The beginning of a family
In 1861, Aksakov married Olga Semyonovna Zaplatina, who is the daughter of a Suvorov general living in Moscow. They leave for Novo-Aksakovo. In the year 1817, they have a son, who is given the name Konstantin, in the future life awaits him famous critic, a poet, scientist and founder of Slavophilism. In 1819, Aksakov's daughter was born, who was named Vera, in 1820 a second son appeared, who was called Gregory. In 1823, another son was born, who was named Ivan, he also became a famous poet, publicist, critic and prominent figure in Slavophilism. The Aksakov family consisted of ten children, who received a lot of attention from their parents.
Unfortunately, Konstantin and Ivan Sergeevich, who supported the concept of family and family relations among peoples and international relations, could not leave behind their offspring (heirs). They gave themselves completely to the world. Only the middle brother, whose name was Grigory, continued the Aksakov family on earth.
Grigory Sergeevich
Very little information is known about Grigory Sergeevich in history; he was not known as his older brothers. He was sent to the St. Petersburg School of Law, where Ivan ended up with him. Grigory Sergeevich was married to Sofya Alexandrovna Shishkova, who was the daughter of a Simbirsk landowner, she was a relative of the well-known statesman and Vice Admiral A.S. Shishkov. Sofia Alexandrovna was a student of the Ufa Women's Gymnasium. By her will, the first theater was built. Some time before the wedding, Aksakov wrote a telegram to his son, in which the following words sounded: “My dearest son, Grisha, now you have your own life, your own family, a new home, and you will have all this if you will always be close to your wife and our beloved daughter.”
Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov was inscribed in the history of literature as a realist writer, he was a great connoisseur and connoisseur of the Russian language. In all his works, Aksakov, when he created a hero, took someone from his family as a basis. Thus, it can be said that his entire family participated in the creation of all his works. Impaired vision deprives the writer of the opportunity to do what he loves, that is, to write. At this difficult moment, his daughters come to his aid. He sat in a chair and told them a story, and they put it on paper. In the evenings, Aksakov, sitting in his favorite chair in front of the whole family, told his stories. That is why it is believed that his first listeners and critics were his family.
Report 6th grade.
S.T. family Aksakov, a remarkable Russian writer of the 19th century, was a truly remarkable Russian family, it was dominated by a variety of mental and creative interests, an atmosphere of mutual respect and love, spiritual community, lovingly attracted many people to the SSBS. Aksakov Saturdays are visited by famous writers, publishers, artists: M.P. Pogodin, P.V. Kireevsky, M.N. Zagoskin. Often there are F.I. Tyutchev.
A.K. Tolstoy, N.M. Yazykov, M.S. Shchepkin, family friends - famous Russian writers N.V. Gogol, I.S. Turgenev, L.N. Tolstoy. Especially loved in the Aksakov family N.V. Gogol. As Gogol himself wrote to his close friend A.O. Smirnova-Rosset, "The Aksakovs are capable of falling in love to death." In every letter from Gogol to different people, at least a few lines were dedicated to the Aksakovs.
The Aksakov family was a real big Russian family. According to A.S. Kurilov, the author of the introductory article and the compiler of the collection of Konstantin Sergeevich and Ivan Sergeevich Aksakov (the eldest sons of Sergei Timofeevich), "Literary Criticism", published in 1981, the family had 6 sons and 8 daughters. According to A.A. Sievers, cited in the pre-revolutionary publication Genealogical Intelligence (St. Petersburg, 1913), the Aksakov family had 4 sons and 6 daughters.
“All members of the family,” writes one of S.T. Aksakov, - were united by a rare unanimity, complete agreement of tastes, inclinations and habits, and over the years, on this basis, a deep inner connection was established, consisting in a common belief and sympathy.
The family was morally strong, friendly, in which, as A.S. Kurilov, “consent and unconditional, indisputable trust of everyone to everyone and everyone to everyone reigned, where everything was pure, honest, sincere, direct, frank ... The feeling of everyone's involvement in the affairs and concerns of others, spiritual sensitivity and responsiveness become, as it were, moral imperative, the basis of personal and social behavior of all, without exception, the children of Sergei Timofeevich and Olga Semenovna. Perhaps this is where Konstantin and Ivan Aksakov’s passionate and immutable conviction arose that the future of Russia, our people, all Slavic peoples is most closely and directly connected with the flowering of this beautiful and all-conquering feeling of a single family ... "
Of course, as in any family, disputes sometimes arose in the Aksakov family - between father and sons, especially the elders Konstantin and Ivan - about various problems of public life, but an atmosphere of respect and sincere friendship was always preserved.
S.T. Aksakov had a remarkable property - to learn from his children. And the children in this family were truly wonderful, bright, talented.
Konstantin Sergeevich, the eldest son of Aksakov, the first-born from a happy marriage, was, according to the memoirs of his contemporaries, a remarkable and amazing personality, even his ideological opponents spoke about it. As a child, he showed brilliant abilities, at the age of 15 he entered the verbal department of Moscow University.
He worked in the field of linguistics, and his work was highly appreciated by V. Dahl, the author of the famous Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language. In 1847 he defended his thesis - "Lomonosov in the history of Russian literature and the Russian language"; was a writer, author of dramas and comedies, publicist, literary critic. His article “The Experience of Synonyms” (“The Public and the People”) will be called later! one of the most remarkable phenomena of Russian journalism. Konstantin Sergeevich was also a public figure, he spoke out against social oppression, against arbitrariness in society, sharply denounced the way of life of the ruling classes. In 1855, he passed, 1! with Countess Bludova his "Note" to Tsar Nicholas I, striking in its courage and dignity. Here is a small excerpt from it.
“There is no dispute that the government exists for the people. and not the people for the government ... The government, and with them the upper classes, separated from the people and became strangers to them ... deceit is everywhere ... Everyone lies to each other ... Bribery and bureaucratic organized robbery are terrible ... Everyone evil comes primarily from the oppressive system of our government... The same oppressive government system makes an idol out of 170 sovereigns, to whom all moral convictions and forces are sacrificed...”
This note, presented to the king, was the first but incredible boldness of many other private notes.
Surprisingly close relations connected the father and the eldest son of the Aksakovs. From the day of his birth until his death, Konstantin Sergeevich parted with his father only once; it was he who, in childhood, affectionately called his father "ogesenka" instead of "daddy", as was customary in those years, and after that all the children of the large Aksakov family called Sergei Timofeevich that way. After the death of his father, he literally withered away; strong man, of a Herculean physique, he fell ill with consumption and died in 1860, when he was only 43 years old, outliving his father by 19 months.
Many magazines, critics, contemporaries of Konstantin Sergeevich responded to his death:
“Cleaner, nobler, more innocent than Konstantin Aksakov, it was wiser to find a person in our century.” M. Pogodin.
“I personally knew Konstantin Aksakov well: this is a man in whom nobility is the true nature.” V.G. Belinsky.
The second son of Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov, Ivan Sergeevich, was the same bright, extraordinary, talented person. When he died (it happened on January 27 - February 8 - 1886), the newspapers wrote:
“The loss is irreparable. Ivan Sergeevich Aksakov was not only a writer, publicist, public figure, he was a banner, a social force.
“Few of the public losses made such a strong impression as the death of I. Aksakov, because his name was very popular both in Russia and throughout the Slavic world; and in Western Europe they looked at Aksakov as one of the most prominent representatives of the Russian literary world and the entire Russian society.
“Honest as Aksakov” - this was said about Ivan Aksakov, and this expression has become almost a proverb.
A major government official, publisher of the famous Moscow Collection, public and political figure, chairman of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, founder and ideologist, head of the Moscow Slavic Committee - this is all about Ivan Aksakov. Throughout his life, he sought to unite all people - in Russia, in the Slavic countries. As the head of the Moscow Slavic Committee, Ivan Sergeevich Aksakov organizes assistance to Serbia and Montenegro in their liberation struggle against Turkey, a loan to the Serbian government and fundraising for the needs of the struggling Slavic people, organizes the recruitment and sending of volunteers to Serbia.
During the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878. he organizes assistance to the Bulgarian squads - fundraising, purchase and delivery of weapons.
An interesting fact is that almost a hundred years later, in connection with the 150th anniversary of the birth of I.S. Aksakov, an organ of the Ministry of Defense of Bulgaria - the newspaper "People's Army" on October 2, 1973 wrote that the Bulgarians during the Russian-Turkish war called their militias "children of Aksakov." Through I. Aksakov, they received 20 thousand rifles in part; it turns out that even a military uniform for the militias, the so-called. infantry grinder, was proposed by Aksakov.
One of Ivan Sergeevich's contemporaries said that he feels himself Russian in sinful cases: when he listens to ancient chants, when he hears a Russian folk song, and when he reads articles by Ivan Sergeevich Aksakov.
^ When Ivan Sergeevich died, they buried him in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra - this honor was not awarded even to this father and none of the "worldly", non-church people.
Grigory Sergeevich Aksakov, jurist by education, in 1861-1867. he was a Fazhdansky governor in his father's homeland, in Ufa, under him the liberation of the peasants was accomplished. When he was transferred to Samara in 1867, the people of Ufa elected him an honorary citizen of the city.
As contemporaries said, he was one of the most remarkable Russian governors, an honest, courageous, humane man.
Three of his eldest daughters S.T. Aksakov named: Faith, Hope, Love; the family had three more daughters - Olga, Maria, Sophia.
A special place among the daughters was occupied by the eldest daughter, Vera. It was she who dictated the "Family Chronicle" to Sergei Timofeevich, in fact, she was his editor. The already blind writer dictated all his latest works to Vera.
The youngest of the daughters, Sofya, did everything to preserve the memory of her father and the entire Aksakov family. She made desperate attempts to prevent Abramtsevo, where Aksakov spent his last years, from falling into the wrong hands. In 1870, she sold the estate to a man of "richest talents" (M. Ivanov), passionately in love with Russia, a major industrialist and philanthropist Savva Ivanovich Mamontov. Thus, it is to her that we owe the fact that Abramtsevo, inseparable from the names of her father, Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov, brothers, people who were in it, along with neighboring Muranov, where the famous Russian poet F.I. Tyutchev and with the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, became one of the moral centers of Russia.
The granddaughter of Sergei Timofeevich, an amazingly bright and pure person, did a lot of good in life, and among other things, she created one of the first in the country and the first in Bashkiria, a koumiss clinic for tuberculosis patients (now it is a sanatorium in Bashkiria). With her help, many manuscripts from the archive of the Aksakov family were published, for example, "The Diary of Vera Sergeevna Aksakova 1854-1855". Together with Anna Fedorovna Tyutcheva-Aksakova, she published a 3-volume collection "Ivan Sergeevich Aksakov in his letters". She helped people all her life, therefore, in the difficult years of the Civil War, she, already an old woman, was helped by peasants from. Yazykovo, where she lived; they buried her and carefully looked after her grave.
“The power of this family love was so great,” recalls a contemporary of Aksakov S.A. Vengerov - that it also infected those who joined it later. The wife of Grigory Sergeevich, Sophia, was not just a daughter-in-law, she became a real daughter. On her initiative, a new theater building was built in Ufa; under her leadership, one of the most beautiful alleys was planted in the city, which the inhabitants of Ufa affectionately called Sofyushkina alley.
“An amazingly whole and conscientious family, feeling some kind of heightened responsibility to its native people, a family from which we have a lot to learn! How much each of its members, even already in the third generation, did for their people,” writes S.T. Aksakova M. Ivanov.
In S.T. Aksakov's "Childhood Years of Bagrov's Grandson" there is an amazing place when, on a road trip, a seemingly terminally ill child is laid by parents on the grass of a forest glade, and everything that he saw, felt, heard around, birdsong, aroma flowers, the breath of the forest - all this had such a healing effect on him that he soon felt healthy.
The same healing nature lives and has a healing effect on us in the writer's works.
But the very appearance of Sergei Timofeevich has the same spiritual healthy effect on us. In his own words, the inclination towards "everything clear, transparent, easily and freely understood", native traditions absorbed by him with his mother's milk, turned him away from any spiritual shape-shifting presented under the guise of novelty.
While not yet a famous writer, he was already the person who attracted wonderful people Russian art and science. Gogol, Turgenev, Nekrasov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Tyutchev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Apollon Grigoriev - they all deeply revered "old Aksakov". Under the influence of Gogol, who listened to Sergei Timofeevich's oral stories about the Trans-Volga life and persuaded his "older friend" to write "the story of his life," Aksakov began his autobiographical books and immediately entered Russian literature as its classic.
Sergey Timofeevich also attracted his contemporaries as a wonderful family man, a hospitable owner of the house, where everyone breathed greetings and goodwill. Aksakov's wife Olga Semenovna, the daughter of a Suvorov general and a Turkish woman taken prisoner during the siege of Ochakov, was a true organizer of the inner harmony of family life. Belinsky's words are known: "Oh, if only we had more fathers in Russia like old man Aksakov." Mutual love and friendship reigned in the family, which consisted of ten children, they, already being adults, called their father "otesenka" (from the word "father").
Actually, the life of Sergei Timofeevich was centered around two principles: the creation of a family and autobiographical books, the recreation of family traditions.
From this family came two remarkable figures of Russian culture and public life: the Slavophiles Konstantin Aksakov and Ivan Aksakov.
The family has always been a prototype of folk life in Russian literature: Pushkin's Grinevs, Turgenev's Kalitins, Tolstoy's Rostovs, to Sholokhov's Melekhovs, Platonov's Ivanovs. The Bagrov family occupies a special place among them, because the Aksakov family stands behind it.
Family - not only their children, but also a family tradition, parents, ancestors. The famous philosopher-theologian P. Florensky wrote: “To be without a sense of living connection with grandfathers and great-grandfathers means not to have any points of support in history. And I would like to be able to determine for myself exactly what I did and where exactly I was I am in each of the historical moments of our Motherland and the whole world - I, of course, in the person of my ancestors.
In his two main books "Family Chronicle" and "Childhood of Bagrov-grandson", Sergei Timofeevich, based on the stories of his parents, reproduced a family tradition, the history of three generations of the Aksakov family (Aksakov was replaced in the narrative by the fictitious surname Bagrov). In the "Family Chronicle" the first and second generations of the Bagrov family are displayed - the grandfather and parents of little Serezha, and the childhood of Serezha, who continues the family of the Bagrovs in the third generation, is dedicated to the "Childhood of the Bagrov-grandson". The entire "Family Chronicle" consists of five relatively small passages, the book is modest in size, but there is a feeling of completeness, embracing various events and many people, a whole historical era. Behind the literary characters are real people, but this does not mean that we have photographs from them. No, first of all artistic images containing something more than just private, personal. And before, a great artist was seen in Aksakov - already in his "Buran", then in "Notes on catching fish", "Notes of a rifle hunter", "Memoirs" (written almost simultaneously with the last chapters of the "Family Chronicle"), but then the author, as it were, restrained his pictorial power, but here, in the "Family Chronicle", he gave it full rein, and now there was a breath of such genuine life, behind which art is no longer noticed. Such is the very first excerpt from the "Family Chronicle", the chapter "Good afternoon Stepan Mikhailovich" (later included in the famous "Russian reader" by A. Galakhov, which came out in dozens of editions in pre-revolutionary Russia). What, it would seem, is remarkable - a day spent by the narrator's grandfather, a provincial landowner, but how many lovingly conveyed details of everyday life, household, from economic life with Bagrov's trip to the field, examining the flowering rye there, visiting the mill, talking with peasants, dinner, sitting on the porch before going to bed, "crossed himself once or twice on the starry sky and lay down to rest." Epic for the day, time. One day in the life of a hero, but it is perceived as a whole complete cycle of being, so everything is large and holistic.
The author does not idealize his hero, or rather, his grandfather. Old man Bagrov is marked by the seal of time, serfdom. Moving from the Simbirsk province to the Ufa governorship, four hundred miles away, to the newly purchased lands, he removes his peasants, the whole village from their place, and "the poor settlers set out on the road, shedding bitter tears, forever saying goodbye to the old days, to the church in which they were baptized and got married." Steep and autocratic Stepan Mikhailovich in a family where they are so afraid of his anger, which makes this, in essence, a kind-hearted person a "wild beast" (nothing can inflame him like a lie, a lie).
In Bagrov, as in a large character, both shortcomings and advantages are large. With all its contradictions in actions, this personality is monolithic, integral in its moral basis. And this foundation is indestructible, and his wisdom is based on it. worldly rules. He is firm in his word, "his promise was stronger and holier than any spiritual and civil acts." Just as a powerful chest, unusually broad shoulders, sinewy arms, a muscular body exposed a strong man in this small man, just as his face with large dark blue eyes had an open and honest expression, so his constant help to others, mediation in disputes and the lawsuits of neighbors, zealous devotion to the truth in any case testified to his moral height.
Sofya Nikolaevna, daughter-in-law, quickly comprehended "all his quirks", made a "deep and subtle assessment of his high qualities." So a proud, educated woman, who despised everything rustic and rude, bowed before this rude at first glance old man, intuitively feeling in him those qualities of him that elevated him above all others.
In Bagrov, practical qualities are balanced by moral ones, and this is the peculiarity of his nature. He is one of the people of a practical disposition, active, capable of great entrepreneurial deeds, but this is not a bare business that does not know any moral obstacles for the sake of profit. In such people, a developed moral consciousness does not leave them in practical activity, sometimes it can come into violent contradiction with it, but it will never justify the unrighteousness of an act in itself and thereby already excludes unlimited predation in itself.
But the fact of the matter is that such a character as Bagrov was not only "tradition of antiquity deep." Almost simultaneously with Bagrov, Rusakov appeared in Ostrovsky's play Do Not Get into Your Sleigh, later Chapurin in Melnikov-Pechersky's novels In the Forests and On the Mountains; both of these heroes are akin to Bagrov in character.
The image of the old man Bagrov can be put in a number of epic images of world literature. Even in the last century, immediately after the release of the "Family Chronicle", criticism, wishing to praise the author, saw in him "resemblance to Walter Scott", in particular, in understanding the "historical necessity" of past customs, in Bagrov's line of thought "in accordance with the spirit of the times (Evidently, Russian literature at that time was still not authoritative enough for criticism to be able to deduce this "historical necessity" from it itself). The power of generalizing the same image of Bagrov could only be born from such a family chronicle, which presents not the narrow framework of family life, but the whole of Russia in its main qualities (this was the case, especially later, when already in the family of Sergei Timofeevich with its spiritual and social interests Russia was constantly present both in conversations and in the thoughts of the father and children).
And not only the image of the old man Bagrov is distinguished by such an amazing power of artistic generalization. In the "Family Chronicle" Kurolesov is depicted with no less, perhaps only negative force. In the portrait of the hero, who draws S.T. Aksakov, in the absence, it would seem, of analysis (in the way in which, decomposing the whole into its component parts, they “turn out” a person to us, expose the hidden corners of his soul and consciousness, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy), with all the integrity of the picture, strikes in the image of Kurolesov psychological depth. Some critics saw in Kurolesov a kind of everyday villain, which seems to be confirmed by the very outline of the plot: the story of the hero's marriage; cheating wife; the truth she learned about the true way of life of her husband, when she, having heard about it, decides to go to the estate where he lived, and with her own eyes ascertains the truth of the rumors about his depraved life, tyranny; the villainy of Kurolesov, who made sure that his wife would not forgive him and that he was threatened with deprivation of the power of attorney to manage the estate, beating his wife and locking her in a stone cellar; the release of the captive by Stepan Mikhailovich, etc.
But behind this almost adventure story, not only everyday features are hidden, but also the metaphysical secrets of the hero's character. It is said about one of them: "Spoiled by the fear and humility of all the people around him, he soon forgot and ceased to know the measure of his frenzied self-will." That's what, it turns out, can incite "willfulness", "cruelty", "bloodthirstiness" and everything else - and not only in the case of Kurolesov, and not only in his time. From other "oral" remarks of the narrator, as if thrown on the move, Dostoevsky could, it seems, extract material for a chain psychological reaction. Kurolesov named three villages, which he settled with peasants transferred from the old places, with names that made up the name, patronymic and surname of his wife. "This romantic undertaking in such a person as Mikhail Maksimovich will later appear has always surprised me."
Having reached the highest degree of debauchery and ferocity, Kurolesov zealously set about building a stone church in Parashino. These "abysses" in the character of the hero, the "phenomenon" of his bloodthirstiness, the inconsistency of his actions so deeply affected something "inexplicable" in "human nature", which gave grounds to Apollon Grigoriev to draw the following conclusion: "These types of the last times of our literature, who suddenly abandoned and suddenly a light on our historical types - this Kurolesov, for example, "Family Chronicle", in many ways better than the theories of Messrs. Soloviev and Kavelin, explaining to us the figure of Ivan the Terrible ... "Such is the power of the artist's psychological generalization, allowing us to see behind the drawn face a whole historical type that makes us think about phenomena that are not limited by the time and place of action.
Maybe nowhere in S.T. Aksakov's artistic intentness and fullness are not manifested in the same way as in the image of the mother, especially in the Childhood Years of Bagrov the Grandson. “The same filial love endured in her soul the same kind of filial love that formerly cherished her son at the mother’s breast,” one of the writer’s contemporaries rightly wrote. Indeed, the mother's ardent love and the child's passionate affection for her are an inseparable whole. "The constant presence of the mother merges with my every recollection," says the author at the very beginning of his "Children's Years of Bagrov the Grandson." Her image is inextricably linked with my existence." The sickly child was doomed, it seemed, to death, and only miraculously survived. And one of these miraculous forces that healed him was selfless, boundless motherly love, about which it is said this: "My mother did not let the dying lamp of life die out in me; as soon as it began to fade, she fed it with a magnetic outpouring of her own life, her own breath" . The whole story is illuminated by the image of a mother, infinitely dear, loving, ready for any sacrifice, for any feat for the sake of her Serezhenka. Maternal feeling psychologically seems to be inexhaustible: how many experiences, how many spiritual shades. A mother, forgotten by an anxious dream, hears the voice of her sick little son. “Mother jumped up, frightened at first, and then she was delighted, listening to my strong voice and looking at my refreshed face. This is just one moment of her state of mind, and, in fact, her whole life is in this lying in the depths of her soul, "the boundless feeling of motherly love," as the narrator himself says. From the first to the last page of the book, in every episode where the mother is shown, in a wide variety of manifestations - sometimes passionate, sometimes anxious and desperate, sometimes joyful, sometimes lightly sad - this amazing feeling lives, revealing to us the secrets of the mother's heart hidden from the world.
In literature, love is usually poeticized before family life, with the beginning of it, as it were, the curtain falls romantic story and the prose of everyday life begins. Perhaps none of the Russian writers reveals family life with such poetic content as S.T. Aksakov in his "Family Chronicle" and "Childhood years of Bagrov-grandson" in particular. And this is far from a harmonious union between spouses (remember that Sofya Nikolaevna did not marry for love). But there is so much richness of feelings in maternal love, so much spiritual employment "that this alone makes a woman's life deeply meaningful, giving her great moral satisfaction, and the little son feels the mother's "moral power" over him. Such maternal "monolove" was, apparently, the same phenomenon of Russian life as the constancy of Pushkin's Tatyana with her: "But I am given to another and I will be faithful to him for a century."
It is amazing that this maternal feeling in all its originality and purity was conveyed to us by a sixty-five-year-old artist, as if there was neither the burden of worldly experience cooling the soul, nor even another mother, when, with the marriage of her son, she so changed in her feelings for him, jealous of him. to the family: nothing turned out to have power over the strength of that childish filial love, which became the shrine of his soul. As if instinctively feeling what he owes to his mother, who more than once snatched him, it seemed, from the arms of death, Seryozha responds to her with passionate filial affection, which at times literally shakes his childish soul. He experiences such shocks during his mother's illness, falling into unchildish horror at the mere thought that she might die. "The thought of the death of my mother did not enter my head, and I think that my concepts began to get confused and that this was the beginning of some kind of insanity."
S.T. Aksakov apparently conveyed something very characteristic of child psychology in general. Here is the confession of the famous Russian physicist S.I. Vavilov: "I always loved my mother deeply and, I remember, as a boy I imagined with horror, what if my mother dies, which seemed tantamount to the end of the world."
In this horror of being left without a mother, there is some kind of spontaneous fear of orphanhood, not only filial, but orphanhood in general on earth, and the mother is here as that support closest and accessible to the child's consciousness, without which he is so afraid in the world. With what stupor the mother's illness strikes the child's soul, and with what light the world is illuminated with her recovery. “Finally, everything gradually calmed down, and first of all I saw that the room was brightly light from the morning dawn, and then I realized that my mother was alive, she would be healthy, and a feeling of inexpressible happiness filled my soul! This happened on June 4, on dawn before sunrise, therefore very early."
Love for the mother reveals himself more deeply to Serezha. He was so indulged in the impressions of the awakening spring nature, so ("as if mad") was absorbed in his affairs and worries - to listen, to look at what was happening in the grove, how the leaves unfolded, all living creatures came to life, how birds' nests curled - that he forgot about everything on light and even about the mother. And his mother reproachfully reminded him of this. It was as if a veil had been lifted from his eyes: he really thought little of her. Acute repentance pricked him to the very heart, he felt how guilty he was before his mother, and asked for forgiveness from her. The mother did not restrain her feelings: “My mother and I indulged in fiery outpourings of mutual repentance and enthusiastic love; the distance of years and relationships disappeared between us, we both cried frantically and sobbed loudly. son and insulted him with a reproach.
The very moral development of the boy is largely influenced by the knowledge of maternal love. He begins to understand and feel this love especially, "in all its strength", during his illness. “The excruciating fear she experienced is understandable - the delight when the danger has passed is understandable. I have already grown older and was able to understand this delight, understand my mother’s love. This week has enlightened me a lot, developed a lot, and my attachment to my mother, more conscious, has grown much above my age." Thoughts about the mother, which arouse in the son an "anxious state", make him be "in a struggle with himself." And his very "imagination, developed beyond his years," is also largely explained by his ardent attachment to his mother, the fear of losing her. Thus, in child psychology, the image of the mother gives rise to something like a “process of feelings”, a “struggle with oneself” - a phenomenon, as it were, even unexpected, given the established opinion about the “non-analysis” of psychologism in S.T. Aksakov.
And not only through the mother is the growth of the child's soul. How this childish soul shudders when a grandfather dies, what fear, what horror seizes it, how the childish imagination is inflamed with thoughts of death! In terms of the strength of psychological expressiveness, this fear is truly the germ of that fear of death that will rush about in the minds of Tolstoy's heroes, and this same fear of death, so early, almost from infancy, recognized by Sergei Timofeevich, apparently, could not but leave a trace in his later life, perhaps , lurked in his soul, drowned out by those "passions" that the writer himself spoke of, referring to his family concerns, attachment to nature, and so on. And next to the death of grandfather - the birth of a tiny brother, causing some special tender feelings in Seryozha. “In a small nursery, a beautiful cradle hung on a copper ring, screwed into the ceiling. This cradle was presented by the late grandfather Zubin, when my elder sister, who soon died, was still born; both my second sister and I swayed in it. They set up a chair, I climbed on it, and, opening the green silk cover, I saw a sleeping swaddled baby and noticed only that he had black hairs on his head. They took the sister in her arms, and she also looked at the sleeping brother - and we were very pleased ... Alena Maksimovna, seeing that we are such smart children, we walk on tiptoe and speak in an undertone, she promised to let us go to her brother every day, just when she would wash him. Delighted by such pleasant hopes, we merrily went for a walk and ran first around the yard, and then in the garden " . Family feeling, as if branching, enters the soul of the boy, permeates his whole being, gives him a feeling of fullness and certainty of existence. He is happy to know that he is from the same family as his father and grandfather. “I was alone with my father; they also hugged and kissed me, and I felt some kind of pride that I was the grandson of my grandfather. I was no longer surprised that all the peasants loved my father and me so much; I was convinced that this was certainly so it must be: my father is a son, and I am the grandson of Stepan Mikhailovich.
The family principle has become the leading, determining factor in the story. This was reflected in the very titles of the books: "Family Chronicle", "Childhood of Bagrov-grandson". Well said about the books of S.T. Aksakov Andrey Platonov, who saw their "immortal essence" "in relation to the child to his parents and to his homeland." According to Andrei Platonov, "Aksakov's books instill patriotism in readers and reveal the primary source of patriotism - the family," because "a person initially learns this feeling of the Motherland and love for her, patriotism through the feeling of mother and father, that is, in the family." And Aksakov's love for nature itself "is only a continuation, development, dissemination of those feelings that arose in him when he clung to his mother in infancy, and those ideas when his father first took his son with him to fish and rifle hunting. and showed him a big one, bright world, where he will then have to exist for a long time. And the child accepts this world with trust and tenderness, because he was introduced into it by the hand of his father.
Nature is the second, after the parental, cradle that truly nurtured and cherished the artist's childhood. One of the very first and most intimate "fragmentary reminiscences" of the author of "The Childhood Years of Bagrov the Grandson" is an illness and recovery in infancy. “Dear, quite early in the morning, I felt so bad, I was so weak that I was forced to stop; they took me out of the carriage, made a bed in the tall grass of a forest clearing, in the shade of trees, and laid me down almost lifeless. I saw and understood everything, I heard how my father wept and consoled my desperate mother, how fervently they prayed, raising their hands to heaven, I heard and saw everything clearly, and could not say a single word, could not move, and suddenly I felt better, stronger than usual. I liked the forest, the shade, the flowers, the fragrant air so much that I begged them not to move me. So we stood there until evening. The horses were unharnessed and put on the grass close to me, and I was pleased ... I did not sleep, but I felt unusual cheerfulness and some kind of inner pleasure and calmness, or rather, I did not understand what I felt, but I felt good ... The next day in the morning I also felt fresher and better against the ordinary. "Twelve-hour lying in the grass in a forest clearing gave the first beneficial impetus to my body, which was relaxed in body." Thus, nature had a healing effect on the child, and since then he fell in love with her to self-forgetfulness.
One of the contemporaries of S.T. Aksakova, a hunter-writer, jokingly said that his dog stood up in front of the Notes of a Rifle Hunter, there was so much life and truth in them. The same can be said about the description of nature in the "Family Chronicle" and "Childhood of Bagrov the Grandson": there is so much life, truth here that you forget all literature and, together with the author, plunge into the world of nature itself.
A healthy sense of nature made Aksakov and a landscape painter of such power as I.I. Shishkin, who called Sergei Timofeevich his favorite writer.
It has a healing effect even on us, readers of Aksakov's books, and what can we say about Seryozha, who lives in it. For him, she is an inexhaustible source of joy and pleasure. How many secrets, how many exciting details are revealed to him everywhere in it, immediately behind the house, where the Buguruslan flows and the rook grove begins: on fishing; on the road, all the same, from Ufa to Bagrov, and always excitingly new; lodging for the night in the steppe under the open sky; in the spring frenzy of the nightingales at the fading dawn. And all this, and much more, all the voices, flowers, aromas, "the beauties of nature" (the favorite expression of the writer himself) seem to overflow into the child's soul, caress it, delight it, expand it, make it happy. And just as in love for a mother, the whole gamut of feelings, experiences of a little hero is manifested, so in a passionate attachment to nature, no less, perhaps, is revealed. Rich life child soul.
One could talk a lot about the importance of the native corner, nature in the creative destiny of S.T. Aksakov, in particular, and about the uniqueness in Russian literature, and not only, apparently, in Russian, but also in the world - such a phenomenon when the modest framework of an event - childhood spent in the Orenburg village - under the pen of an artist is suddenly filled with such vital authenticity, pithiness, significance, that we involuntarily think about the inexhaustibility of being even in the smallest "corners of the earth." However, this should not surprise us, remember, for example, what this corner of the earth meant for Pushkin, how his two-year stay in Mikhailovsky enriched him, what poetry, what depths of folk life were revealed to him - through the fairy tales of Arina Rodionovna, the stories of peasants, the songs of the blind on fairs; it was from here, from this "corner of the earth" that Pushkin's comprehension of Russian history, the era of "Boris Godunov" (created here), the people itself began. And every great Russian artist had his own "corner of the earth", which connected him with the world.
It is from here, from this "corner of the earth" that the writer's language also originates. "Family Chronicle" and "Childhood of Bagrov the grandson" absorbed the language of the Aksakov homeland, just as they absorbed the fragrance of the surrounding nature. The nationality of the language among S.T. Aksakov not only in purely folk words, but also in the very truth of the expression of folk life, which he knows well. Living speech, it seems, covers everything that it touches, every phenomenon, every object, every everyday detail, is imbued with that elusive Russian meaning that is given by the most direct life in the national element. The verbal liveliness of speech is combined with the amazing plasticity of the image, with such visibility, tangibility of pictures, especially nature, that we seem to enter into them, as if into real world. Not a single false tone, everything is simple and true. Language itself has a purifying effect on the reader, not only in the aesthetic, but also in moral attitude. The imprint of the wisdom, spiritual clarity of the elder, his moral penetration is visible in the style. The artist put all the treasure of his soul into this syllable, into this majesty of the Russian word, and that is why the beauty and truth of this amazing Aksakov language, which endowed us with a wonderful childhood iliad of Russian life, does not decrease with time.
"Family Chronicle" and "Childhood of Bagrov the Grandson" immediately after their release caused rave reviews from contemporaries. And surprisingly, these unanimous praises belonged to people of different convictions, such as Khomyakov and Turgenev, Tolstoy and Herzen, Shevyrev and Shchedrin, Pogodin and Chernyshevsky, Annenkov and Dobrolyubov, and so on. True, the reasons for praise were not the same. So, Dobrolyubov (in his article "The Village Life of the Landowner in the Old Years, Reflected in the Childhood Years of Bagrov the Grandson") noted, as the most important thing in the book of S.T. Aksakov, everything that is connected with the description of the "old order", with the "arbitrariness" of the landowner in "family relations", with the intrusion into his village life of serf relations. "In the end," writes Dobrolyubov, "the whole reason again comes down to the same main source of all internal disasters that we had - serfdom of people."
"The underdevelopment of moral feelings, the perversion of natural concepts, rudeness, lies, ignorance, aversion to work, self-will, unrestrained by anything - it seems to us at every step in this past, now already strange, incomprehensible to us and, let's say with joy, irrevocable" .
For Tolstoy in The Childhood Years of Bagrov the Grandson, "the evenly sweet poetry of nature is poured over everything, as a result of which it may sometimes seem boring, but it is unusually soothing and amazingly clear, faithful and proportional reflection."
Shchedrin admitted that he was strongly influenced by the "beautiful works" of S.T. Aksakov, and therefore dedicated to him one of the cycles of "Provincial essays" in a magazine publication - "Pilgrims, Wanderers and Travelers". Aksakov's epic enlightenment touched such a mercilessly caustic satirist as Shchedrin was. And much later, in his "Poshekhonskaya antiquity" in the chapter "Moral Education", it is told how the hero (with autobiographical features of the author himself), already over thirty years old, for the first time "almost with envy" got acquainted with the "Childhood years of Bagrov the grandson" and made indelible impressions from this reading. Highly put the books of S.T. Aksakov Dostoevsky, noting in them the truth of a national character. Arguing with the Westerners, he wrote: "You say that as soon as the people show activity, now they are a fist. This is shameless. This is not true. Nanny, crossing the Volga in the Family Chronicle and a hundred million other facts, selfless, generous activity. "
Each of the famous contemporaries of S.T. Aksakov had his own view of his books, but everyone agreed on one thing: in recognizing the outstanding artistic merits of these books, the rare talent of their author. Sergei Timofeevich himself, sincerely surprised at his resounding success as an author, with his inherent "arrogance" of pride, explained the matter simply: "I have lived my life, retained the warmth and liveliness of my imagination, and that is why an ordinary talent produces an extraordinary effect."
Having been published, "Childhood of Bagrov-grandson" immediately became a textbook a classic. So, Mamin-Sibiryak (born in 1852, six years before the publication of Sergei Timofeevich's book) wrote in his autobiography how in early childhood he "listened to" reading "Childhood Years of Bagrov the Grandson". And later, another future writer (which Gorky himself will tell about in the story "In People") will remember forever how Turgenev's "Family Chronicle", "Notes of a Hunter" and other works of Russian literature "washed" his soul: "I felt what a good book, and understood its necessity for me. From these books, a strong confidence calmly formed in my soul: I am not alone on earth and I will not be lost!"
Books ST. Aksakov's descendants will always be heard, finding in them, as in wise folk legends, always a living, deeply modern and eternal meaning.
***The names of Aksakovs - Konstantin and Ivan are connected with the direction of Russian social thought, which was called Slavophilism. But it should be noted: justifying this name (love for the Slavs), standing up for the unity of the Slavs, ardently supporting the cause of the liberation of the southern Slavs from the Turkish yoke (the special role of Ivan Aksakov here), the Slavophiles themselves said that the main, hidden in their ideas is the Russian people , Russia. Konstantin Aksakov (born in 1817), although he was much younger than Khomyakov (1804) and Kireevsky (1806), together with them belongs to the generation of older Slavophiles, and Ivan Aksakov is their successor already in the new post-reform era. The acquaintance of the young Konstantin Aksakov with Khomyakov made a revolution in his convictions, which will be discussed below.
Since Aleksei Stepanovich Khomyakov and Ivan Vasilyevich Kireevsky are the "founding fathers", the pillars of Slavophilism, let us dwell briefly on their teachings. Deeply educated, fantastically gifted in many fields of knowledge, fluent in French, English, German, Khomyakov embodied the spiritual height of Russian national identity. The idea of original Russian philosophy originated in him in his youth, in the twenties, in a circle of philosophers, the focus of which was his friend, poet and thinker D. Venevitinov, who showed great promise and died so early in 1827, at the age of only twenty-two years. . The first ideological students of Alexei Stepanovich were the young Konstantin Aksakov and his friend Yuri Samarin. In 1840, a meeting took place that had a decisive influence on their lives. Alexei Stepanovich Khomyakov was much older than each of them: he was thirty-six years old, a man comprehensively educated philosophically, with a long-established worldview. But not only spiritual experience, maturity of thought, he surpassed his young comrades. What was separate in each of them - creativity and analytical power - united in him in complete harmony, making up the integrity of his nature. Therefore, it would seem that the young friends should have found each their own, their own point of support in Khomyakov, but at first this did not happen. For both, as already mentioned, Hegel was an idol, and it was not so easy for them to part with him. Khomyakov, who studied Hegel perfectly, himself a rare dialectician, did not suppress the opinions of young people due to his high tolerance, he only adamantly held on to his "stone" - Russian history, its spiritual, cultural, everyday features. This was the main thing for him, and then already Hegel and the "Hegelates" (as he said), "Hegelism", valued by him, but in his eyes still indirectly related to the "Russian principle" (as in general all German, rationalistic in its basis, philosophy). Friends-opponents turned out to be quite tough nuts that were not easy to deal with. Konstantin Aksakov, whom Khomyakov called "the ferocious lamb," who combined ideological fury with childishness of heart, was especially persistent in standing up for Hegel. Believing in the strength of the main thing in Konstantin Aksakov, Khomyakov told him: "I agree with you more than you yourself." And things moved forward, the reverence of Khomyakov's opponents for Hegel as the all-encompassing absolute principle of knowledge faded. According to his younger brother Ivan, the liberation of Konstantin Aksakov from the shackles of Hegel was complete: "Hegel, as it were, drowned in his love for the Russian people." Subsequently, Konstantin Sergeevich himself admitted: "The lively voice of the people freed me from philosophical abstraction. Thanks be to him."
The unknown, the exciting entered the minds of friends when they began to read the monuments of ancient Russian literature, to study chronicles, old letters and acts. The whole world, until then completely unknown to them, with its spiritual treasures, visible and not yet explored, with the originality of people's life, life, opened up to them. Some kind of soil was suddenly felt underfoot after a shaky wandering in the Hegelian "phenomenology of the spirit."
Khomyakov became a regular visitor to the Aksakovs' house, just as he himself was glad to see them at his home, in the house on the dog's playground. Especially often he began to visit them after the death of his thirty-five-year-old wife Katerina Mikhailovna (she was the sister of the poet Yazykov), who left five children in his arms. He hard, although courageously endured terrible grief, tried not to betray his condition, in public forced himself to be the same as before. One day, a guest staying overnight at Khomyakov's house accidentally witnessed a stunning scene. Khomyakov knelt down in the middle of the night and sobbed muffledly, and in the morning, as usual, he went out to the guests smiling good-naturedly and calmly. The death of his wife was a test of his seemingly unshakable faith. After all, he wrote in his essay "The Church is One":
"He who lives on earth, who has made the earthly journey, not created for earthly path(like angels), who have not yet begun their earthly journey (future generations), are all united in one Church - in one Grace of God. "Both of them - she and he always lived in the Church and in her, in her eternal bosom of grace, continue to live with Katya and with her departure from this life. He believed in this, but such longing for his dead wife sharpened him that at times he lost heart. And one day in a dream he heard her voice: "Do not despair!" And he felt better. She never ceases to be with him, with his children, strengthens his strength for the feat of life. Previously carefree about the "written word", preferring the "oral" word to it, he now began to write more, as if knowing the short earthly period allotted to him, he was in a hurry to transfer to paper in the depths of his soul, thoughts and feelings dear to him had been ripening for many years. In the Aksakovs' house, he rested sincerely, himself, as a good, now incomplete family man, deeply felt the benefit of the family circle. As in everything else in life, in the family he remained a whole person. And in his philosophy, he found for the family not abstract, logistically dead formulas, but living, penetrating words, saying that the family is the circle in which love "passes from an abstract concept and impotent striving into a living and real manifestation."
Deeply loving Sergei Timofeevich, Khomyakov valued his works primarily because the writer "lives in them, acts on the reader with all his wonderful spiritual qualities", as he said - "the secret of his art is in the secret of a soul filled with love." In the fifties, after the death of his wife, Khomyakov went into the depths of theology, the knowledge of the essence of the Church. In his articles and letters, written in French and English for some reason, Khomyakov develops the idea of catholicity. The strength of the Church is not in its outward order, not in its hierarchical nature, but in catholicity, in the unity of the love of the entire church people, in its invincibility as the Body of Christ. The unity of the Church is built up by the unceasing action of the Spirit of God within her. Every action of the Church is directed by the Holy Spirit, the spirit of life and truth. The Spirit of God in the Church is inaccessible to rationalistic consciousness, but only to an integral spirit. Unlike the eastern Orthodox Church with its catholicity in love for the West, Catholicism asserts itself on the pride of individual reason.
Great Russian literature is deeply imbued with catholicity. In the 20th century, what the Orthodox thinker, a faithful son of the Russian Church, Khomyakov, called the emergence of his theological ideas "on the world field" came true.
Spiritually close to the Aksakov family was another outstanding Russian thinker, Ivan Vasilyevich Kireevsky. Let us turn to his philosophical views, without which the display of the mental and spiritual environment that surrounded the Aksakovs would not be complete.
Ivan Kireevsky occupied in it important place. Even in an article written in 1830, "Review of Russian Literature for 1829," he says: "But other people's thoughts are useful only for the development of their own. German philosophy cannot take root in us. Our philosophy must develop from our life, be created from current questions from the dominant interests of our national and private life". Listening in 1830 to Hegel's lectures at the University of Berlin, and then to Schelling's lectures at the University of Munich, did not have a special effect on Ivan Kireevsky, did not arouse in him the very "way of thinking" of German philosophers, even Schelling, who was closer in spirit to him. Perhaps what gave him more personal acquaintance with Hegel and through his younger brother Pyotr Vasilyevich (who had previously arrived in Munich) - with Schelling, who, by the way, in a conversation with the Kireevskys expressed the opinion that Russia was destined for a great appointment (the same idea, apparently, under Hegel expressed the influence of Russia's victory over Napoleon in 1812 to one of the young Russians who listened to his lectures). From a distance, he could more clearly examine the vastness that represented his Fatherland. Without denying the instructiveness of the experience of Western Europe, Ivan Kireevsky believed that any foreign experience cannot be mechanically transferred to the historical soil of another people, that philosophy and education cannot be externally adopted in the same way, but are born from the depths of national life. This applies all the more to "original Russian philosophy," which, in his opinion, was to go far beyond national significance and acquire a world role.
In the creation of such a philosophy, Ivan Vasilievich saw his vocation, the task of his service to the Fatherland, and, in fact, he lived in this single-mindedness. He did not develop a system, like the German philosophers, but developed a number of provisions that formed the basis of Slavophil philosophy. The gist of these provisions is briefly as follows.
Historically, the enlightenment of Europe and Russia was based on different elements, different principles. As for Europe, these beginnings in its enlightenment were Christianity, which penetrated there through the Roman Church, ancient Roman education and the statehood of the barbarians, which arose from the violence of conquest. As can be seen from this, the decisive factor in the fate of the enlightenment of the European peoples was the role of Rome, Roman education. Meanwhile, there was still Greek enlightenment, which in its pure form almost did not penetrate into Europe until the 15th century, until the capture of Constantinople by the Turks (when Greek exiles appeared in the West with their "precious manuscripts"). But it was already a belated acquaintance, which could not change the inherent mindset and life. The dominant spirit of Roman education, Roman laws and the Roman system have left an imperious seal on the whole of history and lifestyle European peoples, ranging from private life and ending with religion. If we talk about the main feature of the "Roman mind", then this will be the predominance of external rationality in it over the internal essence. This character of rational education marked all manifestations of social, religious, family life in ancient Rome, inherited by Western Europe.
If in the West Christianity took root through the Roman Church, then in Russia it took root through the Eastern Church. In contrast to Western theology, which is basically rationalistic, the theology of the Eastern Church, without being carried away by the one-sidedness of syllogisms, constantly maintained the fullness and integrity of speculation. Eastern thinkers are primarily concerned with correctness internal state thinking spirit; Western - more about the external connection of concepts. Eastern writers, according to Ivan Kireevsky, are looking for the inner integrity of the mind, that center of mental forces, where everything individual activities spirit merge into one living and higher unity; Westerners, on the contrary, believe that the achievement of complete truth is possible even for divided forces, for a fragmented spirit, that one sense can understand the moral, another - elegant, the third - personal pleasure, etc.
This wholeness of the spirit, of being itself, as a heritage of Eastern Christianity, Orthodoxy, distinguished, says Kireevsky, the ancient Russian enlightenment, the way of life and the life of the ancient Russian man, and is not yet lost among the common people, among the Russian peasantry. The need for such integrity of the spirit, the integrity of the worldview and life, Kireevsky considered the central task of Russian philosophy, regardless of time, of historical circumstances. Moreover, he urged to follow not the letter, but the spirit of this provision, bringing it into line with modern, including scientific requirements, without allowing any elements of archaism.
So, the main thing, according to Kireevsky, is that the wholeness of being, which distinguished ancient Russian education and which was preserved among the people, should forever be the lot of present and future Russia. But in this Ivan Kireevsky sees not a narrowly national task, but Russia's world vocation, its historical role in the destinies of Europe. Those who consider the Slavophiles to be some kind of provincials who would like to once again board up a "window to Europe", fence themselves off from it, close themselves within their national boundaries (almost a specific Rus') and walk around in murmolkas and kosovorotkas are mistaken. The question of their attitude to Europe is much deeper, has nothing to do with this caricature.
The thought of Ivan Kireysky was as follows: the historical life of Russia was devoid of the classical element, and since Europe is the direct heir of the Ancient World, this classical element should be adopted from it - through the best features of Western education. Having assimilated all the best in the culture of the West, having been enriched by it, thus giving universal significance to Russian enlightenment, it is possible to more successfully influence it and the West, introducing into its life, into its consciousness the unity of spiritual being that it lacks. The essence of Kireevsky's worldview was the demand for integrity, inseparability of beliefs and way of life. Even in his youth, he set as his goal "to elevate the purity of life over the purity of the style." This was the motto of all his friends - and brother Peter Vasilyevich, and Khomyakov, Konstantin and Ivan Aksakov, Yuri Samarin and others. The "purity of life", the moral height of the Slavophiles left their mark on their "syllable", the style of creations, about which V.V. Rozanov, who, due to his inconstancy, wrote various things about them, sometimes directly opposite, in the end could say that their creations “come from an unusually high mood of the soul, from some kind of sacred delight, addressed to the Russian land, but not to it alone, but and other things ... Whatever they touched, Europe, religion, Christianity, paganism, the ancient world - everywhere their speech flowed with gold of the most exalted structure of thought, the most passionate deepening into the subject, the greatest competence in judging about it "(Article "I.V. Kireevsky and Herzen").
The integrity that Ivan Kireevsky strove for did not come down to purely personal self-knowledge for him. The moral integrity of a person can have a great impact on people, become the focus of their unanimity and spiritual community. Ivan Kireevsky knew what the moral height of a person meant for other people, what an inspiring and attracting collective force it was.
As a philosophy not speculative, but practical, vital, the philosophy of wholeness of Ivan Kireevsky absorbed his everyday impressions and, of course, could not but absorb his impressions from communication with the Aksakov family, which was well known to him, close to him. Sergei Timofeevich, not having a penchant for philosophizing, might not delve into all the nuances of Ivan Vasilyevich's views, but he was related to the understanding of human life in the unity, inseparability of his thought and behavior. And in his work, this wholeness became the basis of that amazing truth of the narrative, which has such an authoritative effect on the reader, and not only aesthetically, but also morally.
Sergei Timofeevich, who visited Khomyakov, could see how relations between people were changing, whom he knew all well and "because of his religious tolerance" was ready to give everyone their due. Even recently, it seemed, the same Khomyakov met Granovsky on friendly terms and congratulated him on the success of his public lectures at Moscow University. And in the house of the Aksakovs, a solemn dinner was even given in honor of the popular lecturer, Sergey Timofeevich Aksakov himself was the manager "in terms of food", Herzen "in terms of drinking" and Samarin "in terms of cigarettes".
But already in these lectures the seed of a rupture lurked. No matter how the organizers of the dinner congratulated the hero of the occasion, they saw perfectly well that this cheerful unanimity would end with table toasts: all these dinners are a tribute to people worthy of the same religious tolerance, and the essence remained clear from the very beginning.
A year after Granovsky's lectures at the same Moscow University, another professor, Stepan Petrovich Shevyrev, gave a public course on the history of Russian literature. For many, even skeptics, something amazing suddenly opened up. It turns out that in ancient Russian literature there are such riches that few people knew about. After all, it turns out that Russian literature is almost a thousand years old - the most ancient literature among the literatures of the West! We already had masterpieces of literature when it was not yet listed either in France, or in Germany, or in England. A window was opened, as it were, into Ancient Rus', into the world of its spiritual existence and culture.
Soon Shevyrev published his lectures in a separate book entitled: "The History of Russian Literature, Mostly Ancient." Having received this book, Gogol wrote to the author: "I'm reading your lectures. This is the first power case in our literature." Shevyrev's readings were also aroused by the poet N. Yazykov, who, in letters to his brother, kept returning to lectures, seeing in them a mass of "new" in terms of ancient Russian literature ("this is America, discovered by Shevyrev"). “Aksakov says that no matter how there is a fight at the lectures!,” Yazykov wrote, “the Europeanist party loses its temper,” and so on.
The lectures given by Granovsky and Shevyrev served to deepen the demarcation between Westernizers and Slavophiles. A break was brewing. But almost simultaneously with Shevyrev's lectures, another significant event took place. With "curses in verse" (as one of his contemporaries said), N. Yazykov spoke out against the Westerners, at that time seriously ill, already on the verge of near death, but burning with a passionate faith in "Holy Rus'" and hostility to ideological opponents. The poet, beloved by Pushkin and Gogol, their friend, Yazykov was close to the Slavophils. Khomyakov, married to his sister, Katerina Mikhailovna, called Yazykov in his letters "dear brother." The clash between Westernizers and Slavophiles did not leave Yazykov indifferent. He rushed into the element of struggle, like that swimmer in his famous poem about "our unsociable sea", as if in anticipation that "there will be a storm: we will argue and take courage with it." A whole storm in society was caused by Yazykov's poem "To the Non-Ours". It was directed against those who longed to "Germanize Rus'". The poem affected society like an electric discharge.
This is how the events unfolded, which Sergey Timofeevich became an eyewitness to. He himself was on friendly terms with Yazykov. But back in the early thirties, when he was a censor, Aksakov met in absentia with the poet Yazykov, causing some "damage" to his poems. In the poem "Au", Sergei Timofeevich crossed out the following lines with a red pencil:
ABOUT! Cursed be who will disturb
splendor of antiquity
Who will seal it
Passing novelty!
And this was, of course, not the arbitrariness of the censor S.T. Aksakov, and his conviction, which was later adhered to by his son Konstantin, and indeed by all Slavophiles: "old times" cannot be conserved, they must help create a similar "novelty" in new historical conditions, in the spirit of the same ideal. Whether under the influence of the lesson once given by Sergei Timofeevich, or independently of it, only the “old man” in Yazykov’s messages has already lost its former immunity, peace and has become a force accompanying action:
...original, native
The old man spoke
Raising us to a new life...
Westernizers and Slavophiles separated. Yesterday's friends have become ideological opponents. As for Sergei Timofeevich, although "religious tolerance", as always, remained with him, the convictions of his son Konstantin and his friends were closer to him. Of course, he did not theologize like Khomyakov; did not philosophize, like Ivan Kireevsky; did not get into the annals and acts to prove the historical basis of the Russian community, to clarify the everyday and state elements of Russian history, as Konstantin Aksakov did; did not penetrate, like Yuri Samarin, with logical precision into the rationalistic processes that distorted the moral teaching of "Latinism", that is, Catholicism. Sergei Timofeevich did not go deep and did not enter into spheres that could sometimes seem abstract for his realistic nature, for all its artistry. It was spoken by a man who knows the value of life experience. Therefore, he could joke about the philosophical hobbies of young Konstantin, an immoderate "admirer of the Germans" (believing that "German mysticism is disgusting to the Russian spirit"), he could say directly that the eldest son does not know reality well enough.
Listening to friends who gathered in his house, such as Khomyakov, Kireevsky, Yuri Samarin and others, himself taking part in a conversation, in disputes, Sergei Timofeevich could note with displeasure that sometimes there is no unanimity among seemingly like-minded people, that how many people - so many opinions on one issue. But it is also true that even in his youth, as a student at Kazan University, he spoke of his "Russian direction", and later on his "Moscow direction" - in the sense of "a sense of nationality." We must not forget that great artist just because he is a patriot because he is connected by his very creative vocation with the creative genius of the people, and the fate, the future of his creations are unthinkable outside the fate of the people, their language. Native language was for S.T. Aksakov with that national element, in which only the manifestation of the artist's self-consciousness and his very essence of being is possible. And one can imagine what it meant for him to belittle this language and its creator - the people. And there was no shortage of this derogation.
This "gallomania", "anglomania" and so on did not look so innocent. What do we call a person who disowns his mother, his parents? Not less, but even greater, perhaps, a fall when a person renounces his people, his language, is ashamed of him, as something shameful, low, unworthy of him. How many were prodigal sons, Russian foreigners, in general, voluntary slaves of the West, who humiliated everything Russian in a servile way. The belittling of everything native, disrespect for one's people, their history, their great language was insulting to ST. Aksakov. This was the "sense of nationality" that told him so much both as a person and as an artist, and without which there would be no his wonderful creations.
The central point of disagreement between the Slavophiles and the Westernizers was the question of Russia's attitude to Europe: should she, Russia, follow the path of the West, or should she have her own, original historical path. This discrepancy was expressed with genuine drama in the history of the relationship between the "violent" Vissarion Belinsky and the equally "violent" Konstantin Aksakov, whose seven-year friendship ended in a break. Already in the circle of Stankevich (named after his inspirer Nikolai Stankevich, who died early, at the age of twenty-seven), dissent reigned, disputes were in full swing. Subsequently, in “Memoirs of Studentship,” Aksakov will say about the circle, about his place in it: “This circle has already developed a general outlook on Russia, on life, on literature, on the world - the view is mostly negative ... I was struck by this direction , and it often hurt me: attacks on Russia, which I love from an early age, were especially sick to me. Highly appreciating the Aksakov family, Konstantin himself, whom he called "one of the few people of the family of the sons of God", paying tribute to the merits of the Slavophiles, who for the first time raised the question of Russian national self-determination before society, Belinsky sharply did not accept in Aksakov what he called "immobility" , which was traditional, Orthodox folk in Russia. He himself, Belinsky, in the last period of his short life, abundant in ideological "revolutions", was obsessed with the denial of "vile reality", the spirit of revolutionism, which, of course, Aksakov could not come to terms with.
But there were Westerners who, unlike Belinsky, who sincerely sought the truth and loved Russia, looked at "this country" as a world alien to them, deserving of contempt and not even having the right to exist. For example, for V. Botkin, who spent half his life abroad, in Italy and Paris, the Russian people were like the Papuans, and Russia was mired in ignorance. And spiritual deserters have never been translated in Russia up to modern dissidents, such as Sinyavsky with his threat to "Russia-bitch", A. Zinoviev, the author of the rabid Russophobic opus "Yawning Heights", who, even returning in 1999 after twenty years of emigration to Russia, repeating his unchanging incantations: "Russia is doomed, perished," he admits that he is more worried about "the fate of Western European civilization." For he "lived his whole life as a man, to the marrow of his bones belonging to Western European civilization," that many of his peers were formed as "Western European people, and not national Russians - I went further than many others into these relations." Here the author takes credit for the fact that he "did not become Russified." But here the question arises: what can such neophytes mean for the "civilized Europeans" themselves. Dostoevsky has an article "We are only Stryutsky in Europe": "You started with aimless wandering around Europe with an avid desire to be reborn as Europeans, even if only in appearance ... And what have we achieved?" - Fyodor Mikhailovich asks these "reborns" and summarizes: "The more we despised our nationality to please them, the more they despised us ourselves ... They were just surprised at how we, being such Tatars (les tartars), could not become Russian; we could never explain to them that we do not want to be Russian, but common people. "Russian Europeans" are both Stryutsky (Stryutsky - according to the explanation of the word, a man is vile, trashy, despicable) and "international obshmyga" - in another expression of Dostoevsky.
And Konstantin Aksakov considered the separation of the higher, educated strata of society, that layer that would later be called the intelligentsia, from the people as the greatest disaster for Russia, and the deep contradictions that arose as a result of this rupture between them threaten Russia with a catastrophe.
What is the people for Konstantin Aksakov and what are representatives of the upper class in comparison with him, the people, can be judged by his article "The experience of synonyms. The public is the people", in which one concept is contrasted with aphoristic expressiveness to another: "The public writes out because of seas of thought and feeling, mazurkas and polkas, the people draw their life from their native source, the public speaks French, the people speak Russian, the public has Parisian fashions, the people have their own Russian customs, the public (for the most part at least) eats fast food "The people eat lenten. The public sleeps, the people have long ago risen and worked... The public despises the people; the people forgive the public. The public is only a hundred and fifty years old, and you can't count the years. The public is transient; the people are eternal. And in the public there is gold and dirt, and among the people there is gold and mud, but among the public there is mud in gold, and among the people there is gold in mud... The public and the people have epithets: our public is the most venerable, and the people are Orthodox.
In everything that Konstantin Aksakov thinks about, whatever he writes in any field, whether it be philological research, literary activity in the form of dramas, criticism, journalism, historical works - everywhere and always breathes the most sincere thought of the people as the main historical force . Aksakov's poems contain not only the pathos of his favorite thought about the people, but also other aspects that, perhaps more than ever, say a lot to modern consciousness. He saw a great danger to man in lack of spirituality. For the "crowd of emigrants" (from the poem of the same name) there is no higher truth, except for the "tactile path", except only the material one. But evil nests even deeper - this "material", "carnal", unable to endure the emptiness of its empirical existence, wants to "squeeze into the spirit", takes on the guise of a "false spirit" (poem of the same name), in which only
... Flesh irritated heat:
She has little substance for power,
She is captivated by the gift of the spirit,
The heavenly world awakens passions in her.
The “false spirit” already claims the universality of being, it does not have enough “material” power over a person, it wants to control in him the all-spiritual-secret, intimate, wants to become everything for him, but in essence nothing. The temptation of this pseudo-spirit is especially great because, easily penetrating into the existential strata of a person, he “illuminates” these strata with the arguments of reason, some kind of scientificity that accepts only the “tangible path” and frees a person from his spiritual, moral tasks. Konstantin Aksakov also saw in contemporary literature such a "point of empiricists", self-confident, rational, who, by the way, laughed at his eccentricities.
Berdyaev, in his book on Khomyakov, called the early Slavophils bytoviki, firmly connected with a stable life, devoid of a catastrophic sense of being. Psychologically, the Slavophils were the least rooted in everyday life. If it is impossible not to see the tragic in the very existence of a person, painfully divided between the realization of the Christian ideal and the impossibility of achieving it on earth, then the life of the Slavophiles was tragic in the highest degree. For, unlike the Westerners, who, so to speak, were determined primarily by the social environment, the main engine of the teachings and actions of the Slavophils was morality, the principle of the unity of thought and behavior. The moral impeccability of the Slavophiles was such that even their opponents themselves - Westernizers, liberals - wrote about their rare nobility. The profoundest difference was that Westerners were more interested in "social evil" (prohibition of freedom, speech, serfdom), while the Slavophiles saw the nature of evil immeasurably deeper, primarily in man himself, directing their main efforts towards self-improvement (which is not prevented them, however, from not being indifferent to social evil - it is characteristic that it was the Slavophiles in the person of Y. Samarin and others who prepared the project for the liberation of the peasants in 1861). Far from everyday idyll was the personal life of these people, who knew both heavy losses (the death of Khomyakov’s young wife, who left five small children in his arms), and the abyss of asceticism (the departure of Ivan Kireevsky’s deserts to Optina).
But, perhaps, none of these people was so spiritually merciless to himself and consistent in the directness of his spiritual and moral choice as Konstantin Aksakov, whose purity reached the point that, without creating his own family, he died a virgin. In his writings, he was the same as in life: brotherly close to him was the one
... Who does not cunningly double his speech,
Whose thought is clear, whose word is direct,
Whose spirit is free and open...
By the way, this directness is also in the famous lines of Ivan Aksakov's poem "The Tramp":
Straight road, big road!
You took a lot of space from God,
You stretched into the distance, straight as an arrow,
She lay down with a wide smooth surface, like a tablecloth! ..
It is interesting to compare this Aksakov's "straight road" with the image of the road given by the historian V. Klyuchevsky in his article "Ethnographic Consequences of the Russian Colonization of the Upper Volga Region": often insufficiently thought out, but he walks looking around, and therefore his gait seems evasive and hesitant ... Nature and fate led the Great Russian in such a way that they taught him to go to the straight road by roundabout ways.
The Great Russian thinks and acts as he walks. It seems that you can come up with a crooked and winding Great Russian country road? Like a snake crawled through. And try to go straighter: you will only get lost and go out onto the same winding road. "Geographically different roads can lead to a" direct goal ", but morally most often one, direct road leads to righteousness (as in K. Aksakov), another," winding" - to liberalism (as in V. Klyuchevsky).
From century to century, this “straightness” as a moral trait runs through the whole of Russian history and literature as a through principle. Metropolitan Hilarion (XI century), the greatest work of ancient Russian literature, "The Word of Law and Grace" says: "... and there will be a curve in the right" ("and there will be straight curvatures"). The oath to Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov, who was elected to the All-Russian throne, said: "Serve me the Tsar and straighten and do good, and without any tricks." Optina elder Ambrose wrote about another Optina elder that in his letters he "uncovers the truth directly." Writer XVIII century Andrei Bolotov called his autobiographical book a conversation with a "straight heart and soul." The Russian classics have: "a straight path", "it is more profitable to go a straight road than crafty paths" (Fonvizin), "a direct poet" (Pushkin), "direct happiness" (Zhukovsky), "straight freedom" (Batyushkov), "we will save direct hearts" (S. Aksakov), "directness of feelings and behavior" (Dostoevsky), "direct and reliable people" (Leskov), "real Russian speech is good-natured and direct" (Turgenev about Aksakov's Notes of a Rifle Hunter), " noble directness" of folk songs (P. Kireevsky), Bagrov's "hot directness" (the hero of the "Family Chronicle" by S.T. Aksakov), "the sacred is always straight" (V. Rozanov), etc.
***Unlike Konstantin's older brother, a homebody who almost never traveled anywhere, completely detached from practical issues, immersed in chronicles, in his dissertation on Lomonosov, obsessed with fierce disputes with Westerners in a narrow circle of Moscow acquaintances, unlike Konstantin, Ivan Aksakov from his youth after Petersburg School of Law, he began to diligently serve as an official, traveled a lot with practical, educational purposes in Russia and Europe. At first he was at the Ministry of Justice, then, two years later, in 1844, he was appointed a member of the audit commission in Astrakhan. And he felt satisfaction from this clerical work, he believed that thanks to the audit, he not only gained experience in the service, but also got to know reality better, "turning the people from all sides, in all their needs." Then followed the service in Kaluga, St. Petersburg. Business trip to Bessarabia, in the Yaroslavl province, where he stayed for two years. On behalf of Geographic Society went to Little Russia to review and describe Ukrainian fairs. In addition to the practical goal, there was also the artistic side of this trip: Ivan Sergeevich felt himself a prisoner of the charm and charm that Little Russia had already showered on him on previous trips, and now he had to completely conquer him: both by nature itself and by the view of villages with white huts, picturesquely scattered over the hills and valleys, and southern nights with the luxury of dark skies with brightly burning stars, and charming songs. Moreover, perhaps because these regions are so dear to him, that Gogol always sticks out here with his "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka," as he wrote to his relatives. He visited Gogol's Vasilievka, where the mother of Gogol, who died more than two years ago, showed him all the places that her son loved. Ivan Sergeevich knew how much his words in a letter about Gogol, whom they almost idolized, would say to Otesenka and Konstantin.
And wherever Ivan Aksakov went, wherever his business trips, travels, he always, constantly wrote letters to his relatives, amazing in their thoroughness, observation, sincerity. With all the generosity of his father's heart, Sergei Timofeevich wrote to his son in detail and lovingly, without hiding his attitude to his messages: "... your beautiful letter, in which your nature rich in all grace is revealed with great, although still incomplete freedom, led us all into admiration ". The father talked with his son with such a lively sense of the commonality of their interests and understanding of his psychology, spiritual needs, with such attention that the son, in turn, was no less surprised at his letters: “I am surprised that, dear Otesenka, how you find the leisure to write me carefully half a sheet in your rather concise handwriting." And always under the letters Sergei Timofeevich signed: "Your father and friend."
It must be said that Sergei Timofeevich's attitude to letters was largely aesthetic and artistic. For him, Gogol's letters were primarily the work of a great artist. About two of Gogol's deepest confession letters to him, where the seal of the spiritual upheaval that had taken place in the writer is so clear, Aksakov spoke of "remarkable sincere" letters surrounded by "the brilliance of poetry", admitting, however, that at that time they were not understood and felt as deserve it. There is a statement about the letters of a famous scientist, thinker, theologian, who became a priest, Father Pavel Florensky.
“The only kind of literature that I began to recognize is LETTERS. Even in the Diary, the author takes a pose.
The letter is written in such a hurry and in such fatigue that there is no time for postures in it.
This is the only sincere kind of writing."
This is where the path to that eradication of literature in literature, which writers like V.V. Rozanov, who are jaded, deeply dissatisfied with literature, which obscures the author with a wall of conventionality, which poses for selfhood from reality itself. The utmost sincerity of Ivan Aksakov makes his letters, one might say, the highest type of literature, which absorbed the real vast world of Russian life in the 19th century.
Along with writing letters, Ivan Aksakov wrote poetry from a young age and throughout almost his entire life, putting into them his thoughts about contemporary issues, about reality. He himself did not place himself high as a poet, and this modesty did only honor to Ivan Sergeevich, whose individual verses Nekrasov called "excellent" and added: "For a long time such a noble, strict and strong voice has not been heard in Russian literature." Ivan's muse is very severe in its civic consciousness ("I have too much of a citizen who displaces the poet," according to him) and at the same time is disturbing in its spiritual quests and impulses in comparison with the journalistic poems of Konstantin, who knew no doubts in his sermon. Ivan "face to face", in his words, "met with reality", living for a long time in provincial cities and delving into not only the mechanism of bureaucratic management, but also into the interests of public, people's life. He had to travel thousands of miles along the roads of Russia, whether on a tarantass, in a wagon, on a sleigh, in a simple cart with a wagon top attached to it or without it at all. How many people of various classes he saw at the stations, while spending the night in villages and villages, while on duty, how many travel impressions and conversations. "These impressions will form in me," he wrote, "a broad foundation for my future poetic performance."
There is something of the personal, spiritual and intimate in Ivan Aksakov's best poem "The Tramp" (which he called "an essay in verse"). It was not for nothing that he recognized in himself a "vagrant element" that forced him to embark on a journey through Russia. The "wandering" of the protagonist, twenty-year-old peasant Alyoshka Matveev, on Russian soil allowed Ivan Aksakov to touch the eternally "searching", "wandering" sides of the Russian national character, and at the same time, this "tramp, walking all over Russia at home", gave the author, in his words, "the opportunity to make a poetic description of Russian nature and Russian life in different forms." But our "tramp" is not at all an idler, "not an idler", he runs "not from work, but to new work", knowing that he will find work everywhere.
Although the side is not entirely familiar -
All Rus' yes Rus', everywhere you will be at home!
The poem "The Tramp" was unfinished. Gogol’s remark about its possible denouement is curious: “It is necessary to show how this person, having gone through everything and not finding any satisfaction in anything, will return to mother earth. Ivan Sergeevich wants to do just that, and, surely, he will do well” .
It is not known whether the poem would have ended with this return of the hero to the earth, if it had been written in its entirety, but even in its present, unfinished form, the poem did not at all lose the strength and integrity of the idea. And this idea is nothing else than the author's love for his hero, for the peasantry in general, admiration for his moral health, strength, the scope of his spiritual strength, diligence, intelligence, his very speech. Contemporaries were struck by the courage, the breadth of the idea of the poem, this scope touched both the whole poem as a whole and its individual chapters - unfolding pictures of peasant life, forming, as it were, a panorama of folk life. The simple, strict verse of the poem does not pretend to originality, and, however, as a reflection of the richness of content, life phenomena, the verse composition of the "Tramp" is so original, intonation-metrically diverse, generous. The style of the verse in the chapter "The Burmister", for example, is reminiscent of the verse in the poem "Who Lives Well in Rus'", written by Nekrasov decades after "The Tramp". As recognized in research papers, Ivan Aksakov's poem preceded Nekrasov's poem and the originality of the plot - the hero's journey through Rus', although the goal is the most ideological meaning the walks of the Nekrasov peasants on Russian soil are different from those of the Aksakov tramp.
"Vagabondage" had not yet fermented in Ivan Sergeevich, he was drawn to a new journey, but this time to foreign lands, which one had to see with one's own eyes in order to better understand the issues that were essential for him, related to Russia and Europe, and only after that it was possible to live a settled life, to seriously take up some kind of permanent business.
He wanted to find and understand those “good sides” that every nation has, but it was not easy to do this, the best, apparently, was scattered, like everything rare, and was located somewhere else, inaccessible beyond a distance. The brevity of his stay in Paris did not prevent Ivan Sergeevich from drawing a harsh conclusion about the local spiritual environment, where "ends and bottoms are visible from everywhere, there are no higher aspirations."
Upon his arrival in Italy, Aksakov immediately found himself under the irresistible power of beauty, with the abundance of which, it seems, the very air is saturated here. In Rome, he has four cities: ancient Rome (with the Colosseum, corresponding to the idea of the ancient dominion of Rome), Catholic Rome (with the Church of St. And he has his own opinion about each Rome, his thoughts, taken not from books, but from his own impressions - it is so important to see all this with your own eyes. After Rome, with its ruins, broadcasting about the mighty life of the ancient world, with innumerable treasures of museums, caressing the blue of the sea and intoxicating nature, Naples met the traveler; and completely enchanted Venice; with St. Mark's Square, with hundreds of bridges and arches rising above the canals, with palaces blackened by time, surrounded by water. Italian nature itself, bright, lush, impressive in a youthful way, apparently came to his taste.
He climbed Vesuvius, was in the crater itself, standing on the frozen, hardened lava and seeing how nearby, with a terrible noise and roar, they burst out of two vents, smoking and raging, spewing stones and sulfur, two fiery tongues, and nearby, almost under feet, under the frozen layer, through the cracks breathing, escaping smoke, red-hot lava, it seems, from the underworld itself. A magnificent, terrible, solemn spectacle, he thought, and here he lit a cigar on the "fire of Vesuvius", that is, from a hot piece of lava thrown out before his eyes.
Such moments are rare in a person's life, they leave in him special feeling the exclusivity of the situation: the breath is taken away from the suppressed rage and the rumble of the underlying elements, hearing and vision are unusually aggravated, the very consciousness of a person placed before a volcanic force. Ivan Sergeevich later experienced something similar more than once, being already a famous publicist and public figure, being, as it were, in the craters of social and public life, sensitively listening to the rumble of time, trying to catch the underlying movement of events.
Everything related to Italian nature, painted with enthusiasm by Ivan, did not meet with the sympathy of his father. “Mother and sisters are delighted with the localities and the nature that surrounds you,” he answered his son, “but Konstantin and I, spoiled by our Russian nature, are not carried away by delights, and I confess to you: the thought or desire never flashed through me - to look to these miracles. Sergei Timofeevich did not like anything grandiose in nature, no effects and nothing defiantly bright, catchy. What, it would seem, the water, in which he saw the "beauty of all nature", which is always alive, always moving and gives life and movement to everything around it; but not all water, not in all its elements, is loved by Sergei Timofeevich. He likes small rivers and rivers running along a deep forest ravine or along a flat valley, in a wide circle, across the steppe, but he does not like large rivers, with "an immense mass of water", with huge, rocky banks. “The Volga or Kama during a storm is a terrible sight! I have seen them more than once in a thunderstorm and anger. Yellow, brown water mounds with white ridges and ships sunk like chips are alive in my memory. However, I will not argue with lovers majestic and formidable images, and I will readily agree that I am not capable of receiving grandiose impressions. In nature, Sergei Timofeevich is attracted not by "majestic and formidable images", but by everything simple and everyday, which gives not so much visual pleasure as the spiritual joy of communicating with it, with nature, and life itself in it. That is why he rather indifferently listened to his son's descriptions of the beauties of Italian nature, without ceasing, however, to admire Ivan's "glorious letters". As always, Ivan sent letters home with detailed and expressive stories about the places he had been, about the peculiarities of cultural, domestic, social life, sharing his displeasure about the fact that people live there mainly "in not common modern interests" - and for his social temperament did not diminish in Ivan Sergeevich, turning at least into this criticism.
In one of his letters, Ivan Sergeevich confessed to his parents that "I would like to take a look at London." In his youth, having seen Herzen more than once (his older brother Konstantin was closer to him), he now, ten years after his emigration, was looking forward with curiosity to meet this man, who had become the subject of such contradictory judgments in the Russian public.
Herzen greeted Ivan Aksakov cordially. Soon at the table, where the owner assumed the "position of pouring champagne", the guest fell into the stream of his eloquence, with a brilliance of witticisms, paradoxes, memories of the past. But both had specific goals in the conversation. The fact is that two copies of scenes from Ivan Aksakov's drama "Morning in the Criminal Chamber", which sharply denounced the judicial, feudal order in Russia, fell into Herzen's hands by unknown means in London. And so, seizing on this rather sharp thing, "satirically, and even talentedly written," Herzen decided to publish it in a separate edition, and now, when meeting with the author, he asked for consent to this. But the author had his own request: "respect his refusal."
After all, Aksakov came to Herzen not for the sake of "court scenes" and fashion to visit the "famous exile." He had his own reasons for such a visit. He was aware of Herzen's disappointment with the West, of his rejection of the bourgeois path for Russia, and apparently, in this he heard the "living voice" of Herzen, and he, Aksakov, believed that "it is necessary to touch all living things." Subsequently, speaking of this meeting in one of his letters, Herzen called "the brother of the ardent Slavophile" Ivan Aksakov "a man of great talent... with a practical streak and insight." “We got along very, very much,” he wrote to I.S. Turgenev. Needless to say, they didn't agree on everything. Herzen saw in his interlocutor "a bit of a Slavophile" and then, in a direct conversation, he explained that he, Herzen, was connected and separated from the Slavophiles.
According to him, he and they equally hate serfdom, bureaucracy, arbitrariness of power, the common demand - freedom of speech. Here, far from Russia, "Jeremiads of the Slavophiles about the rotting West" became more understandable to him. By a strange irony, after the revolutionary storms of 1848, he had to propagate in the West part of what Khomyakov and Kireevsky preached in Moscow in the forties and what he then ridiculed. To us, continued Alexander Ivanovich, the Russian community is equally dear, although its socialism is something other than the Slavophile community. But the irreconcilable thing that divides us, Herzen said with a pathetic note in his voice, is the attitude towards religion, here we are sworn enemies. From childhood, according to him, he was a bad believer, communion aroused fear in him, this is how divination works, speaking, Sparrow Hills became for him a place of pilgrimage ... Not veneration to an honest cross, but an honest and courageous way of struggle in the implementation of human progress - here is his, Herzen, motto, symbol of faith.
But the end of Ivan Sergeevich's trip abroad, his new "vagrancy", was coming to an end. The "sacred stones" of Europe, its great cultural heritage spoke a lot to the mind and heart of the Russian people. But it was also a different world, with the seal of utilitarianism and purely business, material interests imposed on it, it was a different world, living its own life, which did not care about the opinion of some visiting Russian, his thoughts, persistent thoughts about "the fate of Russia and Europe", this world was, as it were, even impenetrable for him in its self-satisfied self-sufficiency. No, he would not have taken root here, in this European marketplace. From here, from the "beautiful far away", Russia was seen in its infinity and mystery, involving even at such a vast distance from itself in heavy thoughts and at the same time opening up a purifying scope for thought.
Just as quite recently, three years ago, people lived in the Aksakovs' house with thoughts and feelings from the disturbing, tragic news about the Crimean War, so now, with and without guests, passions flared up here around the fateful peasant question. In the press at the end of November 1857, it was announced the forthcoming development of projects for the peasant reform. Sergei Timofeevich, until recently, less than half a year ago, immersed in his memories, in his "Childhood of Bagrov the grandson" and detached from the topic of the day, was now completely absorbed in assumptions, thoughts about reform. "The ship has set off!" he repeated. "No one can, has no right to look indifferently at what is happening now in Russia." Immediately after the announced royal rescript, Sergei Timofeevich informed the Orenburg marshal of the nobility in writing about his desire to free the peasants. Without waiting for a special decision on this issue. The moral burden was thrown off, and somehow he himself became freer, easier. And Ivan Aksakov long ago determined his attitude to serfdom, as a twenty-five-year-old official, back in 1848, he wrote to his father: "I promised myself never to have serfs and peasants in general" ... It should be said that one of the main incentives The reasons for the journalistic, public activity of the Slavophiles was the struggle against serfdom as the greatest evil - moral, national, state, fettering the creative power of the people, hindering the development of Russia, threatening it with dangerous consequences.
Enormous changes awaited Russia, and not only in the "settlement of the peasants." New forces have appeared on the historical stage. S.T., so dear to the heart, was disappearing before our eyes. Aksakov's old life. Stepan Mikhailovich Bagrov, the writer's grandfather, seemed to live with him, comforted him with his greatness while he wrote his family legends, but as soon as he finished, he felt especially keenly that such people as Stepan Mikhailovich no longer exist and cannot exist at the present time. time. Sergei Timofeevich even became angry with his son Ivan when he declared that "Stepan Mikhailovich would not be fit now." It would fit perfectly, answered Sergey Timofeevich, but the whole trouble is that it is impossible now.
But even about the old man Aksakov himself, one could say that people like him are leaving. About himself, like any father, he could not think better than about children, but it turned out that the fullness of family life was in him, he united in himself, as if harmoniously embracing the interests of all children, and in this respect he was the person universal. This breadth of understanding was already less characteristic of children. Each of them was one-sided father, having gone mainly to one area - to the historical, like Konstantin (with the study of ancient Russian communal life, "Russian outlook"); in politics, social activities, like Ivan; into practical, office work, like Gregory; into moral asceticism, like Vera. But each of them also had something that "Otesenka" did not have. At one time, Sergei Timofeevich wrote to Gogol, fearing that the artist in him, in Gogol, would not suffer from the "religious, mystical direction." And then he made a reservation: “I’m lying, saying that I don’t understand the high side of such a direction. I always understood it, especially in my youth; but it only glided through my soul. Laziness, weakness of will, frivolity, liveliness and inconstancy of character, various passions forced me to close my eyes and run away from the dazzling and terrible brilliance that always lies in the depths of the spirit of a thinking person. Son Ivan did not force himself to "squint his eyes and run away" from what was revealed to him in his worldview. It is amazing with what depth, aggravation, dramatism, a twenty-five-year-old young man with a "practical streak" perceived the intrusion into life of a new cosmically cold beingness with the destruction of everyday life, warmth everywhere: "We must live, rejecting life ... Life is collapsing everywhere; heights, where it is so terribly high; but sometimes it was so good below!.. Of course, we are still far from this transformation, but this life-killing understanding has already entered into us "... In all Russian literature there is no stronger, more real, non-literary recited, namely, real words about a turning point in the world, than this "life-killing understanding." Subsequently, sixty years later, already at the beginning of the new, 20th century, Blok will talk about his time, where there is no peace, no comfort, where the doors are wide open on a blizzard square, etc., but this is already literature, poetic turns, and indeed the poet's bohemian life did not contrast very tragically with the air of the mountain heights. As it always happens in life and in literature: a deep foreboding has become common property and turned into literature.
And for Konstantin Aksakov, the persistent topic will be what is expressed in the very title of his article "On modern man". What is characteristic of this modern person? According to the author of the article, this is primarily that "sincerity and lies, like rust, have penetrated the soul." Aksakov speaks of lies in all its forms, types, in all the subtlest spiritual movements "Everyone has stocked up with an inner, spiritual mirror ... and constantly looks into it", amusing his pride, vanity, "everyone flirts with each other." Actually, this is what he himself called "dirt in gold", the gilding of the outer, and it can be added that this universality of lies, each one's looking into "his own mirror of the soul" becomes that tyranny of "public etiquette" that even sincere people can no longer disregard.
Everything said by Konstantin Aksakov about lies makes one involuntarily recall Pascal's "thoughts on religion", where the nature of lies with insincerity, appearance, artificiality, conventionality in human relationships is derived from a damaged state of the soul, due to original sin. Lies, lack of sincerity Aksakov relates to the West, to the "sons of the West", but the same, in his words, is repeated "and in our country (in the so-called educated society) in a caricatured form." Here patriotism somewhat fails Konstantin Sergeevich, as if the West is to blame for the inoculation of evil, lies in the Russian soul, and not in itself, as in any other soul - be it French, German, etc. - that spider of evil nests, which Dostoevsky showed, for all his love for the Russian people, one might say, the cult of the Russian people. And where, if not in the sacred text, it is said: "Man is a lie." And yet, none other than Konstantin Aksakov could say what would be false in the words of other people, but here it was the very essence of a person: “It seems very simple to say what you feel and feel what you say. But this simplicity constitutes the greatest difficulty of modern man. For this simplicity, integrity of the soul, inner truth is necessary ... " Konstantin Aksakov himself was gifted with such integrity, purity of soul, he was so sincere, truthful, natural in everything that, for example, already an adult could go up to otesenka and caress, as in childhood. He always remained himself at any time and in any circumstances, whether he was in the family, alone with himself or in society. Only such a person could give such strength to persuasiveness, irresistibility to everything when he speaks of a lie. After all, it’s one thing when Aksakov talks about it, it’s quite another when Solzhenitsyn, who made from his spell “live not by lies” an instrument of politicking, rabid slander against our country, seeing in it a complete Gulag, angering that she won the war against Hitler Germany. By the way, of those "types of lies" that Aksakov understands, Solzhenitsyn is directly related to lies "out of hypocrisy in front of oneself ... everything living has already been destroyed inside, every possibility of truth has been eaten away, in a word, a terrible desert in the soul ... the soul he turned his own into a lie, making out of his soul an outfit for his self-love. At the same time, one should not underestimate the role of such a source of lies as hatred for the empire - Russian, Soviet.
In the article "About Modern Man" we encounter such key Aksakov's words as "straightness of soul", "straightness of sympathy", "directly social person", and from the height of this moral directness the author considers the so-called "light" with the "poison of egoism", contrasting to him "peace", "society", where the individual finds himself in "common loving harmony" and "ascends, therefore, into the highest realm of the spirit." At the base of the world, the side is exclusively external, here one appearance, a mask, an appearance of decency are required, and "anything can lie inside, there is no need for this." The most terrible evil in the world, according to Aksakov, is "indifference to moral question", absolute non-recognition of him, the world "throws the very question of morality out of life." And now the "fierce lamb", as Khomyakov called Konstantin Aksakov for the infantile purity of his soul and the violence of his convictions, declares war on secular depravity, "corrupted souls." He says about those who, under the hypocritical pretext of Christian non-judgment, are ready to indulge any meanness, who "in order to justify their fellowship and friendly feasts with notorious scoundrels, they say:" I do not want to condemn. “Don’t condemn,” cries the scoundrel and rogue of rogues. Calling this demagogy a distortion of the meaning of Christian love, Aksakov explains “his positions” in this way: the basis in society is the unity of moral conviction; a person who violates this moral basis, thereby becoming impossible in society. If society does not exclude him, then there is no longer a particular immorality of the person, but the immorality of society itself, an immorality that already falls on everyone. We need a public court. He judges not sinners (we are all sinners), but an apostate.
All Konstantin Aksakov, all the strength, the fury of his convictions at the end of the article "On Modern Man", when he says: "... you do not have unity in convictions with another person, and you disagree with him - that's all" ... "But if (suppose such a country or time) a person had to remain completely alone among people under such requirements? He must remain alone, and he is right in his loneliness. He would like to live in society, but for life in society he will not sacrifice the moral principle , the basis of society (that would be absurd)." And he repeats once again, already making this the end of his article: “Even if a person had to be left without society at all, alone - let him be alone, let him condemn himself to public hermitage, but let him be unshakable in his moral foundation, in his social demand, let him not give in and give honor to sin:
Hora novissima,
Tempora pessima sunt.
Vigilemus.
What was said in the mouth of Konstantin Aksakov was not just words, it was well understood and felt by contemporaries who knew him closely. No wonder Herzen said of him that he "would go to the square for his faith, go to the block, and when this is felt behind the words, they become terribly convincing." It was not easy to break in conviction with yesterday's like-minded people, but the drama of the divergence even deeper only revealed his high human qualities, sincerity, honesty, nobility and raised his faith to an even greater height. Herzen recalled: “In 1844, when our disputes reached the point that neither the “Slavs” nor we wanted to meet again, I somehow walked down the street. K. Aksakov was riding in a sleigh. I bowed to him in a friendly way. He was I drove past, but suddenly stopped the coachman, got out of the sleigh and came up to me. “It was too painful for me,” he said, “to drive past you and not say goodbye to you. You understand that after everything that happened between your friends and mine, I will not go to you, sorry, sorry, but there is nothing to do. I wanted to shake your hand and say goodbye. "He quickly went to the sleigh, but suddenly turned back: I was standing in the same place, I was sad: he rushed to me, hugged me and kissed me tightly. How I loved him at that moment of quarrel " !
Konstantin Aksakov distinguished between thought and thought, he considered the latter to be the property of a few. And this thought of his about "modern man" can be called, in the complete absence of the vanity of teaching in this righteous man, this thought can be called his testament to Russian literature, society, Russia. He restored the original meaning of the word "sin" - in its true Christian meaning. Not literary coquetry around the "sinful world", "the world lies in evil and sin", etc., he enters into battle with sin itself. As in himself (not having found a girlfriend of life, he remained a virgin), and in the world around him. He is ready to remain alone here, too, for he knows only the truth, and that truth is Christ. And he, of course, is not alone, but with the one who said to his few followers: "Be of good cheer! I have conquered the world" (John 16:33).
Konstantin Aksakov set such a spiritual “bar” for literature and society, which, of course, is beyond the strength of us, the “weak,” but which we can no longer forget. And the fact that there was such a feat in literature became the highest justification for the Russian word.
It was a historical foresight that he called in his thought "on modern man" "corrupt souls", "a mixture of good and evil", all this became the spiritual plague of the so-called "Silver Age" with the indistinguishability of God and the devil, with a "new religious consciousness ", and in our "democratic" time, mass corruption under the slogan of pluralism and freedom of speech.
Two "earthly paradises" were given to Sergei Timofeevich in life: Aksakovo - the cradle of childhood, where his eyes were opened to the "miracles of nature"; and Abramtsevo - the haven of his last fourteen years, which sated him in full with the mature joy of communion with nature, but also wounded his soul with the sunset of her beauty. As the sun went beyond the edge of the sky, so, apparently, Abramtsevo was setting for him, and not only it. In this autumn bad weather, sitting within four walls, listening to the whip of a wet wind through the shuttered windows, he suddenly realized with unusual humility for himself and took it for granted that he had fallen seriously ill and now nothing depended on him.
In Moscow, selflessly caring for his father, Konstantin Sergeevich wrote Sergei Timofeevich's "Observation of the Illness", and also kept a "Diary of the Illness", noting the details of the patient's condition and well-being. For tens of years he was very often subjected to severe spasmodic headaches ... thirteen years ago he lost his left eye from cataracts, but now there was another reason for his suffering. The severity of the pain, sometimes unbearable, caused pain in the stomach and especially inflammatory irritation in the urinary canal with the release of blood. In early May 1858, in a letter to P.A. Sergey Timofeevich wrote to Pletnev: "Of course, it is a great joy to be surrounded by such cares as I am, but at the same time, it is irresistibly regrettable to upset and sadden my good family with my painful situation." The whole family went into this care. Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, who visited the sick old man Aksakov, spoke with surprise about the self-denial, patience, meekness with which Konstantin Sergeyevich, as a nurse, went after his father. Close to the Aksakov family historian M.P. Pogodin wrote in his "Diary" "Konstantin is a holy man in feelings for his father."
But it is amazing how, in such a state, on the bed of a painful illness, old man Aksakov could write, or rather, dictate to his daughter Vera the reverently poetic "story from student life" "Collecting Butterflies" (for a collection in favor of needy students of his native Kazan University). Suffering from bouts of illness, barely moving in a locked dark room, barely distinguishing objects with one eye (only every movement felt by the heart, every turn of the head of Vera, who was bending over the table, writing down the story under the dictation of the aunt), a weak old man - what could does he remember about some butterflies, about collecting them more than half a century ago? But now he, who had been sitting bent over in an armchair before, raised his head, fixed his gaze in front of him, tenderness slid over his face, enlivening him with the inner warmth of recollection, and spoke, simply at home, with some kind of bright, gaining strength note, and that something seemed to fly into the room, flung it open and imperiously called into the air, into the open space. “How joyful is the first appearance of butterflies!” a voice seemed to be calling to this expanse. “What animation they give to nature, just waking up to life after a cruel, long winter ...” He seemed to have already seen a butterfly pleasing his eyes, and he followed her inseparably, even as if he was already walking towards this “fluttering flower”, he saw himself already running after him, as once, more than half a century ago, a fifteen-year-old student of Kazan University, he ran in the meadow of a country garden, chasing the flickering multi-colored butterflies and then, with trembling hands, extracting prey from the rampetka pouch.
“Of all the insects inhabiting God’s world, of all living creatures, crawling, jumping and flying, the butterfly is the best, most elegant of all,” he dictated, and as if it were not a memory, but a living contemplation of a small creature, a touching messenger inaccessible already him nature. How beautiful life is, and how much joy for the eyes in the harmony of colors, patterns, dotted with this sweet, pure creature, which does no harm to anyone, feeds on the juice of flowers, which it sucks with its proboscis ... He was already born like that and will, apparently, come down like that in grave: it is enough to cling to something in nature, even to these butterflies, and everything for him is in them, the whole world, the center of all life on earth. And in himself a whole world of impressions comes to life, and from those places where he caught butterflies, where he spent many happy, blissful hours, and from those people with whom he shared this passion, which so quickly, but ardently passed through his soul and left him in him an unforgettable trace. So sad from the irretrievable of that wonderful time ... but there is no need! “Mountains, forests and meadows, through which I wandered with a rampet, evenings when I watched for twilight butterflies, and nights when I lured night butterflies to the fire, as if they were not noticed by me: all attention seemed to be focused on precious prey; but nature, imperceptibly for me, was reflected in my soul with its eternal beauties, and also the impressions that subsequently arise brightly and harmoniously are gracious, and memories of them evoke a gratifying feeling from the depths of the human soul.
And already four months before his death, he found consolation at least in a mental imaginary communion with nature, dictating to Vera "Essay winter day". He remembered a winter day, snowfall, almost half a century ago. "In order to fully enjoy this picture, I went out into the field, and a wonderful sight presented itself to my eyes: all the boundless space around me represented the appearance of a snow stream, as if the skies had opened up, crumbled with snow fluff and filled the whole air with movement and amazing silence. Long winter twilight was setting in: the falling snow began to cover all objects and clothed the earth with a white gloom.
From the field at dusk he walked home, seeing the lights lit up in the peasant huts, indulging in worries and dreams of tomorrow's hunting ... And just as early in the morning at dawn the burning stove illuminated the door and half of the upper room with some kind of cheerful, encouraging and hospitable light, just like something affable, bright from the very voice of Sergei Timofeevich, dictating his last work. And there was so much amazing freshness and charm, youthfulness of feelings in each of his phrases that it was impossible to believe, to come to terms with the idea that it was written by a dying writer.
On April 30, 1859, at three in the morning, Sergei Timofeevich died in the arms of his beloved family. On Sunday, May 3, at the Church of Saints Boris and Gleb, where the deceased was buried, his numerous friends, almost all the local writers, scientists, people of all ranks, came to say goodbye to him. We said goodbye to a dear, deeply revered person and writer. The last path lay to the Simonov Monastery, here, at the request of the writer himself, he was to be buried. During the solemn chants, Aksakov's coffin was carried in his arms through the gates of the monastery... The spring sun gently warmed the earth, the birds chirped jubilantly. Delicate greenery blossomed on the trees. The first breath of spring was felt in the air, and there was something incredible in the fact that with the awakening of nature, the one who knew how to rejoice in all living things in it, who, like a few, had discovered the beauty of this great God's world, fell silent forever.
When the coffin of his father was lowered into the open grave, flooded with bright spring rays of the sun, Konstantin Sergeevich did not seem to clearly realize what was happening. He stood near his mother and gazed in front of him with a motionless gaze, detached from everything that was going on around him.
Sergei Timofeevich was buried on May 3, and already in mid-May, Konstantin Sergeyevich's acquaintances did not recognize him. He has changed terribly. From severe emaciation, something elongated appeared in his face and whole figure, his beard and mustache became ashy, and some kind of terrible stillness in everything - in his voice and in the very look turned inward. Seeing such a change and fearing for his life, acquaintances reproached Konstantin Sergeevich that he did not restrain himself from grief, gave him free rein and deliberately upset himself. But he asked not to believe it, adding: "I just can't." Another invited him to the village in order to somehow disperse him, and to this greeting he answered very seriously, but thoughtfully that if his invitation had been made in the presence of the priest, then he would have gone with pleasure, but now everything is over, no pleasure nor the joy of life could exist for him.
Throughout the winter, Konstantin Sergeevich languished, in the spring he became very ill, the summer did not bring relief, and he was sent abroad for treatment. The famous doctors there marveled at the consumption of this hero, eaten by longing for his dead father, this was his illness. The last thing the doctors could offer was a warm maritime climate. And so he, together with his brother Ivan Sergeevich, who accompanied and took care of him, went to the Greek island of Zante. This was the second and last joint trip of the brothers. Ten years have passed since they traveled together to Rostov the Great, Uglich. Then Ivan wanted to bring his older brother closer to reality. Now there was no longer any need for this, there was already a different reality, in front of which all practical questions fell silent. The ship was taking them to unknown shores. Konstantin Sergeevich, looking with inexpressible anguish into the waves, said to his brother: “But is it really over already? How I did not expect. But so soon, who would have thought”?
The deserted island became the last earthly refuge of Konstantin Sergeevich. Feeling that the end was approaching, he wished to confess and take communion. There was no Russian Orthodox priest in these places; they found a Greek priest who spoke French with difficulty. In the language in which he avoided speaking all his life, the dying man confessed. The Greek, who came hastily to fulfill the requirements, was amazed, listening to confession, seeing such firmness of spirit before his death. And for a long time afterwards he did not cease to be surprised, kept asking if he could see his loved ones, and most importantly, the mother of the deceased, he wanted to tell her that the righteous man had died, he, the confessor, had never seen anything like it in life. He kept wanting to know: who is this extraordinary person? Who died before him? He was told that it was Konstantin Sergeevich Aksakov. And what could be added to this?
And the poor mother, who could not bear the separation from her sick son and a month ago came to his island with her two eldest daughters Vera and Lyubov, heartbroken, set off on her return journey with the coffin of her firstborn; Ivan and his sisters were always with her on the road.
Sergei Timofeevich's premonition was fulfilled: the eldest son could not bear his death, having outlived his father by only a year and seven months. Soon they were next to each other again - in the graves in the Simonov Monastery.
With a numbness in his soul, Ivan Sergeevich wrote to Yuri Samarin: “Now in Moscow, there, outside the city, on a field, in the Simonov wilderness, a terrible peace and terrible silence have settled around him, frosts have bound the fresh earth, the wind now and then covers it with snow ... There is something lawless in this death, no matter how holy it is in itself, no matter how holy life it may be the end of, lawless insofar as the will of the deceased participated in it ... "The younger brother could not reconcile with the self-willed the death of an older brother who did not find the strength to live after the death of his father. “It is still difficult to get rid of painful memories,” Ivan Aksakov wrote at the same time, and they did not leave, they pursued him both at home and abroad, in the Slavic lands, where he soon left and where in his “notebook” he gave himself up to thoughts of longing , about its place, significance in Russian and European literature, about the fact that "all the cries and groans native land, rising like vapors to the sky, form a living atmosphere of longing, of which the poet is the chosen expression, organ, transmitter, interpreter, "and in this vague painful sensation, the longing for his brother was clear to his consciousness.
The death of his father, and then his older brother, who had a huge influence on him, deeply wounded Ivan Sergeevich. It seemed that his interest in topical issues and social activities faded away in him. But he knew that one should not give power over oneself to despondency, because it was he who taught Constantine, dejected by the death of his father, that his brother would be wrong if constant bitterness interfered with his activities. In the service of public good, no personal grief is taken into account. And he knew that this service awaited him, no matter how hard it was for him.
Meanwhile, on the threshold was already a new, post-reform time. Bourgeois forces hitherto unknown in Rus' came into action. It was clear that contemporary demands would inevitably affect Slavophilism as well. And it was necessary to choose a path in accordance with the changed historical conditions. For Ivan Aksakov, a new era of his activity began. He began to publish the newspaper Den, then Moskva, Moskvich, where he confidently entered into a real relationship with the new reality. For him, the new economic life in Russia was a fait accompli. And he saw his goal in turning these changes, both economic and social, into renewed arguments for Slavophile ideas. Few, like him, understood the growing importance of industry in the life of the country. After all, even on a trip to Ukrainian fairs, he learned a taste for the study of "material forces", the economy of the region. In the post-reform reality, the role of "material forces" immeasurably increased, and he was only ready to welcome this. He spoke about railway construction in the language of a poet: "Each verst of a railway is more enlightening than a thousand government institutions and more beneficial than a whole set of laws." And one can imagine what a boon in the eyes of Ivan Aksakov would be the great Siberian railway built after his death with thousands of bridges of amazing engineering art, tunnels, this is a miracle of science and technology of the 19th century, a miracle of the Russian building genius that arose in a short time and delighted world.
Exceptional sensitivity to the ongoing changes made his speeches events in journalism and public life. He boldly and directly expressed views that, in his opinion, were dictated by the spirit of the times and which caused heated debate. Himself an old nobleman, he advocated the abolition of the nobility as a privileged estate, which caused a sharp objection from many well-known publicists, led by M.N. Katkov. But this idea of \u200b\u200bIvan Aksakov was, in essence, the result of the struggle waged by the elder brother Konstantin, and he himself, putting the peasantry, the people at the forefront, seeing in him the main moral force, the embodiment of national identity, calling for rapprochement with the people, with its historical and spiritual origins.
In the literature on Slavophilism, it is generally accepted that Ivan Aksakov is a "practitioner" of Slavophilism. The grandiose social activity of Ivan Sergeevich really, as it were, closed off the creative development of the Slavophile doctrine by him, which found expression in his journalism. Such is the theory of "society" of development in a number of his leading articles published in 1862 in the newspaper Den. It is known that K. Aksakov wrote about "public opinion" as "a great blessing and a great power". But it was a category, as it were, abstractly moral in relation to the teachings of K. Aksakov about the "Earth" ("the people") and the state.
Ivan Aksakov introduces a third force, which already has its definite place. "What is society? And what is its significance in Russia, between the Earth and the State?.. Society, in our opinion, is the environment in which the conscious mental activity of a certain people takes place; which is created by all the spiritual forces of the people, developing people's self-consciousness In other words, society is a people in the second moment, at the second stage of its development, a people self-conscious ".
Let us trace further the development of Ivan Aksakov's thought. “So, we have: on the one hand, the people in their immediate being; on the other, the state, as an external definition of the people ... finally, between the state and the people - society, i.e. the same people, but in its highest human meaning, not dwelling only in the known principles of its nationality, but conscious of them, consciously developing ... A nationality that is not armed with consciousness is not always a reliable bulwark against internal and external enemies. Only the consciousness of the people's principles, only society, serving as the true expression of the people, showing the highest conscious activity folk spirit, can save the people ... "The people make the work of life accessible to them, waiting for what is inaccessible to them, due to their ignorance and the very everyday system, to be completed by those who are from the people, but beyond the people, are called to serve as the highest organ of people's self-consciousness" .
But what, so to speak, is the composition of "society", who, what persons compose it? The natural condition, of course, is education, "but not in the sense of a certain amount of "knowledge", and not even in the sense of one mental education, but in the sense of personal spiritual development in general, such a development that violates the monotony and impersonality of the immediate national existence, but is violated precisely by the fact that the spirit of the people is recognized and the very unity of the people is felt - more clearly and more vividly. ... Society is formed from people of all classes and conditions - aristocrats of the most blooded and peasants of the most ordinary breed, united by a certain level of education. The higher the mental and moral level, the stronger the society."
As you can see, in this society there is no place for that spiritual mob, which Ivan Aksakov always called with contempt "the so-called intelligentsia." A distinctive feature of this "intelligentsia" is its "disease of consciousness", spiritual groundlessness, an ulcer of nihilism, cosmopolitanism, servility to the West. According to Ivan Aksakov, "intellectuals" (this word is always taken by him in quotation marks) "all great masters look for different" views "and" something ", judge and dress up about the fate of mankind in general, create and destroy human societies in theory (and not only in theory. - M.L.) ... add self-conceit, pride of knowledge, or more precisely, half-knowledge, swagger with the last words of science, an arrogantly negative attitude towards Russian history, towards the Russian people, complete ignorance - of human societies - namely Russian society—and it will become clear to you how, in this environment of abstraction, ignorance, and negation... separatism, democratic-revolutionism, and anarchism could have arisen—in a word, all foreign isms that have formed there historically and legally, but among us lawlessly born - and in the end, as the crown of our social cultural development, expressing everything in one word, leading everyone to the same denominator, already completely ours, our own, well-groomed at home - nihilism ". Nihilism cannot be considered to have suddenly arisen in Russia, it was prepared gradually, historically, starting from the era of some Ivan Khvorostinin (who believed that it was impossible to "live with stupid Russians"), a defector to the camp of False Dmitry II, until the time of the emigrant Jesuit Pecherin (" how sweet it is to hate one's homeland and eagerly wait for its destruction"), Chaadaeva ("Russia is an anomaly, an absurdity, an empty place in history"), to the Merezhkovskys ("a new religious consciousness"), to Tolstoy himself (anarchist denial of everything and everyone, from the Church to the state).
Summing up the publication of his newspaper The Day, Ivan Aksakov wrote: "By intercession for the rights of the Russian people and nationality, as we understand them, we both began and ended our painful, four-year editorial work." At the same time, Ivan Sergeevich did not idolatry before the people. Traveling impressions during numerous business trips around Russia, direct acquaintance with the villagers, their way of life revealed to Ivan Sergeevich and that far from ideal among the people, which was hidden from his older brother Konstantin, an enthusiastic worshiper of the people.
Ivan Aksakov gave a deeply topical meaning to the concept of patriotism. In the leading article of the newspaper "The Day" "What is the insufficiency of Russian patriotism?" he writes that "time and circumstances demand from us a patriotism of a different quality than in previous times of national disasters", that "one must be able to stand up for Russia not only with their heads (as in war. - M.L.), but also with their heads", that is, an understanding of what is happening, "not only with military weapons, but also with spiritual weapons; not only against visible enemies, in the form of soldiers of the enemy army, but also against invisible and intangible enemies ..." For patriotism, not only military feats are important, but also feats spirit. Such a rare combination of the qualities of a patriot - a courageous warrior and a thinking person - was in General Skobelev, with whom Ivan Aksakov had friendly relations. What a howl the "liberal press" raised in response to Skobelev's patriotic speech, his words about "home-grown foreigners", about the "intelligentsia" alien to the people.
Ivan Aksakov emphasized more than once that "society" is not a party, not some official corporation of educated minds, but a spiritual and moral unity of people's self-consciousness. As the editor of The Day, he could be humanely magnanimous towards various people (for example, on the pages of The Day he brought Pecherin, who was toiling in Europe, with a friend of his youth), but he was adamant in his principles, refusing to publish articles that were alien to his convictions.
But what is the relationship between "society" and the "so-called intelligentsia"? That which constitutes the essence of the outlook of "society" - nationality - for the "intelligentsia" is a decidedly empty phrase, an atavism. Retrogrades, reactionaries in the eyes of the "intelligentsia" were Dostoevsky and Ivan Aksakov, who were related to the idea of Russian nationality. The main thing for the "intelligentsia" is "theories", regular philosophical books taken from abroad. As in Nekrasov's poem "Sasha":
What will the last book tell him?
That will lie on top of his soul.
They read or even simply heard about Voltaire, Diderot - and the Voltaireans-enlighteners with a Masonic mixture appeared. They learned about Hegel - the Hegelians bred. We got acquainted with Saint-Simon, Fourier - the socialists entered the arena. Following this - the students of Focht, Moleschott - with the cutting of frogs, the cult of natural science, which only promised progress.
In his article "On the Despotism of Theory over Life," Ivan Aksakov wrote: "Of all facades, the facade of liberalism is the worst." Liberal intellectuals blindly grovel before their idol - progress. Another article by Aksakov, "Reply to the handwritten article 'Christianity and Progress'," says: "First of all, about the title "Christianity and Progress." The word "progress" in itself does not express anything; after all, we said: the progress of the disease." A civilization that rejects faith in God and Christ leads to savagery, no matter what liberal and progressive banners it throws out." In our time of unbridled terror of world liberalism, Aksakov's words sound especially relevant: "The Apostle John defines the Antichrist precisely as a false likeness of Christ. Such false likeness is now being presented to the world by modern progress and various humane and literary theories."
Fawning, servility to the "enlightened" West was combined among the "intellectual" rabble with contempt and hatred for Russia. Considering itself the "salt of the earth," the "intelligentsia" has long been perceived even by those who come from it as a poison of the people's soil, as an enemy, the destroyer of Russia. Philosopher-theologian S. Bulgakov wrote in his article in "Milestones" (as if in continuation of Ivan Aksakov's thoughts about the destructive role of the "intelligentsia"): "... for a patriot who loves his people and suffers from the needs of Russian statehood, there is no more exciting topic for reflection, as about the nature of the Russian intelligentsia, and at the same time there is no more tedious and disturbing concern than whether the Russian intelligentsia will rise to the height of its task, whether Russia will receive the educated class it needs so much with a Russian soul, an enlightened mind, a strong will because otherwise the intelligentsia... will destroy Russia."
The thoughts of Ivan Aksakov, who closely followed what was happening in the world, were vividly occupied and New World- America. (By the way, Herzen saw in her and in Russia the two main leading forces in the future of mankind.) The newspaper Den discussed "American questions," events connected with the then civil war in America between the North and the South. In January 1865, Den published Aksakov's article "On the Lack of Spiritual Content in the American Nation". The author writes: "We ourselves saw American gentlemen, who very seriously and sincerely proved that the Negroes do not have a human soul and that they are only a special breed of animals." Such is the neighborhood of American freedom with the "inhumanity of the attitude towards people." And the very war of the Northern states with the Southern ones - with its "frenzy, orgy of fratricide" - "as if it was necessary to show the world how savagery and ferocity can coexist with civilization." The future of America seemed to Ivan Aksakov in a rather gloomy light: “... This new giant state is soulless, and, based on the same material foundations, will perish under the blows of materialism. moral and religious traditions of their mother countries. When the traditions disappear, a truly American nation will be formed and the American state will be formed, without faith, without moral principles and ideals, or it will fall from the unbridled personal egoism and unbelief of a few, or it will unite into the terrible despotism of the New World " .
Khomyakov also had gloomy thoughts about America. In his historical work "Semiramide" he speaks of "the conquerors who soaked with blood the land discovered by the noble feat of Christopher Columbus, and drowned in the blood the cross brought by Columbus."
Russian writers noted the lack of spirituality that prevails in the country of material and technical achievements. Gogol sympathetically cited the words spoken by Pushkin: "And what is the United States? The dead thing, the person in it has weathered to the point that it is not worth a damned egg." Already at the beginning of the 20th century, Tolstoy, speaking about the fact that "Americans have reached the highest degree of material well-being", was surprised at the spiritual level of his American colleague. "Scott, who was here the other day - he's an American writer - didn't know best writers of their country. It's the same as a Russian writer not knowing Gogol, Pushkin, Tyutchev."
Over the years, the name of Ivan Aksakov as a public figure gained more and more authority. In 1872-1874 he was chairman of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. He became especially famous in the field of chairman of the Slavic Committee. Even while traveling Slavic lands, shortly after the death of his father, he made it his task to "strengthen friendly ties with the Slavs and get to know their case and circumstances." In the future, Ivan Sergeevich did a lot for the fruitful development of these ties, to help the Slavs. The Moscow merchants located to Ivan Aksakov contributed large sums of money through him to the Slavic Committee, which went to public schools in the Slavic countries. Merchants' money was used to pay scholarships to Slavic students who studied in Russia.
Great, effective was the role of Ivan Aksakov in protecting the Slavs from the Turkish enslavers. He, as the head of the Slavic Committee, sent General M.G. to Serbia. Chernyaev and sent volunteers there to fight the Turks. During the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, Ivan Aksakov launched an energetic activity not only as a publicist, but also as an organizer; so, he participated in the delivery of weapons for the Bulgarian squads, having connections with the directors of the railways, he sought free transportation of military equipment and food to Bulgaria. Contemporaries believed that the popular movement for the liberation of the Balkan Slavs found its Minin in the person of Ivan Aksakov.
Love for Russia, fiery civic feeling, inflexibility of convictions, honesty ("honest as Aksakov" - it was almost a proverb) made Ivan Sergeevich an outstanding personality, spreading a strong moral influence around him. His call to "Russians to be Russians" had nothing to do with national exclusivity, but only meant that, like any person of any nationality, a Russian should have a sense of national dignity, not be a spiritual slave, a lackey before the West. And he himself, Ivan Aksakov, was an example in this regard, it was not for nothing that one of his contemporaries admitted that he felt most Russian in three cases: when he listened to ancient chants, when he heard a Russian folk song, and when he read Ivan Aksakov's speeches and articles about " our Russian affairs."
Faith in the Russian people, the idea of the need to overcome the gap that exists between the people and the educated layer, was the soil on which Ivan Aksakov's rapprochement with Dostoevsky took place. The highest point of their unanimity was the days of the Pushkin holiday in early June 1880. Then, as you know, in Moscow, in the Noble Assembly, Dostoevsky delivered his famous speech on Pushkin, which made a stunning impression on all those present. With truly prophetic inspiration, Dostoevsky spoke of Pushkin as the all-encompassing genius of the Russian spirit, who embodied in himself such a property of the Russian person as his all-human responsiveness, a sense of brotherhood, thereby saying a new word to humanity. After Dostoevsky's speech, Ivan Aksakov was supposed to speak, however, having ascended the pulpit, he announced that he was refusing to speak: he had nothing to say - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky explained everything in his brilliant speech. True, Ivan Sergeevich, the favorite of Moscow, still had to speak, his refusal was not accepted, and he spoke, as usual, with brilliant oratory, developing the idea of folk principles in Pushkin's work, of the importance for him of his nanny, Arina Rodionovna .
Surviving his older brother for more than two decades, Ivan Sergeevich saw how Russia was changing, how the patriarchal mores that were once dear to his father’s heart were being crowded by the new way of life of merchants who did not know any other ideal than acquisitiveness. “I involuntarily recall brother Konstantin and think how strange, bitter and alien it would be to him in the midst of this movement,” Ivan Sergeevich wrote to one of his acquaintances. The time has come to remember not only the father and Konstantin. Her mother passed away - Olga Semyonovna died in 1878. The sisters died - Olga, Vera, Lyubov, Nadezhda. Vera was most often remembered, Ivan Sergeevich wrote about her: “She belonged entirely to that period of time when brother Konstantin developed and acted ... She sacredly kept the covenants and traditions of our entire school. She served as a guide and verification for me.” The youngest sisters survived - Maria and Sofia. Sophia entered her page in the Aksakov family chronicle: in 1870 she sold S.I. Mamontov Abramtsevo, however, the estate fell into good hands, and, as under Sergei Timofeevich, famous writers and public figures visited here, so under the new owner, the hospitable house became a place where artists and musicians gathered, where wonderful creations of Russian painting were created.
Modest, never distinguishing himself, always proud of his famous brothers Konstantin and Ivan, Grigory Sergeevich served in the distance, at first he was Orenburg, and then Samara governor.
It would be possible to continue the post scriptum to the Aksakov family chronicle, but we will end it with farewell to Ivan Sergeevich, who died at the beginning of 1886. His death caused a wide wave of sympathetic responses throughout Russia and abroad. Telegram from Moscow on January 27, 1886 at 12 noon. sent the emperor K. Pobedonostsev with a sympathetic notice of the death of I. Aksakov with the following words: "There are few such honest and pure people, with such ardent love for Russia and everything Russian." Alexander III replied: “Indeed, the loss, in its own way, is irreplaceable. He was a truly Russian man, with pure soul, and although a maniac in some matters, he defends Russian interests everywhere and always. "A.N. Ostrovsky said, upon learning of his death:" What a pillar has fallen! three weeks before his death, the words of Ivan Aksakov: "Let's stay awake!.. Love for the truth, love for one's people and land make the struggle obligatory. But after all, it is not on the highway that one actually reaches the realm of truth, but it is forced by the high-speed way; but after all, it is precisely to feats that those who are given and destined for much are called.
Or have we lost faith in the fact that much has been given and destined for Russia?
And with this name, the names of Sergei Timofeevich and Konstantin Aksakov inevitably stood side by side, it was already becoming the history of Russian culture, its high heritage famous family, surprisingly rich in the fruits of creativity and life itself.
Sat. "A Modern Reading of Russian Classical Literature of the 19th Century". M. Moscow State Regional Pedagogical University. Ed. "Pashkov house", 2007
Notes:
From a speech at a conference on religious and cultural problems held in Italy at the end of 1990 in Capri.
How cynical the "democratic" methods of fooling the masses were showed by the "presidential elections" in our country in the summer of 1996. The book of the former Yeltsin bodyguard General Korzhakov "Sunrise and Sunset" contains "theses and thoughts" prepared by the analytical group of Chubais - Dyachenko (Yeltsin's daughter) for Yeltsin's election trip to the Volgograd region. He is given recommendations on how he should joke with voters. Here is one of the "comic episodes-situations." Yeltsin should be approached by a fake war veteran with many orders on his chest and start a conversation about how important it would be for his grandchildren to confirm that their grandfather received orders for heroism, and did not buy them at the market. “I have a request or a suggestion to you: maybe the government will find an opportunity to publish a book, or something, or an album, where all our photographs, orders would be ... You understand, B.N., that this is not what I need "My grandchildren need this and yours. By the way, as for me, soon one photo will excite you, you know where." And here follows the "salt" of the "episode-situation". - "We started well, but ended badly (Yeltsin's words.) - (Interrupting.) I don't finish at all! (The remark is accompanied by general laughter.)".
Aksakov I.S. Poly. coll. op. In 7 vols. St. Petersburg, ed. A.S. Suvorin. 1891. Vol. 2. S. 37.
Aksakov I.S. Poly. coll. op. In 7 vols. St. Petersburg, ed. A.S. Suvorin. 1891. Vol. 2. S. 654.
Aksakov I.S. Full coll. op. T. 2. S. 38.
Aksakovs in exile
“To her, Russia, we will bring as a gift the preserved relics of our statehood.
We will give her our old banners, preserved in a time of hard times.
Let us place tricolor banners at her feet and say: “Judge!”
V. Dawatz
As of January 1, 1917, the Aksakov family consisted of 28 people (excluding Alexander Petrovich Aksakov from the Tula-Ryazan branch, who died in 1917, but the exact date of his death has not been established). Of these, there were 11 men, 11 women and 6 spouses.
By branches, they were distributed as follows: in Kaluga-Moscow: 9 men, 8 women and 4 spouses (21 people in total), women, 2 spouses (7 people in total).
Thus, by 1917 the demographic situation in the clan was quite prosperous, it was not threatened with suppression. This happened due to the Kaluga-Moscow branch; in the Ufa-Samara branch, the probability of extinction was higher.
Of the 28 Aksakovs mentioned, from 1917 to 1921, 4 people died: Yulia Vladimirovna (at the age of about 80), Olga Grigorievna (at the age of 72), Ekaterina Nikolaevna (at the age of about 36), Serafima Ivanovna (at the age of about 59 years).
Of the surviving 24 representatives of the genus, 12 emigrated. This indicator was especially significant among men - 8 people (6 men from the Kaluga-Moscow branch and 2 men from the Ufa-Samara branch).
Of the 4 women who ended up in emigration, two belonged to the Kaluga-Moscow branch (Ada Fedorovna and her daughter Ada Pavlovna) and two to the Ufa-Samara branch (Vera Evgenievna and her daughter Vera Sergeevna).
Of the men in Soviet Russia, only three remained: Boris Sergeyevich Aksakov with his two-year-old son Dmitry (later also in exile), as well as 14-year-old Mikhail Georgievich Aksakov. All three belonged to the Kaluga-Moscow branch.
It is known that Boris Sergeevich Aksakov, who fought in the Volunteer Army, was supposed to emigrate from Novorossiysk in 1920, but this was prevented by an unexpected serious illness (typhus).
Among the representatives of the Aksakov family who ended up in exile, the most remarkable was the activity of two full namesakes - Sergeev Sergeevich Aksakov. One of them (belonging to the Kaluga-Moscow branch) is known as a midshipman of the Russian fleet and last graduate Naval Corps, and the second (belonging to the Ufa-Samara branch), as a Russian, was a Soviet composer.
SERGEI SERGEEVICH AKSAKOV, RUSSIAN - SOVIET COMPOSER
Sergei Sergeevich Aksakov devoted himself, he was born on December 24, 1890 in Samara in the family of collegiate secretary Sergei Grigorievich Aksakov. His father and mother Serafima Ivanovna (ur. Sveshnikova - daughter of Rear Admiral Ivan Ivanovich Sveshnikov) baptized their son on January 6, 1891 in the Samara Transfiguration Church. The godparents were: maternal uncle Privatdozent of the Imperial St. Petersburg University, titular adviser Mitrofan Ivanovich Sveshnikov and father's sister Olga Grigoryevna Aksakov, beloved granddaughter of the writer Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov.
Serezha was not the first child in the family. The elder sister Maria at that time was almost 6 years old, brother Konstantin was in his third year.
By the definition of the Samara Nobility Assembly of September 16, 1900, Sergei Sergeevich Aksakov was included in the family and included in the provincial.
As befitted the children of a noble rank, he was assigned to the famous Polivanovsky gymnasium in Moscow, where he and his brother Konstantin studied together with the future world chess champion A.I. Alekhin and the poet S.D. Shervinsky.
Serezha Aksakov's musical abilities appeared early.3 For a short time he attended classes at the Moscow Conservatory, leaving which he continued to study in private studios, including composition - with the composer A.T. Grechaninov (student of N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov), piano - with Professor K.N. Igumnov, musicology with Professor Y. Engel. From 1904 to 1911, under their guidance, he mastered the full scope of the conservatory program. Serezha's father was also not indifferent to music and played the violin well.
Tatyana Alexandrovna Sievers (in the marriage of Aksakov) studied at the nearby Arseniev Women's Gymnasium, from whose memoirs it is clear that Serezha's talent was noticed not only by adults, but also by his peers as early as adolescence.
Mother of the composer Serafima Ivanovna Aksakova (ur. Sveshnikova). Personal collection of I.S. Aksakova. City of Lobnya, Moscow Region. Russia. “Dad recalled a quiet father and an imperious mother, the daughter of Rear Admiral Sveshnikov. The children were afraid of her. On the day of her name day, guests from all over the province came and fired from cannons on the estate. From the memoirs of I.S. Aksakova.
“... On Saturdays, guests gathered at the Morozov children. […] the society broke up into two circles, between which hostility was felt. Our clan could only exhibit the piano playing of Sergei Sergeevich Aksakov (a direct descendant of Sergei Timofeevich). The brothers Sergei and Konstantin Aksakov also studied with Polivanov, and Konstantin, due to infantile paralysis, which he jokingly attributed
"gymnasium unrest", had poor control of the leg and arm. Despite this handicap, he loved to dance, and his pronounced stammer did not prevent him from reciting. Because of his poor diction, at that time I did not appreciate the poetry of A. Blok.
Sergei Aksakov had a round face with a blunt nose and a very small mouth. He was distinguished by seriousness, slowness and with an important look said: .
It's funny, but during the break between secular Saturdays, during gymnasium weekdays, students of two gymnasiums came up with an ingenious way of communication, putting notes addressed to their chosen ones in the coat pockets of absent-minded teachers. Teachers, suspecting nothing and conducting classes alternately in both educational institutions, turned out to be a sort of "carrier pigeons" for young people in love.
At the insistence of his father, as was already a tradition in the Aksakov family, Sergei entered the Imperial Alexander Lyceum to receive a higher legal education. Having moved to St. Petersburg to study, he continued his musical education in the field of composition and orchestration with Professor of the St. Petersburg Conservatory S.M. Lyapunov (continuer of the traditions of the "Mighty Handful"). Even then, the musical preferences of Sergei Sergeevich Aksakov, who preferred chamber music, were outlined.
In 1914, his first musical works, started concert activity, performed as a pianist in Moscow, Kyiv, Minsk and other cities.
Lyceum student Sergei Sergeevich Aksakov. “The bottle-colored uniform, red cuffs, silver embroidery on the collar, and in the senior classes - gold ...”. Personal collection of I.S. Aksakova. City of Lobnya, Moscow Region. Russia.
In the family archive of his daughter Irina Sergeevna Aksakova, photographs of Sergei Sergeevich in a uniform and in a winter lyceum overcoat have been preserved. One of the then lyceum students recalled his fellow students this way: “The bottle-colored uniform, red cuffs, silver embroidery on the collar, and in the senior classes - gold, cocked hat, gray Nikolaev overcoat to toe (with a cape and a beaver collar), and even a sword in graduation year! Against the background of the Petersburg palaces, we seemed to ourselves a vision of Pushkin's time. […] The traditions of the lyceum were very peculiar: many of them ascended.
As the composer himself later recalled, not everyone could afford such a luxurious outfit, but the “charter” of the lyceum students allowed for the opportunity to wear this luxury in turn. "Souls of beautiful impulses" often led tipsy friends to a state of excessive fun, so that his beaver cape was soaked through with wine and tobacco vapors that no purge could weather.
May 23, 1914 S.S. Aksakov graduated from the Imperial Alexander Lyceum, was approved with the rank of provincial secretary and appointed to the civil service in the Department of the Code of Laws of the State Chancellery.
Aksakov's estate "Strakhovo" near Samara. Konstantin Sergeevich holding a horse by the bridle. Sergei Sergeevich in a wagon with his future wife, Vera Evgenievna Usakovskaya. Personal collection of I.S. Aksakova. City of Lobnya, Moscow region. Russia.
In the same year, he married a neighbor on the Samara estate Vera Evgenievna Usakovskaya, the daughter of a general from. She was a wealthy bride, in 1915 she owned 1,500 acres of land near the village of Klyuchi, Buguruslan district. The groom also owned a significant land plot of 3,000 acres of land near the village of Strakhovo, Buzuluk district. In 1916, a daughter, Vera, was born from this marriage (1916 - ca. 1999).
The First World War began. The elder sister Maria Sergeevna Aksakova became a nurse in one of the hospitals.
Sergei Sergeevich resigned from the State Chancellery and on February 16, 1915 he entered the Corps of Pages, where, after completing an accelerated one-year course, he was awarded the rank of officer. In 1916, he was appointed Chief of the Red Cross Society and sent to Polotsk, then to Riga and Pskov.
As Sergei Sergeevich himself wrote in his autobiography, in 1918 the detachment was disbanded. He left for Kuibyshev (Samara), and from there with his family to Harbin, where he arrived "legally" in 1920.
In Harbin, I had to work on the Chinese Eastern Railway, where S.S. Aksakov was in charge of climatic stations, at first temporarily, and on January 1, 1927, he was enrolled in the staff.
During the First World War. Sergei Sergeevich Aksakov, after completing the accelerated course of the Corps of Pages in 1916, was appointed Head of the Red Cross Society detachment and sent to Polotsk, then to Riga and Pskov. Personal collection of I.S. Aksakova. City of Lobnya, Moscow region. Russia.
On February 23, 1928, he became a temporary agent of the Economic Bureau, from which he resigned. The work gave a small but stable income, and Sergei Sergeevich simultaneously began teaching at the Harbin Higher Musical School named after A. Glazunov, which he continued until his departure to Shanghai in February 1929.
The Harbin period of life was both happy and unhappy for the family. The daughter Vera was pleased (she was called Lyalya in the family, even when she grew up, so as not to be confused with her mother Vera Evgenievna).
The process of returning to musical activity was being established, but fate prepared another test - the marriage began to break up. Although the father (according to his daughter Irina) was not sinless, he opposed divorce. Nevertheless, at the insistence of his wife, they parted, and Vera Evgenievna immediately connected her future fate with the then wealthy emigrant Vasily Ivanovich Lavrov.
In those years, the situation in China was extremely tense. The impotence of the central government (in fact, there was a civil war) was aggravated by the presence of hundreds of thousands of Russian-speaking emigrants with their own plans, ideas and ambitions. Only two circumstances could provide a decent standard of living at that time - a demanded specialty and knowledge of at least English, which most refugees, as a rule, did not have. The situation in the country was heating up. In 1928, literally a year before the fighting on the CER (autumn 1929), S.S. Aksakov received an invitation to the Shanghai State Conservatory and decided to move to a more prosperous and musically enlightened Shanghai.
There he worked as a piano professor for 15 years from September 1, 1929 to January 31, 1945. At the same time, in 1932-1934, Sergei
Sergeevich gave a course in the history of music and lectures on theoretical musical subjects for international students.
The concert program of the composer S.S. Aksakov in Harbin on March 26, 1928. Personal collection of I.S. Aksakova. City of Lobnya, Moscow Region. Russia.
The professor's salary (from 96 yuan in 1929 to 220 yuan by 1937), private lessons and the opening of his own music studio in 1930 made it possible to buy a decent house and get servants.
In February 1930, Sergei Sergeevich Aksakov declared himself as a composer: he wrote a cycle of vocal interpretations of works by A.A. Akhmatova, music to the words of the famous writer A.M. Remizov. In total, by that time he owned more than 30 romances, many piano pieces and sonatas, several choirs, the symphonic poem "From Dante", work began on the opera "Psyche". He was perceived by music critics as a composer of the lyrical direction. Reviewers gave the following characteristics to his work: “... The last period of S. Aksakov's musical creativity is a sphere of new special searches. We will try to characterize this direction as a stylization of romanticism, peculiar and.
In November 1935, there was a merger of two emigrant organizations located in Shanghai - "Vostok" and "Shanghai Churaevka". Sergei Sergeevich Aksakov became the chairman of a single society, called the "Shater". The association included people of creative professions - musicians, poets, artists, they published the collection "Gates", which was very popular among emigrants.
In the 1930s, the musical activity of S.S. Aksakova acquired a more noticeable public outcry, often noted in newspaper and magazine articles. He was perceived as a famous composer, musician and teacher.
Simultaneously with his musical activities, Sergei Sergeevich continued to practice law, was interested in the legal status of emigrants. In February 1930, he was elected a member of the Russian Law Society in Shanghai.
In 1934, Sergei Sergeevich Aksakov married a second time to the daughter of a wealthy manufacturer and landlord, Claudia Stepanovna Ivanova-Koludarova (1905-1996). Two daughters were born from this marriage: Irina (August 31, 1939 in Shanghai) and Olga (Ibid November 1, 1942).
According to family tradition, the godmother of Sergei Sergeyevich, his aunt Olga Grigorievna Aksakova, told her nephew - until you name your daughter by my name, you will not see your son! Jokes aside, but the third girl was named Olga, but the prophecy was not destined to come true. Apparently, therefore, when many years later, already in the USSR, the grandson of Seryozha was born, he got (forgive us for this statement) most of his grandfather’s love, especially since both were similar in their addictions, in particular, in love for chocolates .
Despite the changes that had taken place, Sergei Sergeevich and his first wife, Vera Evgenievna, maintained relations and corresponded. However, Sergei Sergeevich did not accept gifts from her for various holidays and constantly returned them back.
S.S. Aksakov with K.S. Aksakova (ur. Ivanova-Koludarova) in the Shanghai park. Shanghai. China. Photo ok. 1935. Personal collection of I.S. Aksakova. City of Lobnya, Moscow Region. Russia.
After some time, by mutual agreement, their daughter Lyalya moved to Shanghai, by that time a very beautiful girl, with whom Claudia Stepanovna immediately became friends. From that moment on, all the best was meant exclusively for her. Lyali's departure from Harbin to Shanghai to join his father was caused by a number of difficult circumstances. The second husband of Vera Sergeevna became seriously ill. He developed multiple sclerosis, he "fell into childhood" and, sitting in an armchair, constantly wept helplessly and called for his wife. Vera Evgenievna, in order to support her family, had to get a job in a pharmacy, but she was silent about all this and pretended that everything was in order.
Very soon, Lyalya married a successful businessman - the merry fellow Viktor Andreevich Menshikov (he had the nickname Hello-boy in his family), who did business with the Japanese, which was then considered almost a crime in society, so they talked about it in a whisper at home, and outside the house was generally silent.
The Menshikov family lived in a prestigious area of the city. Lyalya herself was literally showered with diamonds. At Easter, she always wore a necklace of golden Easter eggs, which, according to tradition, were presented to her by relatives and friends every year.
Very soon, Lyalya's first daughter Natasha was born, followed by her father's daughter Ira. Then Lyalya had a second daughter, Tanya, and after her, Sergei Sergeyevich had a daughter, Olya. It so happened that the aunts were younger than their nieces. The girls were friends in pairs according to age. Having matured, Natasha and Ira were already thinking about gentlemen, and the younger Tanya and Olya were still running in the company of their peers around Shanghai.
Everyday life of the composer's children and his granddaughters with their friends. Shanghai. China. 1940s. Personal collection of I.S. Aksakova. City of Lobnya, Moscow region. Russia
The Lyali family was very friendly with the father's family, the children grew up together, celebrated birthdays and various holidays together.
However, there was a significant difference in the approaches to raising children. If Natasha and Tanya were brought up in the spirit of pro-American values, then Ira and Olya were instilled with elements of Russian and European culture. What was common for children in the Lyalya family was not welcomed in the composer's family. Nevertheless, the quick-tempered Aksakov character, inherent in all representatives of this ancient family, sometimes blurred the lines in the styles of education. As a rule, it happened as follows. Usually, the expansive Olya began her attacks on her older and more restrained sister Irina, gradually moving from words to “combat actions”. This was expressed in throwing out the toys of their sisters through the window from the nursery, located on the second floor. When the intensity of passions unbalanced Irina, Olya's toys flew out the window. The servants standing under the window and accustomed to such scenes, waiting for the last object to fall, brought everything back, and life went back to normal.
The Shanghai period of the composer S.S. Aksakov. Teaching period at the East China State Academy of Music and opening a private music studio. Shanghai. China. 1940s. Personal collection of I.S. Aksakova. City of Lobnya, Moscow region. Russia.
And yet, each appearance in the house of the composer of the Menshikov family violated the measured rhythm of the life of its inhabitants and was a harbinger funny pranks and fun. Once, on Irina's birthday, when she was taking a bath, preparing to appear before the guests, Viktor, who was her godfather, burst into the room, pulled the astonished teenager out of the foam, wrapped her in a towel and, to the lively laughter of the assembled relatives, put a gift on his hand - golden Swiss watch.
On Christmas Eve, Sergei Sergeevich invariably sat down at the piano and each time performed the sad lyrical melody from Rebikov's one-act opera The Christmas Tree.
At Easter, his duties included sprouting oats, in the green sprouts of which they laid colorful Easter eggs. There must have been a hundred eggs. Klavdia Stepanovna baked twenty Easter cakes and cooked a huge ham shank with her own hands. The table was constantly ready for a meal, and the doors of the house were open for guests, who every year for quite a long time came to christen and taste treats.
The Russian school of upbringing and respect for one's family became the cause of sincere indignation at the fact that the book "Family Chronicle", the author of which was the composer's great-grandfather Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov, was published in French under the title "Semi-savages". Outraged, Sergei Sergeevich obtained an apology from the publishing house and the removal of the circulation from sale.
The beginning of the Second World War and the ensuing German attack on the USSR was greeted by the Russian emigration ambiguously. Some emigrants took the events positively, hoping for the fall of the communist regime and a possible return to their homeland. In others, patriotic sentiments and hopes for reconciliation with the Soviet regime grew stronger.
Konstantin Sergeevich Aksakov. Personal collection of I.S. Aksakova. City of Lobnya, Moscow region. Russia
After 1943, when the inevitable victory of the USSR over Germany became clear, many emigrants turned to the Consulate General of the USSR in Shanghai with a request for permission to return to their homeland.
S.S. also belonged to this group. Aksakov. In 1946, he received citizenship of the USSR, became a member of the Society of Citizens of the USSR in Shanghai, in which he conducted extensive social work. In 1947-1948 he was a member of the Artistic Council at the cultural department and in this capacity held a series of lectures on the history of music at the Club of Soviet Citizens of the USSR in Shanghai. He took part in concerts during the days of Soviet public holidays and various.
Together with the family of S.S. Aksakov was inseparably lived by his brother Konstantin, who was in charge of a bureau in China for hiring servants and housekeeping personnel. But the business fell apart, and with a physical handicap (paralysis of the arm and leg), it was difficult to find a job. Konstantin Sergeevich Aksakov still continued to be fond of the theater, was not married and was dependent on his brother, who loved him and considered him his guardian angel.
In the late 1940s, when Sergei Sergeevich seriously thought about returning to his homeland, his brother's health deteriorated sharply. This circumstance postponed the family's move to Soviet Russia, where the fate of the first repatriates - Stalin's concentration camps - inevitably awaited her.
Sergei Sergeevich until the end of his days repeated to his wife and children that they owe Konstantin everything, even life itself.
Friendly caricatures of the composer and performer S.S. Aksakov from Shanghai newspapers of 1930-1940.
Personal collection of I.S. Aksakova. City of Lobnya, Moscow region. Russia.
Friendly caricatures of the composer and performer S.S. Aksakov from Shanghai newspapers of 1930–1940. Personal collection of I.S. Aksakova. City of Lobnya, Moscow region. Russia.
Konstantin Sergeevich Aksakov died in Shanghai, was cremated, the ashes were buried.
Meanwhile, the affairs of the Menshikovs were shaken, and in 1952 they decided to leave for America. They took Vera Evgenievna and Lavrova with them, who had divorced by that time. Their nanny remained in the care of Sergei Sergeyevich, who for the rest of her life was waiting for a call from her owners, but in vain.
The composer's family was not bypassed by the need either. Renting prestigious premises for rehearsals with students required large financial expenses. Debts began to form, but the situation was saved by the inheritance of his wife, Claudia Stepanovna, received after the death of her father. There was enough money to equalize the family financial situation and to support the departing family of Vera's daughter (Lyali), from whom the burdensome furniture and various things were bought.
Finally, in 1954, the Aksakov family received a long-awaited notice signed by the USSR Consul General in Shanghai N. Shesterikov, which allowed them to return to the USSR to work on the development of virgin and fallow lands. Departure was scheduled for .
When leaving China, the Shanghai State Conservatory issued S.S. Aksakov a certificate of employment, in which she expressed "deep gratitude for his long work in the field.
Upon arrival in the USSR, the composer's family was placed in the school of a small working settlement of the Novoivanovskiy state farm in the Omsk region, the main contingent of residents of which were exiled Moldavians. Together with other families who returned from China, the Aksakovs settled in the hall, dividing the room with rag curtains imitating walls. Realizing that the development of virgin and fallow lands became a real prospect for his future activities in the Soviet Union, Sergei Sergeevich (according to his daughter Irina) fell into deep thought for three days. The inspector for displaced persons, who arrived at the state farm, listened attentively to the composer and advised him to immediately leave for Omsk. And so it was done. S.S. Aksakov was absent for about three weeks, which caused serious concern to the family, since no news was received from him during this time. To the great joy of the Aksakovs, the head of the family returned with a passport of a citizen of the USSR. In addition, he managed to get a job as a head of piano and theoretical classes at a music school in the city of Tara, Omsk region.
At that time, it was a provincial, exclusively wooden, one-story town, founded in ancient times by Russian sovereigns in order to exile objectionable subjects there. Half of one of these houses was rented by the Aksakov family, as Irina Sergeevna recalls, from a local resident Galina Balogonskaya. A funny incident happened to Irina in Tara. At less than fifteen years old, she looked like an adult girl, and it so happened that in the local house of pioneers she began to teach the basics of ballet, which she learned back in Shanghai. Her peers reached out to her circle, and about a month later, the administration, convinced of the seriousness of Ira's intentions, asked to bring her passport and work book, which confused the young novice teacher, who struggled to look older. The situation was complicated by the caustic statements of 11-year-old sister Olya, who, in the heat of petty domestic conflicts, constantly threatened to make public Ira's true age. To everyone's satisfaction, the leadership of the House of Pioneers figured out the situation on its own, and only a year later, when the family left Tara, the teacher was forcibly given an indecently large monetary reward, accompanied by a certificate of the magnitude of labor exploits.
In the early 1950s, Sergei Sergeevich Aksakov wrote a piano trio, a piano concerto with an orchestra, a fantastic dance for piano, a concert etude, songs and romances.
In 1955, with the consent of the composer, the Ministry of Culture of the USSR sent him to Minsk for musical and pedagogical activities, where he taught at music school at the Minsk Conservatory.
In his letter to his cousin Kira Mitrofanovna Gasteva (ur. Sveshnikova), the composer wrote: “I am so happy that I finally returned to my homeland, where I was received superbly, immediately given excellent service, already elected a member of the Music Fund
The USSR, they are going to publish my works, recorded my playing on records, and the other day the parents of my students at a music school presented me with such a luxurious writing set made of gray marble as a gift that I even felt embarrassed.
Here with me is my second wife Klavdia Stepanovna (she is only 45 years old) and 2 daughters Irina and Olga, both continue their education at school.
My first daughter Lyalya married Menshikov in Shanghai and already has 2 daughters. They barely left for North Africa, and I have long since lost sight of them.
So, at the end of June we will see each other, and then you will tell me about everything that interests me, since I want to know about our relatives on my father’s side and about the Mazaraki family and about many of my schoolmates.
The choice of Minsk for a place of residence, in many respects, was determined by material considerations, the ability to quickly get an apartment and medical care, which was important for him due to his age (64 years).
Various researchers of the work of Sergei Sergeevich Aksakov argued that the composer's family was forbidden to live in Moscow and other major cities of the Soviet Union. This is not true.
In a letter to his daughter Ira, Sergei Sergeevich pointed out: “Nothing suitable turned out to be within the RSFSR - everywhere the salaries are negligible, you can’t go for 800 rubles. In Belarus, the situation is different. […] by order of the Deputy Minister of Culture, I was invited to go to Minsk myself in order to find out personally with the Minister of Culture of the Byelorussian SSR the city, salary and housing problem. In principle, the issue has already been resolved by them over the phone, but the details must be clarified on the spot.
The Board of the Union of Composers of the USSR did not deprive him of care either.
On October 8, 1955, the composer received a written notice signed by G. Voskanyan: “On behalf of T.N. Khrennikov, I inform you that on 4 / X of this year. signed by him sent a letter to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus comrade. Patolichev with a request to assist in providing you with an apartment. As regards your piano works— they will be reviewed by Ed. Council in October-November and, if adopted, will be included in the plan of publications in 1956.
By this time, the composer had restored relations with friends from the lyceum and the Polivanovskaya gymnasium, including the poet S.D. Shervinsky.
Soon Sergei Sergeevich Aksakov was recognized as a "worker of Soviet culture", in 1955 he was elected a member of the USSR Musical Fund under the Union of Composers of the USSR, and in 1957 - a member of the Union of Composers of the USSR. His works were actively performed, a tense composer activity. In the 1950s, S.S. Aksakov wrote a concert overture, a symphonic fantasy "Over the Neman", a symphonic poem "In Zhuravskaya Pushcha", romances, songs, etudes, waltzes. The work of this period was reflected in the demands that were made on Soviet composers, ideological bias appeared - “The Song of Lenin”, “March of Youth”, etc. In Soviet times, the symphonic poem by Sergei Sergeevich "In the Turov Forest", written to the verses of the poet V. Dubovka, was known. It was dedicated to Soviet soldiers who fought during the Great Patriotic War. On the motives of the poems of the poet Yakub Kolos, he wrote a poem for the orchestra "Forest Fairy Tale".
Decree on the participation of S.S. Aksakov as a member of the commission for organizing events dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the death of his great-grandfather, Russian writer Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov. Personal collection of I.S. Aksakova. Lobnya, Moscow region. Russia.
In 1956, the family of S.S. Aksakov was allocated a separate apartment in the capital of Belarus - Minsk. To his sister Kira Mitrofonovna (dated July 16, 1956), he writes: “I got an apartment in a new house with all amenities, but we will only move on July 20, because there is no light yet."
May 12, 1959 S.S. Aksakov and his daughters took an active part in solemn events on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the death of Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov, which were held in Moscow in the Hall of Columns. He was a member of the organizing committee of celebrations, which, in addition to him, included famous Soviet writers and composers. And in November, Sergei Sergeevich received news from his first wife, Vera Evgenievna, who, together with the family of his eldest daughter Lyalya (Vera Sergeevna), settled in San Francisco. The letter said that the youngest granddaughter Tanya had graduated from high school. The eldest, Natasha, has been married for three years. Her son is two years old, so Sergey Sergeevich is already a great-grandfather. A letter came in a roundabout way through Makhachkala, where Vera Evgenievna's sister lived and whom she asked:
“Can you write a few words to Sergei Sergeyevich, in my opinion, they are still in Minsk and he teaches at the conservatory. They do not write, but I would like to know how they live. I personally saved with him the most best relationship and his wife is a very sweet and good woman (better than me), and most importantly, my Lyalya would like to know about them and their two daughters.
The program of the creative evening of a friend of S.S. Aksakov at the Polivanovskaya gymnasium of the poet S.V. Shervinsky. Personal collection of I.S. Aksakova. City of Lobnya, Moscow region. Russia. “S.V. Shervinsky and the pope were inherent in the ability to conduct a secular conversation. However, I often disrupted its measured course by unceremonious intrusion into the dialogue of former high school students. Once Shervinsky could not stand it and exclaimed with mock seriousness, addressing me - “Ah - Shanghai girl!”, But dad, laughing, came to my defense, and the conversation continued further in the same measured way. (From the memoirs of Irina Sergeevna, recorded from her words in 2006).
In 1961, the Union of Composers of the Byelorussian SSR and the public of Minsk widely celebrated the seventieth anniversary of Sergei Sergeevich Aksakov.
From a letter from the composer to his cousin Kira Mitrofanovna: “On January 11, the Union of Composers solemnly celebrated my 70th (alas!) anniversary. There were many telegrams and greetings, including from the Minister of Culture, from the Union of Writers, from the Union of Composers and other organizations and individuals. After the ceremony was big concert from my works. As a result, I am very tired and now I only dream of rest.
His first wife, Vera Evgenievna, lived to be about 104 years old, her 100th birthday was celebrated in San Francisco on July 2, 1991.
Their daughter Lyalya (Vera Sergeevna Aksakova), after the death of her husband Viktor Andreevich Menshikov, married Vadim Norkevich, a longtime admirer back in Shanghai, so the rest of her life was not deprived of attention. Her children were completely assimilated. Vera Sergeevna died in August 1998 in San Antonio (Texas), where her daughter Natasha lived, but she was buried, like her mother Vera Evgenievna, in San Francisco.
The daughters of Sergei Sergeevich Aksakov from the second marriage, just like their father, were connected with the sphere of culture.
Irina Sergeevna Aksakova continued the stage tradition. She graduated from the Belarusian State Theater and Art Institute. She worked in the theater, then as artistic director at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Mathematics. Was married. She has an adult son Sergei Vitalievich Aksakov (born April 6, 1963), married to Maria Maevna Tikhomirova (born February 11, 1969) and two grandchildren Serezha (born September 15, 1995) and Vanya (October 17, 2004). b.b.). Currently, the son's family lives in the Moscow region, in the city of Lobnya. In the apartment of Irina Sergeevna, in addition to other items in the sideboard, there was a porcelain figurine of Buddha, donated by her sister Lyalya and reminiscent of the distant years of childhood and youth spent in the Middle Kingdom.
Her younger sister Olga Sergeevna Aksakova worked as an employee of the Minsk Museum of Fine Arts. She was married to Valery Borisovich Zaitsev. She has two daughters, Ekaterina and Natalya (the latter retained the surname Aksakov). Olga Sergeevna died on February 22, 1987 and was buried in Minsk. Her daughters and granddaughters currently live in Belarus, in Minsk.
From the memoirs of the daughter of the composer Irina Sergeevna Aksakova
(recorded from her words in the city of Lobnya, Moscow Region in 2006).
“I look through the Aksakov archives and remember, returning to November 1942.
I am 3 years old. I'm annoyed: my dad won't let me play with the bicycle basket (in Shanghai in those days a shopping basket with a lid was attached to the bicycle). I feel the absence of my mother. Dad says that a baby will come in a basket (laughs, apparently joking). He leaves on a bicycle. It was my sister Olya.
Our dining room, a font with candles, a lot of people. Olya is dipped into the font. Big table. I licked the green liquor with my tongue. First time I tried alcohol.
The living room, which is also my father's studio, where the students come. Dad is sitting at the piano, I stand nearby and sing: “My dear little friend, lovely shepherd boy. About what I sigh, and desire to forget the passion. I have good hearing and a clear, plaintive voice. The guests are touched.
I am already 7 years old. There is music in the house from morning to evening, students come, singers performing daddy's romances. I especially liked the cycle - women's songs, on the verses of Akhmatova: "Maiden", "Love", "Widow". I insist - dad gives up, dutifully learns the whole cycle with me. I sing "Love"
“I didn’t cover the window,
look straight into the chamber.
That's why I'm having fun today
that you can't leave."
The family believes that the child shows promise.
Creative Shanghai often gathers in our living room: prof. Zakharov, Pribytkova, poet V. Slobodchikov, Natasha Ilyina, later in the USSR she would write "Return" and work in the editorial office of "Crocodile" under the heading "Pitchfork in the side". Dad is lively, incredibly witty, a wonderful storyteller, performs new works with inspiration. Will Slobodchikov reads his poems (in the USSR he later became a well-known linguist). N. Ilyina reads new humoresques.
Mom is a wonderful cook. Guests are offered her products: baskets with salad, caviar, mushrooms, waffles with kaimak.
I especially remember Easter. Dad, by tradition, always performed "City of Kitezh" at home. A magnificent pianist, passionate to such an extent that his lowing could be heard in the front row.
Dad called mom “my angel”, and mom idolized dad. Unusually meek, devoted wife and mother. Dad told me: "Your mother has an angelic character."
It was the real wife of the composer - the muse of his work.
I remember a big event in Shanghai - the opening or celebration of the anniversary of the opening of the monument to Pushkin (in China, this is still remembered). I am standing next to my father, my father's cantata to Pushkin is being performed to the words of V. Slobodchikov. In our family, they never suppressed the childish personality, they forgave pranks and my mischief. Ultimately, it was not the ban that stopped us, but the high spirituality of our parents.
I am 13 years old. Reading with dad E. Zola. Dad - in his office in the original in French. I am in my room in Russian. At the age of 13 I read almost all French classics, read avidly, now I understand - this is the influence of the pope. This year, dad especially remembers the past. He is a wonderful storyteller. I vividly represent his collection of butterflies, which he collected in the estate of Strakhovo. Dad was catching butterflies all his childhood, and he had one of the rarest butterflies from Madagascar. It even seemed to me that I was touching her, but it was my imagination.
He remembered Olga Grigorievna, his aunt and godmother. She is known to everyone as S.T.'s favorite granddaughter. Aksakov. Dad was her favorite nephew, it was to him that she wanted to leave an inheritance. Dad recalled with humor her tight-fistedness, how she traveled to Strakhovo on the train in third class.
He remembered a quiet father and an imperious mother, the daughter of Rear Admiral Sveshnikov. The children were afraid of her. On the day of her name day, guests from all over the province gathered, and cannons were fired on the estate.
In the same year, letters often come from America from my father's teacher A.T. Grechaninov. He sends his book, in which a whole chapter is devoted to the Aksakov family and their estate Strakhovo, where he often visited. But since he was offended by the Bolsheviks and criticized Soviet power, leaving the country, we left this book in Shanghai.
Summer 1954. Our departure to the USSR, the last day in Shanghai. You can't take Bobby, the Tibetan lapdog, who lived with us for many years. His parents decide to put him to sleep so that he does not suffer in separation. Papa feeds him a royal dinner, but no one rejoices. Then he takes him on a leash to the vet. An hour later, he comes back with Bobby, says: “I can’t!”. We leave Bobby to the Chinese.
Two black cars pull up. The last time we drive through Shanghai. Then for many years I dreamed of Bobby.
Excerpts from speeches by S.S. Aksakov on Minsk radio.
Attention! Minsk speaking!
Please, dear Sergey Sergeevich, we invite you to the microphone.
Aksakov: These were the years of the flowering of Russian art in Moscow, which was very interesting for that time: the Stanislavsky Theater, with its wonderful productions of plays by Gorky, Chekhov, Hamsun, Tolstoy, Shakespeare and others; Maly Drama Theatre, with magnificent artists Lensky, Sadovsky, Yablochkina, Pashennaya, Yermolova, Yuzhin and others. The Bolshoi Opera House, where the brilliant Chaliapin, Sobinov, tenor Smirnov, Nezhdanov, Zbrueva, Tukov, baritones Grizunov and Shevelev and others, interesting symphony concerts with conductor Cooper, Suk, Ippolitov-Ivanov and Rachmaninov, chamber music concerts of the Kerzinsky Circle; a concert of the trio "Shor, Crane and Erlich" and, finally, individual concerts of pianists Igumnov, Goldenweiser, Meychin and others.
In addition, Moscow of that era turned out to be the seat of many major composers - Rachmaninov, Arensky, Grechaninov, Taneyev, Scriabin, Medtner, Rebikov, Ippolitov-Ivanov, Kochetov and others.
The private opera at the Solodovnikov Theater successfully competed with the Bolshoi Theatre. There were also excellent singers - soprano Petrova-Zvantseva, Deiva-Sianitskaya, tenors Klimentyev, Sevastyanov, Lomarev, bass Speransky and others. And most importantly, thanks to a more flexible apparatus, less bureaucratic and less ponderous than at the Bolshoi Theater, new productions were much more frequent at the private opera. It was there that we first heard Masne's operas Werther and Manon, Rimsky-Korsakov's Kashchei the Immortal, Cui's Mademoiselle Fi-fi, Kochetov's Terrible Vengeance and others.
The most interesting thing in this era was that it was a period of new searches and the beginning of the establishment of realism and the truth of life on the stage. After Stravinsky, Kachalov, Lensky, Chaliapin and Sobinov, it was no longer possible to play and sing as before. On the stage it was necessary not to play, but to live. This slogan was enthusiastically picked up by both artists and the public. Of course, not all artists succeeded in this to the same extent, but, in general, they all tried then not only to sing, but, most importantly, to create a truthful and vital image on stage. Of course, Chaliapin was ahead of everyone in this respect, whose images remained in the memory for a lifetime. He succeeded even in minor games. For example, Chaliapin in the episodic role of the fugitive monk Varlaam in Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov.
Unforgettable in their truthfulness, the images created by Chaliapin were associated not only with his art of impersonation, but also with his amazing mastery of sound intonation. Sobinov possessed the same art of vocal intonation, in whose performance even the old romances sounded completely different. Here he sings Tchaikovsky's romance "In the midst of a noisy ball ..." and how much warmth, sincerity and some amazing sadness can be heard in his singing.
Of the other opera artists of that era who managed to create vivid stage images, Nero and German performed by the tenor Klementyev, Werther performed by Sevastyanov, Onegin performed by the baritone Gryzunov, Salieri and Gremin performed by bass Speransky, and a wonderful performer of romances and songs by Mussorgsky soprano Dave-Spanitskaya.
We, young people devoted to art, were literally torn apart to get to all the best performances and concerts. I was somehow lucky in this respect and always managed to get to all the most interesting things. And, besides, thanks to my teachers Grechaninov and Igumnov, I managed to visit the mansion of the composer S.N. Taneyev three times, where the Taneevsky Circle of composers and musicians often met. There, hiding somewhere in a corner, I listened to their music with bated breath, followed their disputes. I still remember the huge angular figure of Rachmaninov, sometimes silent and distracted, and sometimes cheerful and loud; slow, good-natured and corpulent Taneyev; impetuous and nervous Scriabin; Igumnov, always hurrying somewhere, and, on the contrary, calm, silent Grechaninov; always very polite, but rather caustic Medtner; graceful and charming Sobinov; cheerful and cheerful Goldenweiser; eloquent and witty music critics Kruglikov and Engel; famous organist Rubek and many others.
At these evenings, composers played their new works, sometimes they sang in chorus, and then they discussed, gave advice, criticized, sometimes admired, sometimes remained silent. I still remember this large, cozy living room in Taneyev's house, in one of the quiet Moscow lanes not far from the Arbat. Grechaninov plays and sings his new fables to the words of Krylov. Everyone likes it, especially Taneyev, who noisily expresses his approval. But now Rachmaninov sits down at the piano and plays his now famous prelude, which had just been published then in Gutheml's edition.
The prelude arouses general admiration and has to be repeated, then one of the singers present sings Arensky's new romance to Fet's words "One Star".
Another singer sings Taneyev's romance "Lullaby".
Sometimes small chamber ensembles also performed at such parties. I remember how warmly the "Trio" of Arensky was received by those present.
But Scriabin sits down at the piano and enthusiastically plays his new work - a prelude for the piano called "Desire".
Scriabin is a great pianist, especially in octave playing, but sometimes, getting carried away, he begins to sing along so loudly that he drowns out his own performance. Everyone likes the prelude, everyone starts to discuss its harmonic innovations with passion. The evening is more interesting, friendly, fun, even noisy.
There is no doubt that the musical success of everyone pleases all those present. And it seems all the more surprising that representatives of completely different musical trends have gathered here. Taneyev and Medtner are representatives of the "academic" trend, Rachmaninov and Arensky are the heirs of "late romanticism", Grechaninov is an apologist for "populism" and Scriabin is a modernist. Obviously, the love for good, advanced music, the love for Russian art as a whole is so strong that it breaks all conditional barriers.
Composer Rebikov, a representative of Russian impressionism, did not attend these meetings, kept to himself, was almost not friends with composers, sometimes he gave a concert on the piano from his works at the Literary Club on Tverskaya, but he played behind a closed curtain and the audience saw him only before the concert and after. He lived alone in the wing, in the courtyard of the house where his family lived, and his music could be heard from the open window all day long. I visited him often. He loved me very much, but sometimes gave strange advice. So, one day, he told me: “What, Seryozha, are you all studying? Come on, it's better to write an opera directly!
I managed to meet Rimsky-Korsakov only once, since he lived in St. Petersburg. But it seems that in 1906 he came to Moscow for the premiere of his opera The City of Kitezh. And so, after the first performance, which was a brilliant success, small group musical youth (including me) decided to go with flowers to the Metropol Hotel to congratulate the author. He received us very cordially and asked each of us about his plans and musical tastes. And when he found out that I was a student of his student Grechaninov, he cheerfully shouted: “Well, then you are my grandson!” And he shook my hand for a long time.
In 1914 the First World War began. I left Moscow and went with regret to St. Petersburg. But even here I was lucky: at the station in Moscow, when I was leaving, I met the idol of all the youth of that time - Fyodor Ivanovich Chaliapin. I remember that the train had already started, and suddenly a huge figure appeared on the platform, and a thunderous voice rang out: “Where is the duty officer? Stop the train!" The station attendant came running. And again the unforgettable voice thundered: “Stop the train! I am Chaliapin. And the train stopped...
And shortly before my departure from Moscow, as if saying goodbye to me, Igumnov arranged a dinner at which, besides me, Grechaninov, the musicologist Engel and the writer Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy were present. This dinner will forever remain in my memory. Grechaninov played and sang a whole act from his new opera "Sister Beatrice", which had just been taken off the stage by order of the Chief Prosecutor of the Church Synod, as an anti-religious work that undermines the foundations! And so on.
The article presents the biography of Aksakov, a famous Russian writer. He is known to many as the author of a fairy tale and also as the creator of the "Family Chronicle", "Notes of a rifle hunter" and other works.
Aksakov's biography begins on September 20, 1791, when Sergei Timofeevich was born in the city of Ufa. In the family chronicle "Childhood of Bagrov the Grandson", the author spoke about his childhood, and also compiled a description of his relatives. If you want to take a closer look at the first stage of the life path of a writer like Sergey Aksakov, the biography for children and adults presented in this work will surely interest you.
Years of study at the gymnasium
S. T. Aksakov was educated first at the Kazan gymnasium, and then at Kazan University. He spoke about this in his memoirs. It was very difficult for the mother to be separated from Sergei, and she almost cost her life, as well as the writer himself. In 1799 he entered the gymnasium S. T. Aksakov. His biography is marked by the fact that soon his mother took him back, because in an impressionable and nervous child, from loneliness and longing, she began to develop, as Aksakov himself admitted.
During the year the writer was in the village. However, in 1801 he finally entered the gymnasium. Associated with this institution further biography Aksakov. Sergei Timofeevich spoke disapprovingly of the level of teaching at this gymnasium. However, he had great respect for several teachers. This, for example, Kartashevsky. In 1817, this man married the writer's sister, Natalia Timofeevna. During his studies, Sergei Timofeevich was awarded certificates of merit and other awards.
Studying at Kazan University
In 1805, at the age of 14, Aksakov became a student at the newly founded Kazan University. Part of the gymnasium, where Sergei Timofeevich studied, was assigned to a new educational institution. Some teachers from it became university professors. The students were selected from among the best pupils of the gymnasium.
Passing a course of university lectures, at the same time Aksakov continued his studies at the gymnasium in some subjects. In the early days of the university's existence, there was no division into faculties, so all 35 first students studied many sciences: logic and higher mathematics, chemistry and anatomy, classical literature and history. In 1709, in March, Aksakov completed his studies. He received a certificate, which indicated, among other sciences, which Sergei Timofeevich knew only by hearsay. These subjects have not yet been taught at the university. During his studies, Aksakov developed a passion for hunting and theater. These passions continued throughout his life.
First works
The first works were written at the age of 14 by S. T. Aksakov. His biography is marked by early recognition of his work. The first poem by Sergei Timofeevich was published in a magazine called "The Arcadian Shepherds". His staff tried to imitate Karamzin's sentimentality and signed with shepherd names: Amintov, Daphnisov, Irisov, Adonisov, and others. Sergei Timofeevich's poem "To the Nightingale" was appreciated by contemporaries. Aksakov, encouraged by this, in 1806, together with Alexander Panaev and Perevozchikov, who later became a famous mathematician, founded the Journal of Our Studies. In it, Aksakov was already an opponent of Karamzin. He became a follower of A. S. Shishkov. This man created "Discourses on the old and new style" and was the initiator of Slavophilism.
Student troupe, moving to Moscow and St. Petersburg
As we have already said, Aksakov was fond of the theater. Passion for him prompted him to create a student troupe. Sergei Timofeevich himself performed in organized performances, and at the same time showed stage talent.
The Aksakov family received a decent inheritance in 1807, which they inherited from their aunt Kuroyedova. The Aksakovs moved to Moscow, and a year later - to St. Petersburg, so that their daughter would be educated in the best educational institutions of the capital. S. T. Aksakov was fully mastered at that time by stage passion. At the same time, Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov began working as a translator in the commission that drafted laws. His brief biography was marked at this time by new acquaintances.
New acquaintances
Aksakov wanted to improve his declamation. This desire led him to meet Shusherin, a famous actor of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The young theatre-goer spent much of his free time talking about the stage and reciting with this man.
S. T. Aksakov acquired, in addition to theatrical acquaintances, others. He got along with Romanovsky, Labzin and A. S. Shishkov. With the latter, he became very close. Shishkov's declamatory talent contributed to this. Sergei Timofeevich staged performances in Shishkov's house.
1811-1812 years
In 1811, Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov decided to leave work in the commission, short biography which is marked by new attempts to find something to his liking, because the former service did not attract him. First, in 1812, Aksakov went to Moscow. After some time he moved to the village. Here he spent the years of the invasion of Napoleon Bonaparte. Aksakov, together with his father, signed up for the police.
Having visited Moscow for the last time, the writer got acquainted through Shusherin with a number of writers who lived here - Kokoshkin, Ilyin, Shatrov and others. A little earlier, Aksakov began working on the translation of Sophocles' tragedy "Philoctetes" by Lagarpov. This translation was required for Shusherin's benefit performance. In 1812 the tragedy was released.
Years after the French invasion
In the period from 1814 to 1815, Sergei Timofeevich was in St. Petersburg and Moscow. At this time, he became friends with Derzhavin. Aksakov created the "Message to A. I. Kaznacheev" in 1816. It was first published in 1878 in the "Russian archive". In this work, the writer is indignant that the gallomania of the society of that time did not decrease after the French invasion.
Aksakov's personal life
A brief biography of Aksakov continues with his marriage to O. S. Zaplatina, the daughter of a Suvorov general. Her mother was a Turkish woman who, at the age of 12, was taken prisoner during the siege of Ochakov. The Turkish woman was brought up and baptized in Kursk, in the Voinov family. In 1792, Olga Semyonovna, the wife of Aksakov, was born. At the age of 30, the woman died.
Immediately after the wedding, Sergei Timofeevich went to the estate of Timofey Stepanovich, his father. Here, next year, the son Konstantin was born to the young spouses. Sergei Timofeevich lived without a break in his parents' house for 5 years. There was an increase in the family every year.
Sergei Timofeevich in 1821 gave his son the village of Nadezhino in the Orenburg province. This place is found under the name of Parashina in the family chronicle. Before moving there, Aksakov went to Moscow. Here he spent the winter of 1821.
Return to Moscow, resumption of acquaintances
A short biography of Aksakov continues in Moscow, where he renewed his acquaintance with the literary and theatrical world. Sergei Timofeevich struck up a friendship with Pisarev, Zagoskin, Shakhovsky, Kokoshkin, and others. The writer published a translation of Boileau's tenth satire. For this, Sergei Timofeevich was honored to become a member of the famous "Society of Lovers of Russian Literature".
In 1822, in the summer, Aksakov again went with his family to the Orenburg province. Here he remained without a break until 1826. Aksakov was not given any housekeeping. His children grew up and needed to be taught. The way out for Aksakov was to return to Moscow to take up a position here.
Aksakov finally moves to Moscow
In 1826, in August, Sergei Timofeevich said goodbye to the village forever. From that time until his death, that is, about 30 years, he was only 3 times, and even then by accident, was in Nadezhina.
S. T. Aksakov, together with his six children, moved to Moscow. He renewed his friendship with Shakhovsky, Pisarev, and others. The biography of Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov was noted at that time by translation works. In 1828 he took up the prose translation of Molière's "The Miser". And even earlier, in 1819, he outlined in verse the "School of Husbands" by the same writer.
Work in the "Moscow Bulletin"
Aksakov actively defended his comrades from Polevoy's attacks. He persuaded Pogodin, who published the Moskovsky Vestnik in the late 1820s, to start a Dramatic Addendum, which Aksakov was working on, in the journal. Sergei Timofeevich and Polev also quarreled on the pages of Raich's Galatea and Pavlov's Athenaeus. In 1829, Sergei Timofeevich read his translation of Boileau's eighth satire in the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.
Service as a censor
After some time, Aksakov transferred his enmity with Polevoy to censorship. In 1827 he became one of the members of the Moscow censorship committee. Sergey Timofeevich took this position thanks to the patronage of his friend A.S. Shishkov, who at that time was the Minister of Public Education. Sergey Aksakov served as a censor for about 6 years. At the same time, he served as chairman of the committee several times.
Aksakov - school inspector, father's death
The biography of Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov (the later years of his life) is represented by the following main events. Aksakov began working at the survey school in 1834. Work here also continued for six years, until 1839. Aksakov was at first an inspector of the school. After some time, when it turned into the Konstantinovsky Land Survey Institute, he took the position of its director. Sergei Timofeevich became disillusioned with the service. It had a very bad effect on his health. So in 1839 he decided to retire. In 1837, his father died, leaving a significant inheritance, on which Aksakov lived.
New circle of acquaintances
The circle of acquaintances of Sergei Timofeevich changed in the early 1830s. Pisarev died, Shakhovskoy and Kokoshkin lost their former influence, Zagoskin maintained a purely personal friendship with Aksakov. Sergei Timofeevich began to fall under the influence of a young university circle, which included Pogodin, Pavlov, Nadezhdin, along with his son Konstantin. In addition, Sergei Aksakov became close friends with Gogol (his portrait is presented above). His biography is marked by his acquaintance with Nikolai Vasilyevich in 1832. Their friendship lasted 20 years, until (March 4, 1852).
Turn in creativity
In 1834, Aksakov published a short story called "Buran" in the almanac "Dennitsa". This work became a turning point in his work. Sergei Aksakov, whose biography until that time had not been marked by the creation of such works, decided to turn to reality, freeing himself completely from false classical tastes. Following the path of realism, the writer in 1840 set about writing the Family Chronicle. The work was completed in 1846. Excerpts from the work were published in the Moscow Collection in 1846.
In the following year, 1847, another work by Aksakov appeared - Notes on Fishing. And a few years later, in 1852 - "Notes of a rifle hunter". These hunting notes had big success. The name of Sergei Timofeevich became known throughout the country. His style was recognized as exemplary, and the characteristics of fish, birds and animals were recognized as masterful images. Aksakov's works were recognized by I. S. Turgenev, Gogol and others.
Then Sergei Timofeevich began to create memories of a family and literary nature. The Family Chronicle was published in 1856 and was a great success. The opinion of critics differed about this work, which is considered one of the best in the work of Sergei Timofeevich. For example, Slavophiles (Khomyakov) believed that Aksakov was the first among Russian writers to find positive traits in contemporary reality. Publicist critics (for example, Dobrolyubov), on the contrary, found negative characteristics in the Family Chronicle.
A sequel to this work was published in 1858. It is called "Childhood of Bagrov-grandson". This work was less successful.
Illness and death
The biography of Aksakov Sergey Timofeevich for children and adults is marked by a serious illness with which he had to fight in recent years. The writer's health deteriorated about 12 years before his death. Due to an eye disease, he was forced to stay in a dark room for a long time. The writer was not accustomed to a sedentary life, his body fell into disarray. At the same time, Aksakov lost one eye. The writer's illness began to cause him severe suffering in the spring of 1858. However, he endured them with patience and firmness. Sergei Timofeevich spent the last summer at his dacha, located near Moscow. When the disease receded, he dictated new works. This, for example, "Collecting butterflies." The work was published after the death of the writer, at the end of 1859.
A brief biography of Sergei Aksakov is marked by a move to Moscow in the autumn of 1858. He spent the next winter in great suffering. However, despite this, he still sometimes engaged in literature. At this time, Aksakov created " Winter morning"," Natasha "," Meeting with the Martinists ". Aksakov's biography ends in 1859, when Sergei Timofeevich died.
Appeared many times individual publications. In particular, "Family Chronicle" went through 4 editions, and "Notes of a rifle hunter" - as many as 6. And in our time, interest in the life and work of such a writer as S. Aksakov does not fade away. The biography for children and adults presented in this article only briefly introduces him creative heritage. Many of his works are included in the golden fund of Russian literature.
