Why do we keep cultural monuments

In fact, for what? It would seem that such a question is easy to answer. From childhood we were taught that literature and art help to understand the meaning of life, make us smarter, more receptive, spiritually richer. All this is true, of course. But it happens that even the right thought, having become familiar, ceases to disturb and excite a person, turns into a common phrase. Therefore, before answering the question “Why?” And answering it in an adult way, seriously, you need to think about a lot and understand a lot again.

On the banks of the Nerl River near the city of Vladimir stands the Church of the Intercession. Quite small, light, lonely on a wide green plain. It is one of those buildings that the country is proud of and which are usually called "architectural monuments." In any, even the shortest book on the history of Russian art, you will find a mention of it. You will learn that this church was built on the orders of Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky in honor of the victory over the Volga Bulgarians and in memory of Prince Izyaslav, who died in battle; that it was set at the confluence of two rivers - Klyazma and Nerl, at the "gate" of Vladimir-Suzdal land; that on the facades of the building there are bizarre and magnificent stone carvings.

Nature is also beautiful: ancient dark oaks sometimes enchant our eyes no less than works of art. Pushkin did not get tired of admiring the "free element" of the sea. But the beauty of nature hardly depends on a person, it is always renewed, new cheerful shoots grow to replace dying trees, dew falls and dries, sunsets go out. We admire nature and try to protect it to the best of our ability.

However, a century-old oak tree, remembering the bygone days, was not created by man. In it there is no warmth of his hands and trembling of his thoughts, as in a statue, painting or stone building. But the beauty of the Church of the Intercession is man-made, all this was done by people whose names have long been forgotten, people, probably very different, who knew sorrow, joy, longing and fun. Dozens of hands, strong, careful and skillful, folded, obeying the thoughts of an unknown builder, a white-stone slender miracle. Between us - eight centuries. Wars and revolutions, brilliant discoveries of scientists, historical upheavals, great changes in the fate of peoples.

But here stands a small, fragile temple, its light reflection in the calm water of the Nerl sways slightly, gentle shadows outline the outlines of stone animals and birds above narrow windows - and time disappears. Like eight hundred years ago, excitement is born in the human heart, joy is what people worked for.

Only art is capable of this. You can perfectly know hundreds of dates and facts, understand the causes and consequences of events. But nothing can replace a lively encounter with history. Of course, the stone arrowhead is also a reality, but there is no main thing in it - a person’s idea of good, evil, harmony and justice - about the spiritual world of a person. But in art there is all this, and time is not able to interfere with it.

Art is the memory of the heart of the people. Art not only does not lose its beauty, it stores evidence of how our ancestors looked at the world. Birds and lions, slightly angular human heads on the walls of the church - these are the images that lived in fairy tales, and then in the imagination of people.

No, the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, like hundreds of other buildings, is not just a monument of architecture, but a bunch of feelings and thoughts, images and ideas related to the past and present. It’s relatives in the truest sense of the word, because the white-stone church near Vladimir has incorporated the features of Russian, national culture, in all its uniqueness. People want to understand each other, strive to understand the most important thing in the spiritual life of each country.

One thing can make you think about a lot - the only church built many centuries ago, it can stir up thousands of thoughts that people had never suspected of before, can make each of us feel our indissoluble connection with the history and culture of the Motherland. In art, generations transmit to each other the most valuable, innermost and sacred - the heat of the soul, excitement, faith in the beautiful.

How can one not preserve the priceless heritage of the past! Moreover, among all types of art, it is fine art and architecture that are unique and inimitable. In fact, even if one of the million copies of War and Peace survives, the novel will remain alive, it will be printed again. The only score of the Beethoven symphony will be rewritten and played again, people remember poems, poems and songs by heart. But paintings, palaces, cathedrals and statues, alas, are mortal. They can be restored, and then not always, but it is impossible to repeat them the same.

This is partly why they cause trembling excitement, a feeling of uniqueness. Museum workers carefully peer into the readings of the instruments - is the air dry, has the temperature decreased by a degree; new foundations are brought under the ancient buildings, old frescoes are carefully cleared, statues are updated.

When reading a book, you are not dealing with the manuscript of the author, and it is not so important with what ink “Eugene Onegin” was written. And in front of the canvas we remember - Leonardo’s brush touched it. And for painting or architecture, translation is not needed, we always “read” the picture in the original. Moreover, to the modern Italian, the Dante language may seem archaic and not always understandable, but for us it is just a foreign language, and we should use the translation. But the smile of “Madonna Benoit” touches us and compatriots Leonardo, she is dear to a person of any nation. And yet, the Madonna is undoubtedly Italian - with the elusive ease of gesture, golden skin, cheerful simplicity. She is a contemporary of her creator, a woman of the Renaissance, with a clear look, as if trying to discern the mysterious essence of things.

These amazing qualities make painting an especially precious art. With its help, peoples and eras speak with each other in a friendly and simple way, they become closer than centuries and countries. But this does not mean that art easily and without difficulty reveals its secrets. Often, antiquity leaves the viewer indifferent, his gaze dispassionately glides over the stone faces of the Egyptian pharaohs, so equally motionless, almost dead. And, perhaps, someone will have the thought that the lines of dark sculptures are not so interesting, that it is hardly worth being carried away by them.

Another thought may arise - yes, science needs historical values, but why do I need them? Respectful indifference impoverishes a person; he will not understand why people sometimes save works of art at the cost of life.

No, don’t go easy! Look at the granite faces of cruel, forgotten despots, let their external monotony not bother you.

Think about why such twins, like waking people sleeping, were depicted by the sculptors of antiquity of their kings. After all, this is interesting - people probably have not changed so much externally since then, which made the sculptors make the statues just like that: blank eyes, heavy body filled with heavy force, doomed to eternal immobility.

How amazing is the combination of very specific, unique facial features, an eye cut, a lip pattern with detachment, with the absence of any expression, feeling, excitement. Take a look at these portraits, flip through books. And even small particles of knowledge will cast a new light on stone sculptures that seemed at first boring. It turns out that the cult of the dead forced the ancient Egyptians to see in the statues not just images of a person, but the abode of his spiritual essence, his life force, what was called “ka” in ancient Egypt and that according to their ideas it continued to live after the physical death of people.

And if you imagine that these sculptures existed even when Ancient Greece was still in the future, that they were not one thousand years old, and their stone eyes saw Thebes, the floods of the Nile at the foot of completely new pyramids, the chariot of the pharaohs, Napoleon’s soldiers… Then you will not begin to ask yourself what is interesting in these granite figures.

Statues, even the most ancient, are not always kept in museums. They “live” on city streets and squares, and then their fates are closely and forever intertwined with the fate of the city, with the events that took place at their pedestals.

Let us recall the monument to Peter I in Leningrad, the famous "Bronze Horseman", created by the sculptor Falconet. Is the glory of this monument, one of the best monuments in the world, only in artistic merit? For all of us, the “giant on a galloping horse” is a source of complex and exciting associations, thoughts, and memories. This is the image of the distant past, when our homeland "husbands with the genius of Peter", and a magnificent monument to the politician who "reared" Russia. This monument became the personification of old St. Petersburg, built up with low houses, not yet having granite embankments, not having gained its full grandeur. Only one bridge, temporary, pontoon, then connected the banks of the Neva, just opposite the Bronze Horseman. And the monument stood in the very center of the city, its most lively place, where the Admiralty side connected with Vasilyevsky Island. A crowd flowed past him, carriages rumbled with a roar, in the evenings the pale light of lanterns barely illuminated the king’s formidable face "he is terrible in the surrounding darkness…". The sculpture became one with the Pushkin poem and with it - a symbol of the city. The flood glorified by the poet, the terrible hum of December 1825 and much more than the history of St. Petersburg is famous, took place here - at Thunder - a stone, a pedestal of a statue. And the famous white nights, when foggy transparent clouds slowly stretch across the bright sky, as if obeying the gesture of the imperiously outstretched hand of Peter, can you, thinking of them, not remember the "Bronze Horseman", around which so many poetic and unforgettable hours have come to light!

Art accumulates in itself the feelings of hundreds of generations, becomes a receptacle and source of human experiences. In the small hall on the ground floor of the Louvre in Paris, where reverent silence reigns over the statue of Venus de Milo, one involuntarily thinks about how many people were blessed by the contemplation of the perfect beauty of this dark marble.

In addition, art, whether it be a statue, a cathedral or a picture, is a window into an unfamiliar world, separated from us by hundreds of years, through which you can see not only the visible appearance of the era, but also its essence. The way people felt their time.

But you can look deeper: in the thoroughness of the brushstroke of Dutch painters, in their sensitivity to the charms of the material world, to the charm and beauty of “inconspicuous” things - love for an established life. And this is not petty philistine love, but a deeply meaningful, high feeling, both poetic and philosophical. It was not easy for the Dutch to live, they had to conquer land from the sea, and freedom from the Spanish conquerors. And therefore, the sunny square on the waxed floor, the velvety peel of the apple, the delicate chasing of a silver glass in their paintings become witnesses and expressors of this love.

Just look at the paintings of Jan van Eyck, the first great master of the Dutch Renaissance, how he writes things, the microscopic details of being. In every movement of the brush - a naive and wise admiration for what the artist depicts; he shows things in their original and surprisingly attractive essence, we feel the fragrant elasticity of the fruit, the slippery coolness of the dry rustling silk, the cast weight of the bronze shandal.

So in art we are faced with the spiritual history of mankind, the history of the discovery of the world, its meaning, beauty not yet fully known. After all, each generation reflects it anew and in its own way.

On our planet there are many things that do not have utilitarian value, neither able to feed, nor warm people, or cure the disease, these are works of art.

People, as they can, protect them from merciless time. And not only because “useless” works cost millions. This is not the case.

People understand: cultural monuments are the common heritage of generations, which allows us to feel the history of the planet as our personal and expensive.

The art of the past is the youth of civilization, the youth of culture. Without knowing it or neglecting it, one can live a life without becoming a real person, aware of responsibility for the past and future of the Earth. Therefore, we are not surprised that they spend energy, time and money on the restoration of ancient buildings, that paintings, like people, are treated, they are given injections and shone on x-rays.

A museum, an old church, a picture darkened from time to time - for us this is the past. Is it only the past?

Many years will pass. New cities will be built; modern jets will be ridiculous and slow-moving, and a train ride will seem as amazing as a postal carriage trip.

But the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl will remain the same as eight centuries ago. AND paintings in the Hermitage . And the statue of Venus de Milo. All this today belongs to the future. Grandchildren of our grandchildren. This is what we must not forget. The fact that cultural monuments of distant eras is an eternal torch, which is transmitted to each other by different generations. And it depends on us that the flame in it does not shake for a minute.

Paradoxical as it may sound, but meeting the culture of the past, we can feel the breath of the future. The future when the value of art and humanity will be clear and certain for all. The Romans said that art is eternal, and life is short. Fortunately, this is not entirely true, because immortal art is created by people. And it is in our power to preserve the immortality of mankind.