WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: ru-RU 00:00:12.500 --> 00:00:22.000 "The conversation is unthinkable without my participation in it, but I myself am unthinkable if the conversation stops." 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:28.500 Philosopher Alexander Moiseevich Pyatigorsky (1929-2009) 1 00:00:31.400 --> 00:00:35.000 - What I love most in life is 00:00:40.100 --> 00:00:49.000 the possibility and reality of listening and talking. 00:00:49.000 --> 00:00:53.000 conversation with Alexander Pyatigorsky 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:57.000 PART I 2 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:03.800 - I can know some things about myself only I. 3 00:01:05.800 --> 00:01:12.000 Well, for example, you asked... But they are not transcendental. 5 00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:20.500 After all, in fact, the more personal a thing, to be honest, 7 00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:29.000 the more intimate it is, the last real meaning it has. 8 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:34.500 After all, we will eventually return to some idiotic point 9 00:01:34.500 --> 00:01:38.900 where there is simply nothing, no meaning. 10 00:01:38.900 --> 00:01:42.400 Here, I can tell you what I know about myself, 11 00:01:42.400 --> 00:01:46.000 what no one can know - 12 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:56.000 a continuous lifelong ambiguity for me of my own thinking. 13 00:01:56.000 --> 00:02:00.000 If I can somehow cope with the language, then - no, 14 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:04.200 ambiguity, some kind of cloudiness. 15 00:02:04.200 --> 00:02:09.200 And it is not so much necessary to think, as to try 16 00:02:09.200 --> 00:02:19.300 to make some kind of hopeless cleaning, cleaning. Like this. 17 00:02:19.300 --> 00:02:26.000 But it's not interesting! Сказать что-то более интимное о себе... No. 18 00:02:27.000 --> 00:02:29.300 Moreover, I would even say, 19 00:02:29.300 --> 00:02:31.700 I would include in this thinking 20 00:02:31.700 --> 00:02:37.700 (I cannot do otherwise) any feeling, 21 00:02:39.700 --> 00:02:45.500 well, except for some points when it is not there. 22 00:02:45.500 --> 00:02:50.700 But then you still can't say it and you won't think it through, 23 00:02:50.700 --> 00:02:56.000 like, for example, when it suddenly happens to be unusually fun. 24 00:02:57.000 --> 00:03:00.000 Moscow - Petersburg train, 2001 00:03:04.000 --> 00:03:09.000 - Allowed to eat. Filmed continuously. 25 00:03:19.000 --> 00:03:23.200 In fact, what happened to me, 26 00:03:23.200 --> 00:03:26.800 both in childhood and in my youth, 27 00:03:26.800 --> 00:03:30.000 became an event only much later, 28 00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:33.500 when I began to realize it. 00:03:33.500 --> 00:03:38.500 Judging by your love of fighting on the Kuru field, do you care about war? 29 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:49.000 - In general, yes. But when this war is so decent. - The war? 30 00:03:57.600 --> 00:04:02.600 - In addition, stubborn. I was a stubborn Soviet imperialist. 31 00:04:08.600 --> 00:04:17.400 - This, as they say, in 1945 you were ready to go very quickly all the way to the middle (Europe? - ed.) ... sea. 33 00:04:17.500 --> 00:04:20.500 - No, in the fortieth. - And, already in the fortieth? 34 00:04:20.500 --> 00:04:28.000 - Yes. I remember 00:04:34.800 --> 00:04:44.400 that I approached (and I was very fond of talking with adults on an equal footing), 35 00:04:44.400 --> 00:04:55.000 I approached the neighbor's brother, Konstantin Petrovich Smirnov. 37 00:04:55.000 --> 00:05:05.000 And on this day we occupied, sorry, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. 00:05:11.200 --> 00:05:20.700 I said to him: "Well, Sergey Petrovich, well, now it's very simple, 39 00:05:20.700 --> 00:05:31.000 once, to rush, to occupy East Prussia, then Denmark," 40 00:05:34.400 --> 00:05:39.900 and added proudly (what a pity that Vitka is not here), 41 00:05:39.900 --> 00:05:44.000 “we will not deal with Poland,” I said . 42 00:05:47.800 --> 00:05:52.100 To my amazement, (He kept hot tea in a cup holder. 43 00:05:52.100 --> 00:05:57.000 He loved me very much. I don't understand why so many people loved me.) 44 00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:07.000 he looked at me and said: "We'll choke on. We'll threw up". 00:06:08.500 --> 00:06:11.500 About emigration, 1973 45 00:06:16.500 --> 00:06:20.000 Well, after all, I can't forget it, 46 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:25.000 (I've told you this many times already.), when I was already approaching the line at the airport. 47 00:06:27.400 --> 00:06:34.000 Oh, you should have seen their faces!Then, (Now, everyone knows which border guards. 48 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:40.000 Listen, now they are remotely (not like those)) 49 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:47.900 they were ferocious SS men and they had a boorish way of pointing a machine gun at you. 50 00:06:47.900 --> 00:06:54.000 The machine gun must be held in the hands, and not directed directly into the stomach. 52 00:06:54.000 --> 00:07:01.000 This wild, hoarse howl: "Don't turn around! That's it. The send-off is over." 53 00:07:02.700 --> 00:07:12.000 I took one last look back. And suddenly I see Merab Konstantinovich, 54 00:07:12.000 --> 00:07:21.400 with a face expressing such anger (Merab had no anger), but already some kind of animal, 55 00:07:21.400 --> 00:07:27.000 he takes it and goes straight to the border guard. Crosses this (line). 56 00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:36.000 And behind him, already then sick, so clumsy and even then fat Levada. 58 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:43.200 Well, can you imagine? These two are the man 59 00:07:43.200 --> 00:07:47.900 who always wants to be the first in both the offensive and the retreat, Koma Ivanov. 60 00:07:49.900 --> 00:07:55.000 And I knew that these people experienced only one thing - parting. 62 00:07:57.600 --> 00:08:02.800 And this is how Levada later told me: “How can you not understand? 63 00:08:02.800 --> 00:08:12.800 It's not about you," he says. "Somewhere, we were saying goodbye to our own life, 64 00:08:12.800 --> 00:08:16.800 to youth, to everything." 65 00:08:16.800 --> 00:08:22.000 He says: “You think that you, the Devil (as Levada always called me), 66 00:08:22.000 --> 00:08:28.000 that everything is about you,” he says, “and you are nothing.” 69 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:34.000 He says: "I realized that it's all over." - Levada? 70 00:08:34.000 --> 00:08:37.000 - Yes. And everyone was wrong. 00:08:38.500 --> 00:08:49.000 When the pilot read on the plane: 71 00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:56.300 "Now we are leaving the airspace of our Homeland 72 00:08:56.300 --> 00:09:07.100 and crossing the air border of the USSR," I say without exaggeration, 73 00:09:07.100 --> 00:09:13.500 at that moment I felt such happiness! 74 00:09:13.500 --> 00:09:17.300 It was pure happiness. 00:09:17.300 --> 00:09:29.000 It was so pure. And then, of course, I began to joke stupidly. 75 00:09:29.000 --> 00:09:34.300 I turned to a neighbor who was reading the News and said: 76 00:09:34.300 --> 00:09:40.000 "Please let me read this foreign newspaper." 77 00:09:42.000 --> 00:09:45.200 And then I remember one thing, that 78 00:09:45.200 --> 00:09:50.100 my disagreements with immigration began 79 00:09:50.100 --> 00:09:53.900 when everyone started complaining about food. 80 00:09:56.200 --> 00:10:00.000 And for some reason, the food seemed really tasty to me. 00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:11.000 Yes, then one more time I was uncomfortable 81 00:10:11.000 --> 00:10:19.000 when a personal representative of the Jewish Agency wanted to meet with me. 82 00:10:19.000 --> 00:10:21.600 I was just confused by the name. 83 00:10:20.600 --> 00:10:24.500 But, thank God, I remember everything. 84 00:10:24.500 --> 00:10:35.000 He was called Chaim Abraham (not Abram) Jones. 85 00:10:37.000 --> 00:10:41.900 He told me: "Don't call me Mr. Jones, 86 00:10:41.900 --> 00:10:49.000 just call me Chaim. Like my second cousin, not fourth cousin." 87 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:53.000 I felt very uncomfortable. 88 00:10:53.000 --> 00:11:04.400 He said, "Professor, do you know you're going to have a hard life?" 89 00:11:04.400 --> 00:11:08.000 "I know, I know," I yelled happily. 90 00:11:10.400 --> 00:11:19.000 "And if you come to us, then I will take care of you personally." 91 00:11:19.000 --> 00:11:22.000 And I had a feeling, right then, 92 00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:28.000 that I really didn't want anyone to personally deal with me. 94 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:31.000 You don't like it either, do you? 95 00:11:35.400 --> 00:11:41.000 But, in general, all the same, everything was very good. And they were nice and kind. Yes. 96 00:11:41.000 --> 00:11:44.100 In addition, he said (and I hesitated here): 97 00:11:44.100 --> 00:11:52.000 "You know, today we will have a Jewish concert of Russian emigrants." 99 00:11:52.000 --> 00:11:57.200 I, of course, in my moronic way, said: "Oh, this is wonderful." 100 00:11:57.200 --> 00:12:02.400 And I decided that, well, I have to. Should give a concert. 101 00:12:02.400 --> 00:12:08.000 And then he said (and that's it, I was finished)... 103 00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:15.000 He said: "We have a program. We will sing in chorus for 40 minutes." 104 00:12:16.500 --> 00:12:21.500 Here I decided that I was, perhaps, ready to go to my death. 00:12:21.500 --> 00:12:24.800 I was mortally afraid. 105 00:12:29.500 --> 00:12:39.900 The song translated into Russian was called "Mom, take me away from the battlefield." 106 00:12:45.100 --> 00:12:52.000 What is most remarkable, I never heard it in Hebrew there. 108 00:12:52.000 --> 00:12:57.400 It was sung only... In what language? ...in Russian, of course. 109 00:12:57.400 --> 00:13:02.000 I remember such an impudent vulgar 110 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:10.500 Odessa-Nikolaev connotation, like: "Mom, take me away from the battlefield", 111 00:13:10.500 --> 00:13:17.900 very much like a foxtrot. I then thought... 112 00:13:17.900 --> 00:13:22.000 I thought: "Bad music." 00:13:23.500 --> 00:13:28.000 Petersburg, 2002 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:33.000 Alexander Moiseevich, when did you realize that life is suffering? 113 00:13:36.600 --> 00:13:40.000 If I understood this, then I would, forgive me, 114 00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:42.100 dear Uldis, would not be sitting and talking with you now. 115 00:13:42.100 --> 00:13:45.800 but would have been a great sidha long ago. 116 00:13:45.800 --> 00:13:51.600 Because a person who has understood that life is suffering, 117 00:13:51.600 --> 00:13:56.100 who has really understood, and not, like a parrot, 118 00:13:56.100 --> 00:14:06.700 repeating this formulation... Only a person with a radically altered consciousness can understand that life is suffering. 119 00:14:06.700 --> 00:14:12.400 can understand that life is suffering. In other words, 120 00:14:12.400 --> 00:14:16.200 in fact, only a person with a radically altered consciousness 121 00:14:16.200 --> 00:14:22.000 can understand anything at all. And since 122 00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:26.100 anything can be understood only through 123 00:14:26.100 --> 00:14:30.200 the understanding that life is suffering, 124 00:14:30.200 --> 00:14:33.500 then it is very late somehow, 125 00:14:33.500 --> 00:14:38.200 and I, too, basically, monkeyed at first for a long time. 126 00:14:38.200 --> 00:14:41.200 that is, I repeated what others wrote and said. 00:14:42.200 --> 00:14:46.600 And what happened to the brilliant boys from the lane of your childhood? 127 00:14:49.400 --> 00:14:56.000 - I know people for whom it broke off very early. 128 00:14:56.000 --> 00:15:00.400 There was not, there was no choice, 129 00:15:00.400 --> 00:15:06.500 no application happened, no development has happened. 130 00:15:06.500 --> 00:15:13.500 and it happened, I don't want to sound too pessimistic, 131 00:15:13.500 --> 00:15:18.000 a complete break and complete death. 132 00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:25.200 And this is, mon cher, a matter of fate. 133 00:15:25.200 --> 00:15:29.000 That's where I'm being completely serious. 134 00:15:29.000 --> 00:15:32.500 No, maybe they were fate for me too. 136 00:15:32.500 --> 00:15:39.000 But what happened next is even more important. 137 00:15:39.000 --> 00:15:45.000 And here, I think, the main thing would be (but this is speculation) ... 138 00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:50.900 the main thing would be not to resist. 139 00:15:54.600 --> 00:16:02.000 And I think that it was precisely those who did not resist, that is, did not create 141 00:16:02.000 --> 00:16:12.200 that terrible field of false activity that destroys everything, went the farthest. 142 00:16:12.200 --> 00:16:24.000 I was saved here by my innate phenomenal laziness and sloppiness. 143 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:31.000 I would even say that of the talented people around me, the active ones were the first to die. 144 00:16:32.500 --> 00:16:35.500 Can drinking be considered an activity? 00:16:37.000 --> 00:16:41.000 - I think, and in all seriousness, 145 00:16:45.000 --> 00:16:50.000 here I'm just quite sharply against 146 00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:56.000 this Jewish-German bastard Sigmund Freud, 147 00:16:56.000 --> 00:17:03.100 who, as you know, considered drunkenness one of the most typical 148 00:17:03.100 --> 00:17:08.000 manifestations of repressed homosexuality. 149 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:16.000 This man had so little in his intellectual-theoretical pocket! 150 00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:21.000 So he pulled out: "Yeah. I know. I know. I know. Yes." 151 00:17:21.000 --> 00:17:31.500 It seems to me, although I cannot, of course, compete with this man ... 152 00:17:31.500 --> 00:17:38.300 I think... More precisely, my vision of what it's like... 153 00:17:38.300 --> 00:17:47.900 Drinking for me is such a hysterical reaction 154 00:17:47.900 --> 00:17:57.500 to the externalization of one's activity, not even to the one that failed, but to the one that fails. 156 00:17:57.500 --> 00:18:00.400 That is, none of them asked themselves: 157 00:18:00.400 --> 00:18:07.100 "Why are you externalizing her now, snout? Freeze. Wait." 158 00:18:07.100 --> 00:18:10.000 And therefore, here, in an amazing way, 159 00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:19.000 slackers and slobs survived, in this sense. 160 00:18:19.000 --> 00:18:23.000 Because it was precisely this activity of talented people 161 00:18:23.000 --> 00:18:27.300 that destroyed the most important thing that could have arisen in them 162 00:18:27.300 --> 00:18:31.000 on the basis of what we were talking about, 163 00:18:31.000 --> 00:18:37.000 some kind of intellectual stash. She ruined contemplation. 164 00:18:38.500 --> 00:18:41.500 About the first drink 00:18:43.000 --> 00:18:51.200 - You are welcome. On January 30, 1944, 165 00:18:51.200 --> 00:18:57.700 when I turned 15 166 00:18:57.700 --> 00:19:05.000 and my friend decided to arrange my birthday 167 00:19:05.000 --> 00:19:12.000 in such a unique place, which was not and will not be anywhere else in the world, 169 00:19:12.000 --> 00:19:18.000 in a place that Russia should be proud of until its death, 170 00:19:18.000 --> 00:19:23.000 in a place called "Vagonka" - 171 00:19:23.000 --> 00:19:29.000 the largest tank factory in the world, 172 00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:39.500 the factory that produced the tank regiment. In what sense did it was producing? 173 00:19:39.500 --> 00:19:46.200 Tanks with tankmen, with a supply of ammunition, would you believe it, 174 00:19:46.200 --> 00:19:50.500 with a supply of food, were leaving it. 175 00:19:50.500 --> 00:19:58.000 And they - right on the platform and went to the front. 176 00:19:58.000 --> 00:20:03.400 As they explained to me, with five or six transfers. 177 00:20:03.400 --> 00:20:09.700 It was an extraordinary place. Here in this place 178 00:20:09.700 --> 00:20:13.100 is my friend whom I adored... 179 00:20:18.000 --> 00:20:24.000 So he gave me a birthday party and read, as I remember, 180 00:20:24.000 --> 00:20:29.800 (I have no idea about poetry at all. Do you understand that?), 181 00:20:29.800 --> 00:20:39.900 read... Well, I'm 15 years old. Do you remember, yes? 182 00:20:39.900 --> 00:20:44.300 And I only remember the line, but you'll find out now. 184 00:20:44.300 --> 00:20:51.500 "I'm no longer a boy, virgins are available to me ..." 185 00:20:51.500 --> 00:21:02.300 But he, indeed, wrote this, supposedly, the day after his 15th birthday. 187 00:21:02.300 --> 00:21:13.500 It was the first day when his mother Anna Ivanovna, a nurse, 188 00:21:13.500 --> 00:21:23.400 got a bottle of normal vodka, which was very rare 189 00:21:23.400 --> 00:21:28.500 (that is, not diluted alcohol, not moonshine). 190 00:21:28.500 --> 00:21:33.800 But the boy is still 15 years old. 191 00:21:33.800 --> 00:21:38.700 And we drank vodka (you can't know that either, you've never seen it.) 192 00:21:38.700 --> 00:21:47.400 from plastic cups and ate it 193 00:21:47.400 --> 00:21:53.500 with American Lend-Lease stew. 00:21:53.500 --> 00:21:58.800 Indescribably delicious! 194 00:21:58.800 --> 00:22:03.000 And then I drank my first glass. 195 00:22:03.000 --> 00:22:10.300 More precisely, to be precise, the first 6 glasses in my life. 196 00:22:10.300 --> 00:22:15.000 Perhaps they were drunk too quickly, one after the other. 198 00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:21.000 But there was no drinking culture yet. 199 00:22:21.000 --> 00:22:25.000 It was the first time. I got terribly drunk! 00:22:26.500 --> 00:22:30.500 About life's hodgepodge and the Buddha 200 00:22:31.900 --> 00:22:39.900 - He said: “There is no eternity in this world, there is no infinity. This is bullshit. 201 00:22:39.900 --> 00:22:46.500 They can exist beyond limits. It can't have anything to do with you. 203 00:22:46.500 --> 00:22:51.400 You are ultimate and your thinking, as long as you are neither a great yoga, 204 00:22:51.400 --> 00:22:54.500 nor Buddha, nor a Bodhisattva in the tenth degree. 205 00:22:54.500 --> 00:22:59.000 It is also finite, and you are always climbing and 206 00:22:59.000 --> 00:23:10.400 trying to transfer the transcendental to the level of thinking of speech 207 00:23:10.400 --> 00:23:15.000 and actions of your own vulgar life. 208 00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:22.800 And this only increases its inertia and vulgarity." 209 00:23:22.800 --> 00:23:26.700 That is, the Buddha was the most terrible enemy, as it were, 210 00:23:26.700 --> 00:23:35.000 overstatement of real life. But life is like life. 211 00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:41.500 Stay out of it! It's not about you. It's not about that. It's there. And over there... 213 00:23:41.500 --> 00:23:48.700 And how is it there? "Oh! Lord! (He is always addressed as Bhagavat)." 214 00:23:48.700 --> 00:23:52.700 "And this," he says, "when you're there, you'll see. 215 00:23:52.700 --> 00:23:59.000 So it won't be you anymore." 216 00:23:59.000 --> 00:24:02.000 And also, by the way, he said: 217 00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:06.000 "The worst mistake of the vulgar is suffering." 218 00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:09.800 "Well, of course I understand, Lord. I understand suffering. 219 00:24:09.800 --> 00:24:14.000 I'm suffering. He's suffering. She's suffering." 220 00:24:14.000 --> 00:24:20.000 He says: "You don't understand shit! That's not what this is about. 221 00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:28.700 This is what every hare says: "They didn't give me cauliflower. The third week is fed the same." 223 00:24:28.700 --> 00:24:40.000 He says: "But this is mortally uninteresting. Suffering is not that." 224 00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:48.600 And, by the way, it's very funny, it's a constant repetition of the phrase: "This is not that." 226 00:24:48.600 --> 00:24:59.000 What fasted for 16 years is not the same fast. Where is that one? 227 00:24:59.000 --> 00:25:04.000 And that one is not a fast anymore. 228 00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:14.800 And fasting, no longer fasting. It's always a vulgar mix-up. 229 00:25:14.800 --> 00:25:21.400 The fear of this, perhaps, is the little that I learned from Buddhism. 230 00:25:21.400 --> 00:25:27.300 Do not arrange this dumping sin out of everything that you come across in life.