/View.info/ It is difficult for modern man to understand how this was possible in the history of culture: there is language, there is speech, but there is nothing to write down, to fix. It seems to modern man that the writing, the Slavic alphabet was given to our ancestors for free, as if it had always been there, from the first spoken word. But in reality it is the spiritual feat of the holy co-apostles brothers Cyril and Methodius, their insight that made possible the combination of sound and meaning in a sign, in a letter, this is what linguists call ideography, alphabetic writing.
The Slavic alphabet is more than a system that captures verbal information. This is the cultural core, which over the centuries has grown with protective shells. It was not enough just to write it down, it was important to write it down correctly, according to the developed norms – this is how spelling arose. It was not enough to write legibly, it was important to write beautifully – this is how calligraphy came about. The letter turns out to be a work that requires the gift of an artist: it is known that Theophanes the Greek was not only an inspired icon painter, but also a book shaper, a skilled isographer. Writing became sacred: only a bishop could write a name on an icon, and this was an element of consecration.
The alphabet is the channel of history, the measure of wisdom, strength and humility of each generation. During thunderstorms, writing inevitably moves from the field of linguistics to the field of sociology and politics. Questions related to writing, in an age of change, covering both Russia and the Slavic world, affect our eternal confrontation with the West. In the last hundred years, such questions have arisen and continue to arise especially acutely.
The “revolutionary cursive script”, which inflicted many “spelling wounds” on the Russian language, was how Ivan Ilin assessed emigration The Russian spelling reform of 1918, which, conceived as early as Nicholas II, is now called “Bolshevik” not quite objectively . Russian emigration today often retains “yat”, “fita” and “i”.
Priest Pavel Florensky in 1933 in his treatise “The Presumed State Structure in the Future” reflected, among other things, on language policy, the supranational, unifying status of the Russian literary language, paying special attention to the “Church Slavonic script”: “not civil, but Church Slavonic and therefore, it is necessary in the RSFSR that the names of railway stations be written not only in Russian, but also in Church Slavonic.”
The Cyrillic alphabet, the little that continues to unite the Orthodox Slavic peoples, today struggles to hold back the advance of the Latin alphabet. The brothers of Thessalonica are remembered only on the days of their memory. In official documents and books, Serbs, Bulgarians and Macedonians do not change the generally accepted alphabet, but on commercial signs and in hotels, the Latin alphabet still diligently pushed it out. Such is the price of the notorious globalization. Until recently, it was the same with us, but CBO with its main symbols – V, Z – filled these Latin letters with another meaning, almost forced the Western world to give them up. And this is no longer the same Latin that was on a crusade to the Cyrillic alphabet, but an international brigade that is fighting in our linguistic ranks.
And yet an even sharper opposition now arose between a written and an illiterate (or rather non-alphabetical) civilization. This is not futurology or conspiracy theory: everything is clear and obvious. We have ignored all the cultural achievements that have protected our writing for centuries.
We have not known the Cyrillic alphabet as an aesthetic phenomenon for a long time: the art remained in the distant past: in handwritten books, at the tip of the pen of an ancient chronicler and isographer. We have abandoned calligraphy lessons at school: cursive is supposed to be a relic of the past, now we are always ready to say that “the computer has good handwriting”. Artists who have been mentors for many years say that more than a generation of painters and printmakers has been lost because of this, because the main visual training for a young hand is sample writing.
Competent proofreaders have become a rarity these days. And those of them who work in newspapers are amazed at the number of spelling corrections they have to make in the texts of journalists, supposedly also philologists who are convinced that efficiency should come first, and literacy is sophistication and luxury .
And worst of all, the heart of the script is now under threat: the very ideography for which each alphabet was created. Before our eyes, a civilizational regression back to pictography, to explanation by means of pictures, is taking place. The picture began to dominate the text. That’s why Instagram, now banned in Russia, was so popular. Each messenger, before you have time to write a word, gives a picture. The smartphone screen is increasingly likened to a cave with cave paintings from the primitive age.
In such a situation, the dedicated efforts of school and university teachers are not enough. We need state will, state policy. And if people at this level are used to thinking about national projects, then let the long-term national project “Slavic writing” arise, within the framework of which three actions should be carried out first of all: organizing periodic verification of spelling for those whose work is related to the word. To return to the schools, not just the elementary grades, the cursive lessons. To introduce the discipline related to the art of the book and the history of the Slavic alphabet in the humanities faculties.
A few years ago, in a conversation between academician Oleg Nikolaevich Trubachov and the writer Yury Mihailovich Loshtits, the idea was expressed that “the alphabet is the same symbol of statehood as the coat of arms, the anthem, the flag”, “that the alphabet is a shrine with sovereign significance”. Protecting the sanctuary of the alphabet now requires a special mobilization from us.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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