The ideological and aesthetic originality of the work of Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov (1831 - 1895) is primarily determined by the religious and moral foundations of the writer's worldview. Involved in the priestly family, raised in an Orthodox religious environment, with which he was connected by heredity, genetically, Leskov invariably strove for the truth preserved by the Russian paternal faith. The writer ardently advocated for the restoration of "the spirit that befits a society that bears the name of Christ." He declared his religious and moral position directly and unequivocally: "I respect Christianity as a teaching and I know that it contains the salvation of life, and I do not need everything else."
The theme of spiritual transformation, the restoration of the “fallen image” (according to the Christmas motto: “Christ is born before the fallen restore the image”) especially worried the writer throughout his entire career and found vivid expression in such masterpieces as "Cathedrals" (1872), "Imprinted Angel" (1873), "On the edge of the world"(1875), in the cycle "Christmas Stories"(1886), in stories about the righteous.
Leskovskaya story "Unbaptized Pop"(1877) did not attract particularly close attention of domestic literary critics. The work was more often attributed to the genus of Little Russian "landscapes" and "genres", "full of humor or even evil, but cheerful sparkling satire." In fact, what are the episodic, but unusually colorful images of the local deacon - "a lover of choreographic art", who "cheerful feet" "grabbed in front of the guests trepaka", or the unlucky Cossack Kerasenko: he was unsuccessfully trying to keep track of his "fearless autocrat" - a woman.
In foreign Leskoviana, the Italian researcher of Ukrainian origin Zhanna Petrova prepared a translation of The Unbaptized Priest and a preface to it (1993). She managed to establish connections between Leskov's story and the tradition of the Ukrainian folk district.
According to the American researcher Hugh McLane, the Little Russian background of the story is nothing more than camouflage - part of Leskov's method of "literary excuse", "multi-level disguise" wound "around the core of the author's idea." English-speaking scholars Hugh McLane and James Mackle mainly tried to approach the work "through the Protestant spectrum", believing that "The Unbaptized Pop" is a vivid demonstration of Leskov's Protestant views, who, in their opinion, since 1875, "decisively moves towards pro-testantism.
However, one should not exaggerate the writer's attention to the spirit of Western religiosity. On this occasion, Leskov spoke quite definitely in the article "Caricature Ideal" in 1877 - at the same time when the "Unbaptized Pop" was created: "It is not good for us to seek faith in German". The writer made a lot of efforts, speaking with a call for religious tolerance, in order to "dispose the minds and hearts of compatriots to gentleness and respect for the religious freedom of everyone", but he was of the opinion that "it is more original, warmer, more hopeful."
According to the exact word of the researcher, Leskov showed a "brilliant instinct for Orthodoxy", in which faith is "heartened" by love for God and "inexpressible knowledge" received in the spirit. As for Protestantism, “it generally removes the problem and the need for an internal invisible battle with sin, aims a person at external practical activity as the main content of his being in the world.” A significant moment in Leskov's essay "Russian secret marriage"(1878), when an Orthodox priest gives a “sinful” woman hope for God’s forgiveness, reminding that he is not a Catholic priest who could reproach her, and not a Protestant pastor who would be horrified and despair from her sin.
In connection with the objectives of this article, it is important to clarify from what position the writer draws the fate of his heroes, their way of thinking, deeds; how it interprets the essence of the human personality and the universe. “An incredible event”, “a legendary event” - as the author defined his story in the subtitle - also has a paradoxical name - “Unbaptized pop”. It is no coincidence that Andrei Nikolaevich Leskov, the writer's son, defined this title as surprisingly "bold". At a superficial dogmatic view, it may seem that the “anti-baptismal motive”, the rejection of church sacraments, is declared here. This is the opinion of Hugh McLane.
However, such a subjective interpretation is opposed by the objective truth of the entire artistic and semantic content of the work, which continues the development of the theme stated by Leskov earlier in the stories. "On the edge of the world"(1875) and "The Sovereign Court"(1877), - the theme of the need for baptism is not formal (“In Christ we are baptized, but we are not clothed”), but spiritual, entrusted to God's will.
The hidden meaning of Orthodoxy is determined not only by the catechism. It is also "a way of life, worldview and worldview of the people." It is in this non-dogmatic sense that Leskov considers “a real, albeit improbable event”, which has received “among the people the character of a completely finished legend;<...>and to trace how a legend is formed is no less interesting than to penetrate "how history is made."
Thus, aesthetically and conceptually, Leskov combines reality and legend, which are melted into an eternally new reality of the historical and superhistorical, like the "fullness of times" commanded in the Gospel.
A similar sacred time with unusual forms of flow is inherent in the poetics of Gogol's "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" and, in particular, in the Christmas masterpiece "Christmas Eve". The Christian holiday is shown as a peculiar state of the whole world. The Little Russian village, where Christmas time is celebrated, at night around Christmas becomes, as it were, the center of the whole wide world: "in almost all the world, and on the other side of Dikanka, and on this side of Dikanka."
Gogol cannot be adequately understood outside the church tradition, the patristic heritage, and Russian spirituality in general. Leskov is one of the Russian classics closest to Gogol in spirit. According to his confession, he recognized Gogol as a "kindred soul." Gogol's artistic heritage was a living inspirational landmark for Leskov, and in the story "The Unbaptized Pop" this tradition is quite distinguishable - not only and not so much in recreating the Little Russian flavor, but in understanding the individual and the universe through the New Testament prism. Both Gogol and Leskov never parted with the Gospel. “You can’t invent anything higher than what is already in the Gospel,” said Gogol. Leskov was in solidarity with this idea and developed it: "The Gospel contains everything, even that which is not." “The only way out of society from the current situation is the Gospel”, - Gogol prophetically asserted, calling for the renewal of the entire system of life on the basis of Christianity. "A well-read Gospel" helped, according to Leskovsky, to finally understand "where the truth is."
The core of the artistic understanding of the world in the story is the New Testament, in which, according to Leskov, “the deepest meaning of life". The New Testament concept determined the leading principle in the formation of the Christian spatio-temporal organization of the story, which is based on events dating back to the gospel. Among them, the Orthodox holidays of Christmas, Epiphany, Resurrection, Transfiguration, Assumption are especially noted. The gospel context is not only given, but also implied in the super-fable reality of the work.
The intricate story of the incidental case of the “unbaptized priest” unfolds slowly under Leskov’s pen, like a scroll of an ancient chronicler, but in the end the story takes on “the character of an entertaining legend of recent origin.”
The life of the Little Russian village of Paripsy (the name is perhaps a collective one: it is also often found in modern Ukrainian toponymy) appears not as a closed isolated space, but as a special state of the universe, where battles between Angels and demons unfold in the hearts of people from eternity, between good and evil.
The first fifteen chapters of the story are built according to all the canons of the Christmas genre with its indispensable archetypes of a miracle, salvation, gift. The birth of a baby, snow and blizzard confusion, a guiding star, "the laughter and cry of Christmas" - these and other Christmas motives and images, dating back to the gospel events, are present in Leskov's story.
In the birth of the boy Savva to elderly childless parents, the commanded in the Gospel “hope beyond hope” is revealed. The Lord does not allow a believer to despair: even in the most hopeless circumstances, there is hope that the world will be transformed by God's grace. So, Abraham "believed beyond hope with hope, through which he became the father of many nations<...>And, being not exhausted in faith, he did not think that his body, almost a hundred years old, was already dead, and Sarah's womb was dead" (Rom. 4: 18, 19), "Therefore, it was reckoned to him as righteousness. And yet, not in relation to him alone, it is written what was imputed to him, but also in relation to us ”(Rom. 4: 22-24). This Christian universality - beyond temporal and spatial boundaries - is realized in Leskov's narrative about the life of a Little Russian village.
The old rich Cossack, nicknamed Dukach - Savva's father - was not distinguished by righteousness at all. On the contrary, his nickname meant "a heavy, grumpy and impudent man", who was not loved and feared. Moreover, his negative psychological portrait is complemented by another unattractive feature - exorbitant pride - according to patristic teaching, the mother of all vices, which comes from demonic instigation. With one expressive stroke, the author emphasizes that Dukach is almost possessed by dark forces: “when they met with him, they denied it”, “he, being a very smart person by nature, lost his temper and all his mind and rushed at people like a possessed one.”
In turn, the villagers wish only evil to the formidable Dukach. Thus, everyone is in a vicious and vain circle of mutual hostility: “they thought that the sky, only due to an incomprehensible omission, would sting long ago to smash the grumpy Cossack to smithereens so that not even his giblets were left, and anyone who could, as best he could, would willingly try to correct this is an omission of Providence.
However, the miracle of God's Providence is not subject to human superstition and takes place in its own way. God gives Dukach a son. The circumstances of the birth of a boy are congenial to the atmosphere of Christmas: “on one frosty December night<...>in the sacred pangs of childbirth, a child appeared. The new tenant of this world was a boy.” His appearance: “unusually clean and beautiful, with a black head and large blue eyes” - refers to the image of the Divine Infant - the Savior who came to earth, “for He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1: 21).
In Paripsy, they did not yet know that the newborn was sent into the world with a special mission: he would become a priest of their village; preaching the New Testament and an example of a good life will turn people away from evil, enlighten their minds and hearts, and turn them to God. However, in their inert vanity, people who live by passions are unable to foresee God's Providence. Even before the birth of the baby, who later became their beloved “good priest Savva”, the villagers hated him, believing that “it would be a child of the Antichrist”, “bestial deformity”. The midwife, Kerasivna, who "swearing that the child had neither horns nor a tail, was spat upon and wanted to be beaten." Also, no one wanted to baptize the son of the evil Dukach, “but the child still remained pretty, pretty, and besides, surprisingly meek: he breathed slowly, but he was ashamed to scream.”
Thus, being appears in a complex interweaving of good and evil, faith and superstition, Christian and semi-pagan ideas. However, Leskov never called for turning away from reality in the name of personal salvation. The writer was aware that being is good, and just like the Divine image in man, given to him in gift And exercise, being is not just given by the Creator, but given as co-creation: "Peace I leave you, My peace I give you"(John 14:27), says Christ, commanding the "crown of creation" to create itself. It is necessary for a person to begin this process of transformation, creation with himself.
The circumstances of the hero's baptism are providential. Since none of the respected people in the village agreed to baptize Dukachonok, the godparents of the future priest again, paradoxically, were people who seemed to be unworthy: one with outward ugliness - the lopsided "wry-necked" Agap - Dukach's nephew; the other - with a bad reputation: the midwife Kerasivna, who "was the most undoubted witch."
However, Kerasivna is not at all like the Solokha of Gogol's Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, although the jealous Cossack Kerasenko suspects his wife of intentions at times to "fly into the chimney." Her name is emphatically Christian - Christina.
The story of Christi is an independent curious short story within the main Christmas story about the circumstances of the birth and baptism of the baby Savva. Under Christmas circumstances, “in winter, in the evening, on holidays, when no Cossack, even the most jealous one, can’t sit at home,” Kerasivna managed to cunningly spend her husband with her boyfriend, a nobleman (it’s not for nothing that he is nicknamed “Rogachev nobleman”, that is, he instructs husbands "horns"). In a figurative and literal sense, the lovers planted a pig on the unlucky Cossack - a Christmas "drow", and this strengthened for Christ "such a witch's glory that from now on everyone was afraid to see Kerasivna in their house, and not just to call her godmother."
The gospel antinomy about the "first" and "the last" comes true: "the last will be the first, and the first - the last." It was these "last" people that the arrogant Dukach was forced to invite to his godfather.
On a cold December day, immediately after the departure of the godparents with the baby to the large village of Pereguda (later known to readers from Leskov’s “farewell” story “Hare Remise”), a fierce snow storm broke out. The motif of Christmas snow is a stable attribute of the poetics of Christmas literature. In this context, it acquires an additional metaphysical meaning: as if evil forces are gathering around a child, to whom everyone and without any reason wished evil in advance: “The sky from above was covered with lead; snowy dust was blowing from below, and a fierce blizzard began to blow. In metaphorical figurativeness, this is the embodiment of dark passions and evil thoughts that erupted around the event of baptism: "All the people who wished harm to Dukachev's child, seeing this, piously crossed themselves and felt satisfied." Such sanctimonious-ostentatious piety, based on superstition, is equivalent to the diabolical power "from the evil one."
The patristic heritage holds the idea that God created man and everything that surrounds him in such a way that some actions correspond to human dignity and the good order of the world, others contradict. Man was endowed with the ability to know the good, choose it and act morally. Yielding to evil thoughts, the villagers, as it were, provoked, released the dark forces, which were played out in order to prevent the event of baptism. It is no coincidence that Leskov defines the blizzard confusion as “hell”, creating a truly infernal picture: “there was a real hell in the yard; the storm was raging violently, and it was impossible to catch one's breath in the continuous mass of snow, which shook and blew. If such was the case near dwellings, in a lull, then what was to happen in the open steppe, in which all this horror was to catch the godfathers and the child? If this is so unbearable for an adult, how much did it take to strangle a child with this? The questions were rhetorical, and, it would seem, the fate of the baby was a foregone conclusion. However, events develop according to the non-rational laws of Christmastide salvation by the miracle of God's Providence.
The child is saved on Kerasivna's chest, under a warm hare coat, "covered with that blue nanke." It is deeply symbolic that this fur coat is blue - heavenly - the color that marks God's intercession. Moreover, the baby was saved, like Christ's "in the bosom." This Orthodox hopeful image of the “Russian God, Who creates for Himself a monastery “in the bosom””, was formed by Leskov in the story “At the End of the World” - in the confession of the righteous father Kiriak, who, like the heroes of the “Unbaptized priest”, had to go through through the cold and impenetrable darkness of a snowstorm.
The peculiarity of Christmas time is “a carnival violation of the usual order of the world, a return to the original chaos so that from this confusion, as it were, a harmonious cosmos is born again, the act of creating the world is “repeated”. Metelnaya confusion and chaos in the symbolism of Christmas is inevitably transformed into the harmony of God's world order.
However, harmony is achieved only on the paths of transfiguration of fallen human nature. So, around Dukach, who is forced to admit that he has never done good to anyone, the terrifying attributes of death are gathering. Unable to find his son, he falls into terrible snowdrifts and sits for a long time in this snowy dungeon in the dusk of a snowstorm. As if the sins of his whole unrighteous life, Dukach sees only a series of "some kind of long, very long ghosts, which seemed to dance above his head and poured snow on him."
The episode of the hero's wanderings in the blizzard darkness should be interpreted in a Christian metasemantic context. The image of the cross is especially significant. Wandering in the darkness to the cemetery, Dukach stumbles upon a cross, then another, then a third. The Lord, as it were, makes the hero clearly understand that he will not escape his cross. But the "burden of the cross" is not only a burden and burden. This is the path to salvation.
At the same time, his son was being baptized in a snowstorm: the godparents, covered in a snowstorm, inscribed on the child’s forehead with melted snow water the symbol of the cross - “in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” A new Christian has been born. Blood father and son united spiritually. Both are saved from the snowy "hell" by the cross of the Heavenly Father.
Old Dukach is unaware of this for the time being. He is spiritually blind. The lost soul, entangled in the darkness for a long time, is looking for a way, its way to the light. The hero of the story still hopes to get out, having seen some kind of faint flicker through the snowstorm. However, this deceptive earthly wandering light finally knocks him off the path of life: Dukach falls into someone's grave and loses consciousness.
It was necessary to go through this test in order for the world to be transformed from chaos to a harmonious cosmos. Waking up, the hero saw the world, reborn, renewed: “It is completely quiet around him, and above him the sky turns blue and there is a star.” In the New Testament context, the Bethlehem guiding star showed the Magi the way to the Christ Child. So Dukach found his son. For the old sinner, the heavenly light of truth gradually began to open: “the storm noticeably subsided, and the sky began to shine.”
At the same time, Leskov rightly shows that people who are not firm in faith are not able to free themselves from semi-pagan ideas. The dukach, who accidentally fell into someone's grave, is persuaded by his wife to make a sacrifice to God - to kill at least a sheep or a hare in order to protect himself from the consequences of an unkind sign. There is a profanation, as in a distorted mirror, the performance of the Christian rite in a pagan way: the “necessary” sacrifice is the accidental murder of the unrequited orphan Agap, who was sent to baptize the child and swept up in snow. Only his fur hat made of smushki - lamb's wool, which Dukach mistook for a hare, stuck out of the snowdrift. So, along with the image of the downtrodden Agap, the Christmas motif of an orphan child enters the narrative, as well as a peculiar phenomenon of Christmas literature, called “the laughter and crying of Christmas”. Agap in a sheep's hat unwittingly played the role of a traditional sacrificial animal, an uncomplaining "lamb of God" given to the slaughter.
The problem of understanding the horror of sin and deep repentance is posed very sharply in the story. Repentance is considered "the door that brings a person out of darkness and into the light", into a new life.
According to the New Testament, life is constantly being renewed and changed, although for a person this may be unexpected and unpredictable. So, we see a completely new Dukach, a new Kerasivna, not at all like the former valiant Cossack girl, but quiet, humble; internally renewed villagers. Everything that happened for Dukach served as a “terrible lesson”, “and Dukach took it perfectly. Having served his formal repentance, after five years of absence from home, he came to Paripsi as a very kind old man, confessed his pride to everyone, asked for forgiveness from everyone and again went to the monastery where he repented by court decision.
Savva's mother vowed to dedicate her son to God, and the child "grew up under the roof of God and knew that no one would take him from His hands." In church service, Father Savva is a real Orthodox priest, wise and sympathetic to his parishioners, and not a conductor of Protestant ideas in the Russian church (as he is seen by English-speaking researchers). Leskov emphasizes: “around his village there was a shtund<христианское движение, берущее начало в протестантизме немецких эмигрантов на Украине. А.Н.-C.>, and in his small church is still full of people ... ". The way of thinking of Lesk's heroes is determined by the traditions of the Orthodox worldview, and this determines the ideological and artistic originality of the story.
As folk wisdom says: "What is the pop - such is the arrival." Even when the secret of Savva’s baptism was revealed and a terrible commotion arose among the parishioners: if their priest is not baptized, whether marriages, christenings, communions are valid - all the sacraments performed by him, nevertheless, the Cossacks “do not want another priest while their good Savva is alive” . The bishop resolves the confusion: even though the rite of baptism was not completed in its entire “form”, however, the godparents “with the melting water of that cloud wrote a cross on the baby’s face in the name of the Holy Trinity. What else do you need?<...>And you, lads, be without a doubt: your priest Savva, which is good for you, is good for me, and is pleasing to God.
One should agree with the position of the Italian scholar Piero Cazzola that Savva belongs to the Leskian type of righteous clergy along with Archpriest Saveliy Tuberozov in The Cathedrals and Archbishop Nil in the story At the End of the World.
The most important for Leskov is the idea of life-creation, life-building in a harmonious synthesis of the secular and the sacred. In the Christian model of the world, a person is not in the power of a pagan "blind chance" or an ancient "fatum", but in the power of Divine Providence. The writer constantly turned his gaze to faith, the New Testament: Keep the light imate
F.M. Dostoevsky and N.S. Leskov
Speaking about the Russian classic writers F.M. Dostoevsky and N.S. Leskov in this capacity, I would immediately like to emphasize that they were not just eyewitnesses of the evangelical awakening in St. Petersburg, but, moreover, its chroniclers and critics. In their writings, they not only captured the events of interest to us, but also gave them their assessment.
At the same time, their written works (articles, diaries, letters), which are a treasure trove of primary material, are little known and insufficiently studied by modern church historians. Therefore, the study of their rich heritage will help in restoring a more complete and detailed historical picture of the evangelical movement in St. Petersburg.
It is noteworthy that the topic is of interest not only to church historians, but also to secular literary critics, which significantly expands the source base, allows you to look at the issue from different angles and come to more informed conclusions.
This abstract aims to give short review the topic raised, to introduce some of the results obtained and to outline ways for further research.
Literary circles and Lord Redstock
It was so pleasing to God that from the very beginning the missionary activity of the English preacher Lord Redstock in St. Petersburg became widely known thanks to publications in the periodical press. The topic was covered by many newspapers and magazines, especially actively by such publications as "Citizen", "Voice", "Church and Public Bulletin", "Russian World", "Pravoslavnoe Obozreniye", "New Time", "Modernity", "Church Bulletin". ”, “News and Exchange Newspaper” and others.
Lord Redstock
The writer Leskov believed that the press did more to make Redstock famous than his followers, who, according to his own testimony, "admired him secretly" (Leskov, N.S. Velikosvetsky split, pp. 2-3). This statement by Leskov can be disputed, but there is no doubt that the topic turned out to be of interest to many writers and writers.
Among those who wrote about Redstock were: Prince V.P. Meshchersky, priest I.S. Bellustin, Count L.N. Tolstoy, rector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy John Yanyshev, Bishop Theophan the Recluse, historian and publicist A.S. Prugavin, statesmen K.P. Pobedonostsev, F. G. Turner and A. A. Polovtsov.
Most of all, N.S. Leskov wrote about him for many years. In addition to him, it is necessary to single out F.M. Dostoevsky, who was the first to draw public attention to the figure of Redstock and initiated a discussion about him in the press.
All writers in their attitude towards Redstock were divided into two camps: critics and sympathizers. Dostoevsky belonged to the first camp, Leskov, with some reservations, to the second.
Julia Denisovna Zasetskaya
Yu.D. played a key role in introducing our classics to Lord Redstock. Zasetskaya is a writer, translator, evangelist, philanthropist and friend of Dostoevsky and Leskov, with whom she regularly met and corresponded. From the letters it is clear that these relations were valued mutually. Zasetskaya repeatedly expounded to them the essence of the evangelical dogma and the reasons that prompted her to leave Orthodoxy, tried to convince her opponents of the truth of the evangelical faith. The writers, paying tribute to the mind and personal qualities of the woman, quite actively argued with her.
Julia with her brother
Zasetskaya's acquaintance with Lord Redstock took place in England and produced a spiritual upheaval in her. She became so close to the Lord's family that she later wrote to N.S. Leskov: “I spent my days in their family, including his recently deceased mother and his sister, I visited them as if I were at home” (Leskov A., p. 339).
Returning to Russia, Zasetskaya invested a significant amount of her money in the establishment and opening of the first overnight shelter for the homeless in St. Petersburg.
Here is what Anna Grigorievna Dostoevskaya, the writer's wife, wrote:
“By 1873, Fyodor Mikhailovich met Yulia Denisovna Zasetskaya, the daughter of the partisan Denis Davydov. She had just founded at that time the first doss house in St. Petersburg (according to the 2nd company of the Izmailovsky Regiment) and, through the secretary of the editorial board of Grazhdanin, invited Fyodor Mikhailovich on the appointed day to inspect the shelter she had arranged for the homeless. Yu. D. Zasetskaya was a Redstockist, and Fyodor Mikhailovich, at her invitation, was present several times at the spiritual conversations of Lord Redstock and other prominent preachers of this doctrine. Fyodor Mikhailovich greatly appreciated the mind and extraordinary kindness of Yu. D. Zasetskaya, often visited her and corresponded with her ”(Dostoevskaya A. G., p. 278).
Leskov showed no less disposition towards Yulia Denisovna, writing: “I loved and respected this kind lady, like the late Dostoevsky” (Leskov N.S. New Testament Jews, p. 77).
In 1881, Zasetskaya left Russia forever for Paris, where she lived for a short time and died on December 27, 1882.
Dostoevsky's first publication on Redstock
In 1873-1874, Dostoevsky was the editor-publisher of the weekly magazine Grazhdanin. On February 24, 1874, he received a note from the then secretary of the editorial office of this journal, V. F. Putsykovich, with the words: “On behalf of Yu. D. Zasetskaya, I am forwarding to you (...) the ticket attached to this.” It was the writer's invitation to Lord Redstock's sermon (Chronicle of the life and work of F. M. Dostoevsky, pp. 459-460).
The next day, The Citizen was the first to introduce the Redstock figure to the public. From a lengthy editorial titled "The New Apostle in the St. Petersburg High Society" here is just a small quote:
“The venerable lord arrived in Petersburg the other day. On the next day, the whole big world started up. Ten and twenty invitations a day are received by Lord Redstock from ladies of high society to come and talk about Christ. He speaks in an American kirk - all Russian ladies come there and listen to a sermon in English; conversations are held in private homes; everyone is eager to go there, everyone is eager to know Christ from the lips of Lord Redstock! (…) He speaks well. The ladies listen in rapt awe; their appearance is reminiscent of the pagans of the time of the Apostle Paul, with burning eyes, riveted to the preacher's face, and for the first time recognizing Christ's name and His teaching! And after such a sermon, streams of tears flow from the eyes of these high society princesses and countesses; they thank Lord Redstock for revealing Christ to them” (Citizen, No. 8, 02/25/1874, p.217-218).
According to most literary critics, this article, signed with the pseudonym "N.", was written by the owner of the journal, Prince V. Meshchersky. However, in our opinion, given Dostoevsky's visit to the Redstock conversation and his status as editor-publisher, one cannot rule out at least his co-authorship.
This article, critical of Redstock, provoked controversy in two opposing letters in the next issue of The Citizen. The first letter was signed: "Princess D-ya (mother of five children)", under the second: "One of the listeners of the conversations." The “Listener” (most likely Zasetskaya) cleverly defended Redstock.
The editorial response placed under her letter, entitled “Here is our answer to an anonymous person”, according to the opinion accepted in academic circles, belongs to Dostoevsky’s pen, and this is what the writer saw:
“A beautiful hall, well furnished, with an elegant audience, where (...) I heard him (Redstock); he is not very eloquent, makes rather gross mistakes and knows the human heart rather poorly (namely, in the topic of faith and good deeds). This is the gentleman who announces that he is bringing us "precious liquid"; but at the same time he insists that it must be carried without a glass, and of course he would like to break the glass. He rejects forms, he even composes prayers himself”; (...) he “spoke to Mrs. Zas(ets) in the hall, where there were up to 100 invited according to printed notes” (Dostoevsky F.M. PSS in 30 vols., L., 1990, vol. 30, book 2, pp. 22-24, 80-83).
This article ended with:
“No, Mesdames, for you, in your great light, one excellent word, a name, has been invented for denunciation and edification. It was you who was called: "the priestless high society." You can't think of a better one. N." (Citizen, No. 9, 03/04/1874, p. 247-248).
Ten days later, the Russkiy Mir newspaper published the Diary of Merkul Praottsev, written by Leskov, containing a response to this article. Leskov describes the visit of two cousins, listeners of Lord Redstock's sermon, who were offended by this speech by Dostoevsky: “He called us “secular priestlessness”. This is impolite, this is rude” (Russkiy Mir, No. 70, 03/14/1874).
Leskov, who at that time had a painful polemic with Dostoevsky, writes in the heat of the moment:
“Dostoevsky offended them in The Citizen and called them “secular priestlessness”. What to do? Sorry. He did not realize that people baptized in the church and performing its sacraments and rites cannot be called priestless. This is chronic with him: whenever he talks about anything related to religion, he will certainly always speak out in such a way that all that remains is to pray for him: “Father, let him go!” ”(Chronicle of the life and work of F.M. Dostoevsky V.2, St. Petersburg, 1999, p.466).
Dostoevsky on Redstock and Pashkov
Particularly important for understanding Dostoevsky's position is the chapter "Lord Redstock" from the "Diary of a Writer" for March 1876. Learning about the new arrival of an English preacher in the capital, Dostoevsky writes:
"I happened to him then ( approx. ed.- in 1874) to hear in one “hall”, at a sermon, and, I remember, I did not find anything special in him: he spoke neither especially intelligently nor especially boringly. Meanwhile, he works wonders on the hearts of people; cling to him; many are amazed: they are looking for the poor in order to do good to them as soon as possible, and almost want to give away their property. (…) He makes extraordinary conversions and arouses magnanimous feelings in the hearts of his followers. However, it should be so: if he is really sincere and preaches a new faith, then, of course, he is possessed by all the spirit and fervor of the founder of the sect. I repeat, here is our deplorable isolation, our ignorance of the people, our break with nationality, and at the head of everything is a weak, insignificant concept of Orthodoxy ”(Dostoevsky F.M. Writer’s Diary, pp. 189-190).
V.A. Pashkov
On Dostoevsky's attitude towards Redstock's successor, Colonel V.A. We learn Pashkova from the writer's response to two articles about the Pashkovites, as the Redstockists began to be called. These articles were published one after another in the Novoye Vremya newspaper on May 11 and 13, 1880. The short text of the second note is given in full:
“In the“ Church (ram). Vestn(ike)." an exposition of the "doctrine" of the famous Mr. Pashkov is given according to his letters to o.I. Yanyshev. Reporting in these letters that he "has no theological knowledge whatsoever," but acts on inspiration, Mr. Pashkov says among other things: The Lord has appointed me to serve Him - to the service to which I have been surrendering myself with joy for nearly five years now; it consists in testifying to people about Him, about His boundless love, which He daily allows to experience. And in our opinion, Mr. Pashkov is doing well.”
This note, sympathetic to Pashkov's sermon, evoked a painful reaction from Dostoevsky. The writer immediately wrote to the publisher of the newspaper A.S. Suvorin:
“May 14, 1880. Staraya Russa. Dear Alexei Sergeevich, thank you for your kind letter. (...) Why are you praising Pashkov and why did you write (I just read in the issue of May 13) that Pashkov does well what he preaches? And who is this clergyman who, three days ago, published an article in your defense in defense of the Pashkovites. This article is ugly. Please excuse this frankness. It is precisely for this reason that I am annoyed that all this appears in Novoye Vremya, the newspaper that I love. Sincerely respecting you, F. Dostoevsky ”(Dostoevsky F.M. PSS in 30 vols.; vol. 30, kn. 1, p. 336).
So, on the one hand, Dostoevsky recognized the success of Redstock, on the other hand, he did not sympathize with either Redstock or his successor Pashkov, believing that the success of their preaching was due only to ignorance of Orthodoxy and the separation of part of the high society from it.
The writer had a better opinion about the simple Russian people. In his last "Diary of a Writer" (1880, August), Dostoevsky repeats an important thought for himself:
“I affirm that our people have been enlightened for a long time, having accepted Christ and His teachings into their essence. They will tell me: he does not know the teachings of Christ, and they do not preach to him, but this objection is empty: he knows everything, everything that needs to be known, although he will not pass the exam from the catechism.
The idealization of the people and Orthodoxy was the idea of the writer's fix. However, he has statements that evangelical Christians will willingly share with him. For example, Dostoevsky, through the mouth of the elder Zosima, says:
“On earth, we truly seem to be wandering, and if there were no precious image of Christ before us, then we would perish and get completely lost, like the human race before the flood.”
Isn't the writer right when he asserts that only the Lord restrains the multiplication of evil in the world, and only the image of Christ can lead humanity out of a state of spiritual impasse, similar to the state of people before Noah's flood?!
Nikolai Semenovich Leskov
Of the Russian writers, N.S. wrote most of all about Redstock and the results of his preaching. Leskov. However, as we have already seen, Leskov's attention to this topic arose not without the participation of Dostoevsky and the journal Grazhdanin edited by him.
Then, after Dostoevsky's departure from the post of editor in April 1874, this journal in 1875-1876 made Lord Redstock a constant target of its criticism. Scandalous publications belonged to the pen of Prince V.P. Meshchersky.
The apotheosis of absurdity, almost a libel, turned out to be his lengthy novel The Lord Apostle in the Petersburg High Society (Citizen, No. 17-29, 31-43, 1875), in which the Lord Apostle Hitchik (read: Redstock) appeared a swindler and lustful bon vivant, skillfully disguising himself under the guise of religiosity and virtue and preaching that “sinning is not at all as scary as it seems” (Ipatova, pp. 417-418).
The frank slander outraged even Dostoevsky: “Well, what Prince Meshchersky wrote in his Lord Apostle, it’s horror,” he wrote to his wife on June 15, 1875. Leskov spoke no less sharply about Meshchersky in a letter to I.S. Aksakov in March 1875: “He writes, writes, and vulgarizes everything he doesn’t undertake” (Unpublished Leskov, v. 2, p. 216).
In addition, Leskov wrote, for three winters the magazine Grazhdanin zealously tracked down where Redstock addressed, and everywhere sent him “sharp reproaches for seducing our high society people from Orthodoxy into their own special, Redstock schism or heresy; but about this heresy itself, about its essence and tasks, this observational publication did not reveal anything ”(Leskov N.S. Velikosvetsky schism, pp. 3-4). Thus, the caricature of Lord Redstock, deliberately distorted by Meshchersky, who was not at all a frivolous Don Juan, and at the same time the lack of objective information about the lord and the essence of his faith, forced Leskov to undertake a serious study of the topic.
There was also a personal reason. By this time, the writer's disappointment in Orthodoxy was fully revealed, in which he was outraged by many things: stagnation, bureaucracy, hypocrisy, lack of teaching, "self-interest and stupidity" (Dunaev, pp. 424, 456). And he began to look for his own reading of the Gospel, which would satisfy him, and therefore carefully observed the life of the Old Believers and evangelical believers.
Redstock's personality interested him in particular. In June 1876, Leskov entered into correspondence with Zasetskaya, asking her to provide as much information as possible about the lord. She readily responds. This is facilitated by the fact that Leskov, together with his teenage son Andrei, is at that time in Pikruki (near Vyborg) at Zasetskaya’s dacha, who friendly invited and arranged the writer’s summer vacation (Leskov N.S. Collected Works. Vol. XI, M. , 1958, p. 815).
“Your telegram made me very happy, kind Nikolai Semenovich! I did not understand anything, except that you would not offer me anything but good. (...) Not only do I find it difficult to write in detail about all the views of R / edsto / ka, but I cannot fully understand for myself whether I have the right to do so, since much has been said to me, but not to the public. I spent my days in their family, including his recently deceased mother and his sister, I visited them as if I were at home, often touched on issues that he never talks about, and it happened that he would say to me: you understand, I’m telling you this , others may misinterpret my thoughts. - Judge for yourself. However, here's what I'll do. I will write you everything, like a letter, and what seems to me dangerous for him and indelicate on my part, I will mark with a cross ... "
However, in the midst of the work, the writer was no longer able to reckon with any restrictive conventions and “crosses” of Zasetskaya. In a creative hobby, a temperamental publicist thinks of one thing: to give brighter pictures, juicy dialogues, colorful images, even if a little caricatured, but well remembered and impressive ”(Leskov A., p. 339).
In September, the journal Pravoslavnoye Obozreniye began publishing Leskov's essay "The Great Schism: Lord Redstock and His Followers."
In this essay, the writer creates a visible picture of the evangelical movement, which has absorbed many representatives high society who longed for the true Christian life. Finding nothing in the soulless formalism and boredom of the state church, these God-seeking souls found themselves in the position of sheep without a shepherd. It turned out to be easier for them to turn to God through a teacher of faith from England than to satisfy their spiritual thirst in communion with Orthodox pastors. And here is the conclusion of the writer: disillusioned with their own clergy, faced only with hypocrisy, these kind and well-intentioned Russian people found in the Protestant parish life an example and guidance that they wanted to introduce into the Russian church (Leskov, Mirror of Life, pp. 113-115).
The ending of the essay is very important, where Leskov asks the question: is the religious movement that has begun a split? No, the writer is convinced. - So far, this is just a disagreement with the Orthodox Church. Nothing has been formed yet. Redstockists stand up for the renewal of the church, for true Orthodoxy.
But at the same time, the writer sees the danger that the Redstockists' need for "living teaching in churches and direct participation in church parish activities" may not come true, which will alienate them from the church. Leskov fears, and fears not in vain, that the imperviousness of the clergy to the spiritual awakening that the Redstockists wanted to bring into parish life will sooner or later lead to a schism. “Only it will not be Lord Redstock and his admirers who are to blame for this, but too long a delay in the fulfillment of these good and just desires,” the writer concludes (Ibid., pp. 119-121).
In other words, Leskov foresaw that the Orthodox Church might not be ready to take spiritual awakening under its wing and allow the laity to preach the Gospel, gospel readings from home, acts of mercy, and other forms of social service. In Lutheranism, a similar form of renewal of church life through the activity of the laity has been known since the 17th century and has received the name of pietism. Despite historical tensions and difficulties between pastors and flocks, pietism fit within the framework of Lutheranism and did not lead to painful schisms there.
So, we see that Leskov foresaw a danger to the church, and a careful reading of his book by the bishops could have saved the situation, but this did not happen. Church wineskins turned out to be shabby, and the new wine of spiritual awakening broke through them...
Two-thirds of the essay "The Great Schism" was devoted to Redstock's biography, his theological views, the manner of expounding the Scriptures, and the reasons for the success of his sermon in Russian society. The complex image of the English preacher turned out to be open not only to praise, but also to criticism. Moreover, in some places the writer ridiculed his hero.
Friends and sincere followers of Redstock were outraged. Zasetskaya is killed: she is guilty of reckless betrayal of the one whom she so honors and appreciates! She is comforted by the fact that she is nothing more than a victim of writer's treachery. It doesn't soften her remorse. Depressed, she writes:
"Nikolai Semenovich!
The gospel teaches us to repay good for evil and to forgive offenses. I won't blame you...
Our Teacher, the Son of God, called the world Satan and a lunatic - what should His followers expect? If someone does not know you, but judges both of you by your writings, it is enough to be convinced that: "you are from the world and speak the world's way, and the world listens to you." Is it any wonder that you ridicule those who are not at all of the world, and those that are still beyond your reach.
Leskov, justifying himself, refers to the wide approval of his "essay" by the press, for which he receives, as it were, a final absolution:
“Nikolai Semenovich, I received your postscript and a clipping from a magazine. But I can assure you that I do not recognize magazine opinions as authority and allow myself to have personal views. I completely agree that you could describe a thousand times worse than a person whom I place morally higher than all the people I know. Didn't Meshchersky describe him as the last scoundrel? When the goal of a book is to amuse the public, and above all, to make the book a success at all costs, writers probably sacrifice everything without regret: the friendship, the opinion, and the trust of humble individuals like me. I am to blame for imagining that you have a certain feeling of friendship for me, which will not allow you to ridicule (and still choose me as an instrument for this) a person whom I have unlimited respect for. From an excess of imagination, but I am foolishly gullible.
You can be congratulated: your goal has been fully achieved. I am not at all angry with you, I was mistaken, and this consciousness destroys me for a while in my own eyes.
I will end again with the words that I once wrote to you: “You are from the world and speak worldly, and the world listens to you.”
God help you see in time…” (Leskov A., p.340-341).
True, not all Redstockists were outraged by Leskov's book. Bobrinsky, Turner, and even Redstock himself took it favorably (Leskov N.S. Sobr. soch., v. 10, 1958, p. 457). There is evidence that Redstock not only was not offended, but even extremely fond of this book (Shlyapkin I.A., p. 213).
Rapprochement of Leskov with Redstockists
Feeling guilty and cherishing his friendship with Zasetskaya, and also wanting to better understand Redstock and his followers, Leskov enters into closer relations with the Redstockists, visits their homes, listens to the sermons of Redstock and Pashkov. The writer's interest in the English preacher reaches its maximum, despite the fact that The Great Schism has already been published. In the winter of 1877-78, according to his own testimony, he “took a full course in the science of the lord” (Leskov N.S. Miracles and Signs / / TsOV, No. 28, p. 5).
By the spring of 1878, Leskov's views on Redstock were undergoing significant changes. He openly admits that his criticism of the English preacher was in the past hasty and in many ways wrong, and new literary portrait on the pages of the "Church and Public Bulletin" was issued by Leskov in a much more favorable light (Leskov N.S. Miracles and Signs / / TsOV, No. 40, 04/02/1878, p. 3-5).
In the winter of 1878-79, Leskov draws closer and becomes a regular visitor to the evenings of the Peiker family (Leskov A., p. 341). Mother Maria Grigorievna and daughter Alexandra Ivanovna published the journal "Russian Worker", which Leskov had previously, in 1876, subjected to serious criticism, partly fair (Leskov N.S. Sentimental piety). Now he becomes their consultant.
In 1879, Leskov's help was expressed in editing a number of issues of the Russian Worker, which included several of his articles. He later published them separately under the title A Collection of Fatherly Opinions on the Importance of Holy Scripture (1881). Leskov's participation in the publication and his professional advice contributed to a noticeable increase in the popularity of the magazine, the monthly circulation of which reached 3,000 copies (Heyer, pp. 80-82).
Maria Grigoryevna soon, on February 27, 1881, passed away. Leskov sympathized with this, in his words, “very pleasant, subtle mind lady” (Leskov N.S. New Testament Jews, p. 84) “and, moreover, a strongly convinced Christian” (New time, March 1, 1881, No. 1798).
After all that has been said, it is not surprising that in the second half of the 1870s there was a peak of writers' interest in Redstock and his followers, which was reflected in the St. Petersburg periodicals. In the Novoye Vremya newspaper alone, Leskov published several dozen notes and articles about the Pashkovites (Mayorova O.E., pp. 161-185). For example, on April 9, 1880, this newspaper reported the termination of the preaching of "high society preachers" in several houses of St. Petersburg at the insistence of frightened householders, "who did not want to allow the continuation of large gatherings of children and adolescents." Here is an excerpt from this Lesk note:
“Good ladies endure this first “persecution for the faith” not only not without joy, but with delight. Whoever their Diocletian was, he could not think how much he added courage and energy to them. Knocked out of their domestic rut by the homeowners, they rushed to the outskirts of the capital, to Kolpino and other places where there are many working, artisan people. This, of course, is much more troublesome, but the seething energy that inspires the preachers overcomes everything. Every day at the station of the Nikolaev railway you can see several of these "black ladies" undertaking their saving "pilirinazh" (pelerinage (fr.) - pilgrimage, wandering), in order to convince the Russian workers of the truth treacherously hidden from them, that they are "saved ” and in order to assimilate this salvation, they need nothing more than “believing in it.” (...) In addition to the workers of Kolpino, they also rescue the workers of Kumberg and planned to rescue the dense artisan population of the Sestroretsk arms factory. (…)
All this is funny to some, not funny to some, but nevertheless worthy of attention and interesting. As a matter of fact, in our not only practical, but even greedy and greedy time, such a disinterested religious impulse arises and, moreover, the impulse is steadfast and does not cool in the least. The preachers from the orphanages will survive - they penetrate the factories and workshops, they will force them out of there - they appear in baths and prisons; there they will be escorted out, they open their apartments for each of them. In this, they are finally constrained, they rushed out of town like spring swallows, through villages and suburbs ... (...) Even keeping up with them, apparently, is not easy, they flutter so quickly here and there, and everyone everywhere sings their poems, and " proclaim salvation ”... In this way, they will disturb all the Russian clergy to such an extent that they will actually decide to establish in all the churches not only one divine service, but also a school, which has long been so in vain (outdated - in vain) the people thirst, running away to all sorts of "educational" sects, where there is "intellectual understanding". No matter how these religious swallows really brought with them at least some semblance of spring. And then it will probably have to be said about them that they didn’t do anything ... (...) ”(New time, No. 1478, 04/09/1880, p. 2-3).
The writer writes about the evangelizing ladies, these "spring swallows", with obvious sympathy, although not without irony. Lesk's lines recreate a vivid picture of the past, visibly taking us to the 19th century.
And thanks to his publications, the "blank spots" of our history are gradually being erased. So, in the book of the Orthodox author Terletsky "The Sect of Pashkovites" (1891), one can read that since 1880 Pashkov did not live so freely in St. supervision. Terletsky does not indicate the names of the suburbs, and from Leskov's note we learn that the gospel was then begun in Kolpino and Sestroretsk. By the way, the famous Leskovsky "Lefty" (1881) was written under the impression of visiting the Sestroretsk arms factory, and the writer received the impetus for that trip through his interest in the activities of the Pashkovites.
Collision between Leskov and Pashkov
In the 1880s, Leskov gradually moved away from the Pashkovites. He never accepted the biblical doctrine of the atonement for sin by the blood of Jesus Christ. He did not agree that nothing else is needed for salvation, but to accept this gift by faith and out of love for Christ to please Him, doing His will and doing good deeds (Faresov, Mental Breaks, p. 794). However, a long association with the Redstockists had an effect on him. In his literary works, critics began to detect "the influence of the Protestant spirit" (Ibid., p. 800).
In 1884, Leskov collided with Pashkov under the following circumstances. In the journal Grazhdanin, Prince Meshchersky accused the Pashkovites of spreading Stundism and leading the peasants away from the Orthodox Church (Grazhdanin, No. 36, 2.09.1884, p. 23).
Having entered into a controversy with Meshchersky, Leskov wrote an article "Princely slander". However, what he conceived as a defense of the Pashkovites, in fact, turned into their criticism. Leskov called them a "nebulous mystical society" that is supported by Pashkov himself and his money, and that their doctrine of justification by faith would not bring positive results in Russia.
Leskov's ambiguity caused a controversial reaction. Most of the newspapers took his reply to Meshchersky as a passionate defense of the Pashkovites. However, Pashkov himself was outraged by many of Leskov’s statements, and from abroad, where he was in exile, he responded to the writer’s criticism with a well-reasoned letter, in which there were such words: “I am inexpressibly sorry that you, whose heart once responded to everything true and good, now you are mocking (...) what you taught, on behalf of Christ the Son of God, His apostles” (Faresov, Mental fractures, p. 795-796).
Surprised by this interpretation of his words, Leskov replied to Pashkov that his goal was to tell the truth, and not to offend. But the conciliatory words of the writer acquired an accusatory tone at the end of the letter. He warned against any group of people claiming to have found the only true way to salvation (Heyer, 83-84).
After 1884, Leskov ceased to conduct an active dialogue with the Pashkovites, his publications about them in the press became episodic. There are several reasons: the Redstockists closest to him (Yu.D. Zasetskaya, M.G. Peiker) have passed away; after the expulsion of Pashkov and Korf, the activities of the Evangelical believers took on a conspiratorial non-public character; finally, the state increased spiritual censorship. It became difficult for the writer to write about the Pashkovites in the new conditions.
The last years of Leskov's life
However, reflections on the "Pashkov faith" do not leave him until the end of his life. In a notebook begun in 1893, he writes: “Everything is good in the Pashkov faith, only for which goose fat is put into lamps” (Unpublished Leskov, v. 2, p. 589). A year later, again in the notebook, similar words: “In Pashkovsky’s agreement, goose fat is put into lamps” (ibid., p. 590). What obsessive thought did not let the writer go? Literary scholars have left these statements without comment, but we must try to understand them.
It is known that in the last years of his life Leskov sharply criticized Orthodoxy. In a letter to A.S. Suvorin on March 9, 1888, defending the persecuted Stundists, he wrote, becoming in clear opposition to the views of Dostoevsky:
“The fact of the matter is that it is impossible to believe in the Orthodox way if the person is not a fool; but according to the Stundists, i.e., according to the gospel, you can believe. (...) Worst of all is the trick that invented that "the Russian nation is bound by Orthodoxy", and that "non-Orthodox cannot be Russian." From here, it seems to me, there is irritation against good, sincere Russian people who are not able to distort the faith ... (...) Do not attack the Stunda: this is the work of God and the Holy Spirit is with them - “do not quench the spirit” (...) (63 letters from N.S. Leskov, p.454).
Back in 1883, Leskov wrote that of the Redstockists, only Zasetskaya had the sincerity and courage to publicly admit that she did not like Orthodoxy, that she had left it and converted to Protestantism. For the same reason, she bequeathed not to transport her body to Russia, so that she would not be buried as Orthodox. The rest of the Redstockists are cunning, Leskov believed, participating in Orthodox confession and communion, although with their views on Orthodox sacraments, rites and the priesthood, one cannot come to the Orthodox chalice and say “I believe and confess” ... (Leskov N.S. Religious registry, with .2).
Obviously, until the end of his life, Leskov sympathized with both the capital's Pashkovites and the Stundists of Little Russia, placing their piety above the Orthodox. For him, the moral, practical side of faith was most important, and therefore he reproached the Pashkovites precisely for their incomplete break with Orthodoxy. The aforementioned lampada, lit in front of the icons, can speak in favor of such an explanation. However, the difficulty lies in the fact that the Pashkovites, as you know, did not keep icons and lamps in the house. Therefore, Leskov's words, if our assumption is correct, must be understood not literally, but figuratively.
According to the Orthodox author M.M. Dunaev, Leskov, although he did not join Redstock Protestantism, was close to it in spirit (Dunaev, pp. 425, 459). A similar thought was expressed by literary critic Faresov: Leskov “was strongly supported by many people against Redstock. (...) The more, however, Leskov fought with the Redstockists (...), the clearer his enemies became to him, and much in them ceased to repel him ”(Faresov A. Mental fractures, p. 799).
So, the internal forces of attraction and repulsion experienced by the writer in relation to the Pashkovites explain the bifurcation and inconsistency of Leskov's judgments about their faith throughout his life. What, nevertheless, repelled the writer from the evangelical believers, with whom he sympathized in many ways?
In the second half of the 1880s, Leskov became close to Leo Tolstoy. Two years before his death (January 4, 1893), being seriously ill, he wrote a letter of confession to Tolstoy, in which his former relations with the Redstockists are also mentioned:
“Dear Lev Nikolaevich! (...) You know what good you did me: from an early age of my life I had an attraction to questions of faith, and I began to write about religious people when it was considered obscene and impossible ("Soboryane", "The Sealed Angel", " Odnodum" and "Trifles of Bishop's Life", etc.), but I kept getting confused and contented myself with "cleaning up the rubbish at the sanctuary", but I did not know what to go to the sanctuary with. I was pressured by churchmen and Redstock (Zasetskaya, Pashkov and Al. P. Bobrinsky), but this only made me feel worse: I myself approached what I saw from you, but with myself I was still afraid that this was a mistake, because although the same thing shone in my mind that I learned from you, everything was in chaos with me - vague and unclear, and I did not rely on myself; and when I heard your explanations, logical and strong, I understood everything, as if “remembering”, and I no longer needed my own, but I began to live in the light that I saw from you and which was more pleasant to me, because it is incomparably stronger and brighter than the one in which I delved with my own strength. From now on, you have a meaning for me that cannot pass, because with it I hope to pass into another existence, and therefore there is no one else, except for you, who would be dear and memorable to me, like you. I think that you feel that I am telling the truth ”(Leskov N.S. Sobr. soch, vol. 3, 1993, p. 371).
So, Leskov ends his life as a follower of Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoyism as an ethical doctrine was a prisoner of the philosophy of rationalism that prevailed in the 19th century. Tolstoy raised the human mind above Scripture, redrawn the Gospel in his own way, which led to his denial of the divine nature of Jesus Christ and His atoning sacrifice for the sin of the world. Between Tolstoyism, which retained only the moral teaching of Christ, and the true Gospel of grace, an unbridgeable abyss lay, which did not allow either Tolstoy or Leskov to join the evangelical believers, despite mutual human sympathies and many years of communication between both writers with them.
conclusions
1) Despite the prevailing spirit of criticism, numerous writers and journalists with their publications aroused interest in the figure of Redstock, making him known in wide Petersburg circles. According to Leskov, the magazine "Grazhdanin" "dedicated so much attention to Redstock that the importance of this person immediately rose" (Leskov N.S. Velikosvetsky split, St. Petersburg, 1877, p.3). As a result, new authors were added to the coverage of the topic, the range of newspapers and magazines expanded, which contributed to the fame of the English preacher and the growth of revival.
2) In our opinion, God used the talents of Dostoevsky and Leskov, making them a kind of "Nestor-chroniclers" of the St. Petersburg awakening. Today, the articles written by them (especially numerous by Leskov), along with archival documents, serve as a rich storehouse of primary material. The study of this heritage will help in restoring a more complete and detailed historical picture of the revival.
From the results already obtained, I would like to emphasize that Dostoevsky's publications as editor-publisher of the magazine "Grazhdanin" helped to clarify the time of the beginning of the awakening. It can be considered established that Redstock arrived in St. Petersburg no later than the first week of Great Lent (February 10-17, 1874) (Grazhdanin, No. 8, 25.02.1874, p. 218).
3) At present, the works of literary scholars who are engaged in a comprehensive study of the life and work of classical writers, including their attitude to the evangelical awakening and to its individual representatives (Redstock, Pashkov, Zasetskaya, Peiker, etc.) ). In this regard, the studies of Faresov, Dunaev, Mayorova, Ipatova, Ilyinskaya and others are very useful.
As an example, we can mention the informative article by O.E. Maiorova "Leskov in the Suvorin "New Time" (1876-1880)", which is a valuable contribution to the historiography of the awakening and contains numerous references to little-known primary sources (Unpublished Leskov, v. 2, p. 161-185). This article helped to establish that the persecution of the Pashkovites in the capital in 1880 contributed to the beginning of the gospel in Kolpino and Sestroretsk, which is a valuable historical fact for the modern evangelical churches of these satellite cities of St. Petersburg.
4) The personal relations of Leskov and Dostoevsky with the Pashkovites, the mutual influence of their worldviews and talents, are of independent interest and require separate study. As has been shown, Leskov's work cannot be properly understood without taking into account his long-term relationship with the Pashkovites.
5) The dialogue that the participants of the St. Petersburg awakening (Redstock, Zasetskaya, Pashkov, Peiker) had with our classics (Leskov, Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy) demonstrates the deep rootedness of evangelical Christians (Pashkovites) in Russian history and culture. Knowing the interest in Russian society to the topic of the life and work of our literary geniuses, further study and popularization of the proposed topic may be of wide public interest, far beyond the scope of purely confessional history.
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From the collection: Materials of scientific and historical conferences "The Phenomer of Russian Protestantism" (St. Petersburg: Gamma, 2016)
Dunaev M.M.
Faith in the crucible of doubt
Chapter XII.
Nikolay Semyonovich Leskov (1831 - 1895)
In the second half of the 19th century, disunity between people became very clear. This was acutely felt in the middle of the century by L. Tolstoy. Dostoevsky wrote about the same thing with spiritual anxiety: "Everyone is for himself and only for himself, and all communication between people is solely for himself" - here moral principle most of today's people, and not even bad people, but, on the contrary, working people who do not kill, do not steal "(" Writer's Diary "for March 1877).
The disintegration of society into self-enclosed individuals is intensifying. This is a consequence of the weakening of the personal principle, when the feeling of a lost connection with God (which is an indispensable property of a person) is compensated within everyone by the consciousness of their own self-worth and self-sufficiency.
Methods for overcoming disunity were proposed so varied that their diversity could only serve to further division. Socially minded Herzen saw salvation in the strengthening of the community, community thinking in general (and Turgenev refuted him with skeptical irony). In some ways, Tolstoy was close to this, relying on swarm life, and in the end he saw the surest means to complete fusion in the complete rejection of personality (for he did not clearly distinguish personality And individuality).
Too many sought to unite through participation in some general matter. Actually, for the revolutionaries, their cause was such a means to the communization of society. This is how Chernyshevsky and his like-minded people understood the "common cause" as a revolutionary cause. Otherwise, he was aware of the "philosophy of the common cause" of N.F. Fedorov, but he strove precisely for generality. But all these utopian hopes were of little help.
Those who placed their hopes on popular (that is, peasant) unity were also disappointed. Having soberly looked at the peasantry, G. Uspensky clearly discerned the beginnings of the disintegration of communal thinking, communal doing.
The problem of the family has also become a particular manifestation of the problem of universal human unity. And those who were looking for ways to community through the strengthening of the family principle were already getting closer to the correct answer to the question if they understood the family not as an abstract "cell of society", but as small church.
For outside the Church, the search for a way out of the impasse is hopeless, no matter what deceptions, illusions and mirages the seekers entertain themselves with. The disease can be treated only by acting on its cause, and not being carried away by the elimination of external symptoms. The reason for everything is the sinful damage of human nature.
Therefore it is always true common cause everyone can have one thing: Liturgy. Genuine unmixed unity - spiritually contemplated in the Most Holy Trinity - can only be realized in the mystical Body of Christ through the perception of the unity of grace.
The question of the Church became not only timeless, fatefully significant for a person (because there is no salvation outside the Church), for society, but also topical. Russian literature has clearly identified this issue, starting with Gogol and the Slavophiles. Neither Dostoevsky nor Tolstoy could avoid this question, each answering it in his own way. Melnikov-Pechersky and Leskov were the first to try to comprehend the problem of the existence of the Church through the depiction of its inner everyday existence. One did this indirectly: reflecting, first of all, the life of the Old Believers and sectarians, that is, the anti-church, through the denial of which he comprehended the truth; the other, not bypassing this topic, for the first time in Russian literature offered the reader a description of the life and life of the clergy, showed it from the inside and in that tried to look out for all, sometimes imperceptible from the outside, problems of church life in the specific time.
In the mid-80s, Leskov wrote: “There is a God, but not the one that self-interest and stupidity invented. If you believe in such a God, then, of course, it’s better (smarter and more pious) not to believe at all, but the God of Socrates, Diogenes, Christ and Paul - "He is with us and in us," and He is close and understandable, like an author to an actor."
God, who was invented by self-interest and stupidity, is, one must guess, God in Orthodoxy. Such a God is opposed to a certain unified understanding of God by Diogenes and Christ, Socrates and the Apostle Paul. Presumptuous. It is also incorrect to compare the relationship between the creation and the Creator with the relationship between the actor and the author of the play. Here is a certain imposition of Leskov's originality on the complex of syncretic views known from Tolstoy.
Some ideological chaos that we encounter in Leskov's statements, in his journalism, in his artistic work, is determined to a large extent by the unsystematic education of the writer. Leskov did not even complete the course of the gymnasium and was self-taught, although he was a genius, but he did not know the true training and discipline of mastering knowledge. In nature, Leskov was dominated by the elements, which sometimes carried him too far, both in writing, and in family, and in everyday life, and in all other areas of life. No wonder he himself characterized this state of subservience to spontaneous impulses as follows: "leads and writhes." Velo and writhing often in religious quests.
The richest life experience helped the novice writer when he was forced to earn a living with a pen. True, he began to write not with fiction, but with journalistic articles. "The breakdown of the pen" he himself called "Essays on the distillery industry. (Penza province)" that appeared in "Notes of the Fatherland" for April 1861. The success of the first publications continued. The pen turned out to be brisk. Soon Leskov tried himself as a novelist. In March-May 1862, Leskov's first, not quite perfect stories appeared - "The Robber", "Extinguished Case", "In the Carriage".
After the troubles with the famous St. Petersburg fires at the beginning of the summer of 1862, when both the authorities and liberal circles were dissatisfied with Leskov’s note on this subject (and this was his fate for many years to please neither the right nor the left), the writer leaves in the fall for Europe. He lives very disorderly in Paris, in the spring of 1863 he returns to St. Petersburg and publishes the story "The Musk Ox" - a work from which his recognition in great literature began. Then, driven by a vengeful feeling, he works on his first novel, the anti-nihilistic satire Nowhere, until December.
One of the central aspirations in all of Leskov's work is to find in life and display in literature various manifestations kind of righteous the existence of which, according to the writer's conviction, is the only way that all life on earth can be stable and true.
The writer is convinced that not only "a village cannot stand without a righteous person," but life without a righteous person is impossible at all. This idea finally came to Leskov in his work on the story Odnodum (1879). But the approach to the topic is felt in his early works. In fact, the first sketch for the image righteous man became "Musk Ox".
Vasily Petrovich Bogoslovsky, nicknamed the Musk Ox, is an original figure, of which Leskov will have many more. His soul languishes with the evil that he sees in the world.
The musk ox sees the basis of evil - in the acquisition, in the presence of wealth, property. "My heart does not tolerate this civilization, this nobilization, this sterurization." His rejection has a very definite basis: “He began about the publican, but about the wretched Lazarus, but who can crawl into the needle, and who can’t ...” He relies on gospel parable about the publican and the Pharisee (Luke 18:10-14), about wretched Lazar and richer (Luke 16:19-31), to the words of Christ about the difficulty of the entry of the rich into the Kingdom of God (Matthew 19:24). The Musk Ox sees the true means of resisting such evil in the existence of special people who know the truth and confirm such knowledge with their lives. Word righteous not yet pronounced, but already implied: "Sesame, Sesame, who knows how to unlock Sesame - that's who is needed!" concluded the Musk Ox and pounded his chest. "A husband, give us a husband whom passion would not make a slave, and him one we will keep for our souls in the most holy bowels."
The musk ox is busy searching for the righteous: "he is looking for all the gospel people." And he can’t find it in any way - that’s his main trouble. He searches both in monasteries and among schismatics - in vain. And this is the author's trick, that the Musk Ox himself is such a "gospel man" himself.
However, in terms of behavior, in the whole manner of thinking, speaking, and keeping with people, the Musk Ox is such that it is difficult to get along with him. Gather such "righteous" in abundance - life will turn into hell. Vasily Petrovich is too primitive and stupid, because although everything in him is built as if according to the Gospel (as far as he can), he interprets the Gospel "on his own salty", and his mind is somewhat weak. He was one of the seminarians, he even managed to enter the Kazan Theological Academy, but did not take root, because it cannot correspond to his too narrow idea of life. Always and everywhere he is dissatisfied with her. A little something not for him - he throws everything and leaves. He has no sense of responsibility. Thinking about the welfare of all mankind, the Musk Ox did not care about the fate of his own mother and left her in the care of outsiders. He lacks patience and love to get along with people.
Yes, and he sees the main cause of evil incorrectly: commitment to treasures on earth not a cause, but a consequence of that damage by sin, which a person must first overcome in himself, and then go to people. The death of the Musk Ox, suicide, only confirms: he did not have the strength to overcome the sinful passion in himself, and there was no desire, as if, for there was no understanding of the need for it. The end of such people is often tragic: unable to cope with the reality of life, which is too different from their ideal requirements, they voluntarily leave it.
"Nowhere." The title of the novel is too eloquent. Blind restless little men are rushing about, poking at dead ends, eager to become guides to blind people like themselves, but they have nowhere to go, nowhere to go. There is nowhere to lead those they intend to lead. Nowhere. They have wandered into a final dead end, and they themselves do not realize that there is nowhere to go.
The characteristics of the "new people" are exactly the same throughout the space of this novel. Leskov by no means denies the presence of honest aspirations in many, but these aspirations perished in the general mass of the abomination that prevailed in the movement.
Common cause, that these people create cannot but bring destruction and death to all living things. So deed becomes for the nihilists of the novel House of Concord communal coexistence, the real prototype of which was the Znamenskaya commune, organized by the writer Sleptsov and falling apart due to the lack of genuine closeness, which these progressives so cared about. The Znamenskaya Commune was one of those laboratory test-tube experiments, the failure of which foreshadowed the collapse of any experiment on a larger scale.
The secret dream of these figures was expressed frankly by one of them: "Blood Russia, cut everything that was sewn to the pants pocket. Well, five hundred thousand, well, a million, well, five million ... Well, what is it? Cut out five million, but fifty-five will remain and be happy."
And Ivan Karamazov lamented the tear of a child... Rivers of blood are lusted for here. The terrible thing is that the real Leninism-Trotskyism-Maoism has surpassed in its practice even these bloody dreams.
Of course, for a person of the late 20th century, there is nothing unusual in the actions and plans of the characters in Leskov's novel: everything has long been familiar not only from literature. But for its time there was a novelty here, unacceptable by the majority. Many sincere idealists lacked the imagination to accept the incipient demonism as reality.
Leskov touched on the problem of self-will, because the whole nihilist type of thinking and behavior is based on self-will. At the very beginning of the novel, the words of Mother Superior Agnia sound prophetic, warning her niece, Liza Bakhareva, one of the bearers of the idea of progress: "You will not recognize one will, one voice over yourself, you will have to recognize several of them above you, and far from being so sincere and honest ".
Lisa only managed to object to this in that vulgar stereotyped way, in which only limited natures respond in case of disagreement: "You are behind the modern way of thinking."
It is no coincidence that it is the abbess who teaches Lisa: there is church wisdom in her words. Self-will (we had to talk about this earlier - based on patristic tradition) is nothing more than slavery to someone else's will, slyly subordinating unreasonable arbitrariness to itself. Bondage takes possession of both the individual and the whole movement.
And the most important thing in the novel is a certain fleeting dialogue in which, as if in focus, the lines of force of the entire narrative are drawn together:
Beloyartsev went up to the window and shouted with displeasure:
Whose image is this in plain sight?
My, sir, my icon, - responded Abramovna, who had entered for Liza's handkerchief.
So take it away,” Beloyartsev answered nervously.
The nanny silently approached the window, crossed herself, took the icon and, taking it out of the hall, said in an undertone:
It can be seen that the face of Spasov is bothering you - you can’t stand it. ”Almost ten years before Dostoevsky, Leskov highlighted the undoubted demonic nature of the entire movement.
The writer stood up against "progress", the adherents of which could not forgive him for that. It was better not to enter into conflict with these gentlemen. Poisonous Leskov, however, presented them in a too unpresentable form, for which he paid the price.
Prince Vyazemsky knew what he was saying: "Griders of free thought are akin to eastern despots. Whom they disgraced press, you kick for them."
Long later, Leskov "with unrelenting pain in his heart" wrote:
"For twenty years in a row ... I carried vile slander, and it spoiled a little for me - just one life... Who in the literary world did not know and, perhaps, did not repeat this, and for a number of years I was even deprived of the opportunity to work ... And all this is about one novel "Nowhere", where the picture of the development of the struggle between socialist ideas and the ideas of the old order is simply copied . There were no lies, no tendentious inventions, but simply photographic print of what happened."
But he still prophetically looked into the distance of time, and prophesied:
"The people are turning this way, that one here, and they themselves, really, I’m telling you a great word, they don’t know the road anywhere ... Everyone will be spinning, and there will be nowhere to sit down."
Soon Leskov creates a second anti-nihilistic novel - "On the Knives" (1870-1871), an even more evil and prophetic satire.
Everything here is at odds with each other. If some common business is started, then in the background of it is hidden hostility and the intention to deceive each other.
The strong begin to devour the weak. This natural the principle they themselves, with an indispensable reference to Darwin, elevated to the highest law, even being proud of their progressiveness and scientific novelty of the professed theories of social being. “Swallow others, or else you yourself will be swallowed by others - the conclusion seems to be correct,” sounds frankly in one of the conversations of the former nihilists, who, however, have not lost their taste for the old way of thinking, but now applying it to their selfishly selfish vanity.
They not only carry out the cruelty of this "scientific-natural" principle very, very consistently, but also find moral support in it, having managed to reject the last objections of conscience, which they successfully suppressed in themselves. Having turned from revolutionaries (at least those who were at the stage of revolutionary intentions) into simple criminals, these people did not betray themselves at all. The revolution grows largely on criminality and is saturated with it, no matter how lofty and subjectively honest the ideals of its other inspirers and ideologists may be.
Commenting on the ongoing "renewal", Leskov relies on New Testament wisdom, although not quite accurately, but closely quoting the text of Scripture:
"All this went quickly, with impudence almost amazing, and the last thing became really bitterer than the first."
The primary source for Leskov was, most likely, the words of the Savior:
“When an unclean spirit comes out of a person, he walks through dry places, seeking rest, and does not find; then he says: I will return to my house, from where I came out. And when he comes, he finds him unoccupied, swept and cleaned; then he goes and takes other spirits worse than themselves, and when they go in, they dwell there, and the last thing for that man is worse than the first one.
But close wisdom, in a slightly different version, is contained in the Second Epistle of the Apostle Peter:
“These are waterless springs, clouds and darkness driven by a storm: the darkness of eternal darkness is prepared for them. For, uttering inflated idle talk, they entrap into carnal lusts and debauchery those who are barely behind those who are in error; they promise them freedom, being themselves slaves of corruption For if, having escaped the filthiness of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they again become entangled in them and are overcome by them, then the last is worse for them than the first" (2 Pet. 2:17). -20).
Both through one and through the other texts, the evolution of the nihilistic movement and its demonic, dark essence are fully revealed.
One of the nourishing beginnings for such a temptation was the dislike of these people for Russia, and it is mainly based on the type of their primitive worldview, on their emotional inability to perceive the diversity of God's world.
Generally to Russian beginning"new people" feel hatred. "I would rather strangle all those with a Russian direction," says Vanskok, an enthusiast. At that time, Slavophilism was called the Russian direction. Hatred of Russia is revealed in this way as a rejection of Orthodoxy first of all. Like godlessness. This attitude will remain forever - here Leskov is also a prophet.
Nihilistic and post-nihilistic principles are one of the manifestations of the universal humanistic temptation, and where the will enemy nothing can be good. And since in the godless world there is no reliance on absolute God-revealed truth, there can be no unity in it (and common cause, of course), neither the constancy of beliefs, nor goals, aspirations, actions. Everything was mixed up and lost its true bearings.
Leskov undoubtedly had the right to assert that there are genuine prophecies in his novels.
All this does not exempt us from recognizing the artistic imperfection of the novels Nowhere and On Knives. About the latter, Dostoevsky said most accurately of all: "A lot of lies, a lot of devil knows what, it's like it's happening on the moon." Most importantly, he himself admitted the same
The reason, it seems, is not a lack of talent and not the initial inexperience of the writer. Cause in spontaneity of talent, whose energy could not fit into a perfect strict form.
In 1872, the novel "Soboryane" appeared in the journal "Russian Messenger" - one of the pinnacle creations of Russian classical literature.
Although, during the creation of "Soboryan", the author's intention changed, his original idea was preserved. It was already indicated in the first title - "Teasing Movements of Water", which directly indicates that the meaning of the work is revealed through the Gospel: “But there is a pool in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate, called in Hebrew Bethesda, in which there were five covered passages; in them lay a great multitude of sick, blind, lame, withered, waiting for the movement of water; for the angel of the Lord at times went down into the pool and stirred up water, and whoever first entered it after the disturbance of the water, he recovered, no matter what disease he was possessed "(John 5, 2-4).
Leskov depicted in "Cathedrals" looking forward a miracle of renewal in the spiritual life of the people - "movements legal, peaceful, quiet," as he himself explained in a letter to the Literary Fund (May 20, 1867).
But if you do not fall into exaggeration, then it is true dormant there is only one in the novel - Archpriest Savely Tuberozov, who himself is trying to disturb the stagnant peace of the surrounding lukewarmness. Others, whatever their attitude towards the Church, passively follow the development of events - not in a specific time (here many are very active), but in being before the face of God.
The author of The Soboryan for the first time peered intently into what had previously seemed to be of little concern to literature - into the life of the Church. In its concrete historical manifestation, he tried to comprehend the eternal; and what he saw led him to sad thoughts, forced him to draw gloomy conclusions, which later led to complete pessimism and the rejection of the Church as a necessary condition for salvation.
Pop Savely - one of the Leskovsky the righteous. In all Russian literature it is difficult to find an image of an Orthodox priest equal to him in artistic power and inner charm. Next to him is the humble priest Zakharia Benefaktov, the childishly naive and burning with zeal for the Lord deacon Achilles Desnitsyn, wounded the sinful existence of the human community.
old town popovka, as the author of "Soboryan" calls his main characters, is presented in the novel surrounded by a hostile, evil world. Although the love of the townspeople for their pastors is also shown, their life, especially the ministry of Father Saveliy, is revealed in an ongoing struggle with external opposition and even aggressive enmity. The main thing that oppresses his spirit is the state of minds and souls of the people. The petrified insensitivity of too many becomes the reason for their indifference to the fading of faith, to the demonic actions against it of nihilists, both "new" and "recent".
The "new" ones are still trying to serve some kind of "idea", primarily the assertion of advanced natural-scientific views, which they oppose to religious ones. Thus, the mournful teacher Barnabas Prepotensky "brought several students from the district school to the autopsy in order to show them anatomy, and then in the class he said to them:" Have you seen the body? - "And the bones, - they answer, - they saw." - "And did they see everything?" - "They saw everything," they answer. "But they didn't see the soul?" - "No, they didn't see the soul." is she? .. "And he decided to them that there was no soul." Here is a principle familiar from Bazarov: to verify everything with matter, anatomy.
This is one of the common attempts to place rational experiential knowledge over faith. The case is very banal, but common. All scientific outlook based on similar syllogisms. Where does this "wisdom" come from? Leskov points to one of the most painful questions of church life: spiritual education. And in his previous novels, the writer testified: a large detachment of nihilists is recruited in theological schools. Teacher Prepotensky is no exception: “He graduated from the seminary with the first category, but refused to go to the priesthood, and arrived here, at the civil county school, as a teacher of mathematics. When I asked why he did not want to become a spiritual rank, he briefly answered that he did not want to be a deceiver " , - the priest wrote in the notes, noting the record as September 1861. Let us recall that Pomyalovsky's Essays on the Bursa were being created at the same time. Let us mention again the names of Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky... It was the former seminarian Chernyshevsky who planned the destruction of the Church. The nihilists in the Cathedrals also think of the same thing.
A disgusting example of the "newest" force in the novel is the rogue Termosesov. And just such a person becomes the main ideologist of the struggle against the spiritual foundations of society.
Society itself is in slavery to its own thoughtlessness, its own weaknesses. Even those who sympathize with Tuberozov speak of him with incomprehension: a maniac.
But it would be possible to overcome this, if it weren’t for the church officials themselves - the consistory, with its "contemptible, arrogant and shameless tone." "Oh, how we are afraid of all living things everywhere!" - this is how Tuberozov bitterly assessed the consistory government.
An official is always an official, whether he is in uniform, military uniform or church vestments. He is always afraid "whatever happens," he always guarded his own peace and is often completely indifferent to the business over which he was put in charge. Father Savely suffers most of all from the consistory insensitivity to the zealous burning of faith. Officials in a cassock ignite only when they disturb their peace and it is required to punish violators, teasing the movement of water. Church officials become persecutors of faith and the Church.
The longing movements of water ... And, it seems, did not wait. The death of the main characters of the novel acquires the meaning of a tragic symbol.
Before his death, Father Savely grieves not for himself, but for his faith. Leskov could not go against the truth: an Orthodox priest forgives everyone on his deathbed. But what the hero of the novel was able to do, it seems, the author could not do.
In this he revealed himself and a certain break in the faith of Leskov himself. He became more and more disillusioned with the Church and moved away from it, eventually sinking into more and more pessimism.
“I am not an enemy of the Church,” he writes in June 1871 to P.K. into which she fell, crushed by statehood, but in the new generation of servants of the altar, I do not see "great priests", and I know in the best of them only rationalists, that is, nihilists of spiritual dignity.
This mood of his intensified for the worse. Leskov vigilantly discerned many of the vices of bureaucratic church administration, not noticing the main thing - holiness, which was revealed in many ascetics of the Russian Church of that time. In the end, he came to an extreme conclusion: one can do without the Church, one must even seek salvation outside its fence, for in it there is stagnation, the absence of water movement. As a result, the writer identified the concrete historical existence of the Church and its timeless existence. He made the same mistake as Tolstoy. Even a little earlier than Tolstoy. It became all the easier for him later to agree with Tolstoy in many views on the Church and on faith.
At the basis of Leskov's delusions lies, it seems, the same thing that became one of the foundations of Tolstoyism: predominant attention to the moral side of Christianity, that is, concentration in the sphere of spiritual, but not spiritual aspirations. Leskov saw the very goal of Christianity in the improvement and elevation of moral norms on which the life of all mankind should be based. This, we note, was connected with both Tolstoy and Leskov with the idea of improving the earthly dispensation of being, but not with the idea of salvation.
However, it is impossible to rest in such a gloomy conclusion. Mind, Leskov's whole nature is rushing about and looking for something to rely on. His gaze lingers on what is close to the Church - on the Old Believers.
The story "The Sealed Angel" (1873) is an artistic study of the psychology of schismatics. Leskov reveals himself here as an established master, as a fine connoisseur of various aspects of schismatic life. And even (perhaps most importantly) - as a connoisseur of ancient Russian icon painting.
But in describing the actions of the church authorities in relation to the schismatics, Leskov, unfortunately, admitted a clear lie, artistic exaggeration, which Dostoevsky rightly pointed out. It is impossible for an Orthodox person to desecrate icons, which the author talks about. Perhaps Leskov's irrepressibility or the desire for a special effect had an effect here. This happened to Leskov (Dostoevsky delicately called it the ability to awkwardness).
Of course, Leskov is a truthful artist, he always avoided intentional lies. But the fact that he can unintentionally distort reality should not be forgotten.
However, something did not give Leskov peace, did not allow him to stop at what he had acquired. Something led and writhed him, pushing him to further throwing. What? Yes, it seems clear - What...
A year before his death, Leskov confessed to Tolstoy that in the mood that had seized him, he would not have written anything like "Soboryany" or "The Sealed Angel", but would have more willingly taken up "Notes of the Uncut". Let us recall his earlier confession that instead of "Soboryan" he would like to write about a Russian heretic. And in private conversations, he claimed that he wrote a lot of "nonsense" and that, having understood this, he would not write "Soboryan".
So its velo to the description, to the study of heresy.
"The evil is like a fetid mushroom: even the blind will find it. And the good is like the Eternal Creator: it is given only to true contemplation, a pure gaze, and whoever does not have a spiritual gaze rushes after the motley world of his quirks, deceptive illusions, catchy chimeras ..."
In these wise words of I. Ilyin, based on Christ's commandment "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God" (Matthew 5:8),- the solution of the most important question of truth in art, of the criterion of truth in art, has been concluded. Every artist is sincere, even when he lies: he is sincere in his lies, since he sincerely follows the conviction that lies are permissible, because they are beneficial, useful, excusable, etc. In this sense, a work of art always reflects the truth: it truthfully reveals the artist's state of mind. The completeness of the truth of the reflection of the world depends on this state: the contamination of the soul obscures the vision of the highest truth and directs to the contemplation of evil in the world. The artist tries to hide himself from evil with the creations of his fantasy, but many lies can be mixed in it. And sometimes evil attracts unclean in heart and he does not try to hide from him in a fog of illusions and rejoices in evil - worse than that, he feeds his imagination with evil.
Evil is not hidden from the gaze of an artist pure in soul, but in the existence of darkness he is conscious not of self-existent nature, but only of the absence of light, and in the light he sees the true truth of God's world. And mourns for those who are in darkness.
The trouble is that the lack of inner purity, the clouding of the gaze with passions, makes the artist see darkness in the light as well. This is the worst. Therefore, everything is determined by the measure of purity of heart. This is where the source of the gravest tragedies of many, many artists. Talent is not an excuse, but an even greater responsibility. The artist is often endowed with too strong passions that pierce the soul - perhaps this is an inevitable addition to the creative gift with which he is endowed?
Every artist is a wanderer through the abyss of the sea of life. Wandering as an earthly ordeal of the soul, Russian literature, following the patristic wisdom, tried to comprehend in all its complexity. Pushkin was the first to reveal the meaning of wandering in this way (although outwardly he borrowed the plot from a Protestant source). Wandering along the narrow path through the narrow gates of salvation was accomplished towards the one that attracts ahead light.
It is important here what attracts the wanderer.
Search inner meaning can be expelled from the soul by a thirst for an external change of place. The literature of modern times often showed wanderings in space as a way from emptiness to emptiness, whether it was Child Harold's pilgrimage or Onegin's journey. This was warned a long time ago: "Know for certain that wherever you go, even if you pass the whole earth from end to end, nowhere will you receive such benefit as in this place." Abba Dorotheos, who said this, warned of the futility of seeking inner peace through external restless movement.
The path of life as a wandering of the soul in search of truth and how its ordeal on the earthly paths is revealed by Leskov in the story-parable "The Enchanted Wanderer" (1873).
The wandering of the protagonist of the story, Ivan Severyanych, Mr. Flyagin, is the transformation of a senseless and hopeless flight from the providential will of the Creator into the search and acquisition of His truth and the reassurance of the human soul in it.
Wandering Flyagin is associated with wanderings, which have become a sign of an improper search: moving in space is for him only a transition from one disaster to another, until peace is found in what was determined by Providence. The ordeal of Flyagin cannot be comprehended outside the parable of the prodigal son. For his wandering begins with flight and wandering. Escape from Providence and wandering according to providential definition.
The true content of the whole work is not a story about some (and very entertaining) events in the life of a wanderer, but the disclosure of the action of Providence in the fate of a person. It is also significant that the hero of the story, trying to exercise his freedom in opposition to Providence, only plunges himself into slavery (and in the literal sense). He gains freedom only by subordinating himself to Providence.
Flyagin lives faster in young summers natural the inclinations of the soul, not being too guided by Christian commandments. The hero of Leskov got what Tolstoy Olenin dreamed about for some time (the story "The Cossacks"): life according to the natural norms of almost animal life, marriage to a simple woman, merging with natural element. Yes, Flyagin, in his position, was closer to such an environment: he is not a nobleman, he is not burdened with excessive education, he is not pampered, he is accustomed to endure severe trials, he is not deprived of patience, etc. His slavery in Tatar captivity did not differ at all in terms of the conditions of life from the life of all the others: he had everything that others had, he was given "Natasha" (that is, his wife), then another - they could have given more, but he himself refused. He does not know hostility, cruelty towards himself. True, after the first escape he was "bristled", but from natural unwillingness to escape again, and not out of malice.
The only difference between the position of Ivan and his "friends" was that they didn't want nowhere to run, and he could not. Flyagin did not know the word "nostalgia", but he suffered cruelly from it, more than from the stubble in his heels, with which he had become accustomed.
In his visions, the monastery or temple of God becomes the most characteristic sign of the Russian land. And he yearns not for the earth in general, but for baptized earth. The fugitive wanderer begins to be weighed down by his isolation from church life. How prodigal son, he yearns for the Father in the far side.
From under animal instincts, which he lived to a greater extent, from under external insensibility, lukewarmness - suddenly wakes up in him natural Christian worldview. There, in the hardships of slavery, a fugitive from Christendom for the first time truly recognizes the craving for prayer, remembering church holidays. He is not just yearning for his native life - he is about sacraments yearns. In the wanderer, the church attitude towards his life is awakening more and more, manifesting itself in the little things, and not the little things of his actions and thoughts.
But the successful deliverance from captivity did not at all confirm the wanderer in accepting his predestination of the Providence of God. He continues his wanderings, having undergone many new ordeals. However, more and more he is imbued with the thought of the need to resist these diabolical vain temptations. This desire sometimes acquired in him a touchingly naive, but not lost because of the truth of the content form: “And suddenly a divine thought came to me: after all, this, they say, torments me with this passion, I’ll go away from him, a bastard, from myself with a shrine! And I went to the early mass, prayed, took out a piece for myself and, leaving the church, I see that on the wall Last Judgment drawn and there in the corner of the devil in hell the angels are beating with a chain. I stopped, looked and prayed more earnestly to the holy angels, and took the devil yes, drooling, fist in the face and thrust:
“Come on, they say, you’re a fiddle, you can buy whatever you want with him,” and after that he suddenly calmed down completely ...
Here direct action faith in the human soul. At the end of all ordeals, the wanderer comes to the monastery, where in a difficult confrontation he overcomes the demon that tempted him. However, the wanderer was not at all proud of his victory over the demon. On the contrary, he humbly realized his unworthiness and sinfulness.
Conscious of himself as an unworthy sinner, Ivan Severyanych thinks about completing his wandering in death for his neighbors: "... I really want to die for the people." Here is the very feeling that entered his soul with the words of the colonel back in the Caucasian war: "God have mercy, how good it would be now to wash away lawlessness with your blood." And again the words of the Savior are remembered: "There is no greater love than if a man lays down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).
The Leskovsky wanderer cannot complete his life path without following the Providence of God.
But the wandering of the hero of the story is also a reflection of the inner wandering of the author himself. Leskov wanders in search of truth. He wanders through the diversity of human types and characters. Wanders in the chaos of ideas and aspirations. Wanders through the plots and themes of Russian literature. He travels driven by a thirst for truth. And my own passions. Finds solace The Enchanted Wanderer. But does the author himself find it?
The Church, the problem of ecclesiality and the fullness of the ecclesiastical existence - entail Leskov's consciousness. In whatever direction he veered in his wanderings, he invariably and inevitably returns to what occupied him most of all: to church life.
The story "At the End of the World" (1875) in the work of Leskov is one of the milestones.
The writer even more clearly than before, although not completely, outlined a kind of division between the Orthodox dogma and the specific daily practice of the Church, which is available to his observations.
Leskov elevates Orthodoxy above other Christian confessions as bearing in itself the fullness of the perception of Christ. According to the writer, it is difficult to spread Orthodoxy among semi-savage peoples, capable of perceiving only simplified religious ideas and concepts - such a paradoxical idea is substantiated by his character-narrator, an Orthodox bishop. Vladyka finds out that the Orthodox missionaries, whose activity he directed, without doubting its necessity and benefit, do more harm. He was convinced of this by coming into contact with the true life of the converted and baptized inhabitants of the wild Siberian expanses.
Vladyka expects that the morality of those who have received baptism will increase, but it turned out the other way around. The Yakuts themselves trust the baptized less, because they, in their own way, understanding the meaning of repentance and absolution, begin to violate the norms of morality that they lived before baptism: "... A baptized person steals, he will tell his ass, but the priest will forgive him, the tank, he is unfaithful , tank, through this people will become ". Therefore, these people perceive baptism as a disaster that brings adversity in everyday life, in everyday life, in property status: "... I have a lot of resentment, tank: zaisan will come - he will beat me baptized, the shaman will come - he will beat again, the lama will come - too he will beat and drive Oleshkov away.
The bishop goes on a detour of the wild lands, accompanied by Father Cyriacus, a hieromonk, with whom he constantly argues about the methods of missionary activity and the meaning of baptism. Father Cyriacus warns Vladyka against hasty baptisms - and at first he meets with misunderstanding, sometimes even irritation of his archpastor. But life seems to confirm the correctness of the wise monk.
Father Cyriacus chooses a baptized native as his guide, yielding to the bishop an unbaptized one. The bishop was saddened and worried by this circumstance: he believed that a baptized one is incomparably more reliable, while an unbaptized, pagan, if the opportunity arises, can leave his rider and doom him to death. In fact, it turned out differently: the unbaptized saved the bishop from death during a storm, and the baptized left the monk to his fate, having previously eaten Holy Gifts:"The priest will meet - he will forgive me."
The death of Father Cyriacus opened the eyes of the bishop: to the harm of formalism at baptisms, which were done only for the sake of the quantity needed only by officials from the Church. The pursuit of numbers had a detrimental effect on the conversion of savages to Orthodoxy.
The important conclusions that Leskov would later come to are not yet spelled out here. But soon his consciousness begins to "divide" the Church into its spiritual-mystical Body and the real, concrete everyday life of the Church (and then the identification of this latter exclusively with the very concept of the Church). In everyday life - the omnipotence of bureaucracy and formalism. Vladyka himself enumerates many of the misfortunes that he had to face when he entered the administration of the diocese: ignorance and rudeness of the clergy, illiteracy, licentiousness, drunkenness, excesses.
In the end, the bishop even turned out to be ready to recognize his unbaptized native guide as belonging to the spiritual fullness of Christianity, for not only are his moral principles strong and true, but his very religious thinking turns out to be monotheistic. Explaining his behavior, he refers to the "owner", "who looks from above":
Yes, back, of course: after all, he, back, sees everything.
He sees, brother, he sees.
How are you, buck? He, the tank, does not like those who have done bad things.
So, let's agree, any Orthodox Christian can judge.
And it remains for Leskov to take only the smallest step in order to deny baptism as optional. According to Leskov, baptism turns these semi-savages away from the "master", since the priest allegedly takes on the role and duties of the "master" in relation to the baptized, according to their concepts. But God requires to act in justice, and the priest "forgives" any offense and thus, as it were, allows you to do anything.
Reflecting on the spiritual life of his Yakut savior, Vladyka comes to a certain conclusion: "Well, brother," I thought, "however, you don't walk far from the Kingdom of Heaven." As a result, he refuses to baptize this person.
Note that such reasoning (not the narrator - the author himself) comes from a sincere, but primitive desire for a universal reunification(religio) with the Creator, Who reveals Himself to everyone. Baptism destroys unity in this heretical system of reasoning.
And here the question arises about the perfecting power of the sacrament. Father Kyriakos, in a dispute with Vladyka, leads to this:
"So, we are baptized into Christ, but we do not put on Christ. It is vain to baptize like that, Vladyka!"
Note that such an idea has already been encountered in the "notes" of Archpriest Saveliy Tuberozov. Isn't it significant that Leskov returned to her again. But let us listen to the further dialogue between the bishop and the hieromonk:
- How, - I say, - in vain? Father Kyriakos, what are you preaching, father?
And what, - replies, - Vladyka? After all, it is written with a pious cane that water baptism alone does not serve the ignorant to gain eternal life.
I looked at him and said seriously:
Listen, Father Kyriakos, you are heretical.
No, - he answers, - there is no heresy in me, according to the mysticism of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, I faithfully say: “Simon the Magus in the font dip the body with water, but do not enlighten the heart with the spirit, but go down, and go out with the body, but did not bury the soul, and do not rise ". That he was baptized, that he bathed, he was still not a Christian. The Lord lives and your soul lives, Vladyka - remember, isn’t it written: there will be baptized people who will hear “not you,” and unbaptized people who will be justified from works of conscience and enter, as if they kept the truth and the truth. Are you really dismissing this?
Well, I think we'll wait to talk about it ... "
The bishop is not with an answer, but the question cannot be neglected, since it has been raised, since in essence the idea of the uselessness of the sacrament is affirmed and developed further when Father Kyriakos continues his reasoning:
- Well, here we are baptized, - well, that's good; we are given this as a ticket to a feast; we go and know that we are called, because we have a ticket.
Well, now we see that next to us a little man is wandering there without a ticket. We think: "Here's a fool! He goes in vain: they won't let him in! He will come, and his doorkeeper will kick him out." And we’ll come and see: the gatekeepers will chase him that there is no ticket, and the Boss will see, yes, maybe he will let him in, - he will say: “It’s nothing that there is no ticket, I already know him: perhaps come in,” Yes, and he will introduce, and even, look, it’s better than the other one, who came with a ticket, will begin to honor.
One could also add: but with a ticket they may not be allowed in, because the person who was given a ticket may turn out to be unworthy.
So, aren't those right who say that good behavior alone is important for salvation, while the sacrament is an empty, formal thing? Like Simon Magus.
First of all, we note that the comparison with Simon is incorrect, for Magus did not have grace from the apostles. The priest, however, baptizes not with water, but with the Spirit - by the grace of the Apostolic succession.
So the question is not about baptism with water - it really is useless - but about the sacrament in the full sense. ,
Father Kyriakos appeals to the faith that comes from the heart, "from the bosom", as both interlocutors call it.
Again an old problem: the antinomy "faith-mind". The hieromonk is right in elevating faith over reason, but he forgets that a heart that is not cleansed of passions is a bad leader. Raising the faith, Father Cyriacus nonetheless builds all his arguments on the arguments of reason, for he does not want to recognize the mystical side of the sacrament and therefore does not see the difference between the actions of Simon Magus and the Orthodox priest.
However, his rational arguments should not be neglected, since they may seem irrefutable outwardly.
Baptism is the sacrament of mystical communion with Christ and the Church.
“Baptism is a sacrament in which the believer, when the body is immersed three times in water, with the invocation of God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, dies to a carnal, sinful life, and is reborn from the Holy Spirit into a spiritual, holy life. Since Baptism is spiritual birth, and a person is born once, then this sacrament is not repeated" - this is how it is written in the Orthodox catechism. The bishop confesses the same: it is not for nothing that he mourns that he does not have the means to revive the Yakut with a new solemn birth with adoption to Christ. But after all, reasoning in this way, the bishop also expresses his doubts about the sacrament. The unreliability of one sacrament for the salvation of a Christian is substantiated by a number of convincing reasonable arguments.
Father Kyriakos asserts, if we generalize his judgments, that baptism is an empty rite, when it is not supported in a person by the faith that comes from knowledge and understanding of the Orthodox dogma. The savage does not understand the doctrine, and therefore does not have faith. The bishop eventually comes to the same conclusion: "Now I clearly saw that kind weakness is more excusable than zeal not according to reason - in a matter where there is no means to apply reasonable zeal." The same ascension of the mind.
Reason should not be neglected, but one can expect trouble from it: it is the rational understanding of the sacrament that makes one perceive it as a magical act. And the formal pursuit of quantity only contributes to this. Leskov does not directly mention this, but this idea clearly sounds in the subtext of the reasoning of his characters.
Missionary work must go hand in hand with the enlightenment and catechesis of the baptized. But how to solve the question of the effectiveness of the sacrament? Or rather, how does Leskov solve it? For the Orthodox believer, there is no question here: the sacrament is always effective and unconditional, for it is performed not by the "magical" actions of the priest, but by the Holy Spirit. Every believer also knows that the work of salvation is the cooperation of man with the Creator and Provider, and apart from personal efforts, baptism cannot be a sure guarantee of salvation: "The kingdom of heaven is taken by force" (Matthew 11:12). Baptism is a “ticket” (we use the image of Fr. Kyriakos), but if the one who is called, who has a ticket, will not appear in wedding clothes, his entrance may be closed. Here the hieromonk is right, reminding the lord of the words of Christ "we do not know you" (Mt. 7:23).
The consciousness of this has always been and will be one of the most acute experiences of an Orthodox person. Russian literature expressed his painful realization of his unworthiness before the face of the Creator in all tragic fullness.
There are baptized called. But not everyone can be the elect (Matt. 22:11-14).
If the pagans who received the “ticket” are not enlightened with the understanding of what they themselves must attach to it, what clothes to acquire, then here is the undoubted sin of formal missionary work.
But what about those who are without a "ticket", albeit in wedding clothes went to the feast?
If he did not know about the existence of the "ticket" at all, one can rely on the mercy of the "Master". And if a person knew about it - and deliberately rejected it ... One came without a "ticket", because he did not know about it, the other came without a "ticket", because he refused it. Difference.
Let's not forget that God cannot save a person without his willed consent. The will manifested in the refusal of the "ticket" is expressed by that undoubtedly.
"If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin" (John 15:24).
These words of the Savior are quite clear. The one who knew about the existence of the "ticket" has no excuse for refusing it.
The man who refused to be baptized said: I don’t need a Savior, I myself will be like God, I can save myself, I will get my own wedding clothes, they will let me through even “without a ticket.”
Salvation is the restoration of union with God, broken in the original fall. If a person deliberately refused to be baptized into Christ, this means that he refused reunion with him. And chose to stay not just outside Christ, but against Christ, according to His word:
"Whoever is not with Me is against Me" (Matthew 12:30).
In the Gospel, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself is baptized. The Savior is the head of the Church.
Therefore, the "ticket", that is, the sacrament of baptism, can only be received in the Church. - Grace also abides only in the Church. There is no salvation without the Church. After all, everything is so clear. And will not a minister of the Church sin who refuses a person to be baptized?
Outside the Church - Simon Magus baptizes. Water, and without grace.
Leskov returned to the undoubtedly painful problem of the church sacrament in the story "The Unbaptized Priest" (1877). The main character of the story, Pop Savka (one of the righteous Leskovsky), by the will of fate he was not baptized, although he did not suspect that. Everything was found out long later, when he managed to show high virtues to his flock. Baba Kerasivna declared the truth. Once upon a time, it was she who was supposed to take the newborn baby Savva for baptism, but because of the impassability in the snowstorm, she could not do this, and then she did not confess to anyone. Not wanting to take sin upon her soul, the woman revealed her guilt before her death. The incredible was revealed: the sacrament of the priesthood was performed on those who did not go through the sacrament of baptism. How to be here? Here is the temptation...
Ordinary Cossacks stood up for their priest with a mountain, asking the bishop about him: "... such a beep, such a beep, there is no other like this in all of Christianity ..."
The bishop judged wisely. The sacrament of baptism in exceptional cases - in the practice of the Church this happened - is recognized as effective, even if it is performed by a layman (albeit not as it should be according to order) in the fullness of faith. It is given by faith. Only witchcraft must be performed without the slightest deviation from the due, otherwise it will be ineffective. The sacrament is performed by the Spirit, He gives by faith, and not by anything else. The church baptism of the baby Savka was not performed not by malicious intent, but by circumstances - the actions that expressed the faith of a person and the desire to unite the child with God were committed, albeit not in due order.
The bishop, admonishing the dean about the effectiveness of the perfect, resorts to authority Holy Scripture and Tradition and recognizes the priest as having been baptized.
Yes, we can conclude from what happened: the sacrament is not witchcraft, and in special occasions is performed by the Holy Spirit according to the faith of a person without the complete completion of all the prescribed actions. "The Spirit breathes where it wants..." (John 3:8). Of course, the circumstances must be exceptional, when it is not possible to do everything canonically flawlessly.
But one can think differently: they say, the sacrament is not at all necessary - the practice of church life allegedly confirmed this. The reasoning of the bishop is simply scholastic casuistry, explained either by his kindness, or by indifference to the matter, or by ignorance of how to get out of the difficult circumstance of the case.
In fact, Leskov leaves the question open, leaving the decision to the discretion of the reader. He himself tends, one might suppose, to the second judgment. That is, heresy.
It was not for nothing that the writer's inner wandering aroused amazement in his biographer's son: "What a path! What a change of speculation!" The path is indeed tortuous, leading to heresies - if not completely coinciding with Tolstoy's, then close to it.
Like Tolstoy, one of the internal influences on Leskov's religious wandering was independent reading the Gospel: “I didn’t know whose I was? The well-read Gospel made this clear to me, and I immediately returned to the free feelings and inclinations of my childhood ... I wandered and returned, became by myself - by what I am.<...>I was simply mistaken - I did not understand, sometimes I was influenced, and in general - "I did not read the Gospel well." Here, in my opinion, how and in what I should be judged! ". This is from the famous letter to M.A. Protopopov (December 1891), without which not a single biographical study of Leskov can do. "A good reading of the Gospel", that is What was meaningful by his own mind, the writer considered the completion of wandering, "wanderings", and the acquisition of truth.And Tolstoy thought the same.
Leskov did not deny his heresy, even, not without pride, called himself "the heresiarch of Ingrian and Ladoga."
First of all, let us repeat, Leskov is seduced by the difference between the existence of the Church that he sees and the ideal that he desires. But such an action of temptation is dangerous, first of all, for those who are not settled in the faith.
Leskov was less self-confident than Tolstoy in recognizing the indisputability of his worldview. He seems to have suspected that this might lie not in his stability, but in his fall. Leskov was looking for the truth of faith. For a long time he could not find himself in the element of social and political struggles. He broke up with the revolutionaries, but prophesied a lot about them that it would be better not to come true, but come true. Having suffered a lot from the liberal-democratic terror, he inevitably had to find himself in alliance with opposing forces. And indeed, he agreed for a while with Katkov, whom all the liberals were at enmity with.
Only Leskov could not get along with anyone for a long time: he himself was too intolerant, and his position could not always suit publishers with excessive originality.
For some time, Leskov treated the Slavophiles with affection. With I.S. Aksakov for a long time was in a very friendly correspondence, calling him "the most noble Ivan Sergeevich." And here is what he writes to him in August 1875 from Marienbad: "There are a lot of Russian books brought in: everything is terribly expensive, and there is very, very little useful: there is nothing to take in hand except Khomyakov and Samarin." But too close relations with the Slavophiles at Leskov could not last long: they demanded consistency in Orthodoxy. The caustic Leskov could not resist and later stabbed the Slavophiles in The Kolyvan Husband (1888).
Over time, the literary fate of the writer gradually settled, but heresy, religious and socio-political, only aggravated.
In search of allies, Leskov turns his attention to two of his greatest contemporaries - Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy. In 1883 he wrote an article "Count LN Tolstoy and FM Dostoevsky as heresiarchs".
The article about the heresy of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky is Leskov's intercession for both writers from the criticism of K. Leontiev, undertaken in the essay "Our New Christians". Leskov not only stood up for the “offended,” but more, it seems, sought to defend his own convictions, even if covertly, as if speaking not about himself.
It is especially important to understand Leskov's attitude towards Tolstoy. They were connected by mutual affection, good personal relations.
Tolstoy has long attracted Leskov. His religious views turned out to be especially attractive for Leskov. Here is the final view of Tolstoy, expressed by Leskov at the end of 1894 (in a letter to A.N. Peshkova-Toliverova), that is, shortly before his death: "Tolstoy is great as a wise man who cleared the rubbish that filled Christianity."
Leskov's attitude towards Tolstoy as a religious teacher was almost invariable. True, he did not blindly follow Tolstoy, he did not agree with him on everything. But individual differences seemed to him not so important. Over the years, the commitment to Tolstoy in Leskov only increased. Tolstoy's interpretation of Christ is dear to Leskov above all. And also the rejection of the Church. What was the reason for this? The answer is undoubted: the understanding of Christianity at the spiritual level, at the level of absolutization of morality and the rejection of what is higher than morality. That is, lack of spirituality. Perhaps, in the matter of moral self-improvement, one can do without the Church, relying, like Leskov, on the righteous, and not on church life, where you will always find many sinners.
One can cite many confirmations of the growing closeness of Leskov to Tolstoy, but Leskov himself testifies more precisely in a letter to Yasnaya Polyana, written six months before his death (August 28, 1894): "... I love the very thing that you love, and I believe with you in the same thing, and it itself came and goes on like this, but I always take fire from you and light up my splinter and see what is going smoothly with us, and I am always in the philosophy of my religion (if that's possible put it) calm, but looking at you and I am always intensely interested in how your work of thought is going. Menshikov noticed this perfectly, understood and interpreted it, saying of me that I "coincided with Tolstoy." My opinions are almost related with yours, but they are less strong and less clear: I need you for my approval."
Of course, it would be wrong to call Leskov a Tolstoy: he was too independent for that. In general, he contrasted Tolstoy with the Tolstoyans, arguing that with the death of Tolstoy, the whole "game of Tolstoyism" would cease. Leskov walked, by his own admission, "alone with a stick", much "in your own way seeing."
So he made his way through life in his lonely wandering, guarding oneself and others souls by recognizing earthly evil, more and more enchanted"deceptive illusions, catchy chimeras."
On the slope of his life, in 1889, Leskov met Chekhov, who was entering literature, and taught him, being "already a gray-haired man with obvious signs of old age and with a sad expression of disappointment on his face," a sad lesson learned from his own literary activity: "You are young a writer, and I am already old. Write only one good thing, honest and kind, so that you do not have to repent in old age like me. "
Everything in life is mixed, both good and bad. You can mistakenly tune in to one bad thing, and infect others with the same.
It is even more dangerous when a writer, possessing a despotic will, combines such a worldview with the demand for a tendentious reflection of life.
All artists are biased. Even when one of them rejects tendentiousness, this is also a trend. But Leskov consciously demanded tendencies and often based them on heretical ideas. In conjunction with a critical mindset, this is very dangerous.
Leskov subjected his time to more and more harsh and caustic criticism. Even when praising something. famous story about Lefty (1881), shoeing a flea with his comrades, there is an evil thing. These craftsmen, of course, are craftsmen, but only they spoiled a thing, albeit a useless, funny toy: - And for what? They also did not surpass the British, although they showed the finest work. But in order to master the outlandish mechanism, one needs incomparably more skill to detect than to put on primitive horseshoes. "You won't get well from such praises ..." Leskov himself rejected the opinion of critics that he had the intention "to belittle the Russian people in the person of" left-handed "- and he needs to be believed. But what unconsciously manifested itself is all the more significant.
Somewhat later, in the story "Selected Grain" (1884), Leskov, using the example of representatives of all classes - a gentleman, a merchant and a peasant - developed the idea that swindle is a characteristic feature of the Russian people.
He thought about Russia not very flattering at all. So he argued (in a letter to A.F. Pisemsky dated September 15, 18, 72): “Our homeland, it is rightly said, is a country of cruel morals, where malevolence prevails, nowhere in any other country is so common; where goodness is stingy and where general wastefulness : merchant's children swindle money, and other children of other fathers swindle people who make up an even more expensive fortune than money.
One should not think, however, that Leskov was drawn to the idealization of the West. Here is his review of France (from a letter to A.P. Milyukov dated June 12, 1875): religious in the real sense of the word, there is none in France, but there is hypocrisy - a kind of church piety, reminiscent of the religion of our Russian ladies, but this is so disgusting to me and so unlike what I wanted to see that, of course, I don’t want to see it either. At all ideal nation is the most mercantile and base, one might even say vile, behind whom this piety, of course, always easily coexists.
Having met Russian revolutionaries in Paris, he cannot refrain from exclaiming (in the same letter): "Oh, if only you could see what kind of bastard!"
Among Leskov's critical views, a special place belongs to his rejection of external visible manifestations (and he begins to take them as essential) of church life. It would be incorrect to assert that the writer was a firm opponent of the Church and Orthodoxy (like Tolstoy). Simply by virtue of the view of the world he had acquired, he rather noticed the bad and more often selected for depiction the unsuitable sides in all the phenomena of reality. Noticing mainly the uncommendable, he infected himself (infecting others) with the idea of searching for truth outside the church fence.
Gradually, hostility towards the Church extends to Orthodoxy as a creed, in which Leskov rejects living spirit:"I love living spirit of faith, not directed rhetoric. In my opinion, this is "needlework from idleness", and, moreover, all this is for the Orthodox Saltyk ... ".
It is precisely this idea that Leskov puts at the basis of his understanding of the Church. We encounter this to varying degrees when reading Little Bishops' Life (1878), Bishops' Detours (1879), Russian Secret Marriage (1878-1879), Diocesan Court (1880), and Saintly Shadows (1881). ), "Vagabonds of the spiritual rank" (1882), "Notes of an unknown person" (1884), "Midnights" (1891), "Hare remise" (1894) and other works. Not without reason, with the publication of these works, the writer always had censorship difficulties.
However, Leskov did not write these "essays" with the intention of discrediting the Russian clergy. On the contrary, he even prefaced The Trifles of a Bishop's Life with the following statement: "... I want to try to say something in protection our bishops, who find no other defenders for themselves, except for narrow and one-sided people, who regard any speech about bishops as an insult to their dignity.
Leskov not denounces church life, but simply tries to dispassionately show the diversity of the Russian clergy, especially the archpastors. He has many good things to say about them. The brightly shining image of St. Philaret (Amfiteatrov) will not be erased from the memory of anyone who read about him in Leskov. His Eminence Neophyte, Archbishop of Perm, is described with love in the Little Things. But both of them are more likely to oppose, in the opinion of the general way of church life, and the good properties of their nature bring into this life from the outside, and do not strengthen them by it.
In general, the clergy appears in Leskov in an unattractive guise. It shows "for a more or less observant eye an amazing mixture of servility, intimidation and at the same time obvious hypocritical humility, with little covert, comical, albeit good-natured, cynicism." In the writer's works it is greedy, power-hungry, conceited, cowardly, hypocritical, ignorant, of little faith, prone to denunciations and squabbles, "sanctimoniously pretentious."
To retell the content of Lesk's writings in support of this is not entirely useful. But we must acknowledge the sincerity of Leskov in his criticism of the vices that he painfully sees in the Church. Sincerity and the desire for good are always worthy of respect, even if the proposed judgments cause disagreement with them. It is useful to listen, because there is always a grain of truth in any sincere criticism. Leskov pointed a magnifying glass at church life and made many features disproportionately large. But after all, he made it possible to see them more accurately. And having seen, get rid of them.
It is useful to listen to the Orthodox wisdom of Gogol: “Sometimes you need to have embittered ones against yourself. He who is passionate about beauty does not see shortcomings and forgives everything; but he who is embittered will try to dig out all the rubbish in us and put it out so brightly that you will inevitably see it. Truth is so rarely heard that even for one grain of it you can forgive any insulting voice, no matter how it is pronounced.
Is what Leskov said true? Is it true. That is, all this happened in life. Hardly any harsher accusations of church life can be found even in Saints Ignatius (Bryanchaninov) and Theophan the Recluse. But there is nothing new in recognizing this truth: just another confirmation that the world lies in evil.
The only difficulty lies in the fact that such a reflection of evil in the world often causes those who are zealous about the ideal to reject any disclosure of evil in those aspects of life that are thought of as having to be an ideal. Leskov faced this with every publication of his essays, always answering caustically. However, he correctly points out the terrible danger of hushing up one's own weaknesses and thereby rejecting the possibility of overcoming them: one may turn out to be powerless in the face of the aggression of alien, vicious temptations.
Leskov makes one fundamental mistake in his criticism: he endures sin individual people the Church as the center of grace. But a person who deviates from Christ in sin deviates from His Church. It is necessary to separate these deviants and the righteousness of the mystical Body of Christ. Leskov does not make such a division. And that is not true.
It is even more important to understand the untruth of Lesk's denunciation of those who were glorified by the Church as saints: St. Philaret (Drozdov) and St. Righteous John of Kronstadt. It has the same reason: the impossibility of comprehending spiritual heights with the help of spiritual outlook.
But a person striving for truth and good cannot concentrate on evil alone. He must try to find at least some kind of support: otherwise he will not survive.
Therefore, it would be unfair to see in Leskov one gloomy one. It is better to work hard and recognize the good in him.
In his further work, Leskov again focuses on the Holy Scriptures as the basis of righteous wisdom and a kind of practical guide in everyday human behavior. He compiles a collection of moral teachings based on the word of God, and gives it a significant title: "The Mirror of the Life of a True Disciple of Christ" (1877). Christ for Leskov is an ideal for every person. In support of this, the writer quotes at the beginning of the book the words: "I gave you an example, so that you also do what I did" (John 13:15), accompanying with the following explanation: “Here is the mirror of the life of a true disciple of Christ, into which he must look every minute, conforming himself to imitate Him in thoughts, words and deeds."
The collection is composed of five sections, which group the basic rules of human behavior, confirmed by excerpts from the New Testament: "In thoughts", "In words", "In deeds", "In getting around", "In food and drink". It all concludes with the instruction: “Try in general, so that in all your deeds, words and thoughts, in all your desires and intentions, a pure and consonant mood will certainly develop towards the highest goal, life, that is, to transform yourself in the image (or example) Jesus Christ, and then you will be His disciple."
The usefulness of such collections is undeniable. Leskov continued his work in this direction and published a number of brochures of a similar nature: "Prophecies about the Messiah. Selected from the Psalter and the prophetic books of the Holy Bible" (1879), "Point to the book of the New Testament" (1879), "Selection of paternal opinions about the importance of Holy Scripture" (1881), etc.
But are there true disciples of Christ in the reality surrounding the writer? That's what became a sore point for the writer.
Leskov relied a lot on righteous actions exceptional people. The writer admitted: the very consciousness that these people exist in the world strengthened him in life, helped to overcome inner loneliness: "I have my own holy people who awakened in me the consciousness of human kinship with the whole world."
So he finds for himself a means of overcoming the disunity of people. The Church, it seems, is finally rejected by him as a path to unity. In the works of Leskov, the word "saints" holds attention. holy whether these Leskovskie righteous?
And here Ilyin's warning is again recalled: "... whoever does not have a spiritual gaze, he rushes after the motley world of his quirks, deceptive illusions, catchy chimeras ..." Leskov's righteous are similar to such chimeras.
The unusual and paradoxical nature of the external and internal appearance of these people is sometimes excessive. The writer himself often defined them by the word antiques. At times, in search of such antiques (peculiar eccentrics), he wandered far from the ideal of righteousness. For example, in the story "Iron Will" (1876), which depicts a certain stupid German who mistook his stupid stubbornness for a strong will, turned this property into an idol and suffered a lot from it priest, father Flavian (another hairpin to the clergy).
But let's focus on the depicted righteous. The first of them, consciously reproduced by the author in this capacity, was the central character of the story Odnodum (1879) cavalier Ryzhov. Although before, the writer depicted similar ones, starting with the Musk Ox: they are all more often stupid, primitive in thoughts, and sometimes “disgusting with their hopeless stupidity and helplessness”, always reaching only with their own minds to the wisdom that they live.
Ryzhov, the compiler of the handwritten work Odnodum, according to the author himself, was doubtful in faith: "... this work contained a lot of incongruous nonsense and religious fantasies, for which both the author and readers were then sent to pray in the Solovetsky Monastery." Although the author has not reported anything definite regarding the heresies of one mind (as not essential), his testimony must be trusted, for this sage reached everything with his own understanding, having read the Bible without proper guidance.
But it was not for nothing that there was a fair opinion among the people regarding such experts: “In Rus', all Orthodox know that whoever has read the Bible and“ read it to Christ ”, one cannot strictly ask reasonable actions from that; but such people, that holy fools, they wonder, and no harm to anyone, and they are not afraid.
This comes from the pride of the mind, when it comes to the point that it can understand everything on its own and does not need mentors. Leskov himself, as we remember, liked the independent understanding of the Gospel, he demanded no more from the hero.
Leskov's ideal is a purely eudaimonic ideal. The author is most concerned about the structure of earthly existence. Truly spiritual problems are of little interest to him in his work, his religiosity is of a spiritual nature. The eudaimonic type of culture can seek support for itself only in the establishment of strict ethical standards. Therefore, the attitude towards religion in this type of culture cannot but be predominantly pragmatic: religion becomes necessary solely for the justification and strengthening of morality.
"So, religious experience replaced and supplanted by moral experiences. Morality rises above religion; and by it, as a criterion, any religious content is approved or condemned; its effectiveness own experience extends to the sphere of religion, which puts certain limits "- so I. Ilyin wrote, meaning Tolstoy, but the same can be attributed to Leskov's life understanding, and in general, be accepted as the law of existence of any moralism that absolutizes itself.
Ryzhov is precisely "one-minded": his thought is one-sided and pragmatic. He established himself on the literal following of the commandments, without thinking about the complexity of being. One of the early reviewers rightly remarked about Leskov's hero: "From" Odnodum "breathes cold.<...>Involuntarily, questions are raised one after another: does he have a heart? Is the sinful, deluded souls surrounding him at least somewhat dear to him?
All this comes from a non-Orthodox understanding of the very meaning of keeping the commandments, from a one-sided, superficial perception of them.
The spiritual striving to follow the commandments gives rise to that humility in the soul of a person, without which his further growth in the spirit is impossible. But eudaimonic culture, oriented towards earthly bliss, is beyond spirituality. The fulfillment of the commandments in this type of culture rather gives rise to pride, intoxication with one's own righteousness, self-isolation in this righteousness. This has already been discussed here before. Now I had to remember, because this manifests itself in Ryzhov's one-thinking and is too at odds with the Orthodox awareness of oneself in the world. Leskov at the end of the story once again testifies that: "He died, having fulfilled all the Christian requirements for the establishment of the Orthodox Church, although his Orthodoxy, according to general remarks, was "doubtful." Ryzhov was such-and-such a man in faith ... "
For the author, however, this was not a great vice. He considered it possible to neglect such doubtfulness of faith, for it turned out to be more important for him righteousness one mind, on the basis of which he sees the very possibility of establishing moral norms in life, without which this life, in his feeling, is doomed to decay.
Such reliance on a person's own strengths outside of his connection with the fullness of Truth can be attributed to the ordinary costs of humanism. The anthropocentrism and anthropomerism of the very idea of righteousness in Leskov undoubtedly allows it to be matched precisely with the humanistic worldview.
Following Ryzhov's single-mindedness, Leskov brought to the public another one antique, in which, as in the righteous, the author himself doubted for a long time. The outlandishness of his nature is emphasized by the nickname - Sheramur, made in the title of the story, which appeared in 1879.
Sheramur is so righteous that, without hesitation, he gives the last shirt from himself to the needy. However, the author himself is discouraged by the too miserable ideal of the character, for all his disinterestedness: “My hero is a narrow and monotonous personality, and his epic is poor and tedious, but nevertheless I risk telling it.
So Sheramour - belly hero; his motto is eat, his ideal is feed others..."
Words "Man does not live by bread alone" for Sheramur - perfect nonsense. He not only rejects spiritual needs, but even ordinary hygienic habits, since they reduce the means in order to "devour oneself and feed another."
With all his behavior, Sheramur resembles a holy fool, but Leskov is accurate in defining such righteousness:"The womb-for the sake of the Holy Fool" - such a subtitle is given by the author to his story.
For the sake of Christ, Sheramur simply cannot be a holy fool, since he perceives the Gospel in a peculiar way: "Of course, there are many mystics, otherwise it would be nothing: there is a lot of good. It would be necessary to cross out in places ...". The curiosity of such arrogance is that here Sheramur is strikingly similar to Tolstoy, who just as resolutely "emphasized" the gospel texts. Wasn't Sheramur's words also Leskovsky's own attitude to the Gospel? In any case, the writer conveyed his rejection of the Church to the hero.
In Sheramur, there is still some share of righteousness - and that makes him dear to the author, who collected as treasures all even the smallest manifestations of those human qualities that help people withstand the onslaught of evil.
It should also be noted that all Leskovsky antikov, that they are sincerely disinterested. Money means little to them, and they seem to acquire it only in order to get rid of it as soon as possible. In this regard, the story "Chertogon" (1879) is very interesting, the main character of which, the wealthy merchant Ilya Fedoseich, is a clear confirmation of the conviction of Russian philosophers that a Russian man, brought up by Orthodoxy, considers wealth to be a sin and is always ready to part with what he has acquired and atone for guilt in severe prayer asceticism. The hero of "The Chamber" does not act so resolutely, but the consciousness of the sinfulness of wealth carries in itself, sometimes reaching ugly scenes of the "destruction" of money in a wild orgy, in a kind of anguish(if it is appropriate to use the image of Dostoevsky here), and then atones for sin by the severity of repentance and prayer.
Of course, Ilya Fedoseich is far from righteousness - the author was simply carried away by the originality of his nature. But in the story "The Cadet Monastery" (1880), the writer brought out four righteous people at once: the director, housekeeper, doctor and confessor of the Cadet Corps - Major General Persky, Brigadier Bobrov, Corps Doctor Zelensky and Archimandrite, whose name the narrator forgot. All four selflessly took care of the pupils entrusted to them. Note that concern for worldly and spiritual well-being exhausts for Leskov the entire content of righteousness. In such care, of course, not only is there nothing wrong, it is touching and beautiful, but the writer does not seem to want to look higher. Therefore, even the lecture of the father of the archimandrite, which contains an approach to explaining the dogma of the Incarnation, is based on the concepts of earthly well-being and earthly worldly hardships.
Eudaimonic culture, we repeat, cannot seek any other support for itself, in addition to the values of the spiritual nature, while the spiritual unconsciously rejects, and when it comes into contact with it, it certainly seeks to discredit. Therefore, he uses a deceptive technique: instead of the spiritual, he depicts the pseudo-spiritual. Thus, the conclusion is provoked that churchism is truly hypocritical.
So is Leskov. He does not seem to seek the highest, but idealizes the craving for the earthly. However, it would be unfair to say that Leskov has a longing for the higher. This is told by the story "Non-deadly Golovan" (1880).
Golovan - the most perfect of the Leskovian righteous - selflessly serves people, and in all circumstances chooses the memory of God's judgment as a leader for himself and others. Golovan believes sincerely and devoutly, but he has little church. It’s not that he completely bypassed the temple of God, but he didn’t show zealous churchness: “it was not known what parish he was ... His cold shack stuck out at such a departure that no spiritual strategists could count it as their own Golovan did not care about this, and if he was already very tiresomely questioned about the arrival, he would answer:
I am from the parish of the Creator-Almighty, - and there was no such temple in the whole of Orel.
They cannot find such a parish in the whole world; this parish, the whole world is. For Leskov, such a worldview was, perhaps, his ideal of a "worldwide", unifying religion. Therefore, he could not restrain himself from hurting church life. Blasphemously describing the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the relics of the "new saint" (as the writer designated St. Tikhon of Zadonsk), the author of "The Non-Deadly Golovan" focused on the false miracle of healing, which was demonstrated to gullible pilgrims by a clever swindler (for selfish purposes, of course).
This is how the writer implements his idea that there can be righteous people in the parish of the Almighty Creator, and the Church even has a miracle - a deception.
The main thing for a person is to be a disciple of Christ, and what is feasible outside the church fence.
Here is the moralizing parable "Christ visiting a peasant" (1881), close to many of Tolstoy's works of the same kind. Leskov tells about the merchant's son Timofey Osipov, who unjustly suffered from his uncle-guardian, who killed his parents, squandered almost all of his fortune, married his bride and caused his nephew to be sent to a remote, remote place by court. Timothy, righteous in character and behavior, cannot forgive the offender for a long time, referring to many texts from the Old Testament. The man-narrator, who has become a close friend of Timofey, objects (and here Leskov undoubtedly conveys his view): "... in the Old Testament everything is old and somehow ripples in the mind in a dual way, but in the New it stands more clearly." According to the word of Christ, it is necessary to forgive, because "as long as you remember evil, evil is alive, and let it die, then your soul will live in peace."
At the end of the story, Timothy comes (after many years) to an uncle who has endured many hardships - and Timothy sees here a sign of a visitation by Christ Himself. The feeling of evil revenge gives way to forgiveness and reconciliation. The author ends the story with the gospel words: "Love your enemies, do good to those who offended you" (Matthew 5:44).
Peru Leskov owns several similar works of a moralizing nature, in which the spiritual aspirations of the writer, his ardent desire to contribute to the moral improvement of the Russian people, were very clearly revealed.
A special meaning lies in the fact that, simultaneously with the search for the righteous, Leskov continues his main anti-church denunciations: from "Little things in the life of a bishop" to "Vagabonds of the spiritual rank."
And, finally, he suddenly begins to get involved in all sorts of fun, outlandish incidents, amusing anecdotes, trifles: "White Eagle" (1880), "The Spirit of Madame Janlis" (1881), "Darner" (1882), "Ghost in the Engineer's Castle" ( 1882), "Journey with a Nihilist" (1882), "Voice of Nature" (1883), "A Little Mistake" (1883), " old genius"(1884), "Notes of an Unknown" (1884), "Part-time Workers" (1884), "Pearl Necklace" (1885), "Old Psychopaths" (1885), "Robbery" (1887), "Dead Estate" (1888) etc. It is no coincidence that much of this was published in "Shards".
At the same time, in every anecdote, the writer always had some kind of causticity. Whatever Leskov touches, a trinket or a serious fact, he constantly assimilates his barbs to both a simple peasant and the pope, a hectic lady and a revolutionary figure. Here, for example, Herzen: "... he, with many tourists," led an outrageous scene with mustard "for the fact that he was not given such mustard. He was tied under his throat with a napkin and boiled just like a Russian landowner. Everyone even turned around."
Most of all gets from Leskov, of course, the clergy Passing by, and hurt. In the "Notes of an Unknown" clerics, not only about the spiritual, but also about the spiritual, bake little.
He likes everything outlandish and attracts his artistic imagination. After all, even the righteous with him are alone antiques.
This feature - to see in the observable bizarreness of life mainly worthy of ridicule, even harmless - is painful for the writer himself. Even more painful is the ability to notice more evil than good. Leskov had this ability, and he managed to comprehend it deeply and accurately on an artistic level. In the story "Scarecrow" (1885), he depicts the hatred of the peasants of the whole neighborhood for a certain Selivan, in whom everyone sees a sorcerer, pest, destroyer, servant of demons. An unexpected incident revealed the true beauty and kindness of Selivan, a true righteous man, and dramatically changes people's attitude towards him. Explaining what happened, Father Efim Wits (a rare case for the late Leskov when a priest is portrayed as an "excellent Christian") reveals to the narrator the reasons for what happened:
"Christ illuminated for you the darkness that enveloped your imagination - the empty talk of dark people. It was not Selivan that was the scarecrow, but you yourself - your suspicion of him, which did not allow anyone to see his good conscience. His face seemed dark to you, because your eye it was dark. Watch this so that next time you won't be so blind."
If you take a deeper look, you can see that it is precisely such a graceless view of the world that becomes an important reason for the evil existing in the world: "Distrust and suspicion, on the one hand, caused distrust and suspicion, on the other, and it seemed to everyone that they were all enemies among themselves. and all have reason to regard each other as people inclined to evil.
Thus, evil always gives birth to other evil and is overcome only by good, which, according to the word of the Gospel, makes our eye and heart pure.
The writer reveals one of the highest laws of life, as well as the law of the existence and purpose of art in the world, the way it influences human being: through kindness views on the world and the beauty of the reflection of the world. Through insight peace in m ipe.
Leskov again turns to the search for the righteous.
In understanding righteousness, the writer resorts to the help of the [Prologue, a collection of Christian soulful stories, the plots of which he begins to use in his stories. He wrote about that to Suvorin (December 26, 1887): "The prologue is rubbish, but in this rubbish there are pictures that you cannot imagine. I will show them All, and the other person will have nothing left to look for in the Prologue... It is better to write Apocrypha than to ponder icy fictions.
In turning to the Prologue, he also becomes close to Tolstoy, who borrowed the plots of his own moralizing works there. The story "Buffoon Pamphalon" (1887) is partly even close to Tolstoy's manner of writing in similar adaptations of the plots of the Prologue. But at the same time, Leskov comprehends his own problem, which is urgently painful for him, the problem of being an artist in a purely earthly existence, outwardly far from doing good.
The buffoon Pamphalon, the title character of the story, outwardly lives in the shameful service of sin, but it is he who is indicated by the voice from Above as an example of righteous pleasing to God on earth.
"Buffoon Pamphalon" is close in idea to "The Tale of the God-pleasing Woodchopper" (1886), also borrowed from the Prologue. It tells about a terrible drought that the bishop's own prayer could not overcome, but the prayer of a simple wood splitter, who spent his life in labor and care for his daily bread and did not think about any charitable deeds, considered himself an unworthy sinner. And so he turns out to be more pleasing to God than the spiritual master. Leskov portrays this not as a special case (quite possible, of course, in reality), but rather as a kind of generalization regarding the meaning of a righteous life.
The same idea - in the "Legend of the conscientious Daniel" (1888). The action is again attributed to the first centuries of Christianity. The meek Christian Danila, fleeing to the skete, is captured by the barbarians three times, each time undergoing more and more hardships. Motivated by a sense of revenge, he kills his cruel Ethiopian master in his third captivity and runs to his co-religionists. But his conscience makes him seek atonement for the sin of murder, and he visits the Orthodox patriarchs in Alexandria, Ephesus, Byzantium, Jerusalem, Antioch, as well as the pope in Rome, asking everyone for punishment for their deeds. However, everyone unanimously convinces the conscientious Danila that killing a barbarian is not a sin. True, at the request of Danila to point out to him where it is said in the Gospel, all the archpastors fall into anger and drive the questioner away. And his conscience becomes more and more black, like the Ethiopian he killed, haunts the sinner, and he begins to care for the leper, alleviating his suffering last days life. Danila finds comfort in the idea of serving his neighbor.
"Stay at one ministry of Christ and go serve people" - this is the final conclusion of the "Legend ...". In the Church, they say, there is existence outside the teachings of Christ.
Let us note that here we already have a direct slander against the Church, for any murder for a Christian is a sin, regardless of the faith of the murdered. Leskov attributed to Orthodoxy what is characteristic of Islam or Judaism. He did this more out of ignorance or misunderstanding than out of bad intent.
The writer simply refuses to see the fundamental differences between religions. "... To whom that in the reasoning of faith from God is open - this, then, is the will of God," Leskov asserts in "The Tale of Fedor the Christian and his friend Abram the Jew" (1886).
The "Tale ..." tells of friends of the same age who belonged to different faiths, but brought up and raised in love for each other: "All were accustomed to live as children of one Father, God, who created heaven and earth, and all breath - a Hellenic so is the Jew."
The existence of different faiths, imposed primarily by cruel authorities, destroys the friendship between Fyodor and Abram, making them irreconcilable enemies for some time. The reason, according to the author of that, is simple, "Evil is that each of the people considers one of his faiths to be the best and the most true, and denigrates others without good reasoning." However, the good natural properties of the characters of both help them overcome discord and recognize that "all faiths lead to one God."
His co-religionists inspire Fyodor: the Jew is the enemy of our faith, but he realizes that it is possible to serve Christ only in love for all without distinction. The same love for a friend is driven by Abram, who three times rescues him in trouble with big money. In the end, both decide to build a big house for orphans, where everyone would live "indiscriminately" differences in faith. This house is a kind of symbol of universal unity in the service of the one God.
Here is again a distorted idea of Orthodoxy, which does not at all teach to see in the Gentiles - "filthy" (as depicted by Leskov), but - misguided. Love for every person who bears the image of God in himself is commanded by Christ, but not hatred. However, this does not mean a rejection of the Truth for the sake of an imaginary unity. For an Orthodox person, being outside of Orthodoxy is sad and self-blinding, detrimental to the soul, but the realization of this should arouse in a person not hatred (as the writer claims), but regret and a desire to help in finding the Truth.
Leskov, like Tolstoy, has long been embarrassed by the strife stemming from differences in faith. But both writers intended to find unity in indifference to discrepancies in the understanding of God, the meaning of life, Good and evil, and so on. This, of course, is a utopia: the differences will inevitably make themselves felt. Correctly pointed out by Prof. A.I. Osipov: “How short-sighted are those who speak of a common religious consciousness, that all religions lead to the same goal, that they all have a single essence. How naive it all sounds! Only a person who does not understand Christianity at all, can talk about it." Different religions indicate different goals and different paths to them. What kind of unity can we talk about if the roads separate people in different directions. Only those who walk the same path can be close. Those who walk on different roads will inevitably move further and further away from each other.
True unity can only be found in the fullness of the Truth of Christ.
The problem, painful and difficult for him, the problem of serving the world, and through that - serving God, this problem did not leave Leskov. In agony, he beats over her, creating the narrative "Unmercenary Engineers" (1887).
Once again, the righteous are before us. These are Dmitry Brianchaninov, Mikhail Chikhachev, Nikolai Fermor. The first is the future Saint Ignatius. The second is the future schemnik Michael. The third is a military engineer; and desperate suicide.
"Unmercenary Engineers" can be regarded as one of the sources for the life of St. Ignatius. The author mainly covers the period of his journey, when he was a student of the St. Petersburg Engineering School. Already in these years, in the guise of a young student, features of religious seriousness and ascetic transcendence appeared. Friendship with Dmitry Bryanchaninov also determined the life path of Mikhail Chikhachev, for this was most in line with his nature.
Many pages of "Unmercenary Engineers" are devoted to the sublime characteristics of the two friends, but Leskov considers their departure to the monastery as escape from life, literally an escape.
Nikolai Fermor, a junior fellow student of two future monks, is directly called by the author "a more courageous fighter." Leskov gives preference to him, since he chose for himself, according to the writer, the most difficult path. The most difficult, because it turned out: no one is able to overcome the evil of the world (in the specific form in which it stood in the way of honest Fermor: theft, debauchery), not even the king himself. Fermor's conversation with Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich reveals the deepest painful despondency of the young seeker of truth - and the whole abyss of the writer's own pessimism was reflected in that.
Despondency, to which both Fermor and Leskov are subject, is a state closely studied by the Holy Fathers. Not only the causes and signs of despondency were studied, but also the means to overcome it. However, it is useless to resort to their help in this case, because in order to do this, one must rise to the spiritual level, while the character of the story and its author are only in the fullness of soulfulness and perceive the path of asceticism as something insufficient (if not stronger). Fermor, like the author himself, is not aware of the meaning of the ascetic feat and its impact on the world around him, he imagines that with his weak spiritual "civilian" forces he can overcome evil, he believes only in real deeds of a service and moral nature, and they turn out to be powerless in his struggle for the sake of "establishing in the life of the kingdom of truth and disinterestedness." Leskov also ascribes the same goal to two monks, making his usual mistake by mixing mental and spiritual aspirations. Actually, in sincerity, in spirituality, lies the reasons for Fermor's despondency, which led him to suicide - to what a person leads to enemy, luring into the trap of despondency.
This is the misfortune of Leskov himself: he puts the spiritual above the spiritual and is therefore doomed to defeat in his own struggles.
For the third time in a short period of time, Leskov addresses the problem of serving people in the earthly field in the story "Beautiful Aza" (1888). He again uses the plot from the Prologue. Like the buffoon Pamphalon, the beautiful Aza sacrificed her fortune and doomed herself to moral death, but her love "covers a multitude of sins" (1 Pet. 4:8) and for her, at the end of her life, heaven opens.
Leskov stubbornly returns to the thought: even being in the dirt of life cannot discredit a person with sin when the fall is made as a sacrifice for the sake of saving one's neighbor. Here it seems difficult to establish unconditional parallels with the life of the writer himself, but if we do not forget that his apocryphal retellings are undeniable allegories, then the biographical nature of the problem that tormented Leskov becomes obvious.
In a letter to A.N. Peshkova-Toliverova dated April 14, 1888, Leskov states: “According to Christ, according to the teachings of the Twelve Apostles, according to the interpretation of Lev Nikolaevich and according to conscience and reason, a person is called to help a person in what he temporarily needs, and help him become and go, so that he, in turn, also helps another who needs support and help. The idea is indisputable, but it is indicative that Tolstoy's name is included in a number of justifications for its certainty. Tolstoy, according to Leskov, put "Beautiful Aza" - "above all."
The moral perniciousness of wealth and the salvation of non-acquisitiveness are affirmed by Leskov in the stories The Ascalon Villain (1888) and The Lion of Elder Gerasim (1888). The latter is a transcription of the life of the Monk Gerasim of Jordan, interpreted by Leskov as a moral teaching: "Do good and kindness to everyone" and renounce property, for it gives rise to fear of life.
From the allegorical plots of the Prologue, Leskov soon turns in an attempt to solve the same problem to contemporary reality. In the story "The Figure" (1889), the main character, an officer named Vigura (remade by the people into figure), commits an act unworthy according to the code of officer honor: he forgives the slap given to him by a drunken Cossack. It takes place on the night when the festive Easter service is celebrated, and it is precisely this that exacerbates Vigura's inner doubts and torments.
Leskov showed here the strengthening in a person of true faith, which puts Bogovo above cesarean, the heavenly over the earthly, the spiritual over the rational - and gaining as a result tears of tenderness.
But for the world, hardened in evil, there is an insoluble contradiction here: Vigura's act is "dishonorable", but Christian. The attitude of those around him when pointing him to the commandments of religion is unequivocal. So, the colonel, the commander of Vigura, demands that he resign: “What, - he says, - you tell me about Christianity! - after all, I’m not a rich merchant and not a lady. I can’t donate to bells, I don’t know how to embroider carpets, and I demand service from you. A military man must draw Christian rules from his oath, and if you didn’t know how to agree on something, then you could get advice on everything from a priest.
The level of "Christian consciousness" here seems self-explanatory. This is where the "Christ-love" of the host comes to light. If religion turns out to be needed only for donating for bells and embroidering carpets...
The figure goes to the plowmen, taking care of sinned woman and her illegal child. For Leskov, as well as for the reader, the spiritual beauty of the Figure is undoubted, and the author reveals his sacrifice as moral feat to the glory of Christ. So Leskov clearly connects a person’s act with Christianity, while in a number of previous narratives, Christianity as the motivating reason for the actions of the characters was indicated by hints, not quite clearly, or was completely absent. The same beautiful Asa, for example, learns about Christ only before the end of her life, after the completion of her sacrifice. Many Leskovsky righteous people are guided rather by "universal" than Christian morality in their aspirations, while their religion has a somewhat abstract character. This was reflected in the writer's attraction to some universal religion, although it did not manifest itself as sharply as in Tolstoy, but still vegetated at least in its infancy.
The originality of Leskov's Christian worldview was most revealed in the story "The Mountain" (1890), the events of which date back to the first centuries of Christianity and take place in Egypt, where the followers of Christ were surrounded at that time by adherents of the local faith hostile to them.
The protagonist of the story is the goldsmith Zenon (the story was originally named after him), a true Christian who literally follows the commandments of the Savior. So, at the moment of temptation by the beautiful Nefora, he - according to the word of Christ (Matthew 5:29)- gouges out his own eye so that he does not seduce him.
But the Christian community (the Church) does not recognize him as his own, so that the bishop, compiling a list of all Christians at the request of the authorities, does not even remember the name of Zenon: "we do not consider him ours."
In the meantime, the most difficult task was set before Christians: to prove the truth of their faith and move the mountain, as it is said in the Gospel: "For truly, I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you" (Matthew 17:20).
The enemies of the Christians conceived: “We will catch them in His own words: He said that whoever believes, as He taught, then such a person if he says to the mountain: “move”, then it’s as if the mountain will move and throw itself into the water. From the roof of the ruler Mount Ader is visible towards sunset. If the Christians are good, then for the salvation of all, let them pray to their God that Ader will leave her place and, plunging into the Nile, become a dam to the stream. Then the waters of the Nile will rise up and irrigate the burnt fields. If but the Christians will not make Mount Ader move and block the course of the Nile, it will be their fault. Then it will become clear to everyone that either their faith is a lie, or they do not want to avert a common disaster, and then let the Roman cries rush through Alexandria: " Christianos ad leones!" (Christians to the lions)".
The majority of those of little faith flee in fright from the disgrace and death awaiting them; only a few, not hoping, however, for the desired outcome, go to the mountain, which they are ordered to move. However, there is no unity in them, but sheer disagreement, petty in view of the impending disaster (too obvious a parody of the difference in beliefs): "Here the disagreements and disputes began: some people said that it was best to stand with outstretched arms in the air, portraying the crucified, and others argued that it was best to sing prayer words in a singsong voice and stand, according to the Greek, pagan habit, raising your hands up, ready to receive the requested mercy from heaven. and it seemed to others that only one right palm should be raised up, and the left should be bowed down to the earth, as a sign that what was received from heaven in the right hand would be transferred to the earth with the left; but for others, memory failed or they were not well taught, and these they introduced quite the opposite and insisted that the right hand should be bowed to the ground, and the left raised to the sky.
Only Zeno is driven by true faith and is ready to voluntarily challenge the enemies of Christ. He teaches and prays to his fellow believers. It is his prayer that performs a miracle: the mountain moves and dams up the river. Zeno's faith moves a mountain, a faith that he humbly acknowledges as very weak, about which he later speaks to the patriarch.
Zeno's faith, though weak, is true - and he wins. True, Leskov went to the trick: trying to make a concession to reason and reconcile it with faith. He presented all the circumstances of the event in such a way that the natural elements that raged on that day can also be considered the reason for the movement of the mountain - and some natural signs foreshadow this cataclysm in advance. So you can not connect everything with faith, with prayer, but simply consider the movement of the mountain as a natural cataclysm, one of those that occur on their own, without depending on anyone's faith.
Also temptation.
The story "Mountain" is a clear allegory with an undoubted idea: in Christianity, the main thing is not belonging to the Church, but the truth of faith. The Church, on the other hand, unites those who were previously of little faith, who care about external petty formalities, in which disagreement gives rise to all divisions and schisms in it.
Such is Leskov's Christianity.
The heresy of the writer is primarily that he divided the faith and the Church.
Special mention should be made of the language of Lesk's transcriptions of the ancient apocrypha: it contains a special rhythmic structure of speech, which creates its special musical sound. Leskov developed this sound with the most painstaking work. About the language of the story "Mountain" he wrote: "... I achieved "musicality", which goes to this plot as a recitative. The same is in "Pamfalone", only no one noticed it; meanwhile, there you can chant and read with a cadence whole pages.
However, about the original language of Leskov, about his mastery skaz so much has been said that it has long since become a commonplace, so it is not worth repeating.
It seems that in the early 1990s the writer got tired of his "righteous people", and deep pessimism increasingly took power over him.
Leskov again turns to the gloomy sides of Russian reality, to which his largest creations of the last years of his life are devoted.
Evil outlined the mores of St. Petersburg society in unfinished novel"Devil's Dolls" (1890), and in order to partially protect himself, the author portrayed the events as if outside a specific time and place, but added exotic names to the characters. Along the way, he criticized the idea of "pure art".
The story "Yudol" (1892) brought the writer's memory back to the horrors of the long-standing famine of 1840, to childhood impressions, aggravated by terrible episodes of a national disaster, although they are retold as everyday: with measured calmness. (Here's one: the girls stole a neighbor's lamb to eat, then killed a boy who noticed the theft and tried to burn his dead body in the stove.)
By the end of the story, two righteous women appear. First of all, Aunt Polly, who had read the Bible (a familiar motif), who, as a result, "went crazy and began to do obvious inconsistencies." The second righteous Quaker Gildegarda Vasilievna, who, in addition to worries about material things, also has soul-saving conversations: "The Englishwoman showed my sister how to make a" square lace "on a flyer, and at the same time told us all in French" about the unfortunate Judas from Keriot ". We heard for the first time that this was a man who had a variety of qualities: he loved his homeland, loved the paternal rite and was afraid that all this could perish with a change in concepts, and did a terrible deed, "betraying innocent blood" ... .If he were without feelings, he would not have killed himself, but would have lived, as many live, having killed another.
Aunt whispered:
In the common sense of the Russian people, the late Leskov was almost completely disappointed. It is enough to read at least "Improvisers" (1893), "Product of Nature" (1893), especially "Corral" (1893). Again, the ministers of the Church play a negative role in the writer - in collusion with the gendarmes, they are engaged in persecution and bring to death smart and honest people who cause concern to those in power. About this - the story "Administrative Grace" (1893). Here the hierarch becomes the ideological organizer of the persecution, "very subtle, brought up under the wing of the Moscow Philaret." In his denial of the Church, the writer again blasphemes her saints.
In a particularly condensed form, all kinds of "rubbish of Russian life" was presented to the reader in the story "Winter Day" (1894).
The publisher of Vestnik Evropy, Stasyulevich, blamed Leskova: "... you have all this concentrated to such an extent that it catches your head. This is an excerpt from Sodom and Gomorrah, and I do not dare to speak with such an excerpt in God's light." Leskov insisted: I myself like Winter Day. It's just audacity to write it like that... "Sodom," they say about it. Right. What society is, such is "Winter Day".
We are again faced with the fact that Leskov is not lying and is not trying to deliberately exaggerate. He so seen life. As I saw, so I showed.
He wanted to see the good - he immediately hurried to show it to others as soon as he found something similar. In the story "Lady and Fefela" (1894), he brought out his last righteous woman, the selfless Prosha, who gave her life to serve people: "... she was good for everyone, because she could give everyone the treasures of her good heart." But people don't appreciate it.
The nonsense of Russian reality, which drives even healthy and naturally strong natures to madness, is mercilessly proved by the writer in his last significant work, the story "Hare Remise" (1894). The accusatory pathos of this work is so strong that the publication of the story took place only in 1917.
The main character of the story, Onopriy Peregud from Peregudov, regularly carries out police service, successfully catches horse thieves and observes the general order - but is confused by the requirement to find "foundation shakers".
Ordinary clergy are again presented biased. The parent of the protagonist reproaches his priest for usury: "The Jew took only one percent per month, and you take more than the Jew." But even that is not the worst example.
It was the priest, Father Nazariy, who became the main one of those who knocked down the unfortunate Onopry in search of "shakers". Among the curious adventures of Peregud in search of troublemakers, an episode stands out when he suspected some shorn young lady in malicious intent and malicious speeches, while she, in conversation with him, did nothing more than quote the New Testament. A symbol of sorts.
"Remise" is a card game term that means a lack of tricks leading to a loss. Pereguda's "Hare Remise" is the loss of his whole life because of the empty fears of his bewildered mind.
An implacable enemy of nihilism, Leskov suddenly presents the struggle against the revolution as complete inconsistency and absurd nonsense. Of course, it’s really difficult to find shockers in the over-the-top wilderness, but here is a generalizing allegory. Even in Journey with a Nihilist, the writer touched on the same idea: when frightened townsfolk out of fear mistook the Prosecutor of the Judicial Chamber for a nihilist. But that was a joke, a trifle. Now the same thing is said, albeit with irony, but seriously. Only a decade remained before the first revolution.
On the whole, a heavy impression is made of Russian reality from the works of Leskov, especially of the last period. But he saw life that way. The most important question arises again: is such a vision not distorted by some internal damage to the very vision of the beholder?
Let us not judge the whole of Russian life, but let us focus on one Church. Leskov rejected her spiritual significance in the life of the people, recognizing the insufficiency of the Church and in the matter of the earthly dispensation of life. Here, either spirituality was really lost by the Church, or, being too disposed to the spiritual, the writer shielded the spiritual from himself, and thus was forced to turn to his illusions And chimeras.
Let us assume that the first proposition is correct. But a little more than two decades have passed, and the Church, defamated by more than one Leskov (or Tolstoy), suddenly revealed such a host of confessors of faith, shining with holiness, who sacrificed not only the material or spiritual values \u200b\u200bof their existence, but also life itself, often given up in such torments What happens when spirituality is denied is completely incomprehensible: where did the forces come from?
Let us repeat the important judgment of St. Macarius the Great, which accurately explains the essence of Leskov’s world outlook: “The enemy sought this in order to wound and darken the inner man, the dominating mind, seeing God with Adam’s crime. passions."
This is one of the most important lessons to be learned from understanding the work of this undoubtedly great writer.
Outside spirituality, there can be no unity about which Leskov was so sad. And with him, the righteous themselves sometimes, like lonely antiques, oppose all people, and do not unite them around themselves; and uncomfortable at times near them.
Leskov's good intentions cannot be rejected under any circumstances.
"For everything good and bad - thanks be to God. Everything, truly, was necessary, and I clearly see how much that I considered evil served me for good - it enlightened me, clarified concepts and cleansed my heart and character."
So he said about himself and from himself three years before his death (in a letter to Suvorin dated January 4, 1892). Therefore, noting the mistakes and errors of the writer, as we understand them, we should be grateful to God that this writer was, even with his mistakes, but not only with mistakes. Let's take his wisdom: basically it is the wisdom of a Christian, in spite of all his heresies. Let us comprehend his heresies and errors, so as not to fall into a similar sin.
A year before his death, on March 2, 1894 (in a letter to A.G. Chertkova), Leskov states: "I think and believe that" all of me will not die, "but some kind of spiritual post will leave the body and will continue" eternal life", but in what way it will be - it is impossible to form an idea about this here, and then God knows when it becomes clear. ... I also think so that we cannot obtain a definitive knowledge of God under the local conditions of life, and in the distance it will not soon be revealed, and there is nothing to be annoyed with, since, of course, there is the will of God in this.
In these words: both ardent faith, and some implicitly expressed confusion from its uncertainty, one's faith. And the mind can not help.
So, in Leskov, we can note what was already seen in many Russian writers: duality, inconsistency ... Or is every artist in a secular culture doomed to this? However, let's forget that the very beauty that it serves is dual...
1. INTRODUCTION.
2. BRIEF CREATIVITY OF LESKOV.
3. "Cathedral" - A REFLECTION OF THE LIFE OF THE CLERGY.
4. "THE SMALL LIFE OF A BISHOP" - "SHADOWS" AND "LIGHT" OF THE CHURCH.
5. ANTI-RELIGIOUS ACTIVITIES.
6. CONCLUSION
7.LITERATURE
Russia cannot be understood with the mind,
A common yardstick cannot be measured ...
F.I. Tyutchev
He lived, striving with all his heart to "serve the motherland with the word of truth and truth", to seek only "truth in life", giving to any picture, in his words, "the illumination that is subject and the sense of reason and conscience." Each of his works is an artistically developed fact of life, it is an artistic melody that arises on the basis of real events and, as it were, invisibly correlates, connects these events with the past and turns to reflections about the future.
“The best time is not behind us. This is true and worthy of acceptance, ”N. S. Leskov wrote in his declining years. In those years when his contemporaries argued a lot about Leskov's works, Leo Tolstoy perspicaciously remarked: "Leskov is a writer of the future, and his life in literature is deeply instructive." The fate of the writer is dramatic, life, not rich in major events, is full of intense ideological searches. Inspired by a great love for his people, he sought, in Gorky's words, to "encourage, inspire Rus'."
The rich, diverse work of Leskov, although not without contradictions, at the same time is distinguished by an amazing artistic and aesthetic integrity. The writer's works combine the pathos of high morality and the bright originality of poetic forms.
His vision of reality, his poetics organically combined realism and romantic dream, the saturation of the narrative with a mass of specific, sometimes documentary details, almost
naturalistic sketches and deep artistic generalization recreated paintings.
Almost unexplored areas of life arose in Leskov's stories and novels, as if reborn, forcing readers to suddenly look back at the entire Russian world. Here both the “outgoing self-thinking Rus'” and its contemporary reality were presented.
For thirty-five years Leskov served his native literature. And, despite involuntary and bitter delusions, he was and throughout his life remained a deeply democratic artist and a true humanist. He always spoke in defense of the honor, dignity of a person and constantly stood up for “freedom of mind and conscience”, perceiving a person as the only enduring value that cannot be sacrificed either to various ideas or to the opinions of a contradictory world. In his artistic study of the past and present, Leskov persistently and passionately sought the truth and discovered so much previously unknown, beautiful and instructive that we cannot but appreciate the literary feat of the writer ...
Leskov came to literature not from the ranks of that "professional" democratic intelligentsia, which led its ideological origin from Belinsky, from social and philosophical circles of the 40s. It grew and developed outside of this movement, which determined the main features of Russian literature and journalism in the second half of the 19th century. Until the age of thirty, his life went on in such a way that he could least of all think about literature and writing. In this sense, he was right when he later repeatedly said that he got into literature “accidentally”. Nikolai Semenovich Leskov was born in 1831 in the village of Gorokhovo, Oryol province. His father was from a spiritual milieu: "a great, wonderful wise man and dense seminarian," according to his son. Having broken with the spiritual environment, he became an official and served in the Oryol Criminal Chamber. In 1848, he died, and Leskov, leaving the gymnasium, decided to follow in his father's footsteps: he entered the service in the same criminal chamber. In 1849, he moved from Orel to Kyiv, where his uncle (on his mother's side) S.P. Alferyev, then a notorious professor at the Faculty of Medicine, lived. Life has become more interesting and meaningful. Leskov joined the Treasury Chamber, but sometimes had the opportunity to “privately” listen to lectures at the university on medicine, agriculture, statistics, etc. In the story “Product of Nature,” he recalls himself: “I was then still a very young boy and did not knew what to define himself. Now I wanted to study the sciences, then painting, and my relatives wanted me to go to serve. In their opinion, this was the most reliable thing.” Leskov served, but stubbornly dreamed of some kind of "living cause", especially since the service itself brought him into contact with the diverse environment of the local population. He read a lot and during the years of Kyiv life he mastered the Ukrainian and Polish languages. Next to Gogol, Shevchenko became his favorite writer.
The Crimean War began, which Leskov later called "the blow of the tocsin, which was significant for Russian life." Nicholas I died (1855), and that social movement began, which led to the liberation of the peasants and to a number of other consequences that changed the old way of Russian life. These events also affected Leskov's life: he left the government service and switched to private service - to the Englishman Shkott (his aunt's husband), who managed the vast estates of the Naryshkins and Perovskys. So, to some extent, his dream of a “living business” came true: as a representative of Shkott, he traveled all over Russia - no longer as an official, but as a commercial figure, by the very nature of his activity, he was in close contact with the people.
In letters to Shkott, Leskov shared his impressions; F. I. Selivanov, Shkott’s neighbor on the estate, became interested in these letters, who, as Leskov himself later recalled, “began to ask them, read them and found them“ worthy of publication ”, and in the author he prophesied a writer.” Thus began the literary activity of Leskov, limited at first to a narrow circle of economic and everyday topics.
It seemed that Leskov decided to enter into competition with all the major writers of that time, opposing them with his life experience and his unusual literary language. Gorky noted this feature his first things that immediately drew the attention of his contemporaries to him: “He knew the people from childhood; by the age of thirty he traveled all over Great Russia, visited the steppe provinces, lived for a long time in Ukraine - in an area of a slightly different way of life, a different culture ... He took up the work of a writer as a mature man, excellently armed not with a book, but with a genuine knowledge of people's life.
In letters and conversations, he sometimes ironically uses the word "intellectual" and opposes himself to "theoreticians", as a writer who has much more and, most importantly, more diverse life experience. He willingly writes and speaks a lot on this topic that excites him, each time trying to highlight what seems to him the strongest side of his position. “I didn’t study the people from conversations with St. Petersburg cabbies,” he says with some vehemence, clearly alluding to the capital’s intellectual writers, “but I grew up among the people on the Gostomel pasture ... I was my own person with the people ... I need to study, I did not understand and now I do not understand. The people just need to know how our life itself is, not studying it, but living it.” Or so: “Books and a hundredth part did not tell me what the collision with life said ... All young writers should leave St. Petersburg to serve in the Ussuri Territory, in Siberia, in the southern steppes ... Away from Nevsky!” Or else like this: “I did not have to break through books and ready-made concepts to the people and their way of life. Books were good helpers to me, but I was the root. For this reason, I did not stick to any school, because I did not study at school, but at Sarks with Shkott.
The theme of the "righteous" in Leskov's work goes beyond the scope of this book, its origins are in Leskov's earliest works of art, and it stretches, refracting diversity, until the end of the writer's life. This theme was expressed sharply and distinctly in The Cathedrals (1872), followed by The Sealed Angel (1873) and The Enchanted Wanderer (1873). Their goodies Leskov is not looking for them at all where Gogol, and later Dostoevsky or Turgenev, looked for them, he is looking for them in different strata of the people, in the Russian outback, in that diverse social environment, knowledge of life and attention to which, the ability to feel the interests and needs of which testify about the deeply democratic orientation of Leskov's creative searches.
First, under the obvious influence of Katkov's reactionary ideas, he turned to the life of the provincial Russian clergy: this is how the idea of "Bozhedoms" arose, from which the "Soboryane" with Archpriest Tuberozov in the center came about. It is clear, in connection with all that has been said above, that the general ideological and artistic conception of the Soboryans - this, according to Gorky's definition, "magnificent book" is marked by extreme inconsistency. In the center of the story is a completely unexpected hero - the old provincial Russian priest Saveliy Tuberoza. The old archpriest is characterized by features common to a number of Leskov's heroes. On the one hand, there are features in him that are firmly associated with a certain everyday environment, he is emphatically “estate”, as is always the case with Leskov, his life path, his skills, customs are unthinkable anywhere except among the Russian clergy. The everyday beginning, very clearly and multilaterally outlined, is here also the key to the human personality, to psychology, to the peculiarities of mental life - in this sense, the principles of constructing character are absolutely no different from those that we saw in “The Life of a Woman” or in “ Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. At the same time, Savely Tuberozov, no less than other heroes of Leskov, seems to have “broken out” from his environment. The old archpriest is a white crow in the circle of people and customs typical of the spiritual environment, the reader learns about this from the very first pages of his “life”. He does not behave at all in the way that an ordinary, ordinary Russian priest is supposed to behave, and, moreover, he does this literally from the very first steps of his activity. He is a man who "broke out" from the very moment he entered the active life of the class. The demikoton book" is the diary of old Tuberozov for thirty years of his pre-reform life (in the book the action takes place in the 60s). The entire "demikoton book" is filled with variants of one life story - Tuberozov's incessant clashes with church and partly civil authorities. Tuberozov imagines its activity as a civil and moral service to society and people. With horror, the archpriest is convinced that the church itself evaluates its functions in a completely different way. The church administration is represented by a completely dead bureaucratic organization, above all seeking the external fulfillment of ossified and internally senseless rites and rules. The clash of the living a man and a dead estate ritual: - this is the theme of the “demicotone" book. The archpriest receives, say, a solid service "reprimand" for daring in one of his sermons to present as an example to follow the old man Constantine Pisonsky, a man who shows his life an example of true humanity. The official church is interested in everything, anything, except for what Tuberozov seems to be the very essence of Christianity, she meticulously monitors the performance of a dead ritual and severely punishes her servant who dares to look at herself as a worker assigned to a living cause. It is no coincidence that everything that happens in the "demicotone book" is mainly attributed to the pre-reform era. Leskov suggests that by the era of reforms, the same signs of internal decay appeared among the clergy as in other classes - the merchants, the peasantry, etc.
In the post-reform era, in the 1960s, the drama of the "broke out" archpriest develops into a genuine tragedy, the climax and denouement of which are conveyed by Leskov with great artistic power. The obstinate archpriest becomes more and more violent as the social contradictions in the country. Persecuted by both ecclesiastical and civil authorities, the old priest decides to take an unusually daring (for the given social environment, of course) step: he calls all the officials of the provincial town to church on one of the official service days and spiritually “shames the publicans”: he delivers a sermon, in which accuses officials of an externally official, state-owned attitude towards religion, of "mercenary prayer", which is "disgusting to the church." According to Tuberozov, the life and daily affairs of the officials gathered in the church reveal that this “mercenary prayer” is not accidental - in their very life there is not a drop of that “ Christian ideal”, which Tuberozov himself serves. Therefore, “it would be enough for me to take a rope and drive them out of those who are now selling in this temple.” Naturally, after this, both ecclesiastical and civil punishments fall upon Tuberozov. “Do not bother: life is already over, life begins,” - this is how Tuberozov, who is taken away for punishment to the provincial town, says goodbye to his archpriest. The social, inter-class norms of the bureaucratic state came down in a climax on Nastya and Katerina Izmailova. The climax of "Soboryan" is the challenge thrown by Tuberose to social and inter-class relations. Particularly clear in these parts of the book is the literary analogy persistently pursued by Leskov and by no means accidental for the general concept of "Soboryan": the violent old-town archpriest clearly resembles the central character of the brilliant "Life of Archpriest Avvakum".
It is essential for understanding the general inconsistency of the ideological and artistic structure of Soboryan that the enemies of the frantic truth-seeker Tuberozov are not only spiritual and secular officials representing the administrative apparatus of the autocratic-feudal state, but also former “nihilists”. Moreover, the former "nihilists" act in the book together, in alliance with officials in cassocks and uniforms.
Just like in the novels “Nowhere” and especially “On the Knives”, Leskov shows not the advanced people of the 60s, but the self-serving and anarchistic human scum that lives on the principle of “everything is allowed” and which is not shy about means in order to achieve its goals. small goals. Here, in depicting the intrigues of the officials Termosesov and Bornovolokov, whom Leskov persistently seeks to pass off as former representatives of the progressive social movement of the era, Leskov allows a rude attack on progressive social circles. This mistake is connected with the general inconsistency of the ideological composition of Soboryan. Leskov does not consider the rebellion of Archpriest Tuberozov to be a random and private phenomenon: in this rebellion, according to the writer, the general crisis of the feudal system and the collapse of old class ties are reflected. When applied to Tuberozov, it is no coincidence that the word “citizen” is persistently used in the book, the recalcitrant clergyman himself interprets his frantic rampage as an act of civic service, the fulfillment of a public duty that arises before every person of any estate group in new historical conditions. According to the archpriest and the author himself, Tuberozov’s struggle with the Termasesovs, Bornovolokovs, and Prepotenskys is particularly acute in the fact that “it is already growing fruit from your loins,” as Tuberozov puts it, or, in other words, the actions of the Bornozolokovs and Termasesovs seem to Leskov one of forms of social crisis, which was also expressed in the pre-reform activities of people like Tuberozov himself. The Tuberozovs and the Bornovolokovs are fighting on the same historical ground, their different mode of action has the same social premise - the historical crisis of serfdom.
The most impressive pages of Soboryan are the story of tragic death a violent archpriest, who naturally turned out to be powerless in his lonely struggle with the church and police bureaucracy. Tuberozov’s ally in this struggle is the deacon Achilles Desnitsyn, who turned out to be “hard to tell our sleepy slumber when a thousand lives burn in him.” It is no coincidence that the deacon of Achilles is placed in the book next to the tragically concentrated in himself "righteous" Tuberozov. The deacon of Achilles, only by misunderstanding, wears a cassock and has an unusually comical appearance in it. Above all, he appreciates wild riding in the steppe and even tries to get himself spurs. But this man, who lives a direct, thoughtless life, for all his ingenuous brilliance, is also “wounded” by the search for “righteousness” and “truth” and, like the archpriest himself, will stop at nothing in serving this truth.
Deacon Achilles, with all his appearance and behavior, no less than Tuberozov, testifies to the destruction of the old class, everyday and moral norms in the new era. The comical epic of Achilles' trip to St. Petersburg is by no means comical in its meaning: it is an epic of searching for the truth.
Achilles and Tuberozov, as conceived by Leskov, represent different facets of the national Russian character that is united in their foundations. The tragedy of the archpriest is in his irreconcilability. Even after an anti-church sermon in the temple, the matter could easily be settled. The ecclesiastical and secular bureaucracies are so rotten in their very essence that the decorum of order is most important to them. It was enough for the archpriest to repent, and the case would be dismissed. But the archpriest who “broke out” from his midst does not bring repentance, and even the death of the archpriest does not force him to repent.
The petitions of the dwarf Nikolai Afanasyevich lead to the fact that Tuberozov was allowed to go home, but he still does not repent until the moment of his death. In the finale, it was not by chance that the figures of the Plodomasov dwarf and the frantic archpriest collided - they represent, according to Leskov, different stages of Russian life. When leaving their environment in the world of inter-class relations, Nastya and Katerina Izmailova turned out to be victims of the system that fell upon them. Tuberozov keeps his fate in his hands to the end and does not reconcile with anything. Compositionally, the book is structured differently than Leskov's early works. The theme of Tuberozov's rebellion, the theme of inter-class relations, within which the bright, adamant, implacable character of the hero stands out most clearly, has been developed the most. After the death of Tuberozov, the deacon Achilles wages a fierce battle for his memory in ways characteristic of his personality, as a worthy heir to the daring Zaporozhian Sich, and in this battle his nationally unique character is also most clearly revealed, as the character of a “righteous man” and a “truth seeker”. In its conclusion, the "magnificent book" turns out to be a book of reflection on the peculiarities and peculiarities of the national character. The theme of the "righteous" is solved in a different way in the things that followed the "Cathedrals". More and more, Leskov departs from the idealization of the “old fairy tale”, his critical attitude to reality deepens more and more, and, accordingly, the writer is looking for the “righteous” in a different environment. In The Sealed Angel (1873), the heroes are already Old Believers who are fighting Orthodoxy, but the story ends with their transition to the bosom of the Orthodox Church. It was an obvious stretch. In 1875, Leskov told his friend from abroad that he had become a “changeling” and no longer burns incense to many old gods: “Most of all, he was at odds with churchism, on issues of which I read to my heart’s content things that are not allowed in Russia ... I will only say one thing, that had I read everything that I have now read on this subject, and listen to what I have heard, I would not have written The Cathedral the way they are written ... But now it twitches me to write a Russian heretic - an intelligent, well-read and free spiritual Christian. Here he also reports that in relation to Katkov he feels something "which a literary person cannot but feel towards the murderer of his native literature."
That special ideological approach to the phenomena of social life, which is characteristic of Leskov's mature work, determines the writer's original, original approach to the problems of artistic form. Gorky saw the most important distinguishing feature Leskov - the master of form - in the principles of his solution: problems of poetic language. Gorky wrote: “Leskov is also a magician of the word, but he did not write plastically, but by telling, and in this art he has no equal. His story is a spiritualized song, simple, purely Great Russian words, descending one with the other into intricate lines, now thoughtfully, now laughingly ringing, and you can always hear in them a quivering love for people, covertly tender, almost feminine; pure love, it is a little ashamed of itself. The people in his stories often talk about themselves, but their speech is so amazingly lively, so truthful and convincing that they stand before you just as mysteriously tangible, physically: clear, like people from the books of L. Tolstoy and others - in other words, Leskov achieves the same result, but with a different technique of skill, "Leskov wants the Russian person to speak for himself and for himself - and, moreover, the estate of a simple person who does not look at himself from the side, as the author usually looks at his characters, He wants, so that the reader listens to these people themselves, and for this they must speak and tell in their own language, without the intervention of the author.
Living from the very beginning of his literary career on magazine earnings, materially poor, Leskov was forced for many years to be a member of the Scientific Committee of the Ministry of Public Education, despite a number of humiliating details of his career and meager pay for sometimes extremely laborious activities. However, for Leskov, greedy for diverse life impressions, inquisitive about the most diverse aspects of Russian life, this service also had some creative interest: he sometimes printed the departmental material that most interested him, subjecting him to journalistic or artistic processing.
It was these publications that aroused the unfavorable attention of such pillars of autocratic reaction as K. P. Pobedonostsev and T. I. Filippov. Lighting that. Leskov attached to the facts he published, far from coinciding with the intentions and aspirations of the government leaders. Dissatisfaction with Leskov's literary activity especially intensified at the beginning of 1883, apparently in connection with Leskov's speeches on questions of church life.
The Minister of Public Education, I. D. Delyanov, was instructed to "reason" the masterful writer in the sense that Leskov would adjust his literary activity to the types of government reaction. Leskov did not succumb to any persuasion and categorically rejected the inclinations of the authorities to determine the direction and nature of his literary work. There was a question about resignation. In order to give the case a decent bureaucratic guise, Delyanov asks Leskov to file a letter of resignation. The writer resolutely rejects this proposal as well. Frightened by the threat of a public scandal, the confused minister asks Leskov why he needs to be dismissed without a petition, to which Leskov replies: “It is necessary! At least for obituaries: mine and… yours.”
The expulsion of Leskov from the service caused a well-known public outcry. Of even greater social significance, undoubtedly, was the scandal that broke out during the publication by Leskov, already at the end of his life, of the collected works. The publication of the ten-volume collected works undertaken by the writer in 1888 had for him double meaning. First of all, it was supposed to sum up the results of his thirty-year creative path, the revision and rethinking of everything he created over these long and turbulent years. On the other hand, having lived after his retirement exclusively on literary earnings, the writer wanted to achieve a certain material security in order to focus all his attention on the realization of the final creative ideas. The publication was started, and things went well until the sixth volume, which included the chronicle "The Seedy Family" and a number of works interpreting issues of church life ("Trifles of Bishop's Life", "Diocesan Court", etc.). The volume was seized, as anti-church tendencies were seen in its content. For Leskov, this was a huge moral blow - there was a threat of the collapse of the entire publication. At the cost of removing and replacing things objectionable to censorship, after long ordeals, the publication was saved. (The part of the volume that was confiscated by the censorship was subsequently, apparently, burned.) The collected works were a success and justified the hopes placed on him by the writer, but the scandalous story with the sixth volume cost the writer dearly: on the day when Leskov found out about the arrest of the book, he was with him for the first time , according to his own testimony, there was an attack of illness, a few years later (February 21 / March 5, 1895) that brought him to the grave.
If you do not particularly think about the meaning of Leskov's satirical assignment in "Trifles of Bishop's Life" (1878), then these essay sketches at first glance may seem completely harmless. It may even seem strange that this book so agitated the highest spiritual hierarchy and, by order of spiritual censorship, was delayed in publication and burned. Meanwhile, Leskov's task here is extremely poisonous and really satirical in Leskov's way. With the most innocent look, the author tells how bishops fall ill with indigestion, how they treat prominent officials with selected wines, almost breaking into a dance, how they take exercise to combat obesity, how they do good only because the petitioner managed to to find a weak spot in their likes and dislikes, how petty and ridiculous they are at enmity and compete with secular authorities, etc. The selection of small, at first glance, everyday details, skillfully recreating the everyday existence of spiritual officials, is subject to a single task. Leskov, as it were, consistently exposes the masquerade of external forms by which the church artificially separates itself from the ordinary philistine Russian life. Quite ordinary philistines are found, who absolutely do not differ in any way from those who look after the name of spiritual children. The colorlessness, emptiness, banality of ordinary bourgeois life, the absence of any bright personal life - this is the theme that permeates seemingly innocent everyday sketches. It turns out really a satire, very offensive to those who are depicted, but the satire is special. All this is a shame for the clergy, first of all, because the reason for the masquerade is quite clearly exposed - special forms clothing, language, etc. This masquerade is needed because, in essence, an ordinary bishop is absolutely no different from an ordinary tradesman or an ordinary official. There is not even a glimpse of the main thing that the bishop officially represents - the spiritual life. The spiritual principle is likened here to a cassock - an ordinary official with indigestion or hemorrhoids is hidden under the cassock. If among the Leskovsky bishops there are people with human pure soul and a warm heart, then this refers exclusively to their personal qualities and is in no way connected with their official professional functions and official social position. On the whole, Leskov, in his own, special ways, exposes the everyday ritual of church life, in many respects close to the “tearing off the masks”, which Leo Tolstoy later carried out so vividly and sharply.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the themes and images of folk heroics and talent were replaced by Leskov's anti-government and anti-church satire, exposing the victorious regime.
Starting from "The Trifles of Bishop's Life" to "Hare Remise", for almost twenty years, Leskov tirelessly exposes the "ideology" and practice of the church and religion. And it must be said that there was not a single “writer” in Russia who would deal such fierce and crushing blows to the strongest stronghold of autocracy - the church, as Leskov did, who was never a consistent and completely convinced atheist.
In the essays "Trifles of Bishop's Life" (1878-1880) 1 Leskov tries to write about the clergy from the standpoint of an “ideal”, imaginary church, and therefore he sees not only shadows, but also “light”. He dedicates a number of sketches to Metropolitan F. Amfiteatrov of Kiev and other hierarchs who are rebelling against the Byzantine pomp and seclusion of hierarchal life, he proposes to eliminate the diocesan (that is, spiritual) court, according to which churchmen, committing criminal offenses,
often go unpunished, and calls for reforms in Orthodoxy, following the example of Protestantism and the Anglican Church. On the other hand, the first chapters of the essays (G-IV), which appeared gradually, are distinguished by a special sharpness of tone, and it can be assumed that they subsequently softened under external pressure, but in any case, "Trifles" were only an initial, relatively weak attempt at anti-church satire.
Having become acquainted during the years of cooperation in the Russky Vestnik and church magazines with circles of the higher clergy, Leskov was aware of the entire policy of the ruling clique, carried out through the church, of all the intrigues and moods of the synod. This served him as material for accurate and irrefutable portraits of Russian hierarchs.
Bishop Smaragd of Oryol did not get along with Governor Trubetskoy. Their quarrel filled the emptiness of provincial life, and the idle witty Major Schultz put up mannequins of a fighting rooster (governor) and a goat (bishop) on the window and every day, depending on the circumstances, changed the arrangement of the figures. “Then the rooster pecked and beat with a wave of the goat’s wing, which, lowering its head, held with its paw the hood that was moving to the back of the head, That the goat crushed the rooster’s spurs with its hooves, hooking it under its jaws with its horns, which caused its head to rise up, its helmet to fall on the back of its head, its tail to drop, and its pitifully gaping mouth, as it were, cried out for protection ... It was, however, impossible not to watch the figures, because there were cases when a goat appeared to the eyes of passers-by with a slate tablet, on which it was inscribed in large size: “P-r-i-x-o-d”, and at the bottom under this heading it was written: “Such and such a number: I took this ruble and two sugar heads" or something like that." This trick of the witty major allows Leskov to present with great vivacity and humor both the Oryol archpastor, a bribe-taker and a petty tyrant, and his enemy, the “crazy governor.
In another chapter, also on memoirs, he sketched the Bishop of Penza, who was distinguished by his obstinate disposition. Leskov depicts him in a collision with an Englishman who had no reason to be afraid of the Russian bishop. “The bishop blushed like a cancer, and, snapping his nails on the stick, he no longer spoke, but croaked: “Now I must report that This like that?" He was informed that This(A. Ya. Sh[kott], head manager of the estates of the Perovsky counts. The bishop immediately calmed down and asked: “Why is he in such a dress?” - but, without waiting for any answer, he went straight to his uncle. The moment was the most decisive , but ended with the bishop holding out his hand to Shkott and saying: "I have great respect for the English nation."
The essays are especially convincing due to the peculiar position of the author, who, as a sincerely interested person, "tells about the hierarchical and church life in general; however, this also leads to the filling of some chapters with truly "petty" facts and to the well-known inconsistency in the tone of the essays - it is difficult, for example, to harmonize extremely gentle scenes designed for tenderness with sharply satirical, bold characteristics and positions related to Filaret Drozdov, Smaragd Kryzhanovsky and others.
"Little Things of Bishop's Life" for the first time showed the general reader a special caste world not from its external, but from carefully concealed sides. Leskov cited countless facts of church and monastery criminality, not subject to civil court, spoke about priestly hypocrisy and avarice, and a series of his “pictures from nature” presented the entire Russian church in its true form from village deacon to Moscow metropolitan. At the same time, Leskov's essays were not a single work in style: along with excellent humorous stories, they included extensive newspaper and documentary material. At the end of the 1970s, Trifles of a Bishop's Life was a well-deserved success with the reader and in the progressive democratic press. The reactionary-priestly press, of course, reacted differently. In the article “The Innocently Disgraceful Honor”, the “Church Herald”, powerless to answer on the merits, accused Leskov of “boorish ridicule ... most often invented shortcomings” of church ministers. “Recently,” the editorial says, “a whole book has been published speculating on the flattery of the grossly selfish instincts of the underdeveloped crowd. Composed primarily of gossip of the lowest sort, it without shyness throws dirt and slander on the most venerable representatives of the Russian Church.
In the essays written after the "Trifles" essays "The Revolt of the Nobles in the Dobrynsky Parish" (1881), "The Beggar" (1881), "The Serpent of Paradise" (1882), "Priest's Leapfrog" (1883), etc. Leskov also avoids any generalizations inconvenient for the church, but only expounds archival materials and documents with emphasized dispassion, but the true facts of church life, with the author’s honest attitude towards them, arouse great dissatisfaction with the insidious “renegade”, which soon takes on the character of persecution. And Leskov, for his part, becomes sharper with each successive work, he affects not only the life of monasticism and priesthood, but also the ritual practice of the church and the dogmas of Orthodoxy. This inevitably raises the need to present in a new light the images of the former "ecclesiastical" works.
In the essays “Pechersk Antiques” (1883), Mr. Leskov, as mentioned above, refers to an explanation of the final episode of “The Sealed Angel” and instead of the poetically depicted religiosity of the Old Believers, he shows ridiculous fanaticism and religious battles, instead of the icon-painting fanatic Leo "ntii - foolish, but also fanatical “Bricklayers,” says Leskov in “Pechersk Antiques,” “were people of a very sedate and impressive appearance, moreover, with all the signs of high-profile Russian piety: the bangs on their foreheads were trimmed, and on the domes in honor of the Lord, the Humenets were shaved ... How the Pomors used to start singing and praying, Gehazi climbed onto the mountain ash and teased them from there, shouting: "Troparia-collectors." skirmishes and "stone-throwing", sometimes ending in breaking windows on both sides.In conclusion of all this spiritual strife, Gehazi, as the direct culprit of the collisions, was "started" with a rope and sometimes (walked for three days bent over.
In the humorous stories of the 80s The White Eagle (1880), The Spirit of Mrs. Janlis (1881), A Little Mistake (1883), Leskov caustically ridicules the belief in "crazy" prophets "in the bourgeois-merchant environment and the passion for mysticism and spiritualism in high society, and in the story "Chertogon" (1880) he creates an almost fantastic picture of a merchant's revelry, culminating in holy foolish hypocrisy.
Leskov's acquaintances tried to influence him and stop his anti-religious activities. Colonel Pashkov, one of the first leaders of the Russian evangelists, wrote to him on September 22, 1884: “I am inexpressibly sorry that you, whose heart once responded to everything true and good, now scoff ... at what they taught ... the apostles " 1 . At the same time, the Slavophile I. Aksakov tried to exhort Leskov, “... in recent times,” wrote Aksakov on November 15, 1884, “I completely slandered your Muse and turned her into a simple cook ... There are a lot of abominations in our church life, terribly, to horror, a lot. It should be exposed, but in a Russian song it is sung:
The same word would you
I wouldn't say so.
This once. There is another way of denunciation in the manner of Ham, who made fun of his father's nakedness. Feel it, most venerable Nikolai Semyonovich...”2. However, censorship bans, exhortations and scolding of former comrades-in-arms from conservative circles could not stop Leskov.
The most interesting anti-church work of this time can be considered "Notes of an Unknown Man" (1882-1884) 3. They represent a series of independent stories united by common characters and the personality of the narrator. In the preface, Leskov writes that he allegedly acquired an old manuscript, which is of "considerable interest as an artless depiction of events that were of interest at one time to some apparently very venerable, original and serious social circle." This "social circle", of course, is priests and monks, which is proved by the Church Slavonic language and the narrator's point of view, which does not at all coincide with the reader's attitude to events.
In "Notes of an Unknown Man" Leskov uses anecdotal humoresque, an adventurous story, a vicious satirical grotesque, and all this combines into complete picture manners and customs of the clergy. He gives a whole gallery of colorful portraits: Father John, who, being drunk, fell asleep during a church service; Fr. Vist and Fr. Preferants, “two priests, both of academic scholarship and such passionate lovers of playing cards that even their names have been forgotten in the city”; rich sheep breeder father Pavel; a European-style priest, Father George, who “killed all the best ladies in the city from other priests”; a hierodeacon-bogatyr who had a fight in a tavern with a quarterly on the “greatly mournful day” - Friday in Holy Week, etc. The unknown narrator fully sympathizes with these heroes, and therefore the author’s irony is especially noticeable. It affects even the titles, comically inconsistent with the content of the stories ("About the madness of one prince", "The constrained limitations of English art").
But the funny alternates in "Notes of an Unknown Man" with the Tragic, the terrible. Leskov, as in the Pechersk Antiques, seems to be returning to his first works about the clergy. So, for example, in the "Soboryany" with good-natured irony, it is told about the amusing quarrel between Savely and Achilles because of the canes presented to them; a similar story with a gift comes to life in a reduced satirical interpretation in the short story "On the dangers of reading secular books that happen to many." A new version of the fate of Savely Tuberozov can be the short story "Stopping the Growing Language". Leskov shows how the clergy hunted down the “defrocked” archimandrite. The hero of the novel, having retired from his rank, tries to get a job as a teacher, but on the denunciations of the priests he is persecuted by the police and in the end, “living in the spring in a water-filled rostal in a damp stone barn, with an abandoned mill, he fell ill ... with that disgusting and fatal disease called scurvy, and he died alone in the night, biting his tongue with his teeth, which had so far protruded out of his mouth to the surface that it was very unpleasant and scary to look at. Next comes the miraculous arrest of this growing tongue, performed by a monk in front of frightened peasants. Leskov sarcastically exposes the "miracle" and the intricate moralizing of the deceitful narrator.
Remarkable for their elegant, fine finishing and witty parody of speech, the short stories lead to a convincing conclusion: there is no such meanness that these heroes, corrupted by age-old parasitism and always ready to serve the "political authorities", would not have committed.
Under reaction conditions Alexander III“Notes of the Unknown” is undoubtedly a bold and risky speech against church obscurantism, and they finally determine the further path of Leskov, the maintenance of Leskov’s work, especially pronounced in the images he created of people of an honest and disinterested “righteous” life, Russian heroes, “enchanted by the love of life and people”, masters of their craft who see hard and joyful work in art and turn work into high art and influenced Gorky. “In life I saw dozens of bright, richly gifted, excellently talented people,” writes Gorky, and in literature, the “mirror of life,” they were not reflected or were reflected so dimly that I did not notice them. But Leskov, a tireless hunter for a kind of original person, had such people, although they were not dressed as - in my opinion - they should have been dressed.
Romantic colorfulness of Leskov's prose, its multicolored language tools, the landscape framing of Leskov's heroes in the brilliance of the "silver sea of the steppes", "in the bright powerful illumination" of crimson and azure, in the sparkle of the snowy deserts of Siberia - all this turned out to be consonant with the optimistic romance of nature and life in Gorky's stories. Finally, the bright national color, folklore motifs and beauty of folk speech in the work of Leskov could not help but influence Gorky, a connoisseur and poet of Russian life. And this literary continuity shows that Leskov worked not only for his own, but also for the future era, which for the first time in the history of mankind opened up a free outlet for the inexhaustible sources of heroism and creativity of the people, who now vote for “beautiful laws, war and peace.”
In our days of the flourishing of all people's forces and talents and the construction of a national in form and socialist in content culture, in a new and more understandable way than for many of Leskov's contemporaries, his images of a talented and strong Russian man sound, and verbal skill can be highly recognized and appreciated and Leskov's love for the "rich and beautiful" language of the people.
LITERATURE
1. Russian writers and poets. Brief biographical dictionary. Moscow, 2000.
2. Collected works in 11 volumes. T. 6. M.: State publishing house of fiction, 1957 OCR Bychkov M.N.
3. Collected works in twelve volumes. N. S. Leskov “Pravda” 1989.
4. The life of Nikolai Leskov according to his personal family and non-family records and memories. A. N. Leskov “Fiction” 1984.
5. Energetic faux pas. N.S. Leskov "Orthodox Review" 1876.
Maya Kucherskaya is a writer, literary critic and literary critic, literary columnist for the Vedomosti newspaper. Candidate of Philological Sciences (Moscow State University, 1997), Ph.D. (UCLA, 1999). Associate Professor, Deputy Head of the Department of Literature, State University Higher School of Economics. Laureate Bunin Prize(2006), Student Booker (2007).
Thank you for coming on this rainy evening to think about Leskov together. The fact is that I have been studying Leskov for many years, but I have never considered him specifically from this position. Today's lecture I would rather call "Leskov and Christianity" than "Christianity in Leskov's work." Probably, the corrected name should sound like this - "Leskov and Christianity."
Since I am a philologist (besides everything else that I do in life), the most interesting thing about Leskov for me is his texts, and only secondarily his views. This, of course, is connected one with the other, but I analyze the texts more, I look at what happens in them, I just don’t know how to do anything else. We were taught this at the Faculty of Philology, and this is what I do.
For me, this topic is a challenge, a shake-up. A very useful shake-up, because the results that I came to after my superficial reflections on Leskov and Christianity are very similar to what I came to when analyzing his texts in terms of their structure, images, language, and other things.
What I would like to dedicate our meeting today is the question of what is the essence of Leskov's sermon. Today we will not talk about what is not in this sermon, although I know that there is always a considerable number of interested readers who are interested in looking at the writer from a Christian point of view, from an Orthodox point of view.
For those who care about this aspect in Leskov, I refer them to Mikhail Dunaev's wonderful study "Orthodoxy and Literature", there is a large chapter devoted to Leskov. This chapter is a critique of Leskov's worldview and Leskov's prose from the point of view of orthodox Orthodox Christianity. It's a pretty convincing critique, but it's a job I just can't do because I have a different toolkit.
It has always been important for me what they want to say to me, I want to hear what the writer wants to tell me. There will be no criticism of Leskov from the standpoint of correct Orthodox Christianity today. In addition, this is also due to the fact that I am by no means a religious scholar, not a theologian, I do not know what the correct Orthodox Christianity is, and I do not dare to set foot there.
In general, Leskov was not very lucky. At first he was a marginal, he became one already during his lifetime, and they looked at him with a squint and talked about him through his teeth, starting in the early 1860s, almost immediately after he entered the literary field, because he unsuccessfully acted with two articles about fires and he was accused of political denunciation. It was not a denunciation, it was such an innocence of a beginner, he did not know how to write in newspapers.
He, an aspiring writer, came from Kiev, and when a series of fires broke out in St. Petersburg in the summer of 1862, he wrote several articles in the Northern Bee, the essence of which was that he urged the police to find out who set these arson, who is to blame for this, are the students really to blame for this, as rumors say about it. In this way, he legalized the rumors, named the possible perpetrators, and called on the police to investigate. All radical youth and writers turned away from him, because he was not his own.
He was offended, went to Paris, wrote the anti-nihilistic novel "Nowhere" - and off we go. He forever remained a marginal in the literary environment, he forever became not his own for those who were then trendsetters. From this there was a rather sad consequence that in Soviet times they also did not pay much attention to him, because he was “not his own” one who became his own for the Soviet authorities, whom she considered a radical. He criticized Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, and this could not please the Soviet publishers.
His religious views were not studied at all, it was a completely taboo subject. The only thing you could look at in Leskov was the language, the style, the tale. There was a good justification for this position: from this position one could see in him a folk writer, and if this folk writer, then you can talk about it and you can discuss it. In the field of Leskov and Christianity (in our today's topic), there is almost complete emptiness.
In this void there is one book, one tree grows - this is a wonderful study (it was published quite recently) by Tatyana Ilyinskaya, it is called "Russian Diversity in the Works of Leskov." The book was published in St. Petersburg in 2010, there is a squeeze from it on the Internet. Those who are interested in our today's topic from a research point of view, I refer there, to this book. It says a lot of new things, considering that almost nothing is said about it at all.
I consider our today's meeting as a reading by Nikolai Semenovich, I will read out some important fragments and comment on them a little. That's how we'll spend it, I hope it's a nice time.
Here is the first fragment, this is from Leskov himself, from his autobiographical essay, where he describes a lot of things, talks about his life, in particular about his relationship with religion:
“Religiosity has been in me since childhood, and, moreover, quite happy, that is, such that early on I began to reconcile faith with reason in me. I think I owe a lot to my father here too. Mother was also religious, but in a purely ecclesiastical way - she read akathists at home and served prayer services every first day and observed what consequences this had in the circumstances of life.
I think that here you hear the irony of Leskov, but then it will disappear:
“Father did not prevent her from believing as she wanted, but he himself rarely went to church and did not perform any rituals, except for confession and Holy Communion, which, however, I knew what he thought. It seems that he "did this in his (Christ's) remembrance." He was impatient with all other rites and, dying, bequeathed "not to serve memorial services for him." In general, he did not believe in the advocacy of either the living or the dead, and, if his mother wanted to go to worship miraculous icons and relics, he treated all this with disdain. He did not like miracles and considered talking about them empty and harmful, but for a long time he prayed at night in front of the Greek letter with the icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands and, walking, he loved to sing: “Help and patron” and “Wave of the sea”. He was undoubtedly a believer and a Christian, but if he were taken to be examined according to the catechism of Filaret, then it would hardly be possible to recognize him as Orthodox, and I think he would not be afraid of this and would not dispute it.
How much the father had a huge influence on Leskov's views, we will be able to see today as we talk, because this, also not the most quoted fragment, reveals quite a lot in Leskov, and not only in his father. This is the first fragment, we will return to the father and this topic, and here is the second fragment.
Leskov is already an adult, he is already remembered as a famous writer. These are the memoirs of the writer Pilsky, who later emigrated, to whom another writer and critic Izmailov wrote, who wrote about Leskov, who wrote a long book, but did not finish it.
“Izmailov visited the already very elderly Leskov and told the following. On the table he had a beautiful cross on ivory, of wonderful work, taken from Jerusalem, which caused an involuntary sigh of admiration. Once, in a moment of frankness, Leskov, jokingly, drew Izmailov's attention to the round glass made in the cross, and bringing the cross closer to his poorly sighted eyes, Izmailov was dumbfounded - there, behind the glass, a completely indecent picture was inserted.
The memoirist continues and tells another story from the words of Izmailov:
“Once, going to Leskov by chance, Izmailov quietly crossed the threshold of the office and saw the owner in an unexpected position - Leskov was on his knees and bowed. Izmailov coughed cautiously. Leskov glanced around quickly, fidgeted about the carpet, and began talking quickly in confusion, as if justifying himself: “A button came off, you know, I’m looking for it, I’m looking for it, and I can’t find it in any way,” and for the sake of appearance, he began to rummage around the carpet with his hand, as if there really was something that's what I was looking for."
This scene is described by various memoirists who recall Leskov, this is already the 80-90s, he is already old man. In my opinion, these two fragments perfectly and accurately indicate the two poles. On the one hand, religiosity and an easy reconciliation of faith and reason, a father who, perhaps, is not very churchly, but sings “Help and Patron” and takes communion. On the other hand, a very strange cross, skepticism and denial, but still a prayer on one's knees in front of the icons. We will designate these two poles and we will move between them. Now let's turn to the figure of the father again.
The Leskov family experienced a terrible drama. As you know, Leskov's grandfather was a priest, his name was Father Dmitry, he served in the village of Leski, this is the Bryansk district. The village was rather poor, father Dmitry had three children, one of them was Leskov's father, another son and another daughter. As expected, the boys went to the seminary, they successfully graduated from it ... One graduated, and the other did not. One brother was killed in a brawl, because morals in the seminary were tough, there was the right of the kulak - whoever is the strongest is the most successful.
When Semyon Dmitrievich, already the only son of Father Dmitry, returned home from the seminary, the first thing he told his father was that he would not become a priest. According to Leskov: "Father refused to go to the priests because of the inevitable aversion to dirt." What terrible words! Where did he manage to grow this disgust in himself? One can imagine that when your brother is killed, perhaps in front of your eyes, it is not very pleasant, but that is not the point. In general, everything that we read about the seminary of those years ... This is the beginning of the 19th century, the 1810s, there are many memoirs of seminarians left (not only “Essays on the Bursa” by Pomyalovsky, but also others).
It is impossible to read these memoirs without horror and tears, because everyone describes - guess what? What is everyone describing? How they were beaten, of course. The main event of the seminarian is the rod. They beat them all the time, they always beat them, for faults and not for faults, especially sophisticated teachers demanded that the elders beat the younger ones, and so on. They studied in this nightmare, morals were cruel. Judging by the intonation of these memories, it was impossible to get used to it.
This nightmare continued even into adulthood, through high school, until it finally ended. What kind of Christian love can be discussed here, what kind of Christianity in practice? About none. However, in fairness, I know one exception. I read a lot of these memoirs, I was wondering who the classmates of Father Leskov Semyon Dmitrievich were, and I found one famous one. This is his namesake Semyon Raich, he changed his surname and became Amfiteatrov, and his brother Filaret was Amfiteatrov (Leskov's hero, by the way, is a goodie).
Semyon Raich was a poet at heart, and he warmly recalled the same Sevsk Seminary where Semyon also studied. Warmly, he recalled, first of all, the lessons of the Latin language, there were good teachers. And we also know about Semyon Dmitrievich that he loved Latin all his life, he translated Horace into Russian, this served as a consolation for him in difficult days. There were good teachers in the seminaries, but the general atmosphere was not for tender souls.
In a word, Semyon Dmitrievich refused to go to the priesthood. Why was it a disaster and not the death of a brother? Because the parish was passed down from generation to generation, because it was extremely difficult to leave the priesthood, it required justifications, it was a complicated procedure. Needed where was born. It was not customary to go out.
This happened from time to time. The same Raich did not become a priest, but for other reasons: he loved literature too much, he loved poetry too much, he wanted to do it. It was extremely difficult for him to leave the estate, we know how many procedures he went through, including he had to resort to deceit and say that he was sick, otherwise they would not have let him go. In a word, the parish is left without an heir, the father is left without a son-priest.
Father Dmitry was a hot man. According to the memoirs, he immediately kicked out his son. He did not even have time to spend the night, exhale after the seminary grubs. By family tradition, he left with forty kopecks of copper, which his mother managed to slip to him already at the gate. He did not disappear, because the sciences were driven hard into seminarians. He had a fairly wide knowledge in various fields. Of course, he knew ancient languages, of course, he knew history, a bit of literature. And, of course, he could become who? A teacher, a tutor, which he became. Then he became an official and so on. This seminary teaching, apparently, has never been forgotten.
This dislike for priests, about which Leskov writes, apparently also remained with him forever. At the same time, this was a dislike for priests in the plural. Among Semyon Dmitrievich's friends was Evfimy Ostromyslensky. This is the priest who taught the Law of God to Leskov himself. They were friends. That is, when it was about specific people, then love could appear and return. Such was the father.
Let us now turn to Leskov's childhood, to his youth, and to the topic of disbelief. From the very beginning, Nikolai Semenovich was surrounded by various versions of Christianity, primarily the Old Believers. There were a lot of Old Believers and schismatics around, he himself wrote that “Gostomel farms, where I was born and raised, are surrounded on all sides by large schismatic villages.” And then he recalls how he secretly ran to their secret services, they let him in, but, of course, he hid it from his parents, because it was a terrible secret.
Dissenters are an important part of the life of the entire 19th century, namely in the 1860s, when Leskov took shape as a writer, this topic became one of the most discussed in journalism and journalism. Why? Because the 60s of the 19th century was a time of liberalization, a time of liberation in all areas. In particular, they started talking about the liberation of women, freed the peasants and began to actively discuss the civil rights of the Old Believers, because they were amazed in these rights. In a word, interest in schismatics and Old Believers began very early and accompanied Leskov all his life.
Leskov was interested not only (I’ll tell you right away, looking ahead) to the Old Believers, but also to the most diverse types of offshoots of Christianity. It seems that he was always walking around with a metal detector and looking for a treasure: where is the truth, where is the gold, where is it? He brings the metal detector to the Old Believers: is there one here? There are, of course. Those works that he wrote about the Old Believers betray his great sympathy for the schismatics. Why? This does not mean that he was blind and did not see their limitations, dogmatism, often cruelty towards others (cruel fasts, corporal punishment). All this is described in the Pechersk Antiques, in particular, and not only. I don't even mention the "sealed angel" because it's a well-known classic Leskov about the life of the Old Believer community.
He saw everything, but he also saw in them their incredible sincerity, their uncompromisingness, their desire to live according to the word of God, their zeal, he could not help but appreciate it. In 1863, on behalf of the Minister of Public Education Golovnin, he went to Pskov and Riga, where he studied Old Believer schools. He had to write a note for the ministry about schismatics, about schismatic schools, but in the end...
He compiled notes on the schismatics, they were written, but in the end they turned out to be works much broader than what was required of him. Their essence, if reduced to a certain concentrate, is that Leskov protests in every possible way against the restriction civil rights schismatics, emphasizes that these are by no means sectarians, but part of our common Christian Russian world, and says that schismatics should join Orthodoxy voluntarily, they should not be forced.
This is what he always insisted on from an early age: no violence in faith, this is the free choice of everyone. In this sense, he also preached an extremely unfashionable position in relation not only to the official Church, which is understandable, but also to radical circles, too, because they preferred to see the opposition of the authorities in the Old Believers, it was pleasant for them in them. Leskov stressed in every possible way that they were loyal to the authorities, and even more so, they should be treated mercifully.
If this is a delusion, then they must be given the opportunity to live and experience it on their own. In my opinion, the scene in Pechersk Antiques very expressively illustrates Leskov's attitude to the Old Believers. There is an episode of the arrival of the sovereign in Kyiv. Kyiv was also a very diverse and diverse city, including the Old Believers.
This is how Leskov describes the elder Malachi, who was waiting for the sovereign to climb the newly built bridge (he came for this bridge in many ways, it was a huge and important event in the life of the city), he would turn to the river, show two fingers and say, that this is what true confession should be. At the same time, Elder Malachi was sure that this was not a fantasy, but the truth. Here's what happened out of it all. First, Leskov describes how he was dressed:
“He was dressed in a pious ancestral custom, in a blue wide cloth chuyka, sewn just like an old robe and trimmed along the sleeves, along the collar and along the right field with some kind of crappy crawly fur. Shoes also answered the clothes: on the feet of the old man were red boots with a soft goat's boot, and in his hands a long painted crutch; but what was planted on his head, you really can’t even describe it. It was a hat, but who made it and where it could have been obtained in our century, no experienced person could determine. The historical completeness of the information requires, however, to say that this thing was obtained by the admirers of the elder Malachi in Kiev, and before that it was kept in the caches of Kozlovsky's store, where it was accidentally found by his clerk.
Skripchenko when transporting fashion rarities from Pechersk to Khreshchatyk. The hat was a tall plush top hat, with the boldest interception in the middle and with wide, completely even brim, without the slightest bend either on the sides, or behind, or in front. She sat on her head like a rampage, as if she didn't want to have anything to do with anything.
When the sovereign appears on the bridge and suddenly stops in the middle, the elder falls into a frenzy, falls to his knees.
“He was literally beside himself: “the fire burned in his eyes, and the hair on him was seen as bristles.” His right hand, with a tightly clenched two-fingered cross, was directly raised above his head, and he shouted (yes, he did not speak, but with all his might, shouted loudly):
- Yes, father, yes! Here it is, dear, do it! Fold, as it should, two fingers! Give the whole earth one heavenly confession.
And at that time, as he shouted, hot tears poured in abundant streams down his cheeks covered with gray moss and hid in his beard ... The old man’s excitement was so strong that he could not stand on his feet, his voice broke off, he staggered and collapsed on his face and froze ... One might think that he even died, but his right hand prevented it, which he nevertheless straightened, raised up and waved it to the sovereign with a two-fingered addition ... The poor man, obviously, was afraid that the sovereign would not make a mistake, as it should be shown " heavenly confession.
I can't express how touching it was! In all my life after that, I have not seen a serious and strong-willed person in a situation more tragic, enthusiastic and at the same time pathetic.
This picture perfectly illustrates Leskov's attitude to the Old Believers. A serious, strong-willed person, but tragic and pitiful. Leskov was occupied not only by the Old Believers, he was also interested in eunuchs and Molokans, but he had a special sympathy for the Stundists (this is such a Protestant branch that arose in the south of Russia, mainly in Little Russia). Its origin is not entirely clear.
The name "stundism" is associated with the German root "stunde", which means not just "hour", but also "hour of prayer". The Stundists were Protestants, they did not recognize the priesthood, they did not recognize the sacraments in our understanding, but they had two important values.
First - the Bible, they read it constantly, studied it, regardless of class. Secondly, they preached practical Christianity. They believed that the main thing was to live the gospel and do Christian deeds. Both were very close to Leskov. Both he considered worthy of emulation. Both of them were very much lacking in Orthodoxy. He dedicated many of his journalistic works to the Stundists, where he also expressed all respect for them without any fear.
Stundism is a theme that appears in a wide variety of his stories. Here is "The Unbaptized Pop", also a very revealing story for Leskov. It turns out that it is not at all necessary to be baptized in order to become a priest, this is not the main thing. True, then his hero was nevertheless recognized as baptized, if you remember from the plot. Leskov does not insist that this sacrament happened, it did not interfere with anything, his hero became one of the best and most beloved shepherds of his flock.
Completing this circle of walking along different faiths together with Leskov, we will also touch on Tolstoyism. Tolstoy Leskov was fascinated beyond measure. This was already in later years. After Leskov read the key works of the late Tolstoy, where he tells what his faith is, Leskov seems to have simply fallen in love with Tolstoy. Everything that Tolstoy said was close to him. He insisted on a meeting, they met, and it was a pretty successful meeting, apparently. Why? Because Tolstoy later wrote about him that he was a very smart person. Leskov could not stop in this love of his, he showered Tolstoy with letters of infinite length.
Leskov wrote dozens of letters to Tolstoy, and Tolstoy wrote him six. Some of them are very short. In a word, it was not that there was no reciprocity, but, of course, Nikolai Semenovich looked up at Lev Nikolaevich, although, loving him, sharing his views on the Church in many respects, he did not like the Tolstoyans. The further, the more. At the very end of his life he said: “I love Leo Tolstoy, but there are no Tolstoyans”.
One can imagine how he was annoyed by the treatment, important for the Tolstoyans and for their life practices, when they went and did carpentry, trying to get closer to the people. Leskov perceived this as a masquerade, called them mummers. He knew the people too much from the inside, unlike even Lev Nikolayevich. Leskov belonged to completely different circles, and he saw falsehood in this. He did not like Tolstovtsev, but nevertheless he maintained the most respectful relations with Tolstoy until the end of his life.
With this, we conclude this part, from which we can conclude that Leskov was looking for the truth everywhere. I searched in different directions, and yet the most persistent and longest of all in Orthodoxy. That's what we'll talk about. Of course, today I will not have time and will not be able to tell about all his stories and novels, where this topic is present in one way or another. I will focus on the most important ones.
Here we cannot ignore the novel "Soboryane" - the only novel in Russian literature where the main characters are priests, we do not know other such novels, only Nikolai Semenovich gave it to us. There is, of course, The Brothers Karamazov, where the elder Zosima appears.
There is "The Story of Father Alexei" by Turgenev. But the novel, in the center of which is Archpriest Savely Tuberozov, the quiet, meek priest Zakharia Benefaktov, and the deacon Achilla Desnitsyn, is one such novel. He is unique. Leskov endlessly rewrote it. Many drafts have survived. The first edition of the novel was called "The Chasing Movements of the Water".
The publication was suspended by Leskov - he could not stand the cuts that Kraevsky made in the novel in "Notes of the Fatherland", cut off the publication. Soon it was resumed in another magazine - "Literary Library", already under the name "Soboryane", and again broke off, the magazine was closed. Finally, the novel was finished and released. It is very difficult to read.
I know that he has a certain circle of admirers, but no one can not admit to himself that this is a difficult read. There's no storyline, no such bright and interesting adventures to follow that would keep our attention. This is a novel to which Leskov gave the subtitle "Romanic Chronicle". Here, therefore, as if there are no pronounced plots, climaxes and denouements, that is, they are all the same, but they must be felt and you see them not from the first reading.
This novel is Leskov's gift to us. First, the clergy are brought out here. Secondly, Leskov did not just describe two priests and one deacon: he was able to catch the types. This is an incredibly difficult thing. I am often asked at various reader meetings: “Who is the hero of our time now? Is there a hero of our time? Good question.
I come up with different answers, I came up with one just yesterday. We do not have Lermontov to see the hero of our time. To see the hero of our time, you need to have a very high degree of vigilance and sensitivity to history, to the present day, to trends. It was possessed not only by Lermontov, it was possessed, for example, by Turgenev. Then it is possible - in this crowd of contemporaries to see someone who can become a representative of the time, and see him as a representative of a whole generation and thus immediately describe the type.
Leskov also did the impossible: he described several types of priests. His Savely Tuberozov is the type of ardent priest who burns. His closest relative in literature is Archpriest Avvakum, speaking of the Old Believers. Many wonderful works have been written (particularly by Olga Mayorova), which show that Leskov used the life of Archpriest Avvakum when he composed this novel, that is, he sculpted his character in many respects from Avvakum. This time.
Two - the bogatyr deacon Achilles, he is a little bit not an intellectual, frankly speaking, not too much, maybe well-read and smart, but he has a very kind heart, he is sure that many problems can be solved by simply physical strength. His life is disappointing. The third is Zakharia Benefaktov, a meek and quiet priest who accepts Savely's last confession.
Each of them is a type. The fact that Leskov was able to describe them speaks of his writing depth and maturity. What is the Cathedral about? Of course, I will not retell the (however, missing) plot of this book. The critic Volynsky wrote wonderfully about Soboryan. So wonderful that I'll read his opinion on it.
“Leskov mysteriously diverts the attention of readers from the details to something lofty and important. Not for a moment do we cease to follow the development of one great, supersensible truth, which somehow invisibly approaches us and inaudibly takes possession of the soul.
You know, you can't say better about this novel, because the invisible and inaudible truth of this work is the main thing in it. Savely Tuberozov is looking for where this truth is hidden. Leskov very tenderly described Mother Tuberozov, this is such an ideal patriarchal couple, they have no children, and this is the subject of his grief and sorrow.
But the main thing for him is not this, but the stagnation that surrounds him: everything has become dead. Nobody likes the movement of water, that's the point. In the end, having gone a very long way, Savely Tuberozov delivers a sermon, which becomes the beginning of his end. He delivers a sermon in the church, which even Leskov does not give us the opportunity to hear, we only read the summary of this sermon.
How Savely pronounced it - we do not know. What is this sermon about? Its fragments are scattered throughout Saveliy's various diary entries, and therefore I will not quote only the sermon, I will quote some of his diary entries. Here is one part of which has become very famous and is quoted all the time. He writes in his diary:
“He founded his house and was engaged in reading the fathers of the church and historians. I drew two conclusions, and I want to recognize both as erroneous. The first of them is that Christianity has not yet been preached in Rus'; and second, that events repeat themselves and can be predicted. I once spoke about the first conclusion with my rather intelligent colleague, Father Nikolai, and was surprised how he heeded this and agreed. “Yes,” he said, “it is certain that we are baptized into Christ, but we are not yet clothed in Christ.” So, I’m not the only one who sees this, and others see it, but why is it funny to all of them, and my womb is indignant at this to the blood.
This is his main pain, and the sermon with which he goes out to his flock is about this, about the fact that everyone has become deaf, blind and does not want to put on Christ, but only formally baptized. Another aspect of this sermon is this. Savely Tuberozov falls into a thunderstorm - this is one of the most striking scenes of the novel. The storm threatens him with death, he survives when the storm ends, but he sees that the tree that stood next to him is cut down, as if on the vine, and it crushed the raven. The raven wanted to hide in the branches of the tree, but died. Savely Tuberozov writes:
“How instructive this raven is to me. Is there salvation where we drink it, is there salvation where we fear it?
This is where his mind is heading. Are we looking in the right direction? In the sermon, speaking of this, he also says the following:
“Following His divine example, I rebuke and condemn this trade in conscience that I see before me in the Temple. The Church is opposed to this mercenary prayer.”
Thus, what is Savely protesting with his author? Against the humiliation of the clergy, against the indifference and ignorance of the flock, against the weakening of the connection between the pastor and the flock, against church lies. All this is the invention of Nikolai Semenovich. All this was actively discussed then, in the 1860s, in church journalism. The researchers even looked at the manuscripts and saw that some newspaper clippings were glued to Leskov's manuscripts, this is what fed him and why he was so sick. Savely's last words:
"... they are here ... God's living cause is ruining ...".
He dies for absolutely nothing, only at the last second forgiveness is brought to him and he can be buried in vestments, because for his bold sermon he was banned from ministry and died soon after. Here we already see Leskov's gradual departure from the Church, but it will not take place immediately and not soon. In my opinion, the key story for our topic is the story “At the End of the World”.
To be honest, this is one of my favorite lyrics. Let me recap the plot in a nutshell. This story will be at the center of today's conversation, because everything came together in it and in it we hear Leskov's long-suffering position in relation to Christianity, the Gospel, and so on. This is a story about how an Orthodox bishop went as a missionary to the Russian north and wanted to convert as many savages as possible to Orthodoxy. It all ended with one of these savages teaching him such a lesson, from which he concluded that, it turns out, the light of Christ shines not only in Christians and it is not necessarily hidden in baptism, but in this simple savage who saved his life, he is also present.
Leskov proves this idea very beautifully. Actually, the story begins with the conversation of the bishop, who is listened to by several people, they talk about different images of Christ, and this story ends with the following words, this is the very end:
“Evaluate, gentlemen, at least the holy modesty of Orthodoxy and understand that it truly contains the spirit of Christ, if it endures everything that God pleases to endure. Indeed, his humility alone is worthy of praise; and one must marvel at its vitality and glorify God for it.
We all answered without persuasion:
- Amen.
Here, it seems to me, the most important word is “Amen”. Everything that the bishop told about his terrible adventures, in which he almost died, was perceived by the listener as a sermon. Leskov, of course, presents this as a sermon. This, of course, is not only the sermon of the hero of the story, but this is the sermon of Leskov himself.
What does Nikolai Semenovich want to tell us here? The first thing that catches your eye in this story is the huge number of sources to which he refers. I will simply list what he quotes here: the Book of Genesis, the book of Exodus, the books of the Old Testament prophets, the Gospel, the Revelation of John the Theologian, the Acts of the Apostles. Everything is clear here, everything is canon.
Then he turns to the fathers of the Church, to preachers and uses not only the prayer of Cyril of Turov, for example, or the teaching of Cyril of Jerusalem, or Isaac the Syrian, but also refers to Tertullian, a heretic, and to the German philosopher and mystic Karl Eckartshausen, and to the ancient and Buddhist mythology, and folklore. The amount of what he quotes is endless. Behind this, of course, is the ideological picture of the world of Leskov: the last truth, maybe not, everyone can sing it only in chorus.
The most unexpected in this list of sources is the reference to Virgil. It sounds in one of the climactic places of the story. The bishop has already been saved; his savage, with whom they fell into a terrible storm and nearly died, has already brought him food. He looks around and this is what he sees:
“And in this reflection, I did not notice how the sky suddenly flared up, caught fire and doused us with magical light: everything again took on huge, fantastic dimensions, and my sleeping deliverer seemed to me enchanted by a mighty fairy-tale hero. Forgive me, blessed Augustine, but even then I disagreed with you and now I do not agree with you that "the very virtues of the pagans are only hidden vices." No; this one who saved my life did it out of nothing else but virtue, self-sacrificing compassion and nobility; he, not knowing the apostolic covenant of Peter, “could take courage for me (his enemy) and betrayed his soul for doing good.” Abba, father, communicate yourself to the one who loves you, and not to the one who tests you, and be blessed forever, such as you, by your goodness, allowed me, and him, and everyone to comprehend your will in their own way. There is no more confusion in my heart: I believe that you have revealed yourself to him, as much as he needs, and he knows you, like everyone else knows you:
Largior hic campos aether et lumine vestit
Purpureo, solemque suum, sua sidera norunt! -
(The ether here dresses the spaces more magnificently in the decoration of purple light, and the people here will know their sun and their stars! (lat.))
old Virgil prompted my memory - and I bowed at the head of my savage face down, and, kneeling down, blessed him, and, covering his frozen head with my coat, slept next to him as if I were sleeping, embracing with a desert angel ".
There are a lot of interesting things here. Here, it seems, the bishop and Leskov refer to the words of the Apostle Paul from the Acts of the Apostles about the altar. From Virgil he quotes openly. Why is Virgil here? You can understand and imagine this for yourself. Because Virgil has a special place in Christian culture. We know that he wrote the fourth eclogue, which was interpreted by Christian commentators as a prediction of the birth of Christ. This is an eclogue, included in Virgil's large book Bucoliki, which describes the arrival of a divine baby who will bring prosperity to the world.
More skeptical researchers say that this eclogue is dedicated to the birth of an heir in the imperial house and it is impossible to see here the prediction of the coming of Christ. It is interesting that this eclogue was written at the very dawn of a new era.
I won't go into it now, talk about what Virgil really meant, because what matters is his reputation in the culture. It is such that Virgil is a pagan poet who managed to see something that a pagan poet cannot see. Therefore, Dante took him as his guide, and it was Virgil who led Dante through the circles of hell. There was no other companion for the Christian poet Dante.
Just as Virgil came closer to understanding that there is Christ, so the pagan, in Leskov's understanding, can come closer to the knowledge of God. Perhaps this parallel is not accidental. The desert angel shows up here, right? Here, too, this is not some kind of reservation, but a clear projection on the image of John the Baptist, on which John the Baptist is depicted in the form of an angel in animal skins. Again the most unexpected projection, because John the Baptist is projected onto a savage who needs to be baptized.
How is this even possible? This is possible because it happens in Leskov's story. It turns out that in some sense it is the savage who baptizes the bishop, and not vice versa. Probably, I will not dive into other nuances of this wonderful story and will only add one detail. A little earlier, before the scene that I read, there is another one that explains a lot about Leskov's attitude to Christianity and missionary work. This is how the bishop sees his savior. He was already waiting and had already said goodbye to life, and he had already appeared on the horizon:
“I will describe it to you as well as I can: a winged gigantic figure swam towards me, which was all dressed from head to toe in a tunic of silver brocade and sparkled all over; on his head was a huge, it seemed, almost a fathom height, a headdress that burned, as if it was completely strewn with diamonds, or as if it were a solid diamond miter ... with his fantastic appearance, sparks of silvery dust splash from under the feet of my wondrous guest, over which he seems to be rushing on a light cloud, at least like a fabulous Hermes.
You see everyone is here, right? Both the pagan god Hermes and the Indian idol have gathered here, here the savage looks like a metropolitan in a diamond miter - this is all the meaning of the sermon that Vladyka delivers to his listeners, and Leskov is in front of us. The harmonic world for Leskov of that time, Leskov of the 1870s, is a world containing different cultures, different languages and views. The higher principle that can unite and reconcile all this, regardless of what religion a person professes at the moment and what language he speaks.
Referring to the plot in which different languages and cultures collide, Leskov declares the existence of timeless universal truths, the expression of which requires more means than one language and one culture can provide. It is clear that the story of these truths must inevitably include borrowings from different languages and different cultures. In fact, this story is also about missionary work. Leskov thus also speaks of multilingualism, that the apostle must speak in all languages, depending on who he is now speaking with.
I would like to dwell on this, but I can’t, because then the relationship between Leskov and the Church and Orthodoxy changed ... Still, the story “At the End of the World” clearly does not contradict Orthodoxy, it’s not for nothing that it is sold in church shops, although if you read it carefully ... Then Leskov left farther and farther from the Church, in 1875, two years after the story, he remarkably wrote to his acquaintance in a letter:
“On the other hand, it twitches me now to write a Russian heretic - an intelligent, well-read and free-thinking spiritual Christian who went through all the hesitation in order to seek the truth of Christ and found it only in his soul alone.”
This desire to write a novel about a heretic never came true, but the search for Leskov continued and still continued outside the Church. Where did he go next to seek the truth? He started looking for the person.
The last story today is a story related to the search for the righteous. Of course, he had been looking for them much earlier. The same Savely Tuberozov, all the main characters of "Soboryan" and the heroes of "At the End of the World" are already quite righteous, but somewhere in the 1880s, Leskov realized this as a task - to look for these people and describe them. He himself spoke very funny and very caustically about the circumstances of how this idea came to his mind, in the preface to the collection, which was called “The Three Righteous Ones”, which was published in 1886. He writes in the preface:
“With me, for the forty-eighth time, a great Russian writer died. He still lives as he lived after forty-seven of his previous deaths, observed by other people and in a different environment.
Then he tells about the conversation that took place between him and this writer (we are talking about Pisemsky, he does not name him). They are talking about the following. The writer says that his play is forbidden, and Leskov explains to him that everyone understands that he here laughed at everyone, ridiculed everyone, what does he want now?
“- Because you, knowing our theatrical practices, described in your play all the titled persons and all of them presented one another worse and vulgar.
- Yes; so that's your consolation. In your opinion, I suppose everyone should write good ones, but I, brother, write what I see, but I see only nasty things.
- You have an eye disease.
“Perhaps,” answered the dying man, completely angry, “but what am I to do when I see nothing but abomination in my soul or in your soul, and for that, the Lord God will help me now from himself turn away to the wall and fall asleep with a clear conscience, and leave tomorrow, despising all my homeland and your consolations.
And the sufferer's prayer was heard: he had a good night's sleep, and the next day I accompanied him to the station; but on the other hand, I myself was seized by a fierce anxiety at his words.
“How,” I thought, “can it really be that neither in my, nor in his, nor in anyone else’s Russian soul can you see anything but rubbish? Is it possible that everything good and good that the artistic eye of other writers has ever noticed is one fiction and nonsense? It's not only sad, it's scary. If, according to popular belief, not a single city stands without three righteous ones, then how can the whole earth stand with one rubbish that lives in my soul and yours, my reader?
It was both terrible and unbearable for me, and I went to look for the righteous, I went with a vow not to rest until I found at least that small number of three righteous, without whom “there is no hail of standing”, but wherever I turned, whoever I asked - that’s it. they answered me in the way that they did not see righteous people, because all people are sinners, and so, both of them knew some good people. I started writing it down. Whether they are righteous, I think to myself, or unrighteous - all this must be collected and then sorted out: what here rises above the line of simple morality and therefore "holy to the Lord."
And here is some of my notes.
Further, the reader experiences some shock, because in this collection of the righteous, Leskov included not only stories that do not raise questions about who the righteous is (for example, “Unmercenary Engineers” is a story about wonderful people, or stories about teachers, lecturers, or “ Cadet Monastery"), but also "The Enchanted Wanderer" and "Lefty".
If you remember the content of The Enchanted Wanderer, which killed three people, among other things, then the question arises: what kind of righteous man is he? In "Lefty" it is also not clear who is righteous: a left-hander? He's an alcoholic, or at least a drunkard. In general, Leskov's righteous people, as always with Leskov, are very ambiguous.
I have already uttered the word "ambiguity" - this is what Leskov always insists on, including when talking about Christianity, about the righteous, about faith. It is impossible to evaluate phenomena, events, people. It is impossible to evaluate them from one point of view, they must be evaluated from many points of view. His righteous people are, indeed, strange people, not necessarily attractive at all.
As a rule, Leskov again turns out to be very deep in their description. I refer you, for example, to the story "Odnodum", which describes a person who is impeccable, quarterly, he honestly performs his service, he reads the Bible, he knows it by heart. When the governor arrives and it seems to him that the governor has not reverently entered the temple, he bows this governor and urges him to be more humble. The governor later summoned him, talked to him and realized that he was a special person.
However, one of the critics wrote about this hero: "It blows cold from him" - there is truth in this too. This one is absolutely right person, of course, does not think too much about those who are around, and so devoutly serves the truth that, as a result, again Leskov does not put any accents here. As a result, his mother dies through his fault, because he is a righteous man, because they tell him: “Your mother should not stand in the market and sell pies” - this was her meaning of life, she baked pies and sold them.
At first it was just a way to eat, and then the meaning of life. “Your mother shouldn’t be standing in the bazaar,” we don’t know how it was argued, but he removed her from the bazaar, and she soon died – the meaning of life disappeared. So, the Leskovsky righteous people are also very ambiguous, like everything else with him.
Summing up, I will say one more thing. Being a preacher of love, effective goodness, practical service to people and believing that a true writer was born in order to hasten the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth, Leskov, of course, in many ways followed the path of Gogol, Gogol also always wanted to do so.
For Leskov, in addition to Tolstoy, in later years the experience of Gogol and his "Correspondence with Friends", which Gogol wrote to enlighten Russia, was always important. Leskov had some like-minded people, but his search was still unique. No one else will find such a sincere desire to portray a good person, kind and bright. Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky, Alyosha Karamazov in Dostoevsky, Platon Karataev in Tolstoy, yes, but this is not recognized as the main task.
Leskov saw this as his goal. He could never move away from the Christian theme, he never left it. At the end of his life, he continued to write about it. All his stories that he arranged are all about the same thing: it is not necessary to be baptized, it is not necessary to be orthodox, the truth of Christ can shine in any heart and at any moment.
Thus, we have before us a very, I would say, a modern writer-thinker, because he preaches things that sound normal and familiar to our ears today, but then it was not so. Faith in tolerance, in infinite freedom, in the right of everyone to believe as he sees fit. Intolerance to form, the priority of the spirit over the letter and ambiguity.
The meaning of his preaching is that we should doubt all the time, that we should think, believe in Christ and not always believe people, believe the Gospel, and not its interpretations, and ask ourselves the same question as Savely Tuberozov: is there salvation, where is its tea?
Audience questions
– It seems to me that one of your main themes is a protest against formalism in the understanding of faith, against formalism in the Church. I wanted to ask you, do you know modern literature better: is there someone in modern literature who also develops this topic, who can also be read?
– I think and I can’t think of anything, because we have very few people who write on the Orthodox topic. Few writers are deeply interested in this. I will not say that we have few believing writers, but writers for whom, as for Leskov, Christianity is air ...
He can be condemned, here Mikhail Dunaev wrote an exposé
wow article. Well, maybe Leskov was wrong about Orthodox Christianity in something, but he was so passionately interested in this! Today there are simply no such people, I boldly say: there are none.
We have authors who write on Orthodox topics, but their books are still very cautious, as a rule. Leskov walked fearlessly through the windbreaks, never looking back at anything. Today I do not find anyone who would think freely like this, including about this - about formalism in the Church.
Eat wonderful novel Evgenia Vodolazkina "Laurus", this is a story about a saint, published last year, I highly recommend it to everyone. This book is unique. This is a biography of a medieval saint, written in modern language, written completely fearlessly, because plastic bottles from the 21st century sometimes begin to creak under the feet of this saint, but this is not perceived as some kind of dissonance, but is perceived as the fact that there is no time and no will. I would not say that there is a question about form and freedom, it's just the aroma of freedom and that's it. This creative illustration such freedom and free attitude towards Christianity. This is how I will answer.
– Remember, Leskov has short story"Chertogon"? I didn’t understand: is this a banter or is it a sincere admiration for strong repentance? What is this?
Thank you for reminding me of this story wonderful story. In my opinion, this is also such (I will take the liberty to say this) self-portrait of Nikolai Semenovich. Now let me remind you of his story. This is a story about how one very wealthy merchant first walks all night in full, and then goes and repents in front of the icon, repents as passionately as he walked.
The narrator is at a loss - both. This is Leskov, he himself was bifurcated all the time. I think what I read at the beginning illustrates this very well. He passionately believed, and lived, and prayed.
I would not say that this is satire, this is a story about a Russian person. What is faith in a Russian person? This is immensity! Broad Russian people. Probably, if in the first place I have the story "At the End of the World", then in the second place I have the story "Chertogon". I love him. It is absolutely ambiguous, again nothing is clear. Is it bad that he walked all night? It's not bad, it's just the way it is!
- Tell us about Leskov's attitude towards John of Kronstadt.
He irritated him, that's all! Not even John of Kronstadt himself, but the atmosphere. Leskov, following his father, treated miracles with great skepticism. It's not that he didn't believe in them at all, but he believed that there were far fewer of them than people would like. The fact that John of Kronstadt should appear and perform a miracle made him angry.
Yes, here we meet with such an interesting case: the non-meeting of two contemporaries - John of Kronstadt and Leskov - and such a deep misunderstanding. Still, it seems that although I avoid saying that Leskov did not understand something there, I have to admit here that he could not see the saint in John of Kronstadt as in a priest.
Dmitry Bryanchaninov is good until he becomes a monk; when he became Ignatius - everything, for Leskov he no longer exists. In "Midnighters" speech goes already about John of Kronstadt, yes, he is there. Not only does the caricature appear in Night Owls, but there is also recognition of some of its merits, but clearly Leskov did not see much in John of Kronstadt.
Thanks a lot! I hope that we did not spend this time together in vain. I wish everyone to read Leskov, all the best!
Maya Kucherskaya. Educational portal "Orthodoxy and the World"
