“The darkness of low truths is dearer to us... "the deception that exalts us"

The darkness of low truths is dearer to me / The deception that elevates us
From the poem “Hero” (1830) by L. S. Pushkin (1799-1837):
The darkness of low truths is dearer to me
A deception that exalts us...
Leave your heart to the hero! So what?
Will he be without him? Tyrant...

Encyclopedic dictionary of popular words and expressions. - M.: “Locked-Press”. Vadim Serov. 2003.

See what “The darkness of low truths is dearer to me / The deception that elevates us” is in other dictionaries:

The darkness of low truths is dearer to me than the deception that elevates us. Wed. The darkness of low truths is dearer to me than the deception that elevates us. Leave your heart to the hero! What will He do without him? tyrant! A. S. Pushkin. Hero. 1830. Wed. “It’s better to be in hell with a smart guy than with... ...

A deception that exalts us. Wed. The darkness of low truths is dearer to me than the deception that elevates us. Leave your heart to the hero! What will He do without him? tyrant! A.S. Pushkin. Hero. 1830. Wed. It's better to be with a smart person in hell than with a stupid person in heaven. Wed. Die Irrthümer eines grossen Geistes… … Michelson's Large Explanatory and Phraseological Dictionary

See: The darkness of low truths is dearer to me / The deception that elevates us. Encyclopedic dictionary of popular words and expressions. M.: Locked Press. Vadim Serov. 2003 ... Dictionary of popular words and expressions

- - born on May 26, 1799 in Moscow, on Nemetskaya Street in Skvortsov’s house; died January 29, 1837 in St. Petersburg. On his father’s side, Pushkin belonged to an old noble family, descended, according to genealogies, from a descendant “from ... ... Large biographical encyclopedia

Pushkin A. S. Pushkin. Pushkin in the history of Russian literature. Pushkin studies. Bibliography. PUSHKIN Alexander Sergeevich (1799 1837) the greatest Russian poet. R. June 6 (according to the old style May 26) 1799. P.’s family came from a gradually impoverished old ... ... Literary encyclopedia

- (1799 1837) poet and writer, founder of new Russian literature, creator of the Russian literary language Ah, it’s not difficult to deceive me! I'm happy to be deceived myself! The disease of love is incurable. To be nice is good, to be calm is twice as good... Consolidated encyclopedia of aphorisms

A smart lie is better than a stupid truth. Wed. “He thought for a long time, but lied well.” Wed. I told Karmazinov about you just now that you said about him that he should be flogged... “But I never said that!” Nothing. Se non è vero (è ben trovato) … Michelson's Large Explanatory and Phraseological Dictionary (original spelling)

short- oh, oh; low/low, low/, plural. low/low and low/ 1) Having a short length from bottom to top; small in height, stature. Low fence. Low chair. ...Other [hills] are covered mostly with stunted and short grass (Garshin). Low yellow... ... Popular dictionary of the Russian language

LOW, low, low; low, low, low. 1. Small in height, with a slight extension from bottom to top. Low house. Low mountain. Short stature. || Located a short distance up from something, located at a small height from the ground, ... ... Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary

Aya, oh; zok, zka, zko; below; inferior and inferior. 1. Having a slight extension from bottom to top; opposite high. Low fence. Low table. Low heel. □ On the threshold of the hut, an old man, bald, short, broad-shouldered and stocky, met me. Turgenev,... ... Small academic dictionary

THE EXTREME DECEPTION OF US
To become a moral person means to become a true thinker.
A. Schweitzer
Let us return, however, directly to truth-seeking as a tradition generated by the specifics of Russia, its national existence and the nature of national self-awareness, to the questions and answers, riddles and insights of Russian truth-seeking. And here one cannot help but turn again to A.S. Pushkin. First of all, because this is where the origins of many of our intellectual and cultural traditions are, subsequently developed (or challenged) by all outstanding Russian writers and cultural figures. No less important is the fact that in the work of the genius of Russian literature and Russian culture as a whole, the theme of truth and the motives of truth-seeking occupied a prominent place. And this could not escape the attention of many Soviet writers, who also gravitated towards this topic. However, they do not always reveal Pushkin’s truly Pushkin’s attitude to truth, which, by the way, in itself conceals many interesting, but unsolved mysteries.
In the novel “The Sad Detective”, written with heart and mental pain, Bv Astafiev, speaking passionately and convincingly about the comprehension of truth as the highest goal of human life, also turns to Pushkin. “...When the great poet exclaimed with a groan: “There is no truth on earth, but there is no truth above!” “He was not pretending,” writes Astafiev, “he spoke about the highest justice, about the truth that people comprehend in agony and, in an attempt to reach its heights, fall down, die, destroy their personal destinies and the destinies of entire nations, but, like climbers, they climb and they climb up the fatally steep rock.”
1 Astafiev V.P. Sad detective. M., 1986. P. 12.
It is annoying, however, that while seemingly appealing directly to Pushkin’s ideas, the writer nevertheless presents close to the text the words of that Pushkin hero, whose position Pushkin himself, of course, does not share. After all, it is not Pushkin, but his Salieri who exclaims angrily and with irritation:
Everyone says: there is no truth on earth.
But there is no truth - and beyond. For me
So it's clear, like a simple scale.
1 Pushkin A. S. Poli. collection Op. In 10 volumes. M., 1960. T. 5 P. 357
And no matter how one interprets Salieri’s personality, whoever he is - either a man gripped by philistine envy of Mozart, or a “cold analyst” acting in the name of principle, one thing is certain: the denial of truth not only on earth, but also in heaven Salieri needs to establish his own “truth”, for the sake of which he commits, according to the well-known historical version depicted in Pushkin’s tragedy, his villainy - he kills a man who overshadowed both his talent and everything around him, whose lifestyle did not correspond to Salieri’s ideas about what there must be an “immortal genius...”.
Although “Mozart and Salieri” contains, as we will see later, clues to Pushkin’s attitude to truth, they are unlikely to be found in Salieri’s quoted words. Rather, they should be sought in the famous monologue of the poet from A. S. Pushkin’s poem “Hero”. Let us quote it more fully than is usually done. Here the poet, in an argument with a friend, really passionately, with bitterness and pain, exclaims:
May the light of truth be cursed,
When mediocrity is cold,
Envious, greedy to temptation,
He pleases idly! - No!
The darkness of low truths is dearer to me
A deception that exalts us...
2 Ibid. T. 3. P. 201.
Many tried to unravel and interpret in their own way the meaning of the idea contained in these words. Moreover, most often the controversy flared up around the last two of the above lines, with which, as is known, active disagreement was expressed, for example, by L. N. Tolstoy. He reproached the poet for placing deceptions that supposedly elevate us above the truth.
Of course, as some researchers have noted, Tolstoy is wrong in his reproaches. After all, the key concept for Pushkin in these last lines is not truth, but baseness. To this, human baseness, dressed in the clothes of truth, humiliating a person, denying in him creative potentialities and feelings that go beyond the philistine moral horizon, he contrasts a deception that elevates a person, which instills in him faith in the best and often turns out to be not so much a deception as ... the truth, expressed in the form of intuitive insight. It is interesting and instructive that in the dispute that flared up in Pushkin’s poem between the poet and a friend (the conflict basis of which was, in Pushkin’s time, memoirs refuting the fact that Napoleon visited the hospital in Jaffa, shaking hands with terminally ill, plague-infected soldiers, which especially captivates the poet , elevates him in the eyes of people) Pushkin’s poet was right. The memoirs turned out to be false, and the incident with Napoleon really took place. The Pushkin poet and Pushkin did not know this. But it is characteristic that for Pushkin the fact itself was not of decisive importance. What mattered to him was, as B. Bursov correctly notes, “what the personality in question is like, what we ourselves are like.”
With all the importance of a correct understanding of the seemingly paradoxical Pushkinian elevation of deception over the truth, revealing the mystery of Pushkin’s curse to the light of truth is no less, and perhaps more important. And the point is not only that it sounds almost seditious in the era of the awakening of glasnost! Without this, neither Pushkin’s thought, an interesting and sharp thought, nor his ideological credo, nor his, if you like, concept of truth will be clear. Moreover, it is from this “curse” that Pushkin’s thought begins, which leads to his characteristic solution to the problem of knowledge and faith, truth and morality.
And the point is not so much that A. S. Pushkin here seems to warn, in modern terms, against the use of glasnost (with its desire for strictly truthful coverage of life) for selfish purposes by all sorts of envious people, careerists and ambitious people, unscrupulous and petty people , from using the truth to settle personal scores, to defame great (but thrown off the pedestal, so to speak, official glory) people. All this, of course, was disgusting to the poet, worried and occupied his mind. But Pushkin’s thoughts and feelings here, I think, go further, they are stronger and deeper.
Pushkin is a truly Russian man. And as a son of his people, the product of a certain culture (“...there is a Russian spirit, there is a smell of Russia!”), as a person with a soul shaped by Russian life (also common people), with a character imbued with a Russian “universal” humanistic worldview (let us recall at least the famous lines from the poem “I erected a monument to myself not made by hands...”), he is also not satisfied, moreover, he is even offended by the naked truth alone, divorced from truth-justice, which offends our moral feelings, humiliating us. It is in such a context, in such a confrontation between truth-truth and truth-justice, that the conversation between the poet and his friend takes place in Pushkin’s work under discussion. Let us recall that the monologue about truth in its Pushkinian understanding follows the resonant-skeptical remark of the poet’s interlocutor, trying to cool the poet’s enthusiasm for his idol:
The poet's dreams -
The strict historian is persecuting you!
Alas! his voice rang out,
And where is the charm of light!
1 Pushkin A. S. Poli. collection op. B 10 vol. T. 3. P. 201.
Pushkin believes and is convinced that true truth cannot be immoral in its very essence (regardless of certain specific cases). Moreover, in his opinion, moral truth (which in his poetic lines is called “the deception that elevates us”) carries truths that are deeper, more humanly significant than the darkness of low truths, to which mediocre people are so susceptible in certain cases, dishonest, envious, ready to use everything (even the truth) for base purposes, to spoil and pervert it.
Pushkin’s conviction in this is so strong that he is ready to completely deny the right of unscrupulous and immoral people to be bearers of high truth. From this concept of his morally oriented hierarchy of life values comes, it seems to us, his famous humanistic formula given in “Mozart and Salieri”: “Genius and villainy are two incompatible things.”
2 Ibid. T. 5. P. 368.
Well, Pushkin is apparently right. Not, of course, in the sense that for the sake of noble, sublime, but unrealistic ideals one should sacrifice strict “testimonies” of truth, knowledge, and science. And it’s not that immoral people are not capable of making discoveries in science, sometimes exerting a huge influence on people’s lives and - to a certain extent - even on the course of historical events (unfortunately, the 20th century gave a lot - too much! - evidence of this) . But it is precisely the historical experience of the peoples of the 20th century that confirms Pushkin’s correctness in his desire to elevate universal human values, universal moral norms over all other historically transitory considerations, no matter what philosophical or political arguments they are supported. Isn’t this historically one of the epistemological origins of modern efforts to link politics, including revolutionary politics, and especially international politics, with universal moral norms? Today, in connection with the threat of the destruction of human civilization as a result of the possibility of inhumane use of the progress of science and knowledge, it is especially obvious that this is not a purely “Russian” problem, but a global, universal one.
Pushkin is also right in the sense that often the voice of high morality, the voice of conscience turns out to be the voice of truth in various areas of public life, including politics, that science does not have a monopoly on truth. And it does not have it not only in the sense that many scientific truths turn out to be errors over time, but because morality as a form of social consciousness also reflects objective truths, sometimes carries them from very distant history, from the people’s hard-won experience (and in the form of hopes , illusions), “exalting deceptions” and preserves them for posterity. After all, what could be called social hopes often turns out, as A. A. Lebedev aptly noted, to be a kind of expression of “the feeling of social hunger,” which, like any hunger, needs saturation so that the thread of life is not interrupted. And, therefore, expressions of hope that are moral in form serve as a kind of signal, which also has a more general, vital significance for the normal development of the social organism as a whole.
1 See: Lebedev A. A, Chaadaev. M., 1965. P. 137.

ALEXEY MASHEVSKY

"THE DECEPTION THAT EXTENDS US"

“The darkness of low truths is dearer to me / The deception that elevates us,” Pushkin wrote in 1830. The phrase is mysterious. Its meaning is all the more elusive because one cannot, in fact, assume that the poet is a hypocrite, hiding from an inconvenient truth behind a screen of acquiescent untruth. Although it is often understood this way. Moreover, such self-indulgent, to put it mildly, slyness has become almost a characteristic feature of the national mentality, when frightening signs of everyday and moral squalor are hidden under the cover of discussions about the greatness of the Russian spirit. The exalting deception that proclaims the possibility of making everyone well-fed and rich without sacrifices and decisive market reforms turns out to be more valuable to us than the base truth of the uniform economic laws operating throughout the world. Usually in this case they like to refer to the mysterious Russian specificity, which, in my opinion, consists only in the fact that we, like no one else, are tightly stuck in our problems. Pushkin, however, wrote about something completely different.

This phrase, which appeared in the poem “Hero,” is all the more strange because it was by the end of the 20s and beginning of the 30s that Pushkin came to a realistic method of depicting life, moreover, he recognized himself as a “poet of reality” (as he would define in a note of 1830 in the almanac "Dennitsa"). Realism opposed previous styles precisely because it sought value in life itself and tried to extract evaluation criteria from historically determined circumstances. Any ideal scheme was no longer imposed on the world (as in romanticism), but was checked for compliance with the objective course of things. Thus, the truth became the writer’s God, no matter how inconvenient it may seem. And this truth was that a person is determined by his social environment, his age horizon, cultural connections, and finally, physiological needs. A whole world of complex psychological crossings of ideal attitudes and real everyday motives has opened up. Life suddenly became a huge laboratory with many objects, the properties of which were not predetermined and were subject to research. It was in this setting that the poem “Hero” was written.

It is dedicated to Napoleon, a largely symbolic person for Pushkin, whose attitude towards him changed over the years, but was never indifferent. The epigraph is typical: “What is truth?” The poem is structured as a dialogue between a certain Friend and the Poet. The latter is asked why the image of Napoleon is so attractive, what is the glory of the conqueror of Europe, the attractive power of his personality? Suddenly it turns out that what is dear to the Poet is not the military genius of Bonaparte, not his audacity as a thief of royal scepters and crowns, not even his tragic fate as a prisoner on a deserted island. This is all the subject of boring romantic speculation. Pushkin is worried about something else:
I see a long line of Odrov,
A living corpse lies on everyone,
Branded with a powerful plague,
The queen of diseases... he,
Surrounded by unkind death,
Frowning, he walks between the beds
And coolly shakes hands with the plague
And in a dying mind
Gives birth to vigor...
Consequently, what is fascinating about Napoleon is his human fearlessness in the face of nothingness, in which, however, the main thing is not proud personal courage, but some kind of high ability to resist death in solidarity with others. Something like a conspiracy against inhuman nothingness, embodied in the plague.

And now the sobering voice of a Friend sounds: according to the “Memoirs”, the author of which was the journalist Vilmar, Napoleon did not touch the plague. This means that reality refutes our lofty ideas about heroism and human dignity. But the poet does not want to agree:
May the light of truth be damned, When mediocrity is cold,
Envious, greedy to temptation,
He pleases idly! - No!
The darkness of low truths is dearer to me
A deception that exalts us...
Leave your heart to the hero! what then
Will he be without him? Tyrant...
The thing is that Pushkin was not only the pioneer of the realistic method, he was also the first to understand the threat hidden in such a purely “real” view of the world. A threat that could be called Machiavellianism syndrome. After all, the famous Florentine thinker wanted only one thing: to show that the basis of a politician’s actions should be true reality, in which there is no place for our moral principles and ideas of justice. It is interesting that the stamp of some Machiavellianism is borne by some of Pushkin’s poems - “To the Slanderers of Russia”, “Borodin Anniversary”, in which the bloody massacre of the rebellious Poland is considered as an event arising from historical and political realities.

The new method, which gravitated toward “objective reality,” wittingly or unwittingly left the writer without solid ethical ground (on which, for example, classicism stood unshakably). Man turned out to be deprived of true freedom and completely determined by circumstances, and most importantly, with a scrupulous examination of modernity or historical perspective, the victorious action of moral laws could not be traced anywhere. It turned out that if we approach the world as a laboratory table on which certain objects are laid out, then the presence of such important things for our spiritual essence as conscience, honor, faith, love, heroism, justice is not confirmed. It is not confirmed in the same way as, for example, the presence of a table or chair on which I can sit is confirmed. I can get up, get distracted, go for a walk, come back and again find it in the same place. There is definitely a chair, its existence is automatic and independent of me. But if we now try to “catch” something related to the realm of the spirit in the same way - for example, heroism - we will be disappointed. You cannot, having discovered repentance, love or faith in your soul, go for a walk, and when you return, find them as if “standing still”. They are only there as long as I hold them. I love only insofar as I make a spiritual effort - to love.

Directly or indirectly, realism assumes the world to exist as an object independent of the subject observing it. Something is analyzed that is already present in itself, as if automatically renewing itself in time. These are natural, social processes that develop according to their own laws, or “low truths,” as Pushkin says.

But in this way one can never testify to the presence in the world of something that does not exist independently of the observer himself, the person himself. Because conscience, goodness, heroism are concepts that receive their meaning only in the human (and not just human, but personal) dimension. They exist only as long as there is a subject who holds and reproduces them. From the point of view of a natural or social process, heroism is only an “elevating deception.” But it is no accident that Pushkin emphasizes the words that are dearer to me (not to us - but this phrase is often quoted in this form). Because to me, honesty, let’s say, does not exist in this world at all, not for someone out there, but only when I (namely, I) myself act honestly.

The meaning of Pushkin’s phrase is not that a person will always prefer a sweet illusion to a bitter truth, but that spiritual truth does not exist on its own and is born only by my elevating effort within a certain kind of deception. Deception, from the point of view of a detached observer who, in order to believe in heroism and love, first demands evidence of their presence from others and only then turns to himself. No, it will never work out that way. The only reliable way to prove the existence of good in this world is to immediately begin to create it yourself.

This problem, which boils down to the fact that any truth paradoxically reveals itself in a special kind of illusion, worried Pushkin all the time. After all, the main thing here, as we have already understood, is the state of investment of the soul. But this is a question of love, faith, understanding. Here you can discover a lot of unexpected things, reading, for example, “Eugene Onegin”.

Let us pay attention to a strange circumstance: the poet’s favorite heroine Tatyana Larina falls in love with Onegin in a completely “literary” way. Initially, he is not a real person for her - a St. Petersburg dandy bored in the village - but either Grandison or Lovlace. Tatyana's feeling is genuine, but it is born in the illusory perception of the hero, however, then, precisely thanks to its authenticity, it turns out to be able to discern a real person in Onegin.

Even more interesting is the metamorphosis that happened to Eugene. Why does “that same Tatyana” leave him indifferent in the rural wilderness and drive him crazy in a secular drawing room? Because for the second time a completely different image appears before him (by the way, an illusory one, as the heroine herself says, admitting that she yearns for the simplicity and naturalness of her former life in the village, which is alien to the brilliant secular tinsel). The paradox is that Onegin is an intelligent and honest person, moreover, he, of course, perfectly remembers the old village Tatyana, to whom he quite casually and truthfully explained that he did not love her. But now... But now that old honesty of his, resulting from knowing himself, his habits, etc. etc. (that is, from the “darkness of low truths”), suddenly turns out to be nothing more than blindness (and, in essence, a lie) in the face of the “uplifting deception” of the incoming feeling. The feelings in which he invested, and immediately things that were absolutely impossible from the point of view of his nature (he remained the same, still “not created for bliss” and “unworthy of the perfections” of the woman he loved), became desirable and possible. What are these things? - Love, care, self-sacrifice, pangs of conscience. - Why? - Because they do not exist and did not exist on their own, but now they have become a reality, supported by the effort of his soul, from contact with the familiar-unfamiliar, a beautiful phantom.

This theme of divided, as it were, untruth, which can only become the basis of the feeling that turns illusion into reality, is very significant for Pushkin. We always first experience sympathy, attraction, first fall in love, and then get to know the person. The feeling does not arise outside this field of “elevating deception”, and then it only requires the efforts of the soul to make it true. But this is a disaster, because only the joint efforts of two can make an illusion true. Onegin, during the first explanation with Tatyana, clearly refuses to play the role intended for him for completely honest reasons (which, as it later becomes clear, will turn out to be simply stupidity, blindness). It is no coincidence that the lyrical digression born from the hero’s monologue leads Pushkin to pose a tragic question:
Whom to love? Who to believe?
Who won't cheat on us alone?
Who measures all deeds and all speeches?
Helpfully to our arshin?
That is, who, in solidarity with us, will support the illusion, who will lead it to the truth? Family, friends, lovers? No! Everyone has their own reasons, their own seductions.

The complete hopelessness of such a situation, its torment (not excluding, however, slight irony over one’s experiences) is expressed with particular clarity by Pushkin in the poem “Confession,” addressed to Alexandra Ivanovna Osipova:
Alina! have pity on me.
I dare not demand love:
Perhaps for my sins,
My angel, I'm not worth love!
But pretend! This look
Everything can be expressed so wonderfully!
Ah, it’s not difficult to deceive me!..
I'm happy to be deceived myself!
It is interesting that if you compare Onegin’s letter and Tatiana’s letter, it turns out that the heroine explains her feelings (even sincere feelings) in a completely literary, even romantic way (you can see almost direct borrowings from Rousseau’s “New Heloise”). In his message, Onegin, although he embellishes his previous attitude towards Tatyana, although he breaks into exclamations of offended pride, does not think according to a literary template. And it is amazing that Pushkin’s sympathies are not on the side of the “realist” Onegin (although the poet himself writes a realistic novel and makes fun of elegiac and romantic cliches, ironizing, in particular, Lensky). Pushkin clearly gives preference to the “literary” but sincere Tatyana. What's the matter? Apparently, in creating his novel - not a text, but, as it were, “life itself” - the poet remembered that truth (love, understanding, etc.) can only be born in the spirit, the pure sphere of which is not everyday life, but art. Therefore, for separation, for love, for happiness, a “magic crystal” of illusion is required, which we will make true with the power of our soul. Onegin at one time was afraid to invest, he preferred to stop at the line of stating the true state of affairs (and this true state of affairs is true only in line with his expectations, his social orientation, within the framework of which love for a village girl is not visible) - and he was mistaken and was punished.

The deception that exalts us

The deception that exalts us
cm. The darkness of low truths is dearer to me / The deception that elevates us.

Encyclopedic dictionary of popular words and expressions. - M.: “Locked-Press”. Vadim Serov. 2003.

See what “deception that elevates us” is in other dictionaries:

From the poem “Hero” (1830) by L. S. Pushkin (1799 1837): The darkness of low truths is dearer to me than the deception that elevates us... Leave your heart to the hero! What will He do without him? Tyrant... Encyclopedic dictionary of popular words and expressions. M.: Locked Press. Vadim... Dictionary of popular words and expressions

deception- DECEPTION is a false, incorrect message that can mislead; disinformation that has achieved its goal. O. is the opposite of truth, which means not only true, but also correct, genuine, fair, appropriate... ... Encyclopedia of Epistemology and Philosophy of Science

Wed. You will find it with a fool, you won’t be able to separate it (you won’t be able to cope). Wed. Μετά φρονίμου ζημίαν, και μη συν μωρω κέρδος. (Better) with a smart loss, but not with a stupid gain. Wed. Planud. 117, 119. See the darkness of low truths, the elevating deception is dearer to us... Michelson's Large Explanatory and Phraseological Dictionary

Books

Unasked questions, Maria Metlitskaya. “The darkness of low truths is dearer to me than the deception that elevates us...” Each of us at least once in our lives faced a choice: what is better - to live in ignorance, hiding our heads in the sand like an ostrich, or to find out...
Low truths. Sublime deception (collection), Andrei Sergeevich Konchalovsky. Two books with memoirs by the famous Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky, “Low Truths” and “Exalting Deception,” were published more than fifteen years ago. These two extremely personal, frank...