An attempt to analyze a literary masterpiece.

“The queue, gray, stone, was indestructible, like a Greek phalanx.

Everyone knew their place and was ready to die for their little rights.”

A classic example of a masterpiece, which, according to Paul Valery, is a work of art from which nothing can be taken away and to which nothing can be added. That is, a kind of perfect product of human thought.

The phenomenon is extremely rare, but still happens.

And besides the extraordinary aesthetic pleasure that I get every time I remember these two sentences, curiosity begins to spin in my head:

HOW DID THEY COME TO BE SO BRILLIANT???

I can’t believe, or even imagine, that Ilf and Petrov were sitting at a table and thinking gloomily.: How would we describe this queue at the Soviet post office? What would be a “prettier” way to compare it?

No! It must have been born in their minds instantly! With lightning!

So the question is, why did such a comparison arise?

It is completely unexpected and just as precisely coincides with reality!

Both authors, of course, visited the post office and stood in queues. They were well acquainted with the grumpiness and hardness of the “waiting in the wings.”

On the other hand, both of them, studying at the gymnasium, knew from history lessons what a phalanx was.

A disciplined, cohesive group of warriors heavily armed with spears and shields.

How did their “LEGATO” mindset extend from the ordinary and gray to the nausea of Soviet life thousands of years ago into the romantic haze of Homer, Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great, his son?

Knowledge of history?

Yes, who doesn’t know her, at least in this form?

Any student.

Millions, hundreds of millions of people studied history at school.

Millions and hundreds of millions of people stood and still stand in queues.

And NO ONE, except Ilf and Petrov, even thought to make such a comparison!

Okay, it’s a lightning Flash, an Epiphany, an Inspiration.

But let’s take science.

There, too, a scientist sometimes experiences, extremely rarely, the same inspiration when his thought suddenly flies over a yawning logical chasm on the wings of intuition, on the edge of which he has been hopelessly trampling for weeks, months and years. And suddenly, intuition picked up the poor stomper and easily threw him to the other side of the abyss, where the treasure lay – the SOLUTION to the PROBLEM.

It’s a happy, Happy, HAPPY MOMENT!!!

But then the scientist realizes that saying “Eureka!” is not enough, it is necessary to build a logical bridge back to the problem on the edge where he so unsuccessfully wandered. Otherwise, no one will understand this “flight”.

And he sets about building a bridge back so that others, like him, who have been WINGLESS for most of their lives, can carefully stomp along it with uncertain steps.

Like a cherub,

He brought us some heavenly songs,

So that, having outraged a wingless desire

In us, the children of dust, after flying away …

So, fly away! The sooner the better…

A.Pushkin, “Mozart and Salieri”.

In science, this is usually possible and simply necessary!

THE BRIDGE OVER THE ABYSS IS BACK.

Is it possible for us to build the same bridge in ART?

Is it possible?

And for what purpose?

And in order to walk back along it, we could find a few feathers that had flown off THOSE wings. Once found, twice found, and after a hundred such finds, we ourselves may already be able to mold OUR wings out of them…

So, let’s put ourselves in Ostap’s place.

In the heat of the moment, he stumbled towards the window, but the citizens, nervously raising their elbows, threw him to the end of the queue.

He looked at the people…

Angry, harsh and hard faces.

A gray soulless stone…

Don’t expect sympathy and condescension…

Why?

Because everyone thinks about themselves – they obediently joined this queue and thereby acquired the RIGHT to be some kind of number in this long line. REALLY, it’s small, very small, but ITS OWN!

So the analysis should have started not with the first, but with the second phrase:

“Everyone knew their place and was ready to die for their little rights.”

But where does such severity and determination to die come from?

Only in a well-knit and extremely disciplined group of people.

Usually WARRIORS!

Where everyone can physically feel the shoulder of a comrade-in-arms, just like him, ready to die and win! The natural image is not a modern crumbling chain of fighters, but something monolithic, held together by the cement of strict discipline and the orders of commanders.

The first thing that comes to mind with such a mental visualization is the Greek phalanx.

Gray, stony in its still immobile readiness and therefore indestructible.

I don’t know if the bridge analysis has turned out, or if it has, maybe it’s too flimsy and there won’t be anyone willing to stomp on it?

I – passed…

Even if he was swinging, even if I was grabbing the ropes of the fence, but I PASSED.

Faciant meliora potentes. Let whoever can do better…

28 IV 2020