About three hours after Kirsanov left, Vera Pavlovna came to her senses, and one of her first thoughts was: you can’t leave the workshop like that. Yes, although Vera Pavlovna liked to prove that the workshop went on by itself, she knew, in fact, that she was only seducing herself with this thought, but in reality the workshop needed a leader, otherwise everything would fall apart. However, now the matter was already very settled, and there could be little trouble in directing it. Mertsalova had two children; but an hour and a half a day, and even then not every day, she can devote. She, probably, will not refuse, because she is now doing a lot in the workshop. Vera Pavlovna began sorting out her belongings for sale, and she herself sent Masha first to Mertsalova to ask her to come, then to a dealer in old clothes and all sorts of things to match Rahel, one of the most resourceful Jews, but a good friend of Vera Pavlovna, with whom Rahel was unconditionally honest , like almost all Jewish small merchants and traders with all decent people. Rakhel and Masha were supposed to call at the city apartment, collect the dresses and things left there, on the way to call on the furrier, to whom Vera Pavlovna's fur coats were given for the summer, then with all this heap to come to the dacha, so that Rakhel would properly evaluate and buy everything by the herd.
When Masha came out of the gate, she was met by Rakhmetov, who had been wandering about the dacha for half an hour.
Are you leaving, Masha? For how long?
“Yes, I must be tossing and turning late at night. A lot to do.
- Is Vera Pavlovna left alone?- One.
- So I'll come in, sit in your place, maybe there will be some need.
- Please; and I was afraid for her. And I forgot, Mr. Rakhmetov: call one of the neighbors, there is a cook and a nanny, my friends, to serve dinner, because she has not had dinner yet.
- Nothing; and I didn't dine, we'll dine alone. Did you have lunch?
- Yes, Vera Pavlovna did not let go like that.
- It's good though. I thought they would forget it because of themselves.
Except for Masha and those who equaled or surpassed her in the simplicity of their soul and dress, everyone was a little afraid of Rakhmetov: both Lopukhov and Kirsanov, and everyone who was not afraid of anyone or anything, at times felt a certain cowardice in front of him. He was very distant from Vera Pavlovna: she found him very boring, he never joined her company. But he was Masha's favorite, although he was less friendly and talkative with her than all the other guests.
“I came without a call, Vera Pavlovna,” he began, “but I saw Alexander Matveich and I know everything. Therefore, I reasoned that I might be useful to you for some services and spend the evening with you.
His services could be useful, perhaps even now: to help Vera Pavlovna in dismantling things. Anyone else in Rakhmetov's place at the same moment would have been invited, and he himself would have volunteered to do this. But he did not volunteer and was not invited; Vera Pavlovna only shook hands with him and said with sincere feeling that she was very grateful to him for his attentiveness.
- I will sit in the office, - he answered, - if anything is needed, you will call; and if someone comes, I will open the door, you do not worry yourself.
With these words, he calmly went into the study, took out of his pocket a large piece of ham, a slice of black bread - in total it amounted to four pounds, sat down, ate everything, trying to chew well, drank half a decanter of water, then went up to the shelves with books and began to review , what to choose for reading: "known ...", "unoriginal ...", "unoriginal ...", "unoriginal ...", "unoriginal ..." This "unoriginal" referred to books such as Macaulay, Guizot, Thiers, Ranke, Gervinus. "Ah, that's good, that came across." - He said this, having read several hefty volumes of Newton's Complete Works on the spine; hurriedly he began to sort through the volumes, finally found what he was looking for, and with a loving smile said: “This is it, this is it”, Observations on the Prophethies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John, i.e. "Remarks on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John." “Yes, this side of knowledge has remained with me until now without a solid foundation. Newton wrote this commentary in his old age, when he was half sane, half insane. A classic source on the issue of shifting insanity with the mind. After all, the question is world-historical: it is a confusion in all events without exception, in almost all books, in almost all heads. But here it should be in exemplary form: firstly, the most brilliant and normal mind of all minds known to us; secondly, and the madness mixed with it is recognized, indisputable madness. So, the book is capital in its part. The subtlest features of the general phenomenon must show themselves here more tangibly than anywhere else, and no one can doubt that these are precisely the features of the phenomenon to which the features of the confusion of madness with the mind belong. A book worth reading." With zealous pleasure he began to read the book, which in the last hundred years hardly anyone has read, except for its proofreaders: to read it for anyone, except Rakhmetov, is the same as eating sand or sawdust. But he was delicious.
There are few people like Rakhmetov: so far I have met only eight specimens of this breed (including two women); they had nothing in common except for one feature. Among them were soft people and stern people, gloomy people and cheerful people, troublesome people and phlegmatic people, tearful people (one with a stern face, mocking to the point of insolence; the other with a wooden face, silent and indifferent to everything; both of them sobbed in my presence, several times, like hysterical women, and not from their own affairs, but among conversations about various differences; in private, I am sure, they often cried) and people who never ceased to be calm. There was no similarity in anything, except for one trait, but it alone already united them into one breed and separated them from all other people. Those of them with whom I was close, I laughed when I was alone with them; they were angry or not angry, but they also laughed at themselves. And indeed there was a lot of amusing in them, everything that was important in them was funny, all that is why they were people of a special breed. I love to laugh at such people.
The one whom I met in the circle of Lopukhov and Kirsanov and which I will talk about here serves as living proof that a reservation is needed to Lopukhov and Alexei Petrovich's reasoning about the properties of soil in Vera Pavlovna's second dream, a reservation is needed that no matter what the soil , but still, at least tiny shreds can come across in it, on which healthy ears can grow. The genealogy of the main characters of my story: Vera Pavlovna, Kirsanov and Lopukhov, does not go back, to tell the truth, further than grandparents, and is it really possible to put some other great-grandmother on top (great-grandfather is already inevitably covered with the darkness of oblivion, it is only known that he was the husband of his great-grandmother and that his name was Kiril, because grandfather was Gerasim Kirilych). Rakhmetov was from a family known since the 13th century, that is, one of the oldest not only in our country, but also in the whole of Europe. Among the Tatar temniki, corps commanders, slaughtered in Tver along with their army, according to the chronicles, as if for the intention to convert the people to Mohammedanism (an intention that they probably did not have), but in the case itself, simply for oppression, was Rahmet. The little son of this Rakhmet from a Russian wife, the niece of the Tver court, that is, the chief marshal and field marshal, forcibly taken by Rakhmet, was spared for his mother and rebaptized from Latif into Mikhail. From this Latyf-Mikhail Rakhmetovich came the Rakhmetovs. In Tver they were boyars, in Moscow they became only rounders, in St. Petersburg in the last century they were general-generals - of course, not all of them: the surname branched out very numerous, so that there would not be enough generals-general ranks for everyone. The great-great-grandfather of our Rakhmetov was a friend of Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov, who restored him from the disgrace that had befallen him for his friendship with Minikh. Great-grandfather was a colleague of Rumyantsev, rose to the rank of general-in-chief and was killed at Novi. Grandfather accompanied Alexander to Tilsit and would have gone further than anyone, but he lost his career early for his friendship with Speransky. My father served without luck and without falling, at the age of forty he retired as a lieutenant general and settled in one of his estates, scattered along the upper Medveditsa. The estates, however, were not very large, there were a total of two and a half thousand souls, and many children appeared at the leisure of the village, about eight people; our Rakhmetov was the penultimate one, there was one sister younger than him; because our Rakhmetov was no longer a man with a rich inheritance: he received about 400 souls and 7,000 acres of land. How he disposed of the souls and 5,500 acres of land was not known to anyone; it was also not known that he had left 1,500 acres behind him; a share of the land, he still has up to three thousand rubles of income - no one knew this while he lived between us. We learned this later, and then we believed, of course, that he was of the same surname with those Rakhmetovs, among whom there are many rich landowners, who, all namesakes together, have up to seventy-five thousand souls along the upper reaches of the Medveditsa, Khopra, Sura and Tsna, who there are district leaders of those places, and not one, so the other are constantly provincial leaders, first in one, then in another of the three provinces along which their serf upper reaches of the rivers flow. And we knew that our friend Rakhmetov lived on four hundred rubles a year; for a student it was then very much; but for a landowner from the Rakhmetovs it was too much: not enough; therefore, each of us, who cared little about such information, assumed to himself without information that our Rakhmetov was from some decayed and displaced branch of the Rakhmetovs, the son of some adviser to the state chamber, who left the children a small capital. It was really not for us to be interested in these things.
Now he was twenty-two, and had been a student since he was sixteen; but for almost three years he left the university. He left his second year, went to the estate, ordered, defeated the resistance of the guardian, earned an anathema from the brothers and achieved that the husbands forbade his sisters to pronounce his name; then he wandered around Russia in various ways: both by land, and by water, and both in an ordinary and unusual way - for example, on foot, and on bark, and in slant boats, had many adventures that he arranged for himself ; by the way, he took two people to Kazansky, five to Moscow University - these were his scholarship holders, but he did not bring anyone to Petersburg, where he himself wanted to live, and therefore none of us knew that he had not four hundred, but three thousand rubles of income. This became known only later, and then we saw that he disappeared for a long time, and two years before he sat in Kirsanov’s office for Newton’s interpretation of the Apocalypse, he returned to St. natural, and nothing more.
But if none of Rakhmetov's Petersburg acquaintances knew his family and financial relations, then everyone who knew him knew him under two nicknames; one of them has already come across in this story - "rigorist"; he received it with his usual light smile of gloomy pleasure. But when they called him Nikitushka, or Lomov, or by his full nickname Nikitushka Lomov, he smiled broadly and sweetly and had a fair reason for that, because he did not receive from nature, but acquired by firmness of will the right to bear this glorious name among millions of people. But it thunders with glory only on a strip a hundred miles wide, going through eight provinces; readers of the rest of Russia need to be explained what kind of name it is. Nikitushka Lomov, a barge hauler who walked along the Volga twenty or fifteen years ago, was a giant of Herculean strength; fifteen inches tall, he was so broad in the chest and shoulders that he weighed fifteen pounds, although he was only a thick man, not fat. What strength he was, it is enough to say one thing about this: he received payment for four people. When the ship moored to the city and he went to the market, in the Volga to the market, the shouts of the guys were heard along the distant alleys:
"Nikitushka Lomov is coming, Nikitushka Lomov is coming!" - and everyone fled to the street leading from the pier to the bazaar, and the crowd of people fell after their hero.
Rakhmetov, at the age of sixteen, when he arrived in Petersburg, was from this side an ordinary young man of rather tall stature, rather strong, but far from remarkable in strength: out of ten of his peers he met, probably two would have coped with him. But in the middle of the seventeenth year, he took it into his head that he needed to acquire physical wealth, and began to work on himself. He became very diligent in gymnastics; this is good, but after all, gymnastics only improves the material, you need to stock up on material, and now, for a time twice as long as doing gymnastics, for several hours a day, he becomes a laborer for work that requires strength: he carried water, dragged firewood, chopped wood, sawed wood , hewed stones, dug the earth, forged iron; he went through many works and often changed them, because from each new work, with each change, some muscles receive new development. He adopted a boxing diet: he began to feed himself - that is, feed himself - exclusively on things that have a reputation for strengthening physical strength, most of all steak, almost raw, and since then he has always lived like that. A year after the beginning of these studies, he set off on his wanderings and then had even more convenience to engage in the development of physical strength: he was a plowman, carpenter, carrier and worker in all kinds of healthy trades; once he even went through the entire Volga, from Dubovka to Rybinsk. To say that he wants to be a barge hauler would have seemed the height of absurdity to the owner of the ship and barge haulers, and they would not have accepted him; but he sat down simply as a passenger, having made friends with the artel, began to help pull the strap and a week later harnessed to it, as a real worker should; they soon noticed how he was pulling, they began to try his strength - he pulled three, even four of the most healthy of his comrades; then he was twenty years old, and his comrades in the strap christened him Nikitushka Lomov, after the memory of the hero, who had already left the stage then. The next summer he rode a steamboat; one of the common people crowding on the deck turned out to be his colleague last year on the strap, and in this way his student companions learned that he should be called Nikitushka Lomov. Indeed, he acquired and, sparing no time, maintained in himself an exorbitant strength. “So it is necessary,” he said, “it gives the respect and love of ordinary people. It's useful, it might come in handy."
This stuck in his head from the middle of the seventeenth year, because from that time and in general his peculiarity began to develop. At the age of sixteen he came to St. Petersburg as an ordinary, good, high school student who had finished his course, an ordinary, kind and honest young man, and spent three or four months in the usual way, as beginner students spend. But he began to hear that there were especially smart heads among the students who did not think like others, and he learned from the heels of the names of such people - then there were still few of them. They interested him, he began to seek acquaintance with one of them; he happened to get along with Kirsanov, and his rebirth into a special person began, into the future Nikitushka Lomov and the rigorist. He eagerly listened to Kirsanov on the first evening, wept, interrupted his words with exclamations of curses to that which must perish, blessings to that which must live. What books should I start reading? Kirsanov pointed out. The next day, from eight o'clock in the morning, he walked along Nevsky, from Admiralteiskaya to Police Bridge, waiting for which German or French bookstore would open first, took what he needed, and read for more than three days in a row, from eleven o'clock in the morning on Thursday to nine Sunday evening, eighty-two o'clock; the first two nights he didn’t sleep like that, on the third he drank eight glasses of the strongest coffee, until the fourth night he didn’t have enough strength with any coffee, he collapsed and slept on the floor for fifteen hours. A week later he came to Kirsanov, demanded instructions on new books, explanations; became friends with him, then through him he became friends with Lopukhov. Six months later, although he was only seventeen years old, and they were already twenty-one years old, they no longer considered him a young man compared to themselves, and he was already a special person.
What makings for that lay in his past life? Not very big, but lay. His father was a man of a despotic character, very intelligent, educated, and an ultra-conservative, in the same sense as Marya Aleksevna, an ultra-conservative, but honest. Of course, it was hard for him. This one would be nothing. But his mother, a rather delicate woman, suffered from the difficult nature of her husband, and he saw that he was in the village. And it would still be nothing; there was this: in his fifteenth year he fell in love with one of his father's mistresses. There was a story, of course, especially with her. He felt sorry for the woman who had suffered greatly through him. Thoughts began to wander in him, and Kirsanov was to him what Lopukhov was to Vera Pavlovna. There were inclinations in a past life; but to become such a special person, of course, the main thing is nature. A few times before he left the university and went to his estate, then to wander around Russia, he had already adopted original principles in material, moral, and mental life, and when he returned, they had already developed into complete system, which he adhered to unswervingly. He said to himself, “I don't drink a drop of wine. I don't touch a woman." - And the nature was seething. “Why is this? Such an extreme is not necessary at all." “So it is necessary. We demand complete enjoyment of life for people—we must testify with our lives that we demand this not for the satisfaction of our personal passions, not for ourselves personally, but for man in general, that we speak only on principle, and not out of predilection, out of conviction. and not out of personal need.
Therefore, he began to lead the most severe way of life in general. In order to become and continue to be Nikitushka Lomov, he had to eat beef, a lot of beef, and he ate a lot of it. But he spared every penny for any food other than beef; he ordered the hostess to take the best beef, the best pieces on purpose for him, but the rest he ate at home only the cheapest. He refused white bread, ate only black at his table. For whole weeks he did not have a piece of sugar in his mouth, for whole months no fruit, no piece of veal or poulard. With his own money he did not buy anything like that: “I have no right to spend money on a whim that I can do without,” and yet he was brought up on a luxurious table and had a delicate taste, as was evident from his remarks about dishes; when he dined with someone at someone else's table, he ate with pleasure many of the dishes that he denied himself at his table, and did not eat others at someone else's table. The reason for the distinction was solid: “What eats, although at times, the common people, and I can eat on occasion. Something that is never available to ordinary people, and I should not eat! I need this in order to at least somewhat feel how cramped their life is compared to mine. So if fruit was served, he absolutely ate apples, absolutely no apricots; I ate oranges in Petersburg, I didn’t eat them in the provinces - you see, in Petersburg the common people eat them, but in the provinces they don’t. I ate pates because “a good pie is no worse than pate, and puff pastry is familiar to the common people,” but I didn’t eat sardines. He dressed very poorly, although he loved elegance, and in everything else he led a Spartan lifestyle; for example, he did not allow a mattress and slept on felt, not even allowing himself to fold it in half.
He had a guilty conscience - he did not quit smoking: “I can’t think without a cigar; if indeed so, I am right; but perhaps it is a weakness of the will. And he could not smoke bad cigars, because he was brought up in an aristocratic atmosphere. Of the four hundred rubles he spent, up to one hundred and fifty came out of his cigars. "A vile weakness," as he put it. Only she gave some opportunity to fend off him: if he starts to get too far with his denunciations, the traveler will say to him: “But perfection is impossible, you smoke,” then Rakhmetov came into a double force of denunciation, but he turned most of the reproaches on himself, the accused still got less, although he did not completely forget him because of himself.
He managed to do an awful lot, because at the disposal of time he put upon himself exactly the same curbing of whims as in material things. Not a quarter of an hour a month was wasted on his entertainment, he did not need rest. “My occupations are varied; change of occupation is rest. In the circle of friends, whose assembly points were at Kirsanov and Lopukhov, he was in no way more often than necessary to remain in close relation to him: “This is necessary; daily cases prove the usefulness of having a close relationship with some circle of people - you must always have at hand open sources for various references. Except in the meetings of this circle, he never visited anyone except on business, and not five minutes more than is necessary on business; and he did not accept anyone and did not allow anyone to remain otherwise than on the same rule; without further ado, he announced to the guest: “We have talked about your case; now let me take care of other things, because I have to cherish the time.
During the first months of his rebirth, he spent most of his time reading; but this lasted only a little more than half a year: when he saw that he had acquired a systematic way of thinking in the spirit, the principles of which he found just, he immediately said to himself: “Now reading has become a matter of secondary importance; I am ready for life from this side, ”and he began to give books only time free from other affairs, and he had little such time left. But, despite this, he expanded the circle of his knowledge with amazing speed: now, when he was twenty-two years old, he was already a man of very remarkably thorough learning. This is because he set himself a rule here: there is no luxury and whim; only what is needed. And what you need? He said: “There are very few major works on each subject; in all the others, it only repeats, liquefies, spoils what is contained much more fully and clearly in these few works. It is necessary to read only them; any other reading is just a waste of time. We take Russian fiction. I say: I will read Gogol first. In thousands of other stories I can already see from five lines from five different pages that I will not find anything but a spoiled Gogol - why should I read them? So it is in the sciences—in the sciences this boundary is even sharper. If I have read Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo and Mill, I know the alpha and omega of this trend, and I do not need to read any of the hundreds of political economists, however famous they may be; I can see from five lines from five pages that I can’t find a single fresh thought from them that belongs to them, all borrowings and distortions. I only read what is original and only enough to know this originality. Therefore, no force could force him to read Macaulay; after looking at different pages for a quarter of an hour, he decided: "I know all the materials from which these rags are typed." He read Thackeray's Hustle Fair with pleasure, and began to read Pendennis, closed on the twentieth page: "All said in Hustle Fair, it is clear that there will be nothing more, and there is no need to read." “Every book I read is such that it saves me from having to read hundreds of books,” he said.
Gymnastics, work to exercise strength, reading were Rakhmetov's personal pursuits; but upon his return to Petersburg, they took from him only a fourth of his time, the rest of the time he was engaged in other people's affairs or nobody's business in particular, constantly observing the same rule as in reading: do not waste time on secondary matters and with secondary people, engage in only capital ones, from which, even without it, secondary affairs and guided people change. For example, outside his circle, he met only with people who have influence on others. Who was not an authority for several other people, he by no means could even enter into a conversation with him. He said: “Excuse me, I have no time,” and walked away. But in the same way, the one with whom he wanted to get acquainted could not by any means avoid getting to know him. He just came to you and said what he needed, with this preface: “I want to be acquainted with you; it is necessary. If you don't have time now, make another appointment." He did not pay any attention to your petty affairs, even if you were his closest acquaintance and begged him to delve into your difficulty: “I have no time,” he said and turned away. But he intervened in important matters when it was necessary, in his opinion, even if no one wanted it: “I must,” he said. What things he said and did on these occasions is incomprehensible to the mind. Yes, for example, my acquaintance with him. I was no longer young then, I lived decently, so from time to time about five or six young people from my province gathered to me. Consequently, I was already a precious person for him: these young people were disposed towards me, finding in me a disposition towards themselves; So he heard my name on this occasion. And when I saw him for the first time at Kirsanov's, I had not yet heard of him: it was shortly after his return from his travels. He entered after me; I was the only person he didn't know in society. As soon as he entered, he took Kirsanov aside and, pointing his eyes at me, said a few words. Kirsanov also answered him with few words and was released. A minute later, Rakhmetov sat down directly opposite me, just across a small table by the sofa, and from this distance of some one and a half arshins he began to look into my face with all his might. I was annoyed: he looked at me without ceremony, as if before him was not a person, but a portrait - I frowned. He didn't care. After looking for two or three minutes, he said to me: “G. N, I need to get to know you. I know you, you don't know me. Ask the owner about me and others, whom you especially trust from this company, ”he got up and went into another room. "What kind of weirdo is this?" “This is Rakhmetov. He wants you to ask if he is trustworthy, certainly, and if he deserves attention, he is more important than all of us here, taken together, ”Kirsanov said, others confirmed. Five minutes later he returned to the room where everyone was sitting. He did not speak to me and spoke little to others—the conversation was neither learned nor important. “Ah, ten o'clock already,” he said after a while, “at ten o'clock I have business elsewhere. Mr. N,” he turned to me, “I must say a few words to you. When I took the host aside to ask him who you are, I pointed to you with my eyes, because you should have noticed anyway that I was asking about you who you are; therefore, it would be in vain not to make gestures that are natural in such a question. When will you be at home so that I can visit you?” At that time I did not like new acquaintances, and I did not like this obsession at all. “I only sleep at home; I've been away all day,” I said. “But do you sleep at home? At what time do you return to sleep?" - "Too late". - "For example?" “About two, three.” "It's all the same, set a time." - "If you absolutely please, in the morning the day after tomorrow, at half past three", - "Of course, I must take your words for mockery and rudeness; and maybe that you have your own reasons, maybe even deserving of approval. In any case, I will be with you the day after tomorrow morning at half past four. “No, if you are so determined, then it’s better to come in later: I’ll be at home all morning, until twelve o’clock.” "Okay, I'll be there at ten o'clock. Will you be alone?" - "Yes". - "Fine". He came and, in exactly the same way, without circumlocution, set about the business for which he found it necessary to make acquaintance. We talked for half an hour; what they talked about, it's all the same; it is enough that he said: "it is necessary", I said: "no"; he said: "you are obliged", I said: "not at all". Half an hour later he said: “It is clear that it is useless to continue. After all, you are convinced that I am a person who deserves unconditional trust? “Yes, they told me all this, and now I see it myself.” - "And yet you remain with your own?" - "I remain." “Do you know what follows from this? The fact that you are either a liar or rubbish! How would you like it? What would have to be done with another person for such words? challenge to a duel? but he speaks in such a tone, without any personal feeling, as if the historian, who judges coldly not for offense, but for truth, was himself so strange that it would be ridiculous to be offended, and I could only laugh. "But it's the same thing," I said. "In this case, it's not the same thing." “Well, maybe I am both.” “In the present case, both together are impossible. But one of the two is certain: either you think and do not what you say: in that case you are a liar; or you really think and do what you say: in that case you are rubbish. One of the two for sure. I guess the first one." "Think as you please," I said, still laughing. "Farewell. In any case, know that I will retain confidence in you and am ready to resume our conversation when it pleases you.
For all the savagery of this incident, Rakhmetov was absolutely right: both in that he began in this way, because he had known well about me before and only then had he begun the matter, and in that he ended the conversation in this way; I really didn’t tell him what I thought, and he really had the right to call me a liar, and this could not be at all offensive, even ticklish for me “in the present case”, as he put it, because such was the case and he really could to maintain my former trust and, perhaps, respect.
Yes, for all the savagery of his manner, everyone remained convinced that Rakhmetov had acted exactly as it was most prudent and easiest to do, and he spoke his terrible harshness, terrible reproaches in such a way that no reasonable person could be offended by them, and, for all his phenomenal rudeness, he was, in fact, very delicate. He also had prefaces of this sort. He began every delicate explanation like this: “You know that I will speak without any personal feeling. If my words are unpleasant, please excuse them. But I find that one should not be offended by anything that is said in good faith, not at all for the purpose of insulting, but out of necessity. However, as soon as it seems useless to you to continue to hear my words, I will stop; my rule is to offer my opinion whenever I have to, and never to impose it.” And indeed, he did not impose: there was no way to escape from the fact that, when he found it necessary, he would not express his opinion to you so that you could understand what and in what sense he wants to talk; but he did it in two or three words and then asked: “Now you know what the content of the conversation would be; do you find it useful to have such a conversation?" If you said no, he bowed and walked away.
This is how he spoke and conducted his affairs, and he had an abyss of affairs, and all the affairs that did not personally concern him; he had no personal affairs, everyone knew that; but what business he had, the circle did not know. It was clear that he was in a lot of trouble. He was little at home, he kept walking and driving around, he walked more. But even with him there were incessantly people, now all the same, now all new; for this he was supposed to: be always at home from two to three hours; at this time he talked about business and dined. But often for several days he was not at home. Then, instead of him, one of his friends sat with him and received visitors, devoted to him in body and soul and silent as a grave.
Two years after we see him sitting in Kirsanov's office for a Newtonian interpretation of the Apocalypse, he left Petersburg, telling Kirsanov and two or three other closest friends that he had nothing more to do here, that he had done everything he could that it will be possible to do more only in three years, that these three years are now free for him, that he thinks to use them, as he thinks he needs for future activities. We later learned that he went to his former estate, sold the land he had left, received thirty-five thousand, went to Kazan and Moscow, distributed about five thousand to his seven scholarship holders so that they could finish the course, and that was the end of his authentic story. Where he went from Moscow is unknown. When several months passed without any rumors about him, people who knew anything about him, except known to everyone, ceased to hide things that, at his request, were silent about while he lived between us. It was then that our circle found out that he had scholarship holders, learned most of what I told about his personal relationships, learned many stories, however, far from explaining everything, not even explaining anything, but only doing Rakhmetov a face even more mysterious for the whole circle, stories that amazed with their strangeness or completely contradicted the concept that the circle had of him as a person completely callous to personal feelings, who did not have, so to speak, a personal heart that would beat with the sensations of a personal life . It would be inappropriate to tell all these stories here. I will cite only two of them, one for each of the two genera: one is a wild variety, the other is a variety that contradicted the previous concept of the circle about it. I choose from the stories told by Kirsanov.
A year before he disappeared from Petersburg for the second and probably final time, Rakhmetov told Kirsanov: "Give me a decent amount of ointment to heal wounds from sharp tools." Kirsanov gave a huge jar, thinking that Rakhmetov wanted to take the medicine to some artel of carpenters or other artisans who were often cut. The next morning, Rakhmetov’s hostess ran to Kirsanov in a terrible fright: “Father the doctor, I don’t know what happened to my tenant: he doesn’t leave his room for a long time, he locked the door, I looked into the crack: he’s lying all in blood: I’ll scream , and he says to me through the door: “Nothing, Agrafena Antonovna.” What nothing! Save me, father doctor, I'm afraid of a mortal accident. He's so ruthless to himself." Kirsanov galloped. Rakhmetov unlocked the door with a gloomy broad smile, and the visitor saw something that no Agrafena Antonovna could shrug at: the back and sides of all Rakhmetov’s underwear (he was in his underwear) were covered in blood, there was blood under the bed, the felt on which he slept, also in blood; hundreds of small nails were pierced in the felt with hats from the bottom, points up, they protruded from the felt almost half an inch; Rakhmetov lay on them overnight. “What is this, pardon, Rakhmetov,” Kirsanov said with horror. "Try. Need to. Incredible, of course; however, just in case, it is necessary. I see I can." In addition to what Kirsanov saw, it is also clear from this that the hostess could probably tell a lot of different interesting things about Rakhmetov; but as a simple-hearted and unpaid old woman, she was crazy about him, and, of course, nothing could be obtained from her. This time she ran to Kirsanov only because Rakhmetov himself allowed her to do this to calm her down: she was crying too much, thinking that he wanted to kill himself.
About two months after that - it was at the end of May - Rakhmetov disappeared for a week or more, but then no one noticed this, because he often happened to disappear for several days. Now Kirsanov told the following story, about how Rakhmetov spent those days. They constituted an erotic episode in the life of Rakhmetov. Love came from an event worthy of Nikitushka Lomov. Rakhmetov walked from the first Pargolov to the city, lost in thought and looking more at the ground, as usual, in the neighborhood of the Forest Institute. He was awakened from his meditation by the desperate cry of a woman; he looked: the horse carried a lady riding in a chaise, the lady herself ruled and could not cope, the reins dragged along the ground - the horse was already two steps away from Rakhmetov; he rushed to the middle of the road, but the horse had already rushed past, he did not have time to catch the reins, he only managed to grab the rear axle of the charaban - and stopped, but fell. The people ran up, helped the lady get off the chaise, lifted Rakhmetov; his chest was somewhat broken, but, most importantly, a decent piece of meat was torn out of his leg by a wheel. The lady had already come to her senses and ordered him to be carried to her dacha, some half a verst away. He agreed because he felt weak, but demanded that they send for Kirsanov without fail, not for any other physician. Kirsanov found the chest bruise unimportant, but Rakhmetov himself was already very weak from blood loss. He lay for ten days. The rescued lady, of course, took care of him herself. It was impossible for him to do anything else from weakness, and therefore he spoke to her - after all, all the same time would be wasted in vain, - he spoke and started talking. The lady was a widow of about nineteen, a woman not poor and generally of a completely independent position, an intelligent, decent woman. Rakhmetov’s fiery speeches, of course, not about love, fascinated her: “I see him in a dream, surrounded by radiance,” she said to Kirsanov. He also loved her. She, by dress and everything, considered him a man who had absolutely nothing, therefore she was the first to confess and offered him a wedding when, on the eleventh day, he got up and said that he could go home. “I was more frank with you than with others; you see that people like me have no right to bind anyone's fate with their own." “Yes, it is true,” she said, “you cannot marry. But until you have to leave me, love me until then." “No, and I cannot accept this,” he said, “I must suppress love in myself: love for you would bind my hands, they will not be untied soon, they are already tied. But I'll untie it. I shouldn't love." What happened to this lady then? There was a turning point in her life; in all likelihood, she herself became a special person. I wanted to know. But I don’t know this, Kirsanov didn’t tell me her name, and he didn’t know what happened to her either: Rakhmetov asked him not to see her, not to inquire about her: “If I believe that you will know anything about her, I can’t resist, I’ll start asking, but that’s no good.” Having learned such a story, everyone remembered that at that time, a month and a half or two, and maybe more, Rakhmetov was more gloomy than usual, did not get excited against himself, no matter how much his eyes were pricked by his vile weakness, that is, cigars, and did not smile broadly and sweetly when he was flattered by the name of Nikitushka Lomov. And I remembered even more: that summer, three or four times, in conversations with me, he, a few time after our first conversation, fell in love with me because I laughed (alone with him) at him, and in response to my mockery escaped him with such words: “Yes, have pity on me, you are right, have pity: after all, I, too, am not an abstract idea, but a person who would like to live. Well, yes, it’s okay, it will pass, ”he added. And sure enough, it's gone. Only once, when I had already stirred him up with ridicule too much, even in late autumn, did I still call these words out of him.
The astute reader may guess from this that I know more about Rakhmetov than I say. May be. I dare not contradict him, because he is shrewd. But if I know, then you never know what I know that you, astute reader, will never know. But what I really don’t know, I don’t know: where is Rakhmetov now, and what is the matter with him, and whether I will ever see him. I have no other news or guesses about this, except for those that all his acquaintances have. When three or four months passed after he disappeared from Moscow and there were no rumors about him, we all assumed that he had gone to travel around Europe. This guess seems to be correct. At least, it is confirmed by this case. A year after Rakhmetov disappeared, one of Kirsanov's acquaintances met in the carriage, on the road from Vienna to Munich, a young man, a Russian, who said that he had traveled around the Slavic lands, everywhere approached all classes, in each land he remained so much that it is enough to know the concepts, customs, way of life, everyday institutions, the degree of well-being of all the main constituent parts of the population, lived for this both in cities and in villages, walked from village to village on foot, then, in the same way, got acquainted with Romanians and Hungarians, traveled around and around northern Germany, from there he made his way again to the south, into the German provinces of Austria, now he is going to Bavaria, from there to Switzerland, through Württemberg and Baden to France, which he will bypass and go around in the same way, from there he will go to England for the same and use more year; if there is time left from this year, he will look at both the Spaniards and the Italians, but if there is no time left, then so be it, because it is not so “needed”, and those lands “necessary” to inspect - why? - "for reasons"; and that in a year, in any case, he “needs” to be already in the North American states, which he “needs” to study more than any other land, and there he will remain for a long time, maybe more than a year, or maybe and forever, if he finds a job there, but it is more likely that in three years he will return to Russia, because, it seems, in Russia, not now, but then, in three or four years, he will “need” to be.
All this is very similar to Rakhmetov, even these “needs” that have sunk into the memory of the narrator. In years, voice, facial features, as far as the narrator remembered them, the traveler also approached Rakhmetov; but the narrator then did not pay much attention to his companion, who, moreover, was his companion for a short time, only two hours: he got into a carriage in some town, got off in some village; therefore, the narrator could describe his appearance only in too general terms, and there is no complete certainty here: in all likelihood, it was Rakhmetov, but who knows? Maybe he isn't.
There was also a rumor that a young Russian, a former landowner, came to the greatest of European thinkers of the 19th century, the father of new philosophy, a German, and told him this: “I have thirty thousand thalers; I only need five thousand; the rest I ask you to take from me” (the philosopher lives very poorly). - "Why?" "For the publication of your writings." The philosopher, naturally, did not take it; but the Russian allegedly deposited money with the banker in his name and wrote to him like this: the money still lies with the banker. If this rumor is true, then there is no doubt that it was Rakhmetov who came to see the philosopher.
So that was the gentleman who was now sitting in Kirsanov's office.
Yes, this gentleman was a special person, a specimen of a very rare breed. And it is not then that I describe in such detail one specimen of this rare breed in order to teach you, astute reader, decent (unknown to you) treatment of people of this breed: you will not see a single such person; your eyes, shrewd reader, are not made to see such people; they are invisible to you; they are seen only by honest and courageous eyes; and for this purpose, a description of such a person serves you, so that you know at least by hearsay what kind of people there are in the world. What it serves for readers and ordinary readers, they themselves know.
Yes, these people are funny, like Rakhmetov, very funny. I say to them that they are ridiculous, I say it because I feel sorry for them; I say this for those noble people who are enchanted by them: do not follow them, noble people, I say, because the path to which they call you is poor in personal joys; but noble people do not listen to me and say: no, not poor, very rich, but even if I were poor in another place, it’s not long, we will have the strength to go through this place, go out to places rich in joy, endless places. So you see, astute reader, it's not for you, but for another part of the public that I say that people like Rakhmetov are ridiculous. And to you, astute reader, I will tell you that these are not bad people; otherwise you probably won’t understand yourself; yes, stupid people. Few of them, but they flourish the life of all; without them, she would have stalled, would have turned sour; there are few of them, but they allow all people to breathe, without them people would suffocate. The mass of honest and kind people is great, but such people are few; but they are in it - theine in tea, bouquet in noble wine; from them her strength and fragrance; it is the color of the best people, it is the engines of engines, it is the salt of the salt of the earth.
RAKHMETOV - A SPECIAL PERSON
Here is a real person who is special
but now Russia needs it, take it from him
example and whoever can and is able to follow
along his path, for this is the only
a path that may lead you
to the desired goal.
N.G. Chernyshevsky.
As a character, Rakhmetov appears in the chapter "Features
man." In other chapters, his name is only mentioned. But
it is felt that the image is placed in the center of the reader's attention,
that Rakhmetov is the main character of the novel "What is to be done?". Chapter "Oso-
poor man" forms, as it were, a small independent
message in a novel, the idea of which would not be complete and understandable without it.
Noah.
Talking about Rakhmetov, Chernyshevsky deliberately shifts
temporal order of facts, and does not give a definite sequence
Noah characteristics and biography. He uses hints and under-
rumors, intertwining what they "knew" about him with what they "learned"
afterwards. Therefore, each stroke of the biography has a principle
real meaning. For example, origin. Indeed, honor
mu raznochinets Chernyshevsky makes the main character socially -
political novel of a nobleman whose pedigree goes back to
deep into the ages? Perhaps, according to the writer, the image of the revolutionary
ra-nobleman made the idea of revolution more convincing and attractive
boiler house. Since the best representatives of the nobility refuse
their privileges to live at the expense of the people, then the crisis is ripe.
The rebirth of Rakhmetov began in early youth. Family
his was obviously a serf. Buying says this
phrase: "Yes, and he saw that in the village." Watching the cruelty
serfdom, the young man began to think about justice.
"Thoughts began to wander in him, and Kirsanov was for him what
Lopukhov for Vera Pavlovna. "On the very first evening, he" eagerly served
shal" Kirsanov, "interrupted his words with exclamations and curses -
me to that which must perish, blessings to that which must
but live."
Rakhmetov differs from Lopukhov and Kirsanov not only
its aristocratic ancestry, but also the exceptional power
character, which manifests itself in the constant hardening of the body and mind
ha, but especially in preoccupation with the preparation for the revolutionary
noah struggle. This is a man of ideas in the highest sense of the word.
The dream of revolution for Rakhmetov is a guide to action, ori-
center of all personal life.
The desire for rapprochement with
ordinary people. This can be seen from his travels in Russia,
ty physical labor, severe self-restraint in personal life
neither. The people nicknamed Rakhmetov Nikitushka Lomov, expressing this
your love for him. Unlike the commoner Bazarov, who
condescendingly talked with the "thick-bearded" peasants, two
Ryanin Rakhmetov looks at the people not as a mass to be
study. For him, the people deserve respect. He tries to test
thief at least part of the weight that hangs on the peasant's shoulders.
Rakhmetova Chernyshevsky shows how a person is "very
rare", "special breed", but at the same time as a typical face,
belonging to a new social group, although a little
numerical. The writer endowed the "special person" with a severe requirement
respectfulness towards oneself and others, and even a gloomy appearance.
Vera Pavlovna at first finds him "very boring". Lopukhov and
Kirsanov, and everyone who was not afraid of anyone or anything, felt
and some cowardice in front of him at times ... except for Masha and
equal to or superior to her in the simplicity of soul and dress.
But Vera Pavlovna, recognizing Rakhmetov better, says of him:
"... what a gentle and kind person he is."
Rakhmetov is a rigorist, that is, a person who never
in what does not deviate from the accepted rules of conduct. He cooks
themselves to the revolutionary struggle both morally and physically. overslept
night on nails, he explains his act, widely and joyfully
smiling: "Test. Necessary. Unbelievable, of course: however
needed just in case. I see, I can. "So, probably, Cherny-
Shevsky saw the leader of the revolutionaries. To the question: "What to do?" -
Nikolai Gavrilovich responds with the image of Rakhmetov and the words marked
puppies in the epigraph. The figure of this rigorist had an enormous
influence on subsequent generations of Russian and foreign revolutionaries
sioners. This is evidenced by the confessions of these people that their "beloved
Rakhmetov, in particular, was the father."
I like Rakhmetov. He has the qualities that
ryh is not enough for Bazarov. I admire his perseverance, will,
endurance, the ability to subordinate one's life to the chosen ideal,
courage, strength. I want to be a little like
Rakhmetov.
On July 11, 1856, a note left by a strange guest is found in the room of one of the large St. Petersburg hotels. The note says that its author will soon be heard on the Liteiny Bridge and that no one should be suspected. The circumstances are clarified very soon: at night, a man is shooting at Liteiny Bridge. His shot cap is fished out of the water.
On the same morning, a young lady sits and sews in a dacha on Kamenny Island, singing a lively and bold French song about working people who will be set free by knowledge. Her name is Vera Pavlovna. The maid brings her a letter, after reading which Vera Pavlovna sobs, covering her face with her hands. The young man who entered tries to calm her down, but Vera Pavlovna is inconsolable. She pushes the young man away with the words: “You are in the blood! You have his blood on you! It’s not your fault - I’m alone ... ”The letter received by Vera Pavlovna says that the person who writes it leaves the stage because he loves“ both of you ”too much ...
The tragic denouement is preceded by the life story of Vera Pavlovna. She spent her childhood in St. Petersburg, in a multi-storey building on Gorokhovaya, between Sadovaya and Semyonovsky bridges. Her father, Pavel Konstantinovich Rozalsky, is the manager of the house, her mother gives money on bail. The only concern of the mother, Marya Alekseevna, in relation to Verochka: to marry her as soon as possible to a rich man. A narrow-minded and evil woman does everything possible for this: she invites a music teacher to her daughter, dresses her up and even takes her to the theater. Soon the beautiful swarthy girl is noticed by the master's son, officer Storeshnikov, and immediately decides to seduce her. Hoping to force Storeshnikov to marry, Marya Alekseevna demands that her daughter be favorable to him, while Verochka refuses this in every possible way, understanding the true intentions of the womanizer. She manages to somehow deceive her mother, pretending that she is luring her boyfriend, but this cannot last long. Vera's position in the house becomes completely unbearable. It is resolved in an unexpected way.
A teacher, a graduate medical student, Dmitry Sergeevich Lopukhov, was invited to Verochka's brother Fedya. At first, young people are wary of each other, but then they begin to talk about books, about music, about a fair way of thinking, and soon they feel affection for each other. Having learned about the plight of the girl, Lopukhov tries to help her. He is looking for a governess position for her, which would give Verochka the opportunity to live separately from her parents. But the search turns out to be unsuccessful: no one wants to take responsibility for the fate of the girl if she runs away from home. Then the student in love finds another way out: shortly before the end of the course, in order to have enough money, he leaves his studies and, taking up private lessons and translating a geography textbook, makes an offer to Verochka. At this time, Verochka has her first dream: she sees herself released from a damp and dark basement and talking with an amazing beauty who calls herself love for people. Verochka promises the beauty that she will always let other girls out of the cellars, locked up just as she was locked up.
Young people rent an apartment, and their life is going well. True, their relationship seems strange to the landlady: "cute" and "cute" sleep in different rooms, enter each other only after knocking, do not show each other undressed, etc. Verochka hardly manages to explain to the hostess that they should be a relationship between spouses if they do not want to annoy each other.
Vera Pavlovna reads books, gives private lessons, and runs the household. Soon she starts her own enterprise - a sewing workshop. The girls work in the workshop self-employed, but are its co-owners and receive their share of the income, like Vera Pavlovna. They not only work together, but spend their free time together: go on picnics, talk. In her second dream, Vera Pavlovna sees a field on which ears of corn grow. She also sees dirt on this field - or rather, two dirt: fantastic and real. The real dirt is taking care of the most necessary things (such that Vera Pavlovna's mother was always burdened), and ears of corn can grow out of it. Fantastic dirt - caring for the superfluous and unnecessary; nothing worthwhile grows out of it.
The Lopukhov spouses often have Dmitry Sergeevich's best friend, his former classmate and spiritually close person to him - Alexander Matveevich Kirsanov. Both of them "chest, without connections, without acquaintances, made their way." Kirsanov is a strong-willed, courageous person, capable of both a decisive act and a subtle feeling. He brightens up the loneliness of Vera Pavlovna with conversations, when Lopukhov is busy, he takes her to the Opera, which they both love. However, soon, without explaining the reasons, Kirsanov ceases to visit his friend, which greatly offends both him and Vera Pavlovna. They do not know the true reason for his "cooling": Kirsanov is in love with his friend's wife. He reappears in the house only when Lopukhov falls ill: Kirsanov is a doctor, he treats Lopukhov and helps Vera Pavlovna take care of him. Vera Pavlovna is in complete turmoil: she feels that she is in love with her husband's friend. She has a third dream. In this dream, Vera Pavlovna, with the help of some unknown woman, reads the pages of her own diary, which says that she feels gratitude for her husband, and not that quiet, tender feeling, the need for which is so great in her.
The situation in which three smart and decent "new people" have fallen into seems insoluble. Finally, Lopukhov finds a way out - a shot on the Liteiny Bridge. On the day this news was received, an old acquaintance of Kirsanov and Lopukhov, Rakhmetov, "a special person" comes to Vera Pavlovna. The “higher nature” was awakened in him at one time by Kirsanov, who introduced the student Rakhmetov to books “that need to be read.” Coming from a wealthy family, Rakhmetov sold the estate, distributed money to his fellows and now leads a harsh lifestyle: partly because he considers it impossible for himself to have what a simple person does not have, partly out of a desire to educate his character. So, one day he decides to sleep on nails to test his physical abilities. He doesn't drink wine, he doesn't touch women. Rakhmetov is often called Nikitushka Lomov - for the fact that he walked along the Volga with barge haulers in order to get closer to the people and gain the love and respect of ordinary people. Rakhmetov's life is shrouded in a veil of mystery of a clearly revolutionary persuasion. He has a lot to do, but none of it is his personal business. He travels around Europe, intending to return to Russia in three years, when he "needs" to be there. This "specimen of a very rare breed" differs from just "honest and kind people" in that it is "the engine of engines, the salt of the salt of the earth."
Rakhmetov brings Vera Pavlovna a note from Lopukhov, after reading which she becomes calm and even cheerful. In addition, Rakhmetov explains to Vera Pavlovna that the dissimilarity of her character with the character of Lopukhov was too great, which is why she reached out to Kirsanov. Having calmed down after a conversation with Rakhmetov, Vera Pavlovna leaves for Novgorod, where she marries Kirsanov a few weeks later.
The dissimilarity between the characters of Lopukhov and Vera Pavlovna is also mentioned in a letter that she soon receives from Berlin. he had a penchant for solitude, which was in no way possible during his life with the sociable Vera Pavlovna. Thus, love affairs are arranged to the general pleasure. The Kirsanov family has approximately the same lifestyle as the Lopukhov family before. Alexander Matveyevich works hard, Vera Pavlovna eats cream, takes baths and is engaged in sewing workshops: she now has two of them. Similarly, there are neutral and non-neutral rooms in the house, and spouses can enter non-neutral rooms only after knocking. But Vera Pavlovna notices that Kirsanov not only allows her to lead the lifestyle that she likes, and is not only ready to lend a shoulder to her in difficult times, but is also keenly interested in her life. He understands her desire to engage in some business, "which cannot be postponed." With the help of Kirsanov, Vera Pavlovna begins to study medicine.
Soon she has a fourth dream. Nature in this dream "pours aroma and song, love and bliss into the chest." The poet, whose forehead and thought are illuminated by inspiration, sings a song about the meaning of history. Before Vera Pavlovna are pictures of the life of women in different millennia. First, the slave woman obeys her master among the tents of the nomads, then the Athenians worship the woman, still not recognizing her as their equal. Then the image of a beautiful lady arises, for the sake of which a knight fights in a tournament. But he loves her only until she becomes his wife, that is, a slave. Then Vera Pavlovna sees her own face instead of the face of the goddess. Its features are far from perfect, but it is illuminated by the radiance of love. The great woman, familiar to her from her first dream, explains to Vera Pavlovna what is the meaning of women's equality and freedom. This woman also shows Vera Pavlovna pictures of the future: the citizens of New Russia live in a beautiful house made of cast iron, crystal and aluminum. In the morning they work, in the evening they have fun, and "whoever has not worked out enough, he has not prepared the nerve to feel the fullness of fun." The guidebook explains to Vera Pavlovna that this future should be loved, that one should work for it and transfer from it to the present everything that can be transferred.
The Kirsanovs have a lot of young people, like-minded people: “This type has recently appeared and is quickly spreading.” All these people are decent, hardworking, having unshakable life principles and possessing "cold-blooded practicality." The Beaumont family soon appears among them. Ekaterina Vasilievna Beaumont, nee Polozova, was one of the richest brides in St. Petersburg. Kirsanov once helped her with smart advice: with his help, Polozova figured out that the person she was in love with was not worthy of her. Then Ekaterina Vasilievna marries a man who calls himself an agent of an English firm, Charles Beaumont. He speaks excellent Russian - because he allegedly lived in Russia until the age of twenty. His romance with Polozova develops calmly: both of them are people who "do not rage for no reason." When Beaumont meets Kirsanov, it becomes clear that this person is Lopukhov. The Kirsanov and Beaumont families feel such a spiritual closeness that they soon settle in the same house, receive guests together. Ekaterina Vasilievna also arranges a sewing workshop, and the circle of “new people” is thus becoming wider and wider.
Chernyshevsky wrote his novel "What is to be done?" in the era of the rise of the revolutionary movement in the Russian Federation. The hero of the novel Rakhmetov, like no other, was suitable for revolutionary activity. Rakhmetov is distinguished by rigidity, asceticism, iron will, and hatred of the people's oppressors. No wonder the leader of the Bolsheviks, V. I. Lenin, set this literary hero as an example to his associates, saying that only with such people a revolutionary coup in the Russian Federation is possible.
What kind of special person is this, which still attracts the sensitivity of those who crave social upheavals for the common good? By origin, Rakhmetov is a nobleman. His father was a very rich man. But a free life did not keep Rakhmetov on his father's estate. He left the provinces and entered the Faculty of Natural Sciences in St. Petersburg.
Without difficulty, Rakhmetov became close in the capital with progressive-minded people. Chance brought him to Kirsanov, from whom he learned a lot of new and advanced political things. He began to read books avidly. One gets the feeling that he measured himself a time period and exactly fit into it. Six months later, Rakhmetov put the books aside and said: "Now reading has become a secondary matter for me; from this side I am ready for life." In these words of the hero, one can discern something that goes beyond the framework of a normally developing person.
Rakhmetov began to accustom his physical essence to obey the spiritual, that is, he began to order himself and carry out these orders accurately and on time. Then he began to harden the body. Undertook the hardest work. More than that, he was a burlak.
He did all this in preparation for great revolutionary deeds. He brilliantly managed to create himself a powerful physically and spiritually strong person. Rakhmetov fanatically followed the path chosen once and for all. He only ate what ordinary people ate, although he was likely to eat better. He explained it simply: "So it is necessary - it gives the respect and love of ordinary people. This is useful, it can come in handy." Apparently, in order to emphasize his extreme revolutionary nature, Chernyshevsky forced his hero to renounce personal human happiness for the sake of the ideals of revolutionary struggle. Rakhmetov refused to marry a wealthy young widow. He explained it this way: "I must suppress love in myself; love for you would bind my hands, they will not be untied soon - they are already tied."
The democratic writer Chernyshevsky in the image of Rakhmetov portrayed a revolutionary leader, a special person. The author wrote about such people: "This is the color of the best people, these are engines of engines, this is the salt of the salt of the earth."
But the time has shown the failure of the Bolshevik ideas. And now it is clear to me why the leaders of the October Revolution chose Rakhmetov as their ideal. They developed those Rakhmetian qualities with which it was convenient for them to commit cruel deeds: they did not feel sorry for themselves, and even more so for others, they carried out orders with the chilling thoughtless clarity of an iron engine, they treated dissidents as superhumans treat subhumans. As a result, Russia was covered in blood, and the world was shocked by the brutality of the revolutionary actions.
Our society is still on the way to a civilized future. And personally, I dream that in this future of ours there will be fewer "special" people, and more ordinary people: kind, smiling, living their own lives. I want this future to become a reality.
The novel "What to do?" Chernyshevsky wrote in 1862-1863. The work was created within the framework of the literary direction "sociological realism". Literary historians attribute the novel to the genre of utopia.
The central storyline of the book is a love story with a positive ending. At the same time, the work touches upon the social, economic and philosophical ideas of that time, the themes of love, relations between fathers and children, enlightenment, and the importance of human willpower. In addition, there are many allusions to the coming revolution in the novel.
Main characters
Vera Pavlovna Rozalskaya- a purposeful, freedom-loving girl, "with a southern type of face." She thought in a new way, did not want to be just a wife, but to do her own thing; opened sewing workshops.
Dmitry Sergeyevich Lopukhov- a physician, the first husband of Vera Pavlovna. After a staged suicide, he took the name Charles Beaumont.
Alexander Matveich Kirsanov- a friend of Lopukhov, a talented physician, the second husband of Vera Pavlovna.
Other characters
Maria Alexevna Rozalskaya- the mother of Vera Pavlovna, a very enterprising woman who always looked for profit in everything.
Pavel Konstantinovich Rozalsky- manager of the Storeshnikovs' house, father of Vera Pavlovna.
Mikhail Ivanovich Storeshnikov- "a prominent and handsome officer", ladies' man, wooed Vera Pavlovna.
Julie- a Frenchwoman, a woman with a difficult past, found herself a Russian lover, helped and sympathized with Vera.
Mertsalov Alexey Petrovich- a good friend of Lopukhov, a priest who married Lopukhov and Vera.
Mertsalova Natalya Andreevna- Mertsalov's wife, and then Vera's girlfriend.
Rakhmetov- Lopukhov's friend, Kirsanova, was straightforward, with bold views.
Katerina Vasilievna Polozova- Wife of Beaumont (Lopukhov).
Vasily Polozov- father of Katerina Vasilievna.
I. Fool
“On the morning of July 11, 1856, the servants of one of the large St. Petersburg hotels near the Moscow railway station were at a loss.” The day before, at 9 o'clock in the evening, a certain gentleman stopped by them. He didn't answer in the morning. After breaking down the doors, they found a note: “I am leaving at 11 pm and will not return. I will be heard on the Liteiny Bridge, between 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning. Don't have any suspicions."
The policeman said that at night a pistol shot was heard on the bridge and the shot cap of the missing gentleman was found. Gossips decided that he did it because he was "just a fool".
II. The first consequence of a foolish deed
That same morning, at 12 o'clock, a young lady was sewing and humming a French song in an undertone. She was brought a letter that brought her to tears. The young man who entered the room read the letter: “I disturbed your calmness. I'm leaving the stage. Don't be sorry; I love you both so much that I am very happy with my determination. Farewell". His hands shook. The woman exclaimed: “You have his blood on you!” "And I have his blood on me!" .
III. Foreword
The author argues that he "used the usual cunning of novelists: he began the story with spectacular scenes torn from the middle or end of it." He reflects that among his audience there is a share of people whom he respects - “kind and strong, honest and able”, therefore he “still needs” and “already” to write.
Chapter 1. Life of Vera Pavlovna in the parental family
I
Vera Pavlovna grew up in a multi-storey building on Gorokhovaya, which belonged to the Storeshnikovs. Rozalsky - house manager Pavel Konstantinych, his wife Marya Aleksevna, daughter Vera and "9-year-old son Fedya" lived on the 4th floor. Pavel Konstantinovich also served in the department.
From the age of 12, Verochka went to a boarding school, studied with a piano teacher. She sewed well, so she soon sewed the whole family. Because of her swarthy, “like a gypsy” skin, her mother called her “stuffed animal”, so Vera used to consider herself an ugly girl. But after some time, the mother stopped driving her almost in tatters, and began to dress up, hoping to find the daughter of a rich husband. At the age of 16, Vera began to give lessons herself.
The head of Pavel Konstantinych decided to woo the girl, but he was going for too long. Soon, the master's son Storeshnikov began to go to the Rozalskys, and began to pay much attention to Verochka. To arrange their marriage, Marya Aleksevna even took expensive tickets to the opera in the same box where the mistress's son was with friends, they were vigorously discussing something in French. Verochka was embarrassed and she, citing a headache, left earlier.
II
Mikhail Ivanovich dined with other gentlemen in a fashionable restaurant. Among them was one lady - Mademoiselle Julie. Storeshnikov said that Vera was his mistress. Julie, who saw Vera at the opera, noted that she was "magnificent", but clearly not Mikhail's mistress - "he wants to buy her."
III
When Storeshnikov came to the Rozalskys the next day, Vera deliberately spoke to him in French so that her mother would not understand anything. She said that she knew - yesterday he decided to "expose" her to his friends as a mistress. Vera asked not to visit them and leave as soon as possible.
IV
Julie, together with Storeshnikov, came to Vera, as the lady needed a piano teacher for her niece (but this was just a fictitious reason). Julie told Marya Aleksevna that Mikhail made a bet with friends on Vera.
V-IX
Julie considered Vera a good passion for Storeshnikov: “marrying her, despite her low birth and, in comparison with you, poverty, would have moved your career forward a lot.” Julie also advised Vera to become Storeshnikov's wife in order to get rid of her mother's persecution. But Storeshnikov was unpleasant to Vera.
After some thought, Storeshnikov really got married. Vera's parents were delighted, but the girl herself said that she did not want to marry Mikhail. However, Storeshnikov nevertheless begged for a delay in the answer instead of a refusal. Coming to visit the girl, Mikhail "was obedient to her, like a child." “Three or four months passed like that.”
Chapter 2
I
To prepare Vera's younger brother for entering the gymnasium, his father hired a medical student, Lopukhov. During the lessons, 9-year-old Fedya told the teacher everything about Vera and her potential fiancé.
II
Lopukhov did not live on state support, and therefore did not starve and did not get cold. From the age of 15 he gave lessons. Lopukhov rented an apartment with his friend Kirsanov. In the near future, he was to become an intern (doctor) in one of the "Petersburg military hospitals", soon to receive a chair at the Academy.
III-VI
Marya Aleksevna invited Lopukhov to an "evening" - for her daughter's birthday. At the evening, during the dance, Lopukhov got into a conversation with Vera. He promised to help her "break out of this humiliating situation" associated with the upcoming wedding.
At the end of the evening, Verochka thought about how strange it was that they spoke for the first time "and became so close." She fell in love with Lopukhov, not yet realizing that her feelings were mutual.
VII - IX
Somehow, in order to finally check Lopukhov, whether he had views of Vera, Marya Aleksevna overheard the conversation between Vera and Dmitry. She heard Lopukhov telling Vera that cold, practical people are right: “only the calculation of profit controls a person.” The girl replied that she completely agreed with him. Lopukhov advised her to marry Mikhail Ivanovich. What she heard completely convinced Marya Aleksevna that conversations with Dmitri Sergeyevich were useful for Vera.
X-XI
Lopukhov and Vera knew they were being watched. At the request of Vera, Lopukhov was looking for a place for her as a governess. Kirsanov helped find the right option.
XII. Verochka's first dream
Vera dreamed that she was locked in a damp, dark basement. Suddenly the door opened and she was in a field. She began to dream that she was paralyzed. Someone touched her, and her illness went away. Vera saw that a beautiful girl with a changing appearance was walking across the field - English, French, German, Polish, Russian, and her mood was constantly changing. The girl introduced herself as the bride of her suitors and asked to be called "love for people". Then Vera dreamed that she was walking through the city and freeing the girls locked in the basement and treating girls who were paralyzed.
XIII-XVI
The woman, to whom Verochka was supposed to go as a governess, refused, because she did not want to go against the will of the girl's parents. Frustrated, Vera thought that if it was really hard, she would throw herself out the window.
XVII - XVIII
Vera and Dmitry decide to get married and discuss their future life. The girl wants to earn her own money so as not to be a slave to her husband. She wants them to live as friends, they have separate rooms and a common living room.
XIX – XIX
While Lopukhov had business, Vera lived at home. Once she went out with her mother to Gostiny Dvor. Unexpectedly, the girl told her mother that she had married Dmitry Sergeyevich, got into the first cab she came across and ran away.
XX- XIV
Three days before that, they really got married. Lopukhov arranged for his friend Mertsalov to marry them. He remembered that they kissed in the church and, so that it would not be too embarrassing there, they kissed beforehand.
Having escaped from her mother, Vera went to the apartment Lopukhov had found for them. Lopukhov himself went to the Rozalskys and reassured them about what had happened.
Chapter 3
I
"Things were going well for the Lopukhovs." Vera gave lessons, Lopukhov worked. The owners, with whom the spouses lived, were surprised by their way of life - as if they were not a family, but brother and sister. The Lopukhovs entered each other only by knocking. Vera believed that this only contributes to a strong marriage and love.
II
Vera Pavlovna opened a sewing workshop. Julie helped her find clients. Having gone to her parents, she, returning home, did not understand how she could live in "such disgusting embarrassment" and "grow up with love for good."
III. The second dream of Vera Pavlovna
Vera dreamed that her husband and Alexei Petrovich were walking across the field. Lopukhov told a friend that there is “pure dirt”, “real dirt”, from which an ear grows. And there is "rotten dirt" - "fantastic dirt", from which there is no development.
Then she dreamed of her mother. Marya Aleksevna, with malice in her voice, said that she was taking care of a piece of bread for her daughter, and if she had not been evil, the daughter would not have been kind.
IV
"The workshop of Vera Pavlovna settled down." She first had three seamstresses, who then found four more. For three years, their workshop has only developed and expanded. “A year and a half later, almost all the girls already lived in one large apartment, had a common table, stocked up on provisions in the same manner as is done in large farms.”
5th–18th
Once, after a walk, Dmitry Sergeyevich fell seriously ill with pneumonia. Kirsanov and Vera were on duty at the bedside of the patient until he recovered. Kirsanov had been in love with Vera for a long time, so before his friend's illness he very rarely visited them.
Both Kirsanov and Lopukhov "plowed their way with their breasts, without connections, without acquaintances." Kirsanov was a physician, "already had a chair" and was known as a "master" of his craft.
Being with the Lopukhovs during the illness of a friend, Kirsanov understood that he was "stepping on a dangerous path for himself." Despite the fact that the attachment to Vera resumed with greater force, he managed to cope with it.
XIX. The third dream of Vera Pavlovna
Vera dreamed that she was reading her own diary. From him, she understands that she loves Lopukhov because he "brought her out of the basement." That before she did not know the need for a quiet, tender feeling, which is not in her husband.
XX – XXI
Vera had a premonition that she did not love her husband. Lopukhov began to think that he would not "keep her love behind him." After analyzing the latest events, Lopukhov realized that feelings arose between Kirsanov and Vera.
XXII-XXVIII
Lopukhov asked Kirsanov to visit them more often. Vera realized her passion for Kirsanov and wrote a note to her husband apologizing that she loved Alexander. The next day, Lopukhov went to relatives in Ryazan. A month and a half later he returned, lived for three weeks in St. Petersburg, and then left for Moscow. He left on July 9, and on July 11, "in the morning there was a bewilderment in a hotel near the station of the Moscow railway."
XXIX-XXX
An acquaintance of Lopukhovy Rakhmetov volunteered to help Vera. He knew about Lopukhov's plans and handed over a note where he wrote that he was going to "leave the stage".
Rakhmetov had the nickname Nikitushka Lomov, named after a barge hauler who walked along the Volga, "a giant of Herculean strength." Rakhmetov worked hard on himself and acquired "exorbitant strength". He was quite sharp and straightforward in communication. Once I even slept on nails to test my willpower. The author believes that such people as Rakhmetov, “the life of all flourishes; without them, she would have died out.
XXXI
Chapter 4
I-III
Berlin, July 20, 1856. Letter to Vera Pavlovna from a "retired medical student" in which he conveys the words of Dmitry Sergeevich. Lopukhov understood that their relationship with Vera would no longer be the same as before, reflected on his mistakes and said that Kirsanov should take his place.
IV-XIII
Vera is happy with Kirsanov. They read and discuss books together. Once, during a conversation, Vera said that “the organization of a woman is almost higher than that of men,” that women are stronger and more resilient than men.
Vera suggested that "you need to have such a thing that cannot be abandoned, which cannot be postponed - then a person is incomparably stronger." Vera cited Rakhmetov as an example, for whom a common cause replaced a personal one, while they, Alexander and Vera, only need a personal life.
To be equal to her husband in everything, Vera took up medicine. At that time, there were no female doctors yet, and for a woman this was a compromising matter.
XIV
Vera and Alexander note that over time, their feelings only become stronger. Kirsanov believes that without his wife, he would have long ceased to grow in the professional field.
XVI. The fourth dream of Vera Pavlovna
Vera dreamed of a field covered with flowers, flowering shrubs, a forest, a magnificent palace. Vera is shown three queens, goddesses who were worshipped. The first is Astarte, who was the slave of her husband. The second is Aphrodite, who was exalted only as a source of pleasure. The third - "Integrity", showing a jousting tournament and a knight who loved an inaccessible lady of the heart. The knights loved their ladies only as long as they did not become their wives and subjects.
The guide of Faith said that the kingdoms of those queens are falling, and now her time has come. Vera understands that she herself is the guide and the new queen. The conductor says that it can be expressed in one word - equality. Vera dreams of New Russia, where people live and work happily.
XVII
A year later, Vera's new workshop "was completely settled" . The first workshop is run by Mertsalova. Soon they opened a store on Nevsky.
XVIII
Letter from Katerina Vasilievna Polozova. She writes that she met Vera Pavlovna and is delighted with her workshop.
Chapter 5
I
Polozova owed a lot to Kirsanov. Her father was "a retired captain or staff captain". After resigning, he began to engage in entrepreneurship and soon created a "hefty capital". His wife died, leaving him a daughter, Katya. Over time, his capital reached several million. But at some point he quarreled with the “right person” and at the age of 60 he was left a beggar (compared to the recent one, otherwise he lived well).
II-V
When Katya was 17 years old, she suddenly began to lose weight and took to her bed. Just a year before the wedding with Vera, Kirsanov was among the doctors who took care of Katya's health. Alexander guessed that the cause of the girl's ill health was unhappy love.
“Hundreds of suitors followed the heiress of a huge fortune.” Polozov immediately noticed that Solovtsov liked his daughter. But he was "a very bad man." Polozov once said a taunt to Solovtsov, who began to rarely visit them, but began to send Katya hopeless letters. Rereading them, she imagined love and fell ill.
VI–VIII
At the next medical consultation, Kirsanov said that Polozova's disease is incurable, so her suffering must be stopped by taking a lethal dose of morphine. Upon learning of this, Polozov allowed the girl to do what she wanted. The wedding was scheduled three months later. Soon the girl herself realized her mistake and broke off the engagement. Her views had changed, now she was even glad that her father had lost his wealth and "the vulgar, boring, nasty crowd had left them."
IX
Polozov decided to sell the stearin plant and, after a long search, found a buyer - Charles Beaumont, who was an agent for the London firm of Hodchson, Lauter and K.
X
Beaumont said that his father came from America, he was here "a distiller at a factory in the Tambov province", but after the death of his wife he returned to America. When his father died, Charles got a job in a London office that deals with St. Petersburg and asked for a job in Russia.
XI-XII
Polozov invited Beaumont to dinner. During the conversation, Katya said that she wanted to do some useful work. Beaumont advised her to get acquainted with Mrs. Kirsanova, but then to tell how her affairs were.
XIII-XVIII
Beaumont began to visit the Polozovs very often. Polozov considered him a good match for Katerina. Katerina and Charles fell in love, but did not show their passion, they were very restrained.
Charles proposed to Catherine, warning that he was already married. The girl realized that it was Vera. Katherine gave him her consent.
XIX – XXI
The next day, Katerina went to Vera and said that she would introduce her to her fiancé. The Kirsanovs, having learned that it was Lopukhov, were very happy (Dmitry staged suicide, changed his name, left for America, but then returned). “The same evening we agreed: for both families to look for apartments that would be nearby.”
XXII
“Each of the two families lives in its own way, as it pleases which one. They see each other like family." “Sewing, continuing to grow together, continue to exist; there are now three of them; Katerina Vasilievna has arranged her own for a long time.” This year, Vera Pavlovna will already "take the exam for a doctor."
XXIII
Several years passed, they lived just as amicably. The author depicts a scene of festivities. Among the youth there is a certain lady in mourning who says that "you can fall in love and you can get married, only with analysis, and without deceit."
Chapter 6
“- To the Passage! - said the lady in mourning, only now she was no longer in mourning: a bright pink dress, a pink hat, a white mantilla, a bouquet in her hand. She had been waiting for this day for over two years. But, the author, not wanting to continue, finishes his story.
Conclusion
Roman Chernyshevsky "What to do?" interesting gallery of strong, strong-willed characters - "new" people. This is Vera Pavlovna, Kirsanov, Lopukhov, above whom, as if standing apart, the image of Rakhmetov. All these people made themselves and did not stop working on self-development, while trying to invest as much as possible in the “common cause”. In fact, they are revolutionaries.
The main character of the book, Vera Pavlovna, is not an ordinary woman for that time. She decides to go against the will of her parents, is not afraid of the condemnation of society, opening her workshops, and then becoming a doctor. She inspires other women and people around them for self-development, service to the common cause.
Novel test
Check the memorization of the summary with the test:
Retelling rating
Average rating: 4.7. Total ratings received: 331.
