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Literary critical activity of Mr. Chernyshevsky. "Real Criticism", its methodology, place in the history of criticism and literature

Literary critical activity of Mr. Chernyshevsky. "Real Criticism", its methodology, place in the history of criticism and literature

01.07.2020

N.G. Chernyshevsky

As a literary critic, Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky (1828 - 1889) appeared from 1854 to 1861. In 1861, the last of Chernyshevsky's fundamentally important articles, "Is not the beginning of a change?"

Chernyshevsky's literary-critical speeches were preceded by a solution of general aesthetic issues, undertaken by the critic in his master's thesis "The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality" (written in 1853, defended and published in 1855), as well as in a review of the Russian translation of Aristotle's book "On Poetry" (1854) and an author's review of his own dissertation (1855).

Having published the first reviews in “Notes of the Fatherland” by A.A. Kraevsky, Chernyshevsky in 1854 passes at the invitation of N.A. Nekrasov to Sovremennik, where he heads the critical department. The cooperation of Chernyshevsky (and, since 1857, Dobrolyubov) owed much to Sovremennik not only to the rapid growth in the number of its subscribers, but also to its transformation into the main tribune of revolutionary democracy. The arrest in 1862 and the subsequent penal servitude interrupted Chernyshevsky's literary-critical activity when he was only 34 years old.

Chernyshevsky acted as a direct and consistent opponent of A.V. Druzhinina, P.V. Annenkova, V.P. Botkina, S.S. Dudyshkin. The specific disagreements between Chernyshevsky as a critic and “aesthetic” criticism can be reduced to the question of the admissibility in literature (art) of the entire diversity of current life - including its socio-political conflicts (“topics of the day”), social ideology in general (trends). "Aesthetic" criticism generally answered this question in the negative. In her opinion, socio-political ideology, or, as Chernyshevsky's opponents preferred to say, "tendentiousness" is contraindicated in art, because it violates one of the main requirements of artistry - an objective and impartial depiction of reality. V.P. Botkin, for example, stated that "a political idea is the grave of art." On the contrary, Chernyshevsky (like other representatives of real criticism) answered the same question in the affirmative. Literature not only can, but must be imbued and spiritualized with the socio-political trends of its time, for only in this case will it become an expression of urgent social needs, and at the same time serve itself. Indeed, as the critic noted in Essays on the Gogol Period of Russian Literature (1855-1856), “only those areas of literature achieve brilliant development that arise under the influence of strong and living ideas that satisfy the pressing needs of the era.” Chernyshevsky, a democrat, socialist and peasant revolutionary, considered the liberation of the people from serfdom and the elimination of autocracy to be the most important of these needs.

The rejection of "aesthetic" criticism of social ideology in literature was justified, however, by a whole system of views on art, rooted in the provisions of German idealistic aesthetics - in particular, Hegel's aesthetics. The success of Chernyshevsky's literary-critical position was determined, therefore, not so much by the refutation of the particular positions of his opponents, but by a fundamentally new interpretation of general aesthetic categories. Chernyshevsky's dissertation "The Aesthetic Relationship of Art to Reality" was devoted to this. But first, let's name the main literary-critical works that students need to keep in mind: reviews ""Poverty is not a vice." Comedy A. Ostrovsky "(1854)," "On Poetry". Op. Aristotle" (1854); articles: “On sincerity in criticism” (1854), “Works of A.S. Pushkin" (1855), "Essays on the Gogol period of Russian literature", "Childhood and adolescence. Composition of Count L.N. Tolstoy. Military stories of Count L.N. Tolstoy" (1856), "Provincial essays... Collected and published by M.E. Saltykov. ... "(1857)," Russian man on rendez-vous "(1858)," Is not the beginning of a change? (1861).

In his dissertation, Chernyshevsky gives a fundamentally different definition of the object of art compared to German classical aesthetics. How was it understood in idealistic aesthetics? The subject of art is the beautiful and its varieties: sublime, tragic, comic. At the same time, the absolute idea or the reality embodying it was thought to be the source of beauty, but only in the entire volume, space and extent of the latter. The fact is that in a separate phenomenon - finite and temporal - the absolute idea, by its nature eternal and infinite, according to idealistic philosophy, is unrealizable. Indeed, between the absolute and the relative, the general and the individual, the regular and the accidental, there is a contradiction, similar to the difference between the spirit (it is immortal) and the flesh (which is mortal). It is not given to a person to overcome it in practical (material-production, socio-political) life. The only areas in which the resolution of this contradiction turned out to be possible were considered religion, abstract thinking (in particular, as Hegel believed, his own philosophy, or rather, its dialectical method) and, finally, art as the main varieties of spiritual activity, the success of which is to a great extent depends on the creative gift of a person, his imagination, fantasy.

From this followed the conclusion; beauty in reality, inevitably finite and transient, is absent, it exists only in the creative creations of the artist - works of art. It is art that brings beauty to life. Hence the consequence of the first premise: art, as the embodiment of beauty above life. / / “Venus de Milo,” declares, for example, I.S. Turgenev, - perhaps, more undoubtedly than Roman law or the principles of 89 (that is, the French Revolution of 1789 - 1794 - V.N.) years. Summarizing in his dissertation the main postulates of idealistic aesthetics and the consequences arising from them, Chernyshevsky writes: “Defining the beautiful as a complete manifestation of an idea in a separate being, we must come to the conclusion: “beautiful is in reality only a ghost put into it by our facts”; from this it will follow that “in fact, the beautiful is created by our imagination, but in reality ... there is no truly beautiful”; from the fact that there is no truly beautiful in nature, it will follow that "art has as its source the desire of a person to make up for the shortcomings of the beautiful in objective reality" and that the beautiful created by art is higher than the beautiful in objective reality "- all these thoughts constitute the essence of the dominant now concepts ... "

If in reality there is no beauty and it is brought into it only by art, then creating the latter is more important than creating, improving life itself. And the artist should not so much help improve life as reconcile a person with its imperfection, compensating for it with the ideally imaginary world of his work.

It is to this system of ideas that Chernyshevsky opposed his materialistic definition of the beautiful: “beautiful is life”; “beautiful is the being in which we see life as it should be according to our concepts; beautiful is the object that shows life in itself or reminds us of life.

Its pathos and, at the same time, its fundamental novelty consisted in the fact that the main task of a person was not the creation of the beautiful in itself (in its spiritually imaginary form), but the transformation of life itself, including the current, current one, according to this person’s ideas about its ideal. . Solidarizing in this case with the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, Chernyshevsky, as it were, says to his contemporaries: first of all, make life itself beautiful, and do not fly away in beautiful dreams from it. And second: If the source of the beautiful is life (and not an absolute idea, Spirit, etc.), then art in its search for the beautiful depends on life, generated by its desire for self-improvement as a function and means of this desire.

Chernyshevsky challenged the traditional view of the beautiful as the alleged main goal of art. From his point of view, the content of art is much wider than the beautiful and is "general interest in life", that is, it covers everything. what worries a person, on what his fate depends. Man (and not beauty) became Chernyshevsky, in essence, and the main subject of art. The critic also interpreted the specifics of the latter differently. According to the logic of the dissertation, what distinguishes an artist from a non-artist is not the ability to embody an “eternal” idea in a separate phenomenon (event, character) and thereby overcome their eternal contradiction, but the ability to reproduce life collisions, processes and trends that are of general interest to contemporaries in their individually visual form. Art is conceived by Chernyshevsky not so much as a second (aesthetic) reality, but as a “concentrated” reflection of objective reality. Hence those extreme definitions of art (“art is a surrogate for reality”, “a textbook of life”), which were not without reason rejected by many contemporaries. The fact is that Chernyshevsky's legitimate desire to subordinate art to the interests of social progress in these formulations turned into oblivion of his creative nature.

In parallel with the development of materialistic aesthetics, Chernyshevsky in a new way comprehends such a fundamental category of Russian criticism of the 1940s and 1960s as artistry. And here his position, although it is based on certain provisions of Belinsky, remains original and, in turn, is polemical to traditional ideas. Unlike Annenkov or Druzhinin (as well as such writers as I.S. Turgenev, I.A. Goncharov), Chernyshevsky considers the main condition for artistry not the objectivity and impartiality of the author and the desire to reflect reality in its entirety, not the strict dependence of each fragment of the work ( character, episode, detail) from the whole, not the isolation and completeness of creation, but the idea (social trend), the creative fruitfulness of which, according to the critic, is commensurate with its vastness, truthfulness (in the sense of coincidence with the objective logic of reality) and "consistency". In the light of the last two requirements, Chernyshevsky analyzes, for example, the comedy of A.N. Ostrovsky "Poverty is not a vice", in which he finds "sugary embellishment of what cannot and should not be embellished." The erroneous initial thought underlying the comedy deprived it, Chernyshevsky believes, even of plot unity. “Works that are false in their main idea,” the critic concludes, “are sometimes weak even in a purely artistic sense.”

If the consistency of a truthful idea provides unity to a work, then its social and aesthetic significance depends on the scale and relevance of the idea.

Chernyshevsky also demands that the form of the work correspond to its content (idea). However, this correspondence, in his opinion, should not be strict and pedantic, but only expedient: it is enough if the work is concise, without excesses leading to the side. To achieve such expediency, Chernyshevsky believed, no special author's imagination or fantasy is needed.

The unity of a true and sustained idea with the form that corresponds to it makes a work of art artistic. Chernyshevsky's interpretation of artistry, therefore, removed from this concept that mysterious halo that representatives of "aesthetic" criticism endowed it with. It also freed itself from dogmatism. At the same time, here, as well as in defining the specifics of art, Chernyshevsky's approach sinned with unjustified rationality, a certain straightforwardness.

The materialistic definition of beauty, the call to make the content of art everything that excites a person, the concept of artistry intersect and refract in Chernyshevsky's criticism in the idea of the social purpose of art and literature. The critic here develops and refines the views of Belinsky at the end of the 1930s. Since literature is a part of life itself, a function and a means of its self-improvement, then, the critic says, “it cannot but be a servant of one or another direction of ideas; this is an appointment that lies in her nature, from which she is not able to refuse, even if she wanted to refuse. This is especially true for politically and civilly undeveloped autocratic-feudal Russia, where literature "concentrates ... the mental life of the people" and has "encyclopedic significance." The direct duty of Russian writers is to spiritualize their work with "humanity and concern for the improvement of human life", which have become the dominant need of the time. “A poet,” writes Chernyshevsky in “Essays on the Gogol period ...”, “a lawyer., her (the public. - V.NL) of her own ardent desires and sincere thoughts.

Chernyshevsky's struggle for the literature of social ideology and direct public service explains the critic's rejection of the works of those poets (A. Fet. A. Maikov, Ya. only personal, pleasures and sorrows. Considering the position of “pure art” to be worldly by no means disinterested, Chernyshevsky in his “Essays on the Gogol Period ...” also rejects the argument of the supporters of this art: that aesthetic pleasure “in itself brings a significant benefit to a person, softening his heart, elevating his soul”, that aesthetic experience "directly ... ennobles the soul by the sublimity and nobility of objects and feelings that we are seduced by in works of art." And a cigar, Chernyshevsky objects, softens, and a good dinner, in general, health and excellent living conditions. This, the critic concludes, purely epicurean view of art.

The materialistic interpretation of general aesthetic categories was not the only prerequisite for Chernyshevsky's criticism. Chernyshevsky himself pointed out two other sources of it in "Essays on the Gogol period ...". This is, firstly, the legacy of Belinsky in the 40s and, secondly, the Gogolian, or, as Chernyshevsky clarifies, the “critical trend” in Russian literature.

In "Essays ..." Chernyshevsky solved a number of problems. First of all, he sought to revive the precepts and principles of criticism of Belinsky, whose very name until 1856 was under a censorship ban, and his legacy was hushed up or interpreted by "aesthetic" criticism (in the letters of Druzhinin, Botkin, Annenkov to Nekrasov and I. Panaev) one-sidedly, sometimes negative. The idea corresponded to the intention of the editors of Sovremennik to “fight against the decline of our criticism” and “improve as far as possible” their own “critical department”, which was stated in the “Announcement of the publication of Sovremennik” in 1855. It was necessary, Nekrasov believed, to return to the interrupted tradition - to the “straight road” of the “Notes of the Fatherland” of the forties, that is, Belinsky: “... what faith there was in the magazine, what a living connection between him and the readers!” Analysis from the democratic and materialistic positions of the main critical systems of the 20-40s (N. Polevoy, O. Senkovsky, N. Nadezhdin, I. Kireevsky, S. Shevyrev, V. Belinsky) at the same time allowed Chernyshevsky to determine for the reader his own position in the brewing with the outcome of the "gloomy seven years" (1848 - 1855) of the literary struggle, as well as to formulate the modern tasks and principles of literary criticism. "Essays ..." also served polemical purposes, in particular, the fight against the opinions of A.V. Druzhinin, which Chernyshevsky clearly has in mind when he shows the selfish and protective motives of S. Shevyrev's literary judgments.

Considering in the first chapter of "Essays ..." the reasons for the decline of N. Polevoy's criticism, "who at first so cheerfully acted as one of the leaders in the literary and intellectual movement" of Russia, Chernyshevsky concluded that for viable criticism, firstly, modern philosophical theory, Secondly. moral feeling, meaning by it the humanistic and patriotic aspirations of the critic, and finally, orientation towards truly progressive phenomena in literature.

All these components organically merged in Belinsky's criticism, the most important beginnings of which were "ardent patriotism" and the latest "scientific concepts", that is, L. Feuerbach's materialism and socialist ideas. Chernyshevsky considers other capital advantages of Belinsky's criticism to be its struggle against romanticism in literature and in life, the rapid growth from abstract aesthetic criteria to animation by the "interests of national life" and writers' judgments from the point of view of "the significance of his activities for our society."

In "Essays ..." for the first time in the Russian censored press, Belinsky was not only associated with the ideological and philosophical movement of the forties, but was made its central figure. Chernyshevsky outlined the scheme of Belinsky's creative emotion, which remains at the heart of modern ideas about the activities of a critic: the early "telescopic" period - the search for a holistic philosophical comprehension of the world and nature of art; a natural meeting with Hegel on this path, a period of "reconciliation" with reality and a way out of it, a mature period of creativity, which in turn revealed two stages of development - in terms of the degree of deepening of social thinking.

At the same time, for Chernyshevsky, the differences that should appear in future criticism in comparison with Belinsky's criticism are also obvious. Here is his definition of criticism: “Criticism is a judgment about the merits and demerits of some literary trend. Its purpose is to grieve with the expression of the opinion of the best part of the public and to promote its further dissemination among the masses ”(“ On Sincerity in Criticism ”).

“The best part of the public” is, without a doubt, the democrats and ideologists of the revolutionary transformation of Russian society. Future criticism should directly serve their tasks and goals. To do this, it is necessary to abandon the guild isolation in the circle of professionals, to enter into constant communication with the public. reader, as well as to gain "every possible ... clarity, certainty and directness" of judgments. The interests of the common cause, which she will serve, give her the right to be harsh.

In the light of the requirements, first of all, of a socially humanistic ideology, Chernyshevsky undertakes an examination of both the phenomena of current realistic literature and its sources in the person of Pushkin and Gogol.

Four articles about Pushkin were written by Chernyshevsky simultaneously with "Essays on the Gogol period ...". They included Chernyshevsky in the discussion started by the article by A.V. Druzhinin "A.S. Pushkin and the last edition of his works": 1855) in connection with the Annenkov Collected Works of the poet. Unlike Druzhinin, who created the image of a creator-artist, alien to the social collisions and unrest of his time, Chernyshevsky appreciates in the author of "Eugene Onegin" that he "was the first to describe Russian customs and the life of various classes ... with amazing fidelity and insight" . Thanks to Pushkin, Russian literature became closer to "Russian society". The ideologist of the peasant revolution is especially fond of Pushkin's "Scenes from Knightly Times" (they should be ranked "not lower than "Boris Godunov""), the richness of Pushkin's verse ("every line ... affected, aroused thought"). Crete, recognizes the great importance of Pushkin "in the history of Russian education." enlightenment. However, in contradiction to these praises, the relevance of Pushkin's heritage for modern literature was recognized by Chernyshevsky as insignificant. In fact, in assessing Pushkin, Chernyshevsky takes a step back compared to Belinsky, who called the creator of Onegin (in the fifth article of the Pushkin cycle) the first "artist poet" of Rus'. "Pushkin was," writes Chernyshevsky, "primarily a poet of form." "Pushkin was not a poet of any particular outlook on life, like Byron, he was not even a poet of thought in general, like ... Goethe and Schiller." Hence the final conclusion of the articles: "Pushkin belongs to a bygone era ... He cannot be recognized as a luminary of modern literature."

The general assessment of the ancestor of Russian realism turned out to be unhistorical. It also revealed the unjustified in this case sociological bias in Chernyshevsky's understanding of the artistic content, the poetic idea. Willingly or involuntarily, the critic gave Pushkin away to his opponents - the representatives of "aesthetic" criticism.

In contrast to Pushkin's legacy, in the Essays... Gogol's legacy, according to Chernyshevsky, is given the highest appraisal, addressed to the needs of social life and therefore full of deep content. The critic in Gogol especially emphasizes the humanistic pathos, essentially not seen in Pushkin's work. “To Gogol,” writes Chernyshevsky, “those who need protection owe a lot; he became the head of those. who deny the evil and the vulgar."

The humanism of Gogol's "deep nature", however, according to Chernyshevsky, was not supported by modern advanced ideas (teachings), which did not have an impact on the writer. According to the critic, this limited the critical pathos of Gogol's works: the artist saw the ugliness of the facts of Russian social life, but did not understand the connection of these facts with the fundamental foundations of Russian autocratic-serf society. In general, Gogol was inherent in the "gift of unconscious creativity", without which it is impossible to be an artist. However, the poet, adds "Chernyshevsky," will not create anything great if he is not also gifted with a wonderful mind, strong common sense and fine taste. Chernyshevsky explains the artistic drama of Gogol by the suppression of the liberation movement after 1825, as well as the influence on the writer of the protective-minded S. Shevyrev, M. Pogodin and his sympathies for patriarchy. Nevertheless, Chernyshevsky's overall assessment of Gogol's work is very high: "Gogol was the father of Russian prose", "he has the merit of firmly introducing the satirical into Russian literature - or, as it would be more fair to call his critical directions", he is "the first in Russian literature to to content and, moreover, striving in such a fruitful direction as critical. And finally: "There was no writer in the world who would be as important for his people as Gogol for Russia", "he awakened in us the consciousness of ourselves - this is his true merit."

Chernyshevsky's attitude towards Gogol and the Gogol trend in Russian realism, however, did not remain unchanged, but depended on what phase of his criticism it belonged to. The fact is that two phases are distinguished in Chernyshevsky's criticism: the first - from 1853 to 1858, the second - from 1858 to 1862. The turning point for them was the emerging revolutionary situation in Russia, which entailed a fundamental disengagement between the democrats and the liberals on all issues, including literary ones.

The first phase is characterized by the struggle of the critic for the Gogol trend, which remains effective and fruitful in his eyes. This is a struggle for Ostrovsky, Turgenev, Grigorovich, Pisemsky, L. Tolstoy, for the strengthening and development of critical pathos by them. The task is to unite all anti-serfdom writers' groupings.

In 1856, Chernyshevsky devoted a large review to Grigorovich, by that time the author of not only The Village and Anton the Goremyka, but also the novels The Fishermen (1853), The Settlers (1856>, imbued with deep participation in life and fate " commoner", especially serfs. Contrasting Grigorovich with his numerous imitators, Chernyshevsky believes that in his stories "peasant life is depicted correctly, without embellishment; strong talent and deep feeling are visible in the description."

Until 1858, Chernyshevsky took under the protection of "superfluous people", for example, from criticism of S. Dudyshkin. who reproached them for the lack of "harmony with the situation", that is, for opposition to the environment. In the conditions of modern society, such “harmony,” Chernyshevsky shows, will come down only to “being an efficient official, a landowner in charge” (“Notes on Journals”, 1857 *. At this time, the critic sees in “superfluous people” still victims of the Nikolaev reaction , and he cherishes that share of protest that they contain in themselves. True, even at this time he treats them differently: he sympathizes with Rudin and Beltov, who are striving for social activity, but not Onegin and Pechorin.

Particularly interesting is Chernyshevsky's attitude towards L. Tolstoy, who, by the way, spoke of the critic's dissertation and his very personality at that time with extreme hostility. In the article “Childhood and adolescence. Composition of Count L.N. Tolstoy...” Chernyshevsky showed an extraordinary aesthetic sensitivity in evaluating the artist, whose ideological positions were very far from the mood of the critic. Chernyshevsky notes two main features in Tolstoy's talent: the originality of his psychological analysis (unlike other realist writers, Tolstoy is not interested in the result of the mental process, not in the correspondence of emotions and actions, etc., but “the mental process itself, its forms, its laws , the dialectic of the soul") and the sharpness ("purity") of the "moral feeling", the moral perception of the depicted". The critic rightly understood Tolstoy's mental analysis as an expansion and enrichment of the possibilities of realism (we note in passing that even such a a master, like Turgenev, who called it "picking out the rubbish from under the armpits"). As for the "purity of the moral feeling", which Chernyshevsky noted, by the way, in Belinsky, Chernyshevsky sees in it a guarantee of the artist's rejection of social untruth, along with moral falsehood. This was confirmed by Tolstoy's story "Morning of the Landowner", which showed the meaninglessness of lordly philanthropy in relation to the peasant under the conditions of serfdom. The story was highly appreciated by Chernyshevsky in Notes on Journals in 1856. The author was credited with the fact that the content of the story was taken “from a new sphere of life”, which also developed the writer’s very outlook “on life”.

After 1858, Chernyshevsky's judgments about Grigorovich, Pisemsky, Turgenev, as well as about "superfluous people" change. This is explained not only by the gap between the democrats and the liberals (in 1859 - 1860 L. Tolstoy, Goncharov, Botkin, Turgenev left Sovremennik), but also by the fact that in these years a new trend in Russian realism, represented by Saltykov-Shchedrin (in 1856, the Russky Vestnik began publishing his Provincial Essays), Nekrasov, N. Uspensky, V. Sleptsov, A. Levitov, F. Reshetnikov and inspired by democratic ideas. Democratic writers had to establish themselves in their own positions, freeing themselves from the influence of their predecessors. Chernyshevsky, who believes that Gogol's direction has exhausted itself, is also involved in the solution of this problem. Hence the overestimation of Rudin (the critic sees in him an unacceptable "caricature" of M. Bakunin, with whom the revolutionary tradition was associated), and other "superfluous people", whom Chernyshevsky no longer separates from the liberalizing nobles.

A declaration and proclamation of an uncompromising disengagement from noble liberalism in the Russian liberation movement of the 1960s was Chernyshevsky's famous article "A Russian Man on Rendez-vous" (1958). It appears at the moment when, as the critic specifically emphasizes, the denial of serfdom, which united liberals and democrats in the 1940s and 1950s, was replaced by the polar opposite attitude of the former allies towards the coming peasant revolution, Chernyshevsky believes.

The reason for the article was the story of I.S. Turgenev's "Asya" (1858), in which the author of "The Diary of a Superfluous Man", "Calm", "Correspondence", "Trips to the woods" depicted the drama of failed love in conditions when the happiness of two young people seemed to be both possible and close . Interpreting the hero "Asia" (along with Rudin, Beltov, Nekrasov's Agarin and other "superfluous people") as a type of noble liberal. Chernyshevsky gives his explanation of the social position ("behavior") of such people - even if it is revealed in an intimate situation of meeting with a beloved and reciprocating girl. Filled with ideal aspirations, lofty feelings, they, says the critic, fatally stop before putting them into practice, unable to combine word with deed. And the reason for this inconsistency is not in their personal weaknesses, but in their belonging to the ruling nobility, the burden of "class prejudices." It is impossible to expect decisive actions from a noble liberal in accordance with “the great historical interests of national development” (that is, to eliminate the autocratic-feudal system), because the main obstacle for them is the nobility itself. And Chernyshevsky calls for a resolute rejection of illusions about the liberating and humanizing possibilities of the noble oppositionist: “The idea is developing in us more and more strongly that this opinion about him is an empty dream, we feel ... that there are people better than him, precisely those whom he offends; that without him we would be better off.”

The incompatibility of revolutionary democracy with reformism explains Chernyshevsky in the article “Polemical Beauties” (1860) of his current critical attitude towards Turgenev and the break with the writer, whom the critic had previously defended from cnpalai attacks “Our way of thinking became clear for Mr. Turgenev so much that he ceased to approve of him . It began to seem to us that Mr. Turgenev's latest stories did not correspond as closely to our view of things as before, when his direction was not so clear to us, and our views were not so clear to him. We parted".

Since 1858, Chernyshevsky’s main concern has been devoted to raznochinsk-democratic literature and its authors, who are called upon to master the art of writing and point out to the public other heroes compared to the “superfluous people”, close to the people and inspired by popular interests.

Hopes for the creation of a "completely new period" in poetry Chernyshevsky connects primarily with Nekrasov. As early as 1856, he wrote to him in response to a request to comment on the famous collection “Poems by N. Nekrasov” that had just been published: “We have not yet had such a poet as you.” Chernyshevsky retained the high appreciation of Nekrasov for all subsequent years. Upon learning of the poet's fatal illness, he asked (in a letter on August 14, 1877 to Pypin from Vilyuysk) to kiss him and tell him, “the most brilliant and noblest of all Russian poets. I weep for him” (“Tell Nikolai Gavrilovich,” Nekrasov answered Pypin, “that I thank him very much, I am now consoled: his words are more precious than anyone else’s words”). In the eyes of Chernyshevsky, Nekrasov is the first great Russian poet who has become truly popular, that is, he expressed both the state of the oppressed people (peasantry), and faith in his strength, the growth of national consciousness. At the same time, Nekrasov's intimate lyrics are dear to Chernyshevsky - "poetry of the heart", "plays without a tendency," as he calls it, which embodied the emotional and intellectual structure and spiritual experience of the Russian Raznochinsk intelligentsia, its inherent system of moral and aesthetic values.

In the author of "Provincial essays" M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, Chernyshevsky saw a writer who went beyond the critical realism of Gogol. In contrast to the author of Dead Souls, Shchedrin, according to Chernyshevsky, already knows “what is the connection between the branch of life in which facts are found and other branches of mental, moral, civil, state life”, that is, he knows how to erect private outrages Russian public life to their source - the socialist system of Russia. "Provincial essays" are valuable not only as a "wonderful literary phenomenon", but also as a "historical fact" of Russian life" on the path of its self-awareness.

In reviews of writers who are ideologically close to him, Chernyshevsky raises the question of the need for a new positive hero in literature. He is waiting for “his speech, a most cheerful, at the same time calm and decisive speech, in which one would hear not the timidity of theory before life, but proof that reason can rule over life and a person can agree with his convictions in his life.” Chernyshevsky himself joined in the solution of this problem in 1862, creating in the casemate of the Peter and Paul Fortress a novel about "new people" - "What to do?"

Chernyshevsky did not have time to systematize his views on democratic literature. But one of its principles - the question of the image of the people - was developed by him very thoroughly. This is the subject of the last of Chernyshevsky's major literary-critical articles, "Isn't the Beginning of Change?" (1861), the reason for which was N. Uspensky's "Essays on Folk Life".

The critic opposes any idealization of the people. In the conditions of the social awakening of the people (Chernyshevsky knew about the mass peasant uprisings in connection with the predatory reform of 1861), he believes that it objectively serves protective purposes, as it reinforces the people's passivity, the belief in the inability of the people to decide their own destiny. Nowadays, the image of the people in the form of Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin or Anton Goremyka is unacceptable. Literature should show the people, their moral and psychological state “without embellishment”, because only such an image testifies to the recognition of the people as equal to other classes and will help the people get rid of the weaknesses and vices instilled in them by centuries of humiliation and lack of rights. It is equally important, not content with the routine manifestations of folk life and dozens of characters, to show people in whom the “initiative of folk activity” is concentrated. It was a call to create images of folk leaders and rebels in literature. Already the image of Saveliy - the "hero of the Holy Russian" from Nekrasov's poem "To whom it is good to live in Rus'" spoke of that. that this testament of Chernyshevsky was heard.

Aesthetics and literary criticism of Chernyshevsky are not distinguished by academic dispassion. They, according to V.I. Lenin, imbued with the "spirit of the class struggle." And also, let's add, and the spirit of rationalism, faith in the omnipotence of reason, characteristic of Chernyshevsky as an educator. This obliges us to consider Chernyshevsky's literary-critical system in the unity of not only strong and promising, but also relatively weak and even extreme premises.

Chernyshevsky is right in defending the priority of life over art. But he is mistaken, calling art on this basis a "surrogate" (that is, a substitute) for reality. In fact, art is not only a special (in relation to the scientific or social and practical activity of a person), but also a relatively autonomous form of spiritual creativity - an aesthetic reality, in the creation of which a huge role belongs to the holistic ideal of the artist and the efforts of his creative imagination. In turn, by the way, underestimated by Chernyshevsky. “Reality,” he writes, “is not only more alive, but more perfect than fantasy. Images of fantasy are only a pale and almost always unsuccessful reworking of reality. This is true only in the sense of the connection between artistic fantasy and the life aspirations and ideals of a writer, painter, musician, and so on. However, the very understanding of creative fantasy and its possibilities is erroneous, because the consciousness of a great artist does not so much remake the real world as it creates a new world.

The concept of an artistic idea (content) acquires from Chernyshevsky not only a sociological, but sometimes a rationalistic meaning. If its first interpretation is fully justified in relation to a number of artists (for example, to Nekrasov, Saltykov-Shchedrin), then the second actually eliminates the line between literature and science, art and sociological treatise memoirs, etc. An example of an unjustified rationalization of artistic content can be the following statement by a critic in a review of a Russian translation of Aristotle’s works: “Art, or, better, POETRY ... distributes a huge amount of information among the mass of readers and, more importantly, familiarity with the concepts developed by science - - this is the great significance of poetry for life. Here Chernyshevsky voluntarily or involuntarily anticipates the future literary utilitarianism of D.I. Pisarev. Another example. Literature, says a critic elsewhere, acquires authenticity and content when it “talks about everything that is important in any respect that happens in society, considers all these facts ... from all possible points of view, explains, from what causes each fact proceeds, by what it is supported, what phenomena must be brought into being to strengthen it, if it is noble, or to weaken it, if it is harmful. In other words, a writer is good if, fixing significant phenomena and trends in social life, he analyzes them and pronounces his “sentence” on them. This is how Chernyshevsky himself acted as the author of the novel What Is to Be Done? But to fulfill the task formulated in this way, it is not at all necessary to be an artist, because it is quite soluble already within the framework of a sociological treatise, a journalistic article, brilliant examples of which were given by Chernyshevsky himself (recall the article “The Russian Man on Rendez-Vous”), and Dobrolyubov, and Pisarev.

Perhaps the most vulnerable spot in Chernyshevsky's literary-critical system is the notion of artistry and typification. Agreeing that "the prototype for a poetic person is often a real person", erected by the writer "to a general meaning", the critic adds: "There is usually no need to erect, because the original already has a general meaning in its individuality." It turns out that typical faces exist in reality itself, and are not created by the artist. The writer can only "transfer" them from life to his work in order to explain them and sentence them. This was not only a step back from the corresponding teaching of Belinsky, but also a dangerous simplification that reduced the work and work of the artist to copying reality.

The well-known rationalization of the creative act and art in general, the sociological bias in the interpretation of literary and artistic content as the embodiment of a particular social trend, explains the negative attitude towards Chernyshevsky's views not only by representatives of "aesthetic" criticism, but also by such major artists of the 50s and 60s like Turgenev, Goncharov, L. Tolstoy. In Chernyshevsky's ideas, they saw the danger of "enslavement of art" (N.D. Akhsharumov) by political and other transient tasks.

Noting the weaknesses of Chernyshevsky's aesthetics, one should remember the fruitfulness - especially for Russian society and Russian literature - of its main pathos - the idea of the social and humanistic service of art and the artist. Philosopher Vladimir Solovyov would later call Chernyshevsky's dissertation one of the first experiments in "practical aesthetics". L. Tolstoy's attitude towards her will change over the years. A number of provisions of his treatise "What is art?" (published in 1897 - 1898) will be directly in tune with the ideas of Chernyshevsky.

And the last. It must not be forgotten that under the conditions of the censored press, literary criticism was, in fact, the main opportunity for Chernyshevsky to shed light on the pressing problems of Russian social development and influence it from the standpoint of revolutionary democracy. The same can be said about Chernyshevsky as a critic that the author of Essays on the Gogol Period... said about Belinsky: “He feels that the boundaries of literary questions are narrow, he yearns in his office, like Faust: he is cramped within these walls lined with books - all the same, good or bad; he needs life, not talk about the merits of Pushkin's poems.

Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky

Collected works in five volumes

Volume 3. Literary criticism

Pushkin's works

Pushkin's writings, an appendix of materials for his biography, portrait, photographs from his handwriting and his drawings, etc. Edition P. V. Annenkov. SPb. 1855

The impatient expectation, the urgent need of the Russian public is finally satisfied. The first two volumes of a new edition of the works of our great poet were published; the rest of the volumes will soon follow.

Events joyful for all educated people of the Russian land marked the beginning of 1855: in one capital - the anniversary of Moscow University, which participated so much in the spread of education, contributed so much to the development of science in Russia; in another capital - a worthy edition of the works of the great writer, who had such an influence on the education of the entire Russian public - what triumphs for Russian science and literature!

Fully understanding the importance of such an event as the publication of Pushkin's works, we hasten to give an account of it to the public.

We will not talk about the significance of Pushkin in the history of our social development and our literature; let us not consider from an aesthetic point of view the essential qualities of his works. As far as it is possible for the present time, the historical significance of Pushkin and the artistic merit of his creations have already been appreciated by both the public and the critics. Years will pass before other literary phenomena change the real conception of the public about the poet, who will forever remain great. Therefore, years will pass before criticism will be able to say anything new about his creations. We can now only study the personality and activities of Pushkin on the basis of the data presented by the new edition.

We will not pay attention to the inevitable shortcomings of the new edition. We can only talk about what the publisher gives us, and to what extent he satisfactorily fulfills what he could fulfill.

So, first of all, let's talk about the system and boundaries of the new edition.

It was based on the posthumous edition of the "Works of Alexander Pushkin" in 11 volumes. But this posthumous edition, as is known, was done carelessly, according to a bad system, with omissions of many works, with irregularities in the text, with an arbitrary and often erroneous arrangement of works under headings, which only made it difficult to study both the works themselves and the gradual development of Pushkin's genius. Therefore, it was Mr. Annenkov's duty to correct the shortcomings in the new edition. He talks about it like this:

The first concern of the new edition was to correct the text of the previous edition; but this, due to the importance of the task, could not have happened otherwise than with the presentation of evidence for the right to amend or change. Hence the system of notes adopted in this edition. Each of the poet's works, without exception, is provided with an indication of where it first appeared, what versions it received in other editions during the life of the poet, and in what relation the text of the new edition is with the text of these editions. Thus, the reader has, as far as possible, a history of external and, in part, internal changes received in different eras by each work, and according to it he can correct the oversights of the posthumous edition, of which the most striking ones have already been corrected by the publisher of the proposed collected works of Pushkin. Many of the poet's poems and articles (especially those that appeared in print after his death) have been compared with manuscripts and the author's numerical notes, his first thoughts and intentions are indicated on them. (Preface to Volume II).

The correction of the text was followed by its addition: the publisher took advantage of all the indications about the works of Pushkin that were omitted in the posthumous edition that had ever been printed, reviewed all the almanacs and journals in which Pushkin placed his poems and articles: but this was not limited to replenishment: the publisher received all the papers left after Pushkin, and he extracted from them everything that was still unknown to the public. Finally, to the bibliographical notes and variants that we spoke about above, he added wherever he could, an explanation of the cases and reasons for which the well-known work was written.

Instead of the former confused and arbitrary division into small and inaccurate headings, which was one of the essential shortcomings of the posthumous edition, he adopted a strict chronological order, with the distribution of works in a few departments, which are accepted in all the best European editions of classical writers and are indicated by convenience for readers, aesthetic concepts and the gist of the matter:

I. Poems. The first department is lyrical, the second department is epic, the third department is dramatic works.

II. Prose. Section one - Pushkin's Notes: a) Pedigree of the Pushkins and Gannibalovs; b) Remains of Pushkin's notes in the strict sense (autobiographical); c) Thoughts and comments; d) Critical notes; f) Anecdotes collected by Pushkin; f) Journey to Arzrum. The second department - novels and short stories (here and "Scenes from chivalrous times"). Section three - journal articles published in the posthumous edition and published in journals, but not included in the posthumous edition (eleven articles). Section Four - The history of the Pugachev rebellion with appendices and an anti-critical article on this work, which was not included in the posthumous edition.

Then (says the publisher) many passages, both poetic and prose, a number of small plays and continuations or additions to his works were found in Pushkin's manuscripts. All these remnants are placed in the "Materials for the biography of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin" and in appendices to them.

Having thus explained the order and system underlying the new collection, the publisher does not at all hide from himself that there are still many omissions and oversights both in the notes and in other respects. With all this, the publisher dares to entertain the hope that, under the system adopted for the new edition, every amendment of an informed and well-intentioned criticism can be applied to the case sooner than before. The arena for bibliographic, philological and historical criticism is open. By the common action of experienced and conscientious people, the time for publishing the works of our national writer will be accelerated in a completely satisfactory way. (Preface to Volume II.)

Criticism of the new edition must agree with this modest and impartial assessment of it, given by the publisher himself. It is the best edition that could be made at the present time; his shortcomings are inevitable, his virtues are enormous, and the entire Russian public will be grateful to the publisher for them.

Of the first two volumes of the new edition that came out, the first contains “Materials for the biography of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin with his portrait (engraved by Utkin in 1838) and the following appendices: 1) A. S. Pushkin's genealogy; 2) Tales (three) of Arina Rodionovna, written down by Pushkin; 3) French letters (two) from Pushkin about "Boris Godunov"; 4) and 5) Pushkin's last minutes, described by Zhukovsky, and an extract from Pushkin's biography compiled by Mr. Bantysh-Kamensky; 6) Pushkin's translation of the XXIII song of Ariostov "Orlando Furioso" (stanzas 100-112); 7) Additional octaves to the story "House in Kolomna" (15 octaves); 8) Continuation of the story "Roslavlev"; 9) Remarks on the Word about Igor's Campaign. The second, third, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth applications are in print for the first time. Finally, Pushkin's seven facsimiles are attached to this volume: 1) his handwriting in 1815, 2) his handwriting in 1821, 3) a sheet from a notebook containing the first original of Poltava, 4) the same sheet, completely rewritten, 5) a drawing from the last page of the tale: "The Merchant Ostolop", 6) a drawing made by Pushkin during the story "The House in Kolomna", 7) a draft title page for dramas and dramatic passages. These pictures are beautifully done.

Composition

Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky (1828-1889) began his critical activity by presenting his integral theory of art and historical and literary concept. In 1853 he wrote, and in 1855 he defended and published his master's thesis "The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality". In 1855-1856, on the pages of Sovremennik, he published Essays on the Gogol Period of Russian Literature. This essay was supposed to be in two parts, and in it a characterization of the literary movement of the 30-50s was to occupy a significant place. But Chernyshevsky managed to create only the first part, devoted to the history of criticism of the "Gogol period"; in passing arguments, he also touched on the works of art of this period.

In the article “On Sincerity in Criticism” (1854) and some other works, Chernyshevsky outlined his critical code, continuing Belinsky’s “Speech on Criticism”: he ridiculed “evasive” criticism and developed his understanding of “direct”, principled, high-ideological, progressive criticism. Chernyshevsky also acted as a critic of current modern literature. But, having made a number of remarkable successes in this area, among which the greatest was the discovery of L. Tolstoy as a writer, he took up other, no less important economic problems at that time, entrusting the department of criticism in Sovremennik to Dobrolyubov.

Chernyshevsky outlined his materialistic aesthetics as a system, opposing it to idealist systems. Three circumstances compelled him to do this: the internal consistency of his own materialistic and democratic thought, the systematic nature of Belinsky's revived heritage, and the logical consistency of Hegelian aesthetics, on which Chernyshevsky's opponents relied. It was possible to defeat idealism only by creating a concept that could, from a new historical and philosophical point of view, more rationally illuminate all previously posed and emerging new problems.

All Chernyshevsky's theoretical constructions unfold as follows: first, he analyzes the prevailing idealistic ideas about the goal and subject of art, namely the concept of beauty; then he proclaims his thesis "beautiful is life" and analyzes the attacks of the idealists on beauty in reality, and only then, in a certain sequence, positively sets out his theses. At the end of his dissertation, he draws conclusions from what has been said and concisely sets out the essence of the new materialistic doctrine of art.

Chernyshevsky comprehensively analyzed the basic formula of idealistic aesthetics: “The beautiful is the perfect correspondence, the perfect identity of the idea with the image”1. This formula was born in the bosom of idealistic aesthetics, mainly of the Hegelian school, and follows from the following idealistic thesis: the whole world is the embodiment of the absolute idea, the idea in its development goes through a number of stages, the area of spiritual activity is subject to the law of ascent from direct contemplation to pure thinking. According to Hegel, the naive stage of contemplation is art, followed by religion, and the most mature stage of spiritual activity is philosophy. The beautiful is the sphere of art, it is the result of the apparent identity of the idea and the image, their complete coincidence in a separate object. In fact, say the idealists, an idea can never be embodied in a separate object, but the illusion itself ennobles the object so much that it looks beautiful. At the next stages of cognition, the idea leaves a concrete image, and for developed thinking there is not an illusory beauty, but only an authentic truth. For pure thinking, there is no beauty; beauty is even humiliating for it. Pure thinking is an idea adequate to itself, not resorting to the images of base empiricism in order to appear to the world.

Proclaiming “beautiful is life”, Chernyshevsky took life in all the boundlessness of its manifestations, in the meaning of the joy of being (“it is better to live than not to live”). He interpreted life in its social and class manifestations. Chernyshevsky showed that there are different ideas about beauty among the peasants and the masters. For example, the beauty of a rural girl and a secular young lady. He was the first to put forward the class principle of understanding the problem of the beautiful.

Chernyshevsky clearly sympathizes with the ideas of beauty that the naive consciousness of the working peasantry has developed, but supplements them with ideas about the "mind and heart" that are formed in the enlightened consciousness of leaders of the revolutionary democratic trend. As a result of the fusion of these two principles, Chernyshevsky's position on beauty received a materialistic and democratic interpretation. Idealists in their doctrine of the beautiful introduced the categories of the sublime, the comic, the tragic. Chernyshevsky also paid great attention to them. In idealistic aesthetics, the concept of the tragic was combined with the concept of fate. Fate appeared in the form of the existing order of things (which corresponded to the concept of a social order), and the subject or hero, active and strong-willed by nature, violated this order, collided with it, suffered and died. But his work, cleansed of individual limitations, did not disappear; it entered as an integral element into general life.

In all these positions of idealism Chernyshevsky brilliantly revealed the protective tendency inherent in them. He refuted the fatalism of the theory of the tragic fate of the hero, not only as a revolutionary democrat, but also as a dialectician, a consistent realist. He also proceeded from the fact that the tragic is connected with the struggle of the hero and the environment. “Is this struggle always tragic?” Chernyshevsky asked and answered: “Not at all; sometimes tragic, sometimes not tragic, as it happens. There is no fatalistic effect of fate, but there is only a chain of causes and a correlation of forces. If the hero realizes that he is right, then even a hard struggle is not suffering, but pleasure. Such a struggle is only dramatic. And if you take the necessary precautions, then this struggle almost always ends happily. In this statement one senses the optimism of a true revolutionary fighter.

Chernyshevsky rightly pointed out that “one should not limit the sphere of art to one beautiful thing”, that “general interest in life is the content of art”1. Idealists clearly confused the formal beginning of art - the unity of idea and image as a condition for the perfection of a work - with the content of art.

In addition to the task of reproducing reality, art has yet another purpose - to give an "explanation of life", to be a "textbook of life." Such is the intrinsic quality of art itself. The artist cannot, even if he wanted to, refuse to pronounce his judgment on the phenomena depicted: "this sentence is expressed in his work."

The purpose of art is to reproduce reality, to explain it and to judge it. Chernyshevsky not only returned to the ideas of Belinsky, but also significantly enriched materialist aesthetics with the requirements arising from the very essence of art and the specific conditions of literary life in the 1950s and 1960s. Of particular importance was the thesis of a "sentence" on life. This was something new that Chernyshevsky introduced into the problem of the tendentiousness of art.

But there are also simplifications in Chernyshevsky's dissertation. He is right in the most important thing: art is secondary, and reality is primary (“above” art). However, Chernyshevsky's comparison of images of art with living objects is not carried out in the sense in which art is related to life as a "second reality". Chernyshevsky recognizes for art only the right of a medium of information, commentary, "a surrogate for reality." Even the expression "textbook of life", although true in principle, has a narrow meaning: a reference book of life, an abbreviated presentation of it. In those cases where Chernyshevsky speaks of typification, generalization in art, he recognizes the primacy and superiority of the "typification" inherent in elemental life itself, and art leaves only a judgment, a sentence over reality. But this quality generally follows from the ability of a person to judge everything around him. Where is the special form of judgment in art? Chernyshevsky does not speak of bare tendentiousness, but he also does not say that art influences a person through its images and the general tone, the pathos of the work. The correct idea about the objectivity of beauty and the typical is simplified by Chernyshevsky, since he detracts from the importance of typification, revealing in the chaos of accidents what is natural and necessary. He also underestimated the role of the creative imagination, the artistic form in art.

D.A. Shcherbakov

Roman N.G. Chernyshevsky "What to do?" in the assessment of journalism and criticism of the 1860s.

The article is devoted to the analysis of critical and journalistic articles of the 1860s, which reflect the assessment of the novel What Is to Be Done?. The lines of comprehension of the novel that existed at that time and, in general, the reputation of N.G. Chernyshevsky as a writer. The question is raised as to why one of the most widely read and influential novels of this period caused so many negative reviews.

Keywords: N.G. Chernyshevsky, novel "What is to be done?", literary reputation, Russian journalism of the middle of the 19th century.

Publication in 1863 in the journal Sovremennik of the novel What Is to Be Done? N.G. Chernyshevsky became a landmark event. So, E.N. Vodovozova, a contemporary of the events, wrote in her memoirs: “Whoever you didn’t have to visit at that time, there were rumors everywhere about the novel“ What is to be done? ”1.

Chernyshevsky's book was a high-profile event, primarily among the younger generation. According to the memoirs of P.A. Kropotkin, "for the Russian youth of that time, it was a kind of revelation and turned into a program..."2. P.P. Tsitovich argued that in the second half of the 1860s, “a schoolgirl of the 5th or 6th grade would have been considered a fool if she had not familiarized herself with the adventures of Vera Pavlovna”3. And the censor P.I. Shortly after the publication of Chernyshevsky's book, Kapnist wrote to Minister of the Interior P.A. Valuev that the novel What Is to Be Done? “had a great influence even on the external life of some narrow-minded and unsteady in the concepts of morality of people, both in the capitals and in the provinces.<...>There were examples that daughters left their fathers and mothers, wives - husbands. 4.

Contemporaries, including publicists and critics, unanimously recognized the influence of the novel What Is To Be Done? on society in the 1860s. However, there was no such unanimity in the assessments of Chernyshevsky's book. The opinions of his fellow writers were polar. And the polarization of these opinions began immediately after the release of the novel.

The sharpest of the negative reviews that appeared immediately after the publication of the book was, perhaps, the review of F.M. Tolstoy, composer, musical and literary critic. In the newspaper "Northern Bee", hiding under the pseudonym Rostislav, he argued: "What to do?" is "the most ugly work of Russian literature" full of "disgusting filth"5.

Tolstoy, of course, was not alone. Most critics did not like the novel either from a substantive or artistic point of view. So, the poet and publicist A.A. fully agreed with him. Fet. “The paucity of invention, the positive lack of creativity, incessant repetition, the deliberate antics of the most bad form, and all this, the helpless clumsiness of the language, turn the reading of the novel into a difficult, almost unbearable work,” he argued6.

Among the critics of the novel there were those who, recognizing the ideological value of Chernyshevsky's work, nevertheless denied the author of the novel the right to be called a writer. One of the first to formulate such a position was N.S. Leskov in the same "Northern Bee". Leskov's article "Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky in his novel What Is to Be Done?" appeared in the newspaper as an excuse for F.M. Tolstoy. Leskov saw in the novel "a very bold phenomenon, very large-scale and, in a certain respect, very useful." But at the same time he stated: “The novel is strangely written<...>from the side of art below all criticism; he's just ridiculous."

Leskov's like-minded person was, for example, A.I. Herzen. Seeing in the novel "a very remarkable thing", "an amazing commentary on everything that happened in 60-67", recognizing the skill of the author of "What is to be done?" "to raise everyday questions," he at the same time argued that the novel was "vilely written," that there was a lot of "antics" in the text. “Beautiful” “thoughts” and “positions” are “watered” in the novel, according to Herzen, “from the seminary-Petersburg-petty-bourgeois urylnik”8.

Chernyshevsky also had unconditional supporters in literature and journalism. So, the publicist V.S. Kurochkin sharply ridiculed

YES. Shcherbakov

Tolstoy's article in his essay "Insightful Readers". Kurochkin called Tolstoy a "critic" who poured out bile on Chernyshevsky without even reading the novel to the end. The critic quipped:

I would not advise my young wife to read this novel. But since I - alas! - single, then I will advise Mr. Rostislav; as his young wife, do not read the third part of "What to do?" (because it has already been proven that he did not finish the novel), do not read under any circumstances, so as not to be tempted ... by the desire to write a second review worse than the first9.

The group of those who unconditionally accepted the novel included, for example, D.I. Pisarev - with the textbook article "The Thinking Proletariat" ("New Type"), published in 1865 in the journal "Russian Word". Pisarev believed that Chernyshevsky’s novel was “a highly original work and, from whatever point of view you look at it, in any case, extremely remarkable. The merits and demerits of this novel belong to him alone.

Actually, three groups of reviews about the novel: complete rejection, recognition of ideological merits, but denial of the artistic value of the work, full support for the novel and its author - existed in Russian criticism and journalism until the 1917 revolution. And this range of opinions greatly hampered the process of Soviet canonization of Chernyshevsky . The process, which - being a component of Soviet propaganda - implied the complete and unconditional acceptance of the novel What Is To Be Done? as a reference text of Russian realism.

Notes

1 Cited. by: Bogoslovsky N.V. Life of wonderful people. Chernyshevsky. M .: Young Guard, 1955. S. 459.

2 Kropotkin P.A. Ideals and reality in Russian literature. SPb., 1907. S. 306-307.

3 Tsitovich P. What did they do in the novel “What is to be done?”. Odessa, 1879. S. 4-5.

4 Note by censor P.I. Kapnist to the Minister of Internal Affairs P.A. Valuev // Collection of materials on the direction of various branches of Russian literature over the past decade. SPb., 1865. S. 182.

5 See: Rostislav [Tolstoy F.M.] False wisdom of Chernyshevsky's heroes // Northern bee. 1863. No. 138.

6 Fet A.A. An unpublished article about the novel by N.G. Chernyshevsky "What to do?" // Literary heritage. T. 25-26. M., 1936. S. 489.

7 See: Leskov N.S. Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky in his novel What Is to Be Done? // Northern bee. 1863. No. 142 [dated May 31].

8 Herzen A.I. Letters of 1867-1868 // Herzen A.I. Sobr. cit.: In 30 t. M.: AN SSSR, 1963. T. 29. Book. 1. S. 157, 160, 167, 159, 185.

9 Kurochkin V.S. Insightful readers // Iskra. 1863. No. 32. S. 421-429.

10 Pisarev D.I. New type // Russian word. 1865. No. 10. S. 4.

Literary critical activity of Mr. Chernyshevsky. "Real Criticism", its methodology, place in the history of criticism and literature

See also other dictionaries:

N.G. Chernyshevsky