Античность как геном европейской и российской культуры

But in the 18^th century ideology of Enlightenment tried to revive memory of Antiquity heroes. Robespierre in his revolutionary speeches in Convent mentioned the Greek and Roman heroes as examples for imitation for those, who wanted to build Republic in France. French paintings of this period, particularly special historical paintings of Jacques-Louis David, were full of images of heroes of Greece and Rome. French bourgeois made Revolution dressings in the style of antic costumes.

Drama and poetry of the Classicism tried to revisit the world of ancient mythology and antic heroes. Unfortunately, it was far away from a real ancient history. Among European poets, a Russian poet Alexander Pushkin was much closer to understanding ancient heroism., He preserved for Russian readers originality of Classical poetry. His poetry had many associations with Greek and Roman poetry. Pushkin’s relations to ancient poetry, to its heroic pathos is a great subject for studies in Russia and abroad. Roman Empire had a great territory, which needed a great army to defense and dominate. I think that the best image of militarism of Roman empire belongs to English poet Wystan Auden, who describes a Roman soldier on the wall, which was crossing Britain territory to save Roman army from the foreign invasions.

Over the heater the wet wind blows,
I’ve lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.

Te rain comes pattering out of the sky,

I am a Wall soldier, I don’t know why.

Te mist creeps over the hard grey stone,

My girl’s in Tungria; I sleep alone.

Aulus goes hanging around her place,

I don’t like his manners, I don’t like his fact.

Piso’s a Christian, he worship a fsh;

Tere’d be no kissing if he had his wish.

She gave me a ring but I diced it away;

I want my girl and I want my pay.

When I’m a veteran with only my eye

I shall be nothing but look at the sky.

Here we could see an ironical view on a Roman hero as a controversy to the traditional image of Roman hero.

Tere are large theoretical literature concerning classical heroism and its role in history. It seems that antiquity was always used for ideological reasons. “Cult of Heroes” was developed by Tomas Carlyle, a philosopher from Scotland. In 1840 he published a popular book “On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History”, where he interpreted heroism in terms of religious ethics. To him, hero is a prophet, who transformed Gods’ will to the ordinary people.

In the 20^th century concepts of “hero” and “heroism” became synonymous to national patriotism and applied to diferent national histories – French, Russian, German, and Japanese. Tis created national images of heroism, sometimes very nontraditional. German philosopher Max Scheler connected heroism with militarism. For him a Hero is only a military man, an ideal Soldier (“Zum Helden”). Japanese philosopher Kitajama in his book „Heroics Ethos“ (1944) interpreted heroism as fatalism. He identifed heroism in tradition of samurai ethics with the drive for death.

Russian Marxist philosopher Anatoly Lunacharsky applied an idea of heroism to the class struggle. In his book “Heroism and Individualism” he negated all individual heroism and, as a contrast to it, proposed an idea of the “mass heroism” as a real power of the class struggle.

It seems that all such concepts could not negate that home country of hero and heroism is an ancient Greece. Contemporary meaning of these moral values is deeply connected with history and culture of that nation. Memory of heroic period of the ancient history is a Greek “genome” in the body of European culture.

Культура

Николай Бахтин Ф. Ф. Зелинский