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Olesya Fokina presents

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- So here we go. We just need to focus a little bit.  

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There is also an empty chair here. You can sit down.

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It's not so scary when thoughts are spinning in your head without an answer.

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It's not a big deal. Let them spin.

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And, by the way, this spinning of thoughts is the work of life.

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MERAB TIME

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- I first saw him in the late eighties at the higher directing courses.


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I remember that cloudy autumn day   

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when he, puffing on his pipe, sauntered into the auditorium.

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And from that moment my new life began.

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As a singer is given a voice, so he gave us thinking.

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Did he succeed? It doesn't depend on him anymore.

 
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"According to the level of our souls," so he said.

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There are no prophets in own homeland. And for 3 years  

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there has been no philosopher and prophet Merab Mamardashvili on earth.

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Alexander Pyatgorsky:

- Every film now about Merab is a big problem. 

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Why? Because when we make this kind of film,

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or even when we write an essay, we don't really know what we're doing.


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Is it a history or not? It's too early for history.

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Too little time has passed. Merab's time continues. 

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Otar Ioseliani:

- As you know, there is a look, a pose and a position. There is a touch. 

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There is also a word that is considered to be the most superficial way of communication. 

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- Was he a harmonic person? What do you think? 

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- No, not harmonic at all. I'll tell you, he was a normal person. Normal.

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Don't treat it like a monument. From the fact that each of us is doomed to die,

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so there is no need to engage in necrophilism after death.  

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Tbilisi, 1988

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He was born on September 15, 1930 in the village of Gori.  

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He spent his childhood and youth in Georgia.  

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He graduated school with a gold medal and ented the Faculty of Philosophy at Moscow State University.

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After graduation, he worked in the journal "Questions of Philosophy".

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Then he leaved for Prague as the editor of the magazine "Questions of Peace and Socialism".

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He left Prague illegally for a few days in Paris,

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for which he became banned for the next 20 years.  

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However, this did not frighten him and, upon returning to Moscow, 

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he openly began to philosophize wherever he had to.  

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He lectured at VGIK, at Moscow State University, with friends.  

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He was expelled from the "Questions of Philosophy", and then from the Institute of the History of Natural Science. 

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Moscow doesn't need it. Mamardashvili moved to Tbilisi.

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He defended his doctoral dissertation. He read the famous courses of lectures on Descartes and Proust.

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He worked at the Institute of Philosophy of Georgia. Since the mid-eighties, 

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he has become famous in philosophical and political circles in Europe and the USA.

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Georgia didn't want him.

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Yuri Karyakin:
- We graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy and each of us has a monstrous "Philosopher" written in our diploma.

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It's like writing: "Profession: Aristotle, Socrates, 

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Mamardashvili (as it turned out)". 

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...This brings to mind the legends about Socratic dialogues,

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about the Platonic academy.  

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And it's wonderful that Yura Senokosov recorded not shorthand, but by voice.  

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Almost all films and videos featuring Mamardashvili mysteriously disappeared from the archives of Moscow and Tbilisi. 

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And it so happened that hundreds of tape cassettes are almost all that is left of him.

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And with the help of Senokosov, they turn into books. 

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- I can tell you, I confess, that one of my experiences, because of which, perhaps, I began to study philosophy,

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was an experience in life, completely incomprehensible, 

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leading me to confusion, of people's blindness to what is. 

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Faulkner said that the greatest tragedy of a person is  

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when he does not know what his actual situation is.

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It mean, where is he?

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What's happening? Or rather, so. 

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How? When did what is happening now become interlocked?  

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In Russian history, I would say so, the genius of repetition, 

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bad to the point of nausea, was walking, walking with might and main.  

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Imagine that we eat and chew a piece endlessly, and chewing it never ends.


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We can't eat it. After all, death is once and for all. It's over.  

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Hell is one's own death, that is, death that happens all the time. There's no way we can die.  

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Our world is full of half-born people. 

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They would like to be born, but they were not born. 

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They have the urge to thought, but no thought,

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the urge to honor, but no honor. 

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Urge and action are different things.  

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The urge is neither life nor death, neither dream nor reality, it is madness. 


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On the crest of the October Revolution, a human mutation occurred.

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Yes, we have a heart, lungs, liver.

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We are like a man. We are mutants.  

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We continue to exist, to move. 

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And the heel begins to perform the functions of the heart and lung.

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We have irrevocably lost the taste for normal life.   

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- Apparently, you are a complete pessimist. 

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- Antonio Gramsci said this: "The pessimism of the intellect is the optimism of the will."

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- I met him somewhere in the early sixties. 

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We became friends very quickly.  

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At that time we were still quite hardy, we could drink a lot of time. 

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Philosophers are very fond of drinking, so you know. Real philosophers.  

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They say that only Hegel did not drink. 

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He was such a burgher and, most importantly, he was a boring person. And Kant was drinking.  

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He really liked madeira and liqueur. Well, Merab and I drank wine and drank vodka. 

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Well, we drank and talked somehow.  

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We talked about various topics that our reality, which was rich at that time, gave us.


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- Well, how do you like it?
- 
Well, it's different now. Rich, probably. 

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At every moment of the existence of this country, 

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I don't know, since the time of Ivan the Terrible, everything is rich.  

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It is rich in blood, then rich in tears, then rich in misfortunes.

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The history was not rich in joys, unfortunately. 

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Therefore, joy is in trust, in friendship, in confidence in another person.

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Therefore, one of the greatest joys in this world has always been open

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to the so-called Soviet man -   


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the joy of friendship, solidarity and 


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the joy of sharing common hardships, and the joy of discovering, 

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sharing the coincidence of the view of this life.

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We, after all, knew very little about his activities in the field of philosophy.

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I think this is pure nonsense. He was just fooling around.

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He was just messing with his students. 

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Life is an effort in time. 

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And you often hear that if a person has committed a crime,  

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it is because society is bad, the environment has eaten. 

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For the hero, there is no society that would be to blame for what is happening to him.


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Or else, you don't need the whole world to be good, so that you are good.

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A classic soul is a very strong stomach.

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Classic soul. She can digest everything -

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the injustice reigning around, and happiness, troubles, and devices, and so on.

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The end of the XX century is the time for summing up and the bills will have to be paid. 

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Recalculations have accumulated very serious.  

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Well, let's say there are not enough, according to elementary estimates, 100 million people in Russia alone.


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I'm asking a question: 

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"In what sense can we say that something happened in 1937?"

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Everything that happened in 1937 is happening now

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in our reactions, in our souls.

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We have not learned a lesson and have not learned anything from the experience of 1937.

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If you remember, in the Apocalypse of John:

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If you want to kill millions, if you want plague, famine, 

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then you can ignore what I say. 

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Whatever the world is, there is something I can and should do.

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I am alone in the face of the world and must keep my loneliness.

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Take a look at yourself, make an effort on yourself to see yourself 

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as we really are.

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If you don't make this effort, all is lost.

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Or are you waiting again for someone from the outside to come and solve your problems and difficulties?

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Looking for enemies in outer space again and again?

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This terrible mechanism must be destroyed.

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We are infantile and, as always, in the hands of the Salvation Army. 

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It could have happened in Georgia and so on.

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What to say? When Shakespeare lived, when Dante lived, blood flowed everywhere. 

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When Dante lived surrounded by the most bloodthirsty Medici, poisoning each other,  

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the whole of Italy was enraged. When Aristotle lived... By the way, he was killed just with a sword.

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When Plato lived, people appeared at that time...

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What are you saying? What does... have to do with it? 

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Savagery has always existed. And I think he wasn't such an idiot 

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as to try to appeal to some people who had completely lost their human form. 


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And the human form is always lost. 

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All. Keep collecting material about Merab, and different people will tell you different things. 


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They say about the French that they are a stingy and selfish people,  

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not like us, the Russians - the soul is wide open.  

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But what about the Dittmanns? After all, having accidentally found out that I was making a film about Mamardashvili,


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Michel Dittmann, whom I had never known before, found me by phone in Moscow 

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and demanded that we come to him immediately.

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"You will stay at my house. I have a surprise related to Merab."

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That's how we ended up in this amazing semi-French, semi-Jewish, semi-German family in Paris.


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Michelle Dietmann:
- I was shocked that the world is so small  

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and we are all somehow connected to each other. 

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I've heard so much about Merab that I think I knew him myself.

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Legends about him were brought to our house by our friend,  

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and therefore, it seems to me quite natural that we invited you to our house.

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Мариель Паке:
- Merab loved this anecdote. Russian asks Georgian: 

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"Have you read Lenin?" "No." "And Stalin?" "No." "And Brezhnev?"  

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"Listen, leave me alone. You have your own company, and I have my own." 

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You know, he looked at me like no one else.

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When he saw me for the first time, it seemed to me that after 5 minutes he knew everything about me.

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He gave more than he received. 

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He was afraid of addiction in a relationship.   

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It so happened that on his last visit to Paris, he stayed at my house.

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I'm making a book about him. I remember he didn't want to return to Tbilisi. 

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It was August, 3 months before his death.

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I handed his tickets to Moscow back to the ticket office many times.

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He knew he was going to die. His father died at 60.

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Merab was the same age in September. 

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He promised that he would spend the whole day quietly.

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He didn't want any anniversary.  

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Here he was offered amazing contracts.  

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Everyone sought his company, from Vernon to Mitterrand.  

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Leave this idea, to understand the Russians, or else fall into the abyss. 

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It's impossible to understand us. Russia is a stone that can fall on your head at any moment.


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So you better be ready to die.

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Anna Dittmann

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A song about the Motherland.  

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In 90, he said a phrase that flew around the world: 

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"If my people choose Gamsakhurdia, I will have to go against my people." 

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The Georgian newspapers then wrote: "A traitor to the nation. Get out of Georgia."

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In 1921, what happened happened according to the level of our souls, 

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regardless of the big catastrophes.  As they grew up, so they got it.

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Big disasters didn't make us big. 

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The world is irreversible. And what is not learned today will not be extracted tomorrow.

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Moreover, only you can extract it.

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It is impossible to rely on another, to shift to the class, to the party, to society, to the nation.

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And vice versa, what happens to the nation will be the integral 

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of what each of us has undertaken. 

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And what happens will be equalized, that is, it will be established according to the level of our souls.  

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Proust put it this way: "No matter who you are, a prince or a beggar,  

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no one will save you from the need to desire, suffer, love and hate.

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And the one whose heart sees everything wins." 

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He had bought himself a baguette, a box of camembert and everything else for lunch and was happy.

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It was especially good for me that he had such joy,

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living in these years, one might say, almost in captivity.

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But on the other hand, I know perfectly well that his joy and love of life originated before.

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I mean, I think he's had it since he was a kid.

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Annie Epelboin, philosopher (France)
- I remember how he spoke in the Senate with such sayings, but, of course, in a slightly different context.

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He really wanted to abruptly end the system of incomprehensible love for Russia,

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which reigned among the Western intelligentsia for almost a century,

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the idealization of Russia as a country of happy people, spirituality, and generally it is unclear what.

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He said that the peculiarities of a nation can be judged by deeds, not by doing.

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Who knows how to work. For example, he was watching a waiter in a cafe.

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He said: "Look how well he works, how seriously he takes his business.

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Before God, he is responsible for his life. That's human. That's civilization."

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This is not a conversation about the soul. Here he appreciated people by their attitude to work, 

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to business, how they lead their lives, and not just what kind of spiritual program they have, spiritual ideals.

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You're a philosopher, you have to think. You're the cook, well, cook a good dinner and be responsible for it.

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He terribly disliked emotions and expressing emotions. He was most afraid of hysteria.

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- That's why he was a little afraid of women. No?  

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- It depends on what kind of women. 

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For example, the fact that he couldn't start a family, is it easy? Isn't that a burden?

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On the one hand, he kept his inner calm. On the other hand, he may have died because 

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he didn't have this weight in his life. 

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Therefore, every choice... I won't say that I know everything.

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- I have a lot to thank Merab for. Of course! 

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He just kind of resurrected me once. Partly... 

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At first, on the contrary, he said that if you want to fall into world sorrow,

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then first think, maybe you just have a stomach ache. 


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Natalia Ryazantseva
- And Friendship is not to cause each other trouble, spoil the mood.

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And love and friendship, for love and for friendship.

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Ну, почти ни о ком он не говорил плохо,

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He spoke ill of almost no one, never gossiped at all, never talked about himself.

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Here is what, by the way, in Russian conversations, apparently, did not suit him very much in Russian companies,

265
00:30:58.800 --> 00:31:03.900
and why he preferred secular conversation somewhere in foreign guests, foreign houses,

266
00:31:03.900 --> 00:31:08.600
where everyone gathers for a while, and they talk , do not climb into the soul.

268
00:31:08.600 --> 00:31:13.200
They talk about something, they chat about something. 

269
00:31:13.200 --> 00:31:18.800
It was completely out of habit for me.

270
00:31:18.800 --> 00:31:21.800
I can hardly bear such a conversation.

271
00:31:21.800 --> 00:31:27.400
Because how are we? We'll sit down. We'll get drunk. And yes.

273
00:31:27.400 --> 00:31:34.000
Well, if two or three, then some of the most intimate things are told, they turn the soul inside out one way or another.


275
00:31:36.800 --> 00:31:39.700
- It's hard to decide for him? 

276
00:31:39.700 --> 00:31:47.800
- You see, it can't occur to me, because it's wrong to call it "remember".

278
00:31:47.800 --> 00:31:51.800
I remember all the time. On the contrary, it's hard for me not to remember.

279
00:31:51.800 --> 00:31:59.800
This state is constant and sometimes you break out of it into something else,

280
00:31:59.800 --> 00:32:06.000
get distracted and rejoice if you get distracted. Thought is a very fast thing.


282
00:32:06.600 --> 00:32:09.600
- He sent friends to friends.  

283
00:32:09.600 --> 00:32:14.200
He wanted his friends to communicate with each other. 

284
00:32:14.200 --> 00:32:17.000
- And what was the situation with Pyatigorsky? Did he introduce you too?

00:32:17.000 --> 00:32:24.300
- Of course. Merab even, I remember, loved to change shirts with him very much. 

286
00:32:24.300 --> 00:32:28.600
They had the same size. Merab loved clothes.  

287
00:32:28.600 --> 00:32:32.400
And Pyatigorsky somehow didn't care. Merab told him: 

288
00:32:32.400 --> 00:32:36.100
"Look what you're wearing. I'll give you a shirt." 

289
00:32:36.100 --> 00:32:41.100
As soon as Merab appeared in Paris, the first one who arrived at the same time 

290
00:32:41.100 --> 00:32:44.100
to meet him immediately was Sasha Pyatigorsky.

291
00:32:44.100 --> 00:32:46.700
And they met at the train station.  

292
00:32:46.700 --> 00:32:55.400
And just Merab was dressed normally, and he needed a suit.

293
00:32:55.400 --> 00:33:00.400
Therefore, Sasha Pyatigorsky brought him a suit.

294
00:33:00.400 --> 00:33:04.500
But in order not to carry a suitcase, he put this suit on himself.

296
00:33:04.500 --> 00:33:09.400
Merab didn't recognize him because he always weared jeans. 

297
00:33:09.400 --> 00:33:16.000
On the first evening we all gathered at Katel's. We were all happy. 

299
00:33:28.700 --> 00:33:33.700
Alexander Pyatigorsky, Professor at the University of London,  

300
00:33:33.700 --> 00:33:40.400
любимый друг Мераба, знаток буддизма, истории и культуры Индии. 

301
00:33:40.400 --> 00:33:47.200
20 years ago, he left Russia and, leaving, entrusted his parents to Merab.

302
00:33:47.200 --> 00:33:52.300
"Regularly bring them potatoes to Malakhovka," is his testament.

303
00:33:52.300 --> 00:33:36.400
Merab kept his promise. 

304
00:33:58.100 --> 00:34:04.800
- Now I'm thinking intensely about a snack.  

00:34:07.300 --> 00:34:14.800
If you don't believe me, here you go: fried frog legs.

305
00:34:16.900 --> 00:34:25.200
- Merab. All the stories of his falling in love - he  was dying, he  was adoring the women he loved.

306
00:34:26.600 --> 00:34:34.300
He was a man of love. He was loving women when he loved, in the most devoted way.

307
00:34:40.400 --> 00:34:48.500
When Merab loved a woman, he did everything for her, did everything with great pleasure.


00:34:55.500 --> 00:35:01.600
- He obviously repeatedly loved with the same force?


308
00:35:02.500 --> 00:35:07.800
- I think this has happened very few times in Merab's life.

309
00:35:08.300 --> 00:35:11.700
- Very many times?
- Not many times.

00:35:11.700 --> 00:35:15.700
Merab was not a womanizer in the least.  

310
00:35:15.700 --> 00:35:22.600
He loved ladies, but that was not his distinguishing feature.

00:35:25.500 --> 00:35:29.700
That is, to say that Merab was a womanizer is the same as saying that Merab was a drunkard.


311
00:35:29.700 --> 00:35:31.800
That there was absolutely neither one nor the other . 


312
00:35:31.800 --> 00:35:37.200
The only area where Merab could, in principle, cross someone's path is with some lady.


313
00:35:37.200 --> 00:35:40.800
But even that was completely impossible. 

314
00:35:44.700 --> 00:35:47.700
Merab, in this sense, was an Oriental man. 

315
00:35:47.700 --> 00:35:50.800
A friend, a friend's woman are holy. 

316
00:35:57.000 --> 00:36:00.300
In the sense in which you ask this question, of course, in vain.

317
00:36:00.300 --> 00:36:03.900
The philosopher is not for use. This must be understood.  

318
00:36:03.900 --> 00:36:07.800
- And for what?
- A philosopher in order to philosophizing.

319
00:36:07.800 --> 00:36:11.800
And why should everyone understand everything? 

320
00:36:11.800 --> 00:36:14.700
It is impossible to discover anything in philosophy,    


00:36:14.700 --> 00:36:20.900
in the sense that you can discover something in chemistry, physics, or even mathematics.

321
00:36:20.900 --> 00:36:24.400
What did he do? He showed an example of thinking.

322
00:36:25.800 --> 00:36:38.400
Together with Merab, the experience of free thinking, merged with personality and character, died.

324
00:36:39.100 --> 00:36:44.800
Freedom for him was a normal mode of existence. 

325
00:36:44.800 --> 00:36:49.700
Most free people are not born free.

326
00:36:49.700 --> 00:36:52.700
This is the hardest work.  

327
00:36:52.700 --> 00:37:00.000
And this is the hardest work, where there are much more defeats than victories.

328
00:37:01.800 --> 00:37:12.100
I think that freedom is, excuse me, an open state of the human soul.

330
00:37:12.800 --> 00:37:22.900
This is when a person's soul lives in a space where there is a choice,

331
00:37:22.900 --> 00:37:31.900
where there is a solution, where there is suffering, where there is pleasure.

333
00:37:32.500 --> 00:37:37.900
But all these are points of this space. 

334
00:37:37.900 --> 00:37:42.100
It's the loneliest job in the world. 

335
00:37:42.100 --> 00:37:47.800
A person can work on freedom and in freedom, only one. 

336
00:37:47.800 --> 00:37:54.700
No one can free a person. If he was released, then he is a freedman, 

337
00:37:54.700 --> 00:38:01.400
he is a freed slave, he is a serf who was given a break. 

338
00:38:01.400 --> 00:38:08.200
According to Merab, the Russian intelligentsia, again I emphasize, both Georgian, Armenian, and Ukrainian,

340
00:38:08.200 --> 00:38:14.900
could not develop their own position.

341
00:38:14.900 --> 00:38:20.100
Her position has always been a position of reaction to something,

342
00:38:20.100 --> 00:38:23.700
and, as a rule, to the same thing - to the regime of power.

343
00:38:23.700 --> 00:38:30.700
There was a fall from grace when it was possible to live without trying and cultivating 

345
00:38:30.700 --> 00:38:39.800
(cultum - Latin), without nurturing, without strengthening, without going crazy with tension.

347
00:38:39.800 --> 00:38:42.900
But it's over. There was a fall.  

348
00:38:47.900 --> 00:38:57.000
- Thus, how many slaves does a crowded country produce so abundantly with free people? 

349
00:38:59.600 --> 00:39:03.000
And why does nothing work out, but everything repeats? 

350
00:39:04.500 --> 00:39:11.700
Nothing in Russia has ever been brought to existence.

351
00:39:11.700 --> 00:39:17.900
Of course, there was an urge to freedom. But it's only an urge if there are no muscles.

352
00:39:17.900 --> 00:39:26.700
The urge of a thought, but not a thought. There may be an urge of honor, and there may not be honor.

354
00:39:28.700 --> 00:39:32.400
And when we don't think accurately, the devil is playing with us.

355
00:39:34.500 --> 00:39:41.500
Otherwise, I want to say that in the sphere or in the field of thought, statements of the following kind are impossible: 


357
00:39:42.700 --> 00:39:50.400
"I didn't think," I mean, "I didn't want this," "I had other intentions."


359
00:39:53.700 --> 00:40:00.000
Idiots of the sublime always want the best,

360
00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:05.800
but for some reason they break their forehead, most often, however, not only to themselves, but to everyone around them.

362
00:40:42.100 --> 00:40:49.700
Merab, in this case, was very annoyed by this continuous claim to uniqueness.


364
00:40:49.700 --> 00:40:52.700
Well, there is a Russian soul, and there is a Zulu soul. So what?  

365
00:40:52.700 --> 00:40:58.900
Papuan soul, Canadian soul... It's childhood. 

366
00:40:58.900 --> 00:41:02.800
This is the childhood of thinking. This is some kind of hook. 

367
00:41:02.800 --> 00:41:05.800
Well, you can cling to it for a while,  

368
00:41:05.800 --> 00:41:14.700
but you can't hang yourself on this hook by the collar for life.

369
00:41:14.700 --> 00:41:23.000
In general, it's time for us to treat ourselves as normal people, one of many.

372
00:41:23.000 --> 00:41:27.400
This is the beginning, if you will, of recovery. 

373
00:41:28.800 --> 00:41:34.400
- Specify.

- Because... Well, how can I tell you?

374
00:41:34.200 --> 00:41:38.700
Well, here we are at the conference. Everyone behaves like normal people,

376
00:41:38.700 --> 00:41:45.200
they talk, I do not know, about excavations in central Iran,

377
00:41:45.200 --> 00:41:50.200
if they are archaeologists or orientalists,

379
00:41:50.200 --> 00:41:56.400
about some other amazing things, about some new books, films.

380
00:41:56.400 --> 00:42:02.700
And Russians talk about Russia, although they are not always asked about it. 


382
00:42:03.000 --> 00:42:08.700
Alcoholic's menu. Here, let's say, one of these cocktails, 

383
00:42:10.100 --> 00:42:13.300
consisting, approximately, of the kind of explosives 

384
00:42:13.300 --> 00:42:18.000
I was talking about (that is, toothpaste, something else), is called "Komsomolka Tear".

386
00:42:22.900 --> 00:42:29.400
Clear, the crystal clear drink "Komsomolka Tear".

387
00:42:31.200 --> 00:42:39.900
And so two dudes, sitting in these wine pairs, bending over one to the other and finding out


389
00:42:39.900 --> 00:42:44.700
who respects whom, moved on to one great topic and pose a classic Russian question.

390
00:42:45.500 --> 00:42:48.900
The question sounds like this: "What do you think, Ivan,"  

391
00:42:48.900 --> 00:42:56.100
one of them asks, "on which side of the Pyrenees is the Russian person more respected?"

392
00:42:56.100 --> 00:43:01.800
- I think it's Georgian. Everyone here is a good Georgian, so I am ready to enroll Bakhtin in the Georgians. 

393
00:43:03.100 --> 00:43:13.000
- And the Greeks?
- And Greeks to Georgians.
- If earlier there was a way from the Varangians to the Greeks, now it will be from the Greeks to the Georgians.

394
00:43:15.300 --> 00:43:30.500
- As for the attacks against the Russians, how should I put it... And, in my opinion, he's right.  

395
00:43:32.500 --> 00:43:40.500
Right. We need to swallow the pill. Bitterly, but right. 

396
00:43:41.100 --> 00:43:55.300
Swallow the pill. I still hope that... How did he say wonderful? The genius of repetition.

397
00:43:58.700 --> 00:44:03.900
Nauseous. Maybe we'll be threw up at last.


399
00:44:03.900 --> 00:44:10.300
- Merab thought about the current situation extremely optimistically. 

400
00:44:11.800 --> 00:44:20.000
He believed that this situation is simply unique in its possibilities,   

401
00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:25.800
and whether it is used by you or me or not is our business.

402
00:44:25.800 --> 00:44:29.800
But, of course, we will complain if we fail

403
00:44:29.800 --> 00:44:32.900
and say, "Well, is it possible to deal with such dishonest people? 

405
00:44:32.900 --> 00:44:35.500
We are surrounded by punks".  

406
00:44:35.500 --> 00:44:38.600
But if it is, then there is something in us. 

407
00:44:38.600 --> 00:44:43.900
Why are we surrounded by punks, and, say, Descartes was not?  

408
00:44:43.900 --> 00:44:50.700
Notice how many years Descartes spent in one of the most terrible armies in the world 

409
00:44:50.700 --> 00:44:54.300
during one of the most terrible wars in the world

411
00:44:54.300 --> 00:45:04.800
among the soldiers in the powder smoke, in an atmosphere of violence, death, blood.

412
00:45:04.800 --> 00:45:11.200
He never complained. Because he understood that this was his environment.


414
00:45:11.200 --> 00:45:17.100
He got there himself. He enlisted as an officer, a military engineer.

415
00:45:17.100 --> 00:45:21.600
You can say, "I didn't choose the surroundings."

416
00:45:21.600 --> 00:45:26.800
You know, this is a very dubious excuse. 

417
00:45:26.800 --> 00:45:37.500
Merab said that consciously or unconsciously we choose almost everything and we take risks at the same time.

419
00:45:40.200 --> 00:45:45.700
- What are we choosing today in our homeland, in my homeland? Governments?

420
00:45:45.700 --> 00:45:53.600
- We don't choose governments ourselves, we choose our own lives and our own thinking.

421
00:45:54.700 --> 00:45:58.700
- Or non-thinking.
- Or non-thinking. Or death.

423
00:46:26.700 --> 00:46:32.300
"No, it's not that hopeless," I coaxed myself, remembering that he was somewhere nearby.

424
00:46:35.300 --> 00:46:39.300
The day will come. He will come in our lecture room again.

425
00:46:39.300 --> 00:46:46.400
Looking into my eyes, he will push back his chair. And I will think again: "We live in the time of Merab."

427
00:46:50.800 --> 00:46:59.000
- After all, this is a preparation for death. Or simply, the art of preparing for death.  

428
00:46:59.000 --> 00:47:02.500
And the Greeks knew how to die with dignity.  

429
00:47:02.500 --> 00:47:06.200
What we may have lost, unlike the Greeks, is death.

430
00:47:06.200 --> 00:47:10.200
It is either hysterical - throwing herself into Bunkers together with the Fuhrer 

431
00:47:10.200 --> 00:47:14.400
or individual suicide.  

432
00:47:15.300 --> 00:47:21.800
Let's drink to the fact that we can die with dignity, like philosophers.


434
00:47:36.400 --> 00:47:42.900
- Why do you think Tarkovsky is a good director?  

435
00:47:44.000 --> 00:47:49.100
Because he died. Pushkin also said that only the dead are loved in this country.

436
00:48:04.200 --> 00:48:09.400
He died on November 25, 1990 at Vnukovo airport.


00:48:11.000 --> 00:48:14.200
- You're already falling asleep.  

437
00:48:14.200 --> 00:48:18.800
I'm sorry. I warned you that this would happen. 

438
00:48:20.800 --> 00:48:23.900
Let's end on this cheerful note.

00:48:29.700 --> 00:48:33.700
The film featured fragments of lectures by Merab Mamardashvili. (tape recordings 1978-1990)

00:48:34.200 --> 00:48:37.600
Written and directed by OLESYA FOKINA

00:48:38.200 --> 00:48:41.400
Operator - SERGEY MOKRITSKY

00:48:42.100 --> 00:48:46.400
General Sponsor - ZURAB TSERETELI

00:48:47.300 --> 00:48:51.500
The text was read by MARINA NEELOVA and INNOKENTY SMOKTUNOVSKY