Why do we need monuments to events or outstanding people. Arguments "Historical memory" to the composition of the exam

Every person should know about the place where he was born and lives. In a big country, each person has a small corner - a village, a street, a house where he was born. This is his little home. And our common great Motherland consists of many such small native corners.

We live in a small town, but do we know our city? How do we treat its cultural heritage?

There are many monuments in our city, but people know little about their history, that not all the monuments are known to the inhabitants of our city, and they know even less about the events in honor of which these monuments were erected. Why?Why are monuments erected in cities?What is the significance of the monument in our life?

People are passing by, rushing about. It's just that the townspeople do not notice things that seem ordinary to them, but in fact are fraught with great cultural and historical value. Our city is connected with many great events and interesting people. There are many structures that keep the memory of these events and people. These include sculptural monuments, busts, pedestals, memorial plaques and steles that commemorate the heroic efforts and sacrifices of soldiers on the fronts and home front workers in the years of past wars, and theirwe have a large number.

People should know and remember the history and heroes of their city in order tolearn to respect the ancestors and remember what in turn will be needed for their descendants. Everyone begins to learn responsibility - moral responsibility to the people of the past and at the same time to the people of the future.

All these objects may have the category of federal, regional or local historical and cultural significance.

Our monuments

There are many historical buildings in our city that are attraction his.

http://www.timerime.com/en/timeline/3258748/+/

Conclusion. In the course of work, we learned that our city has a great cultural heritage, represented by architectural monuments. They give a special look and historical flavor to the city.

Only by learning a little more about the city, architecture and society, we will be able to form a competent society that can take responsibility for urban space and, together, preserve our cultural heritage.

Without knowing the past or neglecting it, one can live life without becoming a real person, conscious of responsibility for the past and future of the Earth.

As paradoxical as it sounds, it is by encountering the culture of the past that we can feel the breath of the future. That future, when the value of art and humanity will be clear and undeniable for everyone.

Why are monuments needed? Probably, in order to understand and appreciate your country, its history, to respect yourself for being a part of something big, important, to appreciate and protect our common achievements.

Why are monuments needed? To instill in citizens, especially young people, a sense of pride in their ancestors, in their state, a readiness to defend it with arms in their hands when the enemy attacks. Monuments should give rise to pride in the ancestors...

The Romans said that art is eternal and life is short. Fortunately, this is not entirely true, because immortal art is created by people. And it is in our power to preserve the immortality of mankind.

It must be remembered that thethe waste of cultural values ​​is irreplaceable and irreversible.

Indeed, for what? It would seem that this question is easy to answer. From childhood, we were taught that literature and art help to understand the meaning of life, make us smarter, more receptive, spiritually richer. All this is true, of course. But it happens that even the right thought, having become familiar, ceases to disturb and excite a person, turns into a common phrase. Therefore, before answering the question “For what?”, and answering it in an adult, serious way, you need to think about a lot and understand a lot anew.

On the banks of the Nerl River near the city of Vladimir stands the Church of the Intercession. Quite small, light, lonely on a wide green plain. It is one of those buildings that the country is proud of and which are usually called "architectural monuments". In any, even the shortest book on the history of Russian art, you will find a mention of it. You will learn that this church was built by order of Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky in honor of the victory over the Volga Bulgarians and in memory of Prince Izyaslav who died in battle; that it was placed at the confluence of two rivers - the Klyazma and the Nerl, at the "gates" of the Vladimir-Suzdal land; that on the facades of the building there are bizarre and magnificent stone carvings.

Nature is also beautiful: ancient dark oaks sometimes enchant our eyes no less than works of art. Pushkin did not tire of admiring the "free element" of the sea. But the beauty of nature hardly depends on man, it is forever renewed, new cheerful shoots grow to replace dying trees, dew falls and dries, sunsets fade. We admire nature and try to protect it to the best of our ability.

However, a hundred-year-old oak tree that remembers times gone by is not man-made. It does not have the warmth of his hands and the trembling of his thoughts, as in a statue, a picture, or a stone building. But the beauty of the Church of the Intercession is man-made, all this was done by people whose names have long been forgotten, people, probably very different, who knew grief, joy, longing and fun. Dozens of hands, strong, careful and skillful, folded, obeying the thought of an unknown builder, a white-stone slender miracle. Between us - eight centuries. Wars and revolutions, brilliant discoveries of scientists, historical upheavals, great changes in the destinies of peoples.

But here stands a small, fragile temple, its bright reflection slightly sways in the calm water of the Nerl, gentle shadows outline the outlines of stone animals and birds above the narrow windows - and time disappears. Just like eight hundred years ago, excitement is born in the human heart, joy is what people worked for.

Only art can do this. You can perfectly know hundreds of dates and facts, understand the causes and consequences of events. But nothing can replace a live encounter with history. Of course, a stone arrowhead is also a reality, but it does not contain the main thing - a person's idea of ​​good, evil, harmony and justice - about the spiritual world of a person. And in art there is all this, and time is not able to interfere with it.

Art is the memory of the heart of the people. Art not only does not lose its beauty, it keeps evidence of how our ancestors looked at the world. Birds and lions, slightly angular human heads on the walls of the church - these are the images that lived in fairy tales, and then in the imagination of people.

No, the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, like hundreds of other buildings, is not just an architectural monument, but a bunch of feelings and thoughts, images and ideas that make the past and present related. Precisely related in the truest sense of the word, because the white-stone church near Vladimir absorbed the features of Russian, national culture, in all its uniqueness. People want to understand each other, they strive to comprehend the main thing, the most essential in the spiritual life of each country.

One thing can make you think about a lot - the only church built many centuries ago, it can stir up thousands of thoughts that a person did not suspect before, it can make each of us feel our indissoluble connection with the history and culture of the Motherland. In art, generations convey to each other the most valuable, intimate and sacred - the warmth of the soul, excitement, faith in beauty.

How can you not protect the priceless legacy of the past! Moreover, among all types of arts, it is the fine arts and architecture that are unique and unrepeatable. Indeed, even if only one out of a million copies of War and Peace survives, the novel will live on, it will be printed again. The only score of Beethoven's symphony will be rewritten and played again, people remember poems, poems and songs by heart. And paintings, palaces, cathedrals and statues, alas, are mortal. They can be restored, and even then not always, but it is impossible to repeat them the same.

This is partly why they cause quivering excitement, a feeling of uniqueness. Museum workers carefully look at the instrument readings - is the air dry, is the temperature lowered by a degree; new foundations are being laid under ancient buildings, ancient frescoes are being carefully cleared away, and statues are being renewed.

When reading a book, you are not dealing with the author's manuscript, and it is not so important with what ink "Eugene Onegin" is written. And in front of the canvas, we remember - it was touched by Leonardo's brush. And for painting or architecture, translation is not needed, we always “read” the picture in the original. Moreover, to a modern Italian, Dante's language may seem archaic and not always understandable, but for us it is just a foreign language, and we must use translation. But the smile of Madonna Benois touches both us and Leonardo's compatriots, it is dear to a person of any nation. And yet the Madonna is undoubtedly Italian - with an elusive lightness of gesture, golden skin, cheerful simplicity. She is a contemporary of her creator, a woman of the Renaissance, with a clear look, as if trying to discern the mysterious essence of things.

These amazing qualities make painting a particularly precious art. With its help, peoples and epochs speak to each other in a friendly and simple way, centuries and countries become closer. But this does not mean that art easily and without difficulty reveals its secrets. Often the antiquity leaves the viewer indifferent, his gaze dispassionately glides over the stone faces of the Egyptian pharaohs, so equally motionless, almost dead. And, perhaps, someone will have a thought that the ranks of dark statues are not so interesting, that it is hardly worth getting carried away by them.

Another thought may arise - yes, science needs historical values, but why do I need them? Respectful indifference impoverishes a person, he will not understand why people sometimes save works of art at the cost of their lives.

No, don't go easy! Peer into the granite faces of cruel, forgotten despots, do not be confused by their outward monotony.

Think about why the sculptors of antiquity depicted their kings as such twins, as if sleeping in reality. After all, this is interesting - people, probably, have not changed so much in appearance since then, what made the sculptors make the statues exactly like that: indifferent flat eyes, a body filled with heavy strength, doomed to eternal immobility.

How amazing is the combination of completely specific, unique facial features, the shape of the eyes, the pattern of the lips with detachment, with the absence of any expression, feeling, excitement. Look at these portraits, look through the books. And even small grains of knowledge will throw a new light on the stone statues that seemed boring at first. It turns out that the cult of the dead made the ancient Egyptians see in the statues not just images of a person, but the abode of his spiritual essence, his life force, what was called “ka” in Ancient Egypt and which, according to their ideas, continued to live after the physical death of people.

And if you imagine that these sculptures already existed when even Ancient Greece was still in the future, that they were not one thousand years old, but their stone eyes saw Thebes, the Nile floods at the foot of the still new pyramids, the chariots of the pharaohs, the soldiers of Napoleon. .. Then you will no longer ask yourself what is interesting in these granite figures.

Statues, even the most ancient ones, are not always kept in museums. They "live" on city streets and squares, and then their fates are closely and forever intertwined with the fate of the city, with the events that took place at their pedestals.

Let us recall the monument to Peter I in Leningrad, the famous "Bronze Horseman", created by the sculptor Falcone. Is the glory of this monument, one of the best monuments in the world, only in its artistic merit? For all of us, the "giant on a galloping horse" is a source of complex and exciting associations, thoughts, and memories. This is both an image of the distant past, when our homeland "married with the genius of Peter", and a magnificent monument to a politician who "raised" Russia. This monument became the personification of the old St. Petersburg, built up with low houses, which did not yet have granite embankments, which did not acquire its full grandeur. Only one bridge, temporary, pontoon, then connected the banks of the Neva, just opposite the Bronze Horseman. And the monument stood in the very center of the city, its busiest place, where the Admiralty side connected with Vasilyevsky Island. A crowd flowed past him, carriages roared by, in the evenings the pale light of lanterns barely illuminated the formidable face of the king "he is terrible in the surrounding darkness ...". The sculpture has become one with Pushkin's poem and together with it - a symbol of the city. The flood sung by the poet, the menacing rumble of December 1825 and much that the history of St. Petersburg is famous for, happened here - at the Thunder - stone, the pedestal of the statue. And the famous white nights, when foggy transparent clouds slowly stretch across the bright sky, as if obeying the gesture of Peter’s imperiously outstretched hand, how can one, thinking about them, not remember the “Bronze Horseman”, around which so many generations saw the sight of so many poetic and unforgettable hours!

Art accumulates the feelings of hundreds of generations, becomes a receptacle and source of human experiences. In a small hall on the first floor of the Louvre in Paris, where reverent silence reigns at the statue of Venus de Milo, one involuntarily thinks about how many people were given happiness by contemplating the perfect beauty of this swarthy marble.

In addition, art, be it a statue, a cathedral or a painting, is a window into an unfamiliar world, separated from us by hundreds of years, through which one can see not only the visible appearance of the era, but also its essence. The way people felt about their time.

But you can look deeper: in the thoroughness of the stroke of the Dutch painters, in their sensitivity to the charms of the material world, to the charm and beauty of "inconspicuous" things - love for an established way of life. And this is not petty philistine love, but a deeply meaningful, lofty feeling, both poetic and philosophical. Life was not easy for the Dutch, they had to win land from the sea, and freedom from the Spanish conquerors. And that is why the sunny square on the waxed parquet, the velvety skin of an apple, the fine chasing of a silver glass in their paintings become witnesses and expressions of this love.

Take a look at the paintings of Jan van Eyck, the first great master of the Dutch Renaissance, how he paints things, the microscopic details of being. In every movement of the brush - a naive and wise admiration for what the artist depicts; he shows things in their original and surprisingly attractive essence, we feel the fragrant elasticity of fruits, the slippery coolness of dryly rustling silk, the cast heaviness of a bronze chandelier.

Thus, in art, the spiritual history of mankind passes before us, the history of the discovery of the world, its meaning, and not yet fully known beauty. After all, each generation reflects it anew and in its own way.

There are many things on our planet that have no utilitarian value, that can neither feed nor warm people, nor cure diseases, these are works of art.

People, as best they can, protect them from merciless time. And not only because "useless" works cost millions. It's not about that.

People understand that cultural monuments are the common heritage of generations, which allows us to feel the history of the planet as our own and dear.

The art of the past is the youth of civilization, the youth of culture. Without knowing it or neglecting it, you can live your life without becoming a real person, conscious of responsibility for the past and future of the Earth. Therefore, we are not surprised that they spend energy, time and money on the restoration of ancient buildings, that paintings, like people, are treated, they are given injections and shine through on x-rays.

A museum, an old church, a picture darkened by time - for us this is the past. Is it just the past?

Many years will pass. New cities will be built; modern jet planes will become funny and slow, and a train ride will seem as amazing as a journey in a mail coach to us.

But the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl will remain the same as eight centuries ago. AND . And a statue of Venus de Milo. All this already today belongs to the future. To the grandchildren of our grandchildren. This is something that should not be forgotten. The fact that the cultural monuments of distant eras are an eternal torch that is passed on to each other by different generations. And it depends on us that the flame in it does not waver even for a minute.

As paradoxical as it sounds, it is by encountering the culture of the past that we can feel the breath of the future. That future, when the value of art and humanity will be clear and undeniable for everyone. The Romans said that art is eternal and life is short. Fortunately, this is not entirely true, because immortal art is created by people. And it is in our power to preserve the immortality of mankind.

Even at the dawn of civilization. Scientists are still finding the oldest stone sculptures created by primitive sculptures and still raising questions and debates about what or who they are. One thing does not cause controversy - all images of fictional or real creatures had a cult value. The first monuments were created as objects of worship, magical supernatural powers were attributed to them. Later, deceased leaders and respected members of tribes and ancient communities began to be endowed with magical powers. People began to create monuments to perpetuate and exalt. This function is preserved and . Statues depicting generals, rulers of states or great writers can be seen in any country. The grateful pay tribute to the talents or heroism of their great compatriots. But in the history of mankind, monuments were erected not only to the dead, but also to living people. The cult of a living person and his deification were especially pronounced in ancient Egypt. The pharaohs built tombs for themselves and erected their own next to the statues of their many. This tradition was later picked up by emperors in the ancient world. Monuments were erected to them during their lifetime, and emperors could enjoy divine honors and glorification of their merits even before the inevitable departure to another world. However, the passion for exalting one's own person among the greats of this world can be observed today. Lifetime monuments were erected to Kim Ser In, Stalin, Turkmenbashi Niyazov, Mao, and the full list is not limited to these names. As a rule, the initiative to build monuments to a glorified person came from this person himself or his faithful associates. The presence of monuments to living people is considered by many sociologists as one of the proofs of an unhealthy society and a totalitarian system in the country. With the development of society, the monuments became more and more diverse. Not only people, but also animals began to be honored to be immortalized in bronze and marble. There are monuments to rescue animals who died in the service. For example, in Paris there is a monument to St. Bernard Barry, who saved the lives of people caught in an avalanche. In Japan, you can see a monument to dog loyalty. It was erected in honor of the dog Hachiko, who for several years daily came to and waited for the arrival of his deceased master. In many European cities, there has recently been a trend to erect unusual and funny monuments. In Washington there is a monument to people standing in line, in Bratislava you can see a monument to a plumber sticking his head out of a sewer manhole, and in Paris you can take a picture next to the monument to a finger. Such structures do not have any important social function, they are made for the mood, decoration of the city and attracting the attention of tourists to it. Human memory is short, life goes on as usual and new ones are constantly appearing. Monuments do not allow mankind to forget about the most important milestones in its history, about people and events that we would like to always remember.

In different cities, individual memory and collective memory manifest themselves in different ways ... For example, I have in my head an amazing piece of news that, perhaps, was not on the front pages of newspapers and not in the first minutes of news programs. We are talking about the fact that a monument to Alexander I was erected in the Alexander Garden a few days ago. A large monument to the king, and quite far away. By itself, this news, perhaps, is not very interesting, something else is interesting here. Near this place stood another monument. There was a stele dedicated to revolutionaries and utopians from the time of the victory of the October Revolution. Of course, it was a memory of the revolutionary heroes of the past, but in many respects it was turned to the future, since it was set by the system that perceived itself, of course, purely projectively. This stele was discreetly removed under the pretext of restoration (it was returned already in the form of a Romanov obelisk) and a standard king was placed next to it. Standard, because there was no properly organized competition, and this monument, according to experts, can be perceived as some kind of blank that already existed in advance.

Question: what kind of memory is symbolized not even by this monument in itself, but by the gesture of replacing one with another? I think that such gestures, which are made constantly, in their own way, problematize our attitude to history, our awareness of ourselves - I mean Russians or Muscovites - in historical time. This gesture of addressing the past, and at the place where the monument to the future used to be, seems to me significant in many respects. It can be said in another way: just this erases any kind of memory. It is the replacement of some sign of time, utopian time, with a sign of a time to which we have no access at all today. For us, this is really an empty idol, the embodiment of some state ideology - something that, in the strict sense, has nothing to do with historical memory. That is, there is a more general question about what monuments preserve and what they erase in urban space.

Another interesting point is the missing monuments, more precisely, the removed monuments and empty pedestals. There are such monuments - emptiness as a monument, non-monument as a monument. A dash, to put it simply. This is also a kind of perpetuation - but what? Or even more the embodiment of some expectations than an attempt to refer to the past. I think, in fact, multidirectional vectors intersect here, which are not necessarily directed only to the past and not necessarily related to a specific image of the present. This is the intersection of vectors going both to the past and, in a certain sense, to the future, a projection of today's expectations into tomorrow.

This problem seems to me extremely relevant, because today it is a very important problem that needs to be paid attention to, because many monuments are being dismantled under various pretexts and shops, parking lots, etc. are being built in their place.

Many Russian writers touched upon this most important problem in their works. It is worth remembering the poem "Borodino" by M.Yu. Lermontov. In the poem "Borodino" Lermontov refers to one of the most dramatic moments in Russian history - the Battle of Borodino. The whole work is imbued with patriotic pathos, the author is proud of the heroic past of his Motherland, admires Russian soldiers, heroes of the Battle of Borodino. This example testifies to the heroic deed of a soldier who deserves to be remembered.

I think in real life there are many examples illustrating this problem.

For example, in yesterday's news release, I heard that a monument to volunteers who fought in the Donbass was erected in Rostov-on-Don. This event testifies that there are people who are ready to defend the peace and tranquility of citizens at the cost of their own lives.

Thus, the author of this text made me think about the most important problem of preserving historical and cultural monuments. I came to the conclusion that it is necessary to preserve the monuments, because this is the historical and cultural heritage of the nation, which will help not to forget the exploits of brave people and significant events that have taken place all the time.

Updated: 2018-01-16

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