“The world will be saved by beauty...”:

algorithm of the salvation process in the works of Dostoevsky

We will begin our conversation about the famous quote from Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot” with an analysis of the quote from “The Brothers Karamazov”, also quite famous and dedicated to beauty itself. After all, Dostoevsky’s phrase, which became the title of this work, in contrast to Vl. Solovyov, is dedicated not to beauty, but saving the world, which we have already found out through joint efforts...

So, what Dostoevsky dedicated to beauty itself: “Beauty is a terrible and terrible thing! Terrible because it is indefinable, and it is impossible to determine because God gave only riddles. Here the shores meet, here all the contradictions live together. I, brother, am very uneducated, but I thought about it a lot. There are a lot of secrets! Too many mysteries depress people on earth. Solve it as best you can and get away with it. Beauty! Moreover, I cannot bear that another person, even higher in heart and with a lofty mind, begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom. Even more terrible is someone who, already with the ideal of Sodom in his soul, does not deny the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart burns from it and truly, truly burns, as in his young, blameless years. No, the man is wide, too wide, I would narrow it down. The devil knows what it even is, that's what! What seems disgraceful to the mind is pure beauty to the heart. Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe that it is in Sodom that she sits for the vast majority of people - did you know this secret or not? The terrible thing is that beauty is not only a terrible, but also a mysterious thing. Here the devil fights with God, and the battlefield is the hearts of people. But by the way, whatever hurts, that’s what he talks about” (14, 100).

Note that Dostoevsky always wrote the word “Sodom” with capital letters, directly referring us to biblical history.

Almost all Russian philosophers who analyzed this passage, were confident that Dostoevsky’s hero was talking here about two types of beauty. In a recent study, contained in a just published collection, the author is convinced of the same thing: “In these reflections, Dmitry contrasts two types of beauty: the ideal of the Madonna and the ideal of Sodom.” It was argued that Dostoevsky, through the mouth of the hero (this statement was quite often redirected to the writer), speaks about beauty and its imitation, counterfeit; about a woman clothed with the sun, and a harlot riding a beast - etc., that is, they selected and, in essence, inserted into the text a pair of (seemingly similar) metaphors to explain it. At the same time, the text itself was perceived as a series of metaphors, since philosophers hastened to begin to interpret the text without deigning to actually read it, that is philological analysis that is due in any philosophical reflection on artistic text precede philosophical analysis. They perceived the text as speaking about something they already knew. Meanwhile, this text requires precise mathematical, reading, and, having read it this way, we will see that Dostoevsky, through the mouth of the hero, is telling us here about something completely different from all the philosophers who discussed him.

First of all, it should be noted that beauty is defined here through its antonyms: scary, terrible thing.

Further, the text answers the question: why scary? - because indefinable(and, by the way, by definition through antonyms it is brilliantly emphasized indefinability of this thing).

That is, in relation to the beauty in question, precisely the operation of allegorization (a strictly defining operation, we note) that philosophers performed is impossible. The only symbol corresponding to this beauty that fits the description of Dostoevsky's hero is the famous Isis under the veil - terrible and terrible, because it cannot be defined.

So there - All, in this beauty, all contradictions live together, the shores converge, - and this completeness being not definable in separators, in opposing parts of the whole, terms of good and evil. Beauty is terrible and terrible because it is another world thing, contrary to all probability, present here, in this world given and revealed to us, this is a thing world before the fall, the world before the beginning of analytical thought and the perception of good and evil.

But the “Ideal of Sodom” and the “ideal of Madonna,” which are further discussed by Dmitry Karamazov, are still for some reason stubbornly understood as two opposing types of beauty, isolated in some completely unknown way from the fact that indefinable(i.e. literally - has no limit - but therefore cannot be divided), from what constitutes convergence, indivisible unity of all contradictions, a place where there are contradictions get along- that is, they cease to be contradictions...

But this would be a violation of logic, completely uncharacteristic of such strict thinker, what Dostoevsky is like - and what, it should be noted, are his heroes: before us is not two distinct, opposing beauties, but only and precisely ways of relating person to single beauty. “The ideal of Madonna” and “the ideal of Sodom” are from Dostoevsky - and in the novel there will be many confirmations of this - ways of looking at beauty, perceiving beauty, desiring beauty.

The “ideal” is in the eye, head and heart of the upcoming beauty, and beauty surrenders itself so defenselessly and selflessly to the upcoming that it allows it to shape its inherent indefinability in accordance with the “ideal” it has. Allows you to see yourself as the upcoming one capable see.

I think this will seem unconvincing - we have too accustomed ourselves to the fact that it is not our methods of perception that oppose each other, but precisely the types of beauty, for example, the “blond, blue-eyed angel” and the “fire-eyed demoness” popularized by the romantics.

But if, in defining what the “Sodomian ideal” is, we turn to the original texts, never mentioned in vain by Dostoevsky, we will see that it was not libertines and seducers, not demons who came to Sodom: they came to Sodom angels, receptacles and prototypes of the Lord - and it was them that the Sodomites rushed to “know” with the whole city.

And the Mother of God - let us remember the “Song of Songs” - “formidable, like regiments with banners”, “intercessor”, “ unbreakable wall- is not at all reducible to “one type” of beauty. Her completeness, the ability to accommodate “all contradictions”, is emphasized by the abundance of different types, versions, subjects of icons, reflecting different aspects of Her beauty acting in the world and transforming the world.

Mitino is extremely characteristic: “Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe that she is in Sodom is sitting for the vast majority of people.” That is, it is characteristic precisely from the point of view of language, the words used by the hero. Beauty is not “found” or “found” in Sodom. And Sodom does not “constitute” beauty. Beauty “sits” in Sodom - that is, it is planted, locked in Sodom as in a prison, as in a dungeon. human views . It is in this secret, communicated by Mitya to Alyosha, that the answer to Dostoevsky’s attraction to the heroine is the saint. harlot. “All contradictions live together.” Beauty, prisoner in Sodom, and cannot appear in any other form.

What is significant here is this: in Dostoevsky the word “Sodom” appears both in the novel “Crime and Punishment” and in the novel “The Idiot” - and in the most characteristic places. Marmeladov says, describing the place of residence of his family: “Sodom, sir, the ugliest... um... yes” (6, 16), exactly preceding the story about Sonya’s transformation into a prostitute. We can say that the beginning of this transformation is the settlement of the family in Sodom.

In the novel "The Idiot" the general repeats: “This is Sodom, Sodom!” (8, 143) - when Nastasya Filippovna, in order to prove to the prince that she is not worth him, for the first time takes money from the person who sells her. But before this exclamation, from the words of Nastasya Filippovna, it is revealed to the general that Aglaya Epanchina is also participating in the auction - although she majestically refuses this at the beginning of the novel, forcing the prince to write in Gana’s album: “I am not entering into the auction.” If they don’t trade with her, then they trade with her - and this is also the beginning of placing her in Sodom: “And you looked at Aglaya Epanchin, Ganechka, did you know this? If you hadn’t bargained with her, she would certainly have married you! That’s how it is, all of you: either dating dishonest or honest women is one choice! Otherwise you will certainly get confused..." (8, 143). On XII At the youth April Dostoevsky readings, one speaker characteristically expressed herself about Nastasya Filippovna: “She is vicious, because Everyone sells it." I think it's because- very accurate.

The woman - the bearer of beauty in Dostoevsky - is scary - and amazing - precisely because of her indefinability. Nastasya Filippovna with the prince, who did not trade her, is “not like that,” but with Rogozhin, who traded her, suspecting her, “exactly like that.” These “this way - not that way” will be the main ones definitions, given in the novel to Nastasya Filippovna - beauty incarnate... and they will depend solely on the gaze of the beholder. Let us notice the complete uncertainty and indefinability of these so-called definitions.

Beauty is defenseless before the beholder in the sense that it is he who shapes its specific manifestation (after all, beauty does not exist without a beholder). The way a man sees a woman is the way she is to him. “A man can insult a prostitute who earns rubles with cynicism,” Dostoevsky was convinced. Svidrigailov is inflamed precisely by the chastity of the innocent Dunya. Fyodor Pavlovich experiences lust when he sees his first last wife, similar to Madonna: ““Those innocent eyes then slashed my soul like a razor,” he used to say later, giggling disgustingly in his own way” (14, 13). This, it turns out, is why the preserved ideal of the Madonna is terrible, when the Sodomite ideal is already triumphant in the soul: the ideal of the Madonna becomes an object of voluptuous desire mostly.

But when Madonna's ideal interferes voluptuous desire - then he becomes the object of direct denial and abuse, and in this sense, the scene retold by Fyodor Pavlovich to Alyosha and Ivan takes on the significance of a huge symbol: “But God, Alyosha, I never offended my little girl! Only once, even in the first year: she prayed a lot then, especially observed the Mother of God holidays and then she drove me away from her to her office. I think, let me knock this mysticism out of her! “You see, I say, you see, here is yours image, here it is, here I will take it ( Let us pay attention - Fyodor Pavlovich speaks as if he is stripping Sophia of her true image at this moment, undresses her from her image... - T.K.). Look, you consider him to be miraculous, but now I’ll spit on him in front of you, and I won’t get anything for it!..” When she saw it, Lord, I think she’ll kill me now, but she just jumped up and clasped her hands , then suddenly covered her face with her hands ( as if trying to obscure the desecrated image - T.K.), the whole thing shook and fell to the floor... and fell like that” (14, 126).

It is characteristic that Fyodor Pavlovich does not consider other insults as insults, although the story of his marriage with his wife Sophia is literally the story of the imprisonment of beauty in Sodom. Moreover, here Dostoevsky shows how external imprisonment becomes internal imprisonment - how from outrage grows a disease that distorts both the body and the spirit of the bearer of beauty. “Without taking any reward, Fyodor Pavlovich did not stand on ceremony with his wife and, taking advantage of the fact that she, so to speak, was “guilty” before him and that he almost “let her off the hook,” taking advantage, in addition, of her phenomenal irresponsibility, even trampled under foot the most ordinary marriage decency. Bad women would come to the house, right there in the presence of his wife, and orgies would take place.<…>Subsequently, the unfortunate young woman, who had been frightened since childhood, developed something like some kind of nervous female disease, most often found among the common people among village women, who are called cliques for this disease. From this illness, with terrible hysterical attacks, the patient at times even lost her mind” (14, 13). The first attack of this disease, as we have seen, occurred precisely during the desecration of the image of the Madonna... Due to what has been described, we will not be able to separate this embodiment of the “ideal of Madonna” in the novel either from the hysterical women perceived as possessed, or from the senseless Lizaveta the Stinking. We will not be able to separate him from Grushenka, the “queen of impudence”, the main “infernal” of the novel, who once cried at night, remembering her offender, a thin, sixteen-year-old...

But if the story of Sophia is the story of the imprisonment of beauty in Sodom, then the story of Grushenka is the story of the removal of beauty from Sodom! The evolution of Mitya Grushenka’s perception and the epithets and definitions he gave her is characteristic. It all starts with the fact that she is a creature, an animal, “a bend in a rogue,” an infernal woman, a tiger, “killing is not enough.” Next is the moment of the trip to Mokroe: dear creature, queen of my soul (and in general names directly related to Madonna). But then something absolutely fantastic appears - “brother Grushenka.”

So, I repeat: beauty lies outside the area from which the division into good and evil begins - in beauty there is still an undivided, integral world. The world before the Fall. It is by manifesting this primordial world that the one who sees true beauty saves the world.

Beauty in Mitya’s statement is as united and omnipotent and indivisible as God, with whom the devil fights, but who Himself does not fight with the devil... God abides, the devil attacks. God creates - the devil tries to take away what was created. But he himself did not create anything, and that means that everything created is good. It can only - like beauty - be planted to Sodom...

A phrase from Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot” - I mean the phrase that is the title phrase for this work - was remembered in a different form, the one that Vladimir Solovyov gave it: “Beauty will save the world.” And this change is somehow very similar to the changes that the philosophers of the turn of the century made with the phrase: “Here the devil is fighting with God.” It was said: “Here the devil fights with GodutXia,” and even “Here God is fighting with the devil.”

Meanwhile, Dostoevsky has a different story: “The world will be saved by beauty.”

Perhaps the easiest way to understand what Dostoevsky wanted to say is to compare these two phrases and realize that how lies their difference.

What does the change of seme and rheme bring to us at the semantic level? In Solovyov's phrase, the salvation of the world is a property inherent in beauty. Beauty is saving- says this phrase.

Dostoevsky's phrase does not say anything like that.

Rather, it says that the world will be saved by beauty as one of its inherent properties of the world. It is not characteristic of beauty to save the world, but it is characteristic of beauty to remain indestructibly in it. And this indestructible presence of beauty in it is the only hope of the world.

That is, beauty is not something victoriously approaching the world with the function of salvation, no, but beauty is something already present in it, and due to this presence of beauty in it, the world will be saved.

Beauty, like God, does not fight, but abides. Salvation for the world will come from the gaze of a person who sees beauty in all things. No longer imprisoned, imprison her in Sodom.

Elder Zosima in the drafts for the novel about such a presence of beauty in the world: “The world is paradise, we have the keys” (15, 245). And he will also say, also in drafts: “All around man is the mystery of God, the great mystery of order and harmony” (15, 246).

The transformative effect of beauty can be described as follows: the realized beauty of a person, as it were, gives an impulse to the personalities around her to reveal themselves in their own beauty (this is what the heroine of the novel “The Idiot” means when she says about Nastasya Filippovna: “Such beauty is strength,<…>With such beauty you can turn the world upside down!” (8, 69)). Harmony (aka: paradise - the perfect state of the world - the beauty of the whole) is both the result and the starting point of this mutual transformation. The realized beauty of a person, according to the meaning in Greek of beauty as validity, there is the acquisition of personality your place. But if at least one finds his place, a chain reaction begins to restore others to their places (because this one who has found his place will become for them an additional pointer and determiner of their place - like in a puzzle - if the place of one piece is found, then everything will be much simpler) - and not symbolically, but really the temple of the transformed world will be rapidly built. This is exactly what Seraphim of Sarov said when he asserted: save yourself, and thousands around you will be saved... This, in fact, is the mechanism for saving the world with beauty. Because - once again - everyone is beautiful in its place. You want to be around such people and want to follow them... And here you can make a mistake, trying to follow their rut, while the only one true path following them - finding your own ruts.

However, you can make even more radical mistakes. An impulse given to those around by a wonderful personality, causing wish beauty, the striving for beauty, can lead (and, alas, so often does) not lead to a reciprocal revelation of beauty in to myself, work beauty from the inside myself- that is - to the transformation of oneself, but to the desire to seize in the spring this already revealed property others, beauty. That is, a desire to harmonize the world and man give one's beauty to the world in this case turns into a selfish desire assign the beauty of the world. This leads to destruction, the destruction of all harmony, to confrontation and struggle. This is the ending of the novel "The Idiot". I want to emphasize once again that the so-called “infernal girls” of Dostoevsky’s works are not guns hell yeah prisoners hell, and in this hell they are imprisoned by those who, instead of their own self-giving in response to the inevitable and inescapable self-giving of beauty (since self-giving, according to Dostoevsky, is the way of the existence of beauty in the world), strive to realize capture beauty into their own property, entering into an inevitable brutal struggle with the same invaders along the way.

Self-disclosure of individuals in their beauty in response to the phenomenon of beauty is the path of abundance, the path of turning a person into a source of grace to the world; the desire to appropriate the beauty revealed to others is the path of poverty, lack, the path of turning a person into a black hole, sucking grace from the universe.

Self-disclosure of personalities in their beauty is, according to Dostoevsky, the ability give everything. In the “Diary of a Writer” for 1877, it is along the fault line between the principles of “giving everything” and “you can’t give everything” that for him the fault line between humanity that is being transformed and humanity that is ossified in its untransformed state will pass.

But much earlier, in “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions,” he wrote: “Understand me: the unauthorized, completely conscious and unforced self-sacrifice of oneself for the benefit of everyone is, in my opinion, a sign of the highest development of the individual, his highest power, the highest self-control highest freedom own will. Voluntarily laying down your belly for everyone, going to the cross, to the fire for everyone, can only be done with the strongest personal development. A highly developed personality, completely confident in his right to be a person, no longer having any fear for himself, cannot make anything else out of his personality, that is, no more use than to give it all to everyone, so that others will all be just as self-righteous and happy individuals. This is the law of nature; A normal person is drawn to this” (5, 79).

The principle of building harmony, restoring paradise for Dostoevsky is not to renounce something with the aim of fit in in EVERYTHING, and not to preserve your everything, insisting on complete acceptance of yourself, but to give everything without conditions- and then EVERYTHING will return its personality All, which includes the given for the first time, blossoming in true fullness All personality.

This is how Dostoevsky describes the process of realizing the harmony of nations: “We will be the first to announce to the world that we do not want to achieve our own prosperity through the suppression of individuals of nationalities foreign to us, but, on the contrary, we see it only in the freest and most independent development of all other nations and in fraternal unity with them , replenishing one another, grafting into themselves their organic characteristics and giving them and from themselves branches for grafting, communicating with them in soul and spirit, learning from them and teaching them, and so on until humanity, having been replenished by the world communication of peoples to the universal unity, like a great and magnificent tree, will overshadow the happy earth" (25, 100).

I would like to draw your attention: this apparently poetic description is actually very technologically advanced. Here, the process of gathering the body of Christ (“wholly entered into humanity,” according to Dostoevsky) from its disparate and often opposing aspects - individuals and peoples - is described in detail and technically accurately. I suspect, however, that these are all truly poetic descriptions.

A person who has realized his beauty by being surrounded by failed those who have not yet become beautiful individuals find themselves crucified on the cross of their imperfections; freely crucified in the impulse of self-giving of beauty. But - at the same time - she finds herself as if locked in a cage by their impenetrable boundaries, limited in her own self-giving (she gives - but they cannot accept), which makes the suffering of the cross unbearable.

Thus, to a first approximation, we can say that Dostoevsky depicts to us a single process of transformation of the world, consisting of two interdependent steps, repeated many times in this process, capturing more and more new levels of the universe: the realized beauty of the members making up the community makes harmony possible, the realized harmony of the whole releases beauty...

“Beauty will save the world” (according to F. Dostoevsky)

Many great people claimed that beauty would save the world. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was also sure of this. Beauty, first of all, is expressed in two senses: beauty human face and a wonderful inner world. This great phrase Today it is used quite often and is even the slogan of a beauty contest. But I am sure that Fyodor Mikhailovich put a completely different meaning into it.

Today, beauty plays a huge role in life for many people. IN Lately, people are completely uninterested in the inner world. When meeting a person, everyone pays attention only to appearance, but, as we know, appearances can often be deceiving. Dostoevsky urged us to pay special attention to depth human soul. This is shown in many of his works. A striking example is the novel Crime and Punishment, where one of the heroines completely changes the main character with her deep inner world. Sonechka Marmeladova is the name of this very girl who changes the callous soul of Raskolnikov, the main character. Sonya Marmeladova, a girl who steps over herself for the sake of the lives of her loved ones. The heroine was forced to earn money in a dysfunctional way. She tried to change the fortunes of her family, while practically not leaving a penny for herself. Rodion Raskolnikov sees Sonya as a loved one and loved one. It is to her that he confesses to committing the murder. Rodion trusts her from the first minutes of their acquaintance, and all because Sonya is also an outcast in society. Sonya Marmeladova changes the worldview of Rodion Raskolnikov. She went with him to hard labor only to support Rodion in difficult times. Raskolnikova needed her glance to feel better. Listening to Sonechka's stories, Rodion begins to change. He takes the Gospel and begins to believe in the existence of God. His soul is cleansed of all actions, he begins to look at the world differently. Rodion becomes truly happy.

In the work “The Idiot,” Dostoevsky wanted to portray a “positively beautiful person,” which is why he created the image of Myshkin, calling him “Prince Christ.” Myshkin acts as “Prince Christ” because he lives completely and entirely for other people. His motto:“Love your neighbor!”, this very phrase was the main commandment of Jesus Christ. Prince Myshkin himself is overwhelmed by a passion for the sympathy of people, for supporting a depressed person. In the novel “The Idiot,” no one understood Myshkin. Everyone considered him “out of this world.” And the fault was his kindness and simplicity. Problems in love bring great suffering to Myshkin, but he suffers not because his desires are not satisfied, but because he becomes the cause of unhappiness for the women he loves. I believe that Dostoevsky created the same image of a “positively beautiful person.” In my opinion, Prince Myshkin is such. His soul is truly beautiful, he is capable of performing human actions, despite the difficult end of this work, where Myshkin’s spiritual beauty perishes, because he destroyed Nastasya Filippovna with his love. But this is precisely what gives rise to Dostoevsky’s entire plan in people; we understand that spiritual beauty cannot live in such a harsh world. dostoevsky beauty hero

The beauty of a person is expressed in the depths of his soul, Fyodor Mikhailovich wanted to convey this in his famous works. He said that beauty will save the world. I completely agree with him, because only deeply soulful people can change our world for the better.

Fedor Dostoevsky. Engraving by Vladimir Favorsky. 1929 State Tretyakov Gallery / DIOMEDIA

"Beauty will save the world"

“Is it true, Prince [Myshkin], that you once said that the world will be saved by the “beauty”? “Gentlemen,” he [Hippolytus] shouted loudly to everyone, “the prince claims that the world will be saved by beauty!” And I claim that the reason he has such playful thoughts is that he is now in love. Gentlemen, the prince is in love; Just now, as soon as he came in, I was convinced of this. Don’t blush, prince, I’ll feel sorry for you. What beauty will save the world? Kolya told me this again... Are you a zealous Christian? Kolya says, you call yourself a Christian.
The prince looked at him carefully and did not answer him.”

"The Idiot" (1868)

The phrase about beauty that will save the world is pronounced by minor character- consumptive young man Hippolyte. He asks if Prince Myshkin really said that, and, having received no answer, begins to develop this thesis. But the main character of the novel does not talk about beauty in such formulations and only once asks about Nastasya Filippovna whether she is kind: “Oh, if only she were kind! Everything would be saved!”

In the context of “The Idiot,” it is customary to talk primarily about the power of inner beauty - this is exactly how the writer himself suggested interpreting this phrase. While working on the novel, he wrote to the poet and censor Apollo Maikov that he set himself the goal of creating perfect image“an absolutely wonderful person,” meaning Prince Myshkin. At the same time, in the drafts of the novel there is the following entry: “The world will be saved by beauty. Two examples of beauty,” after which the author talks about the beauty of Nastasya Filippovna. For Dostoevsky, therefore, it is important to evaluate the saving power of both the inner, spiritual beauty of a person and his appearance. In the plot of “The Idiot,” however, we find a negative answer: the beauty of Nastasya Filippovna, like the purity of Prince Myshkin, does not make the lives of other characters better and does not prevent tragedy.

Later, in the novel The Brothers Karamazov, the characters again talk about the power of beauty. Brother Mitya no longer doubts its saving power: he knows and feels that beauty can make the world a better place. But in his understanding, it also has destructive power. And the hero will suffer because he does not understand where exactly the border between good and evil lies.

“Am I a trembling creature or do I have the right”

“And it wasn’t the money that was most important to me, Sonya, when I killed; It wasn’t so much the money that was needed, but something else... I know all this now... Understand me: maybe, walking the same road, I would never repeat the murder again. I needed to know something else, something else was pushing me under my arms: I needed to find out then, and find out quickly, whether I was a louse like everyone else, or a human being? Will I be able to cross or not! Do I dare to bend down and take it or not? Am I a trembling creature or right I have..."

"Crime and Punishment" (1866)

Raskolnikov first talks about the “trembling creature” after meeting with a tradesman who calls him a “murderer.” The hero gets scared and plunges into reasoning about how some “Napoleon” would react in his place - a representative of the highest human “class” who can calmly commit a crime for the sake of his goal or whim: “Right, right” pro-rock,” when he places a good-sized battery somewhere across the street and blows on the right and the wrong, without even deigning to explain himself! Obey, trembling creature, and don’t desire, because it’s none of your business!..” Raskolnikov most likely borrowed this image from Pushkin’s poem “Imitations of the Koran,” where the 93rd sura is freely stated:

Take courage, despise deception,
Follow the path of righteousness cheerfully,
Love the orphans and my Koran
Preach to a trembling creature.

In the original text of the sura, the recipients of the sermon should not be “creatures,” but people who should be told about the benefits that Allah can bestow  “Therefore, do not oppress the orphan! And don’t drive away the one who asks! And proclaim the mercy of your Lord" (Quran 93:9-11).. Raskolnikov consciously mixes the image from “Imitations of the Koran” and episodes from the biography of Napoleon. Of course, it was not the prophet Mohammed, but the French commander who placed “a good battery across the street.” This is how he suppressed the royalist uprising in 1795. For Raskolnikov, they are both great people, and each of them, in his opinion, had the right to achieve their goals by any means. Everything that Napoleon did could be implemented by Mohammed and any other representative of the highest “rank”.

The last mention of the “trembling creature” in “Crime and Punishment” is Raskolnikov’s same damned question “Am I a trembling creature or do I have the right...”. He utters this phrase at the end of a long explanation with Sonya Marmeladova, finally not justifying himself with noble impulses and difficult circumstances, but directly declaring that he killed for himself in order to understand what “category” he belongs to. Thus ends his last monologue; after hundreds and thousands of words, he finally got to the point. The significance of this phrase is given not only by the biting formulation, but also by what happens next to the hero. After this, Raskolnikov no longer makes long speeches: Dostoevsky leaves him only short remarks. Readers will learn about Raskolnikov’s internal experiences, which will ultimately lead him with a confession to Sennaya Square and to the police station, from the author’s explanations. The hero himself will not tell you anything more - after all, he has already asked the main question.

“Should the world fail, or should I not drink tea?”

“...In fact, I need, you know what: for you to fail, that’s what! I need peace of mind. Yes, I’m in favor of not being bothered, I’ll sell the whole world right now for a penny. Should the light fail, or should I not drink tea? I will say that the world is gone, but that I always drink tea. Did you know this or not? Well, I know that I’m a scoundrel, a scoundrel, a selfish person, a lazy person.”

"Notes from Underground" (1864)

This is part of the monologue of the nameless hero of Notes from Underground, which he pronounces in front of a prostitute who unexpectedly came to his home. The phrase about tea sounds like evidence of the insignificance and selfishness of the underground man. These words have an interesting historical context. Tea as a measure of wealth first appears in Dostoevsky’s “Poor People.” This is how the hero of the novel, Makar Devushkin, talks about his financial situation:

“And my apartment costs me seven rubles in banknotes, and a table of five rubles: that’s twenty-four and a half, and before I paid exactly thirty, but I denied myself a lot; I didn’t always drink tea, but now I’ve saved money on tea and sugar. You know, my dear, it’s somehow a shame not to drink tea; The people here are all well-to-do, it’s a shame.”

Dostoevsky himself experienced similar experiences in his youth. In 1839, he wrote from St. Petersburg to his father in the village:

"What; Without drinking tea, you won't die of hunger! I'll live somehow!<…>The camp life of every student of a military educational institution requires at least 40 rubles. money.<…>In this amount I do not include such requirements as, for example: having tea, sugar, etc. This is already necessary, and it is necessary not out of decency alone, but out of necessity. When you get wet in damp weather in the rain in a canvas tent, or in such weather, coming home from training tired, chilled, without tea you can get sick; what happened to me last year on a hike. But still, respecting your need, I will not drink tea.”

Tea in Tsarist Russia was a really expensive product. It was transported directly from China along the only land route, and this journey took about a year. Due to transportation costs, as well as huge duties, tea in Central Russia was several times more expensive than in Europe. According to the Gazette of the St. Petersburg City Police, in 1845, in the store of Chinese teas of the merchant Piskarev, prices per pound (0.45 kilograms) of the product ranged from 5 to 6.5 rubles in banknotes, and the cost of green tea reached 50 rubles. At the same time, you could buy a pound of first-class beef for 6-7 rubles. In 1850, Otechestvennye Zapiski wrote that the annual consumption of tea in Russia was 8 million pounds - however, it is impossible to calculate how much per person, since this product was popular mainly in cities and among upper class people.

“If there is no God, then everything is permitted”

“... He ended with the statement that for every private person, for example, like us now, who does not believe in either God or his own immortality, the moral law of nature must immediately change in complete contrast to the previous, religious one, and that selfishness is even evil ---actions should not only be allowed to a person, but even considered necessary, the most reasonable and almost the noblest outcome in his position.”

"The Brothers Karamazov" (1880)

The most important words in Dostoevsky are usually not spoken by the main characters. Thus, Porfiry Petrovich is the first to speak about the theory of the division of humanity into two categories in “Crime and Punishment”, and only then Raskol-nikov; The question of the saving power of beauty in “The Idiot” is asked by Hippolytus, and the Karamazovs’ relative Pyotr Aleksandrovich Miusov notes that God and the salvation he promised are the only guarantor of people’s observance of moral laws. At the same time, Miusov refers to his brother Ivan, and only then other characters discuss this provocative theory, discussing whether Karamazov could have invented it. Brother Mitya thinks she’s interesting, seminarian Rakitin thinks she’s vile, and meek Alyosha thinks she’s false. But no one utters the phrase “If there is no God, then everything is permitted” in the novel. This “quote” will later be constructed from various replicas literary critics and readers.

Five years before the publication of The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky was already trying to fantasize about what humanity would do without God. The hero of the novel “The Teenager” (1875), Andrei Petrovich Versilov, argued that clear evidence of the absence of a higher power and the impossibility of immortality, on the contrary, will make people love and appreciate each other more, because there is no one else to love. This unnoticed remark in the next novel grows into a theory, and that, in turn, into a test in practice. Tormented by God-fighting ideas, brother Ivan compromises moral laws and allows the murder of his father. Unable to bear the consequences, he practically goes crazy. Having allowed himself everything, Ivan does not stop believing in God - his theory does not work, because he could not prove it even to himself.

“Masha is lying on the table. Will I see Masha?

I love to beat a person as yourself according to the commandment of Christ, it is impossible. The law of personality on earth binds. I hinders. Christ alone could, but Christ was an eternal ideal from time to time, to which man strives and, according to the law of nature, must strive.”

From a Notebook (1864)

Masha, or Maria Dmitrievna, whose maiden name was Konstant, and by her first husband Isaev, was Dostoevsky’s first wife. They married in 1857 in the Siberian city of Kuznetsk and then moved to central Russia. On April 15, 1864, Maria Dmitrievna died of consumption. In recent years, the couple lived separately and communicated little. Maria Dmitrievna is in Vladimir, and Fyodor Mikhailovich is in St. Petersburg. He was absorbed in publishing magazines, where, among other things, he published texts by his mistress, the aspiring writer Apollinaria Suslova. The illness and death of his wife hit him hard. A few hours after her death, Dostoevsky recorded in a notebook his thoughts about love, marriage and the goals of human development. Briefly, their essence is as follows. The ideal to strive for is Christ, the only one who was able to sacrifice himself for the sake of others. Man is selfish and incapable of loving his neighbor as himself. And yet, heaven on earth is possible: with proper spiritual work, each new generation will be better than the previous one. Having reached the highest stage of development, people will refuse marriages, because they contradict the ideal of Christ. A family union is the selfish isolation of a couple, and in a world where people are ready to give up their personal interests for the sake of others, this is unnecessary and impossible. And besides, since the ideal state of humanity will be achieved only at the last stage of development, it will be possible to stop reproducing.

“Masha is lying on the table...” is an intimate diary entry, not a thoughtful writer’s manifesto. But it is in this text that ideas are outlined that Dostoevsky will later develop in his novels. A person’s selfish attachment to his “I” will be reflected in Raskolnikov’s individualistic theory, and the unattainability of the ideal will be reflected in Prince Myshkin, who was called “Prince Christ” in the drafts, as an example of self-sacrifice and humility.

“Constantinople – sooner or later, it must be ours”

“Pre-Petrine Russia was active and strong, although it was slowly taking shape politically; it had developed unity for itself and was preparing to consolidate its outskirts; She understood within herself that she carried within herself a treasure that does not exist anywhere else - Orthodoxy, that she is the keeper of Christ's truth, but already the true truth, the real image of Christ, obscured in all other faiths and in all other people.<…>And this unity is not for capture, not for violence, not for the destruction of Slavic individuals in front of the Russian colossus, but in order to recreate them and put them in the proper relationship to Europe and to humanity, to finally give them the opportunity to calm down and rest -well after their countless centuries of suffering...<…>Of course, and for the same purpose, Constantinople - sooner or later, should be ours ... "

"A Writer's Diary" (June 1876)

In 1875-1876, the Russian and foreign press were flooded with ideas about the capture of Constantinople. At this time, on the territory of Porta  Ottoman Porte, or Porta,- another name for the Ottoman Empire. One after another, uprisings of the Slavic peoples broke out, which the Turkish authorities brutally suppressed. Things were heading towards war. Everyone expected that Russia would come out in defense of the Balkan states: they predicted victory for her, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. And, of course, everyone was worried about the question of who would get the ancient Byzantine capital in this case. Discussed different variants: that Constantinople will become an international city, that it will be occupied by the Greeks, or that it will be part of Russian Empire. The latter option did not suit Europe at all, but it was very popular with Russian conservatives, who saw this primarily as a political benefit.

Dostoevsky was also concerned about these questions. Having entered into controversy, he immediately accused all participants in the dispute of being wrong. In the “Diary of a Writer” from the summer of 1876 to the spring of 1877, he continually returned to the Eastern Question. Unlike the conservatives, he believed that Russia sincerely wants to protect fellow believers, free them from Muslim oppression, and therefore, as an Orthodox power, has the exclusive right to Constantinople. “We, Russia, are truly necessary and inevitable for all of Eastern Christianity, and for the entire fate of the future Orthodoxy on earth, for its unity,” writes Dostoevsky in his “Diary” for March 1877. The writer was convinced of the special Christian mission of Russia. Even earlier, he developed this idea in “The Possessed.” One of the heroes of this novel, Shatov, was convinced that the Russian people are a God-bearing people. The famous one, published in the “Diary of a Writer” in 1880, will be devoted to the same idea.

3. Beauty will save the world

Life had become unbearable, but it was necessary to live, and not only to live, but also to finish the novel he had begun, although the very thought of this now seemed blasphemous to him: what did all his words mean in the face of the death of only one small creature infinitely dear to him?

It is said: “God hid from the wise and prudent what He revealed to babes.” His prince Myshkin, the earthly “Christ”, will also think about this (“prince” - “Christ” - Dostoevsky reminds himself again and again in his notes to the novel). No, in the novel itself he will never call him that, but he will let his hero blurt out more than once about his awareness of his mission. “Now I’m going to people,” the prince will think, almost literally repeating many of the sayings of the religious teacher. But to an even greater extent Dostoevsky would give him his own most cherished beliefs and, of course, about children in the first place: now he constantly thought about them and was convinced: through children the soul is healed - after all, children (his Raskolnikov already knew about this) - image of Christ: “This is the kingdom of God. He ordered them to be honored and loved, they are the future of humanity...” But can children remain children in a world of evil, despair, injustice? Perhaps he will make his Myshkin an adult child who has retained his childish innocence of perceiving the world.

But the novel required not only general, albeit passionately experienced ideas - it needed living facts of reality, everyday life, and he felt himself cut off from his native soil. “Like a fish without water,” that’s what he wrote to Maikov. The only support is newspapers and also the life of Russia that has been buried in memory and his own life, of course. No, as always, he remained alien to the idea of ​​writing a hero from himself, but Myshkin, as he had foreseen him, was still very close to him in spirit, and therefore much of what he had experienced, felt, re-seen, seemed to him, would not turn out to be alien to Prince Myshkin.

Arriving in Russia, the hero ends up in the house of General Epanchin, becomes spiritually close to his wife Elizaveta Prokofievna and their three daughters, especially with Aglaya, who, in the course of working on the novel, increasingly absorbed the features of Anyuta, Anna Korvin-Krukovskaya, just like Elizaveta Prokofyevna - features of Anyuta's mother - General Elizaveta Fedorovna. Gradually, in Myshkin’s stories, in his gestures, in his manner of speaking, holding himself, and finally, in the very content of his conversations with the wife and daughters of General Epanchin, Dostoevsky’s own impressions of his stay in the Korvin-Krukovsky family were definitely heard. Prince Myshkin himself, however, cannot tell, as Dostoevsky once did, about the experience of a death sentence, but Lev Nikolaevich is familiar with “one person” who stood on the scaffold and therefore can experience the same state according to the law of compassion. He even decided to give his illness, epilepsy, to the hero - and not at all for the sake of external resemblance to himself and not in order to highlight the painful peculiarity of the prince, which distinguishes him from the “normal” people around him. No, in his illness itself, Dostoevsky saw not pathology, but something even symbolic: the state of his personality seemed to concentrate in itself, as in a nerve node, the state of the whole world.

Yes, the whole world now seems to be in a fit, in convulsions terrible disease, but this disease itself sharpens consciousness, concentrates it on resistance to the state of decline, the absence of beauty increases humanity’s need for it tenfold, the dominance of ugliness ultimately gives rise to a thirst for the reconstruction of the world on new principles, giving it a new, more worthy of a man image.

So it is in his personal illness: “... in the midst of sadness, spiritual darkness, pressure, for moments his brain seemed to ignite, and with an extraordinary impulse all his vital forces were strained at once. The feeling of life and self-awareness almost increased tenfold in these moments... The mind and heart were illuminated with an extraordinary light; all his worries, all his doubts, worries seemed to be pacified at once, resolved into some kind of supreme calm, full of clear, harmonious joy and hope, full of reason and final reason...”

“Yes, you can give your whole life for this moment,” Prince Myshkin also thinks, because from experience he knows: such moments, at the cost of subsequent torment, still at the same time give “an unheard of and hitherto unknown feeling of completeness, measure, reconciliation and enthusiastic prayer.” merging with the highest synthesis of life."

Catastrophic eras - Dostoevsky constantly carried this feeling within himself - the eras of Cleopatra and Nero, the times of permissiveness and the collapse of the moral foundations of society, these same eras became the times of prophets and ascetics, martyrs of a new enlightening idea - these are the ideologists of the apocalyptic 19th century and his hero of spirit, Prince Myshkin, appeared in the most fantastic city, Petersburg, to announce to people the truth that had been revealed to him: “By beauty the world will be saved.”

And word began to spread about him - didn’t Dostoevsky himself happen to hear the same kind of opinions about himself - an eccentric, a holy fool, a fool, a fool, an idiot... Well, how could he not be an idiot? “Beauty will save the world!”

And now the prince sees Nastasya Filippovna for the first time.

“Nastasya Filippovna,” Dostoevsky enters into notebook the idea of ​​the image that is to unfold in the novel is beauty and disorder...” This is also beauty that has suffered in a loveless and unsympathetic world, touched by corruption, ready to “lick the blood.”

Having finished dictating the next chapter, Fyodor Mikhailovich immediately sat down to develop plans for the next parts. Anna Grigorievna copied the completed ones. and they hurried to the post office - they sent the novel to Russian Messenger, where it had already begun to be published. Dostoevsky eagerly awaited the first responses. In the evenings we walked by Lake Geneva, Fyodor Mikhailovich’s teeth were hurting like never before, and he seriously convinced his wife: why are you laughing, I myself read about this in a very learned book - Lake Geneva has the property of causing toothache. Anna Grigorievna guessed: her husband was tired of Switzerland, he needed a change of scenery.

In September they moved to Milan and in November to Florence.

They worked without rest: according to the terms of the magazine, the novel had to be completed by the end of 1968.

And how can beauty not rush about if spirit and flesh are torn apart as if for some terrible universal ritual, unprecedented in scope?

He already clearly saw the outcome: Myshkina, the poor knight, Don Quixote of the 19th century, Nastasya Filippovna, could not be saved, and he, like the dreamer from the old, almost youthful “Mistress,” would not be given this. Neither the spirit of the almost incorporeal Myshkin, nor the dark Rogozhinsky passion can give itself entirely, without splitting, without perishing, the beauty of this world, embodied for both in such a fatally opposite way in this woman. And another decaying corpse will look at them with its indifferent glassy eye - from a copy of Hans Holbein the Younger... But this will not happen soon, and yet it will be, it will be, - he dreamed, with this passionate dream he completed the novel, - although man still has many temptations and sufferings to endure, his eyelids will be opened, and he will finally see the true face of this world, for man becomes glassy under the glassy gaze of a dead man, a false ideal.

But how else will the romance be met? Will they understand the idea and accept it? Will the novel be considered too fantastic? Apollo Nikolaevich wrote back in March: “There is an awful lot of power, brilliant lightning, but in all the action there is more possibility and plausibility than truth. Everyone seems to live in fantasy world. I read it voraciously, and at the same time I can’t believe it. But how much power!..” Strakhov also responded, even writing with delight about the beautiful idea of ​​the novel - the wisdom revealed to the infant soul of Prince Myshkin, inaccessible to the “wise and reasonable”; he threatened to write an article about “The Idiot”, but, it seems, with he was in no hurry to fulfill the promise, and then seemed to completely forget about it. Although not directly, indirectly - as he knew how to do - he still spoke about the novel publicly, in an article about “War and Peace”: Tolstoy’s epic was contrasted here with works with intricate plots, with descriptions of dirty and terrible scenes, terrible mental anguish.

Burenin in the St. Petersburg Gazette reduced all criticism to feuilleton. Calling the novel “the most unsuccessful” of all that Dostoevsky wrote, he concluded: the heroes of “The Idiot” “are the purest fruits of the novelist’s subjective fantasy... of course, one can only regret the unhappy mood of this fantasy.”

However, most newspapers testified to the enormous success of the new novel among readers, and this is the main thing that truly pleased Dostoevsky. Not at all inclined to exaggerate what he had done, he himself was deeply worried that “he had not expressed even a 10th part of what ... he wanted to express,” as he wrote to Sofya Ivanova. But he also resolutely rebelled against attempts, even if quite friendly, to turn him away from the path along which - he was convinced of this - he was destined from above by his very fate:

“Ah, my friend! - he responds to Maykov’s reproaches. - I have completely different concepts about reality and realism than our realists and critics. My idealism is more real than theirs. God! To explain sensibly what all of us, Russians, have experienced in the last 10 years in our spiritual development, - but won’t the realists shout that this is a fantasy! Meanwhile, this is original, true realism! This is realism, only deeper, but they float shallowly... Their realism cannot explain a hundredth part of real, really happened facts. And we even prophesied facts with our idealism. It happened..."

And to Strakhov: “I have my own special view of reality (in art), and what most people call almost fantastic... for me sometimes constitutes the very essence of reality. The ordinariness of phenomena and the official view of them, in my opinion, is not yet realism, but even the opposite. In every issue of newspapers you come across a report on the most real facts and the most sophisticated ones. For our writers they are fantastic; Yes, they don’t do them; and yet they are reality, because they are data. Who will notice them and explain them?.. Is my fantastic Idiot not reality, and even the most ordinary one! Yes, it is now that there should be such characters... I am not for the novel, but I stand for my idea. Write, write to me your opinion, and as frankly as possible. The more you curse, the more I will appreciate your sincerity...”

“I stand for my idea...” But is it really possible to express it all in one novel? - While I was writing “The Idiot”, a new idea formed in my head: a parable poem “Atheism” in the form of a novel - maybe it will be possible to express it here the idea is complete, but for this you need to be in Russia, certainly see and hear Russian life; participate more directly. No, this will not be an denunciation of morals. Here the entire spiritual history of mankind must fit into the poem, the entire essence of medieval civilization in its main key moments, and Russia as the outcome: to reveal a new, unknown to the world, Russian Christ - this is the calling, this is the purpose of the poem. Oh, how great national books are needed now that can serve for the revival of the Russian people! “In my literary work,” he admitted in a letter to his niece Sonechka, “there is one solemn side for me, my goal and hope - and not in achieving fame and money, but in achieving the synthesis of my artistic and poetic ideas, that is, in wanting to say something completely before I die. Here I cannot do this and therefore I have to write something else. All this makes my life abroad more and more restless... I need Russia; Without Russia I will lose my last strength and talent. I can feel it". If “The Idiot” had dispersed in order to pay off the most enslaving debts, he would not have stayed here a day or an hour. Although they lived well in Florence. Amazing city- it seems he never sleeps: until four in the morning, all night long, he sings and dances, and by five his market hubbub begins. The painfully nervous Fyodor Mikhailovich was now concerned, however, not with his own peace and not even with the almost complete unsuitability of such conditions for work - Anna Grigorievna slept poorly amid the screams, and she was pregnant again, now in her eighth month. Somehow it will all work out this time...

They lived peacefully, their owners hardly bothered them, but one day - what a commotion suddenly arose! Both maids, led by the mistress herself, suddenly burst into their bedroom screaming and began to push back chairs, look under the table, under the bed - it turned out that a Piccola bestia - a poisonous spider, a tarantula - had run into the room (they had just seen it with their own eyes). They looked in the bed, in the linen closet - to no avail.

Just the thought that somewhere here, next to you, maybe very close, invisible to you, but seeing you, this little disgusting creature is spending the night, caused a feeling of disgust, and indeed - your life, the life of your loved one a person, the fate of a creature not yet born, just preparing for life, now depends on the instincts or even the whims of a small but poisonous reptile that defy the logic of human consciousness.

Meanwhile, Anna Grigorievna’s homeland was approaching, and it was necessary to think about moving to a new place, where they could freely communicate in German or French, since neither Fyodor Mikhailovich nor Anna Grigorievna spoke Italian. Dostoevsky liked the idea of ​​Prague.

After a ten-day journey, we finally reached a city that seemed to have emerged from a children's fairy tale about princesses and wonderful castles - Prague. Alas, furnished rooms were rented here only to single people, while family people had to rent apartments, which still needed to be furnished, they would have to acquire a whole household, linen, dishes - you never know what would be needed, especially taking into account the imminent appearance of the baby, and from where get funds for all this? So, sad as it may be, I had to give up dreams of Prague, the possibility of rapprochement with the leaders of the Slavic revival movement, and go to the former places they had already inhabited - to Dresden.

Here, on September 14, 1869, their second daughter was born - they named her Lyubov. “...Everything turned out well,” Fyodor Mikhailovich wrote to Maikov, “and the child is big, healthy and beautiful.” The beauty, however, was only three days old, but her father experiences the event enthusiastically, even a confirmed bachelor Strakhova reproaches: “Oh, why aren’t you married, and why don’t you have a child, dear Nikolai Nikolaevich? I swear to you that this is three-quarters of life’s happiness, but the rest is only one quarter.” The hassle, of course, increased, but many of them brought the main joy: to bathe, to lull in the arms of your little creature, your own child; Anna Grigorievna saw that she had finally given her husband real happiness again.

Russian and especially German newspapers carried alarming news from Russia: rumors were vaguely conveyed about a revolution supposedly brewing in the depths of society, about a revolution covered in a network secret societies a country preparing for an explosion, about the ferment of minds, the vacillation of moral foundations. In mid-October, Anna Grigorievna’s brother, a student at the Moscow Agricultural Academy, who came to Dresden for vacation, confirmed many of the rumors, at least concerning the student environment. The more decisive was the need to return to Russia - to see everything with my own eyes, you won’t get far on rumors. And then I finally finished reading “War and Peace” - I was extremely excited: I myself was thinking about a poem in the form of a novel, and here it was, already created, and brilliantly. I felt in Tolstoy the only one, perhaps, modern literature a worthy rival. And yet, Tolstoy’s epic recreates a life that has passed away - now a completely different life. Who would dare to write a poem about the present and in forms that correspond to the laws and spirit of the new reality? No, this is not a heroic past, this is modern chaos; It is necessary to recreate the unsettled, harmonized forms of the past and contrast them with the chaos of the present, but in this very chaos and decomposition, to discern the germs of a new creation - this is what is most important for the artist now. Will there be enough strength and talent for this?.. Maybe “Atheism” will solve such a problem? The more he thought about the new, haunting idea, the more convinced he was that it was unrealistic, and not quite his: the idea of ​​“Atheism,” as he thought, required more of a historical epic, and he always felt history was not so much lasting as collected in a tight the knot of modernity: here is the whole past, here is the future, like bread in the grain, like an oak in the acorn - eternity is concentrated in every moment, you just need to guess, see it. Now he saw the idea of ​​“Atheism” somewhat differently: to present the entire history of mankind as the history of man, the history of his spiritual struggles, quests, falls, abysses, unbelief, denials and the rebirth of the human soul. All his life he will be tormented by the main question, the main mystery of existence - the question that tormented Dostoevsky himself: is there a God or not? Hence the answers to all other questions - about the meaning of life, and about the purpose of man on earth, and about all values, and about the nature of conscience... He will guide the hero from birth, from angelic innocence, primordial infantile harmony inner world to the first temptations of the heart, consciousness and body, through passions, all forms of temptations of life, through depravity, finally, through monstrous deviations of consciousness, bookish dreams and arrogance, reaching the point of contempt and disgust towards other people, through the idea - the passion of dominion, immeasurable and unquestioning over people, over all humanity and the world. His hero will be possessed by a demonic passion - to become the greatest and foremost of all people, by any means - exorbitant pride, accumulation of wealth: he will meet the Usurer, the Eternal Usurer, who will become his ideal, his god.

Yes, a lot can be achieved with the power of money, but he will go further, through inquisitorial self-affirmation - he will want to replace God himself, he will become an atheist fanatic in the name of establishing a new religion of self-deification. Oh, this will be a great sinner...

The poem was now conceived in the form of a “Life”, most corresponding to the new plan. But life is eternal life, great life, righteous life, which has become an ideal, sanctified by the recognition of contemporaries and descendants - a holy life. “The Life of a Great Sinner”37 - this is how the internal idea of ​​the plan was now determined, and this is how I decided to call the future epic. Life required the transfiguration of the sinner, his spiritual victory over sin, over himself, as if a second birth.

He will be a passionate person, and therefore restless, without solid spiritual support: without faith a person cannot, what can he believe in? In money? He needs a moral, solid point of support, and if “there is no God,” then he needs to be invented - hence, perhaps, he will go into Khlystyism - this is also a form of nihilism, Jesuitism, even worse: everyone has the right to declare himself Christ or Sabaoth, and one of your guardians - the Khlyst Mother of God - here you have “I am God myself,” and not only for myself, but everyone is obliged to honor you as God. This is where the philosophy of modern positivism of Mr. Comte, this unique atheistic religion for the masses, comes in handy for him; for themselves - a religion of self-deification, for humanity - positivism: the masses are obliged to live according to this philosophical program, the main thing is not to have more knowledge than what they need for their own good, so as not to reason too much. From the very cradle, a person must systematically turn into an automaton who will not only act, but even feel and think exclusively as required by the new gods of a society organized according to Comte’s system - then humanity will finally become happy and forever... It seems that this is how Pisarev characterized this the newest idea social reorganization, noting that not a single theorist of despotism in the whole world had ever risen to such a level... Dostoevsky remembered the articles of a young critic who polemicized with the author of a new project to make humanity happy.

Yes, it will not be easy for the hero to overcome all these temptations within himself. Here a meeting is needed, a meeting with true holiness, or rather, with a holy man, well, at least with the same Tikhon of Zadonsky, who since he lived in the last century, it will even be possible to gather Chaadaev and Belinsky, Granovsky, Pushkin to him - let they will talk among themselves, argue - there will be something to talk about... The main thing is that it must be majestic, positive a figure - the antithesis of the Moneylender, the Khlyst Host of Hosts, such that he has the right and power to say: “Conquer yourself and then you will conquer the world.” This is difficult, because the temptations are great for a lost soul that has lost its point of support in the world, but overcome and you will feel the universal joy of life within yourself...

Yes, here, perhaps, one novel will not do, here is a plan for a lifetime. If there is still enough life, then...

Looking up from the notes and coping - how is Lyubochka? - Fyodor Mikhailovich, out of habit, ran to the cafe to read the newspapers. One of the Moscow correspondence particularly interested him:

“In Razumovsky, at the Peter and Paul Academy, student Ivanov was found murdered. The details of the crime are horrifying. His legs are entangled in a cap in which bricks are placed... He was a fellow at the Academy; the largest part I gave money to my mother and sister.” Gradually, more sinister details of the mysterious murder began to emerge: student Sergei Nechaev, according to the plan of Bakunin, with whom he met in Geneva, organized a terrorist group in Moscow - the “Committee of People's Retribution” (the ax was chosen as the emblem). The purpose of the committee is to prepare a nationwide indignation, a political revolution, and the transformation of the Russian Empire into a union of small free communities. Dostoevsky remembered Bakunin's speech with this program at a meeting of the Peace League in 1968. One of the committee members, student Ivanov, who did not fully accept the Bakunin-Nechaev program, decided to openly argue with Nechaev, for which he was secretly sentenced “to elimination”: he was lured to a park, brutally killed, and his body thrown into an ice hole in a frozen pond.

German newspapers these days also wrote a lot about the “nihilistic revolution” in Russia and its Geneva leader, Mikhail Bakunin.

And these are the socialists? revolutionaries?38 - axe, blood, turmoil... Renew the world with an axe? It’s a good idea: they hope to rouse the masses, but they don’t care about the people, precisely the people, their needs and hopes. These gentlemen will stop at nothing: here is nihilism, a fantastic idea of ​​universal negation, all-destruction, and the revolution is not unrest, not negation, but renewal, revival, here it is not an ax, but an idea that resurrects the world, so that for it - not under pain of reprisal , and humanity went with a free heart. No, nihilism does not bring renewal to humanity, but even greater darkness - here is demonism, not socialism.

Dostoevsky realized that Nechaev’s work gave him a living, concrete plot born from reality itself, in which the general ideas of his “Life” could be implemented. He writes down in his notebook the first drafts of the future novel, the character traits of the main characters, and the general outline of their ideas:

“...We looked at Russia. We cannot recognize our own uniqueness and we do not know how to relate to the West on our own. This is a matter of the final results of Peter's reform... The Student appears (that's how he designates Nechaev for now, then he will find a name for him: Peter Verkhovensky) - for proclamations and troikas. Rebuild the world... Shaposhnikov (that’s what he called Ivanov) ardently replies that he considers himself not bound by anything. The student persuades the troika to kill Shaposhnikov. They kill..." Soon Ivanov-Shaposhnikov acquires a more precise name - Shatov, Ivan... No, he is not one of the nihilists - he is already new person, who feels his connection with people's Russia, but he is still shaky in his convictions. Dostoevsky decided to make him a descendant of serfs. The figure of the “father” of the young nihilist Pyotr Verkhovensky is also outlined: the modern nihilism of the “children” grew out of a misunderstanding and denial of anything positive in Russia, and most importantly, from the disbelief of the “fathers” and its popular forces, Dostoevsky believed, which is why the figure was needed senior Verkhovensky - “for the meeting of two generations of all the same nihilists,” he writes. Gradually, the general task of the novel emerges: to reveal the most important aspects of modern nihilism, alien and hostile to the truly social and socialist reorganization of the world, as Dostoevsky himself understood it. And he is not alone: ​​it was not by chance that even the socialist Herzen identified such figures of the Geneva emigration as “Sobakevichs and Nozdrevs of nihilism” - Dostoevsky remembered this passage from “The Past and Thoughts.” And in a recent article, Herzen even seemed to push Dostoevsky, without, of course, having him specifically in mind, but still: “Our Sobakevichs of nihilism do not constitute the strongest expression of the aspirations of the younger generation, but represent too extreme... Arrogant youths , in question, deserve study because they also express temporary type, a transitional form of the disease of our development from the previous stagnation.” To reveal, to show the very root of all forms, all manifestations of this disease - demonism, as Dostoevsky dubbed it - a fanatical, all-destructive idea hiding behind the masks of revolutionism, socialism, the common good - this task is worth a novel. This is not a readiness to sacrifice in the name of improving society, on the contrary: the ability and willingness to sacrifice even the whole world for the sake of implementing one’s theories. It was as if demons had entered the herd of pigs, as in one of the parables of the Evangelist Luke. So I finally decided to call my future novel “Demons.”

However, for some reason the work did not progress, although, it would seem, there was enough material, and the creative impulse did not fade away - something did not work out: Pyotr Verkhovensky, a Nechaevsky type, still came out as a rather comic figure, a lampoon, a petty demon; and the whole novel, it seemed to him, was turning too much into a direct, almost feuilletonous response to the topic of the day. He dreamed of a tragedy, a worldwide action, a mystery playing out in Russia. There really wasn't enough central character. What was clearly missing was the main demon, a deeply tragic figure, a kind of demon - not a romantic, but a living contemporary. And little by little, such a hero began to emerge to him - a type of truly “great sinner” with a great mind, a thirst for achievement, but who had lost the point of reference for good and evil, and therefore was ready for anything: to any, even the most monstrous, extreme.

“So, all the pathos of the novel is in the prince,” Dostoevsky decided to call him Stavrogin, “he is the hero. Everything else moves around him like a kaleidoscope..."

Now the novel had already taken on more realistic shape, so it was quite possible to think about submitting it to the magazine. In which? There was no problem of choice: Dostoevsky, even after The Idiot, still remained financially dependent on Katkov. I wrote to him:

“If you decide to publish my essay, then it seems to me necessary that I inform you in advance, at least in a few words, what, in fact, the matter will be about.

One of the largest incidents will be the murder of Ivanov by Nechaev, well known in Moscow. I hasten to make a reservation: I did not know and do not know either Nechaev, or Ivanov, or the circumstances of that murder, except from the newspapers. Yes, even if I knew, I wouldn’t copy it. I'm just taking a fait accompli. My fantasy may be extremely different from former reality, and my Peter Verkhovensky may not at all resemble Nechaev; but it seems to me that in my stricken mind that person, that type was created that corresponds to this villainy. Without a doubt, it is not useless to expose such a person, but he alone would not seduce me. In my opinion, these pathetic monstrosities are not worth literature. To my own surprise, this face comes out half comical to me. And therefore the incident is only the setting for the actions of another person, who could really be called the main character of the novel.

This other face (Nikolai Stavrogin) is also a gloomy face, also a villain. But it seems to me that this face is tragic. I took it from my heart. Of course, this is a character that rarely appears in all its typicality, but this is a Russian character...

It took me a long time to get started with a novel. I redid it several times, stopping work for weeks at a time. I have barely started the intrigue yet. In general, I am afraid that much is beyond my strength. For the first time, for example, I want to touch one category of people who have not yet been touched by literature. I take Tikhon Zadonsky as the ideologist of such a person. I compare and temporarily bring together the hero of the novel with him. Now about another subject. I have absolutely nothing to survive, and I have a wife and child... I know that I owe you a lot. But with this novel I’m getting even with the editors. Now I’m asking you for 500 rubles...”

We celebrated New Year 1871 with Anna Grigorievna at the Russian consul in Dresden. We also talked about European events, alarming ones that still threaten the future: since the summer of last year, Europe has been engulfed in the Franco-Prussian war. The capital of France is besieged by Bismarck's troops. There is an uprising in Paris. The monarchy has been overthrown. Power is in the hands of the Republicans. There is a red banner over Paris... Elections to the Council of the Commune. Paris is on fire...

Newspapers accuse the Communards of terrible vandalism, cruelty, and unleashing civil war in the face of a common national enemy, watching with cold curiosity the split in the enemy’s camp. Government troops storm the stronghold of the revolutionary Commune. The streets of Paris are littered with the corpses of Parisians, although the Prussian troops do not even waste shells - they wait. After weeks of fighting, the heroic Commune fell. Paris is in the blood. Prussian newspapers demand the destruction of the capital of France and the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. France is crushed. Dostoevsky saw the triumphant return of the victors - the executors of the will of the iron Bismarck...

Of course, he could only know about the Commune from newspapers, which for the most part described events incorrectly, deliberately distorting the facts. But he followed these events with bated breath: what if, what if the people win? Yes, he was now an enemy of coups through blood and violence, but who knows, maybe all this horror of the bloody conflagration of Paris will ultimately be redeemed by the triumph of Victory? No, the shame and humiliation of France is the result: the people are bled dry, and all the burdens are once again placed on them, and power is still with the bankers, the bourgeoisie...

And then Nikolai Nikolaevich Strakhov added fuel to the fire: “What can you say about the French events? - asks. - Here’s a “guardian” for you - too, guess what, my heart sank: what if?! - As usual, many ardent adherents of the Commune showed up. What do you think? Isn't it starting new era? Isn’t it the dawn of the next day?..”

No, Dostoevsky answers: the idea of ​​the Paris uprising is based on the same old fantasy about the phalanstery, with which the world can supposedly be reborn, and no truly new positive word was said here. And therefore “The fire of Paris is monstrosity,” although to many it seems “beauty.”

No, not by sword, but by spirit, the world will be reborn, and Russia will find the strength to tell the world this great word - Revival.

On the evening of July 5, they finally boarded the Dresden-Berlin train. From Berlin there was already a direct route to Russia. When they crossed the border, the mere knowledge that they were already traveling through their native land, that there were Russian people outside the window at the stations, this alone made them happy, and they joked, laughed, as if they were in a hurry to a dinner party, and asked everyone each other: is it really true, are we really finally home? author Sadovskoy Boris Alexandrovich

BEAUTY You call me screaming from the mountain, Wide eagles, And from below I am threatened by the cliffs of the Steep cliff. I look: a sky-high pile is rising, - Ledges of snowy rocks. - I’m not looking for a miracle in salvation. And I didn’t. You ascended to the pink rocks Under the cry of the holy eagles, And you draw me into