Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy memoirs a short story. Memories

Local history is serious, forever

After graduating from the Moscow State Institute of History and Archives and working in the Moscow archives, I returned to Dmitrov, and, ironically, worked in Central Library more than 30 years in a building built on the site of the old house of the merchant Sychev, where I lived with my parents in the 1960s at Pochtovaya, 11. The house was demolished in the 1970s, but I dreamed about it for a long time with all the details of the interior: a wooden staircase, tiled stoves, numerous windows and a massive door. It was a good place: a spacious yard, vegetable gardens, tenants ...

In the library, I started as a bibliographer in the methodological and bibliographic department, I was also the head of the OIEF sector and the non-stationary sector, then I returned to the information and bibliographic department already as a head. local history sector.

Since 1996, I began to study local history and gradually work became the meaning of life for me. And yes, it was a great time! The nineties, so now criticized, opened a new look at history, ourselves. They were that sip fresh air, which was so lacking during the years of stagnation.

And local history? If we talk about the library, then it all fit on one rack. And there was little demand. Knowledge of local history was not included in school programs, in general, interest in the history of the region was repulsed for a long time and for a long time. Among local history literature, a special place was occupied by collections published by the Dmitrov Museum of Local History in 1920-30, during the years of the "golden decade" of local history, the authors of which were genuine enthusiasts who possess scientific knowledge: M.N. Tikhomirov, K.A. Solovyov, A.D. Shakhovskaya, M.S. Pomerantsev and others. They left behind works that have not lost their value to this day.

As messengers of freedom came, or rather, returned to Dmitrov Golitsyn. In 1996, the library hosted an exhibition of works by artist Vladimir Golitsyn. The photo captured the participants of this exhibition: Illarion, Mikhail, Elena, Georgy, Ivan Golitsyn, friends and acquaintances. For them, it was extremely important. Dmitrov was a part of life big family in 1930-50 From here, Vladimir Golitsyn, the head of the family, left forever to die in the camp. This is where his children grew up. Having survived the most difficult war years, they stepped into the world, each building their own destiny. How many then there will be memorable meetings. The last one took place in 2008, when the 600th anniversary of the Golitsyn family was celebrated. They arrived already aged with an irreparable loss, without Illarion Vladimirovich. But during this time, the Golitsyns had already conquered Moscow, they survived, by their talent, deeds, and thoughts they broke through the wall of silence, being proud of their ancestors.

Another representative of the already Dmitrov nobility returned to Dmitrov, a descendant of the Norov-Polivanov family - Alexei Matveevich Polivanov. Noble estates became interesting not only as places associated with the Decembrists, but also as cultural nests. In the wake of those years, on the initiative of A.M. Polivanova, created a memorial corner in former estate Nadezhdino, dedicated to a wonderful family that gave Russia a scientist, participants in the Suvorov wars and Patriotic War 1812, zemstvo figures, teachers. Aleksey Matveyevich was the embodiment of action and perseverance. He was in such a hurry to make up for lost time, to restore the past, as he felt that there was not much time left for him. Alexei Matveevich traveled with the Society of Decembrists' Descendants to many cities with traveling exhibition, visited Switzerland and followed the route of his ancestor, who crossed the Alps in 1799, and at the end of his life was present at the opening of the manor church in Nadezhdino.

I remember the exhibition in the library "Pushkin's Friends in the Dmitrovsky District" (1999), where a few items were exhibited - V.S. Norova, dishes, photographs. Where is all this now? After the death of Alexei Matveyevich, who got these relics? Do his children need them?

In the lobby of the 3rd floor, series of exhibitions "The Small Encyclopedia of the Dmitrovsky Territory" and "From family archive". They took place thanks to cooperation with the descendants of the Voznichikhins, Istomins, Varentsovs, Zilovs-Semevskys. Each exhibition is a search for new information, meeting people. At first great help Romuald Fedorovich Khokhlov provided assistance in their organization. He came to the library hard times when he was fired from the museum, without which he could not imagine his life. Could he imagine that his knowledge and merits turned out to be useless there?

For me R.F. Khokhlov became the person who aroused my interest in local history, became for me a model of a real scientist. For more than 30 years he was an educator, museum worker, local historian, a milestone in the history of our Dmitrov. But there is no prophet in his own country. The museum does not even have a corner dedicated to him. Such people are uncomfortable, they are not loved, they are Don Quixotes fighting windmills.

After the departure of Romuald Fedorovich, in order to somehow compensate for the irreparable loss and pay tribute to a bright and unforgettable personality, I started preparing a collection of his works. Working on the collection has become a real school for me. Feeling that my knowledge would not be enough, I turned to Dr. historical sciences A.I. Aksenov. After listening to me, he expressed doubts about the timeliness of my undertaking, but agreed to be my editor. Yes, he was right about a lot of things. But on the other hand, I have collected invaluable memories shared by Alexander Ivanovich himself, Evgeny Vasilyevich Starostin, Honored Professor of Moscow State Institute of Aviation Institute. It was very important for me that such remarkable scientists would evaluate his work. Of course, I also turned to Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt. He supported this idea, wanted to somehow help, sent a welcome letter to the evening in memory of R.F. Khokhlova in 2006, and in 2013 paid a visit to Dmitrov. Speaking at a meeting in the library, he openly declared the need to publish a collection of his student's works. But apparently the time has not yet come. Publishing in Dmitrov is random, it is carried out by people interested in personal commercial success.

In addition to the collection, which included scientific works, essays, articles by R.F. Khokhlova, a bibliographic list of his works, I have kept a diary that I have kept since 1999, as a living testimony of his life and our communication, which lasted only a few years.

Another person, with the departure of which the thin thread of communication and support was interrupted. This is Nikolai Alekseevich Fedorov. Now, looking back, you understand how small was the circle of like-minded people involved in local history.

Both Khokhlov and Fedorov, they were all like a center around which people, ideas, meetings revolved. Everyone knew them from publications in the newspaper, they were aware of cultural life cities. They were themselves part of a process that took place in a society called glasnost. For Romuald Fedorovich, as a researcher, this time made it possible to write on a wide variety of topics, but his main works were already in the past, and there was no time left to start new ones. How he regretted it. His talent was revealed during the years of prohibitions and ideological pressure. He wrote bitterly that he did not have to deal with Dmitlag, but he rejoiced at the success of his colleague - N.A. Fedorov, his research work on the fate of the builders of the Moscow-Volga canal.

The death of Nikolai Alekseevich Fedorov, the circumstances and its indirect causes caused a real shock in society. It's a pity that last years he was overshadowed by the reorganization of the newspaper's editorial office, which he resisted. Later, when I was working on the bio-bibliographic guide “N.A. Fedorov is a journalist, editor, local historian”, studying biographical documents and the miraculously preserved handwritten magazine “Eccentrics”, I learned a lot about the author himself: in his youth, a great connoisseur of literature, passionate about sports, working with youth (organizer of KVN at school), a person, looking for his place in life, which he could not imagine without journalism.

According to the list of publications, it was possible to trace the professional growth of Nikolai Alekseevich: from notes and reports to critical articles, and with the advent of the headings "Returned Names", "Channel and Fates", he began to actively civil position. The history of Dmitlag and the fate of people became his main theme.

An important milestone in local history was associated with the return of the name of the poet Lev Zilov. Several meetings were held in the library with the participation of the poet's grandson, Fyodor Nikolaevich Semevsky. The very first meeting and presentation of the collection "The Call native land. Remembering the Forgotten Poet” is an unforgettable page. There was so much enthusiasm, genuine interest in the fate and work of Lev Nikolaevich. At the evening, the author-compiler of the collection and the first researcher of the life and work of L.N. Zilova Zinaida Ivanovna Pozdeeva from Taldom. Came with her CEO factory "Porcelain Verbilok" Vadim Dmitrievich Lunev, a young, imposing leader, sponsor of this collection. It was with his support that the book "History of the Gardner Porcelain Factory" appeared two years later.

Fedor Nikolaevich Semevsky struck everyone with the simplicity and modesty of a true intellectual. But he had his merits as a scientist biologist. Communication with him and his wife Vera Alexandrovna was left by the most good memories. I was invited to visit them a private house on Timiryazevskaya, which has preserved the atmosphere of an old, cozy Moscow house. Once again they came to a meeting in Dmitrov with an expensive gift - a collection of rare editions by Lev Zilov, with the poem "Grandfather" (1912), collections of poems and children's books of the 20-30s. XX century.

The first decade of the 21st century is a very important page in the life of the library. In 2004, the Museum of the History of the Library was opened. T.K. took an active part in the work on its creation of the museum. Mammadova, who came to the library from Taldom Museum. Her experience as a museum employee came in handy in the organization of a small exhibition of the library museum. For 7 years of work in the library, she, doing search work to collect information on the history of librarianship in Dmitrov, published articles about libraries: zemstvo, sobriety society, Red Army, the work of libraries during the war years and many other notes in the local press. Tatyana Konstantinovna possessed not only museum experience work, but also journalistic, she went to people, turned to the archives, extracting the necessary information bit by bit. Our interests in the area library local history intersected, but each had its own theme.

Thanks to the new documents, the history of the city's libraries before 1918 sounded in a completely new way, previously not studied by anyone. Suddenly began to emerge genuine picture the past with its achievements, a surge of social activity of the city fathers and all educated strata of Dmitrov society. Zemstvo and city authorities created city libraries, and a whole library network in the county, the so-called public libraries. The names of the benefactors became known - E.N. Gardner, E.V. Shorina, S.E. Klyatov, A.N. Polyaninov, M.N. Polivanov and more than 50 founding members of the Alexander City Public Library. In the library museum, this period is the most interesting in terms of faces, facts and its uniqueness. After all, it was possible to save grains of the past, which seemed to be lost forever.

Communication with the old-timers gave impetus to the study and collection of material about Evnikia Mikhailovna Kaftannikova. We had to hurry, because even then there were few living witnesses, but still they were. These are Galina Alexandrovna Istomina, Mark Andreevich Ivanov, Vadim Anatolyevich Flerov, Zinaida Vasilievna Ermolaeva, Natalya Mikhailovna Ivanovskaya and others. Everything suddenly came to life: E. Kaftannikova’s autograph on Tokmakov’s book (1893), and notes with a dedication, brought unexpectedly to the library, and memories and rare photos, theater posters, and dry lines of reports and references! Everything came together in a short biography, in the book "Eunice" about the fate of a woman, half of whose life was spent in a passion for theater, art, and the other - in the library.

My other works, Alexei Nikitovich Topunov and Alexandra Matveevna Varentsova, were also devoted to librarians, as well as essays on the history of the library.

A special page in my life is the "Memorial of Alexei Yegorovich Novoselov", the second most difficult work, which required a lot of time and knowledge from me in order to prepare for publication a unique source, which was the diary of a Dmitrovsky merchant.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, a very active stage in the development of local history began. The library was replenished with new editions, collections from the series "Annals of Local Lore" with previously inaccessible sources from the museum. New thematic folders were created on the history of settlements, the estates of Nadezhdino, Olgovo, Nikolskoye-Obolyanovo, monasteries and temples of the Dmitrovsky district, about the Dmitrovsky merchants, the channel named after. Moscow, honorary citizens of the Dmitrovsky district, streets and squares of Dmitrov and many others. The demand for local history material was great, unfortunately, it was not always possible to satisfy the demand. The information that was drawn from the local press could not fill the gaps in local history and modern life district. This was the period when the newspapers Dmitrovsky Vestnik, Dmitrovskiye Izvestiya, Vremena i Vesti often published local history articles.

The demand for local history literature was extremely high. But as soon as the Internet became a reality, it became clear that along with traditional views library work, it is necessary to refer to the virtual space of the Internet. The local history portal "Dmitrovsky Krai" was created, which was based on the local history fund, research work of the department's employees and local historians.

Open access to any information, including local history information, is a great achievement of our time; it is the future of the library. But I'm glad that my time gave me the happiness to do research work, reveal the "Diary of a merchant A.E. Novoselov”, to take photographs of an unknown photographer of the early 20th century, to collect information on the history of the library, to publish local history bibliographic collections, to collect the memories of citizens and much more.

Working in the library, I met many interesting people. All of them are imprinted in my memory as dear memories.

I would like to end my “memories” with the words of R.F. Khokhlova. In them I see great sense about the purpose of a person summing up his life and work: “This is not an easy science - history, but very complex. Yes, and not "bread" besides. And yet: how many discoveries (large and small) have been made during this time. This compensates for all the hardships and troubles for me. God bless them, I think, troubles will pass, and history and culture are eternal, at least as long as at least one person remains on Earth.

Elovskaya N.L.

Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich

Memories

L.N. Tolstoy

MEMORIES

INTRODUCTION

My friend P[avel] I[vanovich] B[iryukov], who undertook to write my biography for the French edition complete essay, asked me to give him some biographical information.

I really wanted to fulfill his desire, and in my imagination I began to compose my biography. At first, imperceptibly for myself, in the most natural way, I began to remember only one good thing of my life, only as shadows in the picture, adding to this good the gloomy, bad sides, the actions of my life. But, thinking more seriously about the events of my life, I saw that such a biography would be, although not a direct lie, but a lie, due to incorrect illumination and exposure of the good and silence or smoothing over everything bad. When I thought about writing the whole true truth Without hiding anything bad about my life, I was horrified by the impression that such a biography should have made.

At this time I got sick. And during the involuntary idleness of my illness, my thoughts always turned to memories, and these memories were terrible. I'm with the greatest power experienced what Pushkin says in his poem:

MEMORY

When the noisy day falls silent for a mortal
And on the mute hailstones
Translucent will cast a shadow on the night
And sleep, day's work is a reward,
At that time for me to drag in silence
Hours of weary vigil:
In the inactivity of the night live burn in me
Snakes of heart remorse;
Dreams boil; in a mind overwhelmed by longing,
An excess of heavy thoughts crowds;
The memory is silent before me
Its long develop scroll:
And, with disgust reading my life,
I tremble and curse
And I bitterly complain, and bitterly shed tears,
But I do not wash off the sad lines.

In the last line, I would only change it like this, instead of: sad lines ... I would put: I don’t wash off the shameful lines.

Under this impression, I wrote the following in my diary:

I now experience the torments of hell: I remember all the abomination of my former life and these memories do not leave me and poison my life. It is commonly regretted that a person does not retain memories after death. What a blessing it is not. What a torment it would be if in this life I remembered everything that was bad, painful for my conscience, that I had done in my previous life. And if you remember the good, then you must remember all the bad. What a blessing that remembrance disappears with death and only consciousness remains, a consciousness that represents, as it were, a general conclusion from good and bad, as if a complex equation reduced to its simplest expression: x = positive or negative, large or small value. Yes, great happiness is the annihilation of memories, it would be impossible to live joyfully with it. Now, with the annihilation of memory, we enter into life with a clean, white page on which one can again write good and bad.

It is true that not all of my life was so terribly bad - only one twenty-year period of it was like that; it is also true that even during this period my life was not a complete evil, as it seemed to me during my illness, and that even during this period impulses for good were awakened in me, although they did not last long and were soon drowned out by unrestrained passions. But all the same, this work of thought of mine, especially during my illness, clearly showed me that my biography, as biographies are usually written, with silence about all the vileness and criminality of my life, would be a lie, and that if you write a biography, you must write all real truth. Only such a biography, no matter how ashamed I am to write it, can be of real and fruitful interest to readers. Remembering my life in this way, that is, considering it from the point of view of good and evil that I did, I saw that my life is divided into four periods: 1) that wonderful, especially in comparison with the subsequent, innocent, joyful, poetic period of childhood up to 14 years; then a second, terrible 20-year period of gross licentiousness, service to ambition, vanity and, most importantly, lust; then the third, 18-year period from marriage to my spiritual birth, which, from a worldly point of view, could be called moral, since in these 18 years I lived a correct, honest family life, not indulging in any condemned public opinion vices, but all the interests of which were limited to selfish concerns about the family, about increasing the state, about acquiring literary success and all sorts of pleasures.

And finally, the fourth, 20-year period, in which I now live and in which I hope to die, and from the point of view of which I see all the significance past life and whom I would not wish to change in anything, except in those evil habits which I have acquired in past periods.

Such a life story of all these four periods, completely, completely true, I would like to write, if God gives me strength and life. I think that such a biography written by me, even if with great shortcomings, will be more useful for people than all that artistic chatter with which my 12 volumes of works are filled and to which people of our time attribute an undeserved importance.

Now I want to do this. I will tell you first the first joyful period of childhood, which attracts me especially strongly; then, ashamed as it will be, I will tell you without hiding anything, and the terrible 20 years of the next period. Then the third period, which may be the least interesting of all, in, finally, last period my awakening to the truth, which gave me the highest good of life and joyful calm in the face of approaching death.

In order not to repeat myself in the description of childhood, I reread my writing under this title and regretted that I had written it: it was so bad, literary, insincerely written. It could not have been otherwise: firstly, because my intention was to describe the history not of my own, but of my childhood friends, and that is why an awkward confusion of the events of theirs and my childhood came out, and secondly, because at the time of writing this I was far from independent in the forms of expression, but was influenced by the two writers Stern "a (his Sentimental journey") and Topfer "a ("Bibliotheque de mon oncle") [Stern (" sentimental journey") and Töpfer ("My Uncle's Library") (English and French)].

I especially disliked now the last two parts: adolescence and youth, in which, in addition to an incoherent mixture of truth and fiction, there is insincerity: the desire to present as good and important what I did not consider then good and important - my democratic direction . I hope that what I write now will be better, most importantly - more useful to other people.

I was born and spent my first childhood in the village Yasnaya Polyana. I don't remember my mother at all. I was 1 1/2 years old when she passed away. By a strange chance, not a single portrait of her remains, so that as a real physical being I cannot imagine her. I am partly glad of this, because in my idea of ​​her there is only her spiritual appearance, and everything that I know about her, everything is fine, and I think - not only because everyone who told me about my mother tried to talk about only good things, but because there really was a lot of this good in her.

However, not only my mother, but also all the faces surrounding my childhood - from my father to the coachmen - seem to me exclusively good people. Probably my pure baby love feeling, like a bright ray, revealed to me in people (they always exist) their best qualities, and the fact that all these people seemed to me exceptionally good was much more true than when I saw only their shortcomings. My mother was not good-looking and very well educated for her time. She knew, besides Russian, in which, contrary to the then accepted Russian illiteracy, she wrote correctly, four languages: French, German, English and Italian, and she had to be sensitive to art, she played the piano well, and her peers told me that she was a great master of telling enticing tales, inventing them as she told them. Her most precious quality was that, according to the stories of the servants, although she was quick-tempered, she was reserved. "She'll blush all over, she'll even cry," her maid told me, "but she'll never say rude word". She did not know them.

I have left a few of her letters to my father and other aunts and a diary of Nikolenka's (older brother's) behavior, who was 6 years old when she died, and who, I think, was most like her. They both had a very sweet quality of character to me, which I assume from the letters of my mother, but which I knew from my brother - indifference to the judgments of people and modesty, reaching the point that they tried to hide the mental, educational and moral advantages that they had in front of other people. They seemed to be ashamed of these advantages.

Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich

Memories

L.N. Tolstoy

MEMORIES

INTRODUCTION

My friend P[avel] I[vanovich] B[iryukov], who undertook to write my biography for the French edition of the complete work, asked me to provide him with some biographical information.

I really wanted to fulfill his desire, and in my imagination I began to compose my biography. At first, imperceptibly for myself, in the most natural way, I began to remember only one good thing of my life, only as shadows in the picture, adding to this good the gloomy, bad sides, the actions of my life. But, thinking more seriously about the events of my life, I saw that such a biography would be, although not a direct lie, but a lie, due to incorrect illumination and exposure of the good and silence or smoothing over everything bad. When I thought about writing the whole truth, without hiding anything bad about my life, I was horrified at the impression that such a biography should have made.

At this time I got sick. And during the involuntary idleness of my illness, my thoughts always turned to memories, and these memories were terrible. I experienced with the greatest force what Pushkin says in his poem:

MEMORY

When the noisy day falls silent for a mortalAnd on the mute hailstonesTranslucent will cast a shadow on the nightAnd sleep, day's work is a reward,At that time for me to drag in silenceHours of weary vigil:In the inactivity of the night live burn in meSnakes of heart remorse;Dreams boil; in a mind overwhelmed by longing,An excess of heavy thoughts crowds;The memory is silent before meIts long develop scroll:And, with disgust reading my life,I tremble and curseAnd I bitterly complain, and bitterly shed tears,But I do not wash off the sad lines.

In the last line, I would only change it like this, instead of: sad lines ... I would put: I don’t wash off the shameful lines.

Under this impression, I wrote the following in my diary:

I now experience the torments of hell: I remember all the abomination of my former life, and these memories do not leave me and poison my life. It is commonly regretted that a person does not retain memories after death. What a blessing it is not. What a torment it would be if in this life I remembered everything that was bad, painful for my conscience, that I had done in my previous life. And if you remember the good, then you must remember all the bad. What a blessing that remembrance disappears with death and only consciousness remains, a consciousness that represents, as it were, a general conclusion from good and bad, as if a complex equation reduced to its simplest expression: x = positive or negative, large or small value. Yes, great happiness is the annihilation of memories, it would be impossible to live joyfully with it. Now, with the annihilation of memory, we enter into life with a clean, white page on which one can again write good and bad.

It is true that not all of my life was so terribly bad - only one twenty-year period of it was like that; it is also true that even during this period my life was not a complete evil, as it seemed to me during my illness, and that even during this period impulses for good were awakened in me, although they did not last long and were soon drowned out by unrestrained passions. But all the same, this work of thought of mine, especially during my illness, clearly showed me that my biography, as biographies are usually written, with silence about all the vileness and criminality of my life, would be a lie, and that if you write a biography, you must write all real truth. Only such a biography, no matter how ashamed I am to write it, can be of real and fruitful interest to readers. Remembering my life in this way, that is, considering it from the point of view of good and evil that I did, I saw that my life is divided into four periods: 1) that wonderful, especially in comparison with the subsequent, innocent, joyful, poetic period of childhood up to 14 years; then a second, terrible 20-year period of gross licentiousness, service to ambition, vanity and, most importantly, lust; then the third, 18-year period from marriage to my spiritual birth, which, from a worldly point of view, could be called moral, since in these 18 years I lived a correct, honest family life, without indulging in any vices condemned by public opinion, but all whose interests were limited to selfish concerns about the family, about increasing the state, about acquiring literary success and all kinds of pleasures.

And finally, the fourth, 20-year period, in which I now live and in which I hope to die, and from the point of view of which I see the whole significance of the past life and which I would not like to change in anything, except in those habits of evil, which I have learned in the past.

Such a life story of all these four periods, completely, completely true, I would like to write, if God gives me strength and life. I think that such a biography written by me, even if with great shortcomings, will be more useful for people than all that artistic chatter with which my 12 volumes of works are filled and to which people of our time attribute an undeserved importance.

Now I want to do this. I will tell you first the first joyful period of childhood, which attracts me especially strongly; then, ashamed as it will be, I will tell you without hiding anything, and the terrible 20 years of the next period. Then the third period, which may be the least interesting of all, and finally, the last period of my awakening to the truth, which gave me the highest good of life and joyful peace in view of the approaching death.

In order not to repeat myself in the description of childhood, I reread my writing under this title and regretted that I had written it: it was so bad, literary, insincerely written. It could not have been otherwise: firstly, because my intention was to describe the history not of my own, but of my childhood friends, and that is why an awkward confusion of the events of theirs and my childhood came out, and secondly, because at the time of writing this I was far from independent in the forms of expression, but was influenced by the two writers Stern "a (his Sentimental journey") and Topfer "a ("Bibliotheque de mon oncle") [Stern ("Sentimental Journey"), who strongly influenced me then and Töpfer ("My Uncle's Library") (English and French)].

I especially disliked now the last two parts: adolescence and youth, in which, in addition to an incoherent mixture of truth and fiction, there is insincerity: the desire to present as good and important what I did not consider then good and important - my democratic direction . I hope that what I write now will be better, most importantly - more useful to other people.

I was born and spent my first childhood in the village of Yasnaya Polyana. I don't remember my mother at all. I was 1 1/2 years old when she passed away. By a strange chance, not a single portrait of her remains, so that as a real physical being I cannot imagine her. I am partly glad of this, because in my idea of ​​her there is only her spiritual appearance, and everything that I know about her, everything is fine, and I think - not only because everyone who told me about my mother tried to talk about only good things, but because there really was a lot of this good in her.

However, not only my mother, but also all the people around my childhood - from my father to the coachmen - seem to me to be exceptionally good people. Probably, my pure childhood love feeling, like a bright ray, revealed to me in people (they always exist) their best qualities, and the fact that all these people seemed to me exceptionally good was much more true than when I saw them alone. flaws. My mother was not good-looking and very well educated for her time. She knew, besides Russian, in which, contrary to the then accepted Russian illiteracy, she wrote correctly, four languages: French, German, English and Italian, and she had to be sensitive to art, she played the piano well, and her peers told me that she was a great master of telling enticing tales, inventing them as she told them. Her most precious quality was that, according to the stories of the servants, although she was quick-tempered, she was reserved. “She will blush all over, even cry,” her maid told me, “but she will never say a rude word.” She didn't know them.

First memories

Lev Nikolaevich remembered his father and mother in different ways, although he seemed to love them equally; weighing his love on the scales, he surrounded with a poetic halo his mother, whom he almost did not know and did not see.

Lev Nikolaevich wrote: “However, not only my mother, but all the people around my childhood - from my father to the coachmen - seem to me to be exceptionally good people. Probably, my pure childish love feeling, like a bright ray, revealed to me in people (they always exist) their best qualities, and the fact that all these people seemed to me exceptionally good was much more true than when I saw them alone. flaws".

So Lev Nikolayevich wrote in 1903 in his memoirs. He started them several times and quit without finishing.

People seemed to contradict themselves, memories argued, because they lived in the present.

Memories turned to remorse. But Tolstoy loved Pushkin's poem "Reminiscence":

And with disgust reading my life,

I tremble and curse

And I bitterly complain, and bitterly shed tears,

But I do not wash off the sad lines.

“In the last line,” he writes, “I would only change it this way: instead of“ lines sad...” would put: “strings shameful I don't flush."

He wanted to repent and repented of ambition, of rude licentiousness; in his youth he glorified his childhood. He said that the eighteen-year period from marriage to spiritual birth could be called moral from a worldly point of view. But then, speaking of honest family life, repents of selfish concerns about the family and about increasing the state.

How difficult it is to know what to weep about, how difficult it is to know what to blame oneself for!

Tolstoy had a merciless, all-restoring memory; remembered things that none of us can remember.

He began his memoirs thus:

“Here are my first memories, such that I cannot put in order, not knowing what happened before, what after. I don’t even know about some, whether it was in a dream or in reality. Here they are. I am bound, I want to free my hands, and I cannot do it. I scream and cry, and my crying is unpleasant to me, but I cannot stop. Someone is standing over me, bending down, I don’t remember who, and all this is in semi-darkness, but I remember that there are two, and my cry affects them: they are alarmed by my cry, but they don’t untie me what I want, and I scream even louder. It seems to them that this is necessary (that is, that I be bound), while I know that this is not necessary, and I want to prove it to them, and I burst into a cry, disgusting to myself, but uncontrollable. I feel the injustice and cruelty not of people, because they pity me, but of fate and pity for myself. I do not know and will never know what it was: whether they swaddled me when I was breastfeeding, and I tore out my hands, or whether they swaddled me when I was more than a year old, so that I would not comb my lichen; whether I have collected in this one recollection, as happens in a dream, many impressions, but it is true that this was my first and most powerful impression of my life. And what I remember is not my cry, not my suffering, but the complexity, the inconsistency of the impression. I want freedom, it does not interfere with anyone, and they torture me. They feel sorry for me and they tie me up. And I, who needs everything, I am weak, and they are strong.”

IN old life of humanity, in its long early morning sleep, people tied each other with property, fences, bills of sale, inheritances and slings.

Tolstoy wanted to free himself all his life; he needed freedom.

People who loved him - his wife, sons, other relatives, acquaintances, close ones - swaddled him.

He wriggled out of the slings.

People felt sorry for Tolstoy, honored him, but did not release him. They were as strong as the past, and he longed for the future.

Now they already forget how a breast-feeding baby looked before, entwined with a sling, like a mummy with a tarred veil.

The current breast baby with bent legs raised up is a different fate for the baby.

The memory of the vain deprivation of liberty is Tolstoy's first memory.

Another memory is joyful.

“I am sitting in a trough, and I am surrounded by a strange, new, not unpleasant, sour smell of some substance with which my naked body is rubbed. It was probably bran, and probably I was washed in water and a trough every day, but the novelty of the impression of bran woke me up, and for the first time I noticed and fell in love with my little body with visible ribs on my chest, and a smooth dark trough, and rolled up the nurse's hands, and the warm, steamy, strained water, and the sound of it, and especially the feeling of the smoothness of the wet edges of the trough, when I ran my little hands over them.

Memories of bathing are a trace of the first pleasure.

These two memories are the beginning human dismemberment peace.

Tolstoy notes that during the first years he “lived and lived blissfully”, but the world around him is not divided, and therefore there are no memories. Tolstoy writes: “It is not only that space, and time, and reason are forms of thinking and that the essence of life is outside these forms, but our whole life is a greater and greater subordination of ourselves to these forms and then again liberation from them.”

Outside the form there is no memory. Something that can be touched is formed: “Everything that I remember, everything happens in bed, in the upper room, neither grass, nor leaves, nor sky, nor sun exists for me.”

It is not remembered - as if there is no nature. "Probably, one must get away from her in order to see her, and I was nature."

It is important not only what surrounds a person, but also what and how he distinguishes from the environment.

Often what a person does not seem to notice actually determines his consciousness.

When we are interested in the work of a writer, what is important for us is the way in which he singled out parts from the general, so that we can then perceive this general anew.

Tolstoy all his life was engaged in isolating from the general stream of what was part of his system of world outlook; changed the selection methods, thereby changing what he chose.

Let's look at the laws of dismemberment.

The boy is transferred down to Fyodor Ivanovich - to the brothers.

The child leaves what Tolstoy calls "habitual from eternity." Life has just begun, and since there is no other eternity, what is experienced is eternal.

The boy parted with the primary tangible eternity - "not so much with people, with a sister, with a nanny, with an aunt, but with a bed, with a bed, with a pillow ...".

The aunt is named, but still does not live in a dismembered world.

The boy is taken from her. He is put on a dressing gown with a suspender sewn to his back - this seems to cut him off "forever from the top."

“And here for the first time I noticed not all those with whom I lived upstairs, but the main person with whom I lived and which I did not remember before. It was Aunt Tatyana Alexandrovna.

The aunt has a name, patronymic, then she is described as short, dense, black-haired.

Life begins - as a difficult task, not a toy.

"First Memoirs" was started on May 5, 1878 and abandoned. In 1903, Tolstoy, helping Biryukov, who undertook to write his biography for the French edition of his works, again writes childhood memories. They begin with a conversation about repentance and with a story about ancestors and brothers.

Lev Nikolaevich, returning to his childhood, now analyzes not only the emergence of consciousness, but also the difficulty of narration.

“The further I go in my memoirs, the more indecisive I become about how to write them. Describe events and states of mind I can’t, because I don’t remember this connection and sequence of mental states.”