Topic: about the psychology of the betrayal of Judas, the betrayal of the cowardly disciples of Christ, the masses of the people who did not come out in defense of Christ.

Idea: the paradox of Andreev's story is the unlimited love of Judas for his Teacher, the desire to be constantly near and betrayal, too, as a way to get closer to Jesus. Judas betrays Christ to find out if any of his followers are capable of sacrificing their lives to save the teacher. His betrayal is predetermined from above.

Artistic features: comparison of Judas and Christ. The writer equates two such apparently opposite images, he brings them together. Images of students are symbols.

Peter is associated with a stone, even with Judas he enters into a stone-throwing contest.

Reader's position: Judas - a traitor, betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver - such a name was fixed in the minds of people. After reading Andreev's story, you wonder how to understand the psychology of Judas' act, what made him violate the laws of morality? Knowing in advance that he will betray Jesus, Judas fights against it. But it is impossible to defeat predestination, but Judas cannot but love Jesus, he kills himself. Betrayal is a topical issue at the present time, a time of misunderstanding between people.

Updated: 2017-09-30

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"Psychology of betrayal" - the main theme of L. Andreev's story "Judas Iscariot" -. The images and motives of the New Testament, the ideal and reality, the hero and the 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 Scriptures 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 Judas' actions, to understand his psychology, internal contradictions that prompted him to commit a moral crime, to prove that there is more nobility and love for Christ in Judas's betrayal than among faithful disciples.

According to Andreev, by betraying and assuming the name of a traitor, “Judas saves the cause of Christ. True love is betrayal; the love for Christ of the other apostles is a betrayal and a lie.” After the execution of Christ, when “the horror and dreams came true”, “he walks slowly: 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 for his feelings. The change in the traditional interpretation of the image of Judas in the story is complemented by new details: Judas was married, left his wife, who wanders in search of food. The episode of the competition of the apostles in throwing stones is fictitious. Opponents of Judas 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 depicts the apostles Peter, John, Thomas being in the power of pride - they are worried about who will be the first in the Kingdom of Heaven. Having committed his crime, Judas commits suicide, as he cannot bear his act and the execution of his beloved Teacher.

As the Church teaches, sincere repentance allows one to receive the forgiveness of sin, but the suicide of Iscariot, which is the most terrible and unforgivable sin, forever closed the doors of paradise before him. In the image of Christ and Judas, Andreev confronts two philosophies of life. Christ dies, and Judas seems to be able to triumph, but this victory turns into a tragedy for him. Why? From Andreev's point of view, the tragedy of Judas is that he understands life and human nature more deeply 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 sufferings of Christ the ideas of goodness and love will be more clearly revealed to people. A. Blok wrote that in the story - "the soul of the author - a living wound."

Rethinking the image of a traitor in the story "Judas Iscariot"

In 1907, Leonid Andreev, returning to the biblical problem of the struggle between good and evil, wrote the story Judas Iscariot. Work on the story of Judas preceded work on the play Anathema. Criticism recognized the high psychological skill of the story, but negatively reacted to the main position of the work "on the meanness of the human race" (Lunacharsky A. Critical studies).

L.A. Smirnova notes: “In the Gospel, the sacred text, the image of Judas is a symbolic embodiment of evil, a character conditional from the standpoint of artistic depiction, purposefully devoid of a psychological dimension. The image of Jesus Christ is the image of the righteous martyr, the sufferer, who was destroyed by the mercenary traitor Judas” (26, p. 190). The biblical stories tell about the life and death of Jesus Christ, about the miracles that he performed on earth. The closest disciples of Jesus were preachers of the truths of God, their deeds after the death of the Teacher were great, they fulfilled the will of the Lord on earth. “Very little is said about the traitor Judas in the Gospel teaching. It is known that he was one of the closest disciples of Jesus. According to the apostle John, Judas in the community of Christ fulfilled the "earthly" duties of the treasurer; it was from this source that it became known about the price of the life of the Teacher - thirty pieces of silver. It also follows from the Gospel that Judas' betrayal was not the result of an emotional impulse, but a completely conscious act: he himself came to the high priests, and then waited for a convenient moment to fulfill his plan. The sacred text says that Jesus knew about the fatal predestination of his fate. He knew about the dark plans of Judas” (6, p.24).

Leonid Andreev rethinks the biblical story. Gospel sermons, parables, the Gethsemane prayer of Christ are not mentioned in the text. Jesus is, as it were, on the periphery of the events described. Sermons are transmitted in the dialogues of the Teacher with the students. The story of the life of Jesus the Nazarene is transformed by the author, although the biblical story is not changed in the story. If in the Gospel the central character is Jesus, then in L. Andreev's story it is Judas Iscariot. The author pays much attention to the relationship between the Teacher and the students. Judas is not like the faithful companions of Jesus, he wants to prove that only he is worthy to be near Jesus.

The story begins with a warning: "Judas from Carioth is a man of very bad reputation and must be guarded against" (T.2, p.210). Jesus affectionately accepts Judas, brings him closer to him. Other disciples do not approve of the Teacher's affectionate attitude towards Iscariot: "John, the beloved disciple, moved away in disgust, and all the rest looked down in disapproval" (T.2, p.212).

The character of Judas is revealed in his dialogues with the rest of the disciples. In conversations, he expresses his opinion about people: “Good people are those who know how to hide their deeds and thoughts” (T.2, p.215). Iscariot tells about his sins, that there are no sinless people on earth. The same truth was preached by Jesus Christ: “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her (Mary)” (T.2, p.219). All the disciples condemn Judas for sinful thoughts, for his lies and foul language.

Iscariot opposes the Teacher in the matter of attitude to people, to the human race. Jesus is completely removed from Judas after an incident in one village, where Iscariot saved Christ and his disciples with the help of deceit. But his act was condemned by all. Judas wants to be close to Jesus, but the Master does not seem to notice him. The deception of Judas, his betrayal - striving for one goal - to prove his love for Jesus and expose the cowardly disciples.

According to the gospel story, Jesus Christ had many disciples who preached Holy Scripture. Only a few of them take an active role in the work of L. Andreev: John, Peter, Philip, Thomas and Judas. The plot of the story also mentions Mary Magdalene and the mother of Jesus, women who were also next to the Teacher during the events of two thousand years ago. The remaining companions of Christ do not participate in the development of the action, they are mentioned only in crowd scenes. L. Andreev does not accidentally bring these students to the fore, it is in them that everything important is concentrated that is necessary for understanding the problem of betrayal, which is fundamental in the work. Evangelists recognized by the church are depicted in detail by the author, it is their revelations that are the truth; The Gospels of John, Thomas, Peter, Matthew became the basis of the Christian faith. But L. Andreev offers a completely different point of view on the events of that time.

L. Andreev depicts the disciples of Jesus realistically, as the plot develops, the images of the evangelists are revealed. The author departs from the ideal image of a martyr, recognized in the Bible, and "Judas is all created from destroyed habits, and not even merged, but only ugly clinging impressions" (3, p. 75). According to L. Andreev, Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot are, first of all, real images in which the human principle prevails over the divine. Judas becomes for the author a person who has played the greatest role in history. In Jesus, L. Andreev sees, first of all, the human essence, affirms the active principle in this image, equalizes God and man.

All the heroes of L. Andreev make a choice between a sacrifice in the name of saving the human race and the betrayal of the Son of God. It is on this choice that the author's assessment and the solution of the conflict depend: fidelity to the spiritual ideal or betrayal. The author destroys the myth of the disciples' devotion to Jesus. Through mental trials, the writer leads all the characters to the highest point in the development of the plot - the choice between serving a higher goal and betrayal, which will remain in the history of peoples for centuries.

In the description of L.N. Andreev, the character of Judas is full of opposites, which corresponds to his appearance. At the same time, he is not only greedy, angry, mocking, cunning, inclined to lie and pretense, but also smart, trusting, sensitive and even gentle. In the image of Judas, the author combines two seemingly incompatible characters, inner worlds. According to Andreev, the "first half" of Judas' soul is a liar, a thief, a "bad man." It is this half that belongs to the "moving" part of the face of the hero of the story - "a sharply peering eye and a noisy, like a woman's voice." This is the "worldly" part of the inner world of Judas, which is turned to people. And short-sighted people, of whom the majority, see only this open half of the soul - the soul of a traitor, curse Judas the thief, Judas the liar.

“However, in the tragic and contradictory image of the hero, the author seeks to create in our minds a more complete, integral inner world of Judas. According to Andreev, the "reverse side of the coin" is no less important for understanding the soul of Judas - that part of his soul that is hidden from others, but from which nothing escapes. After all, nothing could be read on the “frozen” half of Judas’ face, but, at the same time, the “blind” eye on this half “did not close day or night.” It was this wise and hidden from everyone Judas who had a “courageous and strong” voice, which “I wanted to pull out of my ears like rotten, rough splinters.” Because the spoken words are the ruthless, bitter truth. The truth, which has a worse effect on people than the lies of Judas the thief. This truth points people to mistakes they would like to forget. With this part of his soul, Judas fell in love with Christ, although even the apostles could not understand this love. As a result, both the “good” and the “bad” rejected Judas” (18, p.2-3).

The relationship between Jesus Christ and Judas is very complex. “Judas was one of the “rejected and unloved”, that is, those whom Jesus never repelled” (6, p. 26). At first, when Judas first appeared among the disciples, Jesus was not afraid of evil rumors and "accepted Judas and included him in the circle of the elect." But the attitude of the Savior towards Iscariot changes after an incident in one village, where Jesus was in mortal danger, and Judas, risking his own life, with the help of deceit, prayer, gave the Teacher and students the opportunity to escape from the angry mob. Iscariot was waiting for praise, recognition of his courage, but everyone, including Jesus, condemned him for deceit. Jude accuses the disciples of not wanting Jesus and not wanting the truth.

From that moment on, Christ's attitude towards Judas changed dramatically: now Jesus "looked at him, as if not seeing, although as before - even more stubbornly than before - he looked for him with his eyes whenever he began to speak to the disciples or to the people" (T .2, p.210). “Jesus is trying to help him in what is happening, to explain his attitude towards him with the help of the parable of the barren fig tree” (6, p. 27).

But why now, apart from the jokes of Judas and his stories, Jesus began to see something important in him, which made the Teacher treat him more seriously, turn his speeches to him. Perhaps it was at that moment that Jesus realized that only Judas, who loves Jesus with sincere and pure love, is capable of sacrificing everything for the sake of his Master. Judas, on the other hand, is experiencing this change in the mind of Jesus very hard, he does not understand why no one will appreciate his courageous and wonderful impulse to save his Teacher at the cost of his own life. This is how Iscariot speaks poetically about Jesus: “And for everyone he was a delicate and beautiful flower, fragrant with the Lebanese rose, 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 he understands everything the beauty of tender and blameless petals” (T.2, p.215).

Commenting on this episode, I. Annensky notes: “L. Andreev’s story is full of contrasts, but these contrasts are only tangible, and they arise directly and even inevitably in the floating smoke of his imagination” (3, p. 58).

After the incident in the village, a turning point is also planned in the mind of Judas, he is tormented by heavy and vague thoughts, but the author does not reveal to the reader the secret experiences of Iscariot. So what is he thinking about while others are busy with food and drink? Maybe he is thinking about the salvation of Jesus Christ, or is he tormented by thoughts of helping the Teacher in his ordeal? But Judas can help only by committing a betrayal, and a betrayal involuntarily. Iscariot loves the Teacher with pure, sincere love, he is ready to sacrifice his life, his name for the sake of a higher goal. “But for Judas, to love means, first of all, to be understood, appreciated, recognized. He does not have enough favor with Christ, he still needs recognition of the correctness of his views on the world and people, the justification of the darkness of his soul” (6, p. 26).

Judas goes to his sacrifice with great suffering and understanding of all the horror, because the torment of Judas is as great as the torment of Jesus Christ. The name of the Savior will be glorified for centuries, and Iscariot will remain in the memory of peoples for many hundreds of years as a traitor, his name will become the personification of lies, treason and baseness of human deeds.

Many years passed before evidence of the innocence of Judas appeared in the world, and for a long time there will be disputes about the reliability of the gospel information. But L.N. Andreev in his work does not write a historical portrait, in the story Judas is a tragic hero who sincerely loves his Teacher and passionately wants to alleviate his suffering. The author shows the real events of two thousand years ago, but "Judas Iscariot" is a work of fiction, and L. Andreev rethinks the problem of Judas' betrayal. Iscariot occupies a central place in the work, the artist draws a complex, contradictory character in a period of great life upheavals. The betrayal of Judas is not perceived by us as a betrayal for the sake of selfish interests, the story depicts the difficult spiritual trials of the protagonist, a sense of duty, Judas' readiness to sacrifice for the sake of his Teacher.

The author characterizes his hero with such epithets: "noble, beautiful Judas", "Judas the winner". But all students see only an ugly face and remember notoriety. None of the companions of Jesus Christ notices the devotion of Judas, his fidelity and sacrifice. The teacher becomes serious, strict with him, as if he begins to notice where true love is, and where false. Judas loves Christ precisely because he sees in him the embodiment of immaculate purity and light, in this love “both admiration and sacrifice, and that “feminine and tender” maternal feeling, by nature prescribing to protect her sinless and naive child” (6, pp.26-27). Jesus Christ also shows a warm attitude towards Judas: “With greedy attention, childishly half-opening his mouth, laughing in advance with his eyes, Jesus listened to his impetuous, sonorous, cheerful speech and sometimes laughed so hard at his jokes that he had to stop the story for several minutes” ( T.2, p.217). “It seems incredible, but L. Andreev's Jesus is not just laughing (which would already be a violation of Christian tradition, the religious canon) - he is laughing (18, p.2-3). According to tradition, cheerful laughter is regarded as a liberating principle, purifying the soul.

“Between Christ and Judas in the story of L. Andreev there is a mysterious subconscious connection, not expressed verbally, but nevertheless felt by Judas and us, the readers. This connection is felt psychologically by Jesus the God-man, it cannot but find an external psychological expression (in mysterious silence, in which one feels hidden tension, expectation of tragedy), and it is absolutely clear on the eve of the death of Jesus Christ” (18, p.2-3) . The Savior understands that a great idea may be worth the suffering of others. Jesus knows about his divine origin, he knows that he must go through difficult trials in order to carry out "God's plan", in the implementation of which he chooses Judas as an assistant.

Iscariot is experiencing mental anguish, it is hard for him to decide on betrayal: “Judas took his whole soul into his iron fingers and in its immense darkness, silently, began to build something huge. Slowly, in deep darkness, he lifted up some huge things like mountains, and smoothly laid one on top of the other; and lifted again, and laid again; and something grew in the darkness, spread silently, pushing the boundaries. And softly sounded somewhere distant and ghostly words” (T.2, p.225). What were those words? Perhaps Judas was considering Jesus' request for help in carrying out the "divine plan," the plan of Christ's martyrdom. If there had been no execution, people would not have believed in the existence of the Son of God, in the possibility of heaven on earth.

M.A. Brodsky believes: “L. Andreev defiantly rejects the gospel version of selfish calculation. The betrayal of Judas is rather the last argument in his dispute with Jesus about man. The horror and dreams of Iscariot came true, he won, proving to the whole world and, of course, to Christ Himself, that people are unworthy of the son of God, and there is nothing to love them for, and only he, a cynic and an outcast, is the only one who has proved his love and devotion , should rightfully sit next to Him in the Kingdom of Heaven and administer judgment, ruthless and universal, like the Flood” (6, p. 29).

It is not easy for Judas to decide to betray the man whom he considered the best on earth. He thinks long and painfully, but Iscariot cannot go against the will of his Teacher, because his love for him is too great. The author does not say directly that Judas decided to betray, but shows how his behavior changes: “So simple, gentle and at the same time serious was Iscariot. He did not grimace, did not joke slanderously, did not bow, did not insult, but quietly and imperceptibly did his business” (T.2, p.229). Iscariot decided to betray, but in his soul there was still hope that people would understand that before them was not a liar and a deceiver, but the Son of God. Therefore, he tells the disciples about the need to save Jesus: “We must protect Jesus! We need to protect Jesus! It is necessary to intercede for Jesus when that time comes” (T.2, p.239). Judas brought the stolen swords to the disciples, but they replied that they were not warriors, and Jesus was not a military commander.

But why did the choice fall on Judas? Iscariot has experienced a lot in his life, he knows that people are sinful in their nature. When Judas first came to Jesus, he tried to show him how sinful people are. But the Savior was true to his great purpose, he did not accept the point of view of Judas, although he knew that people would not believe in the Son of God; they will first betray him to martyrdom, and then they will only understand that they did not kill a liar, but the Savior of the human race. But without suffering there would be no Christ. And the cross of Judas in its test is just as heavy as the cross of Jesus. Not every person is capable of such a feat, Judas felt love and respect for the Savior, he is devoted to his Teacher. Iscariot is ready to go to the end, to accept martyrdom next to Christ, to share his sufferings, as befits a faithful disciple. But Jesus disposes in a different way: he asks him not for death, but for a feat, a betrayal involuntarily, for the sake of a higher goal.

Judas is going through severe mental anguish, taking the first step towards betrayal. From that moment on, Iscariot surrounds his Teacher with tenderness, love, he is very kind to all the students, although he himself experiences mental pain: “And going out to the place where they went out of need, he cried there for a long time, writhing, wriggling, scratching his chest with his nails and biting his shoulders. . He caressed the imaginary hair of Jesus, whispered softly something tender and funny, and gritted his teeth. And for so long he stood, heavy, resolute and alien to everything, like fate itself ”(T.2, p.237). The author says that fate made Judas an executioner, put a punishing sword in his hand. And Iscariot copes with this difficult test, although he resists betrayal with all his being.

In the work of L.N. Andreev "Judas Iscariot" the biblical story is completely rethought. First, the author brings to the fore the hero, who in the Bible is considered a great sinner, guilty of the death of Jesus Christ. L. Andreev rehabilitates the image of Judas from Kariot: he is not a traitor, but a faithful disciple of Jesus, a sufferer. Secondly, L. Andreev relegates the images of the evangelists and Jesus Christ to a secondary plane of the narrative.

L.A. Smirnova believes that "turning to the myth made it possible to avoid details, to make each hero a carrier of the essential manifestations of life itself at its break, a sharp turn." “Elements of biblical poetics enhance the weight of each small episode. Quotations from the sayings of the ancient sages give an all-epochal meaning to what is happening” (26, p. 186).

In the work, the author raises the question of the betrayal of the hero. L. Andreev portrays Iscariot as a strong, struggling personality in a period of great mental upheaval. The writer gives exhaustive psychological characteristics to his hero, which allows him to see the formation of the inner world of Iscariot and find the origins of his betrayal.

L. Andreev solves the problem of betrayal in the following way: both the disciples who did not defend their teacher and the people who condemned Jesus to death are to blame. Judas, on the other hand, occupies a special position in the story, the gospel version of betrayal for the sake of money is completely rejected. Judas by L. Andreev loves the Teacher with sincere, pure love, he cannot commit such a cruel act for the sake of selfish interests. The author reveals completely different motives for Iscariot's behavior. Judas betrays Jesus Christ not of his own free will, he remains faithful to his Teacher and fulfills his request to the end. It is no coincidence that the images of Jesus Christ and Judas are perceived by the writer in their close contact. Andreev the artist draws them crucified on the same cross.

Scholars interpret the theme of betrayal in L. Andreev's story "Judas Iscariot" in different ways. A.V. Bogdanov in his article “Between the Wall of the Abyss” believes that Judas has only one opportunity left - to go to the slaughter with all his disgust for the victim, “suffering for one and shame for all”, and only a traitor will remain in the memory of generations (5, p. 17) .

K.D. Muratova suggests that the betrayal is committed by Judas in order to test, on the one hand, the strength and correctness of the humanistic teachings of Christ, and on the other hand, the devotion to him of the disciples and those who so enthusiastically listened to his sermons (23, p. 223).

V.P. Kryuchkov in his book "Heretics in Literature" writes that the divine and human principles appear in L. Andreev's story in interaction. According to Kryuchkov, Judas becomes a personality in paradoxical Andreev, who played a huge role in history, Jesus is represented in his human flesh, corporality, in this image the active principle, the equalization of God and Man (18, 2-3) prevails.

Despite the difference in views, researchers agree on one common opinion - Judas' love for Jesus was great in its strength. Therefore, the question arises: could a person so faithful to his Master betray him for the sake of selfish interests. L. Andreev reveals the reason for the betrayal: for Judas it was a forced act, a sacrifice for the sake of fulfilling the will of the Almighty.

L. Andreev boldly reshapes the biblical images in order to force the reader to rethink the opinion that has been established in the world and in the Christian religion about the traitor, the villain Judas. After all, the fault lies not only with an individual, but also with people who easily betray their idols, shouting “Crucify!” as loud as Hosanna!

History of creation and analysis of the problems of the story

The work was written in 1907, although the idea appeared 5 years earlier. Andreev decided to show betrayal, based on his own thoughts and fantasies. In the center of the composition is the narrative of a new look at the famous biblical parable.

Analyzing the problems of the story "Judas Iscariot", one can notice that the motive of betrayal is being considered. Judas is jealous of Jesus, his love and kindness towards people, because he understands that he is not capable of this. Judas cannot contradict himself, even if he behaves in an inhuman way. The general theme is the philosophical theme of the two worldviews.

The main characters of the story "Judas Iscariot"

Judas Iscariot is a two-faced character. Readers' dislike is caused by his portrait. He is shown either courageous or hysterical. Unlike the rest of the disciples, Judas is depicted without a halo and even outwardly uglier. The author calls him a traitor, and in the text there are comparisons with a demon, a freak, an insect.

The images of other students in the story are symbolic and associative.

Other details of the analysis of the story "Judas Iscariot"

The whole appearance of Judas coincides with his character. But, external thinness brings him closer to the image of Christ. Jesus does not distance himself from the traitor, because he must help everyone. And he knows that he will betray him.

They have mutual love, Judas also loves Jesus, listen to his breathy speeches.

The conflict occurs at the moment when Judas accuses people of depravity and Jesus moves away from him. Judas feels and perceives this quite painfully. The traitor believes that the entourage of Jesus are liars who curry favor with Christ, he does not believe in their sincerity. He also does not believe in their experiences after the death of Jesus, although he himself suffers.

Judas has the idea that when they die, they will meet again and be able to get closer. But, it is known that suicide is a sin and the teacher is not destined to meet his student. It is with the death of Jesus that the betrayal of Judas is revealed. Judas committed suicide. He hanged himself from a tree growing over a precipice, so that when the branch broke off, he would smash against the rocks.

An analysis of the story "Judas Iscariot" would not be complete if we did not note how the Gospel narrative differs fundamentally from the story "Judas Iscariot". The difference between Andreev's interpretation of the plot and the Gospel lies in the fact that Judas sincerely loved Christ and did not understand why he had these feelings and the other eleven disciples have them.

In this story, Raskolnikov's theory can be traced: with the help of the murder of one person, transform the world. But, of course, it cannot be true.

Undoubtedly, the work was criticized by the church. But Andreev put this essence: the interpretation of the nature of betrayal. People should think about their actions and put their thoughts in order.

We hope that the analysis of the story "Judas Iscariot" was useful to you. We recommend that you read this story in its entirety, but if you wish, you can also get acquainted with

The gospel story of the betrayal of Jesus Christ by Judas Iscariot could have interested Leonid Andreev as a writer in that it could be “literaturized”, that is, brought into line with the principles of depicting and evaluating a person in his own work, while relying on the traditions of Russian literature of the 19th century (Leskov , Dostoevsky, Tolstoy) in processing 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 spiritual drama genre, samples of which were known to the reader from the novels of Dostoevsky of the 1860-1870s and the works of the late Tolstoy.

The author of the story follows the plot of the gospel story selectively, while retaining its key situations, the names of its characters, - in a word, creates the illusion of its retelling, in fact, offering the reader his own version of this story, creates a completely original work with an existential characteristic of this writer (a person in world) issues.

In Andreev's story, the ideological beliefs of the characters are polar (faith - disbelief) - in accordance with its genre specifics; at the same time, in their relationship, the intimate, personal principle (likes and dislikes) plays a decisive role, which noticeably enhances the tragic pathos of the work.

Both the main characters of the story, Jesus and Judas, and above all the latter, are clearly exaggerated in the spirit of expressionism professed by Andreev, suggesting the gigantism of the characters, their extraordinary spiritual and physical abilities, forcing tragedy in human relations, ecstatic writing, that is, increased expressiveness of style and deliberate conventionality. images and situations.

Andreev's Jesus Christ is an embodied spirituality, but this artistic embodiment itself, as happens with ideal heroes, lacks external specificity. We almost do not see Jesus, do not hear his speeches; his states of mind are episodically presented: Jesus can be good-natured, welcoming Judas, laugh at his jokes and Peter's jokes, be angry, longing, grieving; moreover, these episodes mainly reflect the dynamics of his relationship with Judas.

Jesus Christ, a passive figure, is the hero of the second plan in the story - in comparison with Judas, the real protagonist, the active "character".

It is he who, in the vicissitudes of his relationship with Jesus, from the very beginning to the end of the story, is in the center of the narrator's attention, which gave the writer reason to name the work after him. The artistic character of Judas is much more complicated than the character of Jesus Christ.

Judas appears before the reader as a complex riddle, as, indeed, for the disciples of Jesus, in many respects for their teacher himself. He is all “encrypted” in a certain way, starting with his appearance; it is even more difficult to understand the motives behind his relationship with Jesus. And although the main intrigue of the story is clearly spelled out by the author: Judas, who loves Jesus, betrays him into the hands of his enemies, the allegorical style of this work makes it 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 kind word about him."

However, it seems that Judas himself is not too fond of the human race and does not particularly suffer from his rejection. Judas is frightened, taken aback, disgusted even by the disciples of Jesus “as something unprecedented, ugly, deceitful and disgusting”, who do not approve of the act of their teacher - to bring Judas closer to themselves. But for Jesus there are no outcasts: “with that spirit of bright contradiction, which irresistibly attracted him to the rejected and unloved, he resolutely 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 agitated and murmured with restraint,” and they had no doubt that “some secret intention was hidden in his desire to get closer to Jesus, there was an evil and insidious calculation. What else can you expect from a person who "staggers senselessly among the people ... lies, grimace, vigilantly looks out for something with his thieves' eye ... curious, crafty and evil, like a one-eyed demon"?

The naive but meticulous Thomas "attentively looked at Christ and Judas, who were sitting side by side, and this strange proximity of divine beauty and monstrous ugliness ... oppressed his mind, like an unsolvable riddle." The best of the best and the worst of the worst... What do they have in common? At least they are able to sit peacefully side by side: they are both from the human race.

The appearance of Judas 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 the sword and re-composed, it was clearly divided into four parts and inspired distrust, even anxiety: behind such a skull there can be no silence and harmony, behind such a skull one always hears 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; it can be assumed that by vocation he is a restless rebel, always looking for something, always lonely. But isn't Jesus himself alone in this world?

And what is hidden behind the strange face of Judas? “Judas’ face also doubled: one side of it, with a black, keenly looking out eye, was lively, mobile, willingly gathering into numerous crooked wrinkles. The other had 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 haze, not closing either at night or during the day, he equally met both light and darkness; but whether because next to him was a living and cunning comrade, one could not believe in his complete blindness.

The disciples of Jesus soon became accustomed to the outward ugliness of Judas. The expression on Judas's face was embarrassing, resembling a mask of a hypocrite: either a comedian, or a tragedian. Judas could be cheerful, sociable, a good storyteller, however, somewhat shocking listeners with his skeptical judgments about a person, however, he was also ready to present himself in the most unfavorable light. “Judas lied all the time, but they got used to it, because they didn’t see bad deeds behind a lie, and she gave Judas’ conversation and his stories a special interest and made life look like a funny, and sometimes terrible fairy tale.” This is how a lie is rehabilitated, in this case fiction, a game.

As an artist by nature, Judas is unique among the disciples of Jesus. However, Judas not only entertained listeners with fictions: “According to the stories of Judas, it turned out that he knows all people, and every person he knows has committed some bad deed or even a crime in his life.”

What is it - lie or truth? But what about the disciples of Jesus? And Jesus himself? But Judas evaded such questions, sowing confusion in the souls of his listeners: is he joking or speaking seriously? “And while one side of his face writhed in clownish grimaces, the other swayed seriously and sternly, and his never closing eye looked wide.”

It was this, either the blind, dead, or all-seeing eye of Judas, that instilled anxiety in the souls of Jesus’ disciples: “while his living and cunning eye moved, Judas seemed simple and kind, but when both eyes stopped motionless and skin gathered into strange bumps and folds on his convex forehead - was a painful conjecture about some very special thoughts tossing and turning under this skull.

Completely alien, completely special, having no language at all, they surrounded the meditating Iscariot with a deaf silence of mystery, and I wanted him to quickly begin to speak, move and even lie. For the very lies spoken by human language seemed like truth and light in front of this hopelessly deaf and unresponsive silence.

Lies are rehabilitated again, because communication - the way of being a person - is by no means alien to lies. Weak person. Such a Judas is understandable to the disciples of Jesus, he is almost his own. The tragic mask of Judas exuded cold indifference to man; this is how fate looks at a person.

Meanwhile, Judas was clearly striving for fellowship, actively infiltrating the community of Jesus' disciples, winning the sympathy of their teacher. There were reasons for this: over time, it will turn out that he has no equal among the disciples of Jesus in mind, in physical strength and willpower, in ability to metamorphosis. And that is not all. What is his desire to “someday take the earth, raise it and, perhaps, throw it away”, the cherished desire of Judas, similar to mischief.

Thus, Judas revealed one of his secrets in the presence of Thomas, however, with the full understanding that he certainly would not understand the allegory.

Jesus entrusted Judas with the cash box and household chores, thus indicating his place among the disciples, and Judas coped with his duties admirably. But did Judas come to Jesus to become one of his disciples?

The author clearly distances Judas, who is independent in his judgments and actions, from the disciples of Jesus, whose principle of behavior is conformism. With irony, Judas refers to the disciples of Jesus, who live with an eye on the teacher's assessment of their words and deeds. And Jesus himself, inspired by faith in the spiritual resurrection of a person, does he know a real, earthly person, as Judas knows him - at least by himself, a fidget with a quarrelsome character, ugly in appearance, a liar, a skeptic, a provocateur, an actor, for whom as if there is nothing sacred for which life is a game. What is this strange and even somewhat scary person trying to achieve?

Unexpectedly, defiantly, 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 directly into Jesus’ eyes: “I! I will be with Jesus." This is no longer a game.

Jude's statement seemed to the disciples of Jesus to be a daring trick. Jesus "slowly lowered his eyes" (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 that must be earned. How does Judas, who behaves as if he deliberately and openly opposes Jesus, think he deserves it?

It turns out that Judas is just as much an ideologue as Jesus. And the relationship between Judas and 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 has its own 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 by all means available to him envelops his hero with secrets.

Such is the aesthetic attitude of the avant-garde writer, who imposes on the reader the hard work 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, constantly and importunately, in rivalry with each other, assuring teachers in their love for him.

Judas declares his love for Jesus intimately, without witnesses and without even 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 a terrible night. - Lord, Lord, then, in “anguish and torment, I have been looking for You all my life, I have searched and found!”.

Did Judas' finding the meaning of existence with fatal inevitability lead him to the need to betray Jesus to his enemies? How could this happen?

Judas understands his role around 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 can the word
to change his carnal nature, which makes itself felt constantly, in the eternal struggle with the spiritual principle, crushingly reminding of itself with the fear of death?

Judas himself experiences this fear in the village, in which its inhabitants, enraged by the denunciations of Jesus, were ready to throw stones at the accuser himself and his confused disciples. It was Judas’s fear not for himself, but for Jesus (“seized with insane fear for Jesus, as if already seeing drops of blood on his white shirt, Judas violently and blindly rushed into the crowd, threatened, shouted, begged and lied, and thereby gave time and opportunity go to Jesus and his disciples."

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 was not the word of the 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 wildly in front of the crowd and charmed it 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, who is alien to any dogmas, especially when it comes to the life and death of Jesus.

“And what is a lie, my clever Foma? Wouldn't the death of Jesus be a greater lie? - Judas asks a tricky question. Jesus basically rejects all lies, no matter how the liar justifies himself. This is the ideal truth, with which you can not argue.

But Judas needs Jesus alive, because he himself is the holy truth, and for her sake Judas is ready to sacrifice his own life. So what is the truth and what is the lie? Judas decided for himself this question irrevocably: the truth is Jesus Christ himself, man, as God perfect in his spiritual incarnation, the gift of heaven to mankind. Lies - his departure from life. Therefore, Jesus must be protected in every possible way, because there will be no other like it.

Death lies in wait for the righteous at every step, for people do not need the truth about their imperfection. They need deception, or rather, eternal self-deception, as if a person is an exclusively carnal being. It is easier to live with this lie, because everything is forgiven for a carnal person. This is what Judas Thomas says: “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 there is no Judas next to him? Jesus needs Judas. Otherwise, he will perish, and Judas will perish with him, ”Iscariot is convinced.

For what would the world be without a god? But does Jesus himself need Judas, who believes in the possibility of the spiritual enlightenment of mankind?

People do not particularly believe in words, and therefore are unstable in their convictions. Here, in one of the villages, its inhabitants cordially met Jesus and his disciples, “surrounded them with attention and love and became believers,” but as soon as Jesus moved away from this village, one of the women announced the loss of the goat, and although the goat was soon found, the inhabitants why -they decided that "Jesus is a deceiver and maybe even a thief." This conclusion immediately calmed the passions.

“Judas is right, Lord. They were evil and stupid people, and the seed of your words fell on the stone, ”the naive truth-seeker Thomas confirms the correctness of Judas, who“ told bad things about its inhabitants and foreshadowed trouble.

Be that as it may, “From that day on, the attitude of Jesus toward him strangely changed. And before, for some reason, it happened that Judas never spoke directly to Jesus, and he never directly addressed him, but on the other hand he often looked at him with kind eyes, smiled at some of his jokes, and if he had not seen him for a long time, he would ask: where is Judas? And now he looked at him, as if not seeing him, although as before, and even more stubbornly than before, he looked for him with his eyes every time he began to speak to his students or to the people, but either sat down with his back to him and threw his words to Judas, or pretended not to notice him at all. And no matter what he said, at least one thing today, and tomorrow completely different, even the very thing that Judas thinks, it seemed, however, that he always speaks against Judas. In a different guise - not a disciple, but an ideological opponent - Judas revealed himself to Jesus.

The ungracious attitude of Jesus Christ to Judas both offended and puzzled him. Why does Jesus get 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 further relationship with Jesus develop now? Will he forever lose the meaning of his existence if Jesus finally turns away from him? The time has come for Judas
comprehend the situation.

Leaving behind Jesus and his disciples, Judas headed for a rocky ravine in search of solitude. This ravine was strange as Judas saw it: “an overturned, chopped off skull looked like this wild desert ravine, and every stone in it was like a frozen thought, and there were many of them, and they all thought - hard, boundlessly, stubbornly” .

Judas himself, in his many hours of immobility, became one of these "thinking" stones: "... his eyes fixed motionlessly on something, both motionless, both covered with a whitish strange turbidity, both as if blind and terribly sighted." Judas - a stone - one of the metamorphoses of his many-sided personality, meaning "stone" Potentially the strength of his will.

Inhuman willpower - like the deadly flat side of Judas' face; willpower that will stop at nothing; she is deaf to humans. 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 "petrification" of Judas is a plot-forming one. A semblance of trembling is experienced at first by Judas before Jesus, like all his disciples. But gradually Judas discovers in himself the qualities that determine human dignity. And above all - the willpower to follow one's own 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 for Jesus Christ himself, this is entertainment. And Judas himself enters the competition to entertain Jesus, tired from a long and difficult journey, and to earn his sympathy.

However, it is impossible not to see in this scene its allegorical meaning: “heavy, he hit short and dull and thought for a moment; then hesitantly made the first leap - and with each touch to the ground, taking speed and strength from it, he became light, ferocious, all-destroying. He no longer jumped, but he flew with bared teeth, and the air, whistling, passed his dull, round carcass.

Here is the edge, - with a smooth last movement, the stone soared upwards and calmly, in heavy thoughtfulness, roundly flew down to the bottom of an invisible abyss. This description is not only about the stone, but also about the “story of the soul” of Judas, about the growing strength of his will, his striving for a daring act, for a reckless desire to fly into the unknown - into the symbolic abyss, into the realm of freedom. And even in the stone thrown by Judas, he seems to see his own likeness: having found a suitable stone, Judas “gentlely dug into it with his long fingers, swayed along with him and, turning pale, sent him into the abyss.”

And if, when throwing a stone, Peter “leaned back and so followed its fall”, then Judas “leaned forward, arched and stretched out his long moving arms, as if he himself wanted to fly away after the stone.”

The motif of "petrification" of Judas reaches its apogee in the scene of Jesus teaching in the house of Lazarus. Judas is offended by the fact that his victory over Peter in throwing stones was so soon forgotten, and Jesus, apparently, did not attach any importance to it.

The disciples of Jesus had other moods, they worshiped other values: “the images of the path traveled: the sun, and the stone, and the grass, and Christ reclining in the tent, quietly floated in my head, casting a soft thoughtfulness, giving rise to vague, but sweet dreams about what something perpetual motion under the sun. The tired body rested sweetly, and all of it thought 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 the disciples of Jesus.

So they surrounded their teacher, and each of them wanted to somehow be involved in him, at least with a light, imperceptible touch of his clothes. And only Judas was on the sidelines. “Iscariot stopped at the threshold and, contemptuously passing the gaze of those assembled, concentrated all his fire on Jesus. And as he looked, everything around him went out, dressed in darkness and silence, and only Jesus brightened with his raised hand.

A light in a dark and silent world is what Jesus is to Judas. But something seems to disturb Judas, peering at Jesus Christ: “but here he seemed to have risen into the air, as if he had melted and became such, as if he consisted entirely of an overhead fog, penetrated by the light of the setting moon; and his soft speech sounded somewhere far, far away and tender.

Jesus appears to Judas for what he is - a spirit, a bright, incorporeal being with a bewitching, unearthly melody of words and at the same time a ghost floating in the air, ready to disappear, to dissolve in the deep, silent darkness of the earthly existence of man.

Judas, constantly preoccupied with the fate of Jesus in this world, imagines that he himself is somehow involved in Jesus differently than his disciples, preoccupied with being closer to Jesus. Judas looks into himself, as if he believes in himself to find the answer to this question: “and, peering into the wavering ghost, listening to the gentle melody of distant and ghostly words, Judas took his whole soul into his iron fingers and in its immense darkness, silently, began build something huge.

Slowly in the deep darkness, he lifted up some huge things like mountains, and smoothly laid one on top of the other; and lifted again, and laid again; and something grew in the darkness, spread silently, pushing the boundaries.

Here he felt his head like a dome, and in the impenetrable darkness of it, a huge one continued to grow, and someone silently worked: he lifted huge masses like mountains, put one on top of the other and raised it again ... And distant and ghostly words gently sounded somewhere.

With full exertion of will, with all his spiritual strength, Judas builds in his imagination some kind of grandiose world, realizing 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 it was also the key to solving the problem of Judas' relationship with Jesus.

Jesus seemed to sense a threat emanating from Judas: he interrupted his speech, fixing his eyes on Judas. Judas stood, "blocking the door, huge and black ...". Did not the penetrating Jesus see the jailer in Judas, if he hurriedly left the house “and passed Judas through the open and now free door”, assessing the real possibilities of his opponent, his power over himself?

Why doesn't Judas address Jesus directly, unlike his other disciples? Is it not for the reason that in the artistic world of the story, Jesus and Judas are separated by some order of things independent of them, an irresistible logic of circumstances, a kind of fate, as in tragedy? For the time being, Judas has to come to terms with the fact that Jesus "for everyone was a delicate and beautiful flower, a fragrant Lebanese rose, and for Judas he left only sharp thorns."

Jesus Christ loves his disciples and is cold and patient in his relationship with Judas, the only one of all who sincerely loves him. Where's the justice? And in the heart of Judas, jealousy flares up - the eternal companion of love. No, he did not come to Jesus then to be his obedient disciple.

He would like to be his brother. Only, unlike Jesus, he does not have faith in the human race, which does not truly understand, does not appreciate Jesus Christ. But no matter how much Judas despised people, he believes that at a critical moment for Christ, people will wake up from spiritual hibernation 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 will be necessary to share unthinkable suffering with Jesus. “I will be near Jesus!”

The idea of ​​Judas was fully mature, he had already agreed with Anna on the extradition of Jesus, and only now he realized how dear to him was Jesus, whom he gave into the wrong hands. “And, going out to a place where they went out of need, he wept there for a long time, writhing, wriggling, scratching his chest with his nails, biting his shoulders. He caressed the imaginary hair of Jesus, whispered softly something tender and funny, and gritted his teeth.

Then suddenly he stopped crying, moaning and grinding his teeth and thought hard, tilting his wet face to the side, like a person who listens. And for so long he stood, heavy, resolute and alien to everything, like fate itself. So that's what was hidden behind the dual face of Judas!

The consciousness of his power over Jesus humbles the jealousy of Judas. Here he is present at the scene when “Jesus gently and gratefully kissed John and affectionately stroked high 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 from Kariot, a red-haired, ugly Jew born among stones!

Imagine yourself as a caring jailer of Jesus - is not this the only way for Judas to objectify his love? Watching how Jesus rejoices, caressing the child that Judas found somewhere and secretly brought Jesus as a kind of gift to please him, “Judas walked sternly aside, like a stern jailer, who himself let a butterfly into the prisoner in the spring and now pretended to grumble complaining about the mess."

Judas is constantly looking for something to please Jesus - secretly from him, as a true lover. Only Judas does not have enough love that Jesus does not even suspect.

He would like to become a brother to Jesus - in love and in suffering. But is Judas himself ready to betray Jesus to his enemies in order to meet him face to face, which he himself is so stubbornly striving for?

Passionately he begs Jesus to send a message about himself, to enter into a dialogue with him, to free him from his shameful role: “Free me. Take off the heaviness, it is heavier than mountains and lead. Do you not hear how the breasts of Judas of Carioth are cracking under her? And the last silence, bottomless, like the last look of eternity.

I'm going." The world responds with silence. Go where you want, man, and do what you know. Jesus Christ is simply the Son of Man.

Here Judas appeared before Jesus on the fateful night face to face. And that was their first conversation. Judas “quickly moved closer to Jesus, who was waiting for him in silence, and plunged, like a knife, his direct and sharp gaze into his calm, darkened eyes.

"Rejoice, rabbi! - he said loudly, putting a strange and formidable meaning into the words of the usual greeting. The hour of testing has come. Jesus will enter the world victorious! But then he saw the disciples of Jesus huddled together in a flock, paralyzed with fear, his hope wavered, “and mortal sorrow was kindled in his heart, which Christ had experienced before.

Stretching out into a hundred loudly ringing, sobbing strings, he quickly rushed to Jesus and gently kissed his cold cheek. So quietly, so gently, with such painful love and longing that if Jesus had been a flower on a thin stalk, he would not have swayed him with this kiss and would not have dropped pearly dew from clean petals.

It happened - Judas put all his tender love for Jesus into his kiss. Is he really ready to subject Jesus to a terrible test for the sake of this kiss? But Jesus did not understand the meaning of this kiss. “Judas,” Jesus said, and with the lightning of his gaze illuminated that monstrous pile of alert shadows that was the soul of Iscariot, “but he could not penetrate into its bottomless depth. - Judas! Do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?" Yes, a kiss, but a kiss of love: “Yes! We betray you with the kiss of love.

With the kiss of love, we betray you to desecration, to torture, to death! With the voice of love, we call the executioners from dark holes and put a cross - high above the crown of the earth
we lift on the cross with love crucified love,” says Judas inner monologue. It's too late now to talk to Jesus.

It so happened that Judas, tormented by unrequited love for Jesus, desired power over him. And is it not the love of Jesus Christ for the human race that became the reason for the hostility towards him of the mighty of this world, hatred that knows no bounds? Isn't that the fate of love in this world? Be that as it may, the die is cast.

“Thus stood Judas, silent and cold as death, and the cry of his soul was answered by cries and noise that rose around Jesus.” Judas will remain with this feeling of "as it were a double being" - a painful fear for the life of Jesus and a cold curiosity about the behavior of people whose spiritual blindness is inexplicable - until his death.

The suffering of Jesus somehow strangely brings 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 a community of suffering, - the one who was betrayed to reproach and torment, and he who betrayed him. From the same goblet of suffering, like brothers, they both drank, the betrayer and the betrayer, and the fiery moisture equally seared clean and impure lips.

Since Jesus was in the hands of the soldiers, senselessly, for no reason beating him, Judas lives in anticipation of what must inevitably happen: people will understand the divinity of Jesus Christ. And then Jesus will be saved - for all eternity. There was silence in the guardroom where Jesus was being beaten.

"What is it? Why are they silent? Did they suddenly figure it out? Instantly, Judas' head was filled with noise, screaming, the roar of thousands of mad thoughts. Did they guess? They realized that this is the best person? - it's so simple, so clear. What is there now? They kneel before him and weep quietly, kissing his feet. Here he comes out here, and those dutifully crawling after him - he comes out here, to Judas, comes out a winner, a husband, a ruler of truth, a god ...

Who is deceiving Judas? Who is right?

But no. Again screams and noise. They beat again. They didn’t understand, they didn’t guess, and they hit even harder, they hit even harder.” Here stands Jesus before the tribunal of the crowd, the tribunal that must decide the dispute between Judas and Jesus. “And all the people shouted, yelled, howled in a thousand animal and human voices:

Death to him! Crucify him!

And now, as if mocking themselves, as if in one moment wanting to experience all the boundlessness of fall, madness and disgrace, the same people shout, yell, demand with a thousand bestial and human voices: - Release Barrabas to us! Crucify him! Crucify!"

Until the last breath of Jesus, Judas hopes for a miracle. “What can keep from tearing a thin film covering the eyes of people, so thin that it seems to be
not at all? Will they understand? Suddenly, with all the formidable mass of men, women and children, they will move forward, silently, without a cry, they will wipe out the soldiers, fill them up to their ears with their blood, tear out the damned cross from the ground and with the hands of the survivors, high above the crown of the earth, they will raise the free Jesus! Hosanna! Hosanna!". No, Jesus dies. And is it possible? Judas is a winner? “Horror and dreams came true. Who will now wrest victory from the hands of Iscariot? Let all the peoples that are on earth flock to Golgotha ​​and cry out with millions of their throats: “Hosanna, Hosanna!” - and seas of blood and tears will shed at its foot - they will find only the shameful cross and the dead Jesus.

The fulfilled prophecy elevates Judas to that level of pride that is inherent in the rulers of the world: “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.” Now his posture is the posture of a ruler, “his face is stern, and his eyes do not run in insane haste, as before. Here he stops and with cold attention examines the new, small land. She has become small, and he feels all of her under his feet.

Infinitely and joyfully alone, he proudly felt the impotence of all the forces acting in the world, and he threw them all into the abyss. The world appeared in darkness and silence, and now Judas has the right to judge everyone and everything. He denounces the members of the Sanhedrin in criminal blindness betrayed, and you, the wise, you, the strong, he betrayed a shameful death that will not end.
forever” and the disciples of Jesus.

Now they are looking at her from above and below and laughing and shouting: look at this earth, Jesus was crucified on it! And they spit on her - like me! But without Jesus, the world has lost its light and meaning.

To be close to Jesus means to follow him out of this empty world. “Why are you alive when he is dead?” Judas asks the disciples of Jesus. 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 the sky in the name of love for Jesus, in order to return to earth with him, fraternally embracing him, and thereby wash away the shameful name of the Betrayer. So thought Judas, 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 in a different way: “and all - good and evil - will equally curse his shameful memory; and among all the peoples, what they were, what they are, he will remain alone in his cruel fate - Judas from Kariot, the Traitor.

People in their own way evaluate a person whose behavior disturbs their conscience. The story of one love and a betrayal committed in the name of her betrayal was told to us by Leonid Andreev in the story "Judas Iscariot".

Analysis of the story "Judas Iscariot"

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The story "Judas Iscariot", a summary of which is presented in this article, was created on the basis of a biblical story. Nevertheless, even before the publication of the work, Maxim Gorky said that few would understand it and would cause a lot of noise.

Leonid Andreev

This is a rather ambiguous author. Andreev's work in Soviet times was unfamiliar to readers. Before proceeding to a summary of Judas Iscariot - a story that causes both delight and indignation - let's recall the main and most interesting facts from the writer's biography.

Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev was an extraordinary and very emotional person. As a law student, he began to abuse alcohol. For some time, the only source of income for Andreev was painting portraits to order: he was not only a writer, but also an artist.

In 1894 Andreev tried to commit suicide. An unsuccessful shot led to the development of heart disease. For five years, Leonid Andreev was engaged in advocacy. Writer's fame came to him in 1901. But even then, he evoked conflicting feelings among readers and critics. Leonid Andreev welcomed the revolution of 1905 with joy, but soon became disillusioned with it. After the secession of Finland, he went into exile. The writer died abroad in 1919 from a heart defect.

The history of the creation of the story "Judas Iscariot"

The work was published in 1907. The plot ideas came to the mind of the writer during his stay in Switzerland. In May 1906, Leonid Andreev informed one of his colleagues that he was going to write a book on the psychology of betrayal. He managed to realize the plan in Capri, where he went after the death of his wife.

"Judas Iscariot", a summary of which is presented below, was written within two weeks. The author showed the first edition to his friend Maxim Gorky. He drew the author's attention to historical and factual errors. Andreev re-read the New Testament more than once and made corrections to the story. Even during the life of the writer, the story "Judas Iscariot" was translated into English, German, French and other languages.

The man of notoriety

None of the apostles noticed the appearance of Judas. How did he manage to gain Master's trust? Jesus Christ was warned many times that he was a very notorious man. He should beware. Judas was condemned not only by “right” people, but also by villains. He was the worst of the worst. When the disciples asked Judas about what motivates him to do terrible things, he answered that every person is a sinner. What he said was in tune with the words of Jesus. Nobody has the right to judge another.

This is the philosophical problem of the story Judas Iscariot. The author, of course, did not make his hero positive. But he put the traitor on a par with the disciples of Jesus Christ. Andreev's idea could not but cause a resonance in society.

The disciples of Christ asked Judas more than once about who his father was. He replied that he did not know, perhaps the devil, a rooster, a goat. How can he know everyone with whom his mother shared a bed? Such answers shocked the apostles. Judas insulted his parents, which means he was doomed to perish.

One day, a crowd attacks Christ and his disciples. They are accused of stealing a kid. But a person who will soon betray his teacher rushes to the crowd with the words that the teacher is not possessed by a demon at all, he just loves money just like everyone else. Jesus leaves the village in anger. His disciples follow him, cursing Judas. But after all, this small, disgusting man, worthy of only contempt, wanted to save them ...

Theft

Christ trusts Judas to keep his savings. But he hides a few coins, which the students, of course, will soon find out. But Jesus does not condemn the unlucky disciple. After all, the apostles should not count the coins that his brother appropriated. Their reproaches only offend him. This evening Judas Iscariot is very cheerful. On his example, the apostle John understood what love for one's neighbor is.

thirty pieces of silver

The last days of his life, Jesus surrounds with affection the one who betrays him. Judas is helpful with his disciples - nothing should interfere with his plan. An event will soon take place, thanks to which his name will forever remain in the memory of people. It will be called almost as often as the name of Jesus.

After the execution

When analyzing Andreev's story "Judas Iscariot", special attention should be paid to the finale of the work. The apostles suddenly appear before the readers as cowardly, cowardly people. After the execution, Judas addresses them with a sermon. Why didn't they save Christ? Why didn't they attack the guards in order to rescue the Teacher?

Judas will forever remain in the memory of people as a traitor. And those who were silent when Jesus was crucified will be venerated. After all, they carry the Word of Christ on earth. This is the summary of Judas Iscariot. In order to make an artistic analysis of the work, you should still read the story in full.

The meaning of the story "Judas Iscariot"

Why did the author depict a negative biblical character in such an unusual perspective? "Judas Iscariot" by Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev is, according to many critics, one of the greatest works of Russian classics. The story makes the reader think first of all about what is true love, true faith and fear of death. The author seems to ask what is hidden behind faith, is there a lot of true love in it?

The image of Judas in the story "Judas Iscariot"

The hero of Andreev's book is a traitor. Judas sold Christ for 30 pieces of silver. He is the worst of all who has ever lived on our planet. Can you feel compassion for him? Of course not. The writer seems to tempt the reader.

But it is worth remembering that Andreev's story is by no means a theological work. The book has nothing to do with the church, faith. The author simply invited readers to look at the well-known story from a different, unusual side.

A person is mistaken, believing that he can always accurately determine the motives of the behavior of another. Judas betrays Christ, which means he is a bad person. This indicates that he does not believe in the Messiah. The apostles give the teacher to the Romans and Pharisees to be torn to pieces. And they do it because they believe in their teacher. Jesus will rise again, they will believe in the Savior. Andreev offered to look at the act of both Judas and the faithful disciples of Christ differently.

Judas is madly in love with Christ. However, it seems to him that those around him do not appreciate Jesus enough. And he provokes the Jews: he betrays the adored teacher in order to test the strength of the people's love for him. Judas is in for a severe disappointment: the disciples fled, and the people demand to kill Jesus. Even Pilate's words that he did not find the guilt of Christ were not heard by anyone. The crowd is out for blood.

This book caused indignation among believers. Not surprising. The apostles did not snatch Christ from the clutches of the escorts, not because they believed in him, but because they were afraid - this is perhaps the main idea of ​​Andreev's story. After the execution, Judas turns to the disciples with reproaches, and at this moment he is not at all disgusting. It seems that there is truth in his words.

Judas took upon himself a heavy cross. He became a traitor, thus causing people to wake up. Jesus said that the guilty should not be killed. But wasn't his execution a violation of this postulate? In the mouth of Judas - his hero - Andreev puts words that, perhaps, he wanted to pronounce himself. Did not Christ go to death with the tacit consent of his disciples? Judas asks the apostles how they could allow his death. They have nothing to answer. They are confusedly silent.

"Judas Iscariot"

will talk about a character from the bible, an apostle named Judas. His name has become a household name, and has been associated with betrayal over the past two millennia. But that doesn't stop people seeking to know

Why did Judas betray Jesus?

What were his motives?

This book by Leonid Andreev is the story of a man of the twentieth century, in which the mind rushes about, looking for the truth.

The books of the Library are a true treasury of the spirit. Our habitual feelings acquire volume in them, thoughts - severity, and actions - meaning. Each testifies to something personal, intimate, touches the finest strings of the soul ... These books are intended for sensitive hearts.

Philosophical problems of L. Andreev's story "Judas Iscariot"

to determine the ideological content of the story, the meaning of the image of Judas in literature.

A tale of love and loyalty? L. Andreev "Judas Iscariot"

Leonid Andreev is a great Russian writer, undeservedly forgotten and therefore not studied at school for a long time. This is one of the most difficult writers, which is connected with his worldview.

The writer wanted know the truth, which in Russian art is integral part of morality.

That's why the problem of a person finding his way, the problem of choice, facing each of us is so essential for the writer.

In his works Andreev spoke

like a thinker existential plan , how original interpreter bible stories,

as a writer who proposed fundamentally new interpretation of the concepts of good and evil,

forced look differently on traditional Russian literature humanism.

Following the tradition of Dostoevsky, laid down by him in Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Andreev

offers a new look at good and evil in their traditional Christian sense:

the question of compatibility and coexistence of the main categories of ethics turned out to be by no means rhetorical.

Dialecticsin understanding ethical issues- one of the most important achievements of Andreev as a writer.

The originality of the writer's works is manifested

in a special philosophical orientation, in the paradoxical nature of the studied eternal questions.

Andreev's prose has not lost its relevance in our time, and above all - the relevance of the moral and ethical, the relevance of the worldview

Betrayal is a topical issue in our time, in difficult days of human mood swings, in days of doubt and misunderstanding by people of each other. Therefore, perhaps, the story of L. Andreev, although written at the beginning of the century, is so popular today:

explores the purpose of the hero's action and preconditions for it.

The theme of betrayal Judas Christ in the story "Judas Iscariot" (1907) in a radical way rethought.

Most Discredited the hero of not only Christian mythology, but, perhaps, of all literature - Judas - appears before the readers of the story in a completely unexpected way.

Judas is the only faithful and consistent disciple Christ, who decides to betray for the sake of exalting the Teacher. Creating "Judas Iscariot"

Andreev continued the atheistic line of his work, where already

scheduled sharp divergences from traditional gospel stories

" ... and just as time has no end, so there will be no end to stories about the betrayal of Judas and his terrible death " . Leonid Andreev

"Judas Iscariot" The story is written based on the biblical story, which tells about the betrayal of Jesus by Judas. Received mixed reviews because Andreev interpreted the plot in his own way. Why did you turn to this topic? In the 1900s, he wrote a lot about the God-man (“Christians”, “Elizar”, “The Life of Basil of Thebes”).

Jesus Christ is the embodiment of truth, goodness and beauty,

and Judas, who betrayed him, is the personification of lies, meanness, deceit.

The traditional opposition of Judas to the eleven faithful apostles caused Andreev to doubt

“The gospel inside out” – this is how Maximilian Voloshin called Andreev’s story.

The general outline of the story corresponds to the scheme given in the New Testament, but Andreev modernizes this scheme.

Common in the language of works: Parables, Christian instructions; - quotes from the Bible in the story: “ And numbered with the villains” (7 ch.), “Hosanna! Hosanna! Coming in the name of the Lord” (ch. 6);

The writer saturates the narrative with numerous particulars and details. For example, it describes past Jude and Peter

- frequently offers both in the Bible and in the story begin with unions and, a, which gives the texts a colloquial character: “And Judas believed him - and he suddenly stole and deceived Judas ... And everyone deceives him”; “And they laughed at me… and gave it to me to eat, and I asked for more…”;

included a fictional episode of the competition apostles in throwing stones.

Peter denies Jesus 3 times...

The actions of the apostles are motivated by personal features of each

Judas in the story looks more monstrous than in the Bible, the work itself shocks and revolts; -

- in the Bible, the disciples intercede for Christ: “ Those who were with Him, seeing what was going on, said to Him: “Lord! Shall we strike with a sword?” And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear. Then Jesus said, leave it alone. And touching his ear, he healed it.” The disciples run away, but this act is a momentary weakness, since then they preached the teachings of Christ, for many of them they paid with their lives.

Andreev's students are traitors;

in the Bible - “but the devil seduced him, and he began to hate the Savior”;

At L. Andreeva Judas betrays Christ of his own free will,

in L. Andreev, Jesus Christ is mostly silent and always in the background

AT Bible and story meets stylistic reception - inversion: “spread their cloaks on the ground”, “people greeted him”.

But unlike the Bible, Andreev has many unusual figurative comparisons; - L. Andreev uses in write obsolete forms of the word: "And silently beating my chest," “And, suddenly replacing the speed of movements with slowness…”

Conclusion:

but breaks the plot: disciples of Christ are cowards, traitors and Judas is two-faced, incomprehensible, but smart.

Why does the writer do this?

What message does he want to convey to us?

-How to understand the psychology of the act of Judas in the story of L. Andreev,

-what made him betray Jesus, thus violating, it would seem, all the laws of morality and morality?

From the very beginning and throughout the story, the words “ Judas the Betrayer”, such the name was rooted in the minds of people from the very beginning, and L. Andreev accepts and uses it, but only as a “nickname” given by people.

For the writer Judas in many ways symbolic traitor.

Andreev is concerned about the following questions:

-Did meanness alone lead Judas to betrayal?

-Did the other apostles show only moral purity in the time of the climactic events of Christian history?

"Judas and Scariot" 9 chapters.

Chapter 3 - betrayal;

the rest are waiting for the death of Jesus.

From the beginning of the story, the motive of anxiety is felt, it also sounds in the description of nature. New paragraph from one sentence: "And Judas Came" A detailed portrait is given. Read it! What is special about a portrait? The disciples of Jesus treated him with disgust, they do not trust him.

"Judas Iscariot" Andreev follows the gospel story: Jesus knew about the betrayal, about everything that would happen, but still accepted Judas.

Nature is waiting. The windless weather remained until the end of history: everything happens in an atmosphere of closeness, heaviness, everything is in black and white. Like before a storm. All in anticipation of change:

Jesus is waiting for the day of betrayal, Judas lives in the hope that when the Jews see the suffering of Christ, they will release the teacher and follow him.

What does Judas look like?

The story begins with the words: “Jesus Christ was warned many times that Judas from Carioth is a man of very bad fame and must beware of him.” Then comes the statement of rumors That is, from the first lines, a negative characterization of Judas is given. There is not a single kind word about him: he is greedy, cunning, prone to betrayal and lies (this is the author's characteristic) Both good and bad speak badly about him

In the appearance of Judas is dominated by duality, especially his face is weird, which one " one side of it, with a black, keenly looking out eye, was lively, mobile, willingly gathering into numerous crooked wrinkles. On the other, there were no wrinkles, and it was deadly smooth, flat, frozen ...". It seems as if the good - that frozen part - is petrified, and the evil - the living part - dominates Iscariot's body and mind.

Slide 7

Negative Left his wife, quarrels people, Curious, crafty, angry. He has no children But Jesus does not listen to anyone, he accepted Judas, included him in the circle of the elect.

Andreev's Judas at the very beginning of the story is presented as a very repulsive character: his appearance is already unpleasant (“ ugly bumpy head”, a strange expression on the face, as if divided in half), a strange changeable voice “sometimes courageous and strong, then noisy, like an old woman scolding her husband, annoyingly thin and unpleasant to hear”. His words are repelled, “like rotten and rough splinters”.

The events of the last days of Christ are reflected in painting. These events are dedicated to icons, frescoes, paintings by famous artists. Let's turn to them, let's see how the ancient masters portrayed Judas. (Icon of the 16th century “The Last Supper”, Rosselli “The Last Supper” of the 16th century and Simon Ushakov “The Last Supper” Icon of the 17th century).

Does the image of Judas differ from other disciples of Christ? In later works, it is easy to recognize Judas by the absence of a halo over his head, but again nothing in his appearance arouses suspicion, surprise or disgust… He is the same as the rest of the students. We see Judas not at all like the one L. Andreev described him.

Let's make the first conclusions.

What can be said about the appearance of Judas in the painting and the text of the story?

in the story, L. Anreev deviates from traditions because he

it is important to show the inconsistency of the image, the difference between Judas and the rest of the disciples is not only internal, but also external

Andreev's images of other students are only symbols. So,

Peter associated with a stone: wherever he is, whatever he does, the symbolism of the stone is used everywhere, even with Judas he competes in throwing stones.

John- the beloved disciple of Jesus is tenderness, fragility, purity, spiritual beauty.

Thomas straightforward, slow-witted, in fact, Thomas is an unbeliever. Even Foma's eyes are empty, transparent, no thought lingers in them.

The images of other disciples are also symbolic: none of them could betray Jesus.

Judas - that's the chosen one to whom this fate fell, and only he is capable of co-creation in the feat of Jesus - he also sacrifices himself.

Give characteristic disciples of Christ: Peter, John and Thomas

Disciples of Christ Possess earthly, human qualities

They're not perfect, but they're different.

Peter loud

John naive, ambitious, wants one thing - to be a favorite student Thomas silent, sensible, but cautious. All the apostles are condescending towards Judas, condemning him for lies and pretense, but listen with pleasure to his false stories

slide 12

The difference between Judas and the apostles The disciples are fighting for the first place next to the teacher - Judas tries to be needed And Christ kindly looks at him.

What is the name of the character in the story?

In the story, Judas is repeatedly referred to as “one-eyed demon”, “Satan”, “devil”. The disciples often call Judas, and “ ugly, “punished dog”, “insect”, “monstrous fruit”, “severe jailer”, “old deceiver”, “gray stone”, “traitor” - so called author.

From the very beginning of the story, we we see how vicious the nature of Judas is, exaggerated his ugliness, the asymmetry of his features. And in the future, the actions of Judas will surprise us with their absurdity:

in conversations with students then silent, then extremely kind and welcoming, which even frightens many of his interlocutors. Judas did not talk to Jesus for a long time, but Jesus loved Judas, as well as his other disciples, often looked for Judas with his eyes and was interested in him, although Judas, it would seem, is not worthy of this. Next to Jesus, he looked low, stupid and insincere. Judas constantly lied, so it was impossible to know whether he was telling the truth once again or lying. It is quite possible to explain the great sin of Judas - the betrayal of his Teacher - by the nature of Judas. After all, it is possible that his envy of the purity, chastity of Jesus, his unlimited kindness and love for people, which Judas is not capable of, led to the fact that he decided to destroy his teacher. ??? But this is only the first impression of L. Andreev's story.

-Why did Jesus bring such a terrible person closer to him?

“The spirit of bright contradiction attracted him to the outcast and unloved”,

that is, the actions of Jesus are guided by love for people

- The difference between Judas and the apostles

The disciples are fighting for the first place next to the teacher - Judas tries to be needed And Christ kindly looks at him.

“He (Judas) was thin, of good height, almost the same as Jesus”, i.e. writer puts two of them in one row; seemingly opposite images, he brings them together. There seems to be some kind of connection between Jesus and Judas, they are constantly connected by an invisible thread: their eyes often meet, and they almost guess each other's thoughts.

Jesus changes attitude towards Judas. Judas proves to Jesus that the villagers were insincere towards him,

they declared him a thief, a deceiver (the kid was later found)

After that, Jesus stopped noticing Judas, sat down with his back to him, looked, but did not see.

Even when Judas helped Jesus, saved his life, again at the cost of a lie, he did not receive gratitude: “a lie for salvation” was severely accepted by Christ.

- How does Judas feel about Jesus?

Judas is crying: he loves the teacher, wants to be loved, utters the fatal phrase: “And now he will perish, and Judas will perish with him”

Jesus loves Judas, although he foresees betrayal on his part. But Judas, Judas also loves Jesus! He loves him immensely, he reveres him. He attentively listens to his every phrase, feeling in Jesus some kind of mystical power, special, forcing everyone who listens to him to bow before the Teacher. - Why does Jesus' attitude towards him change?

- What event preceded that?

When Judas accused people of viciousness, deceit and hatred for each other, Jesus became move away From him. Judas felt it, perceiving everything very painful, which also confirms unlimited love of Judas to your teacher. Therefore, it is not surprising Judas' desire to draw near to him, to be always near him. The thought arises Was Judas' betrayal a way to get closer to Jesus? but in a very special, paradoxical way. The teacher will die, Judas will leave this world and there, in another life, they will be around: there will be no John and Peter, there will be no other disciples of Jesus, there will be only Judas, who, he is sure, loves his Master most of all

When reading the story of L. Andreev often the thought arises that the mission of Judas is predetermined. None of the disciples of Jesus could have endured such a thing, could not have accepted such a fate.

- Why does Jesus push Judas away from him?

- Why Does Judas lie all the time?

Lying is normal for Judas: “According to Judas' stories, it seemed that he knew all the people, and every person he knew had committed some bad deed or even a crime in his life. Good people, in his opinion, are those who know how to hide their deeds and thoughts; but if such a person is hugged, caressed and questioned well, then all untruth, abomination and lies will flow from him, like pus from a punctured wound. Judas did not believe in the sincerity of people's actions, considering everything a deception. He sincerely believes that evil rules the world. It is evil that determines most of his actions and thoughts. What are the views of Christ? Two worldviews collide, this is the conflict of the work, and it has a godly character.

-- Road to crime

Meeting with the high priest Anna and agreeing on the surrender of Jesus into the hands of the law (for 30 pieces of silver) Now he is silent. Stop talking bad about people. Surrounds Jesus with care, tenderness. Guesses his slightest desire. Brings flowers, passes them through Mary Magdalene. But the teacher doesn't seem to notice anything.

Judas evokes a feeling of pity, he sincerely suffers. He says that Jesus Christ needs to be protected, you need to leave here. Brought two swords to save Jesus. Duality: he betrayed and is trying to save. He believes that the love and loyalty of the disciples will prevail. Jesus foresees everything. He says to Peter: "The morning will not come when you betray me three times."

Climax - scene of betrayal

- How students behave? Read out.

Judas is waiting for a miracle: now everyone will understand. He tries to influence Anna, but then drives him away. Pilate washes his hands, says that he is innocent of the blood of the righteous, and Judas kisses his hands and calls him wise.

Throughout the execution, Judas is tormented by the thought: What if they understand? Not too late! “Horror and dreams came true” Judas is considered a traitor, and he goes to the disciples and accuses them of inaction, calls them traitors. - And in a way he is right. In what?

Why does Judas betray? What does he want? Judas created, like Raskolnikov, a theory according to which all people are bad, and wants to test the theory in practice. He hopes to the last that people will intercede for Christ. Knowing in advance that he will betray Jesus, commit such a grave sin, he struggles with this: the best part of his soul struggles with the mission destined for him. And the soul cannot stand it: it is impossible to defeat predestination. So Judas knew that there would be a betrayal, there would be a death of Jesus and that he would kill himself after that, he even marked out a place for death. He hid the money so that later he could throw it to the chief priests and Pharisees - that is, greed was not at all the reason for the betrayal of Judas.

- Why does Jude blame His disciples for Jesus' death?? Having committed an atrocity, Judas accuses ... the disciples of this. He is amazed that when the teacher died, they could eat and sleep, could continue their former life without Him, without their Teacher. It seems to Judas that life is meaningless after the death of Jesus. It turns out that Judas is not as heartless as we first thought. Love for Jesus reveals many of his hitherto hidden positive traits, the immaculate, pure sides of his soul, which, however, are revealed only after the death of Jesus, just as the betrayal of Judas is revealed with the death of Jesus.

Judas had long ago outlined the place where, after the death of Jesus, he would kill himself.” He goes to his death as to a meeting with Jesus. "So meet me kindly, I'm very tired, Jesus"

How does Judas change outwardly? “... his gaze was simple, and direct, and terrible in its naked truthfulness” Judas proved the theory. Why did he hang himself? He loved Christ, wanted to be with him. I saw the inevitability of evil on earth, the lack of love, betrayal True love is sacrificial. What does Judas sacrifice? Dooms himself to eternal shame Judas is a tragic character because, unlike the apostles of Christ, he understands all this, but, in oh difference from Anna and like him, able to be captivated by the unearthly purity and goodness of Jesus Christ. Looks kinda creepy paradox and nonsense: Only an egocentric and cynic who does not believe in people can truly love Christ. One cannot but agree with this!

A tale of love and loyalty? L. Andreev.« JudasIscariot"

Slide 10

Judas suddenly becomes good Conscientiously fulfills his duties to Goethe: "Behavior is a mirror in which everyone shows his face" And yet his behavior is contradictory: he takes on his duties and immediately steals 3 d inaria; tells stories and then admits he lied

Work with text

What feelings does the writing evoke?

The money was thrown by Judas - not because of them he killed.

What is the true reason for the murder of Jesus, according to Andreev? -Winner or loser Judas in the story?

Conclusions:

1. Moral value lies not in words, but in deeds.

2. Love must be active.

3. In order for Jesus to accomplish his feat - to make a sacrifice in the name of humanity, he must be betrayed.

And Judas took upon himself the shame of betrayal, thereby immortalizing not only Jesus, but also himself.

Andreev considers betrayal also a victim, since Judas doomed himself to eternal shame

At home 1. Orally - according to the lesson outline

2. Cards.

№ 1Portraits of Judas, their role in the story.

#2 Disciples of Jesus. How are they shown in the story

#3 Judas after the betrayal

№ 4 Causes of betrayal and suicide of Judas.

"JUDAS": "SILVER GEORGE" FOR THIRTY SILVER

From June 20 to June 29, 2013, the 35th International Film Festival was held in Moscow, in the main competition program of which 16 films from all over the world were presented. Three films represented Russia in this list. Among them - "Judas" by Andrei Bogatyrev, film adaptation of Leonid Andreev's story "Judas Iscariot".

The biblical traitor Judas Iscariot has ceased to be an unambiguously negative character for quite a long time. From the latter, it is enough to recall the cult rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber "Jesus Christ Superstar".

However, long before the "Superstar" the classic of the Silver Age of Russian literature looked at this character differently Leonid Andreev, writing his apocrypha "Judas Iscariot" back in 1906 y. In 2013, director Andrey Bogatyrev presented his vision of Andreev's controversial work at the 35th Moscow Film Festival.

From the first frames it becomes clear that "Judas" is fully consistent with its name. This apocryphal picture is a view from the outside not so much on the well-known biblical story as on Iscariot himself. It is he who is always in the frame, it is he who pushes the story forward. The apostles, and even Christ himself, depersonalized by the director and turned into just a Teacher, only shade the gloomy character Alexey Shevchenkov .

This is clearly evidenced by the fact that after viewing almost no one and nothing remains in the memory, except, in fact, Judas remains. The vague images of Andrew the First-Called, throwing stones, Pilate, ordering to bring water, drown in the cries of the crowd raging at the trial of Christ and are forgotten, as soon as the camera catches a tear rolling down Iscariot's cheek. Only the stupid Foma, beautifully performed by Sergei Frolov, and the look of the Teacher, which Andrei Barilo, who played him, definitely succeeded, came out really bright and memorable.

For those who once admired the director's talent

Mel Gibson in his Passion of the Christ

worth watching" Judas" with care as this picture is complete opposite Gibson's "Passion ..." both in terms of the visual component and the main idea.

Movie Bogatyrev does not capture with pathos and religious mysticism, does not strike with bloody scenes, it almost entirely consists of dialogues,

life,

personal experiences

and vivid symbolism.

Apostles wander for the Teacher from village to village,

weave fishing nets

listen to sermons and collect donations. And around them frantically worn Iscariot asking " Where are you going, fools?"

And almost every dialogue in the film is an independent philosophical parable:

- Why are you following him?
- He's a teacher, that's why we're going.
- And where to?
Wherever he is, there we are.
- You are stupid.
- Why?
Because he knows where he's going. You are not.

All those p tricks, which irritate many and are not at all associated with serious cinema -

camera shaking in the hands of the operator,

abrupt change of plans and scenes,

simplistic, street language,

Formed at Bogatyrev into an organic picture, filled with symbols and hidden meanings.

Even for those who like to argue about the advantages of books over their film adaptations, the director did not give a reason for this, although he did not try to transfer the story to the screen word for word.

Bogatyrev swapped some scenes, omitted some, and, on the contrary, revealed others, only mentioned by Andreev, and made them the main ones. The film came out really authorial, and the story turned out more human

than biblical.

Not without flaws, of course, too. Maybe the story turned out to be too complicated, maybe the young director simply did not have enough experience, but the fact remains that a heavy, drawn-out narration could make even the most ardent fans of Leonid Andreev drowsy. It could, if not for Alexey Shevchenkov. His "Judas" does not want to let go until the very last minutes, no matter how hard they are given. And even the sudden, as if chopped off ending does not push you to leave the hall at all - you still want to sit and listen to the sound of rain under the closing credits.

Much can be forgiven for such a lively and real Iscariot "Judas".

Shevchenkov's game was also appreciated by critics: according to the results of the film festival, Alexey received "Silver George" for Best Actor.

"Judas" by Andrei Bogatyrev did not become a revelation of the 35th film festival. Nevertheless, we got an ambiguous, serious and beautiful movie about the human soul, choice and faith.

Alekseev Mikhail, Russia.tv

	Russia
	"There are things you need to figure out yourself"
producer	Andrey Bogatyrev
scenario	Vsevolod Benigsen, Leonid Andreev
producer	Tatiana Voronetskaya, Maria El, Elena Belova
operator	Dmitry Maltsev
composer	Sergei Solovyov, Dmitry Kurlyandsky
painter	Alexander Telin, Natalia Dzyubenko, Andrey Bilan
	Andrey Bogatyrev, Natalia Semenova, Svetlana Lipina
	drama
fees in Russia	$20,502fees
premiere (world)

The era of modernism, which came at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, was marked by the desire of many writers to give their own interpretation of the "eternal" plots and image that underlie all European culture. These are not only images of world literature - Prometheus, Hamlet, Don Quixote, Don Juan, but also images that have come to us from the pages of Holy Scripture - a book that provides answers to the most important spiritual questions of mankind. Artists of previous centuries relied on canonical plots and interpreted eternal truths in their own words. Modernist writers tried to change the traditional view of biblical imagery. One of these images turned out to be Judas, whose very name became a household name, meaning the highest degree of a person's moral fall - betrayal. Leonid Andreev, the most popular prose writer of the turn of the century, gave his understanding of the reasons that pushed one of the apostles of Christ to a monstrous act.

The theme of the story "Judas Iscariot" (1907) is one of the most relevant and exciting topics for everyone who survived the bloody events of the revolution of 1905-1907. Unlike his contemporary, the writer Fyodor Sologub, Leonid Andreev could not accept the idea that the nature of evil is petty and vile, that there is little grandiose, demonic in the guise of earthly evil. Being strongly influenced by the works of F. M. Dostoevsky, L. Andreev sought to find the ideological prerequisites underlying the Judas sin.

Judas and Christ

It immediately attracts attention that Judas is simultaneously opposed in the story to both Christ and the apostles. However, this opposition is different in the first and in the second case. It's not just about appearance: Jesus is an amazingly whole person who knows no doubt in his words and actions. In the guise of Judas, as well as in his speeches, gestures, deeds, duality is constantly emphasized. Even Judas' face doubles.

In the interpretation of L. Andreev, Judas committed the first betrayal long before the Garden of Gethsemane. Let us recall an incident that occurred in one of the villages, in which the preaching of Jesus was received with hostility and even wanted to stone him and his disciples. Judas, with lies and slanders against his teacher, begged for mercy from the angry inhabitants, but instead of gratitude, he met the wrath of Christ and the apostles. This episode clarifies the nature of Judas' relationship to Jesus: his love for his teacher is earthly love, and Judas values ​​a mortal man in Christ more than the immortal God the Son. Jesus was ready to pay for the truth of his teaching at the cost of his life.

The originality of the author's position in the story

Any interpretation, in contrast to a holistic analysis, is based on the fact that its author formulates his point of view, relying only on a number of facts that allow him to create a fairly convincing and internally consistent concept. That is exactly what L. Andreev did. It is no coincidence that, according to memoirists, he was even proud that, while working on the first edition of the story, he did not read not only other writers who devoted their works to a similar topic, but also did not reread the Gospel, which, by the way, in the initial version of the story was a lot of mistakes. Therefore, in the interpretation of the writer, Jesus will wait for his disciples to intercede for him, and will reject their defense only when he is convinced of its futility.

Another thing is also noteworthy: for a long time, the words of Christ in the story sound only in the retelling of the narrator or his disciples. And the first words of Jesus, sounded in the work from his own lips, will be the words about the coming threefold denial of Peter. In the future, if in the story he says "Christ" in the first person, then these will be words of condemnation of the disciples and sorrow, taken by the author directly from the text of the Gospel. Thus, Leonid Andreev seems to want to convince us that Jesus needed such a person as Judas, who was capable of laying down his life and soul for him. The image of Judas receives in the story, especially in its finale, a truly tragic decision: having destroyed with his love the one who was his only justification and protection, Judas doomed himself to death.

Leonid Andreev is one of the writers whose work gives rise to discrepancies that are not removed by time.

One of the most controversial works of the writer is the story of Judas Iscariot and others. Controversial - not only because his interpretations are polemical in relation to each other, but also because, in my opinion, all are to some extent unconvincing, fragmentary.

The history of misunderstanding of L. Andreev's story began from the moment it was published and was predicted by Gorky: "A thing that will be understood by a few and will make a big noise." central hero. Most researchers of our time reduce the content of the story to the condemnation or justification of the betrayal of Judas by the author.

Against the backdrop of the established tradition of interpreting the story in a purely moral and psychological aspect, the interpretations proposed by S.P. Ilyev and L.A. Kolobaeva / 2 / stand out, which are based on the authors' understanding of the philosophical and ethical nature of the problematics of the work. But they also seem to me subjective, not fully confirmed by the text. Andreev's philosophical story is about the enormous role of the creative free mind in the destinies of the world, about the fact that the greatest idea is powerless without the creative participation of man, and about the tragic substance of creativity as such.

The main plot opposition of L. Andreev's story: Christ with his "faithful" disciples and Judas - has, as is typical of the philosophical meta-genre, a substantial character. Before us are two worlds with fundamentally different attitudes to life: in the first case - on faith and authority, in the second - on a free, creative mind. The perception of the plot-forming opposition as substantial is facilitated by the cultural archetypes embedded by the author in the images that make up the opposition.

In the image of Judas, the archetype of Chaos is recognizable, marked by the author with the help of a pronounced expressionist (that is, frankly conditional and rigidly conceptualized) imagery. It is repeatedly embodied in the description of the head and face of Judas, as if divided into several parts that disagree, arguing with each other / 4 /, the figure of Judas, now likening him to a gray pile, from which arms and legs suddenly protruded (27), then causing an impression that Judas had “not two legs, like all people, but a whole dozen” (25). "Judas shuddered ... and everything in him - eyes, arms and legs - seemed to run in different directions..." (20). Jesus illuminates with the lightning of his gaze "a monstrous heap of wary shadows that was the soul of Iscariot" (45).

In these and other sketches of the image of Judas, the motifs of disorder, unformedness, changeability, inconsistency, danger, mystery, prehistoric antiquity, fixed by cultural consciousness behind chaos, are persistently repeated. The ancient mythological Chaos appears in the darkness of the night, which usually hides Judas, in the repeated analogies of Judas with reptiles, scorpions, octopuses.

The latter, perceived by the students as a double of Judas, recalls the initial watery Chaos, when the land had not yet separated from the water, and at the same time is an image of a mythological monster that inhabits the world in the time of Chaos. “Looking intently at the fire of the fire ... stretching out his long moving hands to the fire, all shapeless in the confusion of arms and legs, trembling shadows and light, Iscariot muttered plaintively and hoarsely: - How cold! My God, how cold! So, probably, when fishermen leave at night, leaving a smoldering fire on the shore, something crawls out of the dark depths of the sea, crawls up to the fire, looks at it intently and wildly, reaches out to it with all its members ... "(45).

Judas does not deny his connection with the demonic forces of Chaos - Satan, the devil. The unpredictability, the mystery of Chaos, the secret work of elemental forces, invisibly preparing their formidable outburst, reveals itself in Judas by the impenetrability of his thoughts to those around him. Even Jesus cannot penetrate into the “bottomless depths” of his soul (45). It is also no coincidence that in terms of association with Chaos, images of mountains, deep rocky ravines are associated with Judas. Judas now lags behind the entire group of disciples, then steps aside, rolls down a cliff, peeling himself against stones, disappears from sight - the space is indented, lying in different planes, Judas moves in a zigzag manner.

The space in which Judas is inscribed varies the image of the terrible abyss, the gloomy depths of Hades, the cave, which is closely connected with Chaos in the ancient consciousness. “He turned, as if looking for a comfortable position, put his hands, palm with palm, to the gray stone and leaned heavily against them with his head. (...) And in front of him, and behind, and from all sides, the walls of the ravine rose, cutting off the edges of the blue sky with a sharp line; and everywhere, digging into the ground, huge gray stones rose... And this wild-desert ravine looked like an overturned, chopped-off skull...” (16). Finally, the author directly gives a key word to the archetypal content of the image of Judas: "... all this monstrous chaos trembled and began to move" (43).

In the description of Jesus and his disciples, all the main attributes of the Cosmos archetype come to life: orderliness, certainty, harmony, divine presence, beauty. Accordingly, the spatial organization of the world of Christ with the apostles is semantized: Christ is always in the center - surrounded by disciples or ahead of them, sets the direction of movement. The world of Jesus and his disciples is strictly hierarchical and therefore "clear", "transparent", calm, understandable.

The figures of the apostles most often appear to the reader in the light of sunlight. Each student is an integral character. In their relationship to each other and to Christ, harmony reigns, and each is in agreement with himself. He was not shaken even by the crucifixion of Christ. Here there is no place for a riddle, as well as for individual work beating in contradictions and searching for thought. “... Thomas ... looked so straight with his transparent and clear eyes, through which, as through Phoenician glass, one could see the wall behind him and the dejected donkey tied to it” (13). Everyone is true to himself in any word and action, Jesus knows the future actions of the disciples.

In the story, the image of the conversation of Jesus with the disciples in Bethany, in the house of Lazarus, looks like a kind of emblem of the Cosmos: “Jesus spoke, and the disciples listened in silence to his speech. Motionless, like a statue, Mary sat at his feet and, throwing her head back, looked into his face. John, moving close, tried to make his hand touch the teacher's clothes, but did not bother him. Touched and froze.And Peter breathed loudly and forcefully, echoing the words of Jesus with his breath” (19).

An important cosmogonic act - the separation of Earth and Heaven and the rise of Heaven above the Earth - corresponds to the following frame of the picture: “...everything around ... was dressed in darkness and silence, and only Jesus brightened with his raised hand. But now it seemed to have risen into the air, as if it had melted and became such, as if it consisted entirely of overhead fog ... ”(19).

But in the author's concept of the story, archetypal parallels acquire an unconventional meaning. In the mythological and cultural consciousness, creation is more often associated with ordering and together with the Cosmos, and much less often Chaos receives a positive assessment. Andreev develops a romantic interpretation of the ambivalent Chaos, whose destructive power is at the same time a powerful vital energy, looking for an opportunity to take shape in new forms. It is rooted in one of the ancient concepts of Chaos as something living and life-giving, the basis of world life, and the Hebrew tradition to see the God-fighting principle in Chaos.

The Russian cultural consciousness of the early 20th century often accentuates the creative principle in the idea of ​​Chaos (V. Solovyov, Blok, Bryusov, L. Shestov), ​​the “dark root of world existence.” in brilliant logic and bold creative thought, crushing will and sacrificial love of a free rebel.

It is no coincidence that the author of the story describes the process of the birth of the idea of ​​Judas in the images of Chaos, connecting the “horror and dreams” of the hero (53). Thoughtful Judas is no different from the stones that " thought - hard, stubborn, stubborn ". He sits "without moving ... motionless and gray, like a gray stone itself", and the stones in this abyss-ravine look - "as if stone rain had once passed here and in endless thought its heavy drops froze. (...) ... and every stone in it was like a frozen thought ... "(16) (Here and below it is emphasized by me. - R. S.).

In this regard, the attitude of the author to Judas in Andreev's story is fundamentally different from the attitude of the evangelists and recognized authors of theological writings (D. F. Strauss, E. Renan, F. V. Farrara, F. Mauriac) - as an assessment of his role in the history of mankind, and the very problematic of his image.

Judas' opposition to Christ and the future apostles is not identical to the antithesis of evil versus good suggested by the Bible. As for other disciples, for Judas Jesus is the moral Absolute, the one whom he “in anguish and torment was looking for ... all ... his life, he searched and found!” (39). But Andrew's Jesus hopes that evil will be overcome by the faith of mankind in his Word and does not want to take reality into account. Judas' behavior is dictated by knowledge of the real complex nature of man, knowledge formed and tested by his sober and fearless mind.

The story constantly emphasizes the deep and rebellious mind of Judas, prone to endless revision of conclusions, the accumulation of experience. The nickname “smart” is attached to him among the students, he constantly “quickly moves around” with a “live and keen eye”, tirelessly asks the question: who is right? — teaches Mary to remember the past for the future. His "betrayal", as he conceives it, is the last desperate attempt to interrupt the sleep of reason in which humanity resides, to wake up its consciousness. And at the same time, the image of Judas does not at all symbolize a naked and soulless ratio.

Judas' inner struggle with himself, painful doubts about his rightness, stubborn illogical hope that people will see clearly and crucifixion will be unnecessary, are generated by love for Christ and devotion to his teachings. However, Jude opposes blind faith as the engine of moral and historical progress and proof of fidelity to the spiritual work of liberated thought, the creative self-awareness of a free person capable of taking full responsibility for a non-standard decision. In his own eyes, he is the only companion of Jesus and a faithful disciple, while in the literal adherence of the rest of the disciples to the Word of the Teacher, he sees cowardice, cowardice, stupidity, in their behavior - true betrayal.

Its subjective organization is specific and not simple. Andreev's extensive use of stylization and improperly direct speech leads to blurring and mobility of the boundaries of the consciousness of the characters and the narrator. The subjects of consciousness are often not formalized as subjects of speech. However, upon closer examination, each subject of consciousness, including the narrator, has its own stylistic portrait, which allows it to be identified. The position of the artistic author at the level of the subjective organization of the work finds expression most of all in the mind of the narrator./6/

The stylistic pattern of the narrator's consciousness in L. Andreev's story corresponds to the norms of book speech, often artistic, differs in poetic vocabulary, complicated syntax, tropes, pathetic intonation and has the highest potential for generalization. Pieces of text that belonged to the narrator carry an increased conceptual load. Thus, the narrator acts as the subject of consciousness in the above emblematic picture of the Cosmos of Christ and in the depiction of Judas, the creator of a new project of human history.

One of these "spiritual" portraits of Judas is also quoted above. The narrator also marks the sacrificial devotion of Judas to Jesus: “... and mortal sorrow ignited in his heart, similar to that experienced by Christ before this. 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 that if Jesus had been a flower on a thin stalk, he would not have swayed it with this kiss and would not have dropped pearly dew from clean petals ”(43). In the narrator’s field of consciousness lies the conclusion about the equal role of Jesus and Judas in the turn of history — God and man, bound by a common torment: “... and among all this crowd there were only two of them, inseparable until death, wildly connected by a common suffering ... From one goblet suffering, like brothers, they both drank ... "(45).

The style of the narrator's consciousness in the story has points of intersection with the consciousness of Judas. True, the consciousness of Judas is embodied by means of a colloquial style, but they are united by increased expressiveness and imagery, although different in nature: irony and sarcasm are more characteristic of Judas's consciousness, pathos is more characteristic of the narrator. The stylistic closeness of the narrator and Judas as subjects of consciousness increases as we approach the denouement. Irony and mockery in Judas' speech give way to pathos, Judas's word at the end of the story sounds serious, sometimes prophetic, and its conceptuality rises.

Irony sometimes appears in the voice of the narrator. In the stylistic convergence of the voices of Judas and the narrator, a certain moral commonality of their positions finds expression. In general, repulsively ugly, deceitful, dishonorable Judas is seen in the story through the eyes of characters: students, neighbors, Anna and other members of the Sanhedrin, soldiers, Pontius Pilate, although formally the narrator may be the subject of speech. But only - speeches! As a subject of consciousness (which is closest to the consciousness of the author), the narrator never acts as an antagonist to Judas.

The narrator's voice cuts with dissonance into the chorus of general rejection of Judas, introducing a different perception and a different scale of measurement of Judas and his deeds. Such the first significant "clipping" of the narrator's consciousness is the phrase "And here came Judas." It stands out stylistically against the background of the prevailing colloquial style, which conveys the bad folk rumor about Judas, and graphically: two-thirds of the line after this phrase is left blank.

It is followed by a large segment of the text, again containing a sharply negative characterization of Judas, formally belonging to the narrator. But he conveys the disciples' perception of Judas, prepared by rumors about him. The change in the subject of consciousness is evidenced by a change in stylistic tone (biblical aphorism and pathos give way to vocabulary, syntax and intonation of colloquial speech) and direct instructions from the author.

“He came, bowing low, arching his back carefully and timidly stretching forward his ugly bumpy head - just the way those who knew him imagined. He was thin, of good height ... and he was apparently strong enough in strength, but for some reason he pretended to be frail and sickly, and his voice was changeable: sometimes courageous and strong, sometimes loud, like an old woman scolding her husband...(...) The face of Judas also doubled ... (...) Even people who were completely devoid of insight clearly understood, looking at Iscariot, what such a person cannot bring good, but Jesus brought him closer and even next to himself - next to himself planted Judas" (5).

In the middle of the above passage, the author placed a sentence omitted by us: “Short red hair did not hide the strange and unusual shape of his skull: ... it was clearly divided into four parts and inspired distrust, even anxiety: behind such a skull there can be no silence and consent, behind such the noise of bloody and merciless battles is always heard in the skull.

Let's take a look at this suggestion. He has one subject of speech, but two subjects of consciousness. The perception of Judas by the disciples in the last part of the sentence is replaced by the perception of the narrator. This is indicated by a change in the stylistic register, growing already from the second part of the sentence, and a graphical division of the sentence by means of a colon. And the narrator, this is clearly seen, as a subject of consciousness, opposes his view of Judas to the widespread philistine one: the narrator's view differs from the philistine one in recognition of the significance of the figure of Judas and respect for his personality - the creator, the seeker of truth.

In the future, the narrator more than once reveals the commonality of his point of view on what is happening with the point of view of Judas. In the eyes of Judas, not he, but the apostles - traitors, cowards, nonentities who have no justification. The accusation of Judas is substantiated in the outwardly impartial depiction of the apostles by the narrator, where there is no improperly direct speech and, therefore, the narrator is as close as possible to the author: “The soldiers shoved the disciples, and they again gathered and stupidly climbed under their feet ... Here one of them, frowning his eyebrows, moved to the crying John; the other roughly pushed Thomas’s hand off his shoulder… and raised a huge fist to his most direct and transparent eyes, and John ran, and Thomas and James ran, and all the disciples, no matter how many of them were here, leaving Jesus, fled” (44) .

Judas mocks the spiritual inertia of the "faithful" disciples, with rage and tears falls upon their dogmatism with its disastrous consequences for mankind. The completeness, immobility, lifelessness of the “discipleship” model, which is the attitude of the future apostles to Christ, is also emphasized by the narrator in the above-quoted description of the conversation of Jesus with the disciples in Bethany. This gospel episode is cited and commented on an infinite number of times in theological and scientific literature, but in such a way that, as in the Gospels, the actions (precisely actions!) of Mary are always in the center of attention: she comes, approaches Christ, brings a vessel with the world, becomes behind at His feet, weeps, pours ointment on His head, drenches His feet with tears, wipes Him with her hair, kisses Him, anoints Him with ointment, breaks the vessel.

At the same time, some students grumble. In Andreev's story, the narrator reveals to our eyes an emphatically static picture. The emblematic nature of the image is achieved by likening Christ, surrounded by disciples, to a sculptural group, and this analogy is deliberately accentuated: “Motionless, like a statue ... He touched it and froze” (19).

In a number of cases, the consciousness of Judas and the consciousness of the narrator, in the image of Andreev, are combined, and this overlap falls on fundamentally significant pieces of the text. It is this incarnation that Christ receives in the story as a symbol of the consecrated, higher order of consciousness and being, but supra-material, out-of-body, and therefore “ghostly”. At an overnight stay in Bethany, Jesus is given by the author in the perception of Judas: “Iscariot stopped at the threshold and, contemptuously passing by the gaze of those assembled, all his fire was focused on Jesus. And as he looked ... everything around him went out, dressed in darkness and silence, and only Jesus brightened with his raised hand.

But now it seemed to have risen into the air, as if it had melted and became as if it consisted entirely of an overhead fog, pierced by the light of the setting moon; and his soft speech sounded somewhere far, far away and tender. And, peering into the wavering ghost, listening to the gentle melody of distant and ghostly words, Judas…” (19). But the lyrical pathos and poetic style of the description of what Judas saw, although they can be explained psychologically by love for Jesus, are much more characteristic of the narrator's consciousness in the story.

The quoted piece of text is stylistically identical to the previous emblematic image of the disciples sitting around Christ, given in the perception of the narrator. The author emphasizes that Judas could not see this scene like that: “Iscariot stopped at the threshold and, contemptuously passing the gaze of the assembled ...". The fact that not only Judas but also the narrator saw Christ as a “ghost” is also evidenced by the semantic similarity of the images with which Christ is associated in the perception of Judas and, a little higher, in the perception of the disciples, which could be known only to the narrator, but not to Judas. . Compare: “... and his soft speech sounded somewhere far, far away and tender. And, peering into the wavering ghost, listening to the gentle melody of distant and ghostly words, Judas…” (19). “... the students were silent and unusually thoughtful. The images of the path traveled: the sun, and the stone, and the grass, and Christ reclining in the center, floated quietly in my head, evoking soft thoughtfulness, giving rise to vague but sweet dreams of some kind of eternal movement under the sun. The weary body rested sweetly, and all of it thought of something mysteriously beautiful and great—and no one remembered Judas” (19).

The consciousnesses of the narrator and Judas also contain literal coincidences, for example, in assessing the attitude towards the Teacher of the "faithful" students who freed themselves from the work of thought. The narrator: “... whether the students’ boundless faith in the miraculous power of their teacher, whether the consciousness of the rightness of one’s own or just blinding Judas' timid words were met with a smile...” (35). Judas: "Blind, what have you done to the earth? You wanted to destroy her…” (59). With the same words, Judas and the narrator sneer at such devotion to the work of the Teacher. Judas: “Beloved student! Is it not from you that a race of traitors, a breed of cowards and liars will begin? (59).

Narrator: "The disciples of Jesus sat in sad silence and listened to what was happening outside the house. There was still danger ... Near John, who, as a beloved disciple of Jesus, his death was especially hard, Mary Magdalene and Matthew sat and comforted him in an undertone ... Matthew didactically spoke in the words of Solomon: “The long-suffering is better than the brave ...” (57). The narrator agrees with Judas in recognizing his monstrous act of high expediency - ensuring the teachings of Christ a worldwide victory. "Hosanna! Hosanna!" Iscariot's heart screams. And the narrator's word about the Betrayer Judas sounds in the conclusion of the story with a solemn bearing to the victorious Christianity. But betrayal in it is only a fact fixed by the empirical consciousness of the witnesses.

The narrator brings the reader a message about something else. His jubilant intonation, the result of understanding what happened in the retrospective of world history, contains information about things that are incomparably more significant for humanity - the advent of a new era. (Let us recall that Judas himself did not see betrayal in his behavior at all: “Lowering his hands, Thomas asked in surprise:“ ... If this is not betrayal, then what is betrayal? “Another, another,” said Judas hastily. ”(49) /7/

The concept of Judas, the creator of a new spiritual reality, is affirmed in Andreev's story and by means of its object organization.

The composition of the work is based on the opposition of two types of consciousness, based on the faith of the majority and the creativity of a free person. The inertia and futility of the consciousness of the first type is embodied in the unambiguous, poor speech of the "faithful" disciples. The speech of Judas is replete with paradoxes, allusions, symbols. She is part of the probabilistic world-chaos of Judas, which always allows for the possibility of an unpredictable turn of events. And it is no coincidence that in the speech of Jude the syntactic construction of tolerance (“What if ...”) is repeated: a sign of a game, an experiment, a search for thought, completely alien to the speech of both Christ and the apostles.

The apostles are discredited by metaphors and parables. Such an allegory, for example, is contained in the picture of the apostles' competition in power. This episode is not in the Gospel, and it is significant in the text of the story. “Stretching, they (Peter and Philip) tore off an old, overgrown stone from the ground, lifted it high with both hands and let it go down the slope. Heavy, it struck short and dull and thought for a moment; then hesitantly made the first leap - and with each touch to the ground, taking speed and strength from it, he became light, ferocious, all-destroying. He no longer jumped, but he flew with bared teeth, and the air, whistling, passed his dull, round carcass” (17).

The heightened, conceptual significance of this picture is given by repeated associations with the stone of Peter himself. His second name is a stone, and it is persistently repeated in the story precisely as a name. With a stone, the narrator, although indirectly, compares the words uttered by Peter (“they sounded so firmly ...” - 6), the laughter that Peter “throws on the heads of the disciples”, and his voice (“he rolled round...“ - 6). At the first appearance of Judas, Peter "looked at Jesus, fast as a stone torn from a mountain moved towards Judas…” (6). In the context of all these associations, it is impossible not to see in the image of a stupid, devoid of his own will, carrying the potential for destruction to the stone, a symbol of the model of life of “faithful” students unacceptable for the author, in which there is no freedom and creativity.

In the text of the story there are a number of allusions to Dostoevsky, Gorky, Bunin, which raise Judas from the level of a miserable greedy and offended jealous man, as he traditionally exists in the memory of an ordinary reader and interpretations of researchers, to the height of the hero of an idea. After receiving thirty pieces of silver from Anna, like Raskolnikov, “Judas did not take the money home, but ... hid it under a stone” (32).

In the dispute between Peter, John, and Judas for supremacy in the kingdom of heaven, "Jesus slowly lowered his eyes" (28), and his gesture of non-intervention and silence reminds the reader of the behavior of Christ in conversation with the Grand Inquisitor. The reaction of the unimaginative John to the inventions of Judas ("John ... quietly asked Pyotr Simonov, his friend: - Aren't you tired of this lie?" - 6) sounds like an allusion to the indignation of "stupid as bricks", Bubnov and Baron with Luka's stories in Gorky's play At the bottom(“Here is Luka, ... he lies a lot ... and without any benefit to himself ... (...) Why would he?” “The old man is a charlatan ...”). / 8 /

In addition, Judas, considering his plan of struggle for the victory of Christ, in the image of Andreev is extremely close to Bunin's Cain, the builder of Baalbek, the Temple of the Sun. Let's compare. Andreev: „…began to build something huge. Slowly, in deep darkness, he lifted up some huge things like mountains, and smoothly laid one on top of the other; and lifted again, and laid again; and something grew in the darkness, spread silently, pushed the boundaries” (20). Bunin:

Family comes and goes
And the earth endures forever...
No, he builds, builds
Temple of the immortal tribes - Baalbek.
He's a killer, damn
But from paradise he boldly stepped.
Embraced by the fear of death,
Yet he was the first to look into her face.
But even in darkness he will glorify
Only Knowledge, Mind and Light -
He will build a tower of the sun
Presses an unshakable footprint into the ground.
He hurries, he throws,
He piles rock upon rock. / 9 /

The new concept of Judas is also revealed in the plot of the work: the author's selection of events, their development, location, artistic time and space. On the night of Christ's crucifixion, the "faithful" disciples of Jesus eat and sleep and argue their right to peace by being faithful to the word of the Master. They excluded themselves from the flow of events. The daring challenge that Judas throws to the world, his confusion, mental struggle, hope, rage and, finally, suicide direct the movement of time and the logic of the historical process. According to the plot of the work, it was him, Judas Iscariot, his efforts, foresight and self-denial in the name of love ("We betray you with the kiss of love." - 43) ensured the victory of the new teaching.

Judas knows his people as well as Anna: the need to worship is stimulated by the possibility of hating someone (to slightly paraphrase the essence of upheavals formulated by Judas, then “the victim is where the executioner and the traitor are” - 58). And he takes on the role of the enemy, necessary in the projected action, and gives him - himself! - the name of a traitor understandable to the masses. He himself was the first to pronounce his new shameful name for everyone (“he said that he, Judas, was a pious man and became a disciple of Jesus the Nazarene with the sole purpose of convicting the deceiver and betraying him into the hands of the law.” – 28) and correctly calculated his trouble-free operation , so that even old Anna allowed herself to be drawn into a trap ("Are you offended by them?" - 28). In this regard, the writing by the author of the word "traitor" in the conclusion of the story with a capital letter is of particular importance - as a non-authorial, alien in the narrator's speech, a word-quotation from the consciousness of the masses.

The global scale of Judas' victory over the inert forces of life is emphasized by the space-time organization of the work, which is characteristic of the philosophical meta-genre. Thanks to mythological and literary parallels (the Bible, antiquity, Goethe, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Tyutchev, Bunin, Gorky, etc.), the story's artistic time covers the entire time of the Earth's existence. It is infinitely relegated to the past and at the same time projected into an infinite future - both historical (“... and as time has no end, so there will be no end to stories about the betrayal of Judas ...” - 61), and mythological (the second coming of the Messiah: “... for a long time yet all the mothers of the earth will weep until then, until we come with Jesus and destroy death.”—53). It is the everlasting present tense of the Bible and belongs to Judas, because it was created by his efforts (“Now all time belongs to him, and he goes slowly ...” - 53).

Judas at the end of the story also owns the whole new, already Christian, Earth: “Now the whole earth belongs to him ...” (53). “Here he stops and examines the new, small land with cold attention” (54). Images of altered time and space are given in the perception of Judas, but stylistically, his consciousness here, at the end of the story, as mentioned above, is difficult to distinguish from the consciousness of the narrator - they coincide. Directly at the conclusion of the story, the same vision of space and time is formulated by the narrator (“The stony Judea, and the green Galilee, learned about it ... and to one sea and to another, which is even further away, the news of the death of the Traitor flew ... and among all the peoples that were, what are ... "- 61). The limiting scale of enlargement of artistic time and space (eternity, the globe) gives the events the character of being and gives them the meaning of their due.

The narrator ends the story with a curse on Judas. But the curse of Judas is inseparable in Andreev from the hosanna to Christ, the triumph of the Christian idea is inseparable from the betrayal of Iscariot, who managed to make mankind see the living God. And it is no coincidence that after the crucifixion of Christ, even the “hard” Peter feels “in Judas someone who can command” (59).

Such a meaning of the plot movement of the author's thought in Andreev's story could not seem so shocking to the writer's contemporaries, given that the Russian cultural society knew the work of Oscar Wilde, who gave a close interpretation of the death of Christ back in 1894. In a prose poem Teacher Wilde tells of a beautiful young man weeping bitterly in the Valley of Despair at the grave of a righteous man.

The young man explains to his comforter: “It is not for him that I shed tears, but for myself. And I turned water into wine, and I healed lepers, and I restored sight to the blind. I have walked on the waters and cast out demons from those who dwell in the caves. And I fed the hungry in the deserts where there was no food, and I raised up the dead from their narrow dwellings, and at my command, before the eyes of a great multitude of people, the barren fig tree withered. Everything that this man did, I did. And yet they didn’t crucify me.”/10/

The memories of V. V. Veresaev testify to L. Andreev’s sympathy for O. Wilde. / 11 /

Andreev's concept of Judas does not allow us to agree with the conclusion of the author of one of the most serious interpretations of the story of recent times, that the meaning of the work "is in an unequivocal conclusion about the global impotence of man." but the answer is different. Already the cry of Judas about the absence of man on earth is so angry because, contrary to popular belief, Judas is characterized by the idea of ​​the high destiny of man ("-Are these people: - he complained bitterly about the disciples ... - These are not people! (...) Am I Ever spoke ill of people?" Judas wondered. "Well, yes, I spoke ill of them, but couldn't they be a little better?"-36).

And this idea of ​​the essential capabilities of a person, in principle, was not shaken by the unworthy behavior of those around him: otherwise Judas would have sounded not a furious rebuke, but lamentation. But the main thing is Judas himself. After all, he, Judas Iscariot, is the Man with all his complexity, confusion of thoughts and feelings, weakness, but who defeated “all the forces of the earth” that interfered with the “truth”. True, Judas himself, as the Gospel says, would have been better not to have been born. His victory is "terrible", and his fate is "cruel", according to the author's definition.

Judas Andreeva is a classic tragic hero, with all the features he should have: a contradiction in his soul, a sense of guilt, suffering and redemption, an extraordinary scale of personality, heroic activity that challenges fate. The paradigm of the image of Judas in Andreev's story includes the motive of inevitability, always associated with substantial quantities. "God! - he said. -God! (...) Then he suddenly stopped crying, moaning and gnashing his teeth and thought hard ... like a person who listens. and for so long he stood, heavy, resolute and alien to everything, like fate itself "(33).

“Silent and strict, like death in its majesty, stood Judas from Carioth…” (43). And the tragic hero is great - against all odds. And the author, as he approaches the denouement of events, enlarges the figure of Judas, emphasizes the decisive role of him, Man, in the state of the world, persistently developing the theme of the closeness of Judas and Christ, Man and God. Both of them are surrounded by an aura of mystery and silence, both are unbearably “painful”, each is experiencing the same “mortal sorrow” (“... and deathly sorrow was kindled in his heart, similar to that which Christ experienced before this” - 43, 41). Having accomplished his plan, Judas “steps ... firmly, like a ruler, like a king ...” (53).

Let us remember that Christ called himself the King of the Jews. The vector of space, in which Andreev inscribed Judas, is turned upwards, into the sky, where Jesus ascends as a “ghost”. “And, peering into the vacillating ghost…, Judas… began to build something huge… he lifted some huge things… and smoothly put one on top of the other; and lifted again, and laid again; something grew in the darkness. Here he felt his head like a dome…” (20). Having carried out his plan, Judas sees a new, "small" whole earth. under your feet; looking at small mountains... and mountains feels under your feet; looks at the sky ... - and the sky and the sun feels under your feet“(54). Judas deliberately meets his death “on a mountain high above Jerusalem” (60), where it is difficult, but stubbornly ascends, like Christ ascending Golgotha. His eyes on a dead face "relentlessly look into the sky" (61).

During his earthly wanderings with the Teacher, Judas painfully experiences his coldness, but after the accomplishment of what people called "betrayal", he feels himself a brother of Jesus, inextricably linked and equated with him by common suffering, purpose, the role of the Messiah. "I'm coming to you," mutters Judas. "Then we, together with you, embracing like brothers, will return to earth" (60). The narrator also sees Christ and Judas as brothers: “... and among all this crowd there were only the two of them, inseparable until death, wildly connected by a community of suffering, the one who was betrayed to reproach and torment, and the one who betrayed him. From the same goblet of suffering, like brothers, they both drank, the betrayer and the betrayer, and the fiery moisture equally seared clean and unclean lips” (45). Two equal sacrifices, according to Andreev, were brought to humanity by Jesus and Judas, and their equal size in the plot of the story equalizes Man and God in their creative possibilities. / 13 / It is no coincidence that Judas insists that man himself is the master of his soul if you don't dare to throw it into the fire whenever you want!' ?58).

Fundamentally for the new concept of Judas, the author ignores the image of God the Father, who, as is known, plays the role of the initiator of all events in the Gospel version. There is no God-Father in Andreev's story. The crucifixion of Christ from beginning to end was thought out and carried out by Judas, and he took full responsibility for what was done. And Jesus does not interfere with his plan, as he submitted in the Gospel to the decision of the Father. The author gave Judas the man the role of the demiurge, God the Father, reinforcing this role by repeating Judas' appeal to Jesus several times: "son", "son" (46, 48).

The betrayal of Judas in Andreev's story is a betrayal in fact, but not in theory. Andreev's interpretation of Judas' betrayal once again exposed the problem of the relationship between ends and means, which had been relevant since the 19th century for Russian public consciousness, and seemed to have been closed by Dostoevsky. Ivan Karamazov's poem about the Grand Inquisitor unambiguously refused immoral means to justify them with any lofty goal - it denied both the person of the author and Christ. The plot of the poem revealed a terrifying picture of human happiness in an inquisitorial way. The Grand Inquisitor himself appeared on the scene after the burning of hundreds of heretics. The farewell kiss of Christ was a kiss of compassion to a face so morally hopeless that Christ considered it senseless to object to him. His quiet and meek kiss was a merciless sentence to the Elder.

Unlike the Grand Inquisitor, Judas believes in Jesus. The Grand Inquisitor threatens Christ with a bonfire because he has come, but Judas swears that even in hell he will prepare the coming of Christ to earth. The Grand Inquisitor decided to “lead people already consciously to death and destruction.”/14/ Judas' betrayal aims to come “together with Jesus” to earth and “destroy death.”

The plot of Andreev's story carries a historical justification for Judas' betrayal. And the silence of Andreev's Christ is different from the silence of Christ of Dostoyevsky. The place of meekness and compassion in him was taken by a challenge - a reaction to an equal. One gets the impression that Christ almost provokes Judas to action. “Everyone praised Judas, everyone recognized that he was a winner, everyone chatted with him in a friendly way, but Jesus—but Jesus did not want to praise Judas this time either…” (19).

Like Judas himself and the narrator, unlike other disciples, Christ sees in Judas a creator, a creator, and the author emphasizes this: “... Judas took his whole soul into his iron fingers and ... silently, began to build something huge. Slowly, in the deep darkness, he lifted some huge things like mountains, and smoothly put one on top of the other… and something grew in the darkness… spread silently, pushing the boundaries. (...) So he stood, blocking the door ... and Jesus spoke ... But suddenly Jesus fell silent ... (...) And when they followed his gaze they saw… Judas” (20). the silence of the Jesus of St. Andrew, who understood the intention of Judas, hides deep reflection (“... Jesus did not want to praise Judas. Silently he walked ahead, biting a plucked blade of grass ...” - 19) and even confusion (“But suddenly Jesus fell silent - with a sharp unfinished sound ... (...) And when they followed his gaze, they saw… Judas…” (20).

Silence covers up some obscurity of Christ's reaction to Judas' plan - an obscurity for Judas, for the reader. But perhaps also for Christ himself? This ambiguity also allows us to assume the possibility of a hidden agreement with Judas (especially due to at least a remote analogy of the reaction of the Gospel Christ to the decision of God the Father). "Do you know where I'm going, sir? I am going to deliver you into the hands of your enemies. And there was a long silence ... - 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? (39).

But silence can also mean the possibility of disagreeing with Judas, or rather, the impossibility of agreeing, for the fact of betrayal of love, even in the name of love (“love crucified by love” - 43), for all its historical expediency, remains for the author and Christ incompatible with moral and the aesthetic essence of life ("...can't you? Or don't you dare?"). It is no coincidence that Christ “illuminates with the lightning of his gaze” the “monstrous heap of shadows that was the soul of Iscariot” and its “monstrous” chaos. The corpse of Judas, in the perception of the narrator, looks like a "monstrous" fruit. Many times in the story, the name of Judas coexists with death. And the author repeatedly reminds that the creative thought of Judas matures in the "immense darkness", "impenetrable darkness", "in the deep darkness" of his soul (19, 20).

Andreev's Christ, like Dostoevsky's Christ, also does not allow himself to break the silence, but for a different reason: he does not consider it moral to canonize any one (for all and forever) solution of the problem.

In the minds of contemporaries of the Silver Age, the eternal problem of the relationship between ends and means was transformed into an opposition: creativity - morality. This is how it is set in Andreev's story. There is no reason to absolutize in the Russian public, philosophical and artistic consciousness of the early twentieth century the feelings of impotence, doom and despair of the individual before eternity and history, as modern researchers often do. On the contrary, it is impossible not to notice in the philosophy, ideology, art of this period, the installation, sometimes staged, on the active creative intervention of man in all spheres of earthly life and his ability to change the world. / 15 / Such an installation makes itself felt in the great authority of Nietzsche, with his campaign against morality, attempts to modernize religion, the family, art, in recognizing the theurgical function of art, spreading godless motives in literature, in the popularity of the idea of ​​social transformations of Russian reality, the attention of literary criticism to the hero-actor, etc. The concept of creativity was opposed to morality, slavery , in general, traditions, passivity and acted in close conjunction with ideas about freedom, innovation, love and life, and individuality.

The very substance of creativity, traditionally considered by world culture most often in a tragic way, in the cultural consciousness of the Silver Age, showed a tendency to transform into a heroic one. Let us take, for illustration, the statements of two representatives of Russian culture of that time, strikingly dissimilar in their creative individuality and worldview, M. Gorky and L. Shestov. In 1904, Gorky wrote to L. Andreev: “... despite the knowledge of future death ... - he (a person) works everything, creates everything and does not create in order to avert this death without a trace, but simply out of some kind of proud stubbornness. “Yes, I will perish, I will perish without a trace, but first I will build temples and create great creations. Yes, I know, and they will perish without a trace, but I will create them all the same, and yes, I want to! “Here is a human voice.”/16/

In the book by L. Shestov Apotheosis of groundlessness, published a year later, we read: “Nature imperiously requires individual creativity from each of us. (...) Yes, why shouldn't every adult really be a creator, live for his own fear and not have his own experience? (...) Whether a person wants to or not, sooner or later he will have to admit the unsuitability of all kinds of templates and start creating on his own. And isn't it... it's already so terrible? There are no obligatory judgments - let's get by with non-obligatory ones. /17 / „... the first and essential condition of life is lawlessness. Laws are a restorative dream. Lawlessness is creative activity.”/18/

Against the background of the tendency to glorify the creative act, Andreev returns to the concept of the tragic nature of creativity, which is revealed in its relation to morality. In Andreev's depiction of the betrayal of Judas Iscariot, well-known to the cultured reader, romantic motifs of spiritual confusion, madness, rejection and death of the creator, the secrets surrounding him, his infernality come to life.

Unlike the betrayal of the apostles, which belongs to the empiricism of life (it was not even noticed by the eyewitnesses of the events), the betrayal of Judas is placed by the author in the realm of the substantial. The depiction of the betrayal of Judas in Andreev's story bears all the signs of tragedy, fixed by the well-known aesthetic systems of Hegel, Schelling, Fischer, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche.

Among them is the death of the hero as a consequence of his guilt, but not the denial of the principle in whose name he perishes, and as a sign of the victory of "moral substance as a whole"; the contradiction between the desire for freedom and the need for the stability of the whole, with their equal justification; the strength and certainty of the character of the hero, who in the tragedy of modern times replaces fate; the historical justification of the hero's guilt and the hero's resignation as a consequence of enlightenment through suffering; the value of the hero's self-conscious reflective subjectivity in a situation of moral choice; the struggle of the Apollonian and Dionysian principles, etc.

The listed features of the tragedy are marked by different aesthetic systems, sometimes denying each other; in Andreev's story, they serve one whole, and their synthesis is characteristic of the writer's creative method. But the tragic conflict does not imply an unambiguous moral assessment - justification or accusation. It has a different system of definitions (majestic, significant, memorable), which emphasize the large scale of the events that make up the tragic conflict, and the special power of their impact on the fate of the world.

The tragic conflict that the reader sees in the betrayal of Judas Iscariot in Andreev's story is not an example to follow and not a lesson of warning, it is not in the sphere of action, but in the inner work of the spirit, an eternal subject of reflection in the name of human self-knowledge. It is no coincidence that the author of the work himself reminded many times: “I am a man of inner, spiritual life, but not a man of action.” On the other hand, I like to think in silence, and in the realm of my thought my tasks, as they appear to me, are revolutionary. I still have a lot to say about life and about the God I am looking for.”/20/
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Notes

/1/ Archive of A. M. Gorky, T. IX. M., 1966. S. 23.

/2/ Iliev S. P. Prose of L. N. Andreev of the era of the first Russian revolution. Abstract dis. for the competition scientist step. cand. philol. Sciences. Odessa, 1973. S. 12-14; Kolobaeva L. A. M., 1990. S. 141-144.

/3/ See: Spivak R. Russian philosophical lyrics. Problems of typology of genres. Krasnoyarsk, 1985. S. 4-71; Spivak R. Architectonic form in the works of M. Bakhtin and the concept of meta-genre // Bakhtin and the Humanities. Ljubljana, 1997, pp. 125-135.

/4/ As AF Losev points out, in ancient philosophy Chaos is understood as a disordered state of matter. In Ovid, the image of Chaos is found in the form of a two-faced Janus ( Myths of the peoples of the world. T. 2. M., 1982. S. 580). Cf.: "... and then Thomas for the first time vaguely felt that Judas from Carioth had two faces." Andreev L. Novels and stories: In 2 vols. T. 2. M., 1971. P. 17. In the future, we quote from this edition with page indication in the text.

/5/ Solovyov V.S. Poetry of F. I. Tyutchev// He is. Literary criticism. M., 1990. S. 112. See ibid.: “This presence of a chaotic, irrational principle in the depths of being imparts to various natural phenomena that freedom and strength, without which there would be no life and beauty itself” (p. 114). See also about Chaos in the works of L. Shestov: “Actually, chaos is the absence of any order, which means that it also excludes the possibility of life. (...) ... in life ... where order reigns, there are difficulties ... absolutely unacceptable. And he who knows these difficulties will not be afraid to try his luck with the idea of ​​chaos. And, perhaps, he will be convinced that evil is not from chaos, but from the cosmos ... "(Shestov L. Op.: In 2 vols. T. 2. M., 1993. S. 233.

/6/ See: Korman B.O. Workshop on the study of a work of art. Izhevsk, 1977. S. 27.

/ 7 / L. Andreev said to Gorky: “Have you ever thought about the variety of motives for betrayal? They are infinitely varied. Azef had his own philosophy…” ( Literary legacy. T. 72. Gorky and Leonid Andreev. Unpublished correspondence. M., 1965. S. 396.

/8/ Gorky M. Full coll. op.: In 25 vols. T. 7. M., 1970. S. 153, 172.

/9/ Bunin I.A. Sobr. op.: In 9 vols. T. 1. M .: Hood. lit., 1965. S. 557.

/10/ Wilde O. Full coll. op.; 4 vols. T. 2. St. Petersburg: A. F. Marks Publishing House, 1912. S. 216.

/11/ Veresaev V.V. Memories. M.-L., 1946. S. 449.

/12/ Kolobaeva L. A. The concept of personality in Russian literature at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. M.: Publishing House of Moscow State University, 1990. S. 144.

/13/ Such an interpretation of the author's concept is supported by various statements of Andreev himself: “No matter how my views differ from the views of Veresaev and others, we have one common point, to abandon which means putting an end to all our activities. This is the kingdom of man should be on earth. Hence the calls to God are hostile to us "(Andreev - A. Mirolyubov, 1904 Lit. archive, 5 M.-L., 1960. S. 110). “Do you know what I love most right now? Intelligence. To him honor and praise, to him all the future and all my work "(Andreev - Gorky, 1904. Literary. inheritance. S. 236). “You curse the very sectarianism that has always existed among the people in the most ugly forms only by the will to creativity and freedom, unfading rebellion ...” (Andreev - Gorky, 1912 Literary. inheritance. S. 334).

/14/ Dostoevsky F.M. Sobr. Op..: V 15 v. T. 9. L.: The science, 1991. S. 295.

/ 15 / On the formation of the concept of man - the creator of life in Russian culture of the early twentieth century, see: Spivak R. S. Historical prerequisites for the strengthening of the philosophical principle in Russian literature of the 1910s. // Literary work: word and being. Donetsk, 1977. S. 110-122.

/16/ Literary legacy. S. 214.

/17/ Shestov L. Selected writings. M., 1993. S. 461.

/18/ Ibid. S. 404.

/19/ Literary legacy. S. 90.

/20/ Ibid. S. 128.

Spivak Rita Solomonovna, Doctor of Philology, Professor of the Department of Russian Literature, Perm State University.

Publication: „Sine arte, nihil. Collection of scientific papers as a gift to Professor Milivoje Yovanovitch” – Editor-compiler Kornelia Ichin. "The Fifth Country", Belgrade-Moscow, 2002, 420 p. (“The Newest Studies of Russian Culture”, issue one. - ISBN 5-901250-10-9)