A few words about Leonid Andreev
Once upon a time in Russian national library I happened to get acquainted with the first issue of the magazine “Satyricon”, which was published, as you know, in 1908. The reason was to study the work of Arkady Averchenko or, more likely, to collect materials for writing a novel in which one of the chapters takes place in St. Petersburg in 1908. On the last page of "Satyricon" a cartoon portrait of Leonid Andreev was placed. The following was written:
“Rejoice that you are holding an issue of 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 from then on he laughed only with a blood-chilling Red laugh.”
The cheerful magazine ironized the darkly 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 boldness of 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 land surveyor and tax collector, his mother was from the family of a bankrupt Polish landowner. At the age of six he learned to read “and read extremely a lot, 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 Faculty of Law of Moscow University, he was planning to become a sworn attorney, but unexpectedly received an offer from a lawyer he knew to take the place of a court reporter in the Moskovsky Vestnik newspaper. Having received recognition as a talented reporter, two months later he moved to the Courier newspaper. Thus began the birth of the writer Andreev: he wrote numerous reports, feuilletons, and essays.
Literary debut - the story “In Cold and Gold” (zvezda, 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 publishing house “Znanie”. In 1901, the St. Petersburg publishing house “Znanie”, headed by Gorky, published “Stories” by L. Andreev. The following were also published in the literary collections “Knowledge”: the story “The Life of Vasily Fiveysky” (1904); story “Red Laughter” (1905); dramas “To the Stars” (1906) and “Sava” (1906); story “Judas Iscariot and Others” (1907). In "Rosehip" (an almanac of modernist orientation): drama "Human Life" (1907); 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 Receives Slaps” (1916); story “The Yoke of War. Confessions little man about great days" (1916). Andreev's last major work, written under the influence of the world war and 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 at a dacha in Finland and in December 1917, after Finland gained independence, he found himself in exile. The writer died on September 12, 1919 in the village of Neivola in Finland, and was reburied in Leningrad in 1956.
More details 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 do not have mutual understanding found it. "He's scary, but I'm not scared" - So Leo Tolstoy spoke about Leonid Andreev in a conversation with a visitor. Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya in a “Letter to the Editor” of Novoye Vremya accused Andreev of “ loves to enjoy the baseness of vicious phenomena human life " And, contrasting Andreev’s works with her husband’s works, she called for “ to help those unfortunates come to their senses, whose wings they, Messrs. Andreevs, are knocking down, 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 micro-pamphlet from Satyricon cited above; he himself wrote: “Who knows me among the critics? No one, it seems. Loves? Nobody either."
Interesting statement M. Gorky , very close acquaintance with L. Andreev:
« To Andreev, man seemed spiritually poor; woven from the irreconcilable contradictions of instinct and intellect, he is forever deprived of the opportunity to achieve any internal harmony. All his deeds are “vanity of vanities,” corruption and self-deception. And most importantly, he is a slave to death and all his life
The story of Leonid Andreev is also "gospel of Judas" because the Traitor is in charge there actor and performs the same function as in the heretical treatise, but the interaction between Judas and Jesus occurs more subtly:
Jesus does not ask Judas to betray Him, but by His behavior forces him to do so;
Jesus does not inform Judas about the meaning of his atoning sacrifice, and therefore condemns him to the torments of his conscience, i.e., to put it in the language of the special services, he “uses in the dark” the unfortunate Judas. Andreev’s “shifters” are not limited to this:
Judas not only overshadows many of the heroes of the gospel narrative, since they turn out to be clearly stupider and more primitive than him, but also replaces them with himself. Let's take a closer look at St. Andrew'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 Kerioth was a man of very bad reputation and should be avoided. 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 tell about him kind word. And if the good ones reproached him, saying that Judas was selfish, treacherous, prone to pretense and lies, then the bad ones, who were asked about Judas, reviled him the most cruel words... And there was no doubt for some of the disciples that in his desire to get closer to Jesus there was hidden 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 that irresistibly attracted him to the rejected and unloved, he decisively accepted Judas and included him in the circle of the chosen ones.».
The author at the beginning of the story tells us about some oversight of Jesus, excessive gullibility, improvidence, for which he had to pay later and that his disciples were more experienced and far-sighted. Come on, is he really God after this, to whom the future is open?
There are three options:
either he is not God, but a beautiful-hearted, inexperienced person;
either He is God, and specially brought closer to Him the person who would betray Him;
or he is a man who does not know the future, but for some reason it was necessary for him to be betrayed, and Judas had a corresponding reputation.
The discrepancy with the Gospel is obvious: Judas was an apostle of the twelve, he, like the other apostles, preached and healed; was the treasurer of the apostles, however, a lover of money, and the Apostle John directly calls him a thief:
« He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief. He had a cash drawer with him and wore what was put there"(John 12:6).
IN it is explained that
« Judas not only carried the donated money, but also carried it away, i.e. secretly took a significant part of them for himself. The verb here (?????????), translated in Russian by the expression “carried”, is more correctly translated “carried away”. Why was Judas entrusted with a box of money by Christ? It is very likely that with 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 of the consequences: “ However, the Son of Man comes, as it is written about Him; but woe to that man through whom the Son of Man is betrayed: it was better if that person would never have been 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, addressing the apostles, “ Jesus answered them: Have I not chosen you twelve? but one of you is the devil. He spoke this about Judas Simon Iscariot, for he wanted to betray Him, being one of the twelve "(John 6, 70-71). IN “Explanatory Bible” by A.P. Lopukhina The following interpretation of these words is given: “ So that the apostles do not fall into excessive arrogance about their position as constant followers of Christ, the Lord points out that among them there is one person who is close to the devil in his attitude. Just as the devil is in a constantly 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 was going, so to speak, to betray Christ, although he himself was not yet clearly aware of this intention of his.” ».
Further, according to the plot of the story, St. Andrew's Jesus constantly keeps Judas at a distance, forcing him to envy other disciples who are objectively stupider 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 and does not let him go. There are many examples that can be given, let us highlight a few.
The scene when Judas is accepted as an apostle looks like this:
Judas came to Jesus and the apostles, telling something that was obviously false. “John, without looking at the teacher, quietly asked Peter Simonov, his friend:
- Aren't you tired of this lie? I can't stand her any longer and I'll leave here.
Peter looked at Jesus, met his gaze and quickly stood up.
- Wait! - he told his friend. He looked at Jesus again, quickly, like a stone torn from a mountain, moved towards Judas Iscariot and loudly said to him with broad and clear friendliness:
“Here you are with us, Judas.”.
St. Andrew's Jesus is silent. He does not stop Judas, who is clearly sinning; on the contrary, he accepts him as he is, into the number of his disciples; Moreover, he does not verbally call on Judas: Peter guesses his desire and formalizes it in word and deed. This is not how things happened in the Gospel: apostleship was always preceded by a clear calling by the Lord, often by repentance of the one called, and always by a radical change in life immediately after the calling. This is what happened to the fisherman Peter: “ Simon Peter fell at the knees of Jesus and said: Depart from 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 named Matthew sitting at the toll booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he stood up and followed Him"(Matthew 9:9).
Leonardo da Vinci. Last Supper
But Judas does not abandon his way of life after his calling: he also lies and makes faces, but for some reason St. Andrew’s Jesus does not speak out against it.
« 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 seem funny, and sometimes even a scary fairy tale. He readily admitted that sometimes he himself lies, but he assured with an oath that others lie even more, and if there is anyone deceived in the world, it is he, Judas." Let me remind you that the Gospel Christ spoke quite definitely about lies. He characterizes the devil this way: “ When he tells a lie, he speaks his own way, for he is a liar and the father of lies. "(John 8:44). But for some reason St. Andrew's Jesus allows Judas to lie - except for the case when Judas lies to save himself.
To protect the teacher from the angry crowd, Judas flatters her and calls Jesus a simple deceiver and a tramp, diverts attention to himself and allows the teacher to leave, saving the life of Jesus, but he is angry. This was not the case in the Gospel, of course, but they actually wanted to kill Christ more than once for preaching, and this was always resolved successfully solely thanks to Christ himself, for example, with the admonition:
« I have shown you many good works from My Father; For which of them do you want to stone Me?"(John 10:32) or simply a supernatural departure:« Hearing this, everyone in the synagogue was filled with rage, stood up, drove Him out of the city and led Him to the top of the mountain on which their city was built in order to overthrow Him; but He passed through the midst of them and departed"(Luke 4, 28-30).
St. 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 lies are not a sin.
In the same way, St. 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 the people in the village where Jesus preached earlier, but for some reason he allows Judas to steal from the cash drawer... He behaves very contradictory, as if tempering Judas for betrayal; he inflates Judas’s pride and love of money and at the same time hurts his pride. And all this in silence.
“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 he sat with his back to him and threw words over his head. his own towards Judas, or pretended not to notice him at all. And no matter what he said, even if it was one thing today and something completely different tomorrow, even if it was the same thing that Judas was thinking, it seemed, however, that he was always speaking against Judas. And for everyone he was a tender and beautiful flower, fragrant with the rose of Lebanon, but 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 understood 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 have turned a mountain for him! But what is a poisonous snake? Now her tooth has been pulled out, and she is wearing a necklace around her neck. But what is a mountain that can be torn down with your hands and trampled underfoot? I would give him Judas, 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 his inattention, for his lack of love, for his subtle mockery of the proud Judas. What kind of love of money there is!.. This is the revenge of a loving, but offended and rejected person, revenge out of jealousy. And St. Andrew’s Jesus acts as a completely conscious provocateur.
Judas before last moment ready to save Jesus from the inevitable: “ With one hand betraying Jesus, with the other hand Judas diligently sought to thwart his own plans" And even after the Last Supper he tries to find a way not to betray the teacher, he directly turns to Jesus:
“Do you know where I’m going, Lord? I am coming 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, Lord? 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, like the eyes of eternity.
- But you know that I love you. You know everything. Why are you looking at Judas like that? The mystery of your beautiful eyes is great, but is mine less so? Order me to stay!.. But you are silent, are you still silent? Lord, Lord, why, in anguish and torment, have I been looking for you all my life, looking for you and finding you! Set me free. Take away 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 coming."
And who is betraying whom here? This is the “gospel inside out,” in which Jesus betrays Judas, and Judas begs Jesus just as Christ in the present Gospel begs His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane to carry the cup of suffering past him. In the present Gospel, Christ prays to His Father for his disciples, and St. Andrew’s Jesus condemns the disciple to betrayal and suffering.
Icon “Prayer for the Cup” by Caravaggio. Kiss of Judas
Even in the Gnostic Gospel of Judas, Jesus is not so cruel:
Video fragment 2. "National Geographic. Gospel of Judas"
In general, Andreev’s Judas often replaces the disciples, 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 St. Andrew’s Jesus acts as Sabaoth in the Gnostic understanding, i.e. like a cruel demiurge.
Well, it is Judas who contextually appears as Andreev’s loving “God’s father”: it is not without reason that, observing the suffering of Jesus, he repeats: “Oh, it hurts, it hurts a lot, my son, my son, my son. It hurts, it hurts a lot."
Another replacement of Christ by Judas: Judas asks Peter who he thinks Jesus is. " Peter whispered fearfully and joyfully: “I think that he is the son of the living God.” And in the Gospel it is written like this: “ Simon Peter answered Him: Lord! who should we go to? Do you have verbs eternal life: And we have believed and known that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God"(John 6, 68-69). The twist is that Peter’s gospel remark is addressed to Christ, not Judas.
Appearing to the apostles after the death of Jesus, St. Andrew’s Judas again creates an inverted situation and replaces the risen Christ with himself. "Jesus' disciples sat in sad silence and listened to what was happening outside the house. There was also a danger that the revenge of Jesus’ enemies would not be limited to him alone, and everyone was waiting for the guards to invade... At that moment, Judas Iscariot entered, slamming the door loudly».
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 were meeting were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst 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.
The denunciation of Judas is permeated by the following refrain: “Where was your love? ... Who loves... Who loves!.. Who loves! Compare with the Gospel: “When they were dining, Jesus said to Simon Peter: Simon the Jonah! Do you love Me more than they? Peter says to Him: Yes, Lord! You know that I love You. Jesus says to him: Feed my lambs. Another time he says to him: Simon the Jonah! do you love me? Peter says to Him: Yes, Lord! You know that I love You. Jesus says to him: Feed My sheep. He says to him for the third time: Simon the Jonah! do you love me? Peter was saddened that he asked him for the third time: Do you love Me? and said to Him: Lord! You know everything; You know that I love You. Jesus saith unto 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 three times denounces the apostles for their dislike for Christ.
Same scene: “Judas fell silent, raising his hand, and suddenly noticed the remains of a meal on the table. And with strange amazement, curiosity, as if he saw food for the first time in his life, he looked at it and slowly asked: “What is this? Did you eat? Perhaps you slept the same way? Let's compare: " When they still did not believe for joy and were amazed, He said to them: Do you have any food here? They gave Him some of the baked fish and honeycomb. And he took it and ate before them"(Luke 24:41-43). Once again, Judas exactly the opposite repeats the actions of the risen Christ.
« I'm going to him! - said Judas, extending his imperious hand upward. “Who is following Iscariot to Jesus?” Let's compare: " Then Jesus said to them plainly: Lazarus is dead; and I rejoice for you that I was not there, so that you might believe; but let's go to him. Then Thomas, otherwise called the Twin, said to the disciples: come and we will die with him"(John 11, 14-16). To the courageous statement of Thomas, who, like the other apostles, could not confirm it with deeds on the night when Judas betrayed Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, L. Andreev contrasts the same statement of Judas, and Judas fulfills his promise, showing greater courage than the other apostles.
By the way, Andreev’s apostles are shown as fools, cowards and hypocrites, and against their background Judas looks more than advantageous; he outshines them with his sharp paradoxical mind and sensitive love for Jesus. Yes, this is no wonder: Thomas is stupid and cowardly, John is arrogant and hypocritical, Peter is a complete ass. Judas characterizes him this way:
« Is there anyone stronger than Peter? When he shouts, all the donkeys in Jerusalem think that their Messiah has come, and they also start shouting." Andreev completely agrees with his favorite hero, as can be seen from this passage: “A rooster crowed, resentfully and loudly, as if during the day, a donkey, who had woken up somewhere, crowed and reluctantly fell silent intermittently.”
The motif of a cock crowing in the night is associated with Peter’s denial of Christ, and the braying donkey obviously correlates with Peter weeping bitterly after his denial: “ And Peter remembered the word that Jesus had spoken to him: Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny Me three times; and started crying"(Mark 14:72).
Judas even replaces Mary Magdalene. According to Andreev’s version, it was Judas who bought the ointment with which Mary Magdalene anointed Jesus’ feet, whereas in the Gospel the situation is completely opposite. Let's compare: " Mary, taking a pound of pure precious ointment of spikenard, 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 Simon Iscariot, who wanted to betray Him, said: Why not sell this ointment for three hundred denarii and give it to the poor?"(John 12:3-5).
Sebastian Ritchie. Mary Magdalene washes Christ's feet
And in the light of what has been said above, the outburst of Judas does not look at all strange, who, 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 will be near Jesus!”
One can, of course, 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 this, but the fact that St. Andrew’s silent Jesus, without uttering a word , was able to force this smart, contradictory and paradoxical man to become a great Traitor.
« And everyone - good and evil - will equally curse his shameful memory, and among all nations, which were and are, he will remain alone in his cruel fate - Judas of Kariot, Traitor" The Gnostics, with their theory of a “gentleman’s agreement” between Christ and Judas, never dreamed of this.
A domestic film adaptation of Andreev's story "Judas Iscariot" - "Judas, the Man from Kariot" - should soon be released. I wonder what emphasis the director made. For now, you can only watch the trailer for the film.
Video fragment 3. Trailer “Judas, the Man from Kariot”
M. Gorky recalled this statement by L. Andreev:
“Someone proved to me that Dostoevsky secretly hated Christ. I also don’t like Christ and Christianity, optimism is a disgusting, completely false invention... I think that Judas was not a Jew - a Greek, a Hellenic. He, brother, is an intelligent and daring man, Judas... You know, if Judas had been convinced that Jehovah himself was in the face of Christ before him, he would still have betrayed Him. Killing God, humiliating Him with a shameful death, this, brother, is not a trifle!”
I think that this statement most accurately defines author's position Leonid Andreev.
Story "Petka at the Dacha" first published in the “Magazine for Everyone” in 1899. It is based on the story of the writer’s namesake Ivan Andreev. He was considered the most fashionable hairdresser in Moscow. The story is a highly social work. At the center of the story “Petka at the Dacha” is the fate of a child from a poor family, sent as an apprentice to a hairdresser and doing the most difficult and dirty work. Andreev emphasizes the menacing look that hairdresser Osip Abramovich casts at the boy. At times he whispers threats foreshadowing punishment. The story has a ring composition. Its action begins and ends with approximately the same scene in the hairdresser's. Moreover, the quarter where it is located is filled with houses of cheap debauchery. There are constant fights, bad words, and drunkenness. And against the backdrop of this seamy side of life, the hero of the story spends his childhood in constant work. The writer does not skimp on artistic details depicting the vulgarity of the surrounding environment. These are the indifferent faces of dirty and strangely dressed visitors, and a picture covered in flies on the wall of a hairdressing salon, and pictures of drunken massacres disgusting in their cruelty. The horror of the situation emphasizes its hopeless monotony. All days are alike, like siblings. They are even more depersonalized by the same cry: “Boy, water.” There are no holidays. Drawing a portrait of the hero, L.H. Andreev shows how such a hopeless life dries up a child's soul. Petka is losing weight and has bad scabs and fine wrinkles. L.H. Andreev writes that the boy becomes like an aged dwarf. One day, the owner lets Petka go to stay at the dacha, where his mother serves as a cook, and he seems to find himself in heaven: relaxing, swimming, exploring with interest the ruins of an ancient palace. Outside the city, Petka sees for the first time a clear and wide sky, little white joyful clouds that look like angels. This sky becomes a certain symbol of happiness, freedom, peace, the breadth of the world, open to the inquisitive gaze of a child. L.H. Andreev emphasizes how organic this world is for a child’s consciousness. The boy, who had never been to a dacha before, becomes so accustomed to his surroundings in two days that he forgets that Osip Abramovich and his hairdresser exist in the world. But the happiness suddenly ends: the boy is ordered to return to his boring, exhausting duties. The reader is faced with the true tragedy of a child who was deprived of his childhood. Petka reacts to the current situation like a boy: he screams and cries. But soon the hero calms down and dutifully returns to his duties. The master and lady sincerely feel sorry for the boy, but instead of real help, they only remember that someone in this world is living even worse now. Then, with a clear conscience, they go to the dance to have fun.
With his story L.N. Andreev seeks to attract the attention of the progressive public to the situation of children in capitalist society. After all, true humanism does not consist in pitying a child, but in helping him. However, the strength of the artistic exposure of cruel capitalist mores in the work is such that the conclusion suggests itself that it is possible to change the position of children in society only at the state level. Individual philanthropists will not solve the situation radically. Petka's fate can be considered typical for that time of the fate of a child from a poor family. It is no coincidence that the story depicts the figure of another boy - Nikolka, who is three years older than Petka. Listening to the dirty stories that Nikolka tells about visitors, Petka thinks that someday she will be the same as Nikolka. “But for now he would like to go somewhere else,” emphasizes L.N. Andreev.
Tale "Judas Iscariot" Leonida Andreeva raises not one, but many problems, both psychological, philosophical, and ethical. These problems can be analyzed accordingly from different angles, but without forgetting their interconnection. The psychological problems raised in the story include problems of betrayal and loneliness. The same problems can be considered from the position of philosophy: can a person be lonely? What is the reason for his loneliness? Was Judas really a traitor or did he act guided by higher powers? (The dogmatic interpretation of the theme of Salvation and Redemption is such that they would not have happened without the suffering and death of Jesus, and therefore without the betrayal of Judas. There are many very different points of view on this matter, which indicates the ambiguity of the problem and the presence of different ways of interpreting this plot). Another of the problems raised in the story is the problem of the relationship between truth and lies, truth and untruth. The worldview and attitude of Judas is extremely unusual, its logic differs from the logic of ordinary people. A striking example This is the logic of Judas's monologue about the dog. Judas believes that it is true that everyone is deceiving him, and, based on this, he makes the assumption that if he kills the dog, it will deceive him and in fact will become even more alive than before. Perhaps it was this logic that served as one of the reasons for the betrayal: wanting to destroy Jesus, Judas could hope that he would deceive him and, like that dog, would become even more alive. At the same time, Judas could try to deceive himself and perceive betrayal as proof of love and fidelity. Judas is trying to convict both himself and the people around him of deception. He is trying to prove to the apostles that their love for Jesus is not sincere, and they do not understand the meaning of His words. Together with the apostles, Judas, all the followers of Jesus, is contrasted with Jesus himself (the scene with the stolen denarii and the subsequent conversation between Judas and Thomas, the scene when Judas the traitor comes to the apostles and accuses them of dislike for the Teacher, of betrayal). This contrast raises the problem of inconsistency between the teachings of Christ and the teachings of the official Churches: Jesus suffered, but did not ask to defend himself, was meek, humble and did not welcome any violence, rejected and condemned it. The official Churches, as soon as they ceased to be persecuted, became persecutors themselves, Churches that “own and flay,” venerating the cross as a weapon of murder and thereby betraying their Teacher. From the point of view of Judas, the traitor is not he, but all those who misinterpreted the teachings of Christ and refused to defend the Teacher.
L. Andreev's story “Judas Iscariot” is a psychological interpretation of the famous gospel story.
Composition
“The psychology of betrayal” is the main theme of L. Andreev’s story “Judas Iscariot”. Images and motives of the New Testament, ideal and reality, hero and 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 Scripture 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 tries to find a justification for Judas’s actions, to understand his psychology, the internal contradictions that prompted him to commit moral crime, to prove that in the betrayal of Judas there is more nobility and love for Christ than in the faithful disciples.
According to Andreev, by betraying and taking on the name of the traitor, “Judas saves the cause of Christ. True love it turns out to be betrayal; the love of the other apostles for Christ - through betrayal and lies.” After the execution of Christ, when “horror and dreams came true,” “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.”
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 of his feelings. The change in the traditional interpretation of the image of Judas in the story is complemented by new details: Judas was married, abandoned his wife, who wanders in search of food. The episode of the apostles' stone-throwing competition is fictional. Judas' opponents 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 portrays the apostles Peter, John, and Thomas as being in the grip of pride - they are worried about who will be first in the Kingdom of Heaven. Having committed his crime, Judas commits suicide, because he cannot bear his act and the execution of his beloved Teacher.
As the Church teaches, sincere repentance allows one to receive forgiveness of sin, but Iscariot’s suicide, which is the most terrible and unforgivable sin, forever closed the doors of heaven to him. In the image of Christ and Judas, Andreev confronts two life philosophies. Christ dies, and Judas seems to be able to triumph, but this victory turns into tragedy for him. Why? From Andreev’s point of view, the tragedy of Judas is that he understands life and human nature deeper 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 suffering of Christ the ideas of goodness and love will be more clearly revealed to people. A. Blok wrote that in the story there is “the soul of the author, a living wound.”
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 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 gospel history selectively, while preserving its key situations, the names of its characters - in a word, creates the illusion of its retelling, but in fact offering the reader his own version of this story, creates a completely original work with existential (man in the world) problems characteristic of this writer.
In Andreev's story, the ideological beliefs of the characters are polar (faith - disbelief) - in accordance with its genre specificity; at the same time in their relationship decisive role plays an intimate, personal element (likes and dislikes), which significantly enhances 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 embodied spirituality, but this very artistic embodiment as it happens with ideal heroes, lacks external specifics. We hardly see Jesus, we don’t hear his speeches; his states of mind: 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 complex riddle, as, indeed, for the disciples of Jesus, and in many ways for their teacher himself. All of him is “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 closeness 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 lies, 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 lies are rehabilitated, in this case fiction, game.
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 clownish grimaces, the other was swaying seriously and sternly, and his never-closing eye looked wide.”
It is this one, either blind, dead, or all seeing eye Judas instilled anxiety in the souls of Jesus’ disciples: “while his lively and cunning eye moved, Judas seemed simple and kind, but when both eyes stopped motionless and the skin on his convex forehead gathered into strange lumps and folds, 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 largely 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 competition 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 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. Judas tells Thomas about this: “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 haze, 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 its allegorical meaning in this scene: “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 suitable stone, Judas “tenderly dug into him with his long fingers, swayed with him and, turning pale, sent him 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 in 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 tender 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 a 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 art world In 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 the child whom Judas had found somewhere and secretly brought to Jesus as a kind of gift to please him, “Judas strictly walked aside, like a stern jailer who in the spring himself let a butterfly into 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 persistently 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 was it not the love of Jesus Christ for the human race that became the cause of enmity towards him? powerful of the world this 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” - 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 stubbornly 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? They realized that this is the most best man? - 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 formidable 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.
But he entered the memory of people differently: “and everyone - good and evil - will equally curse his shameful memory; and among all nations, which were and are, he will remain alone in his cruel fate - Judas of Kariot, Traitor.”
People evaluate in their own way a person whose behavior disturbs their conscience. The story of one love and the betrayal committed in the name of it was told to us by Leonid Andreev in the story “Judas Iscariot”.
Analysis of the story “Judas Iscariot”
5 (100%) 2 votes“The psychology of betrayal” is the main theme of L. Andreev’s story “Judas Iscariot”. Images and motives of the New Testament, ideal and reality, hero and 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 Scripture 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 the actions of Judas, to understand his psychology, the internal contradictions that prompted him to commit a moral crime, to prove that in the betrayal of Judas there is more nobility and love for Christ than in the faithful disciples.
According to Andreev, by betraying and taking on the name of the traitor, “Judas saves the cause of Christ. True love turns out to be betrayal; the love of the other apostles for Christ - through betrayal and lies.” After the execution of Christ, when “horror and dreams came true,” “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.”
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 of his feelings. The change in the traditional interpretation of the image of Judas in the story is complemented by new details: Judas was married, abandoned his wife, who wanders in search of food. The episode of the apostles' stone-throwing competition is fictional. Judas' opponents 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 portrays the apostles Peter, John, and Thomas as being in the grip of pride - they are worried about who will be first in the Kingdom of Heaven. Having committed his crime, Judas commits suicide, because he cannot bear his act and the execution of his beloved Teacher.
As the Church teaches, sincere repentance allows one to receive forgiveness of sin, but Iscariot’s suicide, which is the most terrible and unforgivable sin, forever closed the doors of heaven to him. In the image of Christ and Judas, Andreev confronts two life philosophies. Christ dies, and Judas seems to be able to triumph, but this victory turns into tragedy for him. Why? From Andreev’s point of view, the tragedy of Judas is that he understands life and human nature deeper 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 suffering of Christ the ideas of goodness and love will be more clearly revealed to people. A. Blok wrote that in the story there is “the soul of the author, a living wound.”