- Pisarev refers in "Motives of Russian Drama" to the analysis of "Thunderstorm" by Ostrovsky. Assessing Katerina's character, Pisarev declares his disagreement with the main conclusion of Dobrolyubov's article.
He "debunks" Katerina, considering her as an ordinary, ordinary phenomenon in the dark kingdom. He agrees that passion, tenderness and sincerity are really the predominant properties in Katerina's nature. But he also sees some contradictions in this image. Pisarev asks himself and the reader the following questions. What kind of love arises from the exchange of a few glances? What kind of harsh virtue that gives up at the first opportunity? He notices the disproportion between cause and effect in the actions of the heroine: Kabanikha grumbles Katerina is languishing; Boris Grigoryevich casts tender glances - Katerina falls in love. He does not understand Katerina's behavior. Quite ordinary circumstances pushed her to confess to her husband: a thunderstorm, a crazy lady, a picture of fiery hell on the wall of the gallery. Finally, according to Pisarev, Katerina's last monologue is illogical. She looks at the grave from an aesthetic point of view, while completely forgetting about the fiery hell, to which she was previously not indifferent. As a result, Pisarev concludes: The cruelty of a family despot, the fanaticism of an old hypocrite, the unhappy love of a girl for a scoundrel, outbursts of despair, jealousy, fraud, violent revelry, educational rod, educational caress, quiet daydreaming, all this motley mixture of feelings, qualities and actions .. . boils down, in my opinion, to one common source which cannot arouse in us exactly any sensations, neither high nor low. All these are various manifestations of inexhaustible stupidity. Pisarev does not agree with Dobrolyubov in assessing the image of Katerina. In his opinion, Katerina cannot be called a ray of light in the dark kingdom, since she failed to do anything to alleviate her and others' suffering, to change life in the dark kingdom. Katerina's act is meaningless, it has not changed anything. This is a barren, not a bright phenomenon, concludes Pisarev.
The main reason is that Pisarev evaluates the character of the heroine from the standpoint of another historical time filled with great events, when ideas grew very quickly, as many deeds and events took place in a year as in other times it would not happen even in ten to twenty years.
It is characteristic that Bazarov again comes to the fore, who is directly opposed to Katerina. Bazarov, and not Katerina, Pisarev considers a genuine "beam of light in a dark kingdom."
The main task of the time, according to Pisarev, is to prepare such figures who will be able to introduce into society the correct ideas about folk labor and prepare the conditions for a fundamental solution of social issues.
Based on the dramatic works of Ostrovsky, Dobrolyubov showed us in the Russian family that "dark kingdom" in which mental abilities wither and the fresh forces of our young generations are depleted. As long as the phenomena of the "dark kingdom" continue to exist and as long as patriotic dreaminess turns a blind eye to them, until then we will constantly have to remind the reading society of Dobrolyubov's true and lively ideas about our family life. But at the same time, we will have to be stricter and more consistent than Dobrolyubov; we will need to defend his ideas against his own passions; where Dobrolyubov succumbed to an impulse of aesthetic feeling, we will try to reason in cold blood and see that our family patriarchy suppresses any healthy development. Ostrovsky's drama "Thunderstorm" caused a critical article from Dobrolyubov under the title "Ray of Light in the Dark Kingdom". This article was a mistake on the part of Dobrolyubov; he was carried away by sympathy for the character of Katerina and took her personality for a bright phenomenon. A detailed analysis of this character will show our readers that Dobrolyubov's view in this case is wrong and that not a single bright phenomenon can either arise or take shape in the "dark kingdom" of the patriarchal Russian family, brought to the stage in Ostrovsky's drama.
Katerina lives with her husband in the house of her mother-in-law, who constantly grumbles at all her household. Katerina cannot get used to her mother-in-law's manners and constantly suffers from her conversations. In the same city there is a young man, Boris Grigoryevich, who received a decent education. He glances at Katherine. Katerina falls in love with him, but wants to keep her virtue intact. Tikhon is leaving somewhere for two weeks; Out of kindness, Varvara helps Boris see Katerina, and the couple in love enjoys complete happiness for ten years. summer nights. Tikhon arrives; Katerina is tormented by remorse, grows thin and turns pale; then she is frightened by a thunderstorm, which she takes for an expression of heavenly wrath; at the same time, the words of the half-witted lady confuse her; on the street in front of the people, she throws herself on her knees before her husband and confesses her guilt to him. The husband "beat her a little"; the old Boar with redoubled zeal began to sharpen; a strong home guard was assigned to Katerina, but she managed to escape from the house; she met with her lover and learned from him that, on the orders of his uncle, he was leaving for Kyakhta, immediately after this meeting she rushed into the Volga and drowned. I have given my reader a complete list of such facts, which in my story may seem too sharp, incoherent, and in the totality even implausible. What kind of love arises from the exchange of several glances? What kind of harsh virtue that gives up at the first opportunity? Finally, what kind of suicide caused by such petty troubles, which are tolerated quite safely by all members of all Russian families?
I conveyed the facts quite correctly, but, of course, I could not convey in a few lines those shades in the development of the action, which, softening the external sharpness of the outlines, make the reader or viewer see in Katerina not an invention of the author, but a living person who is really capable of doing all of the above. eccentricity. In each of Katerina's actions one can find an attractive feature; Dobrolyubov found these sides, put them together, made up perfect image, saw as a result of this "a ray of light in a dark kingdom", rejoiced at this ray with the pure and holy joy of a citizen and poet. If he looked calmly and attentively at his precious find, then the simplest question would immediately arise in his mind, which would lead to the destruction of an attractive illusion. Dobrolyubov would have asked himself: how could this bright image have been formed? he would have seen that upbringing and life could not give Katerina either a strong character or a developed mind.
In all the actions and feelings of Katerina, first of all, a sharp disproportion between causes and effects is noticeable. Every external impression shakes her whole organism; the most insignificant event, the most empty conversation, produces whole revolutions in her thoughts, feelings and actions. The boar grumbles, Katerina languishes from this; Boris Grigorievich casts tender glances, Katerina falls in love; Varvara says a few words in passing about Boris, Katerina considers herself dead woman. Varvara gives Katerina the key to the gate, Katerina, holding on to this key for five minutes, decides that she will certainly see Boris, and ends her monologue with the words: “Oh, if only the night would come sooner!” Meanwhile, at the beginning of her monologue, she even found that the key was burning her hands and that she should definitely throw it away. When meeting with Boris, of course, the same story is repeated; first, “go away, damned man!”, and after that it throws itself on the neck. While the dates continue, Katerina thinks only that we will “take a walk”; as soon as Tikhon arrives, he begins to be tormented by remorse and reaches half-madness in this direction. Thunder struck - Katerina lost the last remnant of her mind. The final catastrophe, suicide, just like that happens impromptu. Katerina runs away from home with a vague hope of seeing her Boris; she does not think about suicide; she regrets that before they killed, but now they do not kill; she finds it uncomfortable that death is not; is Boris; when Katerina is left alone, she asks herself: “Where to now? go home?" and answers: “No, it’s all the same to me whether it’s home or in the grave.” Then the word "grave" leads her to a new series of thoughts, and she begins to consider the grave from a purely aesthetic point of view, from which people have so far managed to look only at other people's graves. At the same time, she completely loses sight of the fiery Gehenna, and yet she is not at all indifferent to this last thought.
Katerina's whole life consists of constant internal contradictions; every minute she rushes from one extreme to another; today she repents of what she did yesterday; she does not know what she will do tomorrow; she confuses her own life and the lives of other people at every step; finally, having mixed up everything that was at her fingertips, she cuts the tightened knots with the most stupid means, suicide, and even such suicide, which is completely unexpected for herself. Aestheticians could not fail to notice what is striking in all the behavior of Katerina; contradictions and absurdities are too obvious, but they can be called a beautiful name; we can say that they express a passionate, tender and sincere nature.
Every human property has at least two names in all languages, one of which is reprehensible and the other is laudatory - stinginess and frugality, cowardice and caution, cruelty and firmness, eccentricity and passion, and so on ad infinitum. Each individual person has, in relation to moral qualities its own special vocabulary, which almost never completely converges with the lexicons of other people.
We must take raw facts in all their rawness, and the rawer they are, the less they are disguised by laudatory or deprecating words, the more chances we have to understand and catch a living phenomenon, and not a colorless phrase. Resentments for human dignity nothing will happen here, but the benefits will be great.
A smart and developed personality, without noticing it, acts on everything that touches it; her thoughts, her occupations, her humaneness, her calm firmness - all this stirs around her the stagnant water of human routine; who is no longer able to develop, he at least respects a good person in an intelligent and developed personality. whoever is young, having become close to an intelligent and developed personality, may perhaps begin a new life, full of charming work and inexhaustible pleasure. If a supposed bright personality in this way gives society two or three young workers, if she inspires two or three old men with involuntary respect for what they previously ridiculed and oppressed, then will you really say,
That such a person has done absolutely nothing to facilitate the transition to better ideas and more tolerable conditions of life? It seems to me that she did in small sizes what they do in large sizes the greatest historical figures. The difference between them lies only in the number of forces, and therefore their activity can and should be evaluated using the same methods. So that's what "rays of light" should be - not Katerina's couple.
Dmitry Ivanovich Pisarev
MOTIVES OF RUSSIAN DRAMA
I
Based on the dramatic works of Ostrovsky, Dobrolyubov showed us in the Russian family that "dark kingdom" in which mental abilities wither and the fresh forces of our young generations are depleted. The article was read, praised, and then put aside. Fans of patriotic illusions, unable to make a single sound objection to Dobrolyubov, continued to revel in their illusions and will probably continue this occupation as long as they find readers for themselves. Looking at these constant kneeling before folk wisdom and before folk truth, noticing that gullible readers take at face value current phrases devoid of any content, and knowing that folk wisdom And folk truth expressed most fully in the construction of our family life - conscientious criticism is placed in the sad need to repeat several times those positions that have long been expressed and proven. As long as the phenomena of the "dark kingdom" exist and as long as patriotic dreaminess turns a blind eye to them, until then we will constantly have to remind the reading society of Dobrolyubov's true and lively ideas about our family life. But at the same time, we will have to be stricter and more consistent than Dobrolyubov; we will need to defend his ideas against his own passions; where Dobrolyubov succumbed to an impulse of aesthetic feeling, we will try to reason in cold blood and see that our family patriarchy suppresses any healthy development. Ostrovsky's drama "Thunderstorm" caused a critical article from Dobrolyubov under the title "Ray of Light in the Dark Kingdom". This article was a mistake on the part of Dobrolyubov; he was carried away by sympathy for the character of Katerina and took her personality for a bright phenomenon. A detailed analysis of this character will show our readers that Dobrolyubov's view in this case is wrong and that not a single bright phenomenon can either arise or take shape in the "dark kingdom" of the patriarchal Russian family, brought to the stage in Ostrovsky's drama.
II
Katerina, the wife of a young merchant Tikhon Kabanov, lives with her husband in the house of her mother-in-law, who constantly grumbles at everyone at home. The children of the old Kabanikha, Tikhon and Varvara, have long listened to this grumbling and know how to “let it go past their ears” on the grounds that “she really needs to say something.” But Katerina cannot get used to her mother-in-law's manners and constantly suffers from her conversations. In the same city where the Kabanovs live, there is a young man, Boris Grigorievich, who has received a decent education. He glances at Katerina in the church and on the boulevard, and Katerina, for her part, falls in love with him, but wants to keep her virtue intact. Tikhon is leaving somewhere for two weeks; Varvara, out of kindness, helps Boris see Katerina, and the couple in love enjoys complete happiness for ten summer nights. Tikhon arrives; Katerina is tormented by remorse, grows thin and turns pale; then she is frightened by a thunderstorm, which she takes for an expression of heavenly wrath; at the same time, she is embarrassed by the words of the half-witted lady about fiery hell; she takes it all personally; on the street in front of the people, she throws herself on her knees before her husband and confesses her guilt to him. The husband, at the behest of his mother, "beat her a little" after they returned home; the old Kabanikha, with redoubled zeal, began to sharpen the repentant sinner with reproaches and moralizing; a strong home guard was assigned to Katerina, but she managed to escape from the house; she met her lover and learned from him that, on the orders of his uncle, he was leaving for Kyakhta; - then, immediately after this meeting, she threw herself into the Volga and drowned. These are the data on the basis of which we must form an idea of the character of Katerina. I have given my reader a bare list of such facts, which in my story may seem too abrupt, incoherent, and in the aggregate even implausible. What is this love that arises from the exchange of several glances? What is this harsh virtue that gives up at the first opportunity? Finally, what kind of suicide is this, caused by such petty troubles, which are tolerated quite safely by all members of all Russian families?
I conveyed the facts quite correctly, but, of course, I could not convey in a few lines those shades in the development of the action, which, softening the external sharpness of the outlines, make the reader or viewer see in Katerina not an invention of the author, but a living person who is really capable of doing all of the above. eccentricity. Reading The Thunderstorm or watching it on stage, you will never doubt that Katerina had to act in reality exactly as she does in the drama. You will see and understand Katerina before you, but, of course, you will understand her one way or another, depending on the point of view from which you look at her. Every living phenomenon differs from dead abstraction precisely in that it can be viewed from different angles; and, starting from the same basic facts, one can come to different and even opposite conclusions. Katerina experienced many different kinds of sentences; there were moralists who accused her of immorality, this was the easiest to do: one had only to compare each act of Katerina with the prescriptions of the positive law and take stock; for this work neither wit nor thought was required, and therefore it was really performed with brilliant success by writers who do not differ in either of these virtues; then aestheticians appeared and decided that Katerina was a bright phenomenon; the aestheticians, of course, stood immeasurably higher than the inexorable champions of decency, and therefore the former were listened to with respect, while the latter were immediately ridiculed. At the head of the aestheticians was Dobrolyubov, who constantly persecuted aesthetic critics with his well-aimed and fair ridicule. In the sentence against Katerina, he came together with his constant opponents, and came together because, like them, he began to admire general impression instead of subjecting this impression to calm analysis. In each of Katerina's actions one can find an attractive side; Dobrolyubov found these aspects, put them together, made up an ideal image from them, as a result he saw “a ray of light in a dark kingdom” and, like a man, full of love, rejoiced at this ray with the pure and holy joy of a citizen and poet. If he had not succumbed to this joy, if he had tried for one minute to look calmly and attentively at his precious find, then the simplest question would immediately arise in his mind, which would immediately lead to the complete destruction of the attractive illusion. Dobrolyubov would have asked himself: how could this bright image have been formed? In order to answer this question for himself, he would trace Katerina's life from childhood, all the more so since Ostrovsky provides some materials for this; he would have seen that upbringing and life could not give Katerina either a firm character or a developed mind; then he would look again at those facts in which one attractive side caught his eye, and then the whole personality of Katerina would appear to him in a completely different light. It is sad to part with a bright illusion, but there is nothing to do; this time, too, he would have had to be satisfied with the dark reality.
III
In all the actions and feelings of Katerina, first of all, a sharp disproportion between causes and effects is noticeable. Every external impression shakes her whole organism; the most insignificant event, the most empty conversation, produces whole revolutions in her thoughts, feelings and actions. The boar grumbles, Katerina languishes from this; Boris Grigorievich casts tender glances, Katerina falls in love; Varvara says a few words in passing about Boris, Katerina considers herself a dead woman in advance, although until then she had not even talked to her future lover; Tikhon leaves the house for several days, Katerina falls on her knees before him and wants him to take a terrible oath of marital fidelity from her. Varvara gives Katerina the key to the gate, Katerina, holding on to this key for five minutes, decides that she will certainly see Boris, and ends her monologue with the words: “Oh, if only the night would come sooner!” And meanwhile, even the key had been given to her mainly for the love interests of Varvara herself, and at the beginning of her monologue Katerina even found that the key was burning her hands and that she should definitely throw it away. When meeting with Boris, of course, the same story is repeated; first, “go away, damned man!”, and after that it throws itself on the neck. While the dates continue, Katerina thinks only that we will “take a walk”; as soon as Tikhon arrives and, as a result, night walks stop, Katerina begins to be tormented by remorse and reaches half-madness in this direction; meanwhile, Boris lives in the same city, everything goes on as before, and, resorting to little tricks and precautions, one could see each other and enjoy life sometime. But Katerina walks around as if lost, and Varvara is very thoroughly afraid that she will fall at her husband's feet, and that she will tell him everything in order. So it turns out, and this catastrophe is produced by a combination of the most empty circumstances. Thunder struck - Katerina lost the last vestige of her mind, and then a half-witted lady with two footmen walked across the stage and delivered a popular sermon about eternal torment; and here, on the wall, in the covered gallery, hellish flames are painted; and all this is one to one - well, judge for yourself, how can Katerina really not tell her husband right there, in front of Kabanikh and in front of the whole city public, how she spent all ten nights during Tikhon's absence? The final catastrophe, suicide, just like that happens impromptu. Katerina runs away from home with a vague hope of seeing her Boris; she is not thinking about suicide yet; she regrets that before they killed, but now they do not kill; she asks: “How long will I suffer? "She finds it inconvenient that death is not:" You, she says, call her, but she does not come. It is clear, therefore, that there is still no decision to commit suicide, because otherwise there would be nothing to talk about. But now, while Katerina argues in this way, Boris appears; there is a gentle rendezvous. Boris says: "I'm going." Katerina asks: "Where are you going?" They answer her: "Far away, Katya, to Siberia." - "Take me with you from here!" - "I can't, Katya." After that, the conversation becomes less interesting and turns into an exchange of mutual tenderness. Then, when Katerina is left alone, she asks herself: “Where to now? go home?" and answers: “No, it’s all the same to me what goes home, what goes to the grave.” Then the word "grave" leads her to a new series of thoughts, and she begins to consider the grave from a purely aesthetic point of view, from which, however, people have so far managed to look only at other people's graves. “In the grave, he says, it’s better ... There’s a little grave under the tree ... how good! .. The sun warms it, wets it with rain ... in the spring grass grows on it, so soft ... birds will fly to the tree, they will sing, children will be taken out, flowers will bloom: yellow, red, blue ... all sorts, all sorts. This poetic description the grave completely captivates Katerina, and she announces that “I don’t even want to think about life.” At the same time, being carried away by an aesthetic sense, she even completely loses sight of hellfire, but meanwhile she is not at all indifferent to this last thought, because otherwise there would be no scene of public repentance for sins, there would be no departure of Boris to Siberia, and the whole story of night walks would remain sewn and covered. But in her last moments, Katerina forgets about the afterlife to such an extent that she even folds her hands crosswise, as they fold in a coffin; and, making this movement with her hands, even here she does not bring the idea of suicide closer to the idea of fiery hell. Thus, a jump is made into the Volga, and the drama ends.
IV
Katerina's whole life consists of constant internal contradictions; every minute she rushes from one extreme to another; today she repents of what she did yesterday, and yet she herself does not know what she will do tomorrow; at every step she confuses her own life and the lives of other people; finally, having mixed up everything that was at her fingertips, she cuts the tightened knots with the most stupid means, suicide, and even such suicide, which is completely unexpected for herself. Aestheticians could not fail to notice what is striking in all the behavior of Katerina; contradictions and absurdities are too obvious, but they can be called a beautiful name; we can say that they express a passionate, tender and sincere nature. Passion, tenderness, sincerity - all these are very good qualities, at least all these are very beautiful words, and since the main thing lies in words, there is no reason not to declare Katerina a bright phenomenon and not to be delighted with her. I completely agree that passion, tenderness and sincerity are really the predominant properties in Katerina's nature, I even agree that all the contradictions and absurdities of her behavior are explained precisely by these properties. But what does this mean? This means that the field of my analysis should be expanded; analyzing the personality of Katerina, one should keep in mind passion, tenderness and sincerity in general, and, in addition, those concepts that dominate in society and in literature about these properties of the human body. If I had not known in advance that my task would be expanded in this way, then I would not have taken up this article. It really is very necessary to disassemble the drama, written more than three years ago, in order to show the public how Dobrolyubov made a mistake in assessing the female character. But here we are talking about general issues of our life, and it is always convenient to talk about such issues, because they always stand in line and are always resolved only for a while. Aestheticians bring Katerina to a certain standard, and I do not at all intend to prove that Katerina does not fit this standard; Katerina fits, but the measure is no good, and all the grounds on which this measure stands are also no good; all this must be completely redone, and although, of course, I cannot cope with this task alone, I will nevertheless make my contribution.
We are still in assessing the phenomena moral peace groping and acting at random; by habit we know what sin is; according to the Code of Punishments, we know what a crime is; but when we have to navigate in the endless forests of those phenomena that do not constitute either sin or crime, when we have to consider, for example, the qualities of human nature that constitute the inclinations and foundations of future actions, then we all go in all directions and come around from different corners of this oak forest that is, we communicate to each other our personal tastes, which can very rarely have any common interest. Every human property has at least two names in all languages, one of which is reprehensible and the other is laudatory - stinginess and thrift, cowardice and caution, cruelty and firmness, stupidity and innocence, lies and poetry, flabbiness and tenderness, eccentricity and passion, and so on ad infinitum. Each individual person has his own special lexicon in relation to moral qualities, which almost never completely converges with the lexicons of other people. When, for example, you call one person a noble enthusiast and another an insane fanatic, then you yourself, of course, fully understand what you want to say, but other people understand you only approximately, and sometimes they may not understand you at all. After all, there are such mischievous people for whom the communist Babeuf was a noble enthusiast, but then there are also such wise men who would call the Austrian Minister Schmerling a crazy fanatic. Both will use the same words, and the same words will be used by all people of innumerable intermediate shades. What would you do here to unearth a living phenomenon from under a pile of scribbled words that have their own meaning in the language of each individual person? What is noble enthusiasm? What is a crazy fanatic? These are empty sounds that do not correspond to any particular idea. These sounds express the attitude of the speaker to an unknown subject, which remains completely unknown throughout the conversation and after it ends. To find out what kind of person the communist Babeuf was and what kind of person Schmerling was, it is necessary, of course, to put aside all the sentences pronounced on these two personalities. different people expressing in this case their personal tastes and their political sympathies. We must take raw facts in all their rawness, and the rawer they are, the less they are disguised by laudatory or deprecating words, the more chances we have to catch and understand a living phenomenon, and not a colorless phrase. This is what the thinking historian does. If he, having extensive information at his disposal, will avoid being carried away by phrases, if he treats a person and all branches of his activity not as a patriot, not as a liberal, not as an enthusiast, not as an aesthetician, but simply as a naturalist, then he will probably be able to give definite and objective answers to many questions, which were usually decided by a beautiful excitement of lofty feelings. No offense to human dignity will occur here, and the benefit will be great, because instead of a hundred cartloads of lies, one handful of real knowledge will turn out. And one witty saying rightly says that it is better to get a small wooden house than a big stone disease.
V
The thinking historian works and reflects, of course, not in order to stick this or that label to this or that historical name. Is it really worth spending time and effort to call Sidor a swindler with full conviction, and Filimon a virtuous father of a family? Historical personalities are curious only as large examples of our breed, very convenient for study and very capable of serving as materials for the general conclusions of anthropology. Considering their activities, measuring their influence on contemporaries, studying the circumstances that helped or hindered the fulfillment of their intentions, we draw irrefutable conclusions from a multitude of separate and diverse facts about the general properties of human nature, about the degree of its variability, about the influence of climatic and living conditions, about the various manifestations of national characters, about the origin and dissemination of ideas and beliefs, and finally, and most importantly, we are approaching the solution of the issue that in Lately brilliantly staged by the famous Buckle. This is the question: what force or what element serves as the basis and the most important engine of human progress? Buckle answers this question simply and decisively. He says: the more real knowledge, the stronger the progress; the more a person studies visible phenomena and the less he indulges in fantasies, the more convenient he arranges his life and the faster one improvement in everyday life is replaced by another. - Clear, bold and simple! - Thus, efficient historians, through patient study, go towards the same goal, which should be borne in mind by all people who decide to declare in literature their judgments about various phenomena of the moral and intellectual life of mankind.
Every critic who analyzes any literary type must, in his limited field of activity, apply to the case the same methods that a thinking historian uses in considering world events and putting great and strong people in their places. - The historian does not admire, is not touched, is not indignant, does not phrase, and all these pathological departures are just as indecent in criticism as in the historian. The historian decomposes each phenomenon into its component parts and studies each part separately, and then, when all the constituent elements are known, then the overall result turns out to be understandable and inevitable; what seemed, before analysis, a terrible crime or an incomprehensible feat, turns out, after analysis, to be a simple and necessary consequence of these conditions. Criticism should act in exactly the same way: instead of weeping over the misfortunes of heroes and heroines, instead of sympathizing with one, indignant at another, admiring a third, climbing walls about a fourth, the critic must first weep and rage to himself, and then, entering in a conversation with the public, he must thoroughly and judiciously tell her his thoughts about the causes of those phenomena that cause tears, sympathy, indignation or delight in life. He must explain phenomena, not sing about them; he should analyze, not act. It will be more helpful and less irritating.
If the historian and the critic both follow the same path, if both of them do not chatter, but reflect, then both will come to the same results. There is only a quantitative difference between the private life of man and the historical life of mankind. The same laws govern both orders of phenomena, just as the same chemical and physical laws govern both the development of a simple cell and the development of the human organism. Previously, the opinion prevailed that a public figure should behave in a completely different way than private person. What in a private person was considered fraud, then in public figure called political wisdom. On the other hand, what in a public figure was considered a reprehensible weakness, in a private person was called a touching softness of the soul. Thus, for the same people, there were two kinds of justice, two kinds of prudence, two in all. Now dualism, forced out of all its shelters, cannot hold out even in this place, where its absurdity is especially obvious and where it has done a lot of practical nasty things. Now intelligent people are beginning to understand that simple justice is always the wisest and most advantageous policy; on the other hand, they understand that private life requires nothing more than simple justice; torrents of tears and convulsions of self-torture are just as ugly in the humblest private life as they are on the stage of world history; and they are ugly in both cases solely because they are harmful, i.e., they cause one person or many people pain that cannot be redeemed by any pleasure.
The artificial line set by human ignorance between history and private life is destroyed as ignorance disappears with all its prejudices and absurd convictions. In the minds of thinking people this boundary has already been broken, and on this basis the critic and the historian can and must arrive at the same results. Historical figures and ordinary people must be measured by the same yardstick. In history, a phenomenon can be called bright or dark, not because the historian likes or dislikes it, but because it accelerates or retards the development of human well-being. In history there are no barrenly luminous phenomena; what is fruitless is not bright - you should not pay attention to it at all; in history there are a lot of helpful bears who very zealously beat flies on the forehead of sleeping humanity with heavy cobblestones; however, the historian would be ridiculous and pathetic if he would begin to thank these conscientious bears for the purity of their intentions. Meeting with an example of bearish morality, the historian should only notice that the forehead of mankind turned out to be cut open; and must describe how deep the wound was and how quickly it healed, and how this killing of the fly affected the entire body of the patient, and how, as a result, further relations between the hermit and the bear were outlined. Well, what is a bear? Bear nothing; he did his job. He grabbed a stone on his forehead - and calmed down. Bribes are smooth from him. You should not scold him - firstly, because this leads to nothing; and secondly, for no reason: because - stupid. Well, and to praise him for the purity of his heart and even more so there is no reason; in the first place, there is no need for gratitude: after all, the forehead is still broken; and secondly - again, he is stupid, so what the hell is his integrity of heart good for?
Since I accidentally attacked Krylov's fable, it will be curious in passing to note how simple common sense sometimes converges in its judgments with those conclusions that give a solid Scientific research and broad philosophical thinking. Krylov's three fables, about a bear, about musicians who "tear a little, but they don't take drunkenness into their mouths," and about a judge who goes to heaven for stupidity - these three fables, I say, are written on the idea that strength mind is more important than impeccable morality. It can be seen that this idea was especially dear to Krylov, who, of course, could notice the correctness of this idea only in the phenomena of private life. And Buckle elevates this very idea into a world historical law. The Russian fabulist, who was educated on copper money and probably considered Karamzin the greatest historian of the 19th century, says in his own way the same thing that was expressed by the progressive thinker of England, armed with science. I note this not in order to boast of Russian sharpness, but in order to show to what extent the results of reasonable and positive science correspond to the natural requirements of an uncorrupted and unpolluted human mind. In addition, this unexpected meeting Bokla and Krylov can serve as an example of the agreement that can and should exist, firstly, between private life and history, and as a result, secondly, between the historian and the critic. If the good-natured grandfather Krylov could get along with Bockle, then critics who live in the second half of the 19th century and reveal claims to boldness of thought and to a broad development of the mind, such critics, I say, should even more so adhere with unshakable consistency to those methods and ideas that in our time, historical study is being brought closer to natural science. Finally, if Buckle is too smart and brainy for our critics, let them hold on to grandfather Krylov, let them carry out in their research on the moral merits of a person a simple thought, expressed in such unpretentious words: "A helpful fool is more dangerous than an enemy." If only this one thought, understandable to a five-year-old child, were carried through in our criticism with proper consistency, then a radical revolution would take place in all our views on moral virtues, and the aged aesthetics would long ago go to the same place where alchemy and metaphysics went.
VI
Our private life is crowded with utterly beautiful feelings and lofty virtues, which every decent person tries to stock up for his household use and to which everyone attests with his attention, although no one can say that they have ever given anyone the slightest pleasure. There was a time when an interesting pallor of the face and an incomprehensible thinness of the waist were considered the best attributes of physical beauty in a woman; the young ladies drank vinegar and overstretched themselves so that their ribs cracked and their breath spiraled; much health has been destroyed by the grace of this aesthetic, and in all probability these peculiar notions of beauty have not yet been completely destroyed even now, because Lewis rebels against corsets in his physiology, and Chernyshevsky makes Vera Pavlovna mention that she, having become smart woman, stopped lacing. Thus, physical aesthetics very often goes against the requirements of common sense, with the prescriptions of elementary hygiene, and even with the instinctive desire of a person for convenience and comfort. "Il faut souffrir pour ?tre belle" *, said in old time a young girl, and everyone found that she spoke the holy truth, because beauty must exist in itself, for the sake of beauty, completely independent of the conditions necessary for health, for comfort and for the enjoyment of life. Critics who have not freed themselves from the influence of aesthetics agree with admirers of interesting pallor and thin waists, instead of converging with natural scientists and thinking historians. It must be confessed that even the best of our critics, Belinsky and Dobrolyubov, could not completely break away from aesthetic traditions. It would be absurd to condemn them for this, because we must remember how much they did to clarify all our concepts, and we must also understand that two people cannot work out all our work of thought for us. But without judging them, one must see their mistakes and pave new paths in those places where the old paths deviate into the wilderness and into the swamp.
* To be beautiful, you have to suffer ( fr.).
With regard to the analysis of "luminous phenomena," aesthetics does not satisfy us either with its beautiful indignation or with its artificially warmed up delight. Her whitewash and rouge have nothing to do with it. - A naturalist, speaking of a person, will call a normally developed organism a bright phenomenon; the historian will give this name to an intelligent person who understands his own advantages, knows the requirements of his time and, as a result, works with all his might for the development of the general welfare; the critic has the right to see a bright phenomenon only in that person who knows how to be happy, that is, to benefit himself and others, and, knowing how to live and act under adverse conditions, at the same time understands their unfavorability and, to the best of his ability, tries to rework these conditions for the better. Both the naturalist, and the historian, and the critic will agree among themselves on the point that a strong and developed mind must be a necessary property of such a bright phenomenon; where there is no this property, there can be no light phenomena. A naturalist will tell you that a normally developed human organism must necessarily be endowed with a healthy brain, and a healthy brain must just as inevitably think correctly as a healthy stomach must digest food; if this brain is weakened by lack of exercise, and if, therefore, a person who is naturally intelligent is dulled by the circumstances of life, then the whole subject in question can no longer be considered a normally developed organism, just as a person who has weakened his hearing or his vision. A naturalist would not call such a person a bright phenomenon, even if this person used iron health and horsepower. The historian will tell you... but you yourself know what he will tell you; it is clear that the mind is as necessary for a historical person as gills and swimming feathers are for a fish; mind here cannot be replaced by any aesthetic ingredients; this is perhaps the only truth irrefutably proved by all the historical experience of our breed. The critic will prove to you that only an intelligent and developed person can protect himself and others from suffering under those unfavorable conditions of life under which the vast majority of people on earth exist. the globe; whoever does not know how to do anything to alleviate his own and other people's suffering, in no case can be called a bright phenomenon; that one is a drone, maybe very cute, very graceful, cute, but all these are such intangible and weightless qualities that are only accessible to the understanding of people who love interesting pallor and thin waists. Making life easier for himself and others, an intelligent and developed person is not limited to this; he, moreover, to a greater or lesser extent, consciously or involuntarily, recycles this life and prepares the transition to better conditions of existence. A smart and developed personality, without noticing it, acts on everything that touches it; her thoughts, her occupations, her humane treatment, her calm firmness - all this stirs around her the stagnant water of human routine; who is no longer able to develop, he at least respects a good person in an intelligent and developed personality - and it is very useful for people to respect what really deserves respect; but whoever is young, who is capable of falling in love with an idea, who is looking for opportunities to develop the forces of his fresh mind, that, having become close to an intelligent and developed personality, may perhaps begin a new life, full of charming work and inexhaustible pleasure. If a supposed bright personality in this way gives society two or three young workers, if she inspires involuntarily respect in two or three old men for what they previously ridiculed and oppressed, then will you really say that such a personality has done absolutely nothing to facilitate the transition to better ideas and more tolerable living conditions? It seems to me that she did on a small scale what the greatest historical figures do on a large scale. The difference between them lies only in the number of forces, and therefore their activity can and should be evaluated using the same methods. So that's what "rays of light" should be - not Katerina's couple.
VIII
From the few features with which I have described the dwarfs, the reader already sees that they fully deserve their name. All their abilities are developed fairly evenly: they have a little mind, and some kind of little will, and miniature energy, but all this is extremely small and is applied, of course, only to those microscopic goals that can be presented in the limited and poor world of our everyday life. . Dwarfs rejoice, grieve, become delighted, become indignant, struggle with temptations, win victories, suffer defeats, fall in love, marry, argue, get excited, intrigue, reconcile, in a word - everything is done exactly by real people, but meanwhile not one real man will not be able to sympathize with them, because it is impossible; their joys, their sufferings, their excitements, temptations, victories, passions, disputes and reasonings - all this is so insignificant, so elusively petty that only a dwarf can understand, appreciate and take them to heart. The type of dwarfs, or, what is the same, the type of practical people, is extremely common and is modified in accordance with the characteristics of various strata of society; this type dominates and triumphs; he makes himself a brilliant career; makes a lot of money and autocratically disposes of in families; he makes all the people around him a lot of trouble, but he himself does not get any pleasure from it; he is active, but his activity is like a squirrel running on a wheel.
Our literature has long been of this type without any special tenderness, and has long condemned with complete unanimity that education with a stick, which develops and forms carnivorous dwarfs. Only Mr. Goncharov wished to elevate the type of dwarf to the pearl of creation; as a result of this, he gave birth to Pyotr Ivanovich Aduev and Andrei Ivanovich Stolz; but this attempt is in all respects similar to Gogol's encroachment to present the ideal landowner Kostanzhoglo and the ideal farmer Murazov. The type of dwarfs, apparently, is no longer dangerous for our consciousness; he no longer seduces us, and disgust for this type makes even our literature and criticism rush to the opposite extreme, from which it also does not prevent us from being on our guard; Unable to dwell on the pure negation of dwarfs, our writers try to oppose oppressed innocence to the triumphant force; they want to prove that victorious strength is not good, and oppressed innocence, on the contrary, is beautiful; in this they are mistaken; and strength is stupid, and innocence is stupid, and only because they are both stupid, strength tends to oppress, and innocence sinks into dull patience; there is no light, and that is why people, not seeing and not understanding each other, fight in the dark; and although the affected subjects often have sparks from their eyes, yet this illumination, as is known from experience, is completely incapable of dispelling the surrounding darkness; and no matter how numerous and colorful the lanterns that are substituted, but all of them in the aggregate do not replace the most miserable tallow cinder.
When a person suffers, he always becomes touching; a special soft charm spreads around him, which acts on you with irresistible force; do not resist this impression when it prompts you, in the sphere of practical activity, to intercede for the unfortunate or to alleviate his suffering; but if you, in the field of theoretical thought, are discussing the general causes of various specific sufferings, then you must certainly treat the sufferers as indifferently as you treat the tormentors, you must not sympathize with either Katerina or Kabanikha, because otherwise your analysis will burst into a lyrical element that will confuse your entire reasoning. You should consider as a bright phenomenon only that which, to a greater or lesser extent, can contribute to the cessation or alleviation of suffering; and if you become emotional, then you will call a ray of light either the very ability to suffer, or the ass meekness of the sufferer, or the absurd outbursts of his impotent despair, or anything in general that cannot in any case bring carnivorous dwarfs to reason. And it will come out of this that you will not say a single sensible word, but will only shower the reader with the aroma of your sensitivity; the reader might like it; he will say that you are a remarkably good person; but for my part, at the risk of angering both the reader and you, I will only remark that you take the blue spots, called lanterns, for real illumination.
The suffering personalities of our families, those personalities with whom our criticism tries to sympathize, more or less fit the general type of eternal children who are molded by the affectionate upbringing of our stupid life. Our people say that "for a beaten man they give two unbeaten men." Having a concept of savagery family relations in some sections of our society, we must confess that this saying is perfectly true and imbued with deep practical wisdom. Until a real ray of light penetrates our lives, until productive activity, a variety of occupations, contentment and education develop among the masses of the people, until then a beaten one will certainly be more expensive than two unbeaten ones, and until then parents in a simple life will constantly be forced to beat their children. for their own benefit. And this benefit is not imaginary at all. Even in our enlightened time, it is useful and necessary for the children of a commoner to be beaten, otherwise they will be the most unfortunate people in time. The fact is that life is stronger than education, and if the latter does not voluntarily submit to the demands of the former, then life forcibly seizes the product of education and calmly breaks it in its own way, without asking what this breaking costs the living organism. The young man is treated in the same way as all his peers; others are scolded - and he is scolded, others are beaten - and he is beaten. Whether or not he is used to this address - to whom before. case? Used to - well, then withstand; not used to it - so much the worse for him, let him get used to it. This is how life reasons, and it is neither expected nor required that it make any exceptions in favor of delicate complexions or tenderly educated personalities. But since every habit is most easily acquired in childhood, it is clear that people brought up by kindness will suffer in their lives from equally bad treatment much more than people brought up by sticks. Education with a cane is not good, just as bad, for example, is the widespread development of drunkenness in our country; but both these phenomena are only innocent and necessary accessories of our poverty and our savagery; when we become richer and more educated, then at least half of our taverns will close, and then parents will not beat their children. But now, when the muzhik really needs self-forgetfulness, and when vodka is his only consolation, it would be absurd to demand that he not go to the tavern; out of anguish, he could have thought of something even more ugly; after all, there are such tribes that eat fly agaric. Now the stick is useful as a preparation for life; destroy the stick in education, and you will only prepare for our life a huge number of powerless martyrs who, having suffered in their lifetime, will either die of consumption or gradually turn into bitter tormentors. At the present time you have in every Russian family two educational elements, a parental stick and a parental caress; both without the slightest admixture of a reasonable idea. Both are outrageously bad, but the parental stick is still better than the parental caress.
I know what I'm risking; I will be called an obscurantist, and to earn this name in our time is almost the same as it was in the Middle Ages to be known as a heretic and a sorcerer. I very much desire to keep the honest name of a progressive, but, counting on the prudence of the reader, I hope that he understands general direction my thoughts, and, armed with this hope, I dare to deviate from the accepted routine of our cheap liberalism. The stick does develop the child's mind to some extent, but not in the way that harsh educators think; they think that if a child is whipped, he will remember and take saving advice to heart, repent of his frivolity, understand the error and correct his sinful will; for greater intelligibility, educators even flog and sentence, and the child shouts: “I will never!” and, therefore, expresses repentance. These considerations of good parents and teachers are unfounded; but in the carved subject, a process of thought actually takes place, caused precisely by the sensation of pain. It refines the sense of self-preservation, which is usually dormant in children, surrounded by tender cares and constant caresses. But the sense of self-preservation is the first cause of all human progress; this feeling, and only this one, makes the savage go from hunting to cattle breeding and agriculture; it lays the foundation for all technical inventions, all comforts, all trades, sciences and arts. The desire for convenience, the love of elegance, and even pure curiosity, which we in the simplicity of the soul consider the unselfish impulse of the human mind to truth, are only partial manifestations and subtle modifications of the very feeling that prompts us to avoid pain and danger. We feel that certain sensations refresh and strengthen our nervous system; when we do not receive these sensations for a long time, then our body becomes upset, at first very easily, but in such a way that this disorder makes us experience some kind of special sensation known as boredom or longing. If we do not want or cannot stop this unpleasant feeling, i.e. if we do not give the organism what it requires, then it becomes more upset, and the feeling becomes even more unpleasant and painful. In order to constantly plug our body’s mouth with something, when it thus begins to creak and squeak, we, that is, people in general, began to look around us, began to peer and listen, began to move both arms and legs in the most intensified way , and brains. The varied movement perfectly corresponded to the most whimsical requirements of the restless nervous system; this movement has so fascinated us and so fond of us that we are now engaged in it with the most passionate zeal, completely losing sight of the starting point of this process. We seriously think that we love the elegant, we love science, we love the truth, but in reality we love only the integrity of our fragile organism; and we don’t even love, but we simply obey blindly and involuntarily the law of necessity that operates in the entire chain organic creatures, starting from some mushroom and ending with some Heine or Darwin.
IX
If the feeling of self-preservation, acting in our breed, has brought to light all the wonders of civilization, then, of course, this feeling, aroused in a child, will act in him in a small way in the same direction. In order to set in motion the mental abilities of the child, it is necessary to excite and develop in him one or another form of a sense of self-preservation. The child will begin to work with the brain only when some striving wakes up in him, which he wishes to satisfy, and all strivings, without exception, flow from one common source, namely from the feeling of self-preservation. The educator only has to choose the form of this feeling that he wishes to arouse and develop in his pupil. An educated educator will choose a subtle and positive form, that is, the desire for pleasure; and the half-wild educator willy-nilly take on a rude and negative form, i.e., aversion to suffering; the second caregiver has no choice; therefore, obviously, it is necessary either to flog the child, or to reconcile with the idea that all aspirations in him will remain unawakened and that his mind will doze until life begins to push and throw him in his own way. Affectionate upbringing is good and useful only when the educator knows how to arouse in the child the highest and positive forms of the feeling of self-preservation, i.e., love for the useful and the true, the desire for mental pursuits and a passionate attraction to work and knowledge. For those people for whom these good things do not exist, affectionate education is nothing but the slow corruption of the mind through inaction. The mind sleeps for a year, two, ten years and, finally, sleeps to such an extent that even the jolts of real life cease to excite it. It is not all the same for a person when to start developing, from the age of five or from the age of twenty. At twenty, the circumstances are not the same, and the person himself is no longer the same. Unable to cope with circumstances, a twenty-year-old child involuntarily submits to them, and life will begin to throw this passive creature from side to side, and it’s bad to develop here, because when they go hunting, then it’s too late to feed the dogs. And a mouthful and a rag will come out of a person, an interesting sufferer and an innocent victim. When a child is not touched by any aspirations, when real life does not approach him either in the form of a threatening rod, or in the form of those charming and serious questions that it puts to the human mind, then the brain does not work, but constantly plays with different ideas and impressions. This aimless game of the brain is called fantasy and, it seems, is even considered in psychology as a special power of the soul. In fact, this game is just a manifestation of brain power, not attached to the case. When a man thinks, then the forces of his brain are concentrated on a certain subject, and are therefore regulated by a unity of purpose; and when there is no goal, then the ready-made brain power still has to go somewhere; well, and such a movement of ideas and impressions begins in the brain, which is related to mental activity in the same way that whistling of some motive is related to opera singing in front of a large and exacting audience. Thinking is labor that requires the participation of the will, labor impossible without a definite goal, while fantasy is a completely involuntary exercise, possible only in the absence of a goal. Fantasy is a waking dream; therefore, there are words in all languages to denote this concept that are most closely related to the concept of sleep: in Russian - a dream, in French - r?verie, in German - Tr?umerei, in English - day dream. It is very understandable that only a person who has nothing to do and who does not know how to use his time either to improve his situation or to refresh his nerves with active enjoyment can sleep during the day, and sleep while awake. To be a dreamer, one does not need to have the temperament of a special device at all; every child who has no worries and who has a lot of leisure will certainly become a dreamer; fantasy is born when life is empty and when there are no real interests; this idea is justified both in the life of entire peoples and in the life of individuals. If the aestheticians extol the development of fantasy as a bright and joyful phenomenon, then by doing so they will reveal only their attachment to the void and their aversion to what really elevates a person; or, even more simply, they will prove to us that they are extremely lazy and that their mind can no longer endure serious work. However, this circumstance is no longer a secret to anyone.
X
Our life, left to its own principles, produces dwarfs and eternal children. The former do active evil, the latter passive; the former torment others more than they themselves suffer, the latter suffer themselves more than they torment others. However, on the one hand, dwarfs do not enjoy serene happiness at all, and on the other hand, eternal children often cause very significant suffering to others; only they do it not on purpose, but out of touching innocence or, which is the same thing, out of impenetrable stupidity. Dwarfs suffer from narrowness and pettiness of mind, and eternal children suffer from mental slumber and, as a result, a complete lack of common sense. By the grace of dwarfs, our life is full of dirty and stupid comedies that are played out every day, in every family, in all transactions and relationships between people; by the grace of eternal children, these dirty comedies sometimes end in stupid tragic endings. The dwarf swears and fights, but observes prudent prudence during these actions, so as not to make a scandal for himself and not to take dirty linen out of the hut. The eternal child endures everything and mourns everything, and then, as soon as he breaks through, he will have enough at once, so much so that he either puts himself or his interlocutor on the spot. After that, the cherished rubbish, of course, cannot remain in the hut and is forwarded to the criminal chamber. A simple fight turned into a fight with murder, and the tragedy came out as stupid as the comedy that preceded it.
But aestheticians understand the matter differently; the old piitika has settled very deeply into their heads, prescribing to write tragedies in a high style, and comedies in a medium and, depending on the circumstances, even low; aestheticians remember that the hero dies a violent death in tragedy; they know that a tragedy must certainly produce a sublime impression, that it can arouse horror, but not contempt, and that the unfortunate hero must attract the attention and sympathy of the audience. It is these prescriptions of piitika that they apply to the discussion of those verbal and hand-to-hand fights that constitute the motives and plots of our dramatic works. Aestheticians deny and spit on the traditions of the old piitika; they do not miss a single opportunity to laugh at Aristotle and Boileau and declare their own superiority over pseudo-classical theories, and yet it is precisely these decrepit traditions that still constitute the entire content of aesthetic judgments. Aestheticians do not even think that a tragic incident is almost always just as stupid as a comic one, and that stupidity can be the only spring of the most diverse dramatic collisions. As soon as the matter passes from a simple conversation to a criminal offense, the aestheticians immediately become embarrassed and ask themselves whom they will sympathize with and what expression they will depict on their faces - horror, or indignation, or deep thought, or solemn sadness? But in general, they need to find, firstly, an object for sympathy, and secondly, an exalted expression for their own physiognomy. Otherwise it is impossible to speak of a tragic incident.
However, what, in fact, the reader thinks, is it not to laugh when people deprive themselves of their stomachs or cut each other's throats? Oh, my reader, who makes you laugh? I understand just as little laughter at the sight of our comic stupidities as I understand the sublime feelings at the sight of our tragic vulgarities; It is not at all my business, and in general it is not the business of a critic, to prescribe to the reader what he should feel; it is not my business to tell you: if you please, sir, smile, - take the trouble, madam, to breathe and raise your eyes to heaven. I take everything that is written by our good writers, - novels, dramas, comedies, whatever - I take all this as raw materials, as examples of our morals; I try to analyze all these diverse phenomena, I notice common features in them, I look for the connection between causes and effects, and in this way I come to the conclusion that all our worries and dramatic collisions are due solely to the weakness of our thought and the lack of the most necessary knowledge, i. i.e., in short, stupidity and ignorance. The cruelty of a family despot, the fanaticism of an old hypocrite, the unhappy love of a girl for a scoundrel, the meekness of a patient victim of family autocracy, outbursts of despair, jealousy, greed, fraud, violent revelry, educational rod, educational caress, quiet dreaminess, enthusiastic sensitivity - all this motley mixture of feelings, qualities and actions that arouse in the chest of a fiery aesthetic a whole storm of high sensations, this whole mixture, in my opinion, comes down to one common source, which, as far as it seems to me, can excite in us absolutely no sensations, either high or low. All these are various manifestations of inexhaustible stupidity.
Good people will heatedly argue among themselves about what is good and what is bad in this mixture; this, they will say, is virtue, but this is vice; but the whole dispute will be fruitless good people, there are no virtues, no vices, no animals, no angels. There is only chaos and darkness, there is misunderstanding and inability to understand. What is there to laugh at, what is there to be indignant at, what is there to sympathize with? What is a critic to do here? He must speak to society today, and tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and ten years in a row, and how much his strength and his life will last, speak without fear of repetition, speak in such a way that he is understood, say constantly that the people need only one thing which contains all the other benefits of human life. He needs the movement of thought, and this movement is excited and supported by the acquisition of knowledge. Let society not stray from this direct and only road to progress, let it not think that it needs to acquire some virtues, instill in itself some laudable feelings, stock up on subtlety of taste, or adopt a code of liberal convictions. It's all soap bubbles, it's all cheap fake real progress, all these are swamp lights that lead us into a quagmire of sublime eloquence, all these are conversations about the honesty of the zipun and the need for soil, and from all this we will not expect a single ray of real light. Only a living and independent activity of thought, only solid and positive knowledge renews life, drives away darkness, destroys stupid vices and stupid virtues, and thus sweeps the rubbish out of the hut without transferring it to the criminal chamber. But please do not think that the people will find their salvation in the knowledge that our society possesses and which generously scatters books that are now sold for the benefit of their younger brothers by a nickel and a hryvnia. If, instead of this enlightenment, a peasant buys himself a kalach, then by this act he will prove that he is much smarter than the compiler of the book and that he himself could teach the latter a lot.
Our audacity is equal only to our stupidity, and only our stupidity can be explained and justified. We are the educators of the people?!. What is it - an innocent joke or a poisonous mockery? - Yes, what are we? Isn't it true how much we know, how thoroughly we think, how excellently we enjoy life, how cleverly we have established our relations with women, how deeply we have understood the need to work for the common good? Is it possible to enumerate all our virtues? After all, we are so incomparable that when we are shown from a distance, in a novel, the actions and thoughts of an intelligent and developed person, then we will now be horrified and close our eyes, because we will take an undistorted human image for a monstrous phenomenon. After all, we are so philanthropic that, generously forgetting our own unwashedness, we will certainly climb to wash with our dirty hands the younger brothers, about whom our tender soul and which, of course, are also soiled to the point of clouding human image. And we diligently smear our dirty hands on dirty faces, and our labors are great, and our love is fiery, firstly, for the grimy brothers, and secondly, for their nickels and hryvnias, and the philanthropic exploits of the dark enlighteners can continue with the greatest convenience until until the second coming, without causing the slightest damage to that reliable layer of dirt, which with complete impartiality adorns both the busy hands of teachers and the motionless faces of students. Looking at the wonders of our love of the people, you willy-nilly resort to the language of the gods and pronounce the verse of Mr. Polonsky:
Do you with a snout
Cloth and in the living room.
Our best writers feel very well that our muzzle is really made of cloth and that there is no need for us to go to the living room for the time being. They understand that they themselves should learn and develop, and that together with them the Russian society, which, for the sake of style, calls itself educated, should learn. They see two things very clearly: first, that our society, at its present level of education, is completely powerless and, therefore, incapable of producing the slightest change in the ideas and customs of the people, either for bad or for good; and the second is that even if, by some inexplicable coincidence of chance, the present society succeeded in reworking the people in its own image and likeness, then this would be a true misfortune for the people.
Feeling, understanding and seeing all this, our best writers, people who really think, are still turning exclusively to society, and books for the people are written by those literary industrialists who at another time would publish dream books and new collections of songs of Moscow gypsies. Even such a pure and holy cause as Sunday schools is still doubtful. Turgenev rightly notes in his latest novel that the peasant spoke to Bazarov as if he were an unthinking child and looked at him as if he were a clown. As long as there will be one Bazarov per hundred square miles, and even then it is unlikely, until then everyone, both homemakers and gentlemen, will consider the Bazarovs to be absurd boys and ridiculous eccentrics. As long as Bazarov alone is surrounded by thousands of people who are unable to understand him, until then Bazarov should sit at the microscope and cut frogs and print books and articles with anatomical drawings. The microscope and the frog are innocent and entertaining things, and the youth are a curious people; if Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov could not resist not to look at the ciliate swallowing a green speck, then young people will certainly not endure and not only look, but will try to get their own microscope and, imperceptibly to themselves, will be imbued with the deepest respect and ardent love for the spread-eagled frog. And that's all it takes. It is precisely here, in the frog itself, that the salvation and renewal of the Russian people are contained. By God, reader, I am not joking and amusing you with paradoxes. I am expressing, only without solemnity, a truth of which I am deeply convinced and which much earlier than I was convinced by the brightest minds in Europe and, consequently, in the whole sublunar world. The whole strength here is that it is extremely tricky to get excited about a cut frog and say such phrases in which you understand one tenth, and sometimes even less. As long as we, due to historical circumstances, slept the innocent sleep of a baby, so long phrase-mongering was not dangerous for us; Now, when our feeble thought begins to stir little by little, phrases can delay and mutilate our development for a long time. Therefore, if our young people can arm themselves with implacable hatred against any phrase, whether it be spoken by Chateaubriand or Proudhon, if they learn to look for a living phenomenon everywhere, and not a false reflection of this phenomenon in someone else's consciousness, then we will have full foundation count on a fairly normal and rapid improvement in our brains. Of course, these calculations can be completely confused by historical circumstances, but I do not talk about this, because the voice of criticism is completely powerless here. But the time will come—and it is by no means far off—when all the intelligent part of the youth, without distinction of class or condition, will live a full intellectual life and look at things judiciously and seriously. Then the young landowner will put his farm on a European footing; then the young capitalist will start those factories that we need, and arrange them in such a way as is required by the common interests of the owner and workers; and that is enough; good farm and good factory, at rational organization labor, constitute the best and only possible school for the people, firstly, because this school feeds its students and teachers, and secondly, because it communicates knowledge not from a book, but from the phenomena of living reality. The book will come in its own time, it will be so easy to set up schools at factories and farms that it will already be done by itself.
The question of people's labor contains all the other questions and is not itself contained in any of them; therefore, it is necessary to constantly keep this question in mind and not to amuse yourself with those secondary details that will all be arranged as soon as the main thing moves forward. It is not for nothing that Vera Pavlovna starts a workshop, and not a school, and it is not for nothing that the novel in which this event is described is entitled: “What is to be done?”. Here, indeed, our progressives are given the most correct and fully feasible program of activity. How much, how little time we will have to go to our goal, which is to enrich and enlighten our people, it is useless to ask about this. This is the right way, and there is no other right way. Russian life, in its deepest depths, contains absolutely no inclinations of independent renewal; it contains only raw materials that must be fertilized and processed by the influence of universal human ideas; Russian people belong to the highest, Caucasian race; therefore, all the millions of Russian children not crippled by the elements of our folk life, can become thinking people and healthy members of a civilized society. Of course, such a colossal mental upheaval takes time. It began in the circle of the most efficient students and the most enlightened journalists. At first there were bright personalities who stood completely alone; there was a time when Belinsky embodied the entire sum of the luminous ideas that were in our fatherland; now, having experienced many modifications along the way, the lonely personality of the Russian progressive has grown into a whole type, which has already found expression in literature and is called either Bazarov or Lopukhov. The further development of the mental revolution must proceed in the same way as its beginning proceeded; it can go faster or slower, depending on the circumstances, but it must always go the same way.
XI
Do not expect or demand from me, reader, that I now begin to continue the analysis of Katerina's character that I have begun. I have so frankly and in such detail expressed my opinion to you about the whole order of the phenomena of the "dark kingdom", or, to put it more simply, the family chicken coop - that now I would only have to apply general thoughts to individual persons and situations; I would have to repeat what I have already said, and that would be a very non-brainstorming job and, as a result, very boring and completely useless. If the reader finds the ideas of this article fair, then he will probably agree that all the new characters that are introduced in our novels and dramas can either belong to the Bazarov type, or to the category of dwarfs and eternal children. There is nothing to expect from dwarfs and eternal children; they will not produce anything new; if it seems to you that a new character has appeared in their world, then you can safely say that this is an optical illusion. What you at first take to be new will soon turn out to be very old; it's simple - a new cross between a dwarf and an eternal child, and no matter how you mix these two elements, no matter how you dilute one kind of stupidity with another kind of stupidity, the result is still the new kind old stupidity.
This idea is completely confirmed by Ostrovsky's last two dramas, "Thunderstorm" and "Sin and trouble do not live on anyone." In the first - the Russian Ophelia, Katerina, having committed many stupid things, throws herself into the water and, thus, does the last and greatest absurdity. In the second - the Russian Othello, Krasnov, behaves rather tolerably throughout the drama, and then foolishly stabs his wife, a very insignificant woman, with whom it was not worth getting angry. Perhaps the Russian Ophelia is in no way worse than the real one, and perhaps Krasnov is in no way inferior to the Venetian Moor, but this does not prove anything: stupid things could be done just as conveniently in Denmark and Italy as in Russia; and that in the Middle Ages they were performed much more often and were much larger than in our time, this is no longer subject to any doubt; but for medieval people, and even for Shakespeare, it was still excusable to take great human stupidities for great natural phenomena, but for us people 19th century It's time to call things by their real names. Indeed, we also have medieval people who will see in such a requirement an insult to art and human nature, but it is hard to please all tastes; so let these people be angry with me, if it is necessary for their health.
In conclusion, I will say a few words about two other works by Mr. Ostrovsky, the dramatic chronicle Kozma Minin and the scenes from Hard Days. To tell the truth, I don’t really see how Kozma Minin differs from the Kukolnik drama The Hand of the Most High Saved the Fatherland. Both Kukolnik and Mr. Ostrovsky paint historical events in the same way that our homegrown painters and engravers paint gallant generals; in the foreground, a huge general is sitting on a horse and waving some kind of dracole; then - clouds of dust or smoke - you can’t make out what exactly; then, behind the clubs, tiny soldiers, put on the picture only to show clearly how great the regimental commander is and how small the lower ranks are in comparison with him. So Mr. Ostrovsky has the colossal Minin in the foreground, followed by his waking suffering and visions in a dream, and just behind him two or three peanuts depict the Russian people saving the fatherland. Really, the whole picture should be turned upside down, because in our history Minin, and in French - John d "Arc are understandable only as products of the strongest popular inspiration. But our artists argue in their own way, and it is difficult to reason with them. - As for " hard days”, then this is God knows what kind of work. It remains to be regretted that Mr. Ostrovsky did not embellish it with couplets and disguises; a very nice vaudeville would come out, which could be performed with great success on the stage for the congress and for the traveling theatrical public. The plot is that a virtuous and witty official with disinterestedness, worthy of the most ideal camp, arranges the happiness of the merchant's son Andrei Bruskov and the merchant's daughter Alexandra Kruglova. The characters drink champagne, the curtain falls, and my article ends.
Notes:
The first - " Russian word", 1864, No. 3.
Apparently, a hint at the articles by A.A. Grigoriev (see his article “After Ostrovsky’s Thunderstorm” on our page).
We are talking, obviously, about the articles of N.F. Pavlov and A.M. Palkhovsky (see Sat. “Drama by A.N. Ostrovsky “Thunderstorm” in Russian criticism”. L., 1990).
Supporters of "aesthetic criticism" were P.V. Annenkov, V.P. Botkin and A.V. Druzhinin. Annenkov spoke in "Library for Reading" (1860, No. 3) with an article against N.F. Pavlova (see P.V. Annenkov. Critical essays. SPb., 2000).
Gracchus Babeuf (1760-1797) - French radical revolutionary, executed during the years of the Directory.
Schmerling Anton (1805-1893) - Austrian political figure Minister of Justice, Minister of the Interior affairs (1860-65), life member of the upper house, until 1861 the first president of the Supreme Court; was the head of the constitutional party, carried out gradual liberal reforms.
Buckle, Henry Thomas (1821-1862), English historian and positivist sociologist. Main labor- two-volume "History of Civilization in England" (1857-61; Russian translation in "Notes of the Fatherland", 1861, separate ed., 1863-64). In this work, B. draws attention to the study natural environment, population movements, on the distribution of property and the growth of education. B. associated the development of consciousness directly with the conditions of the geographical environment, and the accumulation of knowledge considered the cause of changes in the economic and political system. B.'s views are imbued with faith in the boundless power of reason and social progress, the belief in the possibility of using scientific methods (especially statistics) to understand the laws of history. These features of B.'s worldview ensured his popularity among the Russian intelligentsia.
This refers to the fables "The Hermit and the Bear", "Musicians" and "Nobleman".
From the fable "The Hermit and the Bear".
Lewis George Henry (1817–1878), English positivist philosopher, scientist and literary critic, author of "Physiology everyday life» (1860).
10 This refers to the heroine of the novel by N.G. Chernyshevsky "What to do?"
11 Cornelius Nepos (c. 100 - c. 27 BC) - Roman historian, author of biographies of prominent generals; Aristides the Just (c. 540 - c. 467 BC) - ancient Greek politician; Cato Mark Porcius (the Elder) (234 - 149 BC) - Roman politician (he owns the phrase "Carthage must be destroyed", which he repeated at every opportunity).
12 Richard Owen (1804 - 1892) - English zoologist and paleontologist, opponent of Darwinism.
13 Huxley Thomas (1825 - 1895) - English zoologist, known for his work in the field of embryology and comparative anatomy; in 1863, a Russian translation of the book "Man's Place in Nature" was published, where the author argued that the anatomical differences between humans and higher apes are less significant than between higher and lower apes.
14 Between Karl Focht (1817 - 1895), a vulgar materialist, extremely popular among the Russian intelligentsia of the 1860s, and Rudolf Wagner (1805 - 1864), a German physiologist, the dispute was about the existence of the soul.
15 It's about the characters " Ordinary history» I.A. Goncharov and the second volume of Dead Souls by N.V. Gogol.
16 With the idea of "soil", i.e. folk faith and folk morality, to which modern educated person, employees of the Vremya magazine spoke - F.M. Dostoevsky, N.N. Strakhov and A.A. Grigoriev.
17 From a novel in verse by Ya.P. Polonsky "Fresh Tradition" (Chapter 4).
18 Chateaubriand Francois Rene (1768 - 1848) - French writer and political activist. Author of popular in the first thirds of XIX V. the stories Atala, or the Love of Two Savages (1801) and René, or the Consequences of Passions (1802); also known are The Genius of Christianity (1802) and Grave Notes (published in 1848-1850). Proudhon Pierre Joseph (1809 - 1865) - French socialist, theorist of anarchism.
19 These words reflect the anthropological theory of V.A. Zaitsev, Pisarev's comrade-in-arms "Russian word"; in his opinion, the superior (white) race opposes the inferior - the Mongolian and the Negro.
Literary criticism, in the person of Dmitry Ivanovich Pisarev, found a highly educated, non-standard-minded and principled adherent. He could not pass by the characterization of Ostrovsky's iconic drama The Thunderstorm - a kind of renaissance of Russian national theatrical art in the 19th century. Deeply realizing its content, Pisarev creates “Motives of Russian Drama”. Summary this work of his is a critical attitude to the conclusions of Dobrolyubov regarding the ideological nature of the image of Katerina. Pisarev ironically called such views "patriotic illusions."
The suffocating atmosphere of Kalinov
The fact that Kalinov, depicted by Ostrovsky as a provincial town on the Volga, is indeed a "dark kingdom", Dmitry Ivanovich does not dispute. “Motives of the Russian Drama” shows how the impudent and greedy rude merchant Dikaya and the hypocrite, harassing her neighbors, the merchant Kabanikha impose their will on others. Merchants force others to serve themselves. The depiction of the caste nature of the Russian hinterland and the ugly intra-caste and especially inter-caste relations is dedicated by Pisarev “Motives of Russian Drama”. The summary of this work conveys how the author contrasts the prudent, down-to-earth Kabanikha with the deeply natural, acting with the heart, and not with the mind, Katerina, her daughter-in-law.
A fundamentally different vision of the image of Katerina
The vision of this image, central in Ostrovsky's work, is diametrically opposed by the two above-mentioned critics. If Dobrolyubov saw spirituality in the main character of the drama, not taking into account the underdeveloped will, as well as uncontrollable emotionality, then Pisarev says that Katerina is far from ideal, despite the fact that this literary image is definitely positive. In addition, Dmitry Ivanovich sees the frivolity of a married lady in agreeing to a “faithful date” with Boris, whom she does not really know.
Disclosure of the chaos and unconsciousness of the actions of the heroine of Ostrovsky devotes Pisarev "Motives of Russian Drama". The summary presents the very scene of Katerina's acceptance fatal decision chaotically arisen. After all, initially the woman did not even think of taking sin on her soul. Dmitry Ivanovich focuses the attention of readers on the intermediate state of tenderness of Katerina, caused by the association with flowers, immediately before the jump into the Volga.
The personality of the daughter-in-law of the Kabanovs is deeply contradictory in itself, the woman does not foresee and does not calculate her actions at all, other people do it for her. The boar grumbles - she is hysterical, Boris stares at her - she fell in love, Varvara arranged a date - she went. Quite ironically, the article “Motives of Russian Drama” reveals the image of Ostrovsky's heroine. Pisarev at the same time questions the reasonableness of the position of Dobrolyubov himself in relation to the image of Katerina, idealizing her inner world. He characterizes Dobrolyubov's position as the point of view of an aesthete, but not a citizen, who cares for the priority maintenance of piety.
Why, then, did Dmitry Ivanovich return to the characterization of this work four years after the deafeningly successful article by Dobrolyubov “A Ray of Light in a Dark Kingdom”? He, obviously, was indignant at the exaltation of an image devoid of a “smart beginning”. It is precisely to establish a balanced, unprejudiced view of one of the best Russian dramatic works that Pisarev writes “Motives of Russian Drama”. The summary patiently leads us to an understanding of what can be called “light” in human relationships. A brilliant critic comes to the conclusion that light in a social context is about helping to reduce the suffering of others. Adherence to the idea of abolishing autocracy cost him imprisonment in the Peter and Paul Fortress. It was in prison, when Pisarev himself was allowed to write, that the article “Motives of Russian Drama” itself was born.
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