Lame leg

I

Shatov did not become stubborn and, according to my note, appeared at noon to Lizaveta Nikolaevna. We entered almost together; I also came to make my first visit. They all, that is, Lisa, mother and Mavriky Nikolaevich, sat in the large hall and argued. Mom demanded that Lisa play her some kind of waltz on the piano, and when she started the required waltz, she began to assure that it was not the right waltz. Mavriky Nikolaevich, in his simplicity, stood up for Lisa and began to assure that the waltz was the same; The old woman burst into tears with anger. She was sick and had difficulty even walking. Her legs were swollen, and for several days now she had done nothing but be capricious and find fault with everyone, despite the fact that she was always afraid of Liza. They rejoiced at our arrival. Liza blushed with pleasure and, having said merci to me, of course for Shatov, she went to him, examining him curiously.

Shatov stopped awkwardly in the doorway. Thanking him for coming, she led him to his mother.

This is Mr. Shatov, whom I told you about, and this is Mr. G-v, a great friend of me and Stepan Trofimovich. Mavriky Nikolaevich also met yesterday.

Which professor?

And there’s no professor at all, mom.

No, there is, you yourself said that there would be a professor; That’s right, this one,” she pointed disdainfully at Shatov.

I never told you that there would be a professor. Mr. G - in serves, and Mr. Shatov is a former student.

Student, professor, all from the university. You just have to argue. And the Swiss one had a mustache and a goatee.

“It’s the mother of Stepan Trofimovich’s son who calls everything a professor,” said Lisa and took Shatov to the other end of the hall on the sofa.

When her legs are swollen, she’s always like that, you know, sick,” she whispered to Shatov, continuing to examine him with the same extreme curiosity, and especially his cowlick on his head.

Are you military? - the old woman, with whom Lisa so mercilessly abandoned me, turned to me.

No, sir, I serve...

Mr. G is a great friend of Stepan Trofimovich,” Lisa responded immediately.

Do you serve under Stepan Trofimovich? But he’s a professor too?

“Oh, mom, you probably even dream about professors at night,” Lisa shouted with annoyance.

It’s too enough in reality. And you are always trying to contradict your mother. Were you here when Nikolai Vsevolodovich came, four years ago?

I answered that I was.

Was there any Englishman here with you?

No wasn `t.

Lisa laughed.

And, you see, there was no Englishman at all, so it was a lie. Both Varvara Petrovna and Stepan Trofimovich are both lying. And everyone lies.

It was my aunt and yesterday Stepan Trofimovich who allegedly found a resemblance between Nikolai Vsevolodovich and Prince Harry, and Shakespeare in Henry IV, and my mother said to this that there was no Englishman,” Lisa explained to us.

If Harry was not there, the Englishman was not there. Only Nikolai Vsevolodovich played tricks.

“I assure you that this is mom on purpose,” Lisa found it necessary to explain to Shatov, “she knows very well about Shakespeare. I myself read the first act of Othello to her; but now she is suffering a lot. Mom, hear, twelve o’clock is striking, it’s time for you to take your medicine.

The doctor has arrived, and the maid appeared at the door.

The old woman stood up and began to call the dog: “Zemirka, Zemirka, come with me.”

The nasty, old, little dog Zemirka did not listen and crawled under the sofa where Lisa was sitting.

Do not want? So I don’t want you either. Goodbye, father, I don’t know your name and patronymic,” she turned to me.

Anton Lavrentievich...

Well, it doesn’t matter, it went in one ear and came out the other. Don’t see me off, Mavriky Nikolaevich, I just called Zemirka. Thank God, I can still walk on my own, and tomorrow I’ll go for a walk.

She angrily left the hall.

Anton Lavrentievich, in the meantime, you will talk to Mavriky Nikolaevich, I assure you that you will both benefit if you get to know each other better,” said Lisa and smiled friendly at Mavriky Nikolaevich, who beamed at her look. Having nothing else to do, I stayed to talk to Mavriky Nikolaevich.

Tsarevich

The theme of the “hidden”, “real” king is widely represented in Russian classics. The most accurate author-researcher of the populist quest of the Russian intelligentsia, Manuel Sarkisyants, wrote about the Tsarevich something like this: “The people's tsar-savior was supposed to transform all of Rus' into a semblance of a righteous land. The people's consciousness is looking for persecuted or eliminated princes. If the prince is overthrown by the boyars, it means that he suffered for the people.” The Soviet researcher Chistov emphasized that these kinds of expectations were created by the “collective consciousness of the peasant and Cossack masses.”
Well, our “main” Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky in the famous “Demons” “depicted” the whole doctrine of the “secret sovereign”. For one thing, he also revealed layers of sacred history.
Let us recall the plot of the “demonic” novel:
Adventurer Pyotr Verkhovensky (the prototype of the revolutionary Nechaev) invites the nobleman Stavrogin to either play or actually declare himself Ivan Tsarevich, the Secret Russian Tsar. In whose name landowners' estates will be burned and governors blown up. In his name, neophytes will go to preach the “Russian Truth”. With “Ivan Tsarevich” on our lips the Revolution and Transfiguration of Russia will be realized.
At first, Verkhovensky (or Dostoevsky) makes an allusion to the nobleman-robber Dubrovsky: it is proposed to transmit letters to the Tsarevich through a hollow in the forest.
“There will be such a build-up, the likes of which the world has never seen before. Rus' will become clouded, the earth will cry for the old gods”...

“Listen, I won’t show you to anyone, to anyone: that’s how it’s supposed to be. He is there, but no one has seen him, he is hiding. Do you know what you can even show, out of a hundred thousand, to one, for example. And he will go throughout the whole earth: “We saw, we saw.” And Ivan Filippovich (1) the god of hosts was seen as he ascended in a chariot before the people, they saw “with their own” eyes. And you are not Ivan Filippovich; you are handsome, proud as God, not looking for anything for yourself, with an aura of sacrifice, “hiding”. The main thing is the legend! You will defeat them, look and win. The new truth is carried and “hidden”. And here we will issue two or three Solomon sentences. Heaps or fives - no need for newspapers! If out of ten thousand only one request is satisfied, then everyone will come with requests. In every volost, every man will know that there is, they say, a hollow somewhere where requests are indicated to be placed. And the earth will groan with a groan: “A new law of the right is coming,” and the sea will become agitated, and the booth will collapse, and then we will think about how to erect a stone structure. For the first time! We will build, we, we alone!”

These lines are perhaps the main thing in the novel. The novel and the demons of the novel revolve around these revolutionary obscurantist fiery blank verses...

Columbus without America

The critics (and of them we are primarily interested in the founder of populism, Mikhailovsky) unanimously declared that “that’s novel, sir...” and “Nechaev’s case is atypical.” Well, our youth is not like that, sir... (By the way, our youth is always not like that, sir). And the “grandfather of the populists” Nikolai Mikhailovsky agreed with the general chorus. (2) Not like that, sir... Contemporaries saw in “Nechaevism” and in the plot of “Demons” a deviation, an unexpected strangeness. Idiosyncrasy. Which you shouldn’t pay much attention to...
Decades later, the Swiss psychoanalyst professor Carl Gustav Jung based the study of the unconscious of peoples and Humanity precisely on the study of the neuroses and psychoses of the patients he observed. He believed that in such “oddities”, in the splits of banal consciousness, lies the true cause not only of mental illness, but also the logic of existence of thousands of generations of philistines. After all, everything is hidden in deviations and oddities: dreams and myths, archetypes and fairy tales.
The “Nechaev affair” was the first “oddity” that gave rise to a chain of patterns that led to the Revolution. Dostoevsky courageously looked into the “schizophrenic matter” and saw a well that stretched to the thresholds of Russian Otherness. Unknown stars floated in it, and the Blue Cities sparkled with pearly flames...
The prophecies of Verkhovensky (who himself, of course, is another “alter ego” of Fyodor Dostoevsky, multifaceted, like a diamond) splash metaphysics and sacred geography. Pyotr Verkhovensky claims that he borrowed many of his ideas from the Khlysty and Skoptsy, with whom he stayed.
It was fashionable in revolutionary circles back then. Bakunin and Herzen delved into the life of Russian sects. Young Plekhanov wandered around the Old Believer accords, growing a beard like cabbage. Later, this spiritual baton will be taken over by the Mensheviks (Valentinov is the best friend of Bely and Blok) and the Bolsheviks (Bonch-Bruevich is the main expert on sects and “talks” and the future Secretary of the Council of People’s Commissars).
Trying to “ignite” the “damned master” to a revolutionary spiritual feat, Verkhovensky proves to Stavrogin: “I am without you, like Columbus without America!” Dostoevsky again saw the abyss, because America in the Russian-Byzantine sacred geography is White India, Belovodye and the Kingdom of Prester John. The place where the Secret (Hiding-For-Time) Sovereign is supposed to be...

Mister Stars

It's time to take a closer look at Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin. Why him? What's so special about it?
Dostoevsky's Stavrogin is for Rus' - Alien and Other. “Prince Harry” (3) arrived from Switzerland (like Prince Myshkin or somewhat later Ulyanov-Lenin). He behaves hyper-immorally, even for his boring era. But this is how crazy sacred kings should behave according to Frazer: corrupting women and girls, unexpectedly biting people by the ears, publishing such a biography about themselves that today even Eduard Limonov would be embarrassed. Just a superman according to Nietzsche - Stavrogin was quite suitable for potential kings.
As if some ancient god, Stavrogin gives each character in “Demons” an idea - one is Westernism, another is Slavophile, another is thanatophilia... These ideas are similar to medical diagnoses. Paranoia and schizophrenia - everything came into play... Ideas are so strong that they literally “eat” the heroes of the novel, dragging them to the next world.
Berdyaev rightly calls the heroes of the novel with the ancient Greek word “emanations” - “outflows”. “Demons” are the essence of the “outflow” of the “Secret King”.
The word “demons” - like “heaven” - comes from the early Semitic numeral “sebu” - “seven”, which also meant “seven heavens”. (Hence the Lord of Hosts - “Lord of the stars of the seven heavens”) That is, symbolically Stavrogin personifies God, and the heroes of “Demons” are his messengers, stars.
So, through his “expirations”, Stavrogin by the middle of the novel completely loses his spiritual powers and resembles the Balagan-Tas volcano, extinct in the Yakut permafrost. The one that is covered with snow in winter, and in colorful grass in summer. The shape of the volcano is an almost regular cone, truncated by about one quarter.
They say that the great magician and puppeteer of human emanations Gurdjieff once lost his “inner fire” - “baraka”. This sometimes happens to the gods of the earth.
To return the “baraka” (according to the myths of the peoples of the Earth), the king (or god) must be tortured, finished off and eaten. Dostoevsky doesn’t even hint about this - he says it as it is:
After all, “stavoros” is translated from Greek into Russian as “Crucified.” Another Tsar is also a pharmacist!
Oedipus the King! He is sacrificed at a time known to the stars. This is not only the fate of the rulers of Hellas, Mexico or Tropical Africa. In Rus', kings are more often destroyed than allowed to “play the game” in a natural way. After all, regicide is a very ancient ritual of cosmic renewal.
The superman Stavrogin, who, in the words of Rene Girard, fills his “possessed” with meaning, is the hero of a religious cult in his honor and “without five minutes” the Underground Tsar. Rat King...

Executioner of Russian Myth

The “damned gentleman” in the book refuses the offered role, “doesn’t fit” Ivan Tsarevich, Verkhovensky’s adventure ends in nothing. Instead of the Tsar, they kill the wrong one...
The existential catastrophe that arose after the “wrong” ending of the novel was obvious to many people with a subtle spiritual sense.
In September 1908, Andrei Bely, together with the Menshevik Valentinov, went to the grotto where Nechaev shot the student Ivanov. Together they re-read “Demons” by Dostoevsky, who made the “Nechaev affair” famous and turned it into a novel. The white wing of Dostoevsky, with his last words, shouted that he “didn’t understand anything!”
The future “Scythian” Andrei Bely walked around the park, gesturing and shouting: “Harbingers of an explosion are already walking through cities and villages. I hear them, but the deaf do not hear, the blind do not see them, so much the worse for them. An explosion cannot be avoided. The crater will be opened by men of flint, smelling of fire and brimstone!” (4)
The crater of Tsar Vulcan, completely sealed off near Stavrogin, at the whim of Dostoevsky. Magic portal to White India.
At the same time, Bely wrote his “Demons” - the novel “Silver Dove”. But this is a separate topic.
It seems that Fyodor Dostoevsky understood everything, but deliberately mixed up the cards and grouping meanings of the myth. To make the reader feel sick internally. So he didn’t really like the reader that much (as is commonly believed today among “fans of genius”).
Fyodor Mikhailovich was the main deconstructor of Russian myth (in its most brutal form - in the style of Jacques Derrida). And he deconstructed our myth, like no Derrida or Deleuze could (because they are foreigners, and he is Russian). Christian Europe step by step with F.M.D. analyzed by Friedrich Nietzsche. Having “unscrewed” the “old world” in “Antichrist”, the philosopher (throwing out the “bad”), like a shaman, began to assemble the European gestalt anew. And instead of the “Gospel” he offered Europe “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” Which was, of course, a reference to the ancient Aryan gods and Masonic legends (see the journey to the country of the magician Sarastro in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”). The Mithraic Julian the Apostate tried to accomplish something similar before the collapse of Rome. And Nietzsche took out the subconscious of Europe, kindled it with an internal literary fire and offered it to the planet as an agenda.
Leo Tolstoy also “dissected” Russian society in “Anna Karenina” and “The Kreutzer Sonata”. And then he “reassembled it” in the doctrines of “simplification” and “non-resistance to evil and violence.” The topic did not take off in Russia, but it caught on in India...
Dostoevsky is not like that...
He only took apart, cut and mocked. Fast, active, in the style of epilepsy, dhikr, dance... Like a demon of a very high caliber.
After his death, Sergius of Radonezh (Elder Zosima) stank so much that you could hang up your boots. “Prince Christ” Myshkin became known as an idiot and went crazy. And the “Secret Tsar” Nikolai Stavrogin took it and hanged himself... In the endless race of Skoteperegonsk...
Flipping through the immortal F.M.D. creation, for some reason I remember Alfred Rosenberg’s phrase about “a paralyzing vital force, a gallery of idiots.” Warnak and a fascist, an ideologist of the Third Reich, are not so wrong...
Those who consider Dostoevsky a model for the “Russian World” are either naive or villainous. Dostoevsky is his ruthless executioner and executor.
But even under the Surgeon’s scalpel at the bottom of the “Pandorra’s box” our people sometimes see their last Hope. Nadezhda is a feminine name, and as usual in Rus', salvation comes through a wife.

Stavrogin in Cinema

In the post-perestroika frenzy, during the era of the undivided dominance of demons, as many as four films were made based on “Demons”. And some films turned into TV series. Directors and viewers tried to find lost meanings and guidelines in the broken glass of Dostoevsky’s images. It was of course useless. After all, it is very difficult to guess the contours of the entire work from the fragments of a porcelain vase. But the writers and actors didn’t know this and tried their best. And some of their finds and fragments reminded us of unearthly beauty.
Almost no one guessed Stavrogin's face. In the film adaptation of the Talankin brothers, he is played by Andrei Rudenkin. Imprinted in the minds of the audience from the film “Klim Samgin”. He plays Samghin - the classic “rushing intellectual”. This phrase is extremely hackneyed, but you definitely can’t say it better. A rushing intellectual.
Khotinenko’s Stavrogin was “recreated” by Maxim Matveev. His type is famous and known in Rus' as a “khishch”. A sort of cross between Khlestakov and TV presenter Andrei Brilev.
Only the foreigner Andrzej Wajda almost hit the bull's eye, who staged his "Demons" in Camus' interpretation of the play "The Possessed." In the role of Stavrogin there is then still youthful Frenchman Lambert Visson. (Despite the fact that the film itself is very difficult, watching Polish black stuff with allusions to the Solidarity movement is almost unbearable).
So - Lambert...

The Victorian demonic handsome man, an impeccable genius in a top hat, with his charm and strange activity reminded not even Onegin with Dorian Gray. The chill of the Otherworld whistled through him like through an exquisite Chinese iced teapot. Something about this Visson Vaidovsky was subtly similar to Bela Lugosi in his best roles. Well, Lugosi's best roles are all Count Dracula - the bloody seducer of blonde girls of high society. A bat from the black window of Europe. The secret emperor of terrible and voluptuous dreams, the loner vampire is a spectacular psychoanalytic parody of the King of the Nemean Forest. In a word, Vaida recognized in Stavrogin the subconscious of Europe. Which of course is Asia and Russia. (As Hitler called it - “our Russian India”). Home to crazy Western fears. And the other side of any fears and nightmares is the acquired inhuman happiness.
And Lambert Visson, after playing the role of Stavrogin, is still driving along the mysterious ski track, the archetype he played. We enjoyed watching “The Frenchman,” the sophisticated esthete with an elegantly tied tie, in The Wachowskis’ “The Matrix.” There he plays the Merovingian ruler and oldest inhabitant of the virtual world of the Matrix. Vampires and werewolves serve him, and he himself is responsible for lost souls.
Well, the dynasty of the historical Merovingians, overthrown by the ruthless Carolingians “during that time,” is still a source of concern for Western conspiracy theorists and novelists. Around them hovers the legend of the earthly incarnation of the “race of Christ” and the newest esoteric detective story “The Da Vinci Code” is being built.
The “secret kings” of the West remind themselves and cry for vengeance...

Lame leg

The wife of Merovingian-Visson (who, as we have known for a long time, is “Stavrogin”) in the movie “The Matrix” is not just anyone, but Persephone herself. Wife of the god Hades.
In “Demons”, in addition to his mistresses and his lady-bride, Stavrogin also has a Secret Wife. Which is normal for the Secret King. For example, Pugachev had several Secret Wives. Stavrogin’s wife, the insane Maria Lebyadkina - “The Lame Leg”...
This is an important physical sign of the Sacred. When one foot is in this world and the other in Tom. The devil is limping. And we receive gifts from St. Nicholas from the Christmas (one single) shoe.
Mutilation (like heavenly beauty) is very often a sign of God's sign. The shamans of Siberia are chosen from children with six fingers. In Bely’s novel “Silver Dove”, the prototype of “Lamefoot” is the “spirit” Matryona. Matryonushka is pockmarked and cross-eyed, but she radiates transcendental sexual energy...
Stavrogin married his Maria “for a bet,” and then hid her, and a little later he ordered her to be stabbed to death. Apparently Dostoevsky considered that since the time of Stenka Razin, “wife-murder” has been an ancient pastime of the “people’s kings.”
The foolish and crippled maiden spirit in all the films about “Demons” was played by Slavic actresses (and in Wajda’s film by the German Jutta Lampe) amazingly well. Apparently, it was the ancient female North Eurasian archetype (“crazed-pythian-saints”) that spoke to them.
Well, she did it best (in the Talankin brothers’ version) - the incomparable Alla Demidova. Not a ringing, slender Valkyrie, but an aging, maturing and some kind of stupid woman. Not in a charming, ringing, icy, trademark Demidov voice, but in some hoarse, almost smoky, almost bomzhat pronunciation (an incredible art game), Marya Timofeevna Lebyadkina announces to her king the following popular verdict:

“You look very similar, maybe you’ll be a relative of him—cunning people! Only mine is a clear falcon and a prince, and you are an owl and a merchant! My God, he wants to bow, but he wants to, and doesn’t...
And why did you chicken out and go in? Who scared you then? how I saw your low face when I fell and you caught me - it was like a worm crawled into my heart: not him, I think not him! My falcon would never be ashamed of me in front of a secular young lady! Oh my God! Yes, I was only happy, all five years, that my falcon was somewhere out there, beyond the mountains, living and flying, looking at the sun... Speak up, impostor, how much did you take? Did you agree for a lot of money? I wouldn't give you a penny. Ha ha ha! ha-ha-ha!..”

“The king is not real,” announced the “spirit.” And therefore all the efforts of Verkhovensky (and Dostoevsky) are in vain. Not real…

I searched for a long time and remembered the timbre of the chords, the special voice and drive, the sound with which Demidova delivered her sermon (this lady knows how to speak with “voices”).
And I found it in the catalog of Soviet bohemia of the 70s. After all, our Alla is the central bohemian artist from Taganka. This was a deliberate criminal speech by the Jewish-French model and art critic Dina Verny. Dina (recipient of the Order of the Legion of Honor), as a native of Chisinau and Odessa, retained her love for domestic chanson and in 1975 released in Paris the cult album “Thief Songs” with poems by Aleshkovsky and folk hits about Moldavanka, Bodaibo and Kolyma.
The younger generation may remember her viscous, visceral, otherworldly recitative from the cover version of the punk-hardcore group “A Knife for Frau Müller”:

And now I'm sitting in prison again,
The sun no longer shines on me.
On the bunks...
Nightmares... Nightmares...

From this bottom of the Russian and human psyche, Demidova (not without the help of the Talankins and Verni) pulled out a genuine “Russian thing.” A glorious conversation between the “thief’s wife” and the “Robber King.”
Having “gotten it” with the Cossacks, the Persian princess could have sung a similar rebuke to “Brother Tsar” Stenka. Who knows?
The pitch-black, transcendental, “truly Russian” shadows of “The Hiding Sovereign” and his “Better Half” walk and wander at the bottom of our collective unconscious. And sometimes (at the most terrible moments in history) they break out. From Hidden India...
My socialist friend Konstantin Bakulev once expressed interest in the author’s ethnographic enthusiasm for the work (or life) of the leader of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party, Marusya Spiridonova. To the main woman of the Russian Revolution, who gave Lenin power over peasant Russia.
The role of Maria Spiridonova in the cult movie “The Sixth of July” is, perhaps, the main role of Alla Demidova.
So, Bakulev once said simply like this: “For the Russian people, Lenin was like the Savior-Christ, the Robber Tsar. So they followed him. And his Mother of God (or Mary Magdalene), his Secret Wife, was Spiridonova.”
It was so irresistible that people believed Lenin (and I believed Bakulev), believed it, and galloped in millions of cavalry squadrons behind the red flags. And then the Red Tsar imprisoned his Secret Princess in prison.
That's the whole fairy tale.

Pavel Zarifullin

(1) In fact, Danila Fillipovich (Fillipov) is the first Khlyst “God of Hosts.” And Dostoevsky imagined Ivans everywhere.
(2) Nikolai Mikhailovsky “About Dostoevsky’s “Demons””
(3) The prince in Shakespeare’s chronicle “Henry the Fourth”
(4) N. Valentinov “Two years with the Symbolists”, Stanford, 1969

“A Knife for Frau Müller” remix by Dina Verni

Mine wants to bow to God, but he wants to and doesn’t, but you, Shatushka... he whipped you on the cheeks... F. M. Dostoevsky, “Demons.” Eighty years ago, the Danish critic Georg Brandes wrote about Dostoevsky: “His works represent a real arsenal of Christianly perceived characters and mental states. All the characters in his works are sick, sinners or saints... and the transition from the state of a sinner to the opposite state, from a sinner to a saint and from the physically sick to the mentally healthy occurs either through slow purification, or suddenly, in an instant, as in the New Testament “1. Indeed, Dostoevsky’s works are densely populated by unhappy and wretched people - holy fools, cripples, feeble-minded people, outcasts of society. We have the right to think: why do Dostoevsky’s heroes so often turn out to be physically and mentally handicapped beings? What is the point of such passion in a novelist? Is this a conscious choice of the artist or is it “just” a reflection of the fact of his own ill health (which, by the way, is readily cited by other interpreters of Dostoevsky)? Such questions are logical and natural 2. Resolving them will allow us to better understand the world Dos- 1 Brandeis Georg. Collection op., vol. XIX. St. Petersburg, 1913, p. 223. 2 See... for example, in G. Gachev: “Does it all not matter that he has a city, raw materials, white nights, no animals, there are kitchens, corners, partitions, spiders, stench, stairs, consumption, epilepsy, there are no mothers, there are fathers, there is no childbirth, there is no Caucasus, there is no sea, but there are ponds? (Gachev G.D. Dostoevsky’s Cosmos. - In the collection: “Problems of poetics and history of literature.” Saransk University Publishing House, 1973, p. 110). See also M. Altman: “Really, why is Kapernaumov lame, crooked, and tongue-tied? And why is his whole family also tongue-tied? Why does his wife look scared forever? Why do his children have pale faces and mouths open in constant surprise? What's so

Toevsky in the literal sense of the word - the world as a land inhabited by people, as a small universe. Let us turn to one of the most interesting, in our opinion, mysteries of Dostoevsky’s work. We will talk about the meaning of existence in the novel “Demons” by Marya Timofeevna Lebyadkina, the mysterious Lame Leg, the legal, married wife of the main character of “Demons” Nikolai Stavrogin.

Traditional interpretation, dating back to Vyach. Ivanova and S. Bulgakov, presents the Lame Leg as the “Soul of the World”, “Eternal Femininity”, as a positive bright image of Dostoevsky, the favorite creation of his muse, who embodied the deep mystical and religious insights of the writer 1. Most statements about the Lame Leg speak about extraordinary spiritual qualities with which she is endowed, as if in contrast to her external inferiority: “It is her, half-mad, that the writer elevates above almost all the characters in the novel. Lebyadkina is a holy fool, but that is precisely why... she was granted the highest, lovingly joyful perception of life. She is almost devoid of reason... but then... endowed with the ability of super-intelligent insight into the essence of people and phenomena...” 2 scared the mother and amazed the children? The Kapernaumov people seem to be kind (they warmly sheltered the outcast Sonya Marmeladova), Kapernaumov’s occupation is the most peaceful (he is a tailor), his origins are the most humble (from the servants), and yet all members of the family are marked with some kind of fatal seal, which weighs heavily on the whole family - that's punishment. Why and from what? Dostoevsky does not inform us in a single word about all this” (Altman M.S. Dostoevsky on the milestones of names. Publishing house of Saratov University, 1975, p. 56). 1 See: Ivanov Vyach. Excursion. The main myth in the novel “Demons”. - In the book: Furrows and boundaries. Aesthetic and critical experiments. M., 1916; Bulgakov S. Russian tragedy. About “The Possessed” by F. M. Dostoevsky in connection with the dramatization of the novel at the Moscow Art Theater. - “Russian Thought”, 1914, April; Askoldov S. Religious and ethical significance of Dostoevsky. - In the book: F. M. Dostoevsky. Articles and materials, collection. I, ed. A. S. Dolinina. Petersburg, 1922; Zander L. A. The Mystery of Good (The Problem of Good in the Works of Dostoevsky). - Paris, 1960; Mochulsky K. Dostoevsky. Life and art. - Paris, 1980 (1947). 2 Evnin F.I. Novel “Demons”. - In the book: The work of F. M. Dostoevsky. M., 1959, p. 247. Wed. also: “Lebyadkina’s physical deformity and mental disorder set off her inner beauty” (Chirkov N.M. About Dostoevsky’s style. M., 1964, p. 19). Similar assessments are contained in the comments to the novel “Demons” in the complete collected works: “Purity of heart, childlikeness, openness to goodness, simplicity, joyful acceptance of the world make Chronozhka similar to other “bright” images of Dostoevsky. The writer endows her, weak-minded and holy fool, with clairvoyance, the ability to discern the true essence of phenomena and people” (12, 230). 5* 131

Let's try to think about such contrasts, slightly changing their logic. So, if Marya Lebyadkina is “the embodiment of inner harmony and perfection,” a positive embodiment of Dostoevsky’s mystical-idealistic concepts of man, 1, then why is she endowed with a limp and devoid of reason? Is it really necessary to go beyond the norm and become an object of medicine in order to be a perfect person? Why do light and goodness tragically not coincide with beauty and even seem to supplant it in this “ideal” image? Why is the ideal realized without beauty, to the detriment of it? Did Dostoevsky deviate from his main message in “The Possessed”: “The world will be saved by beauty”? But let’s say that the writer - for the sake of some symbolism that is still unclear to us - has so disfigured his ideal that all its external signs have been lost. In this case, “ideality” should presuppose exceptional inner beauty, spiritual harmony, and moral perfection. However, even here it is difficult to get rid of doubts. If Marya Lebyadkina has the ability to “beyond reasonable insight into the essence of people and phenomena,” then why did she agree to become Stavrogin’s secret wife at a time when he led a “mocking” life in St. Petersburg? Let us remember his confession in confession: “A year ago I was thinking of shooting myself; something better presented itself. Once, looking at the lame Marya Timofeevna Lebyadkina, who served partly in the corners, then not yet crazy, but simply an enthusiastic idiot, madly in love with me in secret (which our people tracked down), I decided to marry her. The thought of Stavrogin’s marriage with such a last creature stirred my nerves” (11, 20). Stavrogin’s marriage in the novel is motivated quite clearly: “Here the shame and nonsense reached the point of genius,” a challenge to common sense, “after a drunken dinner, because of a bet on wine,” “a new sketch of a fed-up man in order to find out what can be brought to crazy cripple." But what about Lebyadkina? Why did she, the clairvoyant Lame, not immediately see the true face of her fiancé, did not discern his true intentions, and was so deceived in him? What seduced her so much about Stavrogin - his unusual appearance? “Unusual capacity for crime”? Why does she need a man who stood “on the other side” 1 Evnin F.I. Roman “Demons”, p. 247.

good and evil"? Why is her marriage to Stavrogin perceived by everyone (even Shatov) as a heavy yoke, a “burden”, without any “higher meaning”? Why, finally, is Lebyadkin, always drunk, drunk and corrupt, Marya Timofeevna’s brother? What is the symbolism of this blood relationship? Indeed, in the world of “fantastic realism” where Lebyadkina and Stavrogin find themselves, blind chance gives way to regularity, the plan and providence of the creative writer. But perhaps it is completely useless to talk about Marya Lebyadkina in real categories and we should recognize her as “a symbol of a different, super-real reality” (K. Mochulsky)? And then it turns out that Marya Timofeevna is “a reflection of the unfading light of the Virgin and Mother” (S. Bulgakov) or “the idea of ​​the hypostatic feminine principle” (S. Askoldov)? Or maybe she is a frog princess, languishing in the captivity of evil spells and waiting for a deliverer, Ivan Tsarevich? But why then didn’t Lame Leg break out of the captivity of her illness and her deformity? If Marya Lebyadkina belongs to a different plane of existence, what symbolic meaning should be seen in her death? These questions are directly related to the central conflict of “Demons”. The answers to them should clarify for us the moral and philosophical concept of the novel and Dostoevsky’s views on the religious and ethical image of the people. Moreover, by comprehending the meaning of the personal fate of the Lame, we can determine how consistent this image was with Dostoevsky’s idea of ​​“an absolutely wonderful person” - an idea “ancient and beloved” (28, book II, 251).

Demons: A Novel-Warning Saraskina Lyudmila Ivanovna

Chapter 4. DISTORTION OF THE IDEAL (Limp in “The Possessed”)

Chapter 4. DISTORTION OF THE IDEAL

(Limp in "Demons")

My God, he wants to, bow down, but he wants to, and not, but Shatushka... whipped you on the cheeks...

F. M. Dostoevsky, “Demons”.