed at the crowd, threatened, shouted, begged and lied, and thus gave time and opportunity Jesus and his disciples must go."
It was a spiritual act of overcoming the fear of death, a true expression of man's love for man. Be that as it may, it is not the word of truth of Jesus, but the lie of Judas, who presented the religious teacher to the angry crowd as an ordinary deceiver, his acting talent, capable of bewitching a person and making him forget about anger (“he rushed madly in front of the crowd and charmed them with some strange power "(ibid.), saved Jesus and his disciples from death.
It was a lie for salvation, for the salvation of Jesus Christ. “But you lied!” - the principled Thomas reproaches the unprincipled Judas, alien to any dogmas, especially when it comes to the life and death of Jesus.
“And what is a lie, my smart Thomas? Wouldn’t the death of Jesus be a bigger lie?” - Judas asks a tricky question. Jesus, in principle, rejects all lies, no matter what motives the liar may have to justify himself. This is the ideal truth that you cannot argue with.
But Judas needs Jesus alive, because he himself is the holy truth, and for her sake Judas is ready to sacrifice his own life. So what is the truth and what is a lie? Judas decided this question for himself irrevocably: the truth is Jesus Christ himself, man, like God perfect in his spiritual hypostasis, a gift from heaven to humanity. A lie is his departure from life. And therefore Jesus must be protected in every possible way, because there will be no other like him.
Death awaits the righteous at every step, because people do not need the truth about their imperfections. They need deception, or rather, eternal self-deception, as if man is an exclusively carnal being. It is easier to live with this lie, because everything is forgiven to the carnal man. This is what Judas says to Thomas: “I gave them what they asked for (that is, a lie), and they returned what I needed” (the living Jesus Christ).
What awaits Jesus Christ in this sinful earthly world if Judas is not next to him? Jesus needs Judas. Otherwise, he will perish, and Judas will perish with him,” Iscariot is convinced.
For what will the world become without a deity? But does Jesus himself need Judas, who believes in the possibility of spiritual enlightenment of humanity?
People do not particularly believe words, and therefore are unstable in their beliefs. In one of the villages, its residents warmly welcomed Jesus and his disciples, “surrounded them with attention and love and became believers,” but as soon as Jesus left this village, one of the women reported the loss of a kid goat, and although the kid was soon found, the residents why - they decided that “Jesus is a deceiver and maybe even a thief.” This conclusion immediately calmed passions.
“Judas is right, Lord. These were evil and stupid people, and the seed of your words fell on the stone,” the naive truth-lover Thomas confirms the rightness of Judas, who “told bad things about its inhabitants and foreshadowed trouble.”
Be that as it may, “from that day on, Jesus’ attitude towards him changed somehow strangely. And before, for some reason, it was the case that Judas never spoke directly to Jesus, and he never directly addressed him, but he often looked at him with gentle eyes, smiled at some of his jokes, and if he did not see him for a long time, he asked: where is Judas? And now he looked at him, as if not seeing him, although as before, and even more persistently than before, he looked for him with his eyes every time he began to speak to his disciples or to the people, but either sat down with his back to him and threw his words against Judas, or pretended not to notice him at all. And no matter what he said, even if it’s one thing today and something completely different tomorrow, even if it’s even the same thing that Judas thinks, it seemed, however, that he was always speaking against Judas.” In a different guise - not as a disciple, but as an ideological opponent - Judas revealed himself to Jesus.
The unkind attitude of Jesus Christ towards him offended and puzzled Judas. Why is Jesus so upset when his disciples, that is, all people, turn out to be petty, stupid and gullible? Isn't that what they are in essence? And how will his future relationship with Jesus develop now? Will he really lose the meaning of his existence forever if Jesus finally turns away from him? The time has come for Judas
comprehend the situation.
Having fallen behind Jesus and his disciples, Judas headed into a rocky ravine in search of solitude. This ravine was strange, as Judas saw it: “this wild desert ravine looked like an overturned, severed skull, and every stone in it was like a frozen thought, and there were many of them, and they all thought - hard, boundless, stubbornly.” .
In his many hours of immobility, Judas himself became one of these “thinking” stones: “... his eyes stopped motionless on something, both motionless, both covered with a whitish strange turbidity, both as if blind and terribly sighted.” Judas is a stone - one of the metamorphoses of his multifaceted personality, meaning “stone” Potentially, the power of his will.
Inhuman willpower - like the deathly flat side of Judas's face; willpower that will stop at nothing; she is deaf to man. No, Peter is not a stone, but he, Judas, because it is not for nothing that he comes from a rocky area.
The motif of the “petrification” of Judas is plot-forming. Judas initially experiences a similar kind of awe before Jesus, as do all his disciples. But gradually Judas discovers in himself the qualities that define human dignity. And above all, the willpower to follow one’s path, to which a person is destined by the very order of things. This is the meaning of the metaphor: Judas is a stone.
We find the development of the “petrification” motif in the scene of the competition between Judas and Peter in throwing stones into the abyss. For all disciples, including Jesus Christ himself, this is entertainment. And Judas himself enters into the competition in order to entertain Jesus, tired from a long and difficult journey, and to earn his sympathy.
However, one cannot help but see in this scene its allegorical meaning: “heavy, he struck briefly and bluntly and thought for a moment; then he hesitantly made the first leap - and with each touch to the ground, taking from it speed and strength, he became light, ferocious, all-crushing. He no longer jumped, but flew with bared teeth, and the air, whistling, passed his blunt, round carcass.
Here is the edge, - with a smooth last movement the stone soared upward and calmly, in heavy thoughtfulness, flew roundly down to the bottom of an invisible abyss. This description is not only about the stone, but also about the “history of the soul” of Judas, about the growing strength of his will, his aspiration for a daring act, for a reckless desire to fly into the unknown - into the symbolic abyss, into the kingdom of freedom. And even in the stone thrown by Judas, he seems to see his likeness: having found a suitable stone, Judas “tenderly dug into it with his long fingers, swayed with it and, turning pale, sent it into the abyss.”
And if, when throwing a stone, Peter “leaned back and watched it fall,” then Judas “leaned forward, arched and extended his long moving arms, as if he himself wanted to fly away after the stone.”
The motif of Judas’ “petrification” reaches its climax in the scene of Jesus’ teaching in the house of Lazarus. Judas is offended that everyone so quickly forgot about his victory over Peter in throwing stones, and Jesus, apparently, did not attach any importance to it.
The disciples of Jesus had other moods, they worshiped other values: “images of the path traveled: the sun, and the stone, and the grass, and Christ reclining in the tent, quietly floated in their heads, evoking soft thoughtfulness, giving rise to vague but sweet dreams about what something eternally moving under the sun. The tired body rested sweetly, and it was all thinking about something mysteriously beautiful and big - and no one remembered Judas.” And there was no place in this beautiful, poetic world for Judas with his worthless virtues. He remained a stranger among Jesus' disciples.
So they surrounded their teacher, and each of them wanted to somehow be involved with him, even if only by a light, imperceptible touch of his clothes. And only Judas stood aside. “Iscariot stopped at the threshold and, contemptuously passing by the gaze of those gathered, concentrated all his fire on Jesus. And as he looked, everything around him went out, became covered with darkness and silence, and only Jesus brightened with his raised hand.”
Light in a dark and silent world - that is what Jesus is to Judas. But something seems to disturb Judas, peering at Jesus Christ: “but then he seemed to rise into the air, as if he had melted and became as if he all consisted of a lake-like fog, permeated with the light of the setting moon; and his soft speech sounded somewhere far, far away and tenderly.”
Jesus appears to Judas as what he is - a spirit, a bright, ethereal being with a charming, unearthly melody of words and at the same time a ghost floating in the air, ready to disappear, dissolve in the deep, silent darkness of man's earthly existence.
Judas, constantly concerned about the fate of Jesus in this world, imagines that he himself is somehow involved in Jesus differently than his disciples, who are concerned about being closer to Jesus. Judas looks into himself, as if he believes in himself to find the answer to this question: “and, peering into the wavering ghost, listening to the gentle melody of distant and ghostly words, Judas took his entire soul into his iron fingers and in its immense darkness, silently, began build something huge.
Slowly in the deep darkness, he raised some mountain-like masses and smoothly laid one on top of the other; and raised it again, and put it on again; and something grew in the darkness, expanded silently, pushed the boundaries.
Here he felt his head like a dome, and in the impenetrable darkness a huge thing continued to grow, and someone was silently working: raising huge masses like mountains, putting one on top of the other and lifting again... And somewhere distant and ghostly words sounded tenderly.”
With full exertion of his will and all his spiritual strength, Judas builds in his imagination some kind of grandiose world, recognizing himself as its ruler, but the world, alas, is silent and gloomy. But Judas has little power over the world; he needs power over Jesus, so that the world does not remain forever in darkness and silence. It was a bold desire. But this was also the key to solving the problem of Judas' relationship with Jesus.
Jesus seemed to sense the threat coming from Judas: he interrupted his speech, fixing his gaze on Judas. Judas stood, “blocking the door, huge and black...”. Did the insightful Jesus see a jailer in Judas if he hurriedly left the house “and walked past Judas through the open and now free door,” assessing the real capabilities of his opponent, his power over himself?
Why doesn't Judas directly address Jesus, unlike his other disciples? Is it not for the reason that in the artistic world of the story Jesus and Judas are separated by some order of things independent of them, an irresistible logic of circumstances, a semblance of fate, as in a tragedy? For the time being, Judas has to come to terms with the fact that Jesus “was for everyone a tender and beautiful flower, a fragrant rose of Lebanon, but for Judas he left only sharp thorns.”
Jesus Christ loves his disciples and is coldly patient in his relationship with Judas, the only one of all who sincerely loves him. Where is the justice? And jealousy, the eternal companion of love, flares up in the heart of Judas. No, he did not come to Jesus to be his obedient disciple.
He would like to become his brother. Only, unlike Jesus, he does not have faith in the human race, which truly does not understand and does not appreciate Jesus Christ. But no matter how much Judas despises people, he believes that at a critical moment for Christ, people will wake up from spiritual slumber and glorify his holiness, his divinity, which are as obvious to everyone as the sun in the sky. And if the impossible happens - people turn away from Jesus, he, only he, Judas, will remain with Jesus when his disciples run away from him, when it is necessary to share unimaginable suffering with Jesus. “I will be near Jesus!”
Judas’s idea was fully matured; he had already agreed with Anna to hand over Jesus and only now he realized how dear Jesus was to him, whom he was giving into the wrong hands. “And, going out to the place where they went to relieve themselves, he cried there for a long time, writhing, writhing, scratching his chest with his nails, biting his shoulders. He caressed the imaginary hair of Jesus, quietly whispered something tender and funny, and gritted his teeth.
Then he suddenly stopped crying, moaning and gnashing his teeth and began to think heavily, tilting his wet face to the side, looking like a man who was listening. And for so long he stood, heavy, determined and alien to everything, like fate itself.” So this is what was hidden behind the dual face of Judas!
The awareness of his power over Jesus humbles Judas' jealousy. Here he is present at the scene when “Jesus tenderly and gratefully kissed John and affectionately stroked the tall Peter on the shoulder. And without envy, with condescending contempt, Judas looked at these caresses. What do all these ... kisses and sighs mean compared to what he knows, Judas of Kariot, a red-haired, ugly Jew, born among the stones!
Isn’t Judas’ only way of meaningfully expressing his love to imagine himself as Jesus’ caring jailer? Watching how Jesus rejoiced, caressing a child whom Judas had found somewhere and secretly brought to Jesus as a kind of gift to please him, “Judas sternly walked aside, like a stern jailer who, in the spring, let a butterfly in to the prisoner and is now feigningly grumbling , complaining about the mess."
Judas is constantly looking for an opportunity to please Jesus with something - secretly from him, like a true lover. Only Judas doesn’t have enough love that Jesus doesn’t even know about.
He would like to become a brother to Jesus - in love and in suffering. But is Judas himself ready to hand Jesus over to his enemies in order to meet him face to face, which is what he so stubbornly strives for?
He passionately begs Jesus to make himself known, to enter into dialogue with him, to free him from his shameful role: “Free me. Take off the heaviness, it is heavier than mountains and lead. Can't you hear how the chest of Judas of Kerioth is cracking under her? And the last silence, bottomless, like the last glance of eternity.
“I’m going.” The world responds with silence. Go, man, wherever you want, and do what you know. Jesus Christ is simply the Son of Man.
Here Judas appeared before Jesus face to face on the fateful night. And this was their first dialogue. Judas “quickly moved towards Jesus, who was waiting for him in silence, and plunged his direct and sharp gaze, like a knife, into his calm, darkened eyes.
“Rejoice, Rabbi! “he said loudly, putting a strange and menacing meaning into the words of an ordinary greeting.” The hour of testing has come. Jesus will enter the world victorious! But then he saw the disciples of Jesus huddled in a herd, paralyzed by fear, his hope wavered, “and the mortal sorrow that Christ experienced before was kindled in his heart.
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 and longing that if Jesus had been a flower on a thin stem, he would not have shaken it with this kiss and would not have dropped the pearly dew from the pure petals.”
It is finished – Judas put all his tender love for Jesus into his kiss. Is he really ready to subject Jesus to a terrible test for this kiss? But Jesus did not understand the meaning of this kiss. “Judas,” said Jesus, and with the lightning of his gaze he illuminated that monstrous pile of wary shadows that was the soul of Iscariot, “but he could not penetrate into its bottomless depths. - Judas! Do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss? Yes, by kissing, but by kissing love: “Yes! We betray you with a kiss of love.
With the kiss of love we hand you over to desecration, to torture, to death! With the voice of love we call the executioners from the dark holes and put up a cross - high above the crown of the earth
we raise crucified love on the cross,” Judas pronounces an internal monologue. It's too late to explain things to Jesus now.
It so happened that Judas, tormented by unrequited love for Jesus, desired power over him. And wasn’t it the love of Jesus Christ for the human race that became the reason for the enmity of the powers that be towards him, hatred that knows no bounds? Isn't this the fate of love in this world? Be that as it may, the die is cast.
“So Judas stood, silent and cold as death, and the cry of his soul was answered by the screams and noise that arose around Jesus.” Judas will remain with this feeling of “a kind of double existence” - a painful fear for the life of Jesus and cold curiosity about the behavior of people whose spiritual blindness is inexplicable - until his death.
The suffering of Jesus will somehow strangely bring him closer to Judas, which the latter so persistently sought: “and among all this crowd there were only the two of them, inseparable until death, wildly connected by the commonality of suffering - the one who was given over to reproach and torment, and the one who betrayed him. From the same cup of suffering, like brothers, they both drank, the devotee and the traitor, and the fiery moisture equally scorched clean and unclean lips.”
Ever since Jesus found himself in the hands of the soldiers, senselessly beating him for no reason, Judas lives in anticipation of what is inevitably going to happen: people will understand the divinity of Jesus Christ. And then Jesus will be saved - forever and ever. Silence fell in the guardhouse where they beat Jesus.
"What is this? Why are they silent? What if they guessed it? Instantly, Judas’s head was filled with noise, screaming, and the roar of thousands of frenzied thoughts. Did they guess? Did they understand that this is the best person? - it's so simple, so clear. What's there now? They kneel in front of him and cry quietly, kissing his feet. So he comes out here, and they meekly crawl behind him - he comes out here, to Judas, he comes out victorious, a husband, the lord of truth, a god...
-Who is deceiving Judas? Who's right?
But no. Again screams and noise. They hit again. They didn’t understand, they didn’t guess, and they hit even harder, they hit even more painfully.” Here Jesus stands before the court of the crowd, the court that must resolve the dispute between Judas and Jesus. “And all the people shouted, screamed, howled in a thousand animal and human voices:
- Death to him! Crucify him!
And so, as if mocking themselves, as if in one moment wanting to experience all the infinity of fall, madness and shame, the same people shout, scream, demand in a thousand animal and human voices: “Release Barrabas to us!” Crucify him! Crucify!
Until Jesus' last breath, Judas hopes for a miracle. “What can keep from breaking the thin film that covers people’s eyes, so thin that it seems
not at all? What if they understand? Suddenly, with the entire menacing mass of men, women and children, they will move forward, silently, without shouting, they will wipe out the soldiers, drench them up to their ears in their blood, tear out the cursed cross from the ground, and with the hands of the survivors, raise the free Jesus high above the crown of the earth! Hosanna! Hosanna!". No, Jesus dies. Is this possible? Is Judas the winner? “Horror and dreams came true. Who will now snatch victory from the hands of Iscariot? Let all the nations that exist on earth flock to Golgotha and cry out with millions of their throats: “Hosanna, Hosanna!” - and seas of blood and tears will be shed at its foot - they will find only a shameful cross and a dead Jesus.”
The fulfilled prophecy elevates Judas to the level of pride that is inherent in the rulers of the world: “now the whole earth belongs to him, and he walks firmly, like a ruler, like a king, like one who is infinitely and joyfully alone in this world.” Now his posture is that of a ruler, “his face is stern, and his eyes do not dart in mad haste as before. So he stops and examines the new, small land with cold attention. She has become small, and he feels all of her under his feet.
Infinitely and joyfully alone, he proudly felt the powerlessness of all the forces acting in the world, and threw them all into the abyss.” The world has appeared in darkness and silence, and now Judas has the right to judge everyone and everything. He denounces the members of the Sanhedrin for their criminal blindness, and betrayed you, the wise, you, the strong, to a shameful death that will not end
forever" and the disciples of Jesus.
Now they look at it from above and below and laugh and shout: look at this land, Jesus was crucified on it! And they spit on her - like me! But without Jesus the world lost its light and meaning.
To be close to Jesus means to follow him from this desolate world. “Why are you alive when he is dead?” Judas asks Jesus’ disciples. Jesus is dead, and only the dead are not ashamed now. Judas is ready to continue to endure Jesus' dislike for him, even in heaven, even if Jesus sends him to hell. Judas is capable of destroying heaven in the name of love for Jesus in order to return to earth with him, embracing him brotherly, and thereby wash away the shameful name of the Traitor. This is what Judas believed, the one who truly loved Jesus and who, in the name of love, doomed him to torment and death.
He [Thomas] looked carefully at Christ and Judas,
sitting next to each other, and this strange proximity of the divine
beauty and monstrous ugliness, a man with a gentle gaze
and the octopus with dull, greedy eyes oppressed his mind,
like an unsolvable riddle.
L. Andreev. Judas Iscariot
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, let me remind you of the words of M. Gorky, was “terribly insightful.”
At the center of L. Andreev’s story is the image of Judas Iscariot and his betrayal - “experiment”. According to the Gospel, Judas was driven by a mercantile motive - he betrayed the Teacher for 30 pieces of silver 1 (the price is symbolic - this is the price of a slave at that time). In the Gospel, Judas is greedy, he reproaches Mary when she buys precious ointment for Jesus - Judas was the keeper of the public treasury. Andreevsky's Judas is not characterized by the love of money. From L. Andreev, Judas himself buys expensive wine for Jesus, which Peter drinks almost all of.
The reason, the motive for the terrible betrayal, according to the Gospel, was Satan, who entered Judas: “And Satan entered into Judas, who was called Iscariot... and he went and spoke with the high priest” (Gospel of Mark, chapter 14: 1-2). The Gospel explanation seems, from a psychological point of view, mysterious: since all the roles were already distributed (both victim and traitor), then why did the heavy cross of being a traitor fall on Judas? Why did he then hang himself: he could not bear the gravity of the crime? Did he repent of the crime he committed? The “crime-punishment” scheme here is so generalized, abstracted, and reduced to a general model that, in principle, it allows for various psychological specifications.
In contrast to Yu. Nagibin’s story “Favorite Student,” published in the early 1990s, where the author’s position is clearly expressed (in particular, in the title itself), L. Andreev’s story is contradictory, ambivalent, its “answers” are encrypted and paradoxical, which determines the contradictory, often polar nature of reviews of the story. The author himself spoke about this as follows: “As always, I only pose questions, but do not give answers to them...”
The story is symbolic and has a parable character. The beginning of the parable is: "And then Judas came...", repetitions of the union And, sounding epic: “And it was evening, and there was evening silence, and long shadows lay along the ground - the first sharp arrows of the coming night...”
At the beginning of the story, a negative characterization of Judas is given, it is stated, in particular, that “He had no children, and this once again said that Judas is a bad person and God does not want offspring from Judas,” “He himself has been wandering around senselessly among the people for many years... and everywhere he lies, makes faces, vigilantly looks out for what - with your thief's eye" etc. These characteristics are fair from a certain point of view; they are often cited as proof of the author’s negative attitude towards the central character of his story. And yet, it is necessary to remember that these rumor reviews do not belong to the author, but to certain “knowers” of Judas, as evidenced by the author’s references to the point of view of others: “Jesus Christ many times warned, that Judas of Kariot is a man of very bad reputation and one must beware of him..."; " They told further, that... [emphasis added in both cases by me. - V.K.]". This initial knowledge about Judas is further supplemented and corrected by the author.
Intentionally, at the beginning of the story, a repulsive portrait of the ugly red-haired Judas is given:
And then Judas came... He was thin, of good height, almost the same as Jesus... and he was quite strong in strength, apparently, but for some reason he pretended to be frail and sickly... Short red hair did not hide his strange and unusual shape his skull: as if cut from the back of the head with a double blow of a sword and put back together again, it was clearly divided into four parts and inspired distrust, even anxiety: behind such a skull there cannot be silence and harmony, behind such a skull one can always hear the noise of bloody and merciless battles. Judas’s face was also double: one side of it, with a black, sharply looking eye, was alive, 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...
What was the motive for Judas’s villainous act? S.S. Averintsev in the encyclopedia “Myths of the Peoples of the World” calls the main motive “a painful love for Christ and the desire to provoke his disciples and people to decisive action” 2 .
From the text of the story it follows that one of the motives is not of a psychological, but of a philosophical and ethical nature, and it is associated with the satanic nature of Judas ( "Satan entered into Judas..."). It's about Who knows people better: Jesus or Judas? Jesus, with his idea of love and faith in the good beginning in man, or Judas, who claims that in the soul of every person - "all untruths, abominations and lies", even in the soul of a good person, if you scratch it thoroughly? Who will win in this unspoken dispute between Good and Evil, i.e. What will be the outcome of the “experiment” staged by Judas? It is important to emphasize that Judas does not want to prove, but to test his truth, which was rightly noted by L.A. Kolobaeva: “Judas does not need to prove that the disciples of Christ, like people in general, are bad - to prove to Christ, to all people, but to find out for himself what they really are, to find out their real value. Judas must decide the question - is he being deceived or right? This is the cutting edge of the story's problematics, which is of a philosophical and ethical nature: the story asks a question about the basic values of human existence" 3 .
To this end, Judas decides to undertake a terrible “experiment.” But his burden is heavy for him, and he would be glad to be mistaken; he hopes that “others too” will defend Christ: “With one hand betraying Jesus, with the other hand Judas diligently sought to thwart his own plans.”.
The duality of Judas is connected with his satanic origin: Judas claims that his father is a “goat” 4, i.e. devil. If Satan entered Judas, then the satanic principle should have manifested itself not only at the level of action - the betrayal of Judas, but also at the level of philosophy, ethics, and also appearance. Judas, with his characteristic (and explained by the author of the story) insight, sees and evaluates people from the outside. The author deliberately gives Judas “snake” features: “Judas crawled away,” “And, walking as everyone else walks, but feeling as if he was dragging along the ground.”. In this case, we can talk about the symbolic nature of the story - about the duel between Christ and Satan. This conflict is essentially evangelical; it expresses the confrontation between Good and Evil. Evil (including the recognition of ontological evil in the human soul) wins in the story. It could be argued that L. Andreev comes to the idea of the global powerlessness of man, if (paradox!) not for Judas’s ability to repent and self-sacrifice.
L. Andreev does not justify Judas’s action; he is trying to solve the riddle: what guided Judas in his action 5? The writer fills the gospel plot of betrayal with psychological content, and among the motives the following stand out:
- rebellion, rebellion of Judas, an irrepressible desire to unravel the mystery of man (to find out the value 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 a rebel, a paradoxist and a heretic;
- loneliness, abandonment Jude 6. Judas was despised and Jesus was indifferent to him. Only for a short time did Judas gain recognition - 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, L. Andreev’s language is extremely picturesque, flexible, and expressive, in particular in the episode where the apostles throw stones into the abyss:
Peter, who did not like quiet pleasures, and Philip with him began to tear off large stones from the mountain and let them down, competing in strength... Straining, they tore off an old, overgrown stone from the ground, lifted it high with both hands and let it down the slope. Heavy, it struck short and bluntly and pondered for a moment; then he hesitantly made the first leap - and with each touch to the ground, taking from it speed and strength, he became light, ferocious, all-crushing. He no longer jumped, but flew with bared teeth, and the air, whistling, passed his blunt, round carcass. Here is the edge - with a smooth last movement the stone soared upward and calmly, in heavy thoughtfulness, flew down roundly to the bottom of an invisible abyss.
The picture is so expressive that we tensely follow the jumps and, finally, the flight of the stone, following with our gaze every stage of its movement. The Messiah completely stopped paying attention to Judas: "For everyone he (Jesus) was a tender and beautiful flower, but for Judas he left only sharp thorns - as if Judas had no heart". This indifference of Jesus, as well as disputes about who is closer to Jesus, who loves him more, became, as a psychologist would say, a provoking factor for Judas’ decision;
- resentment, envy, immense pride, the desire to prove that it is he who loves Jesus most of all is also characteristic of St. Andrew’s Judas. To the question asked of Judas, who will be first in the Kingdom of Heaven next to Jesus - Peter or John, the answer follows that amazed everyone: Judas will be first! Everyone says they love Jesus, but how they will behave in the hour of trial is what Judas seeks to test. It may turn out that “others” love Jesus only in words, and then Judas will triumph. The act of a traitor is a desire to test the love of others for the Teacher and to prove one’s love.
The plot and compositional role of Judas is multi-valued. It is intended by the author to be a catalyst for events in order to highlight and give a moral assessment of the actions of “others”. But the plot is also driven by Judas’s personal desire to be understood by the Teacher, to encourage him to pay attention to him, to appreciate his love. Judas creates an existential situation - a situation of choice, which should become a moment of psychological, moral revelation for all participants in this great test.
At the same time, the personality of Judas becomes independently significant in the story, and its significance is evidenced by a reliable indicator - the speech of the central character, in contrast to the speech of “and other” characters. R. S. Spivak discovers the priority of the creative principle in the story and distinguishes in it (and on the basis of speech too) two types of consciousness: inert, uncreative("faithful" disciples) and creative, liberated from the pressure of dogma (Judas Iscariot): “The inertia and sterility of the first consciousness - based on blind faith and authority, which Judas never tires of mocking - is embodied in the unambiguous, poor, at the everyday level, speech of the “faithful” disciples. The speech of Judas, whose consciousness is focused on the creativity of a free personality, is replete with paradoxes, hints, symbols, poetic allegories" 7. It is replete with metaphors and poeticism, for example, Judas’ appeal to Jesus’ beloved disciple John:
Why are you silent, John? Your words are like golden apples in transparent silver vessels, give one of them to Judas, who is so poor.
This gave rise to R.S. Spivak to assert that the creative personality has a central place in Andreev’s concept of man and in Andreev’s worldview.
L. Andreev is a romantic writer (with a personalist, that is, deeply personal type of consciousness, which was projected onto his works and primarily determined their character, range of themes and features of the worldview) in the sense that he did not accept evil in the world around him, the most important justification His existence on earth was creativity 7. 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 may sound for a believer.
St. Andrew's Judas takes on grandiose proportions, he is equated with Christ, and is considered as a participant in the re-creation of the world, its transfiguration. 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 leisurely, 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. He notices the mother of Jesus and says to her sternly:
-Are you crying, mother? Cry, cry, and all the mothers of the earth will cry with you for a long time. Until we come with Jesus and destroy death.
Judas understands the situation as a choice: either he will change the world with Jesus, or:
Then there will be no Judas from Kerioth. Then there will be no Jesus. Then it will be... Foma, stupid Foma! Have you ever wanted to take the earth and lift it up?
Thus, we are talking about the transformation of the world, no less. Everything in the world yearns for this transformation, nature yearns for it (see the expressive landscape painting in the story before the tragic events begin):
And ahead of him [Judas. - V.K.], both behind and on all sides the walls of the ravine rose, cutting off the edges of the blue sky with a sharp line; and everywhere, digging into the ground, huge gray stones rose - as if a stone rain had once passed here and its heavy drops froze in endless thought. And this wild desert ravine looked like an overturned, severed skull, and every stone in it was like a frozen thought, and there were many of them, and they all thought - hard, boundless, stubbornly.
Everything in the world yearns for transformation. And it happened - the course of time was changed.
What are tears? - asks Judas and furiously pushes motionless time, hits it with his fist, curses it like a slave. It is alien and that is why it is so disobedient. Oh, if it belonged to Judas - but it belongs to all these crying, laughing, chatting, as in the market; it belongs to the sun; it belongs to the cross and the heart of Jesus, dying so slowly.
And one more important feature of Andreev’s hero (Andreev’s concept of man) is emphasized by researchers: “This is a potential rebel, a rebel challenging earthly and eternal existence. These rebels are very different in their vision of the world, and their rebellions have different colors, but the essence of their existence is the same : they die, but do not give up" 8.
From artistic features L. Andreev's story "Judas Iscariot" attracts the attention of literary scholars system of paradoxes, contradictions, understatements, which has the most important visual function. The system of paradoxes helps to understand the complexity and ambiguity of the Gospel episode and constantly keeps the reader in suspense. It reflects the emotional storm that overwhelmed the soul of the betrayed Christ, and then the repentant and hanged Judas.
The paradoxical duality of the appearance and inner essence of Judas is constantly emphasized by the author. The hero of the story is deceitful, envious, ugly, but at the same time the smartest of all the students, and smart with a superhuman, satanic mind: he knows people too deeply and understands the motives of their actions, but for others he remains incomprehensible. Judas betrays Jesus, but he loves him as a son; the execution of the Teacher for him is “horror and dreams.” Paradoxical duality gives multidimensionality, ambiguity, and psychological persuasiveness to Andreev's story.
In Judas, undoubtedly, there is something of the devil, but at the same time, the reader cannot but be influenced by his personal (not from the devil, but from a person) amazing sincerity, the power of feeling for the Teacher in the hour of his tragic trial, the significance of his personality. The duality of the image lies in the fact that it is inextricably linked with the terrible that is assigned to it by the religious and cultural world tradition, and the sublimely tragic that equates it with the Teacher in the image of L. Andreev. These are the author of the story who wrote these words that are piercing in meaning and emotional power:
And from that evening until Jesus’ death, Judas did not see any of his disciples near him; and among this entire crowd there were only the two of them, inseparable until death, wildly bound by a commonality of suffering - the one who was betrayed to reproach and torment, and the one who betrayed him. From the same cup of suffering, like brothers, they both drank, the devotee and the traitor, and the fiery moisture equally scorched clean and unclean lips 9 .
In the context of the story, the death of Judas is as symbolic as the crucifixion of Jesus. The suicide of Judas is described in a reduced level, and at the same time as a significant event that rises above ordinary reality and ordinary people. The crucifixion of Jesus on the cross is symbolic: the cross is a symbol, a center, a convergence of Good and Evil. On a broken crooked branch of a wind-worn, half-withered tree, but on a mountain (!), high above Jerusalem, Judas hanged himself. Deceived by people, Judas voluntarily leaves this world following his teacher:
Judas had long ago, during his lonely walks, marked out the place where he would kill himself after the death of Jesus. It was on a mountain, high above Jerusalem, and there was only one tree standing there, crooked, tormented by the wind, tearing it from all sides, half-withered. It extended one of its broken crooked branches towards Jerusalem, as if blessing it or threatening it with something, and Judas chose it to make a noose on it... [Judas] muttered angrily:
No, they are too bad for Judas. Are you listening, Jesus? Now will you believe me? I'm coming to you. Greet me kindly, I'm tired. I'm very tired. Then you and I, hugging like brothers, will return to earth. Fine?
Let us recall that the word brothers was already uttered in the speech of the author-narrator earlier, and this indicates the closeness of the positions of the author and his hero. A distinctive feature of the story is lyricism and expressiveness, an emotionally high degree of narration, conveying the tension of Judas’ expectations (the embodiment of “horror and dreams”). At times, especially when describing the execution of Christ, the narrative takes on an almost unbearable intensity:
When the hammer was raised to nail Jesus' left hand to the tree, Judas closed his eyes and for an eternity did not breathe, did not see, did not live, but only listened. But then, with a grinding sound, iron struck iron, and over and over again there were dull, short, low blows - you could hear a sharp nail entering the soft wood, pushing its particles apart...
One hand. It's not too late.
Another hand. It's not too late.
A leg, another leg - is it really all over? He hesitantly opens his eyes and sees how the cross rises, swaying, and settles in the hole. He sees how, shuddering tensely, Jesus’ arms stretch out painfully, widening the wounds - and suddenly his fallen belly disappears under his ribs...
And again the author - together with the central character of the story, and as a result of the maximum approach to the suffering Jesus, the depicted picture grows to enormous sizes (in reality, Jesus could hardly be seen so close - he was on the cross, the guards did not allow him to approach), reaching an extraordinary expressiveness. The expressiveness and emotional infectiousness of L. Andreev’s story prompted A. Blok to say at one time: “The author’s soul is a living wound.”