Basinsky P.V. Why didn't Tolstoy and Dostoevsky meet? (from the book "No Violinist Needed")

10-11-2002

And man is the experiencer of pain in the world of bodies,
Since his own is unknown to him - whether - its limit

I. Brodsky

One did not fight, the other did not sit

Today, the names of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are often pronounced side by side, they write almost through a line. Like Pushkin and Lermontov, Socrates and Plato, Goethe and Schiller, Hegel and Schelling. Sarcastic literary critics sometimes drop the verbal hybrid Tolstoevsky”, one of the characters of the sarcastic Nabokov wants to read the novel “Anna Karamazov”. Everyone feels the inner affinity of the two great writers, but at the same time they are vaguely aware of the inner incompatibility of Tolstoy's world with the world of Dostoevsky.

Roots affinity, perhaps more or less clear.

The creativity of both is permeated with one main string, one dominant: compassion.

Both could say to themselves following Radishchev: "And my soul became wounded by human suffering." Both fearlessly, intensely search for an answer to the question: why, why, why do people on earth torture each other so inventively, for a long time, ruthlessly? Including people who call themselves Christians, who know Christ's call to infinite mercy?

And in search of an answer to this question, their paths hopelessly diverge. They have different understandings of the nature of the strange creature called man” – hence the incompatibility.

Perhaps this has something to do with the difference between their fates.

A difference that, in its most concise form, can be described as follows:

-Dostoevsky did not fight, and Tolstoy did not go to jail.

The spectacle of human suffering appeared before Tolstoy during the battles near the spurs of the Caucasus, under the whistle of grenades over the heads of the defenders of Sevastopol, in the blood-drenched trenches on the Malakhov Hill, in the groans of the wounded, in the screams of the burnt. From the smoke of war, the Moloch of the State appeared before him and he hated him for the rest of his life. It was he who so skillfully portrayed in “War and Peace”, in the chapters devoted to the battle of Shengraben, in the scene of the execution of “arsonists” in burning Moscow, in the murder of Platon Karataev.

Dostoevsky also had a chance to stand face to face with the monster of the state - when he was half-dressed, in the February frost, saying goodbye to life in anticipation of execution. And yet, even at that moment, his fate depended not on the soulless will of the state machine, but on the personal will of one person - the king. And only then, in hard labor, he lived for several years side by side with people who committed unheard of atrocities without any coercion from outside. No one forced the husband of the unfortunate Akulka to torture his wife so inventively and for a long time (“Notes from the House of the Dead”, chapter “Akulka’s Husband” 1).

No one forced Lieutenant Zherebyatnikov to savor and vary the punishment procedure “through the ranks” with sadistic pleasure. 2 No one forced the convict Gazin to slaughter small children and then terrorize his neighbors in prison for years. 3 In the characters of these people, the beast that lives in man was revealed to Dostoevsky in all its original cruelty and became for many years the object of his literary, journalistic, and philosophical research.

Tolstoy, to the end of his days, refused to believe in the ontological nature of the evil that lives in the human heart. Following Rousseau, he interpreted evil as a manifestation of the ulcers of civilization that led humanity to a dead end. There are no real villains in Tolstoy's books. Dolokhov, Anatoly Kuragin, Prince Vasily commit unworthy and evil deeds more out of frivolity, out of vanity than out of malice. Even Napoleon is presented as a ridiculous and pathetic puppet of historical forces, only imagining that his will controls events. Evil and suffering come from the deeds of the insignificant executors of the blind will of the state machine, all these generals, ministers, judges, jailers, executioners. In all of Tolstoy's work, one can only find one real criminal, a conscious killer: Poznyshev in the Kreutzer Sonata. But he, at the end of the story, is full of remorse. And so that the reader does not have “wrong” ideas, Tolstoy writes another afterword, in which in detail - five accusatory points - he explains why society is to blame for what happened, and not individual person succumbed to passion. 4

For Dostoevsky, there is nothing more interesting than a person with

freely choosing meanness and villainy. Already in Notes from the Underground, the hero in a mocking monologue recreates the alluring, spicy aroma of freedom, which is inevitably present in any act condemned by public morality. “It got to the point that I felt some kind of secret, abnormal, petty pleasure to return, it happened, on some other nastiest Petersburg night to my corner and intensely realize that today, too, I did something disgusting ... to saw and suck myself until that bitterness turned at last into some kind of shameful, accursed sweetness, and finally into a decided, serious pleasure! Yes, enjoy it!.. I stand on that.” 5

This suggests another short formula describing the difference between the two famous writers:

Tolstoy is a defender of the good and an accuser of the state.

Dostoevsky is the defender of freedom and the accuser of man.

(He is not interested in the complicity of the state, because where it intervened, the free will of man ended).

Great criminologist

The history of any crime can be decomposed into five stages:

1. the maturation of a criminal intent or irresistible passion;
2. committing an illegal act;
3. investigation;
4. trial and sentence;
5. punishment.

All five of Dostoevsky's major novels can be attributed to one or more of these stages:

• "Demons" and "Idiot" - the maturation of passion, culminating in villainy.
• Crime and Punishment should really be called Crime and Investigation.
• The Brothers Karamazov covers the first four stages.
• The last, fifth - punishment - is entirely devoted to "Notes from the House of the Dead".

Dostoevsky is interested in a person only there and then, where and when he is free. Man, as a microparticle of history, remains practically out of his field of vision. Only his contemporaries act in his novels and short stories. Unless the “Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” can be considered a way out of the historical Russia of the middle of the 19th century. But it also deals with the same central theme for Dostoevsky: about the gift of human freedom, about the burden of this gift, about the temptation to give it away for peace and satiety, promised by the Inquisitor.

And in his journalism, in the "Diary of a Writer" Dostoevsky most often raises the same dilemma: villainy - responsibility - retribution. Moreover, he chooses crimes from the everyday judicial chronicle, as a rule, intra-family crimes committed “disinterestedly”. How should jurors and judges deal with a man who, after years of beatings, drove his wife to suicide? With an educated gentleman who beat a seven-year-old adopted daughter almost to death? With the woman who slit the throat of her lover's wife? 6 Condemn? Send to hard labor? That is, to commit obvious cruelty towards one's neighbor? How to reconcile the demand for infinite mercy, to which Christ calls (“Judge not, lest you be judged”) with the need to protect the weak and small from the bestial cruelty of the evil ones?

Neither in prose nor in journalism does Dostoevsky offer easy recipes. He continues to stir the hearts of himself and the reader with these painful questions, apparently with a secret belief that this is the only possible path: do not let people's hearts harden, hide behind an anesthetic prescription-sentence.

Great Revealer

Tolstoy does not believe in the existence of villains. Yes, he saw how people ingeniously killed each other in the war - but there they definitely did it against their will. He knows as well as Dostoevsky the "chronicle of everyday atrocities" in families and schools, in barracks and prisons, in towns and villages. But he cannot believe that a person does these atrocities on his own. For Tolstoy, every evil, cruel act is just another manifestation of a thoroughly rotten, lied, greedy, stupid system of human relations called “civilization”. IN late story"Divine and human" all the people who take part in the execution of a young revolutionary - the general signing the sentence, the prison guard, the executioner - all are ready for repentance and almost cry, doing their cruel deed. 7

For many years, Tolstoy leaves artistic creativity and plunges into philosophical and religious studies aimed at showing people how wrong, badly they live. “Everything that you are proud of, that you exalt - this is the source and cause of your torment. Praise science - and it only does what it produces trifles, nonsense, untruth. Art? Yes, it is the main source and producer of debauchery. Law, right? It is on them that the ruthless machine of the state is built to protect the monster called “property”. But worst of all is your church, which has perverted the simple and lofty teachings of Christ, which blesses wars and executions, which profits from the deceived and destitute.”

Tolstoy, of course, understands that denunciations alone are not enough. A sensitive conscience tells him that calls to rebuild life will remain empty words if they are not backed up by personal example. And he begins to break the whole way of his life.

Where is the main source of evil? Of course, in the institution of property. And Tolstoy renounces ownership of land, ownership of the house, his literary works. He almost literally fulfills the call of Christ: "Give your property to the poor and follow me." But the other call of Christ - to break with relatives, friends - he is unable to fulfill. He loves his wife, children, he does not want to upset them, because that would be unkind deed. He still hopes to persuade them to share his views, to follow his path. And of course, he falls into the trap that Christ warned about when he said that "the enemies of a man are his household."

Those close to him love him, but they cannot follow him. His wife, Sofya Andreevna, put her whole life into preserving the house and family. She considers it her duty to take care of the well-being of children, to give them an education, to provide them with an inheritance. She can't let her husband - whatever great writer he was not - to ruin the family for the sake of his convictions. The last thirty years of Tolstoy's life are endless story mental and family discord that torments him every day.

He urges people not to believe the teachings of the Orthodox Church - and his daughters get married in a church marriage and baptize their children.

He calls privileged class a bunch of idlers and parasites - but he himself, continuing to live in his family, uses the labors of peasants, servants, workers.

He sends curses to the institution of property, especially land - and his wife rents land to peasants, regularly collects rent from them

He calls not to resist evil with violence - and a hired horse guard (Circassian!) rides around his estate, who beats the peasants with a whip for any violation of the right of landlord property. 8

To live without having anything - is this not a step towards the ideal indicated by Christ? But in this case, you cannot help anyone, you cannot do good. Tolstoy is forced to compromise here too: he agrees to take payment for the novel “Sunday” in order to help the non-resistance Doukhobors to emigrate from Russia. 9

For people with an exalted structure of the soul, from time immemorial there has been a refuge from rudeness real world: monastery. But for Tolstoy, this way out is closed, because he does not recognize the dogmas of the ruling church, which anathematized him as a heretic.

Family strife brings Tolstoy to the point where he deviates from the commandment of Christ “do not condemn” and writes an accusatory letter to his wife: “Precisely because ... because you did not want to change, did not want to work on yourself, go forward on the contrary, with some kind of stubbornness, you held on to everything that was the worst, you did a lot of bad things to other people, and you yourself sank more and more and reached that miserable position in which you are now. 10

Everything is in vain. Neither society, nor the world, nor the church, nor even one's own wife succumbed to the thirty-year bombardment (a former artilleryman!) with denunciations and remained the same. And worldwide famous writer, thinker, preacher, at the age of eighty-three, left his house on a cold night, having as his property only the clothes that he had on his shoulders, and died a homeless wanderer at an obscure railway station.

They don't hear each other

Surely, among Russian readers there were, are and will be thousands of those who, having finished reading War and Peace with excitement, will immediately open Crime and Punishment and read it with no less fervor and enthusiasm. But Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky themselves, working side by side in Russian literature for twenty years, do not seem to notice each other.

In all of Tolstoy's vast correspondence, Dostoevsky's name is mentioned only a few times, usually in passing. Literary critics like to recall one letter to Strakhov, dated 1880, where Tolstoy praises Notes from the House of the Dead and asks him to tell Dostoevsky that he loves him. 11 But praise old romance, passing over in silence everything written over the past twenty years - should not this be considered an insult to the conceited author? Upon learning of Dostoevsky's death, Tolstoy expressed sincere regret. However, many years later, shortly before own death, wrote in a letter to A.K. Devil's:

“Forgetting everything, I wanted to remember the forgotten Dostoevsky as well, so I started reading The Brothers Karamazov (I was told that it was very good). I started to read and I can’t overcome my disgust at artlessness, frivolity, antics and inappropriate attitude to important subjects. 12

Dostoevsky, in turn, bypasses the figure of Tolstoy in silence. In letters to his wife, if he mentions him, then, most often, in an ironic and dismissive tone. In one place, he complains that the Russky Vestnik magazine pays Tolstoy twice as much per sheet as he does (500 rubles!), and comments: “No, they value me too low, because I live by work.” 13 In another, he describes how Strakhov “ridiculously” praises “Anna Karenina”, but is silent about “The Teenager”. 14 He quotes critical remarks about Tolstoy (Nekrasov, Ilovaisky), and in 1880 several times with pleasure conveys gossip that Tolstoy "has completely lost his mind." 15 Chairman of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature S.A. Yuriev calls him to go together to Yasnaya Polyana. “... I will not go,” Dostoevsky writes to his wife, “although it would be very interesting.” 16

"Curious" - no more. But had he lived for a few more years, had he read Tolstoy's attacks on the Orthodox Church, indifference could easily turn into enmity. To the caricature portraits of Gogol (“The Village of Stepanchikovo”), Turgenev (“Demons”), a character from a joke could well be added, to which the servant reports: “Your Excellency, it’s time to plow.”

It seems that both writers created a whole universe containing the entire spiritual world of a person. But the geography and astronomy of the spiritual spheres is bizarre. And now these two universes are as far apart as two galaxies.

Even the story of the spiritual maturation of both looks like the movement of two trains on parallel rails - towards and past each other. In the late 1840s, the young Dostoevsky seeks answers to painful questions in the ideas of atheism and socialism; in those same years, the young Tolstoy leads a stormy life of a secular young man, fully accepting all the prejudices and conventions of the society around him. By the end of the 1870s, Tolstoy came to a complete break and rebellion not only against society, but against the entire course of development of civilization, and essentially called for Christian socialism. The former rebel Dostoevsky, on the contrary, comes to the ideas of universal reconciliation, which were most clearly expressed in his speech at the Pushkin anniversary (June 6, 1880) and in the speech of Alyosha Karamazov at the grave of Ilyushechka.

Of course, during this period they would have had nothing to say to each other, even if Dostoevsky had agreed to come to Yasnaya Polyana. And yet, even here, at the stage of seemingly complete divergence, the feeling of their similarity, inner affinity does not leave us. Where does it come from?

Two lessons

In a letter to Chertkov, dated 1892, Tolstoy describes a visit to Yasnaya Polyana by one of their like-minded people and shares his feelings about this: “He goes past tens of millions of people, considering them alien, in order to come to his fellow believers in Tver, Tula, Voronezh . It’s like how gentlemen in the city go to visit from Morskaya to Konyushennaya, and all these people among whom they push through are not people, but hindrances, but real people for them only there on Morskaya or some other ... There is no more non-Christian attitude to people... This is the denial of what constitutes the essence of the doctrine. And just as the present hour is the only real hour, so the [person] who is here in front of me, the person is the real, main brother. I sinned with this and therefore I noticed it and I will try to sin less.” 17

Love for someone alone, selective friendship, any individual connection between people is seen by Tolstoy as unrighteous, sinful, because it deprives all others - unloved ones. He returns to this topic many times, condemning himself even for his love for his daughters. Over the past 25 years of his life, there was no person dearer and closer to him than Vladimir Grigorievich Chertkov. But Sofya Andreevna's jealous hostility towards this closest colleague and friend has grown in recent years into open hatred. Blackmailing her husband with hysterical attacks, suicide threats, she forced him to refuse to meet with Chertkov. In the summer of 1910 Tolstoy wrote to him:

“I think that I do not need to tell you how much it hurts me both for you and for myself, the termination of our personal communication, but it is necessary. I also don't think I need to tell you what it requires of me. what we both live for. I console myself and think that the cessation is only temporary, that this painful state will pass. 18

But it didn't pass. The last meeting of friends took place only in November, when Tolstoy was dying at the Astapovo station. The idol of kindness - a duty of kindness to those “who are here in front of me”, to “neighbor, home” - received its sacrifice: a 27-year friendship.

In this respect, fate turned out to be more merciful to Dostoevsky. He died a few weeks before the event that would inevitably lead to a painful clash in his soul of the two most dear to him ideals: mercy and justice. When on March 1, 1881, the “demons” he described killed Alexander II, he would have had to make a choice and declare his attitude to the event.

For Tolstoy, this tragedy was not a test. The concepts of human justice, justice, retribution were so alien to him that he, without hesitation, sent a letter to the new king - Alexander III - with a call to pardon the murderers of his father. (The philosopher Vladimir Solovyov called for the same publicly - during his lecture).

For Dostoevsky, such an act would have been impossible. In one of the issues of the Writer's Diary, he considers a hypothetical situation: a conscientious and decent person accidentally heard on the street how two revolutionaries conspire to commit the next day political assassination. What should he do? Go tell the police? But this would be contrary to all his notions of honor. This would mean for sure dooming two "neighbors" to hard labor.

Dostoevsky does not find a solution to this dilemma in theory. He is unable to say to his reader: "Go and report." But he also cannot say, "Shut up and let the murder happen." He could not have approved the execution of the regicides, but he could not have called for pardon. His soul would have been in the same discord as that of Tolstoy, who had to choose between personal affection and the duty of compassion.

Secretary of Tolstoy N.N. Gusev wrote down his words spoken in the winter of 1908: “This is what is difficult: when different loves collide, for example, love for your loved ones and for your soul, this is what is difficult...” 19

Isn't this the similarity between the two different writers vaguely felt by us? Is it not that they were both ready to meet that terrible moment “when two different loves collide”, and not resort to the painkiller drug “rightness”, with which we so often rush to burn out one of our loves in life?

We could draw at least two lessons from the lofty drama of the incompatibility, the incompatibility of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

First: that it is absurd to measure and evaluate - to devalue - the world created by the artist, pointing out that what is not in it. Well, if in Tolstoy there is not all of Dostoevsky, and in Dostoevsky there is not all of Tolstoy, then probably this criterion should not be used to measure the completeness of artistic accomplishment.

Second: that no matter how we wander in the spiritual oceans and cosmos, if it takes us to a real height, there we will inevitably have to choose not between high and low, evil and good, worthy and unworthy, but between high and high, between love and love. . And this is what in the language of faith is called Temptation - seriously, with a capital letter.

Notes

1. F. M. Dostoevsky. Notes from the House of the Dead. Complete collection. op. (hereinafter PSS) in 30 volumes (Leningrad: Nauka, 1972), v. 4, pp. 165-172.
2. Ibid., pp. 147-150.
3. Ibid., pp. 40-41.
4. L.N. Tolstoy. "Afterword to the Kreutzer Sonata". Sobr. op. in 20 vols. (Moscow: ed. Kushnerov, 1911), v. 12, p. 492.
5. F. M. Dostoevsky. Notes from the Underground. PSS, vol. 5, p. 102.
6. F. M. Dostoevsky. Writer's diary. PSS, vol. 21, p. 20; v. 22, p. 50; v. 23, p. 15.
7. L.N. Tolstoy. "Divine and human". Sobr. op. 20-1911, v. 12, p. 509.
8. M.V. Muratov. L.N. Tolstoy and V.G. Chertkov according to their correspondence (Moscow: State Tolstoy Museum, 1934), p. 356.
9. Ibid., p. 282.
10. L.N. Tolstoy. Letters. Sobr. op. in 20 volumes (Moscow: “Art Literature”, 1965), vol. 18, p. 438.
11. L.N. Tolstoy. Correspondence with Russian writers (Moscow: "Fiction", 1978), vol. 2, p. 115.
12. L.N. Tolstoy. Letters. UK. cit., vol. 18, p. 499.
13. F.M. Dostoevsky, A.G. Dostoevskaya. Correspondence (Leningrad: Nauka, 1976), p. 142.
14. Ibid., p. 144.
15. Ibid., p. 326.
16. Ibid., p. 327.
17. Muratov, uk. cit., p. 180.
18. Ibid., pp. 412-413.
19. N.N. Gusev. Two years with L.N. Tolstoy (Moscow: "Fiction", 1973), p. 224.

D. S. Merezhkovsky was not the first author to analyze the work of L. N. Tolstoy: before him, N. G. Chernyshevsky (about " Sevastopol stories") and D. I. Pisarev ("Mistakes of immature thought" about "Childhood. Adolescence. Youth"; "Old nobility" based on the novel "War and Peace"). An assessment of the work of L. Tolstoy was also given by Nekrasov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhailovsky, Gorky, Veresaev and other contemporaries of the writer. However, Merezhkovsky's study was subsequently recognized by many as the most detailed and thorough.

background

By the beginning of the 20th century, D. Merezhkovskoy was seriously engaged in understanding issues related to Christianity and the cathedral church. G. Adamovich in the article “Merezhkovsky” recalled that “if the conversation was really lively, if there was tension in it, sooner or later it would get lost on a single, constant theme of Merezhkovsky - on the meaning and meaning of the Gospel. Until this word was uttered, the argument remained superficial, and the interlocutors felt that they were playing hide and seek. Projecting the course of his philosophical searches on the history of Russian literature, Merezhkovsky decided to express them by contrasting two of its classics.

“His name was on everyone's lips, all eyes were turned to Yasnaya Polyana; the presence of Leo Tolstoy was felt every minute in the spiritual life of the country, ”recalled P.P. Pertsov. “We have two kings: Nicholas II and Leo Tolstoy. Which of them is stronger? Nicholas II cannot do anything with Tolstoy, cannot shake his throne, while Tolstoy undoubtedly shakes the throne of Nicholas and his dynasty, ”wrote A. S. Suvorin.

After the deterioration of Tolstoy's health at Torquemada-Pobedonostsev, quite definite threats were uttered among the radical student community. “Now in Moscow the heads of the students are confused on the occasion of the expected death of Tolstoy. In such circumstances, prudence requires me not to be in Moscow, where it is impossible to hide, ”wrote Pobedonostsev.

D. S. Merezhkovsky quite definitely expressed support for the position of the church, although he noted in a letter to the chairman of the Neophilological Society A. N. Veselovsky: “My attitude towards Tolstoy, although completely censorship, is not hostile, but rather sympathetic.”

The author formulated the main idea of ​​the essay in the preface to the complete works. The book, according to him, was devoted to the struggle of two principles in Russian literature, the opposition of two truths - Divine and Human. Merezhkovsky considers L. Tolstoy the successor of the "earthly beginning, human truth" in Russian literature, and the bearer spirituality, Divine Truth - F. Dostoevsky. Comparing writers, Merezhkovsky sees the origins of their work in A. S. Pushkin: “He<Л. Т.>and Dostoevsky are close and opposite to each other, like two main, most powerful branches of one tree, diverging in opposite directions with their tops, fused in one trunk with their bases.

Four of the seven chapters of this part of the book contain an assessment of Tolstoy the artist, in which Merezhkovsky gives a detailed concept of the writer's work. Main artistic technique Merezhkovsky defines Tolstoy as a transition "from the visible to the invisible, from the external to the internal, from the corporeal to the spiritual" or, at least, "mental".

The author believed that only by revealing the "mysteries of the flesh", Tolstoy is approaching the knowledge of the "mystery of the spirit." Dostoevsky, on the contrary, moves from the inner to the outer, from the spiritual to the corporeal. As a justification for his thesis, Merezhkovsky developed the idea that L. Tolstoy offers the reader a lot of artistic details, with their help revealing the inner essence of the characters. Dostoevsky's portraits look sketchy, but they take on life in the reader's imagination thanks to their spiritual content.

Merezhkovsky categorically considered Tolstoy's attitude, considering it "dual" (for Tolstoy the Christian, it is "something dark, evil, bestial, or even demonic ...", from the point of view of his unconscious pagan element, "a person merges with nature, disappears in it, like a drop in the sea"

Exploring the “mystery of action” in Tolstoy’s works, Merezhkovsky notes that the author notices the ability to “imperceptible, too ordinary”, to present unusual only on the face, but also in the sound of the voice, that the voice, just like the face, can be smiling.

Another strong point Tolstoy, Merezhkovsky considers his extraordinary ability to reincarnate, the ability to feel what they feel "according to their personality, gender, age, upbringing, estate ...". “His sensory experience is so inexhaustible, as if he had lived hundreds of lives in various bodies of people and animals,” writes the author of the essay. From Tolstoy’s great “sensory experience” (according to Merezhkovsky) follows his extraordinary ability to depict “that side of the flesh that is turned to the spirit, and that side of the spirit that is turned to the flesh - the mysterious area where the struggle between the Beast and God in man takes place” .

Report "Leo Tolstoy's Attitude to Christianity"

At first, “aesthetic” claims were made against the author of the essay. They soon gave way to "socio-ideological" claims. This happened after on February 6, 1901 (shortly before the publication of the "Definition") Merezhkovsky read the report "Leo Tolstoy's Attitude towards Christianity" in Philosophical Society at Petersburg University. The report, held in the hall of the Council of St. Petersburg University, caused a heated debate that dragged on past midnight. In the intelligentsia, as Yu. V. Zobnin notes, Merezhkovsky clearly "went against the current, it was immediately learned and caused an immediate negative reaction", and no one delved into the nuances of his criticism of "Tolstoy's religion".

Immediately after Merezhkovsky’s report “Leo Tolstoy’s Attitude towards Christianity,” an angry rebuke from the populist publicist M. A. Protopopov appeared in the press: “This essay makes a bad impression. You can love and dislike Tolstoy, you can agree with him and disagree, but butchering Tolstoy “under the nut” ... this really ... resembles the fable of the elephant and the pug ... ”, - he wrote. Protopopov gave Merezhkovsky the following description:

Merezhkovsky was born only 35 years ago. After graduating from a historical and philological course, Mr. Merezhkovsky quickly finds himself in "good company" - he publishes his poems in Vestnik Evropy and other good magazines. The original and translated poems are followed by critical articles And historical novels. From an imitator of Nadson, Mr. Merezhkovsky becomes a Narodnik, then a Symbolist, and finally an admirer of “pure beauty” and a Nietzschean, and most recently, apparently, he resigns Nietzscheism too ... S. A. Vengerov characterizes Mr. Merezhkovsky as a person, especially inclined to be “inspired by bookish moods”: “Whatever the last book says to him, It will fall on his soul from above ...” Such is Tolstoy's walnut cutter. - "Odessa News". 1901. No. 5241

Merezhkovsky was attacked in the liberal press (as Yu. Zobnin writes) by “real persecution, with personal insults and absurd but effective historical parallels”; for example, Merezhkovsky's report was called a call for "St. Bartholomew's Night" ("East Review" 1901. No. 85). Protesting, Merezhkovsky sent a letter to the editorial offices of the capital's newspapers, in which he pointed out the unacceptable pressure exerted on him - the "oppression public opinion". The letter only prompted new wave bullying: “In one of Garshin’s stories, a lizard is hatched, whose tail was crushed“ for its beliefs ”. G. Merezhkovsky, with his protest, is very similar to this lizard, with the only difference that Mr. Merezhkovsky’s “tail” is intact: no one even encroaches on his integrity,” wrote the Novosti newspaper (1901. No. 149).

Reviews from critics

The treatise “Leo Tolstoy and Dostoevsky”, which was published within a year on the pages of the World of Art, already after the release of the first parts, caused persistent irritation in the “conservative” circles of readers, who considered Merezhkovsky’s views on Russian classics unacceptably “free”.

In the World of Art, Mr. Merezhkovsky's endless "critical" article on Leo Tolstoy and Dostoevsky stretches out, which, like all of Mr. Merezhkovsky's critical articles, is a characteristic mess of honey and tar. This time Mr. Merezhkovsky, however, outdid himself. Speaking of Anna Karenina, Mr. Merezhkovsky is trying to determine the place of the heroine of this novel among Tolstoy's other creations, for which he compares Anna Karenina with ... Vronsky's horse "Frou-Frou" ... They write well in the World of Art!

- Northern Courier. 1900. No. 299

One of the few contemporaries who highly appreciated Merezhkovsky's work on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky was V. Rozanov. He believed that “before us ... a completely new phenomenon in our criticism: objective criticism instead of subjective, analysis of the writer, and not self-confession” Rozanov wrote:

Merezhkovsky threw himself at Tolstoy with his chest, like a Hellene at a barbarian, with frank sincerity and great artistic power. He clung to “non-doing”, “non-marriage”, an imaginary “resurrection” and all sorts of boredom and dryness of Tolstoy’s recent years ”... From this point of view, but precisely Hellenic-light, he clung to negative everywhere, not in the least creative, not bursting with life, empty and not giving birth to Tolstoy's movements of recent years.

- V. Rozanov. In the court of the Gentiles. Part IV

- D. Galkovsky. Endless dead end. note 882

As noted (in a 2008 biography) by Yu. V. Zobnin, before Merezhkovsky’s works, a literary critic usually “assigned” a certain “meaning” to the text of the author being analyzed, relying on biographical documents that made it possible to formulate the “views of the writer”, and saw in his works (more precisely - in their "ideologically significant" fragments) are exactly the same "biographical evidence". Merezhkovsky first turned to the text as such, trying to extract its "meaning" from the elements of its aesthetic structure. In essence, Merezhkovsky in this essay "... for the first time in history domestic literary criticism hermeneutic methods were applied, ”concludes the author of the writer’s biography.

Notes

1. Merezhkovsky Dmitry Sergeevich. Russian biographical dictionary. Archived
2. Churakov D.O. Aesthetics of Russian decadence at the turn of the XIX - XX centuries. Early Merezhkovsky and others. Page 1 . www.portal-slovo.ru. Archived from the original on August 24, 2011. Retrieved February 2, 2010.
3. Alexander Men Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius. Lecture. . www.svetlana-and.narod.ru Archived from the original on August 24, 2011. Retrieved January 2, 2010.
4. A.A. Zhuravleva D.S. Merezhkovsky is a critic of Leo Tolstoy. www.lib.csu.ru Archived
5. G.Adamovich Merezhkovsky. russianway.rchgi.spb.ru. (unavailable link - story) Retrieved February 14, 2010.
6. Merezhkovsky D. S. “L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Merezhkovsky D.S. Full. coll. op.: In 24 vols. Vol. 10. p.8. M.
7. Merezhkovsky D. S. “L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Merezhkovsky D.S. Full. coll. cit: In 24 vols. Vol. 10. p.36. M.
8. Merezhkovsky D. S. “L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Merezhkovsky D.S. Full. coll. op.: In 24 vols. Vol. 10. p.22. M.
9. Merezhkovsky D. S. “L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Merezhkovsky D.S. Full. coll. op.: In 24 vols. Vol. 10. p.24. M.
10. Merezhkovsky D. S. “L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Merezhkovsky D.S. Full. coll. cit: In 24 vols. Vol. 10. pp. 26-27. M.
11. Yu. V. Zobnin. Dmitry Merezhkovsky: life and deeds. Moscow. - Young guard. 2008 Life wonderful people; Issue. 1291 (1091)). ISBN 978-5-235-03072-5 …
12. World of Art. 1903. No. 2. Chronicle. p.16
13. A. Nikolyukin The Merezhkovsky Phenomenon. russianway.rchgi.spb.ru. (unavailable link - story) Retrieved 2 January 2010.
14. V. Rozanov In the Court of the Gentiles. www.fedy-diary.ru Archived from the original on April 20, 2012. Retrieved March 22, 2010.
15. Berdyaev N. A. New Christianity (D. S. Merezhkovsky) // Berdyaev N. Decree. op. S. 141.
16. Gippius-Merezhkovskaya Z. N. D. Merezhkovsky // Silver Age: Memoirs. M., 1990. S. 96.
17. Merezhkovsky D.S.: Pro et contra. SPb., 2001. S. 392.
18. D. Galkovsky Endless dead end. www.samisdat.com. Archived from the original on April 20, 2012.

see also

Categories:

• Essay in Russian
• Literary works alphabetically
• Literary critical works
• Works by Dmitry Merezhkovsky
• Works of 1901

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In January 1894, young Ivan Bunin (who at that time strove to be an orthodox Tolstoyan) visited the author of Anna Karenina in Khamovniki. Bunin conveys the speech of his interlocutor as follows:

"Do you want to live simple, working life? It's good, just don't force yourself, don't uniform from it, in every life one can be a good person...” [i] [Tolstoy 1978, 234].

There is something very familiar in these words.

In the February issue of The Writer's Diary for 1877, referring to the recently published Anna Karenina (specifically, the conversation between Stiva and Levin on the hunt - "about the distribution of the estate"), Dostoevsky writes: "Yes, in essence, you don’t even need to distribute certainly estates - for every inevitability here, in the matter of love, it will look like uniform , on a heading, on a letter ... You need to do only what your heart tells you to give up - give it back, orders you to go work for everyone - go, but even here do not do it like other dreamers who directly take up the wheelbarrow: " Say, I'm not a gentleman, I want to work like a man. Wheelbarrow again uniform » [Dostoevsky 1972-1990, 25, 61].

However, if he has forgotten Dostoevsky's article, he will hasten to be reminded of it.

In the October days of 1910, the wife of V.G. Chertkova sends Tolstoy his letter former secretary N.N. Gusev. Gusev notes that in recent years a lot has been written about Dostoevsky in literature and that he "was presented as the greatest and most perfect teacher of faith." Therefore, he, Gusev, "after the novels, it was very interesting to get acquainted with those writings of Dostoevsky, where he speaks from himself personally." He "expected a lot" from the "Diary of a Writer", but, alas, "suffered a severe disappointment. Everywhere Dostoevsky presents himself as an adherent of the popular faith; and in the name of this popular faith, which he, I dare to think, did not know<...>he preached the most cruel things, like war and penal servitude. Further, Gusev recalls Dostoevsky's words about Anna Karenina, "in the last part of which Lev Nikolaevich then still expressed his denial of war and violence in general." From the "Diary of a Writer" Gusev unexpectedly learns for himself that "Dostoevsky was an ardent champion of resisting evil with violence, he argued that shed blood is not always evil, but sometimes good..." [Tolstoy 1928-1958, 58, 554-555] . And Gusev cites "the most terrible passage from this terrible article" - a fantastic scene that Dostoevsky thought up while talking about "Karenina":

"Imagine<...>Levin is already standing there, there (that is, in Bulgaria, where the Turks massacred the civilian population. - I.V.), with a gun and a bayonet (“why would he take such a dirty trick?” - Gusev adds “on his own behalf”), and two steps away from him, the Turk is voluptuously preparing to gouge out the eyes of a child who is already in his arms with a needle ... What would he do? - No, how can you kill! No, you can't kill a Turk! "No, let him gouge out the child's eyes and torture him, and I'll go to Kitty."

Gusev reports that he was “horrified” when he read the following lines from the one whom many Russian intellectuals now consider their spiritual leader: “What to do? Is it better to let them pierce their eyes, so as not to somehow kill the Turk? But this is a perversion of concepts, this is the dumbest and crudest sentimentality, this is frenzied straightforwardness, this is the most complete perversion of nature. Gusev is also not satisfied with the practical conclusion that the author of the Diary makes: “But gouging out the eyes of babies should not be allowed, and in order to stop villainy forever, it is necessary to free the oppressed firmly, and snatch weapons from tyrants once and for all” [Dostoevsky 1972-1990, 25, 220-222].

After reading Gusev's letter, Tolstoy writes to Chertkova on October 23: “A strange coincidence has happened. I, having forgotten everything, wanted to remember the forgotten Dostoevsky<го>and took to read<ев>Karamaz<овых>(I was told that<то>This is very good). I started reading and I can not overcome my disgust for anti-artism, frivolity, antics and inappropriate attitude to important subjects. And now N.N. writes what explains everything to me" [Tolstoy 1928-1958, 89, 229].

This is almost verbatim! - coincides with the words of another Nikolai Nikolayevich - Strakhov, who in 1883 wrote to Tolstoy - about his work on the biography of Dostoevsky - "I struggled with the disgust rising in me ..." [Tolstoy, Strakhov 2003, 652].

“Not that, not that! ..” - Dostoevsky clutched his head and repeated in a “desperate voice”, reading Tolstoy's letter to Countess A.A. a few days before his death. Tolstoy, where her correspondent expounded his new faith[Tolstoy, Tolstaya 1911, 26]. "Not that, not that!" - could exclaim (and practically exclaims) Tolstoy, leaving Yasnaya Polyana (or rather, from life) and reading "on the road" sunset Dostoevsky's novel.

Meanwhile, when it comes to the main thing, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy reveal a surprising similarity.

On May 29, 1881, Tolstoy writes in his diary: “A conversation with Fet and his wife. Christian teaching is unfulfillable. - So it's nonsense? No, but not feasible. - Have you tried to do it? - No, but it is impossible" [Tolstoy 1928-1958, 49, 42].

That is, for Tolstoy, Christianity is not an abstract theory, but a kind of "guide to action": it should be applicable to all phenomena of real life without exception. (He is just “trying to fulfill it.”) But, according to Dostoevsky, should not a person be guided by the same, and not only in his everyday behavior, but, so to speak, in the world field? Christian consciousness must be introduced into all spheres of existence: only in this way will the Testament be fulfilled.

“No,” writes the author of the “Diary of a Writer” (in the same February issue for 1877, where we are talking about Tolstoy) - it is necessary that the same truth, that same Christ's truth, be recognized in political organisms, as well as for every believer. At least somewhere this truth must be preserved, at least some of the nations must shine. Otherwise, what will happen: everything will be obscured, mixed up and drowned in cynicism” [Dostoevsky 1972-1990, 25, 51].

The Gospel commandments must become the "constitution" of this worldly world: otherwise, this world is doomed. So suddenly converge artistic worlds Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.

Meanwhile in artistic experience his older contemporary, Tolstoy could find even more unexpected stories. Arguing about the properties of the Russian national character, the author of The Karamazovs, without knowing it, points to some of the fundamental features of the personality of the “furious Lion”.

Alyosha Karamazov informs Kolya Krasotkin of the opinion of “a foreign German who lived in Russia”: “Show me<...>to a Russian schoolboy a map of the starry sky, about which he had no idea until then, and tomorrow he will return this map to you corrected. “No knowledge and selfless conceit - that's what the German wanted to say about the Russian schoolchild,” Alyosha comments [Dostoevsky 1972-1990, 14, 502].

Of course, the author of A Study in Dogmatic Theology is far from being a schoolboy. Before proceeding with the "correction of the map" (whether The World History, religion, Shakespeare etc.), he tries to study the subject in the most thorough way. But there is a characteristic impulse. "Revision of the universe" is performed without sacred awe and worship of authorities; they look at the "map" with a clear, unclouded look. It is not for nothing that the story cited causes complete delight in the young interlocutor of Alyosha: “Bravo, German!<...>Self-conceit - let it be, it is from youth, it will be corrected<...>but on the other hand, an independent spirit, from almost childhood, on the other hand, courage of thought and conviction<...>But still the German spoke well! Bravo, German!

"Bravo, German!" - we could also exclaim, referring his observation no longer to a hypothetical Russian schoolboy, but to Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy himself. "Correction of the map" - purely Russian trait which, by the way, the social practice of the 20th century convinces us of.

Yes, and in his religious rebellion Tolstoy has something to rely on.

In the "Diary of a Writer" in 1873, Dostoevsky cites the story of a certain confessor-old man - about a village boy who crawled to him on his knees: the one, according to him own confession, committed the greatest sin - at the instigation of a friend, he held the sacrament in his mouth, took it out of the temple and, putting it on a pole in the garden, began to aim with a gun. But as soon as he was about to shoot, the Crucified One appeared to him on the cross, and he "fell unconscious with a gun."

Dostoevsky says that the aforementioned blasphemers (instigator and perpetrator) are "two folk types, in the highest degree depicting to us the entire Russian people as a whole. What is this so startling author national trait? “This is, first of all, the oblivion of any measure in everything<...>the need to go over the edge, the need for a fading sensation, to reach the abyss, to lean halfway into it, to look into the very abyss and - in particular cases, but not uncommon - to rush into it as if stunned upside down" [Dostoevsky 1972-1990, 21, 33 -35].

Tolstoy in no way recognizes himself as a defiler of holy things. He will never “crawl” to the elder with contrition and repentance. (Although after leaving, already in Optina, there will be cut circles around the cell of Elder Joseph - in the hope of meeting). He "throws himself into the abyss" with the full consciousness of his own rightness, with the hope that this is the outcome worthy of every thinking person. He, Dostoevsky says (not about Tolstoy, of course, but about his “village Mephistopheles”), “comes up with unheard-of audacity, unprecedented and unthinkable, and in her choice an entire worldview of the people was expressed” [Dostoevsky 1972-1990, 21, 37].

So, "unheard of audacity" is also a Russian mental property. But if “below” it appears as wild mischief, temptation and deliberate blasphemy threatening eternal death, then “above” (in Tolstoy) it is conscious religious freethinking (a kind of manifestation of freedom of conscience), which serves as a tool to achieve the truth. The initial impulse of these impulses is different; all the more incomparable moral motivations. However, both there and here the usual picture of the starry sky is called into question.

But posthumous roll call Dostoevsky and Tolstoy is not limited to this. The first critic of Tolstoyism, as it were, sees through something that the inhabitant of Yasnaya Polyana does not yet guess.

In the novel "Demons" "a distressed writer" - intellectual Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky leaves the house of General Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina, with whom he had high , that is, exclusively spiritual relations, and where he prospered for twenty years in bliss and relative peace. For him, this desperate step is a break with an established and comfortable existence, a moment of truth, a transition to a different life full of meaning.

At the same time, Stepan Trofimovich is a tragicomic figure.

It is rightly noted that the artistic situation reproduced in the novel The Possessed in 1872 in some way anticipates (in a parodic, grotesque, ironically reduced form) those dramatic events that the world witnessed in the year 1910.

“The last wandering of Stepan Trofimovich” - this is the title of the chapter in “Demons”, which tells about the departure of Verkhovensky Sr.

“... He,” says the novel about Stepan Trofimovich, “and with the clearest consciousness of all the horrors awaiting him, he would nevertheless go out to big road and follow her! There was something proud and admired in spite of everything. Oh, he could accept Varvara Petrovna's sumptuous conditions and remain with her favors "comme un a simple hanger-on"! But he did not accept mercy and did not stay. And so he himself leaves her and raises the "banner of a great idea" and goes to die for him on high road! That is how he must have felt it; this is how his act should have appeared to him” [Dostoevsky 1972-1990, 10, 480].

Of course, such rapprochements are purely formal: between the "last wanderings" of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy and Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky there is a huge distance. The more surprising is the resemblance of seemingly small and random details, “accessories”, provisions, plot moves: in the context of “ideological withdrawal”, all this takes on symbolic meaning. Thus, Stepan Trofimovich, striving to simplify himself, captures in his ascetic pilgrimage such a necessary thing for this as an umbrella. Tolstoy, upset that he forgot his nail brush in Yasnaya Polyana (a break with the past does not necessarily imply a change in hygiene habits), asks, along with the also forgotten second volume of The Brothers Karamazov, to send him this item. Stepan Trofimovich "leaves into the world" with forty rubles in his pocket; the sum captured by Tolstoy (50 rubles) is not much more.

But the main thing is that both fugitives are terribly afraid of the chase - the persecution of them by the women they left behind. Tolstoy, covering his tracks, changes trains and even buys a ticket, only while already in the car. Stepan Trofimovich "was afraid to take horses, because Varvara Petrovna could visit and detain him by force, which she probably would have done, and he probably would have obeyed and - goodbye then, great idea forever." In the end, the pursuers overtake the pursued - with the difference, however, that General Stavrogina is caring for the sick Stepan Trofimovich and closes his eyes, and Countess Sofya Andreevna will admitted only when the agony begins.

And further. “Oh, we forgive, we forgive, first of all we forgive everyone and always,” exclaims Stepan Trofimovich, who has gone on the run. Let's hope they forgive us. Yes, because each and every one is to blame for the other. Everyone is to blame!..” [Dostoevsky 1972-1990, 10, 491] Before leaving, Tolstoy is going to write “There is no one to blame in the world” [Goldenweiser 2002, 580].

Unlike Tolstoy, Stepan Trofimovich is an old atheist. He meets a book-seller who offers him the gospel. “With the greatest pleasure,” replies Verkhovensky Sr. - Je n "ai rien contre l" Evangile, et ... ". The Sermon on the Mount is read aloud to him, and he is quite satisfied with its content (“Do you really think that this not enough!"). And he himself is ready to sell these "beautiful books" with pleasure. “The people are religious, c" est admis, but they do not yet know the Gospel. I will present it to them ... Oral presentation can correct the errors of this wonderful book ... "[Dostoevsky 1972-1990, 10, 486-497].

Tolstoy will soon set himself such a task: it will be he who will try - and in writing and in detail - "to correct the mistakes of this wonderful book." And even after leaving, if he had remained alive, he would hardly have refused oral preaching, which is more accessible to the people's understanding. (“I will be useful even on the high road,” says Stepan Trofimovich.)

Once upon a time, the author of "The Village of Stepanchikov" mockingly depicted some of Gogol's features in the image of the accustomer-despot Foma Opiskin. It was a rather harsh retrospective parody. Completing The Possessed, he could not imagine that life itself in many years would mockly take advantage of his novel plot and that the tragicomedy generated by his fantasy would turn into a great world drama - also not without a comic shade.

Obviously, V. Rozanov is right when he asserted that “all the Dobchinskys from all over Russia fled to Tolstoy’s coffin, and, apart from the Dobchinskys, there was no one there, they didn’t let anyone in through the tightness of the crowd. So the “funeral of Tolstoy” at the same time came out as an “exhibition of the Dobchinskys”...” (quoted from: [Rozanov 2004, 56]).

Alas, it is. And yet the deaths of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are key points Russian stories. It can even be said that both of them, in a certain sense, completed it - and with opposite signs.

Dostoevsky died shortly after the Pushkin holiday in Moscow (which turned out to be nothing more than a "pre-parliament" that brought together almost the entire spectrum of available social forces). In an atmosphere of tense constitutional hopes, Dostoevsky's muffled voice sounded from the first national rostrum: “Humble yourself, proud man and above all break your pride. Humble yourself, idle man, and above all work hard in your native field...” The call was addressed not only to the terrorist underground, but also to the “terrorist” government, which also seemed to be a kind of “proud person”.

Unprecedented in scope, the farewell to the author of the "Diary of a Writer" - when everyone political forces, from conservatives to radicals, lowered their banners - were a clear signal sent by society "from the bottom up": a historical compromise is possible. Dostoevsky's death, as it were, materialized this social illusion, opening up the prospect of a peaceful way out of the deepest national crisis, from the bloody confusion at the turn of the 1870s and 1880s (see: [Volgin 1986]).

The regicide on March 1, 1881, which took place a month after Dostoevsky's death, crossed out these hopes.

On the other hand, the stunning death of L.N. Tolstoy in November 1910, before the eyes of the whole world, and the churchless ones that followed, it is emphasized opposition the funeral marked the collapse of the traditional formula "poet and tsar" (replaced by another, uncompromising: "poet or tsar"), the final rupture of society and power. According to its historical and philosophical content Tolstoy's departure is in direct contrast to the "event of death" of 1881: it became a harbinger of the coming national catastrophe.

But in both events there was a common - deep - meaning. The funeral of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy became the first attempts at self-organization civil society , which in the second case excommunicated both the state and the Church.

Literature

Volgin 1986 - Volgin I.L. Dostoevsky's Last Year: Historical Notes. M., 1986.

Goldenweiser 2002 - Goldenveizer A.B. Near Tolstoy: Memoirs. M., 2002.

Dostoevsky 1972-1990 - Dostoevsky F.M. Full coll. op. in 30 t. L., 1972-1990.

Makovitsky 1979 - Literary heritage. T. 90. “Yasnopolyansky notes” by D.P. Makovitsky. M., 1979. Book. 3.

Rozanov 2004 - Rozanov V.V. Miniatures. M., 2004.

Tolstoy 1928-1958 - Tolstoy L.N. Full coll. op. in 90 t. M., 1928-1958.

Tolstoy 1978 - L.N. Tolstoy in the memoirs of contemporaries. M., 1978. T. 2.

Tolstoy 2010 - Tolstoy L.N. Last diary. diaries, notebooks 1910 M., 2010.

Tolstoy, Strakhov 2003 - L.N. Tolstoy - N.N. Strakhov. Complete collection of correspondence. T. 2. Ottawa, 2003.

Tolstoy, Tolstaya 1911 - Tolstoy Museum. T. 1. Correspondence of L.N. Tolstoy with gr. A.A. Tolstoy. 1857-1903. SPb., 1911.

Notes

For the first time these considerations were stated in our report "Gogol and Dostoevsky", read at the Gogol Festival in Paris on April 2, 2009.

On June 6, 1910, the pianist Goldenweiser, who was visiting Yasnaya Polyana, wrote down the following words of Tolstoy: “Today I again received a very long and very clever (it seems English) letter, and again there is the same child who is being killed before my eyes. I always say: I have lived 82 years and have never seen this child that everyone tells me about.<...>And, finally, who prevents at the sight of such a child from protecting him with his own body?..” [Goldenweiser 2002, 315]. Does this mean some kind of collective, "common" child - or is it still "Dostoevsky's child"?

It is interesting to compare this letter of Tolstoy with the entry of his doctor Dushan Makovitsky dated September 21, 1908: “Today I continued to read the second volume of the biography of L. N. Biryukov. Dostoevsky's criticism of Anna Karenina had a strong effect. I spoke about it to L.N., he wished to read it and said: "Dostoevsky - great person"" [Makovitsky 1979, 206]. That is, apparently, in 1910, this criticism was no longer news for Tolstoy. It is surprising that at the time the Diary appeared with an article about Anna Karenina, this one was undoubtedly important for The text of him and his correspondents was not reflected in Tolstoy's correspondence (for example, with Strakhov.) As was often the case with Tolstoy, his reaction could depend on his mood, on the minute.

How (French).

I have nothing against the gospel, and... (French).

It's set (French).

The generation of Russian people that entered conscious life between the eighties and nineties 19th century, is in such a difficult and responsible position regarding the future of Russian culture, as, perhaps, not one of the generations since the time of Peter the Great.

I say - from the time of Peter, because it is the attitude towards Peter that serves as a watershed feature of the two great currents of Russian historical understanding over the past two centuries, although in reality, earlier than Peter and deeper in history, the struggle between these two currents begins, so superficially and imperfectly denoted by words "Westernism" and "Slavophilism". The denial by Westerners of an original idea in Russian culture, the desire to see in it only a continuation or even only an imitation of European culture, the approval by the Slavophils of this original idea and the opposition of Russian culture to Western culture - in such an extreme, pure form, both currents are not found anywhere, except for abstract speculation. In any action, scientific-historical or artistic, they involuntarily approach each other, unite, however, never mixing and never completely merging. So, in all the great Russian people, from Lomonosov through Pushkin to Turgenev, Goncharov, L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, despite the deepest Western influences, the original Russian idea also manifests itself, however, with a lesser degree of clarity and consciousness than common European ideas. Until now, this lack of clarity and consciousness has been the main weakness of the teachers of Slavophilism.

Whereas the Westerners could point to common European culture and to the feat of Peter as a definite and conscious ideal, the Slavophiles were doomed to remain in the realm of romantic vague regrets about the past, or equally romantic and vague aspirations of the future, they could only point to too clear, but motionless and dead historical forms, or to too obscure, incorporeal and foggy distances, to that which has died, or to that which has not yet been born.

Dostoevsky felt and noted this sickness of Slavophilism - the lack of clarity and consciousness - "the dreamy element of Slavophilism," as he puts it. “Slavophilism still stands on its vague and indefinite ideal. So, in any case, Westernism was still more real than Slavophilism, and, despite all its mistakes, it nevertheless went further, nevertheless, the movement remained on its side, while Slavophilism did not move from its place and even imputed to itself it's a great honor."

Westernism seemed to Dostoevsky more real than Slavophilism, because the former could point to a certain phenomenon. European culture, while the second, despite all its searches, did not find anything of equal value, equivalent, and, at the same time, equally definite and complete in Russian culture. So thought Dostoevsky in 1861. Sixteen years later, he already found, it seemed to him, this certain, great phenomenon of Russian culture, sought and not found by the Slavophiles, which could be consciously, in perfect clarity, opposed and indicated to Europe, found it in the universal meaning of the new, emerging from Pushkin, Russian literature.

“This book,” he wrote in his “Diary” for 1877, regarding the newly appeared “Anna Karenina” by L. Tolstoy, “this book directly assumed in my eyes the size of a fact that could be responsible for us in Europe, that desired fact, to which we could point Europe. Anna Karenina is perfection piece of art with which nothing like out European literatures in the present era cannot be compared, and secondly, and in its idea it is already something of ours, our his, dear, and exactly the very thing that makes our peculiarity in front of the European world. If we have literary works of such power of thought and execution, then why does Europe deny us independence, our his own word, - this is a question that is born of itself.

At that time, these words may have seemed bold and presumptuous; now they seem to us almost timid, in any case not sufficiently clear and definite. Dostoevsky pointed out in them only a small part of the universal significance that is revealed to us with greater and greater clarity in Russian literature. For this it was necessary to see, as we saw, not only the complete growth of artistic creativity, but also the entire tragic development of the moral and religious personality of L. Tolstoy, it was necessary to understand the deepest agreement and the deepest opposition of L. Tolstoy to Dostoevsky in their common continuity from Pushkin. It is already, indeed, as Dostoevsky puts it, a “fact of special significance,” already almost conscious, although not yet said, already defined, clothed in flesh and blood, the phenomenon of Russian and at the same time world culture. Only the most sensitive people in Western Europe– Renan, Flaubert, Nietzsche – if they didn’t figure it out, then at least they foresaw the meaning of this phenomenon. But even to this day, despite the Russian fashion in Europe recent decades, the attitude of most European criticism towards Russian literature remains casual and superficial. And to this day, she does not suspect the real dimensions of her worldwide significance, already visible to us Russians, for whom the primary source of Russian poetry is open - Pushkin, still inaccessible to an alien look. And we can no longer return either to the Westernizers who deny the original idea of ​​Russian culture, or, even more so, to the Slavophiles, not because their preaching seemed too bold and proud to us - perhaps our faith in the future of Russia is even bolder, even more autocratic. - but only because these book dreamers and speculators of the forties seem to us to be too submissive and fearful students of German metaphysics, disguised as Germanophiles, simple-minded Hegelians. And if Dostoevsky's prophecy: "Russia will say greatest word all the world that he had ever heard "turned out to be premature, only because he himself did not finish this word to the end, did not bring his consciousness to the last degree of possible clarity, was afraid of the last conclusion from his own thoughts, broke their edge, dulled their sting - having reached the edge of the abyss, he turned away from it and, in order not to fall, again grabbed hold of the motionless, petrified historical forms of Slavophilism, the very ones for the destruction of which he, perhaps, did more than anyone else. One needs, in fact, great clarity and sobriety of mind in order, without dizziness, without intoxication with popular vanity, to recognize the universality of the idea that opens up in Russian literature. Perhaps for our weak and sickly generation this confession is more terrible than seductive: I mean the terrible, almost unbearable burden of responsibility.

But, in spite of this, or rather, thanks to the fact that we have recognized the original Russian idea, we can no longer, no matter what the cost, and no matter how fatal contradictions threaten us, arrogantly turn away from Western culture or cowardly turn a blind eye to it, like the Slavophiles. We cannot forget that it was Dostoevsky, and just at the time when he was, or at least considered himself, the most extreme Slavophile, with such force and certainty expressed our Russian love for Europe, our Russian longing for our native West, like none of our Westerners: “We Russians,” he says, “two homelands: our Rus' and Europe.” “Europe… But this is a terrible and holy thing! Oh, do you know, gentlemen, how dear to us, to us, Slavophile dreamers, this same Europe, this “land of holy miracles”! “Do you know to what tears and constrictions the hearts torment and excite us the fate of this road and native us countries, how these scare us dark clouds more and more clouding her sky slope? To the Russian, Europe is as precious as Russia. Oh more! It is impossible to love Russia more than I love her, but I never reproached myself for the fact that Venice, Rome, Paris, the treasures of their sciences, their whole history are dearer to me than Russia. Oh, these old foreign stones are dear to Russians, these wonders of God's old world, these fragments of holy miracles; and even that is dearer to us than to them!” “I want to go to Europe, Alyosha,” says Ivan Karamazov, “and I know that I will only go to the cemetery, but to the most, to the most expensive cemetery, that's what! Dear dead lie there, each stone above them speaks of such a hot past life, of such a passionate faith in my feat, in my truth, in my struggle and in my science, that I know in advance that I will fall to the ground and kiss these stones and weep over them, at the same time convinced with all my heart that all this has long been a cemetery and nothing more!”

Sometimes people ask with surprise: why didn't Dostoevsky and Tolstoy know each other? How? Why? After all, they lived at the same time and belonged to approximately the same generation: Dostoevsky was born in 1821, and Tolstoy in 1828. They had a common friend - N.N. Strakhov, critic and philosopher. There was a common, let's say, literary opponent and competitor, with whom both did not immediately develop relations - I.S. Turgenev. Both, although at different times, "fed" near the publisher of "Sovremennik" N.A. Nekrasov.

And, finally, it would be just logical to meet the two greatest prose writers of the world, since they happened to be born in the same country and at the same time. True, Tolstoy lived near Tula, and Dostoevsky lived in St. Petersburg and abroad. But Tolstoy was in St. Petersburg on business, and writers of even lower rank came to Yasnaya Polyana, and he willingly received everyone. Is it really the same N.N. It didn't occur to Strakhov to bring together our two equal-to-the-apostles geniuses, Peter and Paul of Russian prose? Didn't it ever occur to them themselves that they should meet and talk? Moreover, both read and appreciated each other. It would be a beautiful meeting!

No, they didn't get to know each other. Although there was such an opportunity, and even twice ... On March 10, 1878, while in St. Petersburg, where he concluded a deed of sale for the purchase of Samara land from Baron Bistrom, Tolstoy attended a public lecture by Vladimir Solovyov, a 24-year-old philosopher who was becoming fashionable, a master of St. Petersburg University , the future "father" of Russian symbolism. Strakhov and Dostoyevsky attended this lecture. It seemed that everything spoke for Strakhov, who was closely acquainted with both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, to introduce the two main prose writers of our time, who had long wanted to meet each other. But Strakhov did not. In the memoirs of Dostoevsky's widow, Anna Grigorievna, this is explained by the fact that Tolstoy asked Strakhov not to introduce him to anyone. And this is very similar to Tolstoy's behavior in Petersburg, which he hated, where he felt like a complete stranger.

Dostoyevsky's reaction to Tolstoy's so-called "spiritual upheaval" was interesting. It is also interesting in that it very accurately reflects the opinion literary circles in general about what happened to Tolstoy in the early eighties. In May 1880, during the grand opening of the monument to Pushkin in Moscow, when Dostoevsky delivered his famous "Pushkin" speech, Tolstoy was not among the assembled writers. On the other hand, a rumor circulated that Tolstoy had gone mad in Yasnaya Polyana. On May 27, 1880, Dostoevsky wrote to his wife: “Today Grigorovich said that Turgenev, who had returned from Leo Tolstoy, was ill, and Tolstoy had almost lost his mind, and perhaps even completely gone.” This means that, perhaps, it was Turgenev who started the rumor about Tolstoy's "madness" in Moscow. Before that, he visited Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana, they reconciled, and Tolstoy told him about his new views. But how easily did the brother writers accept this rumor, if the very next day Dostoevsky wrote in a letter to his wife: “About Leo Tolstoy, Katkov also confirmed that, it is heard, he was completely crazy. Yuryev (Sergey Andreevich Yuryev - writer and translator, chairman of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, acquaintance of Tolstoy. - P.B.) urged me to visit him at Yasnaya Polyana: it took less than two days to go there, there and back. But I won’t go, although it would be very interesting.”

That is, Dostoevsky, embarrassed by rumors about Tolstoy's "madness", decided not to risk it. Thus, another opportunity for the two writers to meet was lost ... almost because of the usual writer's slander.

But Tolstoy and Dostoevsky also had one more common acquaintance - Countess A.A. Tolstaya, Lev Nikolaevich's aunt and his spiritual correspondent. In the winter of 1881, shortly before Dostoevsky's death, she became close friends with him. “He loves you,” she wrote to Tolstoy, “he asked me a lot, heard a lot about your real trend, and finally asked me if I had anything written where he could get better acquainted with this trend, which is extremely important to him. interested." alexandrine, as they called her in secular circles, gave Dostoevsky to read Tolstoy's letters to her in 1880, written at a time when Tolstoy, according to general opinion, "gone crazy". In Reminiscences, she wrote:

“I still see Dostoevsky in front of me, how he clutched his head and repeated in a desperate voice: “Not that, not that! ..” He did not sympathize with a single thought of Lev Nikolaevich ...”

Such was Dostoevsky's reaction to Tolstoy's spiritual crisis.

Quite different was Tolstoy's response to Dostoyevsky's death.

On February 5, 1881 (Dostoevsky died on January 28, old style), Tolstoy wrote to Strakhov in response to his letter: “I never saw this man and never had direct relations with him, and suddenly, when he died, I realized that he was the closest, dearest, necessary person to me ... And it never occurred to me to compare with him - never. Everything he did (good, real, what he did) was such that the more he did, the better for me. Art causes envy in me, the mind too, but the work of the heart is only joy. I considered him my friend, and I didn’t think otherwise, like the fact that we would see each other, and that now it just wasn’t necessary, but that it was mine. And suddenly at dinner - I dined alone, I was late - I read: he died. Some support bounced off me. I was confused, and then it became clear how dear he was to me, and I cried, and now I cry.

Two days before, Strakhov wrote to Tolstoy: “He alone was equal (in terms of influence on readers) to several magazines. He stood apart among literature, almost entirely hostile, and boldly spoke of what had long been recognized as "temptation and madness" ... "But what was" temptation and madness "from the point of view of the literary environment of that time? But just the preaching of Christianity as the ultimate truth.

On this, according to the writers, Gogol became obsessed before his death, this was the point of Dostoevsky's "madness", and Tolstoy "went crazy" from this same thing. And Tolstoy, without delay, takes the baton of "madness." Coincidentally or not, but it was after the death of Dostoevsky with little story“What makes people alive”, written in 1881, begins the “late” Tolstoy, whose views on life, on religion, on art are completely opposite to those accepted in a “normal” society and which Tolstoy himself recently accepted ...

Pub. by ed.: Basinsky P.V. The violinist is not needed. M.: AST, 2014. S. 34-37.