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Kireevsky review of the current state of literature. Russian literary criticism of the 18th and 19th centuries

Kireevsky review of the current state of literature. Russian literary criticism of the 18th and 19th centuries

01.07.2020

Keywords

I.V. KIREEVSKY / METHODOLOGY OF CRITICISM / IDEOLOGY OF SLAVOPHILISM / CATHEDRAL FEELING / EPIC THINKING / THE SACRALIZATION OF ART AND THE DENIATION OF ITS SECULAR NATURE/ IVAN KIREYEVSKY / CRITICISM METHODOLOGY / SLAVOPHILE IDEOLOGY / CONCILIAR SENSE / EPIC IDEATION / CONSIDERING ART BEING SACRAL WITH DENIAL ITS SECULAR NATURE

annotation scientific article on linguistics and literary criticism, author of scientific work - Vladimir Tikhomirov

The article characterizes the specifics of the literary-critical method of one of the founders of Slavophilism I. V. Kireevsky. The traditional point of view that Kireevsky's Slavophile ideas were formed only by the end of the 1830s is questioned. Already in his youth, he set the goal of determining a special path for the development of national literature in Russia on the basis of Orthodox traditions, which are not based on a combination of aesthetic and ethical factors of artistic creativity. The interest of the publisher of "European" in Western civilization was explained by his desire to study it in detail in order to understand the main differences. As a result, Kireevsky came to the conclusion that it was impossible to combine the principles of Russian Orthodox culture with the European one, based on Catholicism and Protestantism. This is the basis of the methodology of Slavophile literary criticism. Ethical principle, the unity of "beauty and truth", according to the conviction ideologue of Slavophilism, is rooted in the traditions of the Russian national Orthodox conciliar feeling. As a result, Kireevsky's concept of artistic creativity acquired a kind of party, ideological character: he affirms the sacred foundations of culture as a whole, excluding its secular, secularized version. Kireevsky hopes that in the future Russian people will read exclusively spiritual literature, for this purpose the critic proposes to study in schools not European languages, but Church Slavonic. In accordance with his views on the nature of artistic creativity, the critic positively assessed mainly writers close to the Orthodox worldview: V.A. Zhukovsky, N.V. Gogol, E.A. Baratynsky, N.M. Yazykov.

Literary criticism of the founders of the Slavophile movement: Ivan Kireyevsky

The specificity of the literary-critical method of one of the founders of the Slavophilia Ivan Kireyevsky is characterized in the article. The traditional view that the Slavophile ideas in Ivan Kireyevsky formed only at the end of the 1830s, is being questioned. He already in his youth set a target to define a particular path of development language and literature of the Russian nation in the Empire on the basis of Orthodox traditions that relied on combination of aesthetic and ethical dimensions of artistic creativity. The interest of the publisher of “The European Literary Magazine” of Western civilization was due to his desire to study it in detail in order to understand the main peculiarities. As a result, Ivan Kireyevsky came to the conclusion that it was impossible to reconcile the principles of Russian Orthodox culture with the European one, being based on Catholicism and Protestantism. Methodology of Slavophil literary criticism is based on this. The ethical principle of the unity of “truth and beauty”, the conviction of the Slavophile ideologue, rooted in the traditions of Russian national feelings of the Orthodox conciliar. As a result, the concept of art according to Ivan Kireyevsky , acquired a kind of character of a polical party, of ideology: he claims culture to be on the whole of sacred foundations, that excludes its wordly, secularized version. Ivan Kireyevsky hopes that in the future, Russian people will read spiritual literature exclusively; for this purpose, the critic offers to study in schools Church Slavonic other than European languages. In accordance with his views on the nature of art, the critic positively evaluated mainly writers who were close to the Orthodox worldview: Vasily Zhukovsky, Nikolai Gogol, Yevgeny Baratynsky, Nikolay Yazykov.

The text of the scientific work on the topic "Literary criticism of the older Slavophiles: I. V. Kireevsky"

Tikhomirov Vladimir Vasilievich

Doctor of Philology, Professor, Kostroma State University named after V.I. ON THE. Nekrasov

LITERARY CRITICISM OF SENIOR SLAVOPHILS: I.V. KIREEVSKY

The article characterizes the specifics of the literary-critical method of one of the founders of Slavophilism - IV Kireevsky. The traditional point of view that Kireevsky's Slavophile ideas were formed only by the end of the 1830s is questioned. Already in his youth, he set the goal of determining a special path for the development of national literature in Russia on the basis of Orthodox traditions, which are not based on a combination of aesthetic and ethical factors of artistic creativity. The interest of the publisher of "European" in Western civilization was explained by his desire to study it in detail in order to understand the main differences. As a result, Kireevsky came to the conclusion that it was impossible to combine the principles of Russian Orthodox culture with the European one, based on Catholicism and Protestantism. This is the basis of the methodology of Slavophile literary criticism. The ethical principle, the unity of "beauty and truth", according to the ideologist of Slavophilism, is rooted in the traditions of the Russian national Orthodox conciliar feeling. As a result, Kireevsky's concept of artistic creativity acquired a kind of party, ideological character: he affirms the sacred foundations of culture as a whole, excluding its secular, secularized version. Kireevsky hopes that in the future Russian people will read exclusively spiritual literature, for this purpose the critic proposes to study in schools not European languages, but Church Slavonic. In accordance with his views on the nature of artistic creativity, the critic positively assessed mainly writers close to the Orthodox worldview: V.A. Zhukovsky, N.V. Gogol, E.A. Baratynsky, N.M. Yazykov.

Keywords: I.V. Kireevsky, methodology of criticism, ideology of Slavophilism, conciliar feeling, epic thinking, sacralization of art and denial of its secular nature.

A lot of solid works have been written about Slavophile literary criticism, in which its connections with the aesthetics of romanticism, the movement of Russian philosophers of the 1820s and 1830s, with the philosophy of Schelling's mythology and other philosophical teachings of Europe are convincingly defined. In the works of B.F. Egorova, Yu.V. Manna, V.A. Kosheleva, V.A. Kotelnikova, G.V. Zykova rightly points out the rejection by the Slavophiles of a purely aesthetic analysis of works of art and the correlation of literature with moral categories. In most cases, the analysis of Slavophile criticism concerned specific assessments of various literary phenomena and their connection with the literary process. The methodological foundations of the Slavophile ideas about the unity of aesthetic and ethical factors in the works of art themselves and, accordingly, in their analysis, as well as the Orthodox origins of the Slavophile program of artistic creativity, have not been sufficiently clarified. This article is devoted to the peculiarities of the methodology of this direction of criticism.

Researchers of Slavophilism (and specifically the activities of I.V. Kireevsky) constantly emphasize that he experienced a complex and dramatic evolution of a European-educated Russian intellectual, an admirer of German philosophy, who later became one of the founders of the Slavophil doctrine. However, this traditional idea of the development of Kireevsky's worldview needs to be clarified. Indeed, he carefully and with interest studied the history of European civilization, including religious, philosophical, aesthetic,

literary. This was necessary for Kireevsky for self-determination, for understanding the deep, in his opinion, differences in the spiritual foundations of Europe and Orthodox Russia. How else can one explain, for example, his judgments expressed in a letter to A.I. Koshelev back in 1827, at the age of 21, before the start of active journalistic activity: “We will return the rights of true religion, we will agree gracefully with morality, we will arouse love for truth, we will replace stupid liberalism with respect for laws and we will raise the purity of life above the purity of style” . Somewhat later, in 1830, he wrote to his brother Peter (a well-known collector of Russian folklore): to understand beauty “one can only feel: the feeling of brotherly love” - “brotherly tenderness”. Based on these statements, it is already possible to formulate the basic principles of future Slavophile criticism: the organic unity of aesthetic and ethical principles in a work of art, the sacralization of beauty and the aestheticization of truth (naturally, in the specific Orthodox understanding of both). Kireevsky from a young age formulated the tasks and prospects of his religious-philosophical and literary-critical searches. At the same time, the literary position of Kireevsky, like other Slavophiles, does not need to be justified or blamed, it is necessary to understand its essence, motivation, development of traditions.

The main aesthetic and literary-critical principles of Kireevsky appeared already in his first article, "Something about the nature of Pushkin's poetry" ("Moskovsky Vestnik", 1828, No. 6). The connection of this article with the principles of fi-

Bulletin of KSU im. H.A. Nekrasov № 2, 2015

losophical direction is obvious. Philosophical criticism was based on the traditions of romantic aesthetics. “The aesthetics of the early Slavophilism could not but bear traces of the romantic trends of the literary and philosophical life of Russia in the 30s,” V.A. Koshe-lion. It is significant that Kireevsky’s attitude is to define precisely the “character” of Pushkin’s poetry, by which the critic means the originality and originality of Pushkin’s creative manner (la maniere) - the critic introduces into verbal circulation, apparently, a French expression that is still not familiar enough in Russia.

In order to comprehend a certain regularity in the development of Pushkin's creativity, Kireevsky proposed to systematize it in stages, according to certain features - with the triple law of dialectics. At the first stage of Pushkin's work, the critic states the poet's predominant interest in objective figurative expression, which is replaced at the next stage by the desire for a philosophical understanding of being. At the same time, Kireevsky discovers in Pushkin, along with European influence, a Russian national principle. Hence, according to the critic, the poet's natural transition to the third period of creativity, which is already distinguished by national identity. The “distinctive features” of “original creation” are not yet clearly defined by the critic, mainly on an emotional level: these are “painting, some kind of carelessness, some kind of special thoughtfulness and, finally, something inexpressible, understandable only to the Russian heart<...>» . In "Eugene Onegin" and especially in "Boris Godunov", Kireevsky finds evidence of the manifestation of the "Russian character", his "virtues and shortcomings". The predominant feature of Pushkin's mature work, according to the critic, is immersion in the surrounding reality and the "current minute". In the development of Pushkin the poet, Kireevsky notes "continuous improvement" and "correspondence with his time."

Later, in the poem "Poltava", the critic discovered "the desire to embody poetry in reality." In addition, he was the first to define the genre of the poem as a "historical tragedy", containing "an outline of the century". In general, Pushkin's work became for Kireevsky an indicator of nationality, originality, overcoming the traditions of European romanticism with its penchant for reflection - a personal quality unacceptable for the ideologist of Slavophilism, emphasizing the advantage of holistic epic thinking, allegedly characteristic of Russians to a greater extent than Europeans.

Finally, the critic formulates his ideas about the folk creativity: in order for the poet "to be

folk”, you need to share the hopes of your fatherland, its aspirations, its losses, - in a word, “live its life and express it involuntarily, expressing yourself”.

In the “Review of Russian Literature in 1829” (“Dennitsa, Almanac for 1830”, published by M. Maksimovich, b. m., b. G.), Kireevsky continued to characterize Russian literature in philosophical and historical terms, at the same time evaluating the social function of the artist: "The poet is to the present what the historian is to the past: a conductor of popular self-knowledge". Hence the “respect for reality” in literature, associated with the historical direction of “all branches of human existence.<...>Poetry<...>also had to move into reality and focus on the historical kind. The critic has in mind both the general fascination with historical topics that was widespread in the 1820s and 1830s, and the “permeated” understanding of the historical significance of the pressing problems of our time (“the seeds of the desired future are contained in the reality of the present,” Kireevsky emphasized in the same article - ). “The rapid development of historical and philosophical-historical thought, of course, could not but affect literature - and not only externally, thematically, but also on its internal artistic properties,” says I.M. Toybin.

In modern Russian literature, Kireevsky discovers the influence of two external factors, "two elements": "French philanthropism" and "German idealism", which have united "in striving for a better reality." In accordance with this, the "essentiality" and "additional thought" of the poet are combined in a work of art, that is, objective and subjective creative factors. This traces the dualistic concept of artistic creativity, characteristic of romantic aesthetics. Kireevsky states as a sign of overcoming romantic dualism “the struggle of two principles - dreaminess and materiality”, which “should<...>precede their reconciliation."

Kireevsky's concept of art is part of the philosophy of reality, since, in his opinion, in literature there is "a desire to reconcile the imagination with reality, the correctness of forms with the freedom of content." In place of art comes "an exceptional desire for practical activity." The critic states in poetry and in philosophy "the convergence of life with the development of the human spirit."

The notions of artistic creativity characteristic of European aesthetics, based on the principle of overcoming dualism, according to

According to Kireevsky, “an artificially found middle”, although the principle is relevant for the historical direction of modern literature: “beauty is unambiguous with truth”. As a result of his observations, Kireevsky concludes: “It is precisely from the fact that Life supplants Poetry that we must conclude that the striving for Life and for Poetry have converged and that<...>the hour for the poet of Life has come.

The critic formulated these last conclusions in the article “The Nineteenth Century” (“European”, 1832, No. 1, 3), because of it, the magazine was banned, in which Kireevsky was not only the publisher and editor, but the author of most publications. At that time, Kireevsky's ideas about the essence of artistic creativity seem to fit into the system of European philosophy of art, but there are also critical notes about European traditions in Russian literature. Like many contemporaries who adhered to the romantic concept of art, Kireevsky argues: “Let's be impartial and admit that we still do not have a complete reflection of the mental life of the people, we still do not have literature.

The author of the article considers the dominance of logical, rational thinking to be an important reason for the spiritual crisis in Western Europe: “The whole result of such thinking could only be in negative cognition, because the mind, which develops itself, is limited by itself.” Related to this is the attitude towards religion, which in Europe is often reduced to a ritual or “individual conviction”. Kireevsky states: “For the full development<...>religion needs the unanimity of the people,<...>development in single-meaning legends, infused with the state structure, personified in unambiguous and nationwide rituals, aligned to one positive principle and tangible in all civil and family relations.

Naturally, the question arises about the relationship between European and Russian enlightenment, which are fundamentally different in historical terms as well. Kireevsky relies on the law of dialectics, according to which “each epoch is determined by the previous one, and the previous one always contains the seeds of the future, so that in each of them the same elements appear, but in full development” . Of great importance is the fundamental difference between the Orthodox branch of Christianity and the Western one (Catholicism and Protestantism). The Russian Church has never been a political force and has always remained "cleaner and brighter".

Along with stating the differences and advantages of Orthodoxy over Western Christianity, Kireevsky admits that Russia in its history is clearly

lacked the civilizing power of antiquity ("the classical world"), which played a large role in the "education" of Europe. Therefore, “how could we achieve education without borrowing from outside? And shouldn't borrowed education be in the struggle against a nationality alien to it? - states the author of the article. Nevertheless, “a people that is beginning to form can borrow it (enlightenment. - V.T.), directly install it without the previous one, directly applying it to their real life” .

In the "Review of Russian Literature for 1831" ("European", 1832, part 1, no. 1-2), much more attention is paid to the characteristics of the modern literary process. The author of the article emphasizes the desire of readers in Europe and Russia to update the content side of works of art. He claims that "literature is pure, valuable in itself - barely noticeable in the midst of the general desire for more significant things", especially in Russia, where literature remains "the only indicator of our mental development". The dominance of the artistic form does not satisfy Kireevsky: “Artistic perfection<...>there is a secondary and relative quality<...>, his dignity is not original and depends on his inner, inspiring poetry ", therefore, has a subjective character. In addition, Russian writers are still being judged “according to foreign laws,” because their own have not been worked out. The combination of objective and subjective factors, according to the critic, is the most important condition for artistic creativity: a work of art must consist of "a true and at the same time poetic representation of life" as it is "reflected in a clear mirror of the poetic soul" .

In the article “On Yazykov’s Poems” (“Telescope”, 1834, No. 3-4), Kireevsky has new ideas about the specifics of artistic creativity, based not on the condition of correspondence between content and form, but on their organic unity, mutual conditioning. According to the author of the article, “before the picture of a creative artist, we forget art, trying to understand the thought expressed in it, to comprehend the feeling that gave birth to this thought.<...>At a certain degree of perfection, art destroys itself, turning into a thought, turning into a soul. Kireevsky rejects the very possibility of a purely artistic analysis of a work of art. To critics who "want to prove beauty and make you enjoy by the rules,<.>ordinary works remain as consolation, for which there are positive laws.<.>. In poetry, the “unearthly world” and the world of “real life” come into contact, as a result of

a "true, pure mirror" of the poet's personality is being opened. Kireevsky concludes that poetry is “not just a body into which a soul has been breathed, but a soul that has taken on the evidence of a body,” and “poetry that is not imbued with essentiality cannot have influence.”

In the concept of artistic creativity formulated by Kireevsky, one can trace the opposition of pagan art (“the body into which the soul was breathed” is a clear reminder of the myth about Pygmalion and Galatea) and Christian art (the soul that accepted the “evidence of the body”). And as if in continuation of this thought in the well-known article “In response to A.S. Khomyakov” (1839), where, according to researchers, Kireevsky finally formulated his Slavophile doctrine, he directly states that romanticism bowed to paganism and that for the new art “a new servant of Christian beauty” must appear to the world. The author of the article is sure that “someday Russia will return to that life-giving spirit that her church breathes”, and for this there is no need to return to the past “peculiarities of Russian life” 3, [p. 153]. So, it has been determined that the basis for the development of the civilization of Russia, its spiritual revival, including the formation of its own direction in artistic creativity, is Orthodoxy. This opinion was shared by all Slavophiles.

In the "Note on the Direction and Methods of the Initial Education of the People" (1839), Kireevsky insists that literacy education and artistic creativity should be subordinated to the "concepts of faith" "predominantly before knowledge," since faith "is a conviction associated with life, giving a special color<...>, a special warehouse to all other thoughts<.>in relation to dogma, faith has something in common with a sense of grace: not a single philosophical definition of beauty can communicate the concept of it in that fullness and strength,<.>in which his one view of an elegant work informs. The religious basis of any artistic creation is again emphasized.

Kireevsky's most extensive article, "Review of the Current State of Literature" ("Moskvityanin", 1845, Nos. 1, 2, 3), contains a fairly complete Slavophile program of artistic creativity. The critic delivers a final verdict on the cult of beauty in art: Gone are “abstract love for beautiful forms,<...>enjoyment of harmony of speech,<...>delightful self-forgetfulness in the harmony of verse<...>". But, Kireevsky continues, he “is sorry for the old, useless, useless literature. It had a lot of warmth for the soul<.>belles-lettres were replaced by magazine-style literature.<.>Everywhere thought is subject to current circumstances<...>, the form is adapted to the requirements

minutes. The novel turned into statistics of manners, poetry - into poems in case<...>» . Literature with a focus on the priority of content and ideas over form does not satisfy the critic either: there is noticeable “excessive respect for the minute”, an all-consuming interest in the events of the day, in the external, business side of life years "natural school"). Kireevsky argues that this literature "does not embrace life, but only touches its outer side,<...>insignificant surface. Such a work is a kind of "shell without grain".

The critic sees European influence in literature with a clear civic tendency, but emphasizes that the imitation of Europe by Russian writers is rather superficial: Europeans focus on “the very inner life of society,<...>where the minute events of the day, and the eternal conditions of life,<...>and religion itself, and together with them the literature of the people merges into one boundless task: the improvement of man and his life relations. In addition, in European literatures there is always a “negative, polemical side, a refutation of systems of opinion”, and a “positive side”, which is the “feature of a new thought”. This, according to Kireevsky, is lacking in modern Russian literature.

The specificity of European thinking, the critic believes, is the ability to "multiple thoughts", which "splits the self-consciousness of society" and "individual". Where "the sanctuary of being is fragmented by the heterogeneity of beliefs or empty by their absence, there can be no question of<...>about poetry". The poet is “created by the power of inner thought. From the depths of his soul, he must endure, in addition to beautiful forms, the very soul of beauty: his living, integral view of the world and man.

Kireevsky states the crisis of European spiritual values, arguing that Europeans "invent for themselves a new religion without a church, without tradition, without revelation and without faith." This is also a reproach to European literature, which is hindered by "the prevailing rationalism in its thought and life." The works of Russian literature still remain "reflections of European ones", and they are "always somewhat lower and weaker<.>originals". The traditions of the "former Russia", which "now constitute the only sphere of its national life, have not developed into our literary enlightenment, but have remained untouched, divorced from the successes of our mental activity." For the development of Russian literature, it is necessary to combine European and native, which “coincide at the last point of their development into one love, into one desire for the living,

full<.. .>and true Christian enlightenment. The “living truths” of the West are “the remnants of Christian principles”, although distorted; “an expression of our own beginning” is what should be “at the foundation of the Orthodox-Slovenian world”.

The critic does not completely cross out the achievements of Western Europe, although he considers Western Christianity to distort the foundations of the true faith. He is sure that Orthodoxy should become the basis of genuine domestic literature, but so far he does not specify its distinctive features, perhaps it was planned to write about this in the continuation of the article, which was not followed.

Kireevsky found confirmation of his ideas about original Russian literature in the historical and literary concept of S.P. Shevyryov, to whose public readings he dedicated a special article (Moskvityanin, 1845, No. 1). Shevyrev did not belong to the Slavophiles, but turned out to be their like-minded in understanding the role of Orthodoxy in the development of Russian literature. It is no coincidence that Kireevsky emphasizes that the lectures of Shevyrev, who essentially opened ancient Russian literature to Russian society, are an event of "historical self-knowledge." Shevyryov is characterized by the concept of "literature in general as a living expression of the inner life and education of the people." The history of Russian literature, in his opinion, is the history of "Old Russian enlightenment", which begins with the impact of "Christian faith on our people".

Orthodoxy and nationality - these are the foundations of the future Russian literature, as Kireevsky represents it. He believes that the creativity of I.A. Krylov, although in a rather narrow fable form. “What Krylov expressed in his time and in his fable sphere, Gogol expresses in our time and in a wider sphere,” the critic asserts. Gogol's work turned out to be a real acquisition for the Slavophiles; in Gogol they found the embodiment of their cherished hopes for a new, original Russian literature. From the time the first volume of Dead Souls (1842) appeared in print, a real struggle for Gogol unfolded between the Slavophiles and their opponents, primarily Belinsky, each side sought to “appropriate” the writer for itself, updated his work in its own way.

In a bibliographic note (“Moskvityanin”, 1845, No. 1), Kireevsky claims that Gogol represents with his work “the strength of the Russian people”, the possibility of connecting “our literature” and “the life of our people”. Kireevsky's understanding of the specifics of Gogol's creativity is fundamentally different from how it was interpreted by the theorist of "natural

schools "V.G. Belinsky. According to Kireevsky, “Gogol is popular not because the content of his stories is taken for the most part from Russian life: content is not character.” In Gogol, in the depths of his soul, special sounds lurk, because special colors shine in his word, special images live in his imagination, exclusively characteristic of the Russian people, that fresh, deep people who have not yet lost their personality in imitation of foreign<...>. In this feature of Gogol lies the profound significance of his originality. In his work lies "the beauty of its own people, surrounded by an invisible array of sympathetic sounds." Gogol "does not separate the dream from the sphere of life, but<...>binds artistic pleasure subject to consciousness.

Kireevsky does not reveal the details of Gogol's creative method, however, in the critic's judgments there is an important idea about the predominantly subjective, personal beginning in his works. According to Kireevsky, it is necessary "to judge the thought of a work of art according to the data contained in it, and not according to conjectures attached to it from the outside" . This is again a hint at the critical position of the supporters of the "natural school", who in their own way, mainly in the social sense, perceived Gogol's work.

In another case, formulating his idea of the peculiarities of fiction, Kireevsky expressed the opinion that a work needs a thought “carried through the heart”. The author's idea, heartened by a personal feeling, becomes an indicator of the spiritual values inherent in the artist and manifested in his work.

Kireevsky's reflections on Russian literature were accompanied by increasing confidence that it was necessary to revive and strengthen its (literature) fundamental foundation - Orthodoxy. In a review of F. Glinka's story "Luka da Marya" ("Moskvityanin", 1845, No. 2), the critic recalls that natively in the Russian people "the lives of the saints, the teachings of the holy fathers and liturgical books constitute<...>favorite subject of reading, the source of his spiritual songs, the usual sphere of his thinking. Before, before the Europeanization of Russia, it was "the whole way of thinking of all classes of society<...>, the concepts of one estate were the complement of another, and the general idea was held firmly and whole in the common life of the people<.>from one source - the church.

In modern Russian society, the reviewer continues, "the prevailing education" has moved away from "the beliefs and concepts of the people," and this did not benefit both sides. The new civic literature offers the people "books

easy reading<...>that amuse the reader with the strangeness of the effects", or "heavy reading books", "not adapted to his ready-made concepts<...>. In general, reading, instead of the goal of edification, has the goal of pleasure.

Kireevsky openly insists on the revival of the tradition of the sacred word in literature: "From faith and conviction come holy deeds in the sphere of morality and great thoughts in the sphere of poetry." It is no coincidence that one of the first researchers of the literary activity of the Slavophiles, historian K.N. Bestuzhev-Ryumin noted: “They believe in the sanctity of the word<...>» . This calls into question the necessity of the existence of modern secular, secularized literature, in which there are also spiritual, moral principles, but without open didacticism and striving for fundamental churchness. Kireevsky even considers it necessary to study the Church Slavonic language instead of the new European ones.

The nature of artistic creativity, its essence, the origins of the poetic word, naturally, also remained the subject of Kireevsky's keen interest. Aesthetic problems were actualized in connection with the popularity in Europe in the 1830s and 1840s of the philosophical ideas of F. Schelling, who was close to romanticism, and somewhat later of his opponent, G. Hegel. Russian Slavophiles took into account the theoretical research of German philosophers, especially Schelling. In an article entitled Schelling's Speech (1845), Kireevsky focused on his philosophy of mythology, perceiving mythology as the original form of "natural religion", in which "the great, universal<...>process of inner life”, “real being in God”. Religious revelation, the author of the article summarizes Schelling's views, "regardless of any teaching," represents "not one ideal, but at the same time real, relation of man to God." Kireevsky admits that "the philosophy of art cannot but concern mythology", moreover, mythology gave rise to the philosophy of art and art itself, "the fate of every nation lies in its mythology", is largely determined by it.

One of the essential principles of Schelling's aesthetics, which was taken into account by Kireevsky, is: "The real in Schelling contains the ideal as its highest meaning, but, in addition, it has irrational concreteness and fullness of life."

The discussion of the problem of the development of Russian literature was continued by Kireevsky in the article “On the Character of the Enlightenment of Europe and its Relation to the Enlightenment of Russia” (“Moscow Collection”, 1852, vol. 1). Here Kireevsky argues that

in order to preserve the meaning of beauty and truth in the spiritual life of the people<.>inextricable connection,<.>which preserves the general integrity of the human spirit", while "the Western world, on the contrary, based its beauty on a deception of the imagination, on a deliberately false dream, or on the extreme tension of a one-sided feeling, born from a deliberate splitting of the mind." The West does not realize that “dreaming is a lie of the heart and that the inner wholeness of being is necessary not only for the truth of reason, but also for the fullness of elegant pleasure.” In these conclusions, there is an obvious opposition between the traditions of integrity, the catholicity of the worldview of the Russian person (as the Slavophiles understood it) and the individualistic "fragmentation of the spirit" of the European. This, according to the critic, determines the fundamental differences between cultural traditions and the peculiarities of understanding the nature of the art of the word in Europe and in Russia. Kireevsky's arguments are largely speculative in nature; they are based on the a priori assumptions accepted by the Slavophiles about the special historical, religious and civilizational path of Russia.

Of contemporary Russian writers to Kireevsky, the poets V.A. Zhukovsky, E.A. Baratynsky, N.M. languages. In their work, the critic found spiritual, moral and artistic principles dear to him. He described Zhukovsky's poetry as follows: "This ingenuous sincerity of poetry is exactly what we lack." In the Odyssey translated by Zhukovsky, Kireevsky finds “non-stilted poetry”: “Each expression is equally suitable for beautiful verse and living reality,<...>everywhere the equal beauty of truth and measure. The Odyssey "will act not only on literature, but also on the moral mood of a person." Kireevsky constantly emphasizes the unity of ethical and aesthetic values in a work of art.

To understand the poetry of Baratynsky, the critic argues, there is not enough attention to the "exterior decoration" and "external form" - the poet has a lot of "deep lofty moral<...>delicacy of mind and heart. Baratynsky "actually discovered<...>possibility of poetry<...>. Hence his assertion that everything true, fully presented cannot be immoral, that is why the most ordinary events, the smallest details of life are poetic when we look at them through the harmonic strings of his lyre.<...>... all the accidents and all the ordinary things of life take on the character of poetic significance under his pen.

The closest to Kireevsky spiritually and creatively was N.M. Languages, about which the critic suggested that when perceiving

his poetry "we forget art, trying to understand the thought expressed in it, to comprehend the feeling that gave rise to this thought" . For a critic, Yazykov's poetry is the embodiment of a broad Russian soul, capable of expressing itself in various qualities. The peculiarity of this poetry is defined as "the desire for spiritual space". At the same time, there is a tendency for the poet to penetrate deeper "into life and reality", the development of the poetic ideal "to greater materiality".

Kireevsky chooses for critical analysis that literary material that is closer to him, which helps to formulate the basic principles of his philosophical-aesthetic and literary-critical position. As a critic, he is clearly unbiased, his criticism has the features of a kind of journalism, since it is guided by certain, pre-formulated

ideologemes, seeks to revive the traditions of sacred Russian literature based on Orthodox values.

Bibliographic list

1. Alekseev S.A. Schelling // F. Schelling: pro et contra. - St. Petersburg: Russian Christian Humanitarian Institute, 2001. - 688 p.

2. Bestuzhev-Ryumin K.N. Slavophile doctrine and its fate in Russian literature // Otechestvennye zapiski. - 1862. - T. CXL. - No. 2.

3. Kireevsky I.V. Criticism and aesthetics. - M.: Art, 1979. - 439 p.

4. Koshelev V.A. Aesthetic and literary views of Russian Slavophiles (1840-1850s). - L.: Nauka, 1984. - 196 p.

5. Toybin I.M. Pushkin. Creativity of the 1830s and questions of historicism. - Voronezh: Publishing House of the Voronezh University, 1976. - 158 p.

REVIEW OF THE CURRENT STATE OF LITERATURE.

(1845).

There was a time when, saying: literature, they usually understood fine literature; in our time, fine literature is only an insignificant part of literature. Therefore, we must warn readers that, wishing to present the current state of literature in Europe, we will inevitably have to pay more attention to philosophical, historical, philological, political-economic, theological works, etc., than to fine works proper.

Perhaps from the very epoch of the so-called renaissance of the sciences in Europe, never has belles-lettres played such a pitiful role as now, especially in the last years of our time—although, perhaps, so much has never been written in all genres and never read. everything that is written is so greedy. Even the 18th century was predominantly literary; as early as the first quarter of the 19th century, purely literary interests were one of the mainsprings of the mental movement of peoples; great poets aroused great sympathy; differences of literary opinion produced passionate parties; the appearance of a new book reverberated in the minds as a public affair. But now the relation of belles lettres to society has changed; of the great, all-captivating poets, not a single one remained; with a multitude of poems and, let's say, with a multitude of remarkable talents, there is no poetry: even its need is imperceptible; literary opinions are repeated without participation; the former, magical sympathy between the author and readers is interrupted; from the first brilliant role

belles-lettres have become the confidante of other heroines of our time; we read a lot, we read more than before, we read everything that is horrible; but all in passing, without participation, as an official reads incoming and outgoing papers when he reads them. When we read, we do not enjoy, still less can we forget ourselves; but we only take it into consideration, we are looking for an application, a benefit; - and that lively, disinterested interest in purely literary phenomena, that abstract love for beautiful forms, that enjoyment of the harmony of speech, that rapturous self-forgetfulness in the harmony of verse, which we experienced in our youth The coming generation will know about him only by legend.

They say that this should be rejoiced; that literature has been replaced by other interests because we have become more efficient; that if before we were chasing a verse, a phrase, a dream, now we are looking for essentiality, science, life. I don't know if this is fair; but I confess that I feel sorry for the old, inapplicable, useless literature. There was a lot of warmth in her for the soul; and what warms the soul may not be entirely superfluous for life.

In our time, belles-lettres have been replaced by journal literature. And one should not think that the nature of journalism would belong to periodicals alone: it extends to all forms of literature, with very few exceptions.

Indeed, wherever we look, thought is subordinated to current circumstances, feeling is attached to the interests of the party, form is adapted to the requirements of the moment. The novel turned into the statistics of morals; -poetry into verses in case *); -history, being an echo of the past, tries to be at the same time a mirror of the present, or proof

*) Goethe already foresaw this trend; towards the end of my life I asserted that true poetry is poetry for chance ( Gelegenheits-Gedicht ).—However, Goethe understood this in his own way. In the last period of his life, most of the poetic occasions that aroused his inspiration were a court ball, an honorary masquerade, or someone's birthday. The fate of Napoleon and the Europe he turned upside down barely left traces in the entire collection of his creations. Goethe was the all-encompassing, greatest and probably last poet individual life that has not yet penetrated into one consciousness with the life of all mankind.

some social conviction, a quotation in favor of some modern view;—philosophy, in the most abstract contemplation of eternal truths, is constantly occupied with their relation to the current moment;—even theological works in the West, for the most part, are generated by some outsider circumstance of outer life. More books have been written on the occasion of one Bishop of Cologne than on account of the prevailing unbelief of which the Western clergy so complain.

However, this general desire of minds for the events of reality, for the interests of the day, has its source not only in personal benefits or selfish goals, as some people think. Although the benefits are private and connected with public affairs, but the general interest in the latter does not come from this calculation alone. For the most part, it's just an interest in sympathy. The mind is awakened and directed in this direction. The thought of man has grown together with the thought of humanity. This is the pursuit of love, not profit. He wants to know what is happening in the world, in the fate of his kind, often without the slightest regard for himself. He wants to know, in order only to participate by thought in common life, to sympathize with it from within his limited circle.

In spite of this, however, it seems, not without reason, that many complain about this excessive respect for the moment, this all-consuming interest in the events of the day, in the external, business side of life. Such a direction, they think, does not embrace life, but only touches its outer side, its non-essential surface. The shell, of course, is necessary, but only to preserve the grain, without which it is a fistula; perhaps this state of mind is understandable as a state of transition; but nonsense, as a state of higher development. The porch to the house is good as a porch; but if we settle down to live on it, as if it were the whole house, then we can feel cramped and cold from that.

Let us note, however, that questions of political and governmental per se, which have so long agitated the minds of the West, are now beginning to recede into the background of mental movements, and although on superficial occupy most of the heads, but it's a pain

the majority is already backward; it no longer constitutes the expression of the age; advanced thinkers have resolutely crossed over into another sphere, into the area of social questions, where the first place is no longer occupied by the external form, but by the very inner life of society, in its real, essential relations.

I consider it superfluous to stipulate that by the direction to social questions I do not mean those ugly systems that are known in the world more for the noise they make than for the meaning of their ill-conceived teachings: these phenomena are curious only as a sign, but in themselves are insignificant; no, I see an interest in social questions, replacing the former, exclusively political solicitude, not in this or that phenomenon, but in the whole trend of European literature.

Mental movements in the West are now made with less noise and brilliance, but obviously have more depth and generality. Instead of the limited sphere of the events of the day and external interests, thought rushes to the very source of everything external, to the person as he is, and to his life as it should be. A meaningful discovery in science already occupies the minds more than a pompous speech in the Chamber. The external form of justice seems less important than the internal development of justice; the living spirit of the people is more essential than its outward arrangements. Western writers are beginning to understand that under the loud rotation of social wheels lies the inaudible movement of the moral spring on which everything depends, and therefore, in their mental concern, they try to move from the phenomenon to the cause, they want to rise from formal external questions to that volume of the idea of society, where even momentary the events of the day, and the eternal conditions of life, and politics, and philosophy, and science, and craft, and industry, and religion itself, and together with them the literature of the people, merge into one boundless task: the improvement of man and his life relations.

But it must be admitted that if particular literary phenomena are therefore more significant and, so to speak, more juice, then literature in its total volume represents a strange chaos of contradictory opinions, unconnected systems, airy scattered theories, momentary, invented beliefs, and at the base total: co-

the complete absence of any conviction that could be called not only general, but even dominant. Each new effort of thought is expressed by a new system; each new system, as soon as it is born, destroys all the previous ones, and destroying them, it itself dies at the moment of birth, so that while constantly working, the human mind cannot rest on a single obtained result; constantly striving to build some great, transcendental building, he finds no support anywhere to establish at least one first stone for an unshakable foundation.

Hence, in all works of literature that are at all remarkable, in all important and unimportant phenomena of thought in the West, beginning with the latest philosophy of Schelling and ending with the long-forgotten system of Saint-Simonists, we usually find two different sides: one almost always arouses sympathy in the public , and often contains a lot of true, sensible and moving forward thought: this is the side negative, polemical, refutation of systems and opinions that preceded the stated belief; the other side, if it sometimes excites sympathy, is almost always limited and soon passing: this is the side positive, that is, precisely what constitutes the peculiarity of the new thought, its essence, its right to life beyond the limits of the first curiosity.

The reason for this duality of Western thought is obvious. Having brought its former ten-century development to an end, the new Europe has come into conflict with the old Europe and feels that in order to start a new life it needs a new foundation. The basis of the life of the people is conviction. Not finding something ready-made that meets its requirements, Western thought tries to create a conviction for itself by effort, to invent it, if possible, by the effort of thinking, but in this desperate work, in any case curious and instructive, up to now each experience has been only a contradiction of another.

Multithinking, heteroglossia of seething systems and opinions, with the lack of one common conviction, not only shatters the self-consciousness of society, but must also act on a private person, bifurcating every living movement of his soul. That is why, by the way, there are so many talents in our time and there is not a single true poet. For the poet is created

by the power of inner thought. From the depths of his soul, he must endure, in addition to beautiful forms, the very soul of beauty: his living, integral view of the world and man. No artificial arrangements of concepts, no reasonable theories will help here. His ringing and trembling thought must come from the very secret of his inner, so to speak, supraconscious conviction, and where this sanctuary of being is fragmented by the heterogeneity of beliefs, or empty of their absence, there can be no talk of poetry, nor of any powerful influence of man on man. .

This state of mind in Europe is fairly new. It belongs to the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The eighteenth century, although it was predominantly an unbeliever, nevertheless had its ardent convictions, its dominant theories, on which thought was calmed, by which the feeling of the highest need of the human spirit was deceived. When, after a burst of ecstasy, disappointment in favorite theories followed, then the new man could not endure life without heart goals: despair became his dominant feeling. Byron testifies to this transitional state, but the feeling of despair, in its essence, is only momentary. Coming out of it, Western self-consciousness broke up into two opposite aspirations. On the one hand, thought, not supported by the highest goals of the spirit, fell into the service of sensual interests and selfish views; hence the industrial trend of minds, which has penetrated not only into external social life, but also into the abstract field of science, into the content and form of literature, and even into the very depths of domestic life, into the sanctity of family ties, into the magical secret of the first youthful dreams. On the other hand, the absence of basic principles awakened in many the consciousness of their necessity. The very want of conviction produced the need for faith; but the minds that sought faith were not always able to reconcile its Western forms with the present state of European science. From this, some decisively rejected the latter and declared an irreconcilable enmity between faith and reason; others, trying to find their agreement, either violate science in order to force it into Western forms of religion, or want to reform the very forms of religion according to their science, or, finally, not finding on

Westerners in a form corresponding to their intellectual needs invent a new religion for themselves without a church, without tradition, without revelation and without faith.

The boundaries of this article do not allow us to present in a clear picture what is remarkable and special in the modern phenomena of literature in Germany, England, France and Italy, where a new religious-philosophical thought worthy of attention is now igniting. In subsequent issues of the Moskvityanin we hope to present this image with all possible impartiality. Now, in cursory sketches, we will try to indicate in foreign literature only that they represent the most strikingly remarkable at the present moment.

In Germany, the dominant trend of minds is still predominantly philosophical; adjoining it, on the one hand, is the historical-theological direction, which is a consequence of one’s own, deeper development of philosophical thought, and on the other, the political direction, which, it seems, for the most part must be attributed to someone else’s influence, judging by the predilection of the most remarkable writers of this kind to France and its literature. Some of these German patriots go so far as to place Voltaire as a philosopher above the German thinkers.

Schelling's new system, so long awaited, so solemnly accepted, did not seem to agree with the expectations of the Germans. His Berlin auditorium, where in the first year of his appearance it was difficult to find a place, now, as they say, has become spacious. His method of reconciling faith with philosophy has not yet convinced either believers or philosophizers. The former reproach him for the excessive rights of reason and for the special meaning that he puts into his concepts of the most basic dogmas of Christianity. His closest friends see him only as a thinker on the path to faith. “I hope,” says Neander, (dedicating a new edition of his church history to him), “I hope that a merciful God will soon make you completely ours.” Philosophers, on the contrary, are offended by the fact that he accepts, as the property of reason, the dogmas of faith, not developed from reason according to the laws of logical necessity. "If

his system was holy truth itself, they say, then even in that case it could not be the acquisition of philosophy until it is its own work.

This, at least outward, failure of a cause of world significance, with which so many great expectations were combined, based on the deepest need of the human spirit, confused many thinkers; but together was a cause of triumph for others. Both have forgotten, it seems that the innovative thought of the age-old geniuses must be at odds with their closest contemporaries. Passionate Hegelians, completely satisfied with the system of their teacher and not seeing the possibility of leading human thought further than the boundaries shown by him, consider every attempt of the mind to develop philosophy above its present state as a blasphemous attack on the very truth. But, meanwhile, their triumph at the imaginary failure of the great Schelling, as far as one can judge from philosophical pamphlets, was not entirely solid. If it is true that Schelling's new system, in the particular way in which it was expounded by him, found little sympathy in present-day Germany, then nevertheless his refutations of the former philosophies, and especially Hegel's, had a profound and daily increasing effect. Of course, it is also true that the opinions of the Hegelians are constantly spreading more widely in Germany, developing in applications to the arts, literature and all sciences (including the natural sciences); it is true that they have even become almost popular; but for that, many of the first-class thinkers have already begun to realize the insufficiency of this form of wisdom, and I do not feel the need for a new teaching based on higher principles, although they still do not clearly see from what side they can expect an answer to this unquenchable need of the aspiring spirit. Thus, according to the laws of the eternal movement of human thought, when a new system begins to descend into the lower strata of the educated world, at that very time advanced thinkers are already aware of its unsatisfactoriness and look ahead, into that deep distance, into the blue infinity, where a new horizon opens up for their keen foreboding.

However, it should be noted that the word Hegelianism is not associated with any particular way of thinking, with any permanent trend. The Hegelians agree with each other only in the method of thinking and still more in the mode of expression; but the results of their methods and the meaning of what is expressed are often quite opposite. Even during the life of Hegel, between him and Hans, the most brilliant of his students, there was a complete contradiction in the applied conclusions of philosophy. The same disagreement is repeated among other Hegelians. For example, the way of thinking of Hegel and some of his followers reached the extreme aristocracy; while other Hegelians preach the most desperate democratism; there were even some who deduced from the same principles the teaching of fanatical absolutism itself. Religiously, some adhere to Protestantism in the strictest, most ancient sense of the word, without deviating not only from the concept, but even from the letter of the doctrine; others, on the contrary, reach the most absurd atheism. With regard to art, Hegel himself began by contradicting the newest trend, justifying the romantic and demanding the purity of the artistic genre; many Hegelians still adhere to this theory, while others preach the latest art in the most extreme contrast to the romantic and with the most desperate indeterminacy of forms and confusion of characters. Thus, oscillating between opposite directions, now aristocratic, now popular, now religious, now godless, now romantic, now new-life, now purely Prussian, now suddenly Turkish, then finally French—Hegel’s system in Germany had different characters, and not only at these opposite extremes, but also at every step of their mutual distance, has formed and left a special school of followers, who more or less incline now to the right, now to the left. Therefore, nothing could be more unfair than to attribute to one Hegelian the opinion of another, as sometimes happens in Germany, but more often in other literatures where Hegel's system is not yet well known. Because of this misunderstanding, most of the followers of Hegel endure completely undeserved accusations. For it is natural that the harshest, most ugly thoughts of some of

they are most likely to be circulated among the surprised public as an example of excessive boldness or amusing oddity, and, not knowing the full flexibility of the Hegelian method, many involuntarily attribute to all Hegelians what belongs, perhaps, to one.

However, speaking of the followers of Hegel, it is necessary to distinguish those of them who are engaged in the application of his methods to other sciences, from those who continue to develop his teaching in the field of philosophy. Of the former, there are some writers remarkable for the power of logical thinking; of the latter, not a single one of particular genius is known so far, not a single one who would rise even to the living concept of philosophy, would penetrate beyond its external forms and would say at least one fresh thought that was not taken literally from the writings of the teacher. Is it true, Erdman at first he promised an original development, but then, however, for 14 years in a row he does not get tired of constantly turning the same well-known formulas. The same external formality fills the compositions Rosencrantz, Michelet, Margeineke, Goto Roetscher And Gabler, although the latter, in addition, somewhat alters the direction of his teacher and even his very phraseology, either because he really understands him in this way, or, perhaps, wants to understand him in this way, sacrificing the accuracy of his expressions for the external good of the whole school. Werder for some time enjoyed the reputation of a particularly gifted thinker, while he did not publish anything and was known only for his teaching to Berlin students; but by publishing a logic filled with commonplaces and old formulas, dressed in a worn but pretentious dress, with plump phrases, he proved that the talent of teaching is not yet a guarantee for the dignity of thinking. The true, only true and pure representative of Hegelianism is still himself Hegel and he alone, although perhaps no one more than himself contradicted in the application of the basic principle of his philosophy.

It would be easy to calculate many remarkable thinkers from Hegel's opponents; but deeper and more crushing than others, it seems to us, after Schelling, Adolph Trendelenbury, a man who deeply studied the ancient philosophers and attacked the Hegelian method at the very source of her life

nenosti, in relation to pure thinking to its basic principle. But here, as in all modern thinking, the destructive force of Trendelenburg is in clear disequilibrium with the creative.

The attacks of the Herbartians have, perhaps, less logical invincibility, but more essential meaning, because in place of the destroyed system they put not the emptiness of nonsense, from which the human mind has even more disgust than physical nature; but they offer another, already finished, very worthy of attention, although still little appreciated, Herbart's system.

Incidentally, the less satisfactory the philosophical state of Germany is, the more strongly the religious need is revealed in it. In this respect, Germany is now a very curious phenomenon. The need for faith, so deeply felt by higher minds, in the midst of a general vacillation of opinions, and perhaps as a result of this vacillation, was revealed there by the new religious mood of many poets, the formation of new religious-artistic schools, and most of all, a new trend in theology. These phenomena are all the more important because they seem to be only the first beginning of the future, the strongest development. I know that people usually say the opposite; I know that they see in the religious trend of some writers only an exception from the general, dominant state of mind. And indeed it is an exception, judging by the material, numerical majority of the so-called educated class; for it must be confessed that this class, more than ever, now belongs to the very left extreme of rationalism. But we must not forget that the development of popular thought does not proceed from a numerical majority. The majority expresses only the present moment and testifies more to a past, active force than to an upcoming movement. To understand the direction, one must look in the wrong direction. where there are more people, but where there is more inner vitality and where thought is more fully in line with the crying needs of the age. If, however, we take into account how conspicuously the vital development of German rationalism stopped; how mechanically he moves in unimportant formulas, going through the same worn-out positions; like anything

the original fluttering of thought apparently breaks out of these monotonous fetters and strives into another, warmer sphere of activity;—then we will be convinced that Germany has outlived its true philosophy, and that a new, profound change in convictions is soon ahead of her.

In order to understand the latest direction of her Lutheran theology, one must recall the circumstances that gave rise to its development.

At the end of the last and at the beginning of the present century, the majority of German theologians were, as we know, imbued with that popular rationalism which proceeded from the confusion of French opinions with German scholastic formulas. This direction has spread very quickly. Zemler, at the beginning of his career, was proclaimed a free-thinking new teacher; but at the end of his activity and without changing his direction, he himself suddenly found himself with a reputation as an inveterate Old Believer and an extinguisher of reason. The state of theological teaching around him changed so quickly and so completely.

In contrast to this weakening of faith, in a barely noticeable corner of German life, a small circle of people closed hard believers, the so-called Pietists, who were somewhat close to the Hernguthers and the Methodists.

But the year 1812 awakened the need for higher convictions throughout Europe; then, especially in Germany, religious feeling awoke again in a new force. The fate of Napoleon, the upheaval that took place in the entire educated world, the danger and salvation of the fatherland, the rebirth of all the foundations of life, the brilliant, young hopes for the future - all this seething of great questions and tremendous events could not but touch the deepest side of human self-consciousness and awakened its highest powers. spirit. Under such influence, a new generation of Lutheran theologians was formed, which naturally came into direct conflict with the previous one. From their mutual opposition in literature, in life and in state activity, two schools arose: one, at that time new, fearing the autocracy of reason, adhered strictly to the symbolic books of its confession; the other allowed herself their reasonable interpretation. Per-

the shaft, opposing the superfluous, in its opinion, rights of philosophizing, adjoined its extreme members to the pietists; the latter, defending the mind, sometimes bordered on pure rationalism. From the struggle of these two extremes, an infinite number of middle directions have developed.

Meanwhile, the disagreement of these two parties on the most important questions, the internal disagreement of different shades of the same party, the disagreement of different representatives of the same shade, and finally, the attacks of pure rationalists, who no longer belong to the number of believers, on all these parties and shades taken together, all this aroused in the general opinion the consciousness of the need for a more thorough study of the Holy Scriptures than it had been done up to that time, and above all: the need for a firm definition of the boundaries between reason and faith. The new development of historical and especially philological and philosophical education in Germany agreed with this demand and partly strengthened by it. Instead of the fact that previously university students barely understood Greek, now gymnasium students began to enter universities with a ready stock of solid knowledge in languages: Latin, Greek and Hebrew. The philological and historical departments were engaged in people of remarkable talents. Theological philosophy counted many well-known representatives, but its brilliant and thoughtful teaching especially revived and developed it. Schleiermacher, and another, opposite to it, although not brilliant, but no less profound, although hardly understandable, but, by some inexpressible, sympathetic chain of thoughts, surprisingly fascinating teaching of the professor Dauba. These two systems were joined by a third, based on the philosophy of Hegel. The fourth batch consisted of the remnants of the old Breitschneiderian popular rationalism. Behind them began already pure rationalists, with bare philosophizing without faith.

The more vividly the various directions were defined, the more multilaterally the particular questions were handled, the more difficult was their general agreement.

Meanwhile, the side of the predominantly believers, strictly adhering to their symbolic books, had a great outward appearance.

advantage over others: only the followers of the Augsburg confession, which enjoyed state recognition, as a result of the Peace of Westphalia, could have the right to the patronage of state power. As a result, many of them demanded the removal of the anti-thinkers from their positions.

On the other hand, this very advantage was, perhaps, the reason for their small success. Against the onslaught of thought, resorting to the protection of an external force seemed to many to be a sign of internal failure. Moreover, there was another weakness in their position: the Augsburg Confession itself was based on the right of personal interpretation. To allow this right before the 16th century and not after it seemed to many to be another contradiction. However, for one reason or another, but rationalism, suspended for a while and not defeated by the efforts of legitimate believers, began to spread again, acting now with a vengeance, strengthened by all the acquisitions of science, until, finally, following the inexorable course of syllogisms, divorced from faith, he achieved the most extreme, the most disgusting results.

Thus, the results that revealed the power of rationalism served at the same time as its denunciation. If they could bring some momentary harm to the crowd, imitatively repeating other people's opinions; for this, people who frankly sought a solid foundation, the more clearly separated from them and the more resolutely chose the opposite direction. As a consequence, the old view of many Protestant theologians has changed considerably.

There is a party that belongs to the most recent times, which no longer regards Protestantism as a contradiction to Catholicism, but, on the contrary, separates Papism and the Council of Trent from Catholicism and sees in the Augsburg Confession the most legitimate, although not yet the last, expression of the continually developing Church. These Protestant theologians, even in the Middle Ages, no longer recognize a deviation from Christianity, as Lutheran theologians have said up to now, but its gradual and necessary continuation, considering not only internal, but even external, uninterrupted churchness as one of the necessary elements of Christian-

—Instead of the former desire to justify all revolts against the Church of Rome, they are now more inclined to condemn them. The Waldensians and Wycliffites, with whom they had previously found so much sympathy, are readily accused; justify Gregory VII and Innocent III, and even condemn Goose, for resistance to the legitimate authority of the Church The goose, whom Luther himself, according to tradition, called the predecessor of his swan song.

In accordance with this trend, they want some changes in their worship and especially, following the example of the Episcopal Church, they want to give a greater preponderance of the proper liturgical part over the sermon. To this end, all the liturgies of the first centuries have been translated, and the most complete collection of all old and new church songs has been compiled. In the business of pastoring, they demand not only teachings in the church, but also exhortations at home, along with constant monitoring of the life of the parishioners. To top it off, they want to return to the custom the old ecclesiastical punishments, ranging from a simple exhortation to a solemn eruption, and even rebel against mixed marriages. Both in the Old Lutheran Church *) are no longer a desire, but a dogma introduced into real life.

However, it goes without saying that this direction does not belong to all, but only to some Protestant theologians. We noticed it more because it's new than because it's strong. And it is not necessary to think that, in general, legally believing Lutheran theologians, who equally recognize their symbolic books and agree with each other in rejecting rationalism, would therefore agree in

*) Old Lutheran Church there is a new phenomenon. It originated from the resistance of some part of the Lutherans against joining them with the Reformed. The present King of Prussia allowed them to practice their doctrine openly and separately; as a result, a new church was formed, called the Old Lutheran. It had its full Council in 1841, issued its own special decrees, established for its administration its Supreme Church Council, independent of any authorities, sitting in Breslau, on which alone the lower councils and all the churches of their confession depend. According to their decrees, mixed marriages are strictly forbidden for all those who take part in church government or in education. Others, if not expressly forbidden, are at least advised against as reprehensible. They call mixed marriages not only the union of the Lutherans with the Catholics, but also the Old Lutherans with the Lutherans of the united, so-called Evangelical Church.

my dogma. On the contrary, their differences are even more significant than it might seem at first glance. For example, Julius Müller, who is revered by them as one of the most legal-minded, nevertheless departs from others in his teaching about sin; despite the fact that this question hardly belongs to the most central questions of theology. " Getstenberg, the most cruel opponent of rationalism, does not find sympathy for this extreme of his bitterness among everyone, and among those who sympathize with him, very many disagree with him in some particulars of his teaching, as, for example, in the concept of prophecy, although a special concept of prophecy must necessarily lead to a special concept of the very relationship of human nature to the Divine, that is, of the very foundation of dogma. Toluca The most lukewarm in his beliefs and the most lukewarm in his thinking is usually revered by his party as an excessively liberal thinker, while this or that relation of thought to faith, with consistent development, must change the whole character of dogma. Neander they blame his all-forgiving tolerance and soft-hearted sympathy with other teachings, a feature that not only determines his distinctive view of the history of the church, but together with the inner movement of the human spirit in general, and consequently separates the very essence of his teaching from others. draw And Lycke also largely disagree with their party. Everyone puts into his confession the distinctiveness of his personality. Regardless, however, Beck, one of the most remarkable representatives of the new believing direction, demands from Protestant theologians the compilation of a general, complete, scientific dogma, free from personal opinions and independent of temporary systems. But, considering all that has been said, we may seem to have some right to doubt the feasibility of this demand.—

About the newest condition French literature, we will say only very little, and that, perhaps, is superfluous, because French literature is known to Russian readers, hardly more than domestic. Let us only note the opposite direction of the French mind to the direction of German thought. Here every question of life is addressed

to the question of science; there every thought of science and literature turns into a question of life. Xu's famous novel resonated not so much in literature as in society; its results were: a transformation in the structure of prisons, the formation of philanthropic societies, and so on. Another novel of his, which is now coming out, obviously owes its success to non-literary qualities. Balzac, who was so successful before 1830 because he described the then dominant society, is now almost forgotten for exactly the same reason. The dispute between the clergy and the university, which in Germany would have given rise to abstract arguments about the relationship between philosophy and faith, state and religion, like the dispute about the Bishop of Cologne, in France only aroused greater attention to the present state of public education, to the nature of the activities of the Jesuits and to the modern direction of public education. . The general religious movement of Europe was expressed in Germany by new dogmatic systems, historical and philological searches and learned philosophical interpretations; in France, on the other hand, it hardly produced one or two remarkable books, but it showed itself all the more strongly in religious societies, in political parties, and in the missionary action of the clergy on the people. The natural sciences, which have reached such an enormous development in France, despite the fact that, however, are not only exclusively based on empirical evidence alone, but in the very fullness of their development they are alienated from speculative interest, caring primarily about application to business, about the benefits and benefits of existence. , while in Germany every step in the study of nature is defined from the point of view of philosophy, included in the system and evaluated not so much for its usefulness for life as for its relation to speculative principles. So in Germany theology And philosophy constitute in our time two most important objects of common attention, and their agreement is now the dominant need of German thought. In France, on the other hand, philosophical development is not a necessity, but a luxury of thought. The essential question of the present moment consists there in the agreement of religion and society. Religious writers, instead of dogmatic development, are looking for real application,

while political thinkers, not even imbued with religious conviction, invent artificial convictions, striving to achieve in them the absoluteness of faith and its suprarational immediacy.

The modern and almost equivalent excitation of these two interests: religious and social, two opposite ends, perhaps one torn thought, leads us to assume that the participation of present-day France in the general development of human enlightenment, its place in the field of science in general, must be determined by that particular the sphere from which both proceed and where these two different directions merge into one. But what result will come from this striving of thought? Will a new science be born from it: the science public life- as at the end of the last century, from the joint action of the philosophical and social mood of England, was born there new science of national wealth? Or will the action of modern French thinking be limited only to changing certain principles in other sciences? Is France destined to make, or only intend, this change? Guessing it now would be an empty dream. The new trend is only just beginning, and even then barely noticeably, to express itself in literature—still unconscious in its particularity, not yet collected even into a single question. But in any case, this movement of science in France cannot but seem to us more significant than all the other strivings of her thinking, and it is especially interesting to see how it begins to express itself in contradiction to the former principles of political economy, the science with which it most of all comes into contact. Questions about competition and monopoly, about the relationship of an excess of luxury products to the satisfaction of the people, the cheapness of products to the poverty of workers, state wealth to the wealth of capitalists, the value of work to the value of goods, the development of luxury to the suffering of poverty, violent activity to mental savagery, the healthy morality of the people to its industrial education—all these questions are presented by many in a completely new form, in direct opposition to the former views of political economy, and now arouse the concern of thinkers. We do not say that new views have already entered into science. They are too much for that

immature, too one-sided, too imbued with the blinding spirit of the party, obscured by the self-satisfaction of the new birth. We see that up to now the most recent courses of political economy are drawn up according to the old principles. But at the same time, we notice that attention has been aroused to new questions, and although we do not think that they could find their final solution in France, we cannot but admit that her literature is destined to be the first to introduce this new element into the general laboratory of human enlightenment.

This trend of French thinking seems to come from the natural development of the totality of French learning. The extreme poverty of the lower classes was only an external, accidental cause for this, and was not the cause, as some think. Evidence of this can be found in the internal incoherence of those views, for which the poverty of the people was the only outcome, and still more in the fact that the poverty of the lower classes is incomparably greater in England than in France, although there the dominant movement of thought took a completely different direction.

IN England Although religious questions are raised by social conditions, they nevertheless turn into dogmatic disputes, as, for example, in Puseism and among its opponents; public questions are limited to local requirements, or they raise a cry (and cry , as the English say), put up the banner of some conviction, whose significance lies not in the power of thought, but in the power of interests that correspond to it and gather around it.

In outward form, the way of thinking of the French is often very similar to that of the English. This similarity seems to stem from the sameness of the philosophical systems adopted by them. But the inner character of the thinking of these two peoples is also different, just as they are both different from the character of the thinking of the German. The German laboriously and conscientiously works out his conviction from the abstract conclusions of his mind; The Frenchman takes it without hesitation, out of heartfelt sympathy for this or that opinion; The Englishman arithmetically calculates his position in

society and, based on the results of his calculations, forms his own way of thinking. Names: Whig, Tory, Radical, and all the countless shades of English parties express not the personal peculiarity of a person, as in France, and not the system of his philosophical conviction, as in Germany, but the place that he occupies in the state. The Englishman is stubborn in his opinion, because it is in connection with his social position; The Frenchman often sacrifices his position for his heartfelt conviction; and the German, although he does not sacrifice one to the other, cares little for their agreement. French learning moves through the development of mainstream opinion or fashion; English - through the development of the state system; German - through armchair thinking. That is why the Frenchman is strong in his enthusiasm, the Englishman in his character, the German in his abstract and systematic fundamentality.

But the more, as in our time, literature and folk personalities come closer, the more their features are erased. Between the writers of England, who enjoy more than others the celebrity of literary success, two writers, two representatives of modern literature, completely opposite in their directions, thoughts, parties, goals and views, despite the fact, however, both, in different forms, reveal one truth: that the hour has come when the insular separation of England is already beginning to give way to the universality of continental enlightenment and merge with it into one sympathetic whole. In addition to this similarity, Carlyle And Disraeli have nothing in common with each other. The first bears deep traces of German predilections. His style, filled, as the English critics say, with hitherto unheard-of Germanism, meets with deep sympathy in many. His thoughts are clothed in German dreamy uncertainty; its direction expresses the interest of thought, instead of the English interest of the party. He does not pursue the old order of things, does not oppose the movement of the new; he appreciates both, he loves both, he respects in both the organic fullness of life, and, himself belonging to the party of progress, by the very development of its fundamental principle, destroys the exclusive striving for innovation.

Thus here, as in all modern phenomena of thought in Europe, latest direction is contrary new that destroyed old.

Disraelinot infected by any foreign predilection. He's a rep young England, a circle of young people expressing a special, extreme section of the Tory party. However, despite the fact that young England acts in the name of the very extreme of conservation principles, but, according to Disraeli's novel, the very basis of their convictions completely destroys the interests of their party. They want to keep the old, but not in the form in which it exists in its present forms, but in its former spirit, requiring a form that is in many respects the opposite of the present. For the benefit of the aristocracy, they want a living rapprochement and sympathy all classes; for the benefit of the Anglican Church, they want her equal rights with the Church of Ireland and other dissidents; to maintain the preponderance of agriculture, they demand the abolition of the Corn Law, which protects it. In a word, the view of this party of Tories obviously destroys the whole peculiarity of English Thorism, and at the same time the whole difference between England and other states of Europe.

But Disraeli is a Jew, and therefore has his own special views, which do not allow us to fully rely on the fidelity of the beliefs of the younger generation depicted by him. Only the extraordinary success of his novel, devoid, however, of proper literary merit, and most of all the success of the author, according to the journals, in high English society, gives some plausibility to his exposition.

Having thus enumerated the most remarkable movements in the literatures of Europe, we hasten to repeat what we said at the beginning of the article, that by designating the contemporary, we did not mean to present a complete picture of the present state of literature. We only wanted to point out their latest trends, which are barely beginning to express themselves in new phenomena.

Meanwhile, if we collect everything we have noticed in one result and compare it with the character of European enlightenment, which, although it developed before, still continues to be dominant, then from this point of view, some results will be revealed to us that are very important for understanding. our time.

— Separate genres of literature were mixed into one indefinite form.

The individual sciences are no longer kept within their former boundaries, but strive to draw closer to the sciences that are adjacent to them, and in this expansion of their limits they adjoin their common center—philosophy.

Philosophy, in its final final development, seeks such a beginning, in the recognition of which it could merge with faith into one speculative unity.

- Separate Western nationalities, having reached the fullness of their development, strive to destroy the features that separate them and merge into one common European education.

This result is all the more remarkable because it developed from a direction directly opposite to it. It mainly originated from the desire of each nation to study, restore and preserve its national identity. But the deeper these aspirations developed in historical, philosophical and social conclusions, the more they reached the fundamental foundations of the separated nationalities, the more clearly they met in them not special, but general European principles, equally belonging to all particular nationalities. For in the general basis of European life lies one dominant principle.

—Meanwhile, this dominant principle of European life, separating from the nationalities, thereby appears already as obsolete, as past in its meaning, although still continuing in fact. Therefore, the modern feature of Western life lies in the general, more or less clear consciousness that this the beginning of European education, which developed throughout the history of the West, in our time is already unsatisfactory for the highest requirements of education. Let us also note that this consciousness of the unsatisfactoriness of European life arose from a consciousness directly opposite to it, from the conviction of the recently past time that European enlightenment is the last and highest link in human development. One extreme turned into another.

— But recognizing the unsatisfactoriness of European education, the general feeling thereby distinguishes it from other principles of universal human development and, designating it as special, reveals to us distinctive character for-

Western education in its parts and totality, as a predominant desire for personal and original reasonableness in thoughts, in life, in society and in all springs and forms of human existence. This character of unconditional rationality was also born from a long-gone striving that preceded it, from an earlier effort not to educate, but to forcibly lock up thought in one scholastic system.

— But if the general feeling of unsatisfactoriness from the very beginnings of European life is nothing but a dark or clear consciousness unsatisfactory unconditional reason, then, although it produces a desire for religiosity in general However, by its very origin from the development of reason, it cannot submit to a form of faith that would completely reject reason, nor be satisfied with one that would make faith dependent on it.

- Arts, poetry, and even almost every creative dream were possible in Europe only as long as a living, necessary element of its education, as long as the dominant rationalism in its thought and life had not reached the last, extreme link in its development; for now they are possible only as a theatrical decoration that does not deceive the inner feelings of the viewer, who directly takes it for an artificial lie, amusing his idleness, but without which his life will not lose anything essential. The truth for Western poetry can only be resurrected when a new beginning is accepted into the life of the European Enlightenment..

This alienation of art from life was preceded by a period of universal striving for artistry, which ended with the last artist of Europe, the great Goethe, who expressed the death of poetry with the second part of his Faust. The restlessness of daydreaming has become the concern of industry. But in our time, the disagreement between poetry and life has become even clearer.

- From all that has been said, it also follows that the modern character of European enlightenment, in its historical, philosophical and vital meaning, is completely unambiguous with the character of that era of Roman-Greek education, when, having developed to the point of contradicting itself,

she, by natural necessity, had to to take in a different, new beginning, kept by other tribes, which until that time did not have world-historical significance.

Each time has its own dominant, its own vital question, prevailing over all, containing all others in itself, on which alone their relative significance and limited meaning depend. If, however, everything we have noticed about the present state of Western education is true, then one cannot help but be convinced that at the bottom of European enlightenment, in our time, all private questions about the movements of minds, about the directions of science, about the goals of life, about the various structures of societies, about the characters of folk , family and personal relationships, about the ruling principles of the external and most internal life of a person - all merge into one essential, living, great question about the attitude of the West to that hitherto unnoticed beginning of life, thinking and education, which lies at the foundation of the Orthodox world. Slavyansky.

When we turn from Europe to our fatherland, from these general results, deduced by us from Western literature, we pass to a review of literature in our fatherland, we will see in it a strange chaos of underdeveloped opinions, contradictory aspirations, discordant echoes of all possible movements of literature: German, French, English, Italian, Polish, Swedish, various imitations of all possible and impossible European directions. But we hope to have the pleasure of talking about it in the next book.

________

In the first article of our review, we said that Russian literature represents the totality of all possible influences of various European literatures. To prove the truth of this remark seems to us superfluous: every book can serve as an obvious evidence for this.

We also consider it inappropriate to explain this phenomenon: its causes are in the history of our education. But having noticed it, recognizing this all-accepting sympathy, this unconditional dependence of our literature on the various literatures of the West, we see in this very character of our literature, along with its outward similarity, and its fundamental difference from all European literatures.

Let's expand our thought.

The history of all literature in the West presents us with an inextricable link between the movements of literature and the totality of popular education. The same inextricable link exists between the development of education and the first elements that make up the life of the people. Known interests are expressed in the corresponding arrangement of concepts; a certain way of thinking rests on certain relationships of life. What one experiences without consciousness, the other seeks to comprehend with thought and expresses it in an abstract formula, or, conscious in the movement of the heart, pours out in poetic sounds. No matter how different the incoherent, unaccountable concepts of a simple artisan or an illiterate plowman seem at first glance, from the captivatingly harmonious worlds of the poet’s artistic fantasy, or from the deep systematic thought of an armchair thinker, but upon closer examination it is obvious that between them lies the same inner gradualness. , the same organic sequence that exists between the seed, flower, and fruit of the same tree.

How the language of a people represents the imprint of its natural logic and, if it does not fully express its way of thinking, then at least it represents in itself the foundation from which its mental life constantly and naturally proceeds; so the torn, undeveloped concepts of a people who do not yet think form the root from which grows the highest education of a nation. From this, all branches of education, being in living contemplation, constitute one inseparably articulated whole.

For this reason, every movement in the literature of Western peoples results from the internal movement of their education, which in turn is affected by literature. Even those literatures that are subject to the influence of others

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peoples, accept this influence only when it corresponds to the requirements of their internal development, and assimilate it only to the extent that it is in harmony with the nature of their enlightenment. What is foreign to them is not a contradiction of their peculiarity, but only a rung on the ladder of their own ascent. If we see that at the present moment all literatures sympathize with each other, merge, so to speak, into one common European literature, then this could only come from the fact that the cultures of various peoples developed from the same beginning and, each passing through its own path, finally achieved the same result, the same meaning of mental existence. But in spite of this similarity, even now the Frenchman not only does not fully accept German thought, but perhaps even does not fully understand it. In Germany, for the most part, the Jews are Frenchized, brought up in a break with popular beliefs and only later accepted philosophical Christianity. The English are even less able to free themselves from their national peculiarities. In Italy and Spain, although the influence of French literature is noticeable, this influence is more imaginary than essential, and French ready-made forms serve only as an expression of the internal state of their own education; for it is not French literature in general, but only the literature of the eighteenth century that still dominates these belated lands*).

This national fortress, this living integrity of the education of the European peoples, regardless of the falsity or truth of the direction, gives literature their special significance. It serves there not as an amusement of some circles, not as a decoration of salons, not as a luxury of the mind, which can be dispensed with, and not as a school task for students; but it is necessary, as a natural process of mental breathing, as a direct expression, and at the same time as an inevitable condition for any development of education. Unconscious thought, developed

*) The thoughtful writings of Rosemini, promising the development of a new original thinking in Italy, are known to us only through magazine reviews. But as far as one can judge from these torn extracts, it seems that the 18th century will soon end for Italy, and that a new era of mental rebirth awaits her, proceeding from a new beginning of thinking based on the three elements of Italian life: religion, history and art.

secret history, suffered through life, obscured by its multi-complex relationships and diverse interests, ascends the ladder of mental development by the power of literary activity, from the lower strata of society to its highest circles, from unconscious inclinations to the last stages of consciousness, and in this form it is no longer a witty truth. , not by an exercise in the art of rhetoric or dialectics, but by the inner work of self-knowledge, more or less clear, more or less correct, but in any case essentially significant. Thus, it enters the sphere of general universal enlightenment, as a living inseparable element, as a person with a voice in the matter of general advice; but it returns to its inner foundation, to the beginning of its exodus, as the conclusion of the mind to unsolved circumstances, as the word of conscience to unconscious inclinations. Of course, this reason, this conscience can be darkened, corrupted; but this corruption does not depend on the place that literature occupies in the education of the people, but on the distortion of its inner life; just as in man the falsity of reason and the corruption of conscience do not come from the essence of reason and conscience, but from his personal corruption.

One state, among all our Western neighbors, presented an example of a contrary development. In Poland, by the action of Catholicism, the upper classes very early separated from the rest of the people, not only by their customs, as was the case in the rest of Europe, but also by the very spirit of their education, the basic principles of their mental life. This separation halted the development of popular education and, all the more, accelerated the education of the upper classes torn off from it. So the heavy carriage, laid down by the goose, will be in place when the forward lines burst, while the torn off forreater is the more easily carried forward. Unhindered by the peculiarities of folk life, neither by customs, nor by the traditions of antiquity, nor by local relations, nor by the prevailing way of thinking, nor even by the peculiarity of the language, brought up in the sphere of abstract questions, the Polish aristocracy in the 15th and 16th centuries was not only the most educated, but also the most learned, the most brilliant in all Europe. Thorough knowledge of foreign languages, in-depth study

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The knowledge of the ancient classics, the extraordinary development of intellectual and social talents, surprised travelers and were the constant subject of communications of the observant papal nuncios of that time *). As a result of this education, literature was amazingly rich. It was made up of learned commentaries of the ancient classics, successful and unsuccessful imitations, written partly in smart Polish, partly in exemplary Latin, numerous and important translations, of which some are still considered exemplary, such as the translation of Tass; others prove the depth of enlightenment, such as the translation of all the writings of Aristotle, made back in the 16th century. In one reign of Sigismund III, 711 well-known literary names shone, and printing houses were constantly working in more than 80 cities **). But there was nothing in common between this artificial enlightenment and the natural elements of the mental life of the people. As a result, a split occurred in the whole education of Poland. While learned pans wrote interpretations of Horace, translated Tass and undeniably sympathized with all the phenomena of contemporary European enlightenment, this enlightenment was reflected only on the surface of life, without growing from the root, and thus, devoid of original development, all this abstract mental activity, this scholarship, this brilliance, these talents, these glories, these flowers plucked from foreign fields, all this rich literature has disappeared almost without a trace for Polish education, and completely without a trace for universal human enlightenment, for that European education, to which she was too faithful reflection ***). True, one phenomenon in the field of science

*) See: Niemcetmcz: Zbior pamiçtnikow about dawney Polszcze.

**) Look : Chodzko, Tableau de la Pologne ancienne et moderne.

***) Here's what K says. Meherinsky in hisHistorya języka lacinskiego w Polsce, Krakow, 1835:

Then there was a general opinion that everything worthy of respect and reasonable could only be written in Latin.—Meanwhile, the Krakow Academy (founded in 1347), warning all German universities, opened a new Latium for Poland, where the ancient Muses The Hesperians had already chosen their permanent residence, and the Poles no longer needed to look for science beyond the Alps.

Soon, the Jagiellonian educational institutions eclipsed many European ones with their glory.

Poland is proud, she brought one tribute to the treasury of universal enlightenment: the great Copernicus was a Pole; but let us not forget that Copernicus left Poland in his youth and was brought up in Germany.

Thank God: there is not the slightest resemblance between today's Russia and old Poland, and therefore, I hope, no one will reproach me for an inappropriate comparison and will not reinterpret my words in a different sense, if we say that in relation to literature we have such a noticeable the same abstract artificiality, the same flowers without roots, plucked from foreign fields. We translate, imitate, study other people's literature, follow their slightest movements,

The theologian-orators sent (from Poland) to the Council of Basel took first place there after the Bonnon Tullii.

Kazimir Yagaidovich started many Latin schools and was very concerned about the spread of the Latin language in Poland; he even issued a strict decree that everyone who seeks some significant position should be able to speak Latin well. Since then, it has become a custom that every Polish gentry spoke Latin ... Even women zealously studied the Latin language. Yanotsky says, among other things, that Elisaveta, the wife of Casimir II, wrote the essay herself: De institutione regii pueri.

Just as mathematics and jurisprudence used to flourish in Poland, the elegant sciences flourished at that time, and the study of Latin rose rapidly.

Ior. Lud. Decius(a contemporary of Sigismund I th) testifies that among the Sarmatians you rarely meet a person from a good family who does not know three or four languages, and everyone knows Latin.

Queen Barbara, the wife of Sigismund, not only perfectly understood the Latin classics, but also wrote to the king, her husband, in Latin ....

And among Latium, says Kromer, there would not be so many people who could prove their knowledge of the Latin language. Even girls, both from gentry and from ordinary families, both at home and in monasteries, read and write equally well in Polish and Latin. Kamusara, a modern writer, says that out of a hundred gentry it is hardly possible to find two who would not know the languages: Latin, German and Italian. They learn it in schools, and this is done by itself, because there is no such poor village in Poland, or even a tavern, where there would not be people who speak these three languages, and in every, even the smallest village, there is a school (see. Mémoires de F. Choisin ). This important fact has a very deep significance in our eyes. Meanwhile, the author continues, the language of the people for the most part remained only in the mouths of commoners.

The thirst for European glory forced to write in the universal, Latin language; for this, Polish poets received crowns from German emperors and popes, and politicians acquired diplomatic ties

To what extent Poland in X V and X VI century surpassed other peoples in the knowledge of ancient literatures, is evident from many testimonies, especially foreign ones. De-Toux, in his history, under the year 1573, describing the arrival of the Polish embassy in France, says that of the large crowd of Poles who entered Paris on fifty horses drawn by fours, there was not a single one who would not speak Latin in perfection; that the French nobles blushed with shame when they had only to wink at the questions of the guests; that in the whole court there were only two who

we assimilate other people's thoughts and systems, and these exercises are the decorations of our educated living rooms, sometimes have an impact on the very actions of our life, but, being not connected with the fundamental development of our historically given education, they separate us from the internal source of national enlightenment, and at the same time they make us fruitless for the common cause of enlightenment for all mankind. The works of our literature, as a reflection of European ones, cannot be of interest to other peoples, except for a statistical interest, as an indication of the measure of our student success in studying their samples. For ourselves, they are curious as an addition, as an explanation, as an assimilation of other people's phenomena; but for ourselves, with the general spread of knowledge of foreign languages, our imitations always remain somewhat lower and weaker than their originals.

It goes without saying that I am not talking here about those extraordinary phenomena in which the personal power of genius is at work. Derzhavin, Karamzin, Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Gogol, even though they follow someone else's influence, even if they pave their own special path, they will always act strongly, with the power of their personal talent, regardless of the direction they choose. I'm not talking about exceptions, but about literature in general, in its ordinary state.

could answer these envoys in Latin, for which they were always put forward. The famous Muret, comparing learned Poland with Italy, expresses himself thus: which of the two peoples is ruder? Was it not born in the bosom of Italy? among them you can hardly find a hundredth of those who would know Latin and Greek and would love science. Or Poles, who have a lot of people who speak both of these languages, and they are so attached to the sciences and arts that they spend the whole century studying them. (see M. Ant. Mureti Ep. 66ad Paulum Sacratum, ed. Kappii, p. 536).—The famous member of the learned Triumvirate, Just Lipsius (one of the first philologists of that time), says the same thing in a letter to one of his friends, who then lived in Poland: How can I be surprised at your knowledge? You live among those people who were once a barbarian people; and now we are barbarians before them. They received the Muses, despised and expelled from Greece and Latium, into their cordial and hospitable arms (cf.Epist. cont. ad Germ, et Gail. ep. 63).

not from the difference in degrees of education, but from their complete heterogeneity. Those principles of mental, social, moral and spiritual life that created the former Russia and now constitute the only sphere of her national life, did not develop into our literary enlightenment, but remained untouched, torn off from the successes of our mental activity, meanwhile past them, without attitude towards them, our literary enlightenment flows from foreign sources, completely dissimilar not only to the forms, but often even to the very beginnings of our convictions. This is why every movement in our literature is conditioned not by the internal movement of our education, as in the West, but by the accidental phenomena of foreign literatures for it.

Perhaps those who assert that we Russians are more capable of understanding Hegel and Goethe think justly than the French and the English; that we can sympathize more fully with Byron and Dickens than the French and even the Germans; that we can appreciate Berenger and Georges-Sand better than the Germans and the English. And indeed, why should we not understand, why should we not evaluate with the participation of the most opposite phenomena? If we break away from popular beliefs, then "no special concepts, no definite way of thinking, no cherished predilections, no interests, no ordinary rules will interfere with us. We can freely share all opinions, assimilate all systems, sympathize with all interests, accept all convictions, but being influenced by foreign literatures, we cannot, in turn, act on them with our pale reflections of their own phenomena; we cannot act on even our own literary education, subject directly to the strongest influence of foreign literatures; we cannot act on the education of the people , because between her and us there is no mental connection, no sympathy, no common language.

I willingly agree that, having looked at our literature from this point of view, I have expressed here only one side of it, and this one-sided presentation, appearing in such a sharp form, not softened by its other qualities, does not give a complete, real idea of the whole character of our literature.

But this sharp or softened side nevertheless exists, and exists as a disagreement that needs to be resolved.

How, then, can our literature emerge from its artificial state, acquire a significance that it still does not have, come into agreement with the totality of our education and be both an expression of its life and a spring of its development?

Two opinions are sometimes heard here, both equally one-sided, equally unfounded, both equally impossible.

Some people think that the complete assimilation of foreign education can eventually re-create the entire Russian person, as it re-created some writers and non-writers, and then the totality of our education will come into agreement with the nature of our literature. According to them, the development of certain basic principles should change our fundamental way of thinking, change our customs, our customs, our convictions, erase our peculiarity and thus make us European enlightened.

Is it worth refuting such an opinion?

Its falsity seems to be obvious without proof. It is just as impossible to destroy the peculiarity of the mental life of a people as it is impossible to destroy its history. It is as easy to replace the fundamental convictions of the people with literary concepts as it is to change the bones of a developed organism with an abstract thought. However, even if we could admit for a moment that this assumption could actually be fulfilled, then in that case its only result would not be enlightenment, but the destruction of the people itself. For what is a people, if not the totality of convictions, more or less developed in its manners, in its customs, in its language, in its concepts of the heart and mind, in its religious, social and personal relations, in a word, in the fullness of its life. ? Moreover, the idea, instead of the principles of our education, to introduce in us the principles of European education, already and therefore destroys itself, because in the final development of European enlightenment there is no dominant principle. One contradicts the other, mutually annihilating. If remains still in Western life

a few living truths, more or less still surviving amid the general destruction of all special convictions, then the truths are not European, because in contradiction with all the results of European education; they are the surviving remnants of Christian principles, which, therefore, do not belong to the West, but more to us, who accepted Christianity in its purest form, although, perhaps, the existence of these principles is not assumed in our education by unconditional admirers of the West, who do not know the meaning of our enlightenment and mix in it the essential with the accidental, their own, the necessary with extraneous distortions of other people's influences: Tatar, Polish , German, etc.

As for the European beginnings proper, as they were expressed in the latest results, then taken separately from the former life of Europe! and laid at the foundation of the education of the new people - what if they would produce, if not a miserable caricature of enlightenment, like a poem that arose from the rules of piitika would be a caricature of poetry? The experience has already been made. It seemed what a brilliant fate awaited the United States of America, built on such a reasonable foundation, after such a great beginning!—And what happened? Only external forms of society developed and, deprived of an internal source of life, man was crushed under external mechanics. The literature of the United States, according to the reports of the most impartial judges, is a clear expression of this state *). - A huge factory of mediocre verse, without the slightest trace of poetry; bureaucratic epithets that do not express anything and, despite the fact, are constantly repeated; complete insensitivity to everything artistic; a clear contempt for any thinking that does not lead to material gain; petty personalities without common grounds; chubby phrases with the narrowest meaning, the desecration of holy words: philanthropy, fatherland, public good, nationality, to the point that their use has become not even hypocrisy, but a simple, generally understood stamp of selfish calculations; external respect for the external side of the laws, with the most insolent

*) Cooper, Washington Irving, and other reflections of English literature cannot serve to characterize American literature proper.

their violation; the spirit of complicity for personal gain, with the unblushing infidelity of the united persons, with a clear disrespect for all moral principles *), so that at the basis of all these mental movements, obviously lies the most petty life, cut off from everything that raises the heart above personal self-interest, drowned in activity of egoism and recognizing material comfort as its highest goal, with all its service forces. No! If it is already destined for the Russian, for some unrepentant sins, to exchange his great future for the one-sided life of the West, then I would rather dream with the abstract German in his cunning theories; it is better to be lazy to death under the warm sky, in the artistic atmosphere of Italy; it is better to spin with the Frenchman in his impetuous, momentary aspirations; it is better to petrify with the Englishman in his stubborn, unaccountable habits than to suffocate in this prose of factory relations, in this mechanism of selfish anxiety.

We have not departed from our subject. The extreme of the result, although not conscious, but logically possible, reveals the falsity of the direction.

Another opinion, opposite to this unaccountable worship of the West and just as one-sided, although much less common, is the unaccountable worship of the past forms of our antiquity, and in the idea that in time the newly acquired European enlightenment will again have to be erased from our mental life by the development of our special education. .

Both opinions are equally false; but the latter has a more logical connection. It is based on the consciousness of the dignity of our former education, on the disagreement of this education with the special character of European enlightenment, and, finally, on the inconsistency of the latest results of European enlightenment. It is possible to disagree with each of these provisions; but, once having admitted them, one cannot reproach the opinion based on them with a logical contradiction, as, for example, one can reproach the opposite opinion,

*) Es finden allerdings rechtliche Zustände, ein formelles Rechtsgesetz statt, aber diese Rechtlichkeit ist ohne Rechtschaffenheit,—speak Hegel in his Phil. East .

preaching Western enlightenment and not being able to point to any central, positive principle in this enlightenment, but content with some particular truths or negative formulas.

Meanwhile, logical infallibility does not save opinions from essential one-sidedness; on the contrary, it makes it even more obvious. Whatever our education may be, but the past forms of it, which appeared in certain customs, passions, attitudes, and even in our language, precisely because they could not be a pure and complete expression of the inner principle of folk life, because they were its external forms, therefore, the result of two various figures: one, expressed beginning, and another, local and temporary circumstance. Therefore, every form of life, once past, is already more irrevocable, as is the feature of time that participated in its creation. to restore these forms is the same as to resurrect a dead man, to revive the earthly shell of the soul, which has already flown away from it once. A miracle is needed here; logic is not enough; Unfortunately, even love is not enough!

Moreover, whatever European enlightenment may be, if once we have become its participants, then it is already beyond our power to destroy its influence, even if we wish it. You can subordinate it to another, higher one, direct it to one goal or another; but it will always remain an essential, already inseparable element of any future development of ours. It is easier to learn everything new in the world than to forget what has been learned. However, if we could even forget at will, If we could return to that separate feature of our education from which we came out, then what use would we get from this new separation? Obviously, sooner or later, we would again come into contact with the principles of Europe, again be subjected to their influence, again we would have to suffer from their disagreement with our education, before we could subordinate them to our principles; and thus would return continually to the same question which now occupies us.

But besides all the other inconsistencies of this trend, it also has that dark side, which, by unconditionally rejecting everything European, thereby cuts us off from

any participation in the common cause of human mental existence; for it must not be forgotten that European enlightenment inherited all the results of the education of the Greco-Roman world, which in turn took into itself all the fruits of the mental life of the entire human race. Cut off in this way from the common life of mankind, the beginning of our education, instead of being the beginning of living, true, complete enlightenment, will necessarily become a one-sided beginning and, consequently, will lose all its universal significance.

The trend towards nationality is true with us, as the highest stage of education, and not as stifling provincialism. Therefore, guided by this thought, one can look at European enlightenment as incomplete, one-sided, not imbued with true meaning, and therefore false; but to deny it as if it does not exist means to constrain one's own. If the European is, in fact, false, if it really contradicts the beginning of true education, then this beginning, as true, should not leave this contradiction in the mind of a person, but, on the contrary, accept it into itself, evaluate it, put it within its boundaries and, subordinating it to such way of his own superiority, to tell him his true meaning. The alleged falsity of this enlightenment does not in the least contradict the possibility of its subordination to truth. For everything that is false, in its foundation, is true, only placed in a strange place: there is no essentially false, just as there is no essentiality in falsehood.

Thus, both opposing views on the relationship of our indigenous education to European enlightenment, both of these extreme opinions, are equally unfounded. But it must be admitted that in this extreme of development, in which we have presented them here, they do not really exist. True, we constantly meet people who, in their way of thinking, deviate more or less to one side or the other, but they do not develop their one-sidedness to the last results. On the contrary, the only reason they can remain in their one-sidedness is that they do not bring it to the first conclusions, where the question becomes clear, because from the realm of unconscious predilections it passes into the realm of rational consciousness, where the contradiction is destroyed

with its own expression. That is why we think that all disputes about the superiority of the West, or Russia, about the dignity of European history, or ours, and similar arguments are among the most useless, the most empty questions that the idleness of a thinking person can come up with.

And what, in fact, is it useful for us to reject or denigrate what was, or is, good in the life of the West? Is it not, on the contrary, the expression of our own beginning, if our beginning is true? As a result of his dominion over us, everything beautiful, noble, Christian, is necessarily our own, even if it is European, even if it is African. The voice of truth does not weaken, but is strengthened by its consonance with everything that is true, wherever it is.

On the other hand, if the admirers of European enlightenment, from unconscious addictions to one form or another, to this or that negative truth, wanted to rise to the very beginning of the mental life of man and peoples, which alone gives meaning and truth to all external forms and particular truths; then, without a doubt, they would have to admit that the enlightenment of the West does not represent this higher, central, dominant principle, and, consequently, they would be convinced that introducing particular forms of this enlightenment means destroying without creating, and that if in these forms, in these particular truths there is something essential, then this essential can only assimilate to us when it grows from our root, will be the result of our own development, and not when it falls to us from outside, in the form of a contradiction to the whole structure of our conscious and ordinary being. .

This consideration is usually overlooked even by those writers who, with a conscientious striving for the truth, try to give themselves a reasonable account of the meaning and purpose of their mental activity. But what about those who act without accountability? Those who are carried away by the Western only because it is not ours, because they know neither the character, nor the meaning, nor the dignity of that principle that lies at the basis of our historical life, and not knowing it, they do not care to find out, frivolously mixing it into one

condemnation and occasional shortcomings and the very essence of our learning? What can be said about those who are effeminately seduced by the outward brilliance of European education, without delving into either the basis of this education, or its inner meaning, or into that character of contradiction, inconsistency, self-destruction, which, obviously, lies not only in the general result of Western life, but even in each of its separate manifestations, obviously, I say, in the case when we are not content with the external concept of the phenomenon, but delve into its full meaning from the basic beginning to the final conclusions.

However, while saying this, we feel, meanwhile, that our words will now still find little sympathy. Zealous admirers and propagators of Western forms and concepts are usually content with such small demands from enlightenment that they can hardly come to the realization of this internal disagreement of European education. They think, on the contrary, that if the entire mass of mankind in the West has not yet reached the last limits of its possible development, then at least its highest representatives have reached it; that all essential tasks have already been solved, all secrets laid out, all misunderstandings clear, doubts over; that human thought has reached the extreme limits of its growth; that now it only remains for it to spread into general recognition, and that there are no longer any essential, glaring, unmuffled questions left in the depths of the human spirit, to which he could not find a complete, satisfactory answer in the all-embracing thinking of the West; for this reason, we can only learn, imitate and assimilate someone else's wealth.

It is obviously impossible to argue with such an opinion. Let them console themselves with the fullness of their knowledge, be proud of the truth of their direction, boast of the fruits of their external activity, admire the harmony of their inner life. We will not break their happy charm; they deserved their blessed contentment by the wise moderation of their mental and hearty demands. We agree that we are powerless to convince them, because their opinion is strong with the sympathy of the majority, and we think that only with time can it be shaken by the strength of its own development. But until then

For now, let us not hope that these admirers of European perfection will comprehend the deep meaning that lies hidden in our education.

For two educations, two revelations of mental powers in man and nations, are presented to us by impartial speculation, the history of all ages, and even daily experience. One education is the inner dispensation of the spirit by the power of the truth announced in it; the other is the formal development of reason and external knowledge. The first depends on the principle to which a person submits, and can be communicated directly; the second is the fruit of slow and difficult work. The first gives meaning and meaning to the second, but the second gives it content and completeness. For the first there is no changing development, there is only direct recognition, preservation and dissemination in the subordinate spheres of the human spirit; the second, being the fruit of age-old, gradual efforts, experiments, failures, successes, observations, inventions, and all the successively enriching mental property of the human race, cannot be created instantly, nor guessed by the most brilliant inspiration, but must be composed little by little of the combined efforts of all individual understandings. However, it is obvious that the first only has an essential significance for life, putting one or another meaning into it; for from its source flow the fundamental convictions of man and nations; it determines the order of their inner and the direction of their outer being, the nature of their private, family and social relations, is the initial spring of their thinking, the dominant sound of their spiritual movements, the color of the language, the cause of conscious preferences and unconscious predilections, the basis of mores and customs, the meaning of their history.

as the development of artistic technique, as well as the cognizing mind itself, when it acts in isolation from other human abilities and develops on its own, not being carried away by low passions, not illuminated by higher thoughts, but silently transmitting one abstract knowledge that can be equally used for good and for harm, to serve the truth or to reinforce a lie.

The very spinelessness of this external, logical-technical education allows it to remain in a people or a person even when they lose or change the inner basis of their being, their initial faith, their fundamental convictions, their essential character, their life direction. The remaining education, surviving the dominance of the higher principle that controlled it, enters the service of another, and thus unharmedly passes through all the various turning points of history, constantly growing in its content until the last minute of human existence.

Meanwhile, in the very times of turning points, in these epochs of the decline of a person or a people, when the basic principle of life is bifurcated in his mind, falls apart and thus loses all its strength, which consists mainly in the integrity of being: then this second education, rationally external, the formal, is the only support of unasserted thought and dominates, by means of reasonable calculation and balance of interests, over the minds of inner convictions.

History presents us with several similar epochs of turning point, separated from each other by millennia, but closely connected by the inner sympathy of the spirit, similar to the sympathy that is noticed between the thinking of Hegel and the inner foundation of the thinking of Aristotle.

Usually these two educations are confused. From this, in the middle of the 18th century, an opinion could have arisen, which was developed from the beginning by Lessing and Condorset, and then became universal, an opinion about some kind of constant, natural and necessary improvement of man. It arose in contrast to another opinion, which affirmed the immobility of the human race, with some periodic fluctuations up and down. Perhaps there was no thought more confused than these two. For if a truly human

the race has improved, then why does not a person become more perfect? If nothing in man developed, did not increase, then how could we explain the indisputable improvement of some sciences?

One thought denies in man the universality of reason, the progress of logical conclusions, the power of memory, the possibility of verbal interaction, etc.; the other kills in him the freedom of moral dignity.

But the opinion about the immobility of the human race had to give way in general recognition to the opinion about the necessary development of man, for the latter was the result of another error, belonging exclusively to the rational direction of recent centuries. This delusion lies in the assumption that that living understanding of the spirit, that inner structure of a person, which is the source of his guiding thoughts, strong deeds, reckless aspirations, sincere poetry, strong life and higher vision of the mind, that it can be compiled artificially, mechanically, so to speak, from one development of logical formulas. This opinion was dominant for a long time, until finally, in our time, it began to be destroyed by the successes of higher thinking. For the logical mind, cut off from other sources of cognition and not yet fully tested the measure of its power, although it promises first to create an inner way of thinking for a person, to communicate a non-formal, living view of the world and oneself; but, having developed to the last limits of its scope, it itself is aware of the incompleteness of its negative knowledge and, already as a result of its own conclusion, requires for itself a different higher principle, unattainable by its abstract mechanism.

This is now the state of European thinking, the state that determines the relation of European enlightenment to the fundamental principles of our education. For if the former, exclusively rational nature of the West could act destructively on our way of life and mind, now, on the contrary, the new demands of the European mind and our fundamental convictions have the same meaning. And if it is true that the basic principle of our Orthodox-Slavic education is true (which, incidentally, I consider it neither necessary nor appropriate to prove here), if it is true, I say, that this is the supreme, living principle of our enlightenment.

is true: it is obvious that, just as it was once the source of our ancient education, so now it must serve as a necessary complement to European education, separating it from its special directions, clearing it of the character of exceptional rationality and penetrating a new meaning; while European education, as a ripe fruit of all-human development, cut off from the old tree, should serve as nourishment for a new life, be a new stimulant for the development of our mental activity.

Therefore, love for European education, as well as love for ours, both coincide at the last point of their development into one love, into one striving for living, complete, all-human and truly Christian enlightenment.

On the contrary, in their underdeveloped state they are both false: for one does not know how to accept someone else's without betraying her own; the other, in her close embrace, strangles what she wants to save. One limitation comes from belated thinking and from ignorance of the depth of the teaching that lies at the basis of our education; the other, recognizing the shortcomings of the first, rushes too eagerly to stand in direct contradiction to it. But for all their one-sidedness, one cannot but admit that both can be based on equally noble motives, the same strength of love for enlightenment and even for the fatherland, despite the outward opposition.

This concept is ours about the correct relation of our popular education to the European one, and about two extreme views, it was necessary for us to express before we begin to consider the particular phenomena of our literature.

III.

Being a reflection of foreign literature, our literary phenomena, like Western ones, are predominantly concentrated in journalism.

But what is the nature of our periodicals?

It is difficult for a journal to express its opinion about other journals. Praise may seem like an addiction, censure has the appearance of self-praise. But how can we talk about our literature without examining what constitutes its essential character? How to determine the real meaning of literature, not to mention magazines? Let us try not to worry about the appearance that our judgments may have.

Older than all other literary magazines remained now Library for Reading. Its dominant character is the complete absence of any definite way of thinking. She praises today what she condemned yesterday; today he puts forward one opinion and now he preaches another; for the same subject has several opposing views; expresses no particular rules, no theories, no system, no direction, no colour, no conviction, no definite basis for his judgments; and, in spite of this, however, constantly pronounces his judgment on everything that is in literature or sciences. She does this in such a way that for each particular phenomenon she composes special laws, from which her condemning or approving sentence accidentally proceeds and falls - on the lucky one. For this reason, the effect that any expression of her opinion produces is like that of her not uttering any opinion at all. The reader understands the thought of the judge separately, and the object to which the judgment relates also lies separately in his mind: for he feels that there is no other relation between the thought and the object, except that they met by chance and for a short time, and having met again not get to know each other.

It goes without saying that this particular kind of impartiality deprives library for reading any possibility of having an influence on literature as a journal, but does not prevent it from acting as a collection of articles, often very curious. In the editor, it is noticeable, in addition to her extraordinary, versatile and often amazing learning, also a special, rare and precious gift: to present the most difficult questions of science in the clearest and understandable form for everyone, and to enliven this presentation with her own, always original, often witty remarks. This quality alone could

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make the glory of any periodical publication, not only here, but even in foreign lands.

But the liveliest part of B. d. Ch. lies in the bibliography. her reviews are filled with wit, gaiety and originality. You can't help but laugh while reading them. We happened to see authors whose works were dismantled, and who themselves could not restrain themselves from good-natured laughter, reading sentences on their works. For such a complete absence of any serious opinion is noticeable in the judgments of the Library, that its most outwardly evil attacks receive from that character a fantastically innocent, so to speak, good-naturedly angry. It is clear that she laughs not because the subject is really funny, but only because she wants to laugh. She twists the words of the author according to her intention, connects those separated by meaning, separates connected ones, inserts or lets out whole speeches in order to change the meaning of others, sometimes composes phrases completely unprecedented in the book from which she writes out, and she herself laughs at her composition. The reader sees this and laughs with her, because her jokes are almost always witty and hilarious, because they are innocent, because they are not embarrassed by any serious opinion, and because, finally, the magazine, joking before him, does not declare any claims on what other success, except for honor: to laugh and amuse the audience.

Meanwhile, although we sometimes look at these reviews with great pleasure, although we know that this playfulness is probably the main reason for the success of the magazine, however, when we consider at what price this success is bought, how sometimes, for the pleasure of amusing, fidelity is sold words, the reader’s confidence, respect for the truth, etc., then involuntarily comes to us the thought: what if with such brilliant qualities, with such wit, with such learning, with such versatility of the mind, with such originality, words were combined still other virtues, for example, lofty thought, a firm and unalterable conviction, or even impartiality, or even its outward appearance? our education? How easily could she

by means of his rare qualities, to master the minds of readers, to develop his conviction strongly, to spread it widely, to attract the sympathy of the majority, to become a judge of opinions, perhaps to penetrate from literature into life itself, to connect its various phenomena into one thought and, thus dominating the minds, form a tightly closed and highly developed opinion, which can be a useful engine of our education? Of course, then it would be less amusing.

The character is completely opposite to the Library for Reading is Mayak and Otechestvennye Zapiski. Meanwhile, the Library as a whole is more of a collection of heterogeneous articles than a journal; and in its criticism it aims solely at the amusement of the reader, without expressing any definite way of thinking: on the contrary, Otechestvennye Zapiski and Mayak are each imbued with their own sharply defined opinion and each express their own, equally decisive, although directly opposite to one another, direction.

Otechestvennye Zapiski strive to guess and appropriate for themselves that view of things, which, in their opinion, constitutes the latest expression of European enlightenment, and therefore, often changing their way of thinking, they constantly remain true to one concern: to express the most fashionable thought, the newest feeling from Western literature.

Lighthouse, on the other hand, notices only that side of Western enlightenment that seems to him harmful or immoral, and, in order to rather avoid sympathy with it, rejects all European enlightenment completely, without entering into dubious proceedings. From that one praises that the other scolds; one delights in what excites indignation in another; even the same expressions that in the dictionary of one journal mean the highest degree of dignity, for example. Europeanism, last moment of development, human wisdom, etc., in the language of another have the meaning of extreme censure. From that, without reading one magazine, you can know his opinion from another, understanding only all his words in the opposite sense.

Thus, in the general movement of literature, our one-sidedness of one of these periodicals

usefully counterbalanced by the opposite one-sidedness of the other. Mutually destroying each other, each of them, without knowing it, complements the shortcomings of the other, so that the meaning and significance, even the way of thinking and content of one, are based on the possibility of the existence of the other. The very polemic between them serves as the cause of their inseparable connection and constitutes, so to speak, a necessary condition for their mental movement. However, the nature of this controversy is completely different in both journals. Mayak attacks Otechestvennye Zapiski directly, openly, and with heroic indefatigability, noticing their errors, errors, slips of the tongue, and even misprints. Otechestvennye Zapiski care little about Mayak as a journal, and even rarely talk about it; but for this they constantly have in mind its direction, against the extreme of which they try to set up an opposite, no less impetuous extreme. This struggle maintains the possibility of life for both and constitutes their main significance in literature.

This is a confrontation between Mayak and Fatherland. We consider notes to be a useful phenomenon in our literature because, expressing two extreme directions, they, by their exaggeration of these extremes, necessarily represent them somewhat in a caricature, and thus involuntarily lead the reader's thoughts onto the path of prudent moderation in error. In addition, every journal of its kind publishes many articles that are curious, practical, and useful for the dissemination of our learning. For we think that our education should contain the fruits of both directions; we do not think only that these trends should remain in their exclusive one-sidedness.

However, speaking of two directions, we mean more the ideals of the two journals than the journals in question. For, unfortunately, neither Mayak nor Otechestvennye Zapiski far reach the goal that they assume for themselves.

Rejecting everything Western and recognizing only that aspect of our education which is directly opposed to European is, of course, a one-sided trend; however, it could have some subordinate meaning if the magazine expressed it in all the purity of its one-sidedness;

but, taking it as his goal, the Lighthouse confuses with it some heterogeneous, accidental and obviously arbitrary beginnings, which sometimes destroy its main meaning. Thus, for example, placing the holy truths of our Orthodox faith at the basis of all his judgments, he at the same time accepts other truths as his foundation: the provisions of his self-composed psychology, and judges things according to three criteria, according to four categories and ten elements. Thus, mixing his personal opinions with general truths, he demands that his system be taken as the cornerstone of national thinking. As a result of this same confusion of concepts, he thinks to render a great service to literature, destroying, along with Otechestvennye Zapiski, also that which is the glory of our literature. This is how he proves, by the way, that Pushkin's poetry is not only terrible and immoral, but that it also lacks beauty, art, good poetry, and even correct rhymes. So, caring about the improvement of the Russian language and trying to give it softness, sweetness, sonorous charm who would do his common language throughout Europe, he himself, at the same time, instead of speaking the language of Russian, uses the language of his own invention.

That is why, in spite of the many great truths expressed here and there by Mayak, and which, being presented in their pure form, should have gained him the lively sympathy of many; it is difficult, however, to sympathize with him, because the truths in him are mixed with concepts, at least strange ones.

Otechestvennye Zapiski, for their part, also destroy their own strength in a different way. Instead of conveying to us the results of European education, they are constantly carried away by some particular manifestations of this education and, without fully embracing it, think to be new, being in fact always belated. For the longing for fashionable opinion, the longing to take on the appearance of a lion in the circle of thought, in itself already proves a departure from the center of fashion. This desire gives our thoughts, our language, our whole appearance, that character of self-doubt sharpness,

that cut of vivid exaggeration which serve as a sign of our alienation from the very circle to which we belong.

Arrivé de province à Paris, recounts a thoughtful and venerable journal(it seems l'Illustration or Guêpes), arrivé a Paris il voulut s'habiller à la mode du lendemain; U eut exprimer les émotions de son âme par les noeuds de sa cravatte et il abusa de l "épingle.

Of course, O. Z. take their opinions from the latest books of the West; but they accept these books separately from the totality of Western education, and therefore the meaning that they have there appears in them in a completely different meaning; that thought, which was new there, as an answer to the totality of questions surrounding it, having been torn off from these questions, is no longer new with us, but just an exaggerated antiquity.

Thus, in the sphere of philosophy, without presenting the slightest trace of those tasks that are the subject of modern thinking in the West, 0. 3. preach systems that are already outdated, but add to them some new results that do not fit with them. Thus, in the sphere of history, they adopted certain opinions of the West, which appeared there as a result of the striving for nationality; but understanding them separately from their source, they deduce from them the negation of our nationality, because it does not agree with the peoples of the West, just as the Germans once rejected their nationality because it is unlike the French. So, in the field of literature, Fatherland was noticed. Notes that in the West, not without benefit for the successful movement of education, some undeserved authorities were destroyed, and as a result of this remark, they seek to humiliate all our fame, trying to reduce the literary reputation of Derzhavin, Karamzin, Zhukovsky, Baratynsky, Yazykov, Khomyakov, and in their place exalt I. Turgenev and F. Maikov, thus placing them in the same category with Lermontov, who, probably, would not have chosen this place for himself in our literature. Following the same principle, O.Z. are trying to renew our language with their own special words and forms.

That is why we dare to think that both O.Z. and Mayak express a direction somewhat one-sided and not always true.

Severnaya Pchela is more of a political newspaper than a literary magazine. But in its non-political part, it expresses the same striving for morality, improvement, and propriety, which O. Z. reveals for European education. She judges things according to her moral concepts, conveys everything that seems wonderful to her in a rather diverse way, reports everything that she likes, conveys everything that is not to her heart, very zealously, but perhaps not always fairly.

We have some reason to think that this is not always fair.

At the Literaturnaya Gazeta, we were not able to open any particular direction. This reading is mostly light, dessert reading, a little sweet, a little spicy, literary sweets, sometimes a little greasy, but all the more pleasant for some undemanding organisms.

Along with these periodicals, we must also mention Sovremennik, because it is also a literary magazine, although we confess that we would not like to confuse his name with other names. It belongs to a completely different circle of readers, has a completely different purpose from other publications, and especially does not mix with them in the tone and mode of its literary action. Always preserving the dignity of his calm independence, Sovremennik does not enter into passionate polemics, does not allow himself to lure readers with exaggerated promises, does not amuse their idleness with his playfulness, does not seek to show off the tinsel of foreign, misunderstood systems, does not anxiously chase news of opinions and does not base his convictions on fashion authority; but freely and firmly goes its own way, without bending before outward success. From that, from the time of Pushkin to the present, it has remained a permanent receptacle for the most famous names of our literature; Therefore, for writers less known, the publication of articles in Sovremennik already has some right to the respect of the public.

Meanwhile, the direction of Sovremennik is not predominantly, but exclusively literary. Articles by scientists, whose goal is the development of science, and not words, are not part of it. From that, the image of his view of things is in some

contradiction with its name. For in our time, purely literary dignity no longer constitutes an essential aspect of literary phenomena. From when, analyzing some work of literature, a Sovremennik bases his judgments on the rules of rhetoric or rhetoric, we involuntarily regret that the strength of his moral purity is depleted in the cares of his literary cleanliness.

The Finnish Herald is just beginning, and therefore we cannot yet judge its direction; we will only say that the idea of bringing Russian literature closer to Scandinavian literature, in our opinion, is not only among the useful, but together with the most curious and significant innovations. Of course, an individual work of some Swedish or Danish writer cannot be fully appreciated by us if we do not consider it not only with the general state of the literature of his people, but, more importantly, with the state of all private and general, internal and external life. these little-known lands. If, as we hope, the Finnish Herald will acquaint us with the most curious aspects of the internal life of Sweden, Norway and Denmark; if he presents us in a clear way the significant questions that occupy them at the present moment; if he reveals to us the full importance of those mental and vital movements, little known in Europe, which are now filling these states; if he presents to us in a clear picture the amazing, almost incredible, welfare of the lower class, especially in certain areas of these states; if he satisfactorily explains to us the reasons for this happy phenomenon; if he explains the reasons for another, no less important circumstance, the amazing development of certain aspects of popular morality, especially in Sweden and Norway; if he presents a clear picture of relations between different classes, relations completely different from other states; if, finally, all these important questions are connected with literary phenomena into one living picture: in that case, without a doubt, this journal will be one of the most remarkable phenomena in our literature.

Our other journals are predominantly of a special nature, and therefore we cannot speak of them here.

Meanwhile, the distribution of periodicals to all parts of the state and to all circles of literate society, the role that they obviously play in our literature, the interest that they arouse in all classes of readers, all this incontrovertibly proves to us that the very nature of our literary education is predominantly magazine.

However, the meaning of this expression requires some explanation.

A literary magazine is not a literary work. He only informs about the contemporary phenomena of literature, analyzes them, indicates their place among others, pronounces his judgment about them. A journal in literature is the same as a preface in a book. Consequently, the predominance of journalism in literature proves that in modern education the need enjoy And know, yields to the need judge- bring your pleasures and knowledge under one review, be aware, have an opinion. The dominance of journalism in the field of literature is the same as the dominance of philosophical writings in the field of science.

But if the development of journalism in our country is based on the desire of our very education for a reasonable report, for an expressed, formulated opinion about the subjects of science and literature, then, on the other hand, the indefinite, confused, one-sided and at the same time self-contradictory character of our journals proves that literary we have not yet formed our opinions; that in the movements of our education more need opinions than opinions themselves; more sense of need for them at all than a certain inclination to one direction or another.

However, could it be otherwise? Considering the general character of our literature, it seems that in our literary education there are no elements for the formation of a general definite opinion, there are no forces for the formation of an integral, consciously developed direction, and there cannot be any, as long as the dominant color of our thoughts is an accidental shade of foreign convictions. Undoubtedly possible and even really constantly encountered

people who pass off some particular thought, which they understand in fragments, as their own specific opinion, - people who call their book concepts the name of beliefs; but these thoughts, these concepts, are more like a school exercise in logic and philosophy; this is an imaginary opinion; one outer garment of thoughts; the fashionable dress in which some intelligent people dress their minds when they take them out to the salons, or youthful dreams shattered at the first onslaught of real life. That is not what we mean by the word persuasion.

There was a time, and not very long ago, when it was possible for a thinking person to form a firm and definite way of thinking, embracing together life, and mind, and taste, and the habits of life, and literary predilections - it was possible to form a definite opinion for oneself only from sympathy with the phenomena of foreign literature: there were complete, complete, complete systems. Now they are gone; at least, there are no generally accepted, unconditionally dominant ones. In order to build one’s complete outlook from contradictory thoughts, one must choose, compose oneself, seek, doubt, ascend to the very source from which the conviction flows, that is, either remain forever with vacillating thoughts, or bring with you in advance what is already ready, not from literature. acquired conviction. Compose belief from different systems - it is impossible, as it is impossible at all compose nothing alive. The living is born only from life.

Now there can no longer be any Voltairians, or Jean-Jacquists, or Jean-Pavlists, or Schellingians, or Byronibtes, or Getists, or Doctriners, or exceptional Hegelians (except perhaps those who, sometimes without reading Hegel, are given out under his name of their personal guesses); now everyone must form his own way of thinking, and consequently, if he does not take it from the totality of life, then he will always remain with the same bookish phrases.

For this reason, our literature could have full meaning until the end of Pushkin's life, and now has no definite meaning.

We think, however, that this state of affairs cannot continue. Due to natural, necessary laws

of the human mind, the emptiness of meaninglessness must someday be filled with meaning.

And in fact, from a certain time, in one corner of our literature, an important change begins, although still barely noticeable in some special shades of literature, a change that is not so much expressed in the works of literature, but is manifested in the state of our very education in general, and promising to transform the character of our imitative subordination into a peculiar development of the inner principles of our own life. Readers will guess, of course, that I am talking about that Slavic-Christian trend, which, on the one hand, is subjected to some, perhaps exaggerated predilections, and on the other, is persecuted by strange, desperate attacks, ridicule, slander; but in any case it is worthy of attention, as such an event, which, in all probability, is destined to occupy not the last place in the fate of our enlightenment.

We will try to designate it with all possible impartiality, collecting into one whole its individual features, scattered here and there, and even more noticeable in a thinking public than in book literature.

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Slavophilism - a trend in Russian critical thought of the 40-50s. 19th century

The main feature: the assertion of the fundamental identity of the culture of the Russian people. This is not only literary criticism, but also theology, politics, law.

KIREEVSKY

Russian literature can become world literature. There is not only the right to tell the whole world, but also our duty. It is our duty to make literature unlike European (precisely because we are so unlike Europe). Russian literature has the opportunity, it has something to say, and it is obliged to write not like in Europe.

The assertion of identity, nationality.

The pathos of Slavophilism: for constant contact with other cultures, but without losing one's own identity ("The View of Russian Literature")

Writes about the state of Russian literature: “Beauty is unambiguous with truth” (from the Christian worldview)

The question of the evolution of the poet as a person: "Something about the nature of Pushkin's poetry."

I. Kireevsky "Review of the current state of literature"

Developed the theory of Slavophilism.

The eternal thesis is solved as follows: “Nationality is a reflection in artistic creativity of the deep foundations of nationwide ideals”

“The root and foundation is the Kremlin (security, the idea of statehood), Kiev (the idea of the Russian state, the baptism of Rus', national unity), the Sorov desert (the idea of man serving God), folk life (culture, heritage) with his songs.”

The idea of the Russian art school is a recognizable tradition in modern culture:

in literature: Gogol

in music: Glinka

in painting: Ivanov

Theological Studies. Formulated the difference between secular and religious (church) art: life and story about a person? icon and portrait (What is eternal in a person and what is momentary in a person?)

A. Khomyakov "On the possibilities of the Russian art school"

Leading fighter of Slavophilism. Engaged in provocative "fights".

Nationality is not just a quality of literature: "Art in the word is necessarily connected with nationality." "The most suitable genre of literature is the epic, but there are big problems with it now."

The classic epic in Homer (contemplation - a calm but analyzing look) to get a true understanding.

The purpose of modern novels is an anecdote - unusual. But if so, then this cannot characterize the epic, therefore, the novel is not an epic

Art. "A few words about Gogol's poem". Gogol, like Homer, wants to fix the nationality, therefore, Gogol = Homer.

A controversy arose with Belinsky.

Gogol's satire - "inside out", "read the other way around", "read between the lines".

K. Aksakov "Three critical articles"

Y. Samarin “On the opinions of Sovremennik, historical and literary”

14. The problematic field of Russian criticism in the 1850s-1860s. Basic concepts and representatives

WESTERNERS are a materialistic, real, positivist direction.

Belinsky Western ideologist.

1. Revolutionary democratic criticism (real): Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Pisarev, Saltykov-Shchedrin.

2. Liberal aesthetic tradition: Druzhinin, Botkin, Annenkov

The era of the “sixties”, which did not quite correspond, as it will happen in the 20th century, to calendar chronological milestones, was marked by a rapid growth in social and literary activity, which was reflected primarily in the existence of Russian journalism. Numerous new publications appeared during these years, including Russkiy Vestnik, Russkaya Beseda, Russkoe Slovo, Vremya, Epoch. The popular Sovremennik and Library for Reading are changing their face.

New social and aesthetic programs are formulated on the pages of periodicals; novice critics (Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Pisarev, Strakhov and many others), as well as writers who have returned to active work (Dostoevsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin), quickly gain fame; uncompromising and principled discussions arise about new outstanding phenomena of Russian literature - the works of Turgenev, L. Tolstoy, Ostrovsky, Nekrasov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Fet.

Literary changes are largely due to significant socio-political events (the death of Nicholas 1 and the succession of the throne to Alexander 2, the defeat of Russia in the Crimean War, liberal reforms and the abolition of serfdom, the Polish uprising). The long-restrained philosophical-political, civic aspiration of public consciousness, in the absence of legal political institutions, reveals itself on the pages of "thick" literary and art magazines; it is literary criticism that becomes an open universal platform on which the main socially relevant discussions unfold. Literary criticism finally and distinctly merges with journalism. Therefore, the study of literary criticism of the 1860s is impossible without taking into account its socio-political guidelines.

In the 1860s, differentiation took place within the democratic socio-literary movement that had been taking shape over the previous two decades: against the background of the radical views of the young publicists of Sovremennik and Russkoe Slovo, which were no longer associated only with the struggle against serfdom and autocracy, but also against the very idea of social inequality, adherents of the former liberal views seem almost conservative.

The original public programs - Slavophilism and soil-basedism - were imbued with general guidelines for progressive social liberation development; at first, the Russky Vestnik magazine also built its activities on the ideas of liberalism, the de facto head of which was another former associate of Belinsky, Katkov.

Obviously, social ideological and political indifference in the literary criticism of this period is a rare, almost exceptional phenomenon (articles by Druzhinin, Leontiev).

The widespread public view of literature and literary criticism as a reflection and expression of current problems leads to an unprecedented growth in the popularity of criticism, and this gives rise to fierce theoretical disputes about the essence of literature and art in general, about the tasks and methods of critical activity.

The sixties are the time of the primary understanding of Belinsky's aesthetic heritage. However, magazine polemicists from opposite extreme positions condemn either Belinsky's aesthetic idealism (Pisarev) or his passion for social topicality (Druzhinin).

The radicalism of the publicists of Sovremennik and Russkoye Slovo manifested itself in their literary views: the concept of “real” criticism, developed by Dobrolyubov, taking into account the experience of Chernyshevsky and supported by their followers, considered “reality” represented (“reflected”) in the work to be the main object of critical criticism. discretion.

The position, which was called "didactic", "practical", "utilitarian", "theoretical", was rejected by all other literary forces, one way or another asserting the priority of artistry in assessing literary phenomena. However, "pure" aesthetic, immanent criticism, which, as A. Grigoriev argued, is engaged in a mechanical enumeration of artistic techniques, did not exist in the 1860s. Therefore, “aesthetic” criticism is a trend that sought to comprehend the author's intention, the moral and psychological pathos of the work, its formal and meaningful unity.

Other literary groups of this period: both Slavophilism, and pochvenism, and the “organic” criticism created by Grigoriev, to a greater extent professed the principles of criticism “about”, accompanying the interpretation of a work of art with principled judgments on topical social problems. "Aesthetic" criticism did not have, like other currents, its ideological center, revealing itself on the pages of the "Library for Reading", "Contemporary" and "Russian Messenger" (until the end of the 1850s), as well as in "Domestic Notes", which, unlike the previous and subsequent eras, did not play a significant role in the literary process of this time.

In the article "Nineteenth century"(European, 1832) Kireevsky analyzes the relationship of "Russian enlightenment to European" - including what are the "reasons that removed Russia from education for so long", in what and to what extent "European enlightenment" influenced the development of "the way of thinking of some educated people" in Russia and others (92, 93, 94). To this end, Kireevsky consistently covered the development of education and enlightenment in Western Europe (with a cautious assessment of the socio-political results of this development in the 2nd half of the 19th century), as well as in America and Russia. These thoughts served as a rationale for the judgments in the article "Review of Russian Literature for 1831" (European, 1832), which began with the words: "Our literature is a child who is just beginning to speak clearly" (106).

A series of articles by Kireevsky entitled "Review of the current state of literature"(Moskvityanin, 1845; remained unfinished) was called upon to update the positions that determine the policy of the journal, the editor of which was the author of the cycle himself for a short time. The initial thought of the articles is the assertion that "in our time, fine literature is only an insignificant part of literature" (164). Because of this, Kireevsky urged to pay attention to philosophical, historical, philological, political-economic, theological, etc. works. should also act on a private person, bifurcating every living movement of his soul. Therefore, according to Kireevsky, "in our time there are so many talents and there is not a single true poet" (168). As a result, Kireevsky's article analyzes the alignment of philosophical forces, socio-political influences of the era, etc., but there was no place for the analysis of fiction.

Of interest to the history of science is Kireevsky's article "Professor Shevyrev's public lectures on the history of Russian literature, mostly ancient"(Moskvityanin, 1845). According to Kireevsky, the merits of S.P. Shevyrev, who lectured at Moscow University, are that the lecturer is focused not only on philological issues proper. “The lectures on ancient Russian literature,” the critic wrote, “have a lively and universal interest, which lies not in new phrases, but in new things, in their rich, little-known and meaningful content.<…>This is the news of the content, this is the revival of the forgotten, the reconstruction of the destroyed is<…>discovery of a new world of our old literature" (221). Kireevsky emphasized that Shevyrev's lectures are "a new event in our historical self-knowledge," and this, in the system of values of criticism, is due to the work of<…>religiously conscientious" (222). For Kireevsky, it was especially important that Shevyrev used the "parallel characteristics" Russia-the West, and the result of the comparison "clearly expresses the deeply significant meaning of ancient Russian enlightenment, which it received from the free influence of the Christian faith on our people, not shackled in pagan Greco-Roman education" (223).

In the sphere of Kireevsky's attention were also masterpieces of Western European art. One of them - "Faust" I.V. Goethe - dedicated to the article of the same name ("" Faust ". Tragedy, the work of Goethe. " Moskvityanin, 1845). Goethe's work, according to the critic, has a synthetic genre nature: it is "half-novel, half-tragedy, half-philosophical dissertation, half-fairy tale, half-allegory, half-truth, half-thought, half-dream" (229). Kireevsky emphasized that "Faust" had "an enormous, amazing influence<…>on European literature" (230), and expected the same impact of this work with "all-human" significance on Russian literature (231).

Thus, Slavophile criticism, the model of which is by right the philosophical, essentially literary-critical and journalistic work of I.V. Kireevsky, is a fact of the general cultural process in Russia in the 19th century. The specificity of Kireevsky's value ideals determined the angle of his view on the problem-conceptual issues of Russian and Western European culture, as well as the selectivity of attention to creative individuals. A distinctive aspect of Kireevsky's literary-critical activity was his focus on the spheres of the spiritual and moral development of the Russian nation.

"ORGANIC" CRITICISM A.A. GRIGORIEV

A.A. Grigoriev remained in the history of criticism as a writer, who throughout his life was looking for his own way. His "organic" criticism, as its creator himself defined it, differed both from Belinsky's "historical" (in Grigoriev's terminology), and from "real" criticism, and from "aesthetic" criticism. The position of the "organic" vision of literary reality and the nature of figurative creativity was associated by Grigoriev with the denial of rationalistic principles in judgments about art. Ideologically, at various times, Grigoriev was close to the Slavophiles, and then to the Soil-Vocationalists, who were striving to overcome the extremes of both Slavophilism and Westernism.

In the article "A critical look at the foundations, meaning and methods of modern art criticism"(Library for reading, 1858) Grigoriev sought to develop the idea of works "of paramount importance, that is born, but not made creations of art" (8), thus emphasizing that the true work of the artistic word does not arise on the paths of logical reasoning, but in the elements and in the mysteries of the sensory perception of life. In this, Grigoriev saw "unfading beauty" and "the charm of eternal freshness that awakens thought to a new activity "(8). He lamented the state of modernity when "criticism is written not about works, but about works" (9). Reflections of scientists and critics, polemics and disputes about the phenomena of artistic culture should be Grigoriev, are focused around a "living" meaning - in the search and discovery of thoughts not "head", but "heart" (15).

In the logical context of the latter position, the critic was categorical, insisting that "only that is brought into the treasury of our soul that has taken on an artistic image" (19). The idea and the ideal, Grigoriev believed, cannot be "distracted" from life; "the idea itself is an organic phenomenon", and "the ideal remains always the same, always constitutes unit, the norm of the human soul" (42). His slogan is the words: "Great is the significance of art. It alone, I will not tire of repeating, brings into the world a new, organic, necessary life "(19). On this basis, Grigoriev formulated the "two duties" of criticism in relation to literature: "To study and interpret born, organic creations and to deny the falsity and untruth of everything done" (31).

In the chain of these reasonings of Grigoriev, the thesis about the limited historical consideration of any artistic facts arose. Concluding the article, he wrote: "Between art and criticism there is an organic relationship in the consciousness of the ideal, and therefore criticism cannot and should not be blindly historical" (47). As a counterbalance to the principle of "blind historicism", Grigoriev argued that criticism "should be, or at least strive to be, just as organic like art itself, comprehending by analysis the same organic principles of life to which art synthetically imparts flesh and blood" (47).

Job "A look at Russian literature since the death of Pushkin"(Russian Word, 1859) was conceived as a series of articles in which its author intended to consider, first of all, the characteristic features of the work of Pushkin, Griboyedov, Gogol and Lermontov. In this regard, from the point of view of Grigoriev, it is inevitable that Belinsky should also be mentioned, since these four "great and glorious names" - "four poetic crowns", are entwined by him like "ivy" (51). In Belinsky, "representative" and "expressor of our critical consciousness" (87, 106), Grigoriev simultaneously noted "the sublime property<…>nature", as a result of which he walked "hand in hand" with artists, including Pushkin (52, 53). The critic, ahead of Dostoevsky, assessed Pushkin as "our everything": "Pushkin- so far the only complete sketch of our national personality", he "is our such<…>a fully and completely marked spiritual physiognomy" (56, 57).

Review of the current state of literature (excerpts)

(Published according to the publication: Kireevsky I.V. Criticism and aesthetics. pp. 176-177, 181-183, 185-187, 189-192.

I. V. Kireevsky analyzes different opinions about the attitude towards Western and Eastern enlightenment and comes to the conclusion that both opinions are “equally false”, one-sided, both unaccountable worship of the West and unaccountable worship of Russian antiquity. In its development, Russian enlightenment can and must preserve its national character, without cutting itself off from European education. Thus, Kireevsky overcomes the one-sidedness and narrowness of the views of some Slavophiles (S. Shevyrev, M. Pogodina, and others) and the official doctrine of nationality.)

Just as the language of a people represents the imprint of its natural logic, and if it does not fully express its way of thinking, then at least it represents in itself the foundation from which its mental life constantly and naturally proceeds, so also the torn, undeveloped concepts of a people who do not yet think , form the root from which the highest education of the nation grows. That is why all branches of education, being in living contact, constitute one inseparably articulated whole ...

There is no doubt that between our literary education and the fundamental elements of our mental life, which developed in our ancient history and are now preserved in our so-called uneducated people, there is a clear disagreement. This disagreement does not arise from differences in the degrees of education, but from their perfect heterogeneity. Those principles of mental, social, moral and spiritual life that created the former Russia and now constitute the only sphere of its national life, did not develop into our literary enlightenment, but remained untouched, torn off from the successes of our mental activity, while past them, without regard to them, our literary enlightenment flows from foreign sources, completely dissimilar not only to the forms, but often even to the very beginnings of our convictions ...

Is it worth refuting such an opinion?

Its falsity seems to be obvious without proof. It is just as impossible to destroy the peculiarity of the mental life of a people as it is impossible to destroy its history. It is as easy to replace the fundamental convictions of the people with literary concepts as it is to change the bones of a developed organism with an abstract thought. However, even if we could assume for a moment that this proposal could actually be fulfilled, then in that case its only result would not be enlightenment, but the destruction of the people itself. For what is a people, if not the totality of convictions, more or less developed in its manners, in its customs, in its language, in its concepts of the heart and mind, in its religious, social and personal relations - in a word, in its entirety? life? In addition, the idea, instead of the principles of our education, to introduce among us the principles of European education, already and therefore destroys itself, because in the final development of European enlightenment there is no dominant principle.

One contradicts the other, mutually annihilating ...

Another opinion, opposite to this unaccountable worship of the West, and just as one-sided, although much less common, is the unaccountable worship of the past forms of our antiquity and the idea that in time the newly acquired European enlightenment will again have to be blotted out of our mental life by the development of our special education.

Moreover, whatever European enlightenment may be, if once we become participants in it, then it is already beyond our power to destroy its influence, even if we wish it. You can subordinate it to another, higher one, direct it to one goal or another; but it will always remain an essential, already inseparable element of any future development of ours ...

For two eruditions, two revelations of intellectual powers in man and nations present us with impartial speculation, the history of all ages, and even daily experience. One education is the inner dispensation of the spirit by the power of the truth announced in it; the other is the formal development of the mind and external knowledge. The first depends on the principle to which a person submits, and can be communicated directly; the second is the fruit of slow and difficult work. The first gives meaning and meaning to the second, but the second gives it content and completeness...

However, it is obvious that the former is only essential for life, imbuing it with one meaning or another, because from its source flow the fundamental convictions of man and peoples; it determines the order of their internal and the direction of their external being, the nature of their private, family and social relations, is the initial spring of their thinking, the dominant sound of their spiritual movements, the color of the language, the cause of conscious preferences and unconscious predilections, the basis of mores and customs, the meaning of their history.

Submitting to the direction of this higher education and supplementing it with its own content, the second education arranges the development of the external side of thought and external improvements in life, without itself containing any coercive force in one direction or another. For in its essence and in its separation from extraneous influences, it is something between good and evil, between the power of elevation and the power of distorting a person, like any external information, like a collection of experiences, like an impartial observation of nature, like the development of artistic technique, like the cognizer himself. reason, when it acts in isolation from other abilities of a person and develops on its own, not being carried away by low passions, not illumined by higher thoughts, but silently transmitting one abstract knowledge that can be equally used for good and for harm, to serve the truth or to reinforce a lie.

The very lack of character of this external, logical and technical education allows it to remain in a people or a person even when they lose or change the inner basis of their being, their initial faith, their fundamental beliefs, their essential character, their life direction. The remaining education, surviving the dominance of the higher principle that controls it, enters the service of another and, thus, unharmedly passes through all the various turning points of history, constantly growing in its content until the last minute of human existence.

Meanwhile, in the very times of turning points, in these epochs of the decline of a person or a people, when the basic principle of life is bifurcated in his mind, falls into pieces and thus loses all its strength, which consists mainly in the integrity of being - then this second education, rational-external, formal, is the only support of unestablished thought and dominates through rational calculation and balance of interests over the minds of internal convictions.

Usually these two educations are confused. Therefore, in the middle of the XVIII century. an opinion may have arisen, first developed by Lessing ( Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729-1781) - German playwright, art theorist and literary critic of the Enlightenment, the founder of German classical literature. He defended the aesthetic principles of enlightenment realism.) and Condorcet ( Condorcet, Jean Antoine Nicolas (1743-1794) - French philosopher-educator, mathematician, sociologist, politician. In philosophy, a supporter of deism and sensationalism.) and then became universal - an opinion about some kind of constant, natural and necessary improvement of man. It arose in contrast to another opinion, which affirmed the immobility of the human race, with some periodic fluctuations up and down. Perhaps there was no thought more confused than these two. For if, in fact, the human race has improved, why does not man become more perfect? If nothing in man developed, did not increase, then how could we explain the indisputable improvement of some sciences?

But the opinion about the immobility of the human race had to give way in general recognition to the opinion about the necessary development of man, for the latter was the result of another error, belonging exclusively to the rational direction of recent centuries. This delusion lies in the assumption that this living understanding of the spirit, this inner disposition of a person, which is the source of his guiding thoughts, strong deeds, reckless aspirations, sincere poetry, strong life and higher vision of the mind, that it can be compiled artificially, so to speak, mechanically. , from one development of logical formulas. This opinion was dominant for a long time, until finally, in our time, it began to be destroyed by the successes of higher thinking. For the logical mind, cut off from other sources of cognition and not yet fully tested the measure of its power, although it promises to first create an inner way of thinking for a person, communicate an informal, living view of the world and itself, but, having developed to the last limits of its scope, he himself is aware of the incompleteness of his negative knowledge and, already as a result of his own conclusion, he demands for himself a different, higher principle, unattainable by his abstract mechanism.

Such is now the state of European thinking, the state which determines the relation of European enlightenment to the fundamental principles of our education. For if the former, exclusively rational character of the West could act destructively on our life and mind, now, on the contrary, the new demands of the European mind and our fundamental convictions have the same meaning. And if it is true that the basic principle of our Orthodox-Slovenian education is true (which, incidentally, I consider it unnecessary and inappropriate to prove here), if it is true, I say, that this supreme, living principle of our enlightenment is true, then it is obvious that as it was once the source of our ancient education, so now it must serve as a necessary complement to European education, separating it from its special trends, clearing it of the character of exceptional rationality and penetrating it with new meaning; while the educated European, as a mature fruit of all-human development, being cut off from the old tree, should serve as nourishment for a new life, be a new stimulant for the development of our mental activity.

Therefore, love for European education, as well as love for ours, both coincide at the last point of their development into one love, into one striving for living, full, all-human and truly Christian enlightenment ...