Black Rain

Alexander Shappo
Wood, brass, sandstone 73 × 21, h=122

Black Rain
To the silence you babble a primitive song and to the foliage you repeat the golden tradition, and the desolate heart comprehends them bitterly in the hopeless and black pentagram of suffering. FG Lorka The image of an ancient priest who makes rain symbolizes the timeless self-consciousness of man as a part of the Universe, his harmonious dialogue with the world around him. This understanding of things is a kind of covenant of our ancestors, from whom we inherited the land. Modern civilization with its own cult of consumption has changed the picture of the world, destroying the fragile balance in the relationship between man and nature. In this sense, primitive people were more civilized than us - they apologized to the tree, going to cut it down, because they knew that they were using for their survival some resource that belonged not only to them, but to all living things, including future generations. They honored the existing world order inherited from their ancestors. This connection with one's heritage and responsibility to future generations is something without which a person of any era ceases to be a person in the full sense of the word. Despite all modern achievements, we, like primitive people, are faced with a choice of how to build relationships with the outside world, and it depends only on us whether it will rain on the fields.