Two legends and one life

Abstract

The two legends of architecture — the legend of the construction of the Cathedral of the Dormition at the Kyiv Lavra by twelve brothers and the legend of the Master Builder Manole — are interlinked by common semantics. Despite both temporal and socio-cultural distance of their origin, as well as the differences in their semantic tonality, these legends are marked by mutual development, which in the mythological sounding includes essential principles not only of architectural character, but also of symbolic expression of the «architecture» of human life. According to the legend, the Cathedral of the Dormition was shrinking during its construction and only after it had been built it rose in all its glory. The laws of physics have nothing to do with that legend, as another thing is symbolically hidden in it — the phenomenon of the dense transition of formational frames of life in the historical emergence of Kievan Rus'. Formally, the Old Russian state in a single year (the year of Duke Vladimir's adoption of Christianity) passed through three modes of production: patrimonial, which happened; slave-holding, which almost was not there; feudal, in the sense that Christianity appeared in the feudal Middle Ages. Such a unique ontological situation is rooted in the subconscious as a being-not-being objective basis of society and is reflected in this legend. The legend of the Master Builder Manole is not about the foundations of a church cathedral, but about the walls, which were being demolished without a living person being built into them. This person had to be a pure, beautiful soul. Built into the wall of a religious temple, such a soul made it impervious to physical decay. Again, the laws of physics were of no use — «of use» were only the laws of the power of the unity of the Man and something in which he is «concretised», giving his creation the power of indestructibility. In the history of the blind determination of the classics such a phenomenon was reached through self-sacrifice. In these legends, we shall hear echoes of an intolerably intensive yet triumphant journey of becoming, echoes that demand contemporary reflection.