A striking impression is made by the rhythmically and rhymically organized proverbs, sayings of our holy fathers, beloved by the entire Orthodox world. It is striking that you do not usually expect any "arts" from them.

What is in these verses? The special fun of the verbal mind? The only possible game for a monk?

Let's start with the most famous and, of course, providential example.

In 1839, A.M. Grenkov (the future famous elder - St. Ambrose of Optina), who then sought the monastic life. Father Hilarion told the young man: "Go to Optina and you will become experienced." Then he added: “It would be possible to enter the Sarov Hermitage, but there are no longer such wise elders as they used to be, and eldership flourishes in Optina Hermitage.” (It should be noted that the conversation of Elder Hilarion with A.M. Grenkov took place 6 years after the blessed death of St. Seraphim of Sarov, and the spiritual situation in the Sarov Monastery at that time really did not change for the better).

Recently in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy?? uttered this famous proverb “about experience” in an expanded and modified edition: “If you are harsh, go to Sarov, if you want experience, go to Optina, and if you are stubborn, go to Valaam!”

(My friend Yuri Zaitsev, with whom I happened to make many trips in my life, and in last years- to be honored to visit with God's help Optina Hermitage, Diveevo, Valaam, Pochaev and other holy places, added to this: "... if you are sad - go to Pochaev." I can’t resist my own version: “... and if you are desperate, go to Pochaev.” You can combine both: "... and if you are desperate or sad - go to Pochaev." Likewise, in folklore tradition, many oral sayings were composed by nameless centuries.)

But not from that phrase about. Hilarion went the famous rhymes of Fr. Ambrose? For example, the most famous, most often quoted:

Where it's simple
there are angels with about hundred,
where is smart
there isn't one there.

(With an understanding of all the greatness of this judgment, one cannot but recognize as congenial to it - semantic and stylistically - the clever maxim of our contemporary: "Let it be difficult, if only it is not false.")

Who gives in
he gets more.

Or such Ambrose's remark, which seems to me both brilliant in the versification sense, and not very easy to understand (in terms of the "bull custom"):

What river
eccentric man
or I will speak
doing his own will? -
So, brother, custom
we have a bull
and a calf's mind...

Good, sorry, "literary", and such a maxim of the old man:

Live - do not grieve,
don't judge anyone
don't annoy anyone
and all - my respect!

Here, the compositional surprise of the fourth line even evokes joy, a smile. In fact, in such an easy form, a behavioral formula of incredible spiritual height is given, the execution of which directly leads to salvation. However, give it a try! It seems that the person who has carried out this promise, communicated to us as if through a smiling mustache, will undoubtedly acquire the grace that we on earth consider holiness.

Continuation of father's sayings:

One must live without hypocrisy and behave approximately,
then our cause will be right, otherwise it will be bad.

“What do you care what they say about you? - was talking about. Ambrose -

If you listen to other people's words,
you have to put the donkey on your shoulders.”

Then he told a famous parable about an old man, a boy and a donkey.

To one nun, probably from Shamordin, he used to say, warning against arrogance (and here it is difficult for us to suppress a smile):

Look, Meliton, hold on to the tone:
take it high, it won't be easy,
take it low, it will be slippery;
and you, Melitona, stick to the middle tone.

These instructions are good: unintentional, cheerful, remembered immediately, they go crazy. It would be good for us to learn to be strictly guided by them.

Listen, sister!
Don't be awake, don't be colorful!
But be constant and humble,
And be at peace!

Boredom is the despondency of the grandson, and laziness is the daughter.
To drive her away
try hard in business
do not be lazy in prayer,
then boredom will pass, and zeal will come.
And if you add patience and humility to this,
then you will save yourself from many evils.

Here is the reverend's advice on spiritual life:

Don't be like a pesky fly that sometimes flies to no purpose,
and sometimes it bites, and it bothers both;
but be like a wise bee,
who diligently started her business
and by autumn finished honeycombs,
which are as good as correctly sung notes.

To the question of one woman, where should she live - in the world or in a monastery, St. Ambrose replied:

You can live in the world
but not to the south,
and live quietly.

And more about monastic life: “To be a nun, you need patience, not a cart, but a whole convoy.”

And on the same subject:

Moses endured
Elisha endured,
suffered Elijah,
I will also endure.

When the priest was told that, de, they do not give him rest, he answered:

For us then there will be peace,
when they sing over us "With the saints rest!"

As if picking up the “piitic” baton, another of the brothers of the Optina monastery (Father F.) instructed those who sought his advice:

Look into yourself
and will be with you.

Here, in a rhymed pair of short lines, the ancient Greek “Know thyself!” (with a subtext continuation "... and you will know the whole world"), and the Lord's edification that we do not distinguish a log in our own eye, but judge a speck in the eye of our neighbor. “It will be with you” - that is, this knowledge is already very much, in any case, enough for salvation; Do not presumptuously take any more burdens. Without knowing yourself, how can you judge someone? And the trick is that, having known yourself, you will not judge anyone.

Such a story is tied with a golden spiritual thread to the saint of God Hilarion Troekurovsky.

When a certain monk John arrived at the cell of Hilarion, who had already “earned ascetic laurels,” he, having foreseen by the Holy Spirit, humbly said: “Not John, but I should serve John…” With these words, Elder Hilarion sent John a glass of tea to drink. (Here you see a certain symbol associated with the structure of monastic life, but more on that below.)

We are talking about the monks who labored in the Lebedyansky district of the Tambov province (now the Lipetsk region) and later became locally venerated saints - the Monk Hilarion of Troekurovsky and the Monk John Sezenovsky.

This area was also the birthplace of the Monk Silouan of Athos, to whom in childhood the Lord revealed evidence of his two famous spiritual predecessors.

There was also a revelation to him during the prayer struggle: "Keep your mind in hell and do not despair."

It is not surprising that it was precisely from the Monk Silouan of Athos that already in the middle of the 20th century, Fr. Sophrony (Sakharov) took the following saying:

Stand on the edge of despair
and when there is no strength
then go back and sit down and have a cup of tea.

As if the click of a prayer rosary "cha - cha" sounds here in an unusual rhyme of "despair - tea".
This phrase is also very famous among monastics, since tea plays a special role in monastic life. In general, having digressed “for tea”, we recall that B.K. Zaitsev in the famous essay "Valaam". (However, we also note a striking detail that in some Valaam sketes tea was not blessed - due to the severity of abstinence. It is especially shocking if you delve into the meaning, essence and significance of tea and tea drinking in monastic life.)

It is impossible to ignore the testimony of M. Janson's book "The Elders of Valaam" (Berlin, 1938) about Schemagumen Theodore (Feodul Poshekhov, from the peasants of the Yaroslavl province), who was born in 1863 and died on February 518, 1937, having spent 22 years alone, in a hermitage on Porfiryevsky island of the Valaam archipelago and accurately predicted the date of his death.

“... Some time later, Fr. Theodore felt worse again, but he still tried to visit the monastery every Monday. These visits ceased in mid-November. Concerned by this circumstance, Fr. Jerome, the monastery doctor, went by boat to Fr. Theodore again on December 17. The elder met us with lively joy, but greatly changed. “It was God Himself who sent you,” he said.

It turned out that that night he woke up lying on the floor of his cell and for a long time was unable to get up and do anything. With great difficulty he managed to put the samovar on and warm himself with hot tea. On the advice of the doctor, the elder decided to immediately go to the monastery. But, with his characteristic love and rare cordiality, he wished to treat us to tea for the last time in his hermitage.

It was an unforgettable tea party: Fr. Theodore was happy to talk about his imminent death and about the upcoming meeting with his dear fathers and brothers. This farewell conversation lasted for two whole hours, after which, having prayed to the Lord God in the house and in the chapel of St. Seraphim, on his island, we moved to the last one for Fr. Theodora way, on a boat through the monastery bays. We rode in deep concentrated silence, and it seemed to us that Fr. Theodore says goodbye to all the places he loved so deeply. Arriving at the monastery, he went straight to the hospital, where he installed himself in anticipation of the hour of death ... "

Two months later, on February 17, in the presence of Fr. hegumen Khariton, to the words of the abbot, spoken to the schemamonk Fr. Nicholas, who was near the dying man, that Fr. Theodore, perhaps, will get better, the latter firmly and decisively said that he

won't get better
and leave in a day.

And so it happened.

Father Gennady (Davydov) from the village of Pokrovka Belgorod region, who died in 1997 as Schema-Archimandrite Gregory, in response to insincere, “automatic” repentance used to say:

God will forgive
and sick!

An entertaining verb was invented by Fr. Gennady! Sick - does it mean "give in with a twig"? Or will he “add brushwood” to the fire on which you are burning? Or is it about sickness - a disease that is sent from above as a punishment for sins?

About one imaginary patient, the elder prophetically said:

He doesn't have cancer.
but a fool.

It is impossible not to notice that in many piitic sayings of the elders, with a serious conversation about life, death, God, there is a special, lively humor - like a glow of the joy of being.

As you can see, often in smiling "verse words" an instructive, enlightening and parting note.

Valaam hegumen Nazarius (Kondratiev), who began his ascetic path in the Sarov monastery and reposed there on February 23, March 8, 1809 (by the way, one of the spiritual mentors of St. Seraphim of Sarov), edified the brethren:

Talk about yourself
condemn yourself...

And he continued the phrase “in prose”: “that is, your deeds, words and thoughts, conforming to your will, like shameful clothes.”

He also claimed:

Humility is a fence
patience is proof
love -
cover,
Where is love, there is God...

Since 1830, when the most famous subsequently Valaam hegumen, Fr. Damaskin had been living in the desert for the third year already; Fr. Varlaam. Only later, while in Optina Hermitage, where he was sent, having been deposed from the abbots according to the verdict of St. Ignatius (Bryanchaninov), Fr. Varlaam, when asked how to be saved from demonic insurance, answered:

“You won’t get away from demons and in a cell,
if you don't go that route...

However, the paths of salvation are different: one is saved by the mother, but you, according to the word of St. Isaac, enter the ascent of the spiritual feast by the common path.

And here are the words of Fr. Damaskin, who spent 40 years as rector of the Valaam monastery and died in 1881:

love God,
run away from the world
sit in a cell.
The cell will teach all good things,
And sit in it for God's sake,
never get bored!

The first part of the edification, most likely, goes back to the oldest one, who came to us almost from the ancient desert: “Love everyone, run away from everyone.”

And this was his proverb:

Who is addicted to the world,
he will say goodbye to the desert.

One Valaam monk said about Abbot Damaskin 14 years after his death to the writer I. Shmelev: “He knew how to preach sermons well ... as the holy verse expressed. It will start so melodiously, you will listen ... I keep in my mind his verse words, sweet .... "

We do not dare to ignore these simple (and therefore true) key criteria: “like a holy verse”, “singingly”, “sweet”. These are the signs by which it is determined that - always and exactly- the soul needs. Very good and accurate is the turnover “verse words”, borrowed by us for the subtitle.

Let's get acquainted with a completely unfolded canvas - from the simple, seemingly artless sermons of Fr. abbot of Damascus.

So, brethren, flee the world,
love God,
live with advice
do not do your own will!
Remove yourself from rumors and absent-mindedness,
move into the desert!
Who loves God and the desert, -
God loves him too...
And who is addicted to the world,
he will say goodbye to the desert,
Yes, and then God will depart from him!
And a man will remain, like a windmill not fenced,
to plunder birds and beasts;
and you yourself will be a trap for others.
He is always ready to occupy everyone with his idle talk
and take away prayer to God from us;
He is bored talking about the salvation of the soul,
he does not like to burden his body with fasting and bowing,
Yes, he does not want to make a prayer,
and in every possible way tries to spend time in vain;
he finds comfort in that,
how to make people laugh more...

Creative verbosity ends in natural self-abasement, which is good for all of us to learn:

Today I, brethren, a sinner, have spoken many times,
and he did nothing good before the Lord;
woe to me, a sinner, and I exist,
I don't have good deeds
I speak, I do not create.
Teach a friend - do not teach yourself -
alas, alas! my soul, woe to you!

Here we see a technical versification flaw: the pair “delete yourself - move in” is not a successful rhyme even in the style of these compositions, where the precise, full-sounding “love - run - live - create” precede, and below follow “love - love”, “occupy - take away", "speak - create". The editor's corrosive eye will immediately notice that the disadvantage is easily eliminated, since "delete yourself" is quite replaceable with an adequate "depart". It seems that this flaw is connected either with the nature of the composition - improvisational-oral, or the original text will be distorted in other people's retellings.

Let us give examples of a somewhat different, not oral, but rather written genre, although here, too, “speaking” motifs are heard, also somewhat reminiscent of a verse-raeshnik.

We are talking about the interrogation in 1926 in Serdobol (Sortavala) of Valaam monks who were subsequently forcibly evicted from the island and did not want to switch to a new calendar. The text of the narration of Abbot Filimon will be given according to the publication of the Pochaev Brotherhood (“Sorrowful jubilee sheet. 1926−1936”, Vladimirovo, Slovakia, 1937), where it is given in prose, but it is clearly poetic, in a special way built base, which can be reproduced like this:

With tears in their eyes, monks
revealed something new to them
and the interrogators sat in fear
before that fatal answer;
from the Apostolic Canons
Valaamians read aloud
what the sinful world has now left -
became deaf to church discipline!

Further text in the article is given in broken quotations, but rhythmically organized phrases give out signs of versification. “Your father hegumen is with us, you know, and the vicar is our zealous friend! ..” “The hegumen will handle the rest, he will send them throughout the sketes ...”

Archpriest Nikolai Alekseevich Guryanov (1909-2002), about whom they said: “I was wounded by the love of Christ,” who labored on the island of Zalita on Lake Pskov, at the age of 82 spoke, according to the testimony of priest Alexei Likhachev, with the following verses:

My age has passed like yesterday,
How my life has flown by,
And the doors of death are terribly heavy,
It's not far from me.

You forgive, you forgive
Genus and neighbor.
Remember me, a sinner:
I'm leaving you...

“And then he added, smiling slyly, in response to our thoughts”:

not yet.

The style of these texts, of course, reminds us of the poets X? X century, as it were, "Pushkin's style." As you can see, the "general" influence, Feedback with the world, in the "verse words" of the monks also took place. Let's not forget about the answer of St. Philaret of Moscow to Alexander Pushkin to the well-known poem "A gift in vain, a gift accidental..."

It is noticeable that the poetic compositions of the elders were actually written (and more often, rather, they were uttered) predominantly in a free colloquial meter (by the way, very consonant with the searches of some wonderful poets, contemporary to us, I think, who almost physiologically feel the rhythmic-intonation fatigue of Russian verse for the last two hundred years), movingly following the phrase, as a rule, without strict foot regulations. These works are dominated by repetitions, verbal and single-root rhymes (not excluding occasional compound rhymes), which are understood by modern poets as primitive.

But we remember the words of St. Ambrose of Optina (1812−1891): “The Lord rests in simple hearts. Where there is no simplicity, there is only emptiness.”

The same formula was given by the elder in the above form: “Where it is simple, there are a hundred angels, and where it is tricky, there is not a single one.” Note that this proverb contains two rhymes: a rather sophisticated “just - with about one hundred "and a meager" tricky - not a single one. Both of them are rooted in the folklore tradition. Folklore, primitive - characteristic poetic tradition of the elders, regardless of their origin and education. Rev. Ambrose, for example, graduated from the seminary, and Fr. Damascene came from a simple peasant family who did not receive any education.

There is an idiotic phrase “I am a simple man, and I speak in verse ...” There is a feeling that it can be applied to the case we are considering in full, seriously, without any irony and fear of missing.

A frequent feature of monastic poetry is the use of a rhyming text as a fragment of a more lengthy statement, like a quotation in the general volume of thought. Therefore, the impression of quotation is really created, and it is impossible to judge the true authorship. It is clear that with such a stylistic emphasis, the speaker emphasized the special role of precisely this, rhythmically-rhymically organized thought.

Positively, our Holy Fathers attached to the molded word poetic form imitating the Lord Jesus Christ in this: that prayer, which we know as “Our Father”, in its Aramaic basis was taught by the Savior in verses, which was established with sufficient certainty.

And it is obvious: the problem of authorship for the elders was of no importance. “Self-expression”, that is, the desire to express “oneself” (what does this even mean?), realization with a kind of “sub-subversion” of the “face of a non-general expression” - was completely absent in the works of the elders. Witnesses simply conveyed the phrases of the ascetics to us, writing down what they heard firsthand.

Giving preference to maxims, aphoristic statements from the “world of wise thoughts”, the elders nevertheless composed in a childish way, with joy, without caring about the “quality of rhyme”, without setting embellishing, seductive, pardon the expression, “artistic” tasks. It is clear that in the sense of the accuracy of edge agreement, phonetic coincidence, a better (and “uninteresting”) rhyme than the rhyming of a word with itself, of course, does not exist. However, usually the task of “secular” rhyming is not only to create sound meaningfully complete phrases, not in simple hooting, but in entering new semantic spaces. Therefore, it is not uncommon for poets to strive for the echo of rhyme, and hence their multiple testimonies that the author never knows how the poem begun in the work will end. “The poet’s speech goes far ...” (M. Tsvetaeva). The elders, as we see, have no such problem and no task. However, there is an undoubted moment of speaking, multiplication of sound meaning, as if unwinding a ball or cyclic rotation of a well gate.

Not that glorious
whom the world praises
but one whom God will glorify.

Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk spoke.

Well, what is it that “gets you” and “turns you on” in this simplicity? the 17-year-old son asked me. - After all, the monks were people - completely illiterate, with rare exceptions. There was nowhere to take a special sophistication in their poems.

What can I say to this “young, unfamiliar tribe”, which, out of youthful stupidity, honors the mind, the totality of certain knowledge, “educated” - first of the heart? What did I myself think about it at his age? (The only difference is that in godless times we did not know the names of our ascetics, and, living, for example, in Belgorod, a few dozen kilometers from the village of Pokrovka, we never heard of Father Gennady. And about Father Joseph (Golovatyuk ), our dear contemporary, who labored and healed in the Ukrainian village of Malaya Ilovitsa and died in 1970. But who needed it, they knew, they knew. Today, this earthly angel is revered as the Monk Amphilochius of Pochaev, being healed already from his relics, preserved in the cave on Pochaevskaya mountain.)

What can be said today about secular poetry, which departed, fell away in its time from the spiritual, just as the first people Adam and Eve fell away from grace? What was God's will? So that we are convinced of the dead end of a willful choice? Great is the permissive love of the Lord for us self-made! But sophistication without reason - this is the extreme limit to which it has come modern Art. In a daring attempt h fill the gaping abyss of God's absence, if not God-forsakenness (baroque, empire, rococo, modern, and now new type pattern - postmodern - isn't it a vector of this flight from God, that is, a movement to nowhere?), isn't it obvious that there is a clear increase in spiritual entropy, an effort to replace emptiness with an imitation of presence?

This is more and more typical today not only for poetry, but also for art in general (in the name of which the word “skill” is inextricably “sewn up”), and more so for the whole life of modern civilization, which should be regretted, but it is difficult to forgive. Reveling in one's own miasma, when only a wretched ego is placed in the center of the universe - that's new form"inspiration" that the "artists" of the 20th and 21st centuries offered us. Let us ask ourselves the question: is not the complication of the language of art a new, repeatedly repeated, proud, and therefore futile, punishable attempt to build tower of babel- within ourselves?

The pole opposite to sophistication, namely, a different, loving view of the world, is shown to us by the “verse words of the elders”, where there is no covering “decoration”, but the simplicity and height of love are revealed, which fertilize everything and which we, almost hopelessly soiled with civilizational dirt, and not dreamed.
28.06.03 - 11.11.04, 24.08.06

Where it is simple, there are a hundred angels, and where it is tricky, there is not a single one. (Elder Ambrose of Optina)

On the northern island, far away, three elders prayed in tears:
"There are three of you in Heaven, three of us. Have mercy, God save us!
Don't forget the unfortunate ones, the widows and the sick, and the orphans.
Have mercy on us, O Lord, who have fallen, who raise their hands to You!"

From morning until night, three gray-haired ones kneel in tears.
And they pray, pray, pray for the world that is bogged down in sins.

Sailed on the sea somehow a ship, a merchant. On it is a bishop.
In gilded crosses and awards, he sailed to his monastery.

And then I recognized, suddenly, about the elders. He immediately hurries to the captain.
"Respect! I will never forget, people are talking about a miracle!"
Sailed to the island, then. The priest comes out. And so:
Three old men in torn dresses blind with gray beards.

They fell at the priest's feet, and his hands kiss him.
But the priest raised them: "What are you! Tell us your life!
How do you feed here on a distant, forgotten island?
Do you say all prayers? What psalms do you sing?

Hearty eyes lowered, and quietly one says:
"We do not know the Psalms, Vladyka. Our prayer is simple:
Oh Life-Giving Trinity! Save this world to the end!"

“And that’s all?” the bishop was surprised. “Well, I’ll teach you
The most important prayer, the Lord's, this is like a ray!
And in the cold it warms, in the heat it gives relief.
Enemies, as if a sword cuts off, and directly leads to the Truth.

And after an hour, after two or two, the ship returned to its course.
And the elders read a prayer, baptizing those sailing away ...

On deck it is nice, calm, to be the time of the evening dawn.
The stern priest pondered as he quietly sat down in the stern.

Everything looks and looks at the sea. And thoughts float in silence.
"And what is that dot of light, getting closer and closer to me?
But what kind of bright cloud seems to be running after us?
How wonderfully it flares up, like a ray of heaven, it shines!

Queen of Heaven, Mother! Three elders run on water!
Save and have mercy on the Almighty. All three are on the wave!"

Having reached the boat on the water, they call the priest. Shout:
Forgive the despicable old people, forgive us for the sake of Christ!
We have forgotten the main prayer, because the memory has let us down.
You repeat it, father, remind the Holy Words!"

The priest fell to his knees, his face already in tears, and says:
“Oh, humble, wonderful elders, it’s not for me, however, to teach you.
Profitable and your prayer, the Lord heard you a long time ago!
Keep praying brothers. So by God, it is destined to see."

The elders bowed humbly, and again walked on the water.
And above them, shining with rays, the radiance shone in the darkness.

2015

Reviews

Nina, hello! Just the other day I watched a video of an Orthodox channel with a parable on the same topic! Liked it very much. And today is your wonderful work, Thank you! Thank you for the poems, for everything you do with God's help! God bless you!

The daily audience of the Potihi.ru portal is about 200 thousand visitors, who in total view more than two million pages according to the traffic counter, which is located to the right of this text. Each column contains two numbers: the number of views and the number of visitors.

Archimandrite Melchizedek (Artyukhin). Conversations with the priest

“Where it’s simple, there are hundreds of angels ...”
In November 1987 Optina Pustyn was returned to the Church. And in June 1988, by the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Monk Ambrose, the first of the Optina Elders, was canonized as a saint. On the anniversary of the revival of the monastery, by the grace of God, a miracle happened: at night, after the service in the Presentation Cathedral, the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, the relics and the icon of St. Ambrose streamed myrrh. Other miracles were performed from the relics of the elder, with which he certifies that he does not leave us sinners by his intercession before our Lord Jesus Christ. To Him be glory forever, Amen.

Conversations with the priest http://orthodox-newspaper.ru/numbers/at53267 ORTHODOX NEWSPAPER

Archimandrite Melchizedek (in the world Pavel Dmitrievich Artyukhin; May 2, 1962, Moscow) - Archimandrite of Russia Orthodox Church, Rector of the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in Yasenevo and the Church of the Intercession Holy Mother of God in Yasenev.

– Our guest is Archimandrite Melchizedek (Artyukhin), rector of the Optina Pustyn monastery in Moscow. Father Melchizedek, June 6 was the 25th anniversary of the glorification of the Monk Ambrose of Optina (1988), and you, as the rector of the metochion in Moscow, are probably better than anyone else can tell about the spiritual meaning of this event.
– I was lucky to be a member of the Council on June 6, 1988 in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. It was just anniversary year- the millennium from the day of the Baptism of Russia. At this Council, St. Ambrose was canonized as a saint, as were St. Theophan the Recluse and Bishop Ignatius (Brianchaninov) - in all 8 saints of the Russian Orthodox Church.
In the monastery of Optina Pustyn, the first Liturgy was on June 3, on the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, on the feast day of Saints Equal-to-the-Apostles Constantine and Helena. After the Liturgy, we immediately returned to the Lavra for the Local Council. Four pairs of hieromonks were chosen to bring 8 icons of these glorified saints to the Local Council. I was paired with the now Archimandrite Alipiy, he is now the head of the Publishing Department of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. We got to carry two icons - Theophanes the Greek and the Reverend Elder Ambrose of Optina. I handed it to Patriarch Pimen, the Patriarch overshadowed the icons, and at that time the choir, under the direction of Archimandrite Matthew, sang the troparion, kontakion and magnification to those saints who were ranked among the saints. This memorable event took place exactly 25 years ago, in 1988.
One should remember the legacy of the Monk Ambrose, the Elder of Optina, who at all times will be the spiritual mentor of all people seeking salvation. The Monk Ambrose said about himself: "As I was born among people, so I live among people."
From his biography it is known that he was born on the day of memory of Alexander Nevsky in 1812 - last year was the 200th anniversary of the birth of St. Ambrose. “As I was born in people, so I live in people” - that day was his father’s birthday, the hut was full of people, and my mother was in demolition, she was forced to go to the bathhouse; he was born like this, in public. He saw all the strata of pre-revolutionary Russia, and peasants, and petty bourgeois, and nobles, and seminarians, and bishops. All Orthodox Russia stayed in the cell of the Reverend Elder Ambrose of Optina. By the way, Dostoevsky wrote about him - he visited the elder after the death of his only son Alexei, on the advice of his wife. He undertook this huge journey, because then there were neither Sapsan nor aircraft: Optina Pustyn is 250 kilometers from Moscow and 700 kilometers from St. Petersburg. Almost 1000 kilometers Dostoevsky went to the elder Ambrose and then said: "I went to him one, and left the other."
In his brilliant novel"The Brothers Karamazov" many writers see in the image of the elder Zosima the image of the elder Ambrose of Optina, although this is not entirely true. For Russia at that time, such a positive attitude towards the Church, towards the eldership, towards the monastery was absolutely incredible. It was completely unfashionable then - the liberal movements were in full swing, the struggle for democracy and so on and so forth. "Freedom, equality and fraternity" - these were the slogans that hovered in the minds of the Russian intelligentsia at that time. Elder Ambrose of Optinsky was close to every person - both to such an intellectual and the highest writer as Dostoevsky, and to a simple peasant woman.
In our lives, we must leaf through at least a few books of the instructions of St. Ambrose, get to know them. I remember his simple, but capacious, convincing instructions that he gave to people who came to him. Here, for example, is one of them: "Where it is simple, there are a hundred angels, and where it is tricky, there is not a single one."
Here we are all wiser in life, that is, there is not enough spiritual or spiritual simplicity, we are all about ourselves great opinion, we all think that we are seven spans in the forehead. Because of this, we do not consult with anyone, children do not consult with their parents, parents do not consult with the same parents who have the same problem children ... I remember one story, she was in our parish. A 12-year-old girl, her parents teach her, and she transitional age, rebellious spirit, this is a responsible period for the family, which must be thoughtfully passed, together with the child. It is necessary to give him all the attention at this moment in order to protect him from the influence of the street. And the girl says: “I will grow up and start doing exactly the opposite of what you tell me, but now I humble myself, because I am 12 years old.” And the father says: “Start now, put two fingers into the socket.” This is an example of what? An example of such a rebellion: I don’t want to listen to anything. A person does not want to listen or consult ...
“Where it is simple, there are a hundred angels, and where it is tricky, there is not a single one.” At 7 years old, a girl says: “Mom knows everything”, at 12 years old a girl says: “Mom understands something”, at 17 years old a girl says: “Mom is completely behind the times”, at 25 years old a girl says: “It would be better if I obeyed my mother." And so it turns out: smart people learn from strangers, and fools learn from their mistakes.

It is hard to imagine that a video of one and a half hour lectures on folklore could be of interest to the general public, however, the speeches of the Samara philologist Sofya Zalmanovna Agranovich flew around the Runet and made her even more famous than she was during her lifetime. Especially for the "Big Village" her student Ksenia Aitova recalls how it really was.

"I'm not a genius," she said to herself. - “Here is Rymar - a genius. And I'm just retelling what others have written. What is Sofia Zalmanovna Agranovich without self-irony! But for us, she was more than a genius - a person who knows how the world works.

Her first-year lectures on the history and theory of folklore were always scheduled for September 1st. Probably, in order to immediately shock yesterday's Samara schoolgirls and show the "philology face". We have here, they say, not just mountains of books and a dull sitting in the library.

However, schoolgirls, at least those who did not go to the philological faculty out of hopelessness, by the first of September, as a rule, had heard a lot. It seems that senior comrade Max Kiselev told me about Agranovich for the first time in the ninth class. Or was there a note by Katya Spivakovskaya in one of the Samara newspapers before? No, of course, I read the note because I already knew the name "Agranovich".

Here at the first lecture (listen, what good fellow psychologists are after all, that they wrote it all down!) Sofya Zalmanovna tells the full, unadapted version of Ryaba the Hen. She also told us, and also at the first. And our predecessors, and even earlier - probably all 30 years that I worked at the university. And also that Cinderella is afraid of midnight, because she will turn back into a dead one. And about Little Red Riding Hood, which was eaten by a grandmother, and not at all a wolf, and about Hamlet, the English version of our Ivanushka the Fool, who outwitted everyone - but this is already later.

Her lectures literally blew the brains of Filfakovsky "recruits". They broke the template. It seems that at the time of our studies, all these expressions had not yet come into use, otherwise they would certainly have ended up in the lexicon of Sofya Zalmanovna. She did not go into her pocket for a word - she spoke in a colorful, non-academic language, and she retold fairy tales and myths in it. “This is when Gavryusha told Masha that she would be a single mother” (about the Annunciation), “I’m an old aunt, I pepper it like it is” - all this is here, on the first video. "World aunt" - those who have never studied at Samara State University call her on the Internet. She would love it.

To say that Agranovich was colorful means little to say. The first thing that those who entered the university in the early 2000s learned from graduate students was that “they didn’t catch the real Agranovich.” Sofya Zalmanovna, as you can see from the video, has never been frail, but there were real legends about her former volumes. I still don’t know if they were true or exaggerated, but due to health problems at some point, doctors put Agranovich on a strict diet. She sometimes complained about her in lectures, also as part of a self-deprecating project ("I'm hungry, so I'm angry").

Photo source:

Then, she smoked in the audience. An unheard of audacity for an academic university, the toilet in which is hung with prohibitions. And also a stick. Agranovich's legs hurt, but the cane also performed many additional functions. For example, she served visual aid: placed on the table, marked the watershed between the world of the dead and the living. Sometimes it was even threatened by the noisy back rows, but the gesture was more of a ritual one. With all the passion of her nature, which extended to science (“a simulacrum, not a baudriaire” - Agranovich’s favorite expression for any “zaum”), she was a good-natured, sociable and talkative woman (she could not even write books alone, all seven - in collaboration with colleagues).

I watch the recording of the lecture and hear constant laughter. Did we have the same? For sure. And this is not only school "giggling" at spicy places and sharp expressions. Although Agranovich, of course, was a brilliant storyteller - she knew how to lead to the topic, to intrigue. Sometimes, however, her promises “to tell about it someday” were never crowned with anything. Her lectures were built somewhat chaotically (which was also a separate topic for self-irony and self-criticism), but nothing was lost. The laughter in the audience was the laughter of discovery and recognition. Soon we will read "Historical Roots fairy tale» Propp, Panchenko, Bakhtin and many other studies of the origins of literature . In the meantime, this is a real discovery - that you can look at culture like this, through the mythological consciousness .

Photo source: Samara Fate media project

Biography summaries say that Agranovich was the largest specialist in folklore, mythology and mythopoetics in the city. As students, we didn't think about it. She herself was so saturated with these " historical roots”and reflections on the influence of archaic consciousness on modernity, which has become for us almost a folklore character. Squat, frisky, despite the stick, with a constant cigarette and a hoarse voice, a lover of jokes ("this is such a rarity - funny joke no swearing!”), bright, rude and immensely charming, Sofya Zalmanovna, or Sofa, as her colleagues called her, knew the most important thing. At lectures on folklore, she told us how the world works. It seems that it was this knowledge that gave her that freedom, for which the students also reached out. What can bind a person who knows the cipher, the key to unraveling the world?

I won’t even try to reproduce here Sofya Zalmanovna’s story about “Zoya’s standing” and her interpretation of the “Samara miracle” - now such things are fraught. But it’s a sin not to finish the text about Agranovich with an anecdote. This one was inherited from the first lecture. Since about the weather, it is often remembered:
Dad asks his little daughter: “Katya, what season is it now?” - "Summer" - "Well, what a summer, look, the leaves are yellow" - "Summer" - "Look, people are walking in boots and jackets" - "Summer" - "Look, it's raining ..." - "But such a x ... howl summer, ”the daughter cuts off.

All recorded lectures of Sofia Agranovich can be viewed on

Sofia Agranovich: man and myth

on the site bigvill.ru, for which I wrote the text, there is a link to the rest of the lectures of SZ

"I'm not a genius," she said to herself. - “Here is Rymar - a genius. And I'm just retelling what others have written. What is Sofia Zalmanovna Agranovich without self-irony! But for us, she was more than a genius - a person who knows how the world works.

Her first-year lectures on the history and theory of folklore were always scheduled for September 1st. Probably, in order to immediately shock yesterday's Samara schoolgirls and show the "philology face". We have here, they say, not just mountains of books and a dull sitting in the library.

However, schoolgirls, at least those who did not go to the philological faculty out of hopelessness, by the first of September, as a rule, had heard a lot. It seems that senior comrade Max Kiselev told me about Agranovich for the first time in the ninth class. Or was there a note by Katya Spivakovskaya in one of the Samara newspapers before? No, of course, I read the note because I already knew the name "Agranovich".

Here at the first lecture (listen, what good fellow psychologists are after all, that they wrote it all down!) Sofya Zalmanovna tells the full, unadapted version of Ryaba the Hen. She also told us, and also at the first. And our predecessors, and even earlier - probably all 30 years that I worked at the university. And also that Cinderella is afraid of midnight, because she will turn back into a dead one. And about Little Red Riding Hood, which was eaten by the grandmother, and not at all by the wolf, and about Hamlet, the English version of our Ivanushka the Fool, who outwitted everyone - but this is already later.

Her lectures literally blew the brains of Filfakovsky "recruits". They broke the template. It seems that at the time of our studies, all these expressions had not yet come into use, otherwise they would certainly have ended up in the lexicon of Sofya Zalmanovna. She did not go into her pocket for a word - she spoke in a colorful, non-academic language, in which she retold fairy tales and myths. “This is when Gavryusha told Masha that she would be a single mother” (about the Annunciation), “I’m an old aunt, I pepper it like it is” - it’s all here, on the first video. “World aunt” - those who have never studied at Samara State University call her on the Internet. She would love it.

To say that Agranovich was colorful is not enough to say. The first thing that those who entered the university in the early 2000s learned from graduate students was that “they didn’t catch the real Agranovich.” Sofya Zalmanovna, as you can see from the video, has never been frail, but there were real legends about her former volumes. I still don’t know if they were true or exaggerated, but due to health problems at some point, doctors put Agranovich on a strict diet. She sometimes complained about her in lectures, also as part of a self-deprecating project ("I'm hungry, so I'm angry").

Then, she smoked in the audience. An unheard of audacity for an academic university, the toilet in which is hung with prohibitions. And also a stick. Agranovich's legs hurt, but the cane also performed many additional functions. For example, it served as a visual aid: placed on the table, it marked the watershed between the world of the dead and the living. Sometimes it was even threatened by the noisy back rows, but the gesture was more of a ritual one. With all the passion of her nature, which extended to science (“a simulacrum, not a baudriaire” - Agranovich’s favorite expression for any “zaum”), she was a good-natured, sociable and talkative woman (she could not even write books alone, all seven - in collaboration with colleagues).

I watch the recording of the lecture and hear constant laughter. Did we have the same? For sure. And this is not only school "giggling" at spicy places and sharp expressions. Although Agranovich, of course, was a brilliant storyteller - she knew how to lead to the topic, to intrigue. Sometimes, however, her promises “to tell about it someday” were never crowned with anything. Her lectures were built somewhat chaotically (which was also a separate topic for self-irony and self-criticism), but nothing was lost. The laughter in the audience was the laughter of discovery and recognition. Soon we will read The Historical Roots of the Fairy Tale by Propp, Panchenko, Bakhtin and many other studies of the origins of literature. . In the meantime, this is a real discovery - that you can look at culture like this, through the mythological consciousness .

Biography summaries say that Agranovich was the largest specialist in folklore, mythology and mythopoetics in the city. As students, we didn't think about it. She herself was so saturated with these “historical roots” and reflections on the influence of archaic consciousness on modernity that she became for us almost a folklore character. Squat, frisky, despite the stick, with a constant cigarette and a hoarse voice, a lover of jokes (“it’s such a rarity - a funny anecdote without obscenity!”), bright, rude and immensely charming, Sofya Zalmanovna, or Sofa, as her colleagues called her, knew the most important thing. At lectures on folklore, she told us how the world works. It seems that it was this knowledge that gave her that freedom, for which the students also reached out. What can bind a person who knows the cipher, the key to unraveling the world?

I won’t even try to reproduce here Sofya Zalmanovna’s story about “Zoya’s standing” and her interpretation of the “Samara miracle” - now such things are fraught. But it’s a sin not to finish the text about Agranovich with an anecdote. This one was inherited from the first lecture. Since about the weather, it is often remembered:
Dad asks his little daughter: “Katya, what season is it now?” - "Summer" - "Well, what a summer, look, the leaves are yellow" - "Summer" - "Look, people are walking in boots and jackets" - "Summer" - "Look, it's raining ..." - "But this is x ... th summer, ”the daughter cuts off.