Patriarch Kirill: Humor is good, tasteless art is Bad

22/7/2010

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has said that humor is a useful social feature.

“Life becomes dangerous without humor,” the patriarch said during a meeting with Odesa residents in Odesa National Opera House on Thursday.

Patriarch Kirill said that “the majority of bad people have no sense of humor.” He added that humor helps “to relax conflicts between people, reduces stress” and creates good mood.

He also noted that quality humor always depends on a person’s culture and ability to avoid vulgarity in jokes.

The patriarch said that he had loved reading Anton Chekhov’s books since childhood, and Chekhov is the only author whose books the patriarch read “from cover to cover.”

Sense of humor trained by Chekhov’s books helped Patriarch Kirill at school, helping a religious child manage to deal with oppression from atheist teachers, he said.

Viktor Yanukovych famously announced that Chekhov was a great Russian poet in January.

Kirill also said that he believes “gruesome art” by some artists that some people find offensive is demonic in nature.

“You see no harmony in it [the art of such artists]; instead it is filled with ugliness, triggering animosity between people, destroying human society,” Patriarch Kirill said at a meeting with Odesa residents at Odesa National Opera House on Thursday.

According to him, “artists that splash out dirt infect surrounding people” and “people should isolate this infection.”

The patriarch added that “the world is extremely delicate today,” and sometimes it is even difficult to build a dialogue between religions and nationalities. That is why gruesome art should not be trifled with, because “such things provoke aggression and worsen the spiritual and moral climate in society,” he said.

“My answer to this is categorically negative. I condemn those artists – I cannot even call them artists. They do not love people, they create products which offend people around,” Patriarch Kirill said.

Such art “is rather demonic than God’s work,” the patriarch said.

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