And passionately, and languidly, and affectionately

Breathing the forbidden life.

This quatrain and the following two more, which make up the poem in the poet's first book "Stone", may seem like a tidbit for a psychoanalyst. I think that here is an indication of the same thing – origin. In the essay "Jewish Chaos", the poet recalls a trip to Riga, to his grandparents. My grandmother knew in Russian only the question: "Have you eaten?" and repeated it often. Grandfather was sad. "Suddenly, my grandfather pulled out a black and yellow silk handkerchief from the drawer of the chest of drawers, threw it over my shoulders and forced me to repeat words made up of unfamiliar noises, but dissatisfied with my babbling, he got angry and shook his head disapprovingly. I felt stuffy and scared."

In the essay "Book Cupboard", the poet recalls his home education and the Hebrew alphabet with pictures. The pictures depicted watering cans, buckets, cats and the same boy "in a cap with a very sad and adult face. I did not recognize myself in this boy and rebelled against the book and science with all my being." Above the alphabet and the Pentateuch on the shelves were books by Schiller, Goethe, Pushkin,

Ibsen. One can think that this was the "forbidden life" that the boy who had grown "from the evil and viscous pool" breathed "both languidly and tenderly".

Each of us has probably seen the stump of a sawn tree. Not cut down and not felled by the wind, but sawn. At school, we were taught to find out the age of a tree by counting the rings. If you move from the circle to the center, then in the very middle of the stump there will be the place where it all began. There was a thin stem, hardened over time and, layer by layer, built up a shell of experience and maturity.

If Christianity is compared to a tree, then its flexible and fresh core, the core on which everything depends, is the Eucharist. The strata closest to it and dependent on it are the three-part hierarchy, the canons, and the code of the Holy Books. Next come martyrdom, monasticism with all its diversity, theology. Philosophy, art, architecture, the ennobling influence on the laws and mores of society make up the outer layers of the tree and eventually turn into bark.

Mandelstam comprehended the tree, starting with the bark. It can be said that he ate it as harmless and defenseless animals feed on the bark of trees in a fierce winter.

Something did not allow him to gnaw through the bark deep and reach the core. Perhaps a revolution. After all, it was the revolution that cut down the Tree and chopped it down for firewood in order to warm millions of "little ones" and cook porridge for them. Or not her? Then who? I would like to think that she is to blame. It's scary to imagine that the reason is not in it. That if peace and prosperity had lasted for another twenty years, Mandelstam and people like him would have remained there. They would still gnaw the bark without getting to the bottom of it. Or they would raise an intellectual revolt halfway to the core and turn around. This is what their ancestors used to do in the desert. Their bones were white for a long time at the foot of Mount Sinai.

So, Mandelstam came to Christianity from culture. This attraction to dishes from the European table among Jews originated in the XVIII century. The German Jew Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) believed and taught that Jews needed to have both a secular and religious education in order to keep up with life. Mendelssohn was faithful to Judaism, but also open to German culture. His followers were called enlightened, and the movement itself was called haskala (enlightenment). The Haskalah had many opponents among the Jews. Those who were against it felt that it would not be possible to listen to the organ and not delve into the mass for a long time. All six of Mendelssohn's children were baptized. (One of his grandsons is the author of the music we hear at weddings.) In this way, culture captivates the heart and leads to conclusions that were not suspected.

Mandelstam's father was also from Germany. He, according to his son, "made his way into the Germanic world from the Talmudic wilds as a self-taught man." And his son was also baptized. Not to Orthodoxy, which would be natural for Russia. And not into Catholicism, but into Lutheranism.

What is the first thing that captivates a neophyte? The opulence of buildings dedicated to God.

The people who built Notre Dame and Hagia Sophia lived in shacks, covered themselves with rags, and their food was vegetables and bread. They thought more about the end of the world than we did, but they built temples that can withstand even after the wave of a nuclear explosion. The power of churches is the tangible power of faith, and a young person cannot but be captivated by it at a time of search for spiritual guidelines.

The nineteen-year-old poet dedicates his poems to these silent preachers of the Son of God. It does not yet penetrate inside, into the rite and the Sacraments. Attention is drawn to "one hundred and seven green marble pillars", "supporting arches of power", that is, things external and unprincipled. Nine years later, he would say of the main temples of Christendom with the words "not of a boy, but of a man":