Russia: the changing image of time through the prism of language. Representation of the concept of time in Russian in comparison with English and German. Editor-in-chief V. I. Zabotkina. Moscow: Handwritten Monuments of ancient Russia, 2012, 472 p.

The book is devoted to the category of time in the perspective of cognitive research. The focus is on time in the Russian language and cultural consciousness, in comparison with the corresponding representations in the Anglo-American and German languages.

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cultures. The book is structured diachronically: an attempt is made to trace the basic shifts in the use and interpretation of the category of time - shifts that have occurred over the past centuries. All this is done on the example of a technically sophisticated, microscopically verified analysis of three languages by linguists and philologists, with an abundance of language examples taken from texts of various types - from folklore and fiction to speeches of politicians, from economic analysis to Internet volapyuk, which is developing before our eyes.

The subject matter of the articles is extremely scattered, mosaic, and multidirectional-even though almost every author has written several such shard articles. Let's list a few texts at random, so that the reader of the review can imagine this almost unmanageable variety. "Time in the Old Russian Picture of the World (on the Example of Metropolitan Hilarion's "Words on Law and Grace")"; "Time Markers in B. Pasternak's Early Lyrics"; " Metaphorization of Time in Modern English-language Journalistic Discourse (based on the materials of The Economist magazine, 1999 - 2005)"; "The Concept of" Time of Change " in German public consciousness in 1989-1990"; "Time categories in Russian and American political discourse" and so on, with all stops. However, even if the composition of the book is perhaps excessively mosaic, our definition of articles as "fragments" should not sound derogatory; some of them shine with an elegant, professional cut and show insight into the most mysterious depths of what can be called language thinking. In the introductory part, a detailed analysis of the current scientific literature on the topic is given; the authors attack such fundamental phenomena at the intersection of semantics and cognitive linguistics as metaphor and metonymy, with their rational (conscious, controlled) and emotional effects (see the texts of V. Zabotkina, M. Konnova, L. Bondareva in chapter 2, "Conceptual metaphor as a whole"). a way of understanding time"). Russian, English, and German examples abound on many pages; the materials thrown in and dissected on the pages of the book are truly huge: there are textbook memes like time is money or morgen, morgen, nur nicht heute, but also larger generalizations linking temporality to space, movement, and value. Not all of these experiments seem convincing; however, this is the impression of a layman,

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and I would not dare to criticize the method in each specific case. It is important that, in the end, we have a sincere and thoughtful brainstorming session. Sapere aude!

But let's try to understand the idea of the book as a whole. The category of "time" alone is incapable of holding together this sprawling diversity. "Time" is too much; time embraces everything and slips away into nothingness; it is itself blurred in its definitions.

But there are other links that the book's design relies on. First, as already mentioned, it is a method: a thorough, semantic analysis of language; time is "conceptualized"; it is not about "time" in general, but about the "conceptosphere" that pulsates in culture around the concept of time and the sense of time expressed in language.

Secondly, the collection is held together by the idea of changing paradigms, changing the perception of time, which permeates the book from beginning to end: reread the title. We are talking about a changing image. What is this fundamental idea, what is the change? This is the most interesting thing for us.

Let's look at the structure of the book: part one, introductory, is called "Time in Language"; part two," The Christian Model of Time"; part three," The Economic Model of Time"; and finally, part four,"The Technocentric (virtual) Model of Time". The logic seems to be transparent: the Christian concept of time, which dominates in traditional European society, is being replaced by a new, modern concept, mainly economic, or more broadly, profane - secular; then, in the era of late modernity, the era of mass communications and the "information society", this latter model is gradually being modified again. "Pre-Christian "concepts of time are clearly labeled as" mythological and epic " (pp. 15-16). The dualism "Christian vs post-Christian" plays the role of the semantic core of the book. If my presentation is not a simplification, then the author's concept, with its somewhat exaggerated emphasis on the "great narrative" of de-Christianization, is a simplification. I do not rule out the possibility that some concrete examples convincingly confirm the change of time models with the gradual growth and assimilation of European cultures into the New Time, and this transition has been repeatedly described in terms of secularization. At the same time, different parts of the book talk about how difficult it was.

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the structure of post-Christian time-it is enough to trace (mentioned by L. Bondareva) the evolution from Newtonian one-dimensional-homogeneous-infinitely-irreversible time to Einstein's relative time and Heidegger's subjective-existential time. But the same can be said about the "Christian time", which is not something unambiguously unchangeable. Regarding Christian time, it is said (by the same L. Bondareva, although with reference to another work) with obvious European and Christian centrism and not without a normative emphasis: "Thanks to Christianity, humanity was able to comprehend time as a transitory, finite, one-time period, which does not allow revisions, returns and repetition, which contributes to a person's awareness of personal responsibility for your own life " (p. 15). But is the Christian model so unambiguously linear and irreversible? To the same extent, we can speak about Christian thinking, about the more complex embedding of time in the eschatological perspective, about the combination of linearity and repetition (regular reproduction of the Sacrifice), about religious mechanisms of "revisions" and "returns" (the idea of Purgatory, acts of transfiguration or apostasy, etc.).

Speaking about the transition of the Eastern Slavs to a new concept of time after Christianization, G. Berestnev reproduces the well-known scheme of pre-Christian mythological time, referring to C. G. Jung, B. A. Uspensky, V. Toporov, M. Eliade and others. Further, the author records the change of paradigms reflected in Metropolitan Hilarion's" Word " (XI century), in which he finds a ready-made "linear model characteristic of the Judeo-Christian worldview"; and further, the author concludes that such a model was adopted not only by the outstanding metropolitan, but also by the "consciousness of Eastern Orthodox Christians" in general. Slavs in the XI century" (i.e., about half a century after the then quite top-level "baptism of Rus'") (pp. 119-120)! Moreover, comparing the text of Hilarion with Augustine's famous definition of time in the Confessions, the author concludes that, unlike the "subjective" time of Augustine, the Old Russian writer is close to the " modern scientific understanding of historicism "(p. 120), a conclusion for which the text of the article has no sufficient grounds, except for mentioning the stereotypical Christian trope, contrasting the era of the Old Testament law with the era of grace-filled truth. (Moreover, the conclusion that Hilarion's thinking is" scientific " contradicts the book's concept of the opposition between Christian and secular-scientific temporality.)

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In a series of short case studies included in the collection, M. Konnova captures the features of the Christian concept of time using various examples. In the" temporal vocabulary "of the Old Russian language, she finds frequent use of the roots dar - i-blag, reflecting, in her opinion, the concept of time as a"gift of God". Elsewhere, Konnova finds Christian expressions in private correspondence of the 17th and 20th centuries, concluding that even if they are thrown out casually and quite accidentally, they reveal a "peculiar" spiritual code of the " Russian person "(140). Proofs leading to such a fundamental conclusion include, for example, the following (I give only fragments from several quotes specially selected by Konnova): "... I pray to the Almighty that your precious health may be preserved... "(from Potemkin's letter to Catherine); " may God grant you health for many summers!.."(from Pushkin's letter to I. Dmitriev); "I firmly believe that the Lord is leading Russia along the path He has indicated... "(from Stolypin's letter to Nicholas II), etc. Konnova considers all these and similar examples to be linguistic evidence of the Christian elevation of human activity above the ordinary, giving it meaning. This set of examples, however, does not convince me: here you need to carefully look at the context, purpose and meaning of statements; otherwise, in a large number of such examples, you can hardly see anything more than a reflection of a certain historical linguistic usage.

Further, V. Zabotkina and M. Konnova find similar concepts of time in English - "Christian concepts of temporality", among which are the most important metaphors Time is God's creature and Time is a gift of God; and L. Bondareva, in turn, gives many examples in German, in which the Creator is glorified, who gives us and time, among other things. The King James Bible, Book of Common Prayer, many English and German poets, writers, musicians, and just individuals are quoted. Again , it is not clear how solid the generalizations made on this collection of quotations are; should we not simply state the determining presence of Christian tropes and simply Christian vocabulary in European languages, which does not require special evidence? The authors do not ignore three circumstances that could be more important than a simple selection of "Christian fragments": (a) alternative concepts of time in the era of the Christian pre-Christian era.-

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mining operations; (b) deep heterogeneity and tension within the Christian discourse itself; (c) a shift in conceptual models over more than a millennium of European Christian history.

In the next chapter of the same "Christian" section, M. Konnova perfectly formulates the meaning of the concept of time as not only one of the fundamental categories of being, but also as an axiological, value core of human life, adding that "the linguistic explication of the" category of time "reflects both a universal and a national-specific way of perceiving reality" (from 153). Further, the author considers this value component on the examples of Russian and English languages. In particular, it focuses on the semantics of" everyday life", giving a large number of quotes taken from everywhere - perhaps too many to make their selection seem somehow clearly justified. Here you can find everything-texts from the Oxford Dictionary, M. Weber, N. Berdyaev, past and present Orthodox bishops and saints, as well as modern authors. All the quotations celebrate everyday life as a carrier of "system-forming spiritual factors", "virtuous life", "righteous service", which correlate this present life with eternity (pp. 158-159).

At some point, it even seems that the text is slipping off the analytical track and turns into a list of basic Christian virtues, for some reason designated as "cognitive features of the concept of "service of charity"", namely: active faith, prayer and work, charity, love, joy, gratitude, humility, peace of mind - with an abundance of examples from the letters written in English by the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna Romanova (pp. 162-164). In this and other fragments (for example, when describing the epistolary language of St. Luke Voino-Yasenetsky), M. Konnova's text becomes almost hagiographic, and with all the indisputable significance of Orthodox saints, the logic of research is replaced by the logic of deductive confirmation of normatively constructed speculations.

Also, the arguments about the value lining of the temporary concept "everyday life" and "everyday life"look a little sketchy. Of course, in the language you can find a huge number of Christian texts that elevate everyday life, everyday life as containing the dimension of "eternal" and just religious connotations; M. Konnova

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he gives many similar examples. But after all, in Christian discourse, everyday life can also be "with a minus sign", as the focus of the profane, as a source of sadness and temptation-is there not enough of such examples in the language? And further, the image of the holiday contrasted with everyday life, which the author refers to in the next chapter, is illustrated only by Christian examples, with references to the Orthodox Easter Canon, to the poems of B. Pasternak, the novel by I. Shmelev "Summer of the Lord" and the cycles of William Whitworth Time and Death and John Milton On time. For the author, "holiday" is associated only with Christian associations ("The history of the holiday's formation in Russia is closely connected with Orthodox traditions", p. 192); it is concluded that "the value perception of time is based on the key Christian perception of being for European culture" (p.233).

The influence of Christian values and tropes on European civilization is immutable, and it does not seem necessary to prove this fact with a selection of relevant quotations. But should the tropes of consciously Christian discourse, as in the proposed examples, be mechanically extended to "the whole of European culture"? After all, the concept of "holiday", if you think about it, is just as semantically ambivalent as" everyday life " - you can find different connotations in it, and, after all, isn't it possible to find examples of non-Christian, at least anti-church, subversive festivities in Russian cultural history (as well as in English)??

The book goes on to show how this highly sketchy, highly constructed, and somewhat smoothed-down cultural matrix of "Christian time" is falling apart in the process of unstoppable secularization. The authors record the formation of new, profane meanings in all languages; it is stated, for example, that in the XVIII-XX centuries there was a break in the cognitive connections between the categories "everyday life" and "eternity"; they "undergo mental transformations": the expression "dull everyday life" appears (p. 172); the concept of "grace"appears it loses its spiritual meaning and takes on different connotations in the words "prosperous" or "favorable" (p. 131), and so on.

The entire third part of the book is an illustration of this process, about which the authors write with undisguised regret: "The departure of Western Europe from Christianity, which began with the ecclesiastical schism of 1054 and intensified in the epochal period.-

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hu of Rebirth, leads to a gradual oblivion of the spiritual value of time, as given to man by God. With the departure from Christianity, the concept of the purpose of human existence is gradually changing. A new, egocentric attitude to life offers, instead of eternal bliss, a "temporary, earthly, and rapidly passing bliss" (p.270). And then the proof is given - a change in attitude to usury: in the Middle Ages there was a ban, and then... "Over time, the idea of Christian charity and mutual aid gave way to the desire to increase profits, and usury was recognized as legal" (p.272). The New European Time model is an economic model. New "conceptual metaphors" are analyzed in detail: time is commodity; time is money; time is lived - in-space, and so on.

The authors provide a large and diverse language material, which is interesting in itself. However, it is needless to say that the simplified narrative of the "decline" of the West presented here is hardly academically sound and does not require refutation in scientific terms, not to mention the very strange qualification of the Western-Eastern church schism of 1054 as the beginning of a "departure from Christianity". At such moments, the text, richly decorated with quotations from Christian authors and canons, takes on a touch of Orthodox apologetics. In the same spirit, it is demonstrated in detail as the Paschal troparion, when translated from Church Slavonic to (modern!) English loses its spiritual height and integrity, acquiring normative neutrality and dryness. It is concluded (with reference to D. S. Likhachev) that it is inappropriate to translate the language of worship into modern Russian (p. 200). It is no coincidence that Patriarch Alexy II calls out from the pages of the book: "[To]preserve the European cultural identity... it is extremely important to preserve the moral dimension that spiritualizes and ennobles the life of Europeans" (p. 181). Schematic economocentrism in understanding the semantic foundations of modernity, associated with an obvious normative agenda - noticeable at least in some of the authors, but also in the overall architecture of the book - reduces the scientific value of this brave assault on the subtlest matters of language. Possession of the most complex analytical technique of the semantic system requires strict, ascetic use.

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