The course is a brief introduction to the problematics and poetics of the main works of three great Russian writers, based on the works of the most prominent literary scholars, as well as on the lecturer’s own interpretations. Compared to the lectures that the author gives in St. Petersburg state university, here biographies of writers are omitted, the number of works analyzed is significantly reduced, the literary and historical context is reduced, and only the key provisions of all interpretations are left. Purpose of the course: to develop in students basic knowledge about the history of Russian literature of the 1840–1890s. Course objectives: to introduce students to the creative evolution of three classics of Russian literature, to determine the features of the poetics and problems of their most significant works. Target audience: persons familiar with the history of Russian literature in the scope of a high school course.
Creativity of F. Dostoevsky until 1864
The origins of Dostoevsky's early work. The story of a poor official in Russian literature and the specificity of Devushkin’s image in comparison with this tradition. "Ambitiousness" of Dostoevsky's hero. Humanism and sentimentality in "Poor People". Science fiction and psychologism of "The Double". Continuation of the “little man” theme (“Mr. Prokharchin”, “Weak Heart”). The image of a dreamer in Dostoevsky (“The Mistress”, “White Nights”).
Works of F. Dostoevsky 1864–1870
"Notes from the Underground". The evolution of the image of the “underground man” in early Dostoevsky. Irrationalism and the problem of free will. Polemics with utopian socialism, enlightenment, and the theory of “reasonable egoism.” "Crime and Punishment". Synthetism of the novel, its social, philosophical and religious aspects. Raskolnikov's rationalism and his “idea”. "Great Dialogue" in the novel. Raskolnikov and his “doubles”. Psychological duel between Raskolnikov and Porfiry Petrovich. Raskolnikov's theory in dialogue with the Christian idea (Sonya). “Idiot”: the task of depicting a moral ideal, a “positively beautiful person.”
Works of F. Dostoevsky 1870–1880
“Demons” and “the Nechaev case.” The origins of nihilism: “groundless” Western liberalism of the 1840s, the image of Verkhovensky Sr. Problems of the “soil” in the image of Shatov. The adventuristic side of revolutionism and the image of Peter Verkhovensky. Stavrogin as a hero standing “beyond good and evil.” "Teenager". The theme of money in Dostoevsky and the “Rothschild idea” of the hero. The theme of "random family". Dostoevsky’s attitude towards the “Russian European” (Versilov). "The Brothers Karamazov" as Dostoevsky's final novel. Fyodor Pavlovich and Karamazovism. The struggle of two principles in the character of Dmitry Karamazov. Ivan Karamazov: rationalism and fight against God. "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor." Ivan and Smerdyakov. Alyosha Karamazov and the hagiographic subtext of the novel. The teachings of Elder Zosima and the author’s position.
Creativity of L. Tolstoy until 1862
Diaries of L. Tolstoy and “The History of Yesterday”. Autobiographical trilogy, its relationship with noble family chronicles. “External” and “internal” plots, the moral quest of the hero. Addressing military issues. Three images of war in Sevastopol Stories. Heroism in Tolstoy's understanding. “Dialectics of the soul” in the interpretation of N. G. Chernyshevsky. The problems of “The Landowner’s Morning”: the age-old distrust of the peasants towards the master. "Barbarism" of Western civilization in the story "Lucerne". The story “Cossacks”: the theme of “natural man”.
Creativity of L. Tolstoy 1862–1877
“War and Peace”: creative history, reasons for changing the original plan, genre complexity Principles of depicting a person: dynamic and static heroes, “natural” and “unnatural”. Family theme in the novel. “Heroism” and “service” in the moral quest of Andrei Bolkonsky. The path to finding the truth by Pierre Bezukhov. Platon Karataev. The significance of military episodes: differences between the wars of 1805 and 1812. Tolstoy's philosophy of history. "Anna Karenina": personal and public in the novel. Social causes of Anna's tragedy. Personal and public in the images of Karenin and Vronsky. The problem of guilt and various interpretations of the epigraph to the novel. Autobiographical in the image of Konstantin Levin. The causes of Levin's spiritual crisis and finding a way out.
Works of L. Tolstoy 1877–1910
Tolstoy's crisis. Recognition of the “criminality” of the state, church and other social institutions. Preaching moral revival and personal “resurrection.” Preaching non-resistance to evil through violence. Tolstoy's dramaturgy. Folk drama "The Power of Darkness". “Resurrection”: life origins, the problem of the genre. The fall and resurrection of Dmitry Nekhlyudov and Katyusha Maslova. The social-critical orientation of the novel and its panoramic nature. Court, church, administration, secular society as depicted by Tolstoy. The duality of the images of revolutionaries in the novel. Late creativity. "Hadji Murad" and a return to the theme of the natural man. Theme of care (“Father Sergius”, “Living Corpse”). Care and death of Tolstoy.
The work of A. Chekhov until 1888
The first drama and its role in Chekhov's evolution. "Small Press" of the 1880s. Themes and genres of Chekhov's humor in the context of journalism of his time. The genre of “sketch” by Leikin and Chekhov. The comedy of situations and the comedy of characters. Satire of early Chekhov (stories about officials). Lyrical and dramatic in stories (“Melancholy”, “Grief”). The concept of a “discovery narrative.”
His name is known all over the world. His novels are classics, but they are still unsolved classics, about which literary scholars and readers argue, which are filmed and staged on the theater stage by the most famous and talented directors.
We have selected five novels by Fyodor Dostoevsky that everyone should read.
The first novel by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. The book is simple - and painful in its simplicity. The work from which, along with Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” came the “eternal theme” of all Russian literature - the theme of the “little man” crushed by the ruthless force of existence.
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A novel about a crime. A double murder committed by a poor student for money. It is difficult to find a simpler plot, but the intellectual and spiritual shock that the novel produces is indelible. What's the mystery here? In addition to the simple and obvious answer - “in the genius of Dostoevsky” - perhaps there is at least one more: “damned” questions do not have simple and positive answers. Poverty, one’s own suffering and the suffering of loved ones have always presented and will confront a person with a choice: do I have the right to break any moral law in order to then become a savior of the humiliated and a comforter of the weak; Should I first love myself, and only then, having become strong, love my neighbor? These are eternal questions.
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The novel, in which Dostoevsky for the first time with genuine passion, vividly and fully embodied the image of the positive hero as he imagined him. Prince Myshkin combines the features of the image of Christ and at the same time a child, peace bordering on carelessness, and the inability to pass by the misfortune of his neighbor. In a society of “normal” people obsessed with self-interest and destructive passions, Prince Myshkin is an idiot. In a world where beauty is clouded by the unclean thoughts of people, such a hero is helpless, although beautiful. But “beauty will save the world!”, Dostoevsky asserts through the lips of Prince Myshkin, and the world becomes brighter.
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A novel-warning and a novel-prophecy, in which the great writer and thinker points to future social catastrophes. History has proven Dostoevsky right, more than once. The bloody Russian revolution, the despotic regimes of Hitler and Stalin are terrible and accurate confirmations of the idea of what awaits a society in which party morality replaces human morality. But, taking the gospel text as the epigraph to the novel, the writer also offers a metaphysical interpretation of the events described. The book is not only and not so much about the “wrong” social order - the human soul is in danger of decay and death, souls must first of all be healed. For any theories about the reorganization of the world can lead to spiritual blindness and madness if the ability to distinguish between good and evil is lost.
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The final novel of Fyodor Dostoevsky, it concentrated all the artistic power of the writer and the depth of the insights of the religious thinker. “The Brothers Karamazov” is a work in which sizzling passion, the struggle for inheritance, and the search for God lead to global questions about the very essence of man, about his nature. Each character, no matter how complex it may be, in Dostoevsky appears as a certain part of one, almost limitless picture - this is a picture of a multifaceted human soul, and in this soul there is an endless battle of good and evil.
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1. Dostoevsky considered himself ugly, like a quasimodo; his character traits such as hot temper, irritability, touchiness, and jealousy prevented him from establishing good relationships with women. He needed someone who would never contradict him on anything, who would say “okay,” “yes, dear,” “you’re always right, my love,” “you’re the most wonderful,” that is, she should idolize him, despite his oddities , rudeness.Despite all this, Dostoevsky was not a virgin. He once wrote: “I am so dissolute that I can no longer live normally, I am afraid of typhoid or fever, and my nerves are bad. Minushka, Klarushka, Marianna, etc. They have become extremely prettier, but they cost terrible money.”
2. Born in 1821, he married for the first time only at the age of 36 to Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, who was the widow of an official he knew from Semipalatinsk. 
Maria - from a French emigrant family, received a good education, was cheerful, smart, kind, pretty. Dostoevsky met with her even when she was married (her husband was a good man, but a heavy drunk). Dostoevsky and Isaeva got married on February 6, 1857 in the Odigitrievskaya Church in the city of Kuznetsk. Many researchers of Dostoevsky's biography claim that their life was not successful. On the one hand, Fyodor Mikhailovich often cheated on his wife, and on the other hand, he was very jealous of his wife. And the reason for jealousy was Vergunov, to whom Fyodor Mikhailovich’s wife ran. Dostoevsky wrote about his marriage to Maria Isaeva: “We live somehow.” Maria later fell ill with consumption and died in 1864. Dostoevsky until the end of his days took care of her son Pasha Isaev.
3. Even before her death, Dostoevsky started an affair with 23-year-old Apollinaria Suslova, who herself wrote him a letter declaring her love. 
Dostoevsky was a very popular writer at that time, and she decided to make him fall in love with her; she was flattered that a celebrity fell in love with her. After some time, Appolinaria left for Paris, and when Dostoevsky came to see her three months later, he found out that she had cheated on him with a student. And again the woman cheated on him. Despite this, Dostoevsky proposes to Appolinaria, but she refuses him with a laugh.
4. In 1845, Dostoevsky hired nineteen-year-old Anna Grigorievna Snitkina as an assistant stenographer. She turned out to be a real gift for him, because unlike the unbalanced, hot-tempered Dostoevsky, Anna Grigorievna was calm, sweet, and kind. Dostoevsky proposes to Snitkina, and to his joy she agrees. For the first time in his life, Dostoevsky feels calm and happy. 
Young Anna Grigorievna had to go through a lot: frantic, insane fits of jealousy, the birth and death of children, terrible attacks of epilepsy, a murderous passion for roulette. She managed to cure him. The wife passionately loved Dostoevsky as a man and a person with the mixed love of wife and mistress, mother and daughter. And he loved her both like a father and like a girl, young and innocent. The mixture of all elements gave his embrace a certain touch of sinfulness. Perhaps that is why Fyodor Mikhailovich never looked at any woman again and never cheated on Anna Grigorievna even in his thoughts.
5. Dostoevsky’s second wife saved him from the abyss of debauchery; she was a savior angel for him. Under her influence, the writer was transformed. He was 45 years old and she was 20, but family life they were a success. Anna wrote: “I am ready to spend the rest of my life kneeling before him.” They were the perfect couple. Having finally realized all his sexual fantasies and desires, he was cured not only of his complexes as a freak and a sinner, but also of the epilepsy that had tormented him for many years. From Dostoevsky’s letter to his wife: “Every night I dream about you... I kiss you all over, hug your arms, legs... Take care of yourself, take care for me, you hear, Anka, for me alone... I kiss you every minute in my dreams all the time, every minute passionately. I especially love what it says: “And he is delighted and intoxicated with this lovely object.” I kiss this object every minute in all forms and intend to kiss it all my life.” Moreover, with her support and help I was able to write my best works. Next to him, she was able to experience the bright, rich and genuine happiness of a wife, lover, mother.
6. Anna Grigorievna remained faithful to her husband until her death. In the year of his death, she was only 35 years old, but she considered her female life over and devoted herself to serving his name. She published the complete collection of his works, collected his letters and notes, forced her friends to write his biography, founded the Dostoevsky school in Staraya Russa, and wrote her memoirs herself. She devoted all her free time to organizing his literary legacy.
7. Dostoevsky was incredibly jealous. Attacks of jealousy seized him suddenly, sometimes arising out of the blue. He could unexpectedly return home at one o'clock - and start rummaging through the closets and looking under all the beds! Or, for no apparent reason, he will become jealous of his neighbor - a frail old man.
Any trifle could serve as a reason for an outburst of jealousy. For example: if the wife looked at so-and-so for too long, or smiled too broadly at so-and-so!
Dostoevsky will develop a number of rules for his second wife Anna Snitkina, which she, at his request, will adhere to in the future: do not wear tight dresses, do not smile at men, do not laugh in conversation with them, do not put on lipstick, do not apply eyeliner... And indeed , from now on Anna Grigorievna will behave with men with extreme restraint and dryness.
8. Fyodor Mikhailovich, having bad heredity and having a whole bunch of mental complexes, had every chance of ending his days in a mental hospital. But this is truly a rare case when four years spent in hard labor and “healing through labor,” as L. Tolstoy preached, healed Dostoevsky’s psyche, and as a result, good works appeared. Dostoevsky's father, from the clergy, was killed by his own peasants for sadism, but the court acquitted these peasants. Fyodor Mikhailovich himself suffered from epilepsy, and his eyes were different colors. Dostoevsky's first daughter, Sofia, died three months after birth, only the second daughter, Lyubov, survived. Also, two of his sons died in infancy. Dr. G. M. Davidson, in the article “Dostoevsky and the Eternal Drama of Man,” mentions “homosexual tendencies in the life of Dostoevsky.” This also includes sadomasochism and a painful fixation on underage girls.
9. Dostoevsky could not work without strong tea. When Dostoevsky wrote his novels at night, there was always a glass of tea on his desk, and a samovar was always kept hot in the dining room.
10. In the life of F.M. Dostoevsky had mystical cases. With Dostoevsky interesting story happened at hard labor. Tokarzewski, who was there with him, wrote about this. Dostoevsky fed the dog, and the dog became very attached to him. And one day, when Dostoevsky fell ill with pneumonia and ended up in the hospital, they sent him 3 rubles. At that time, this was a lot of money (for comparison: convicts were fed for 30 kopecks a month). Some criminal, in agreement with a paramedic, decided to poison Dostoevsky and steal the money. They put poison in Dostoevsky's milk. But at the moment when F.M. was just about to drink milk, the dog ran in, climbed up to him, turned over the cup of milk, and lapped up what was left. Well, I died, of course. And one of the convicts then said: “You see, gentlemen, how a wonderful providence from above, through a dumb creature, saved a truthful man from death.” This case can be interpreted in such a way that higher powers intervened and did not allow F.M. to die. If it weren’t for this dog, there would be no “Crime and Punishment”, “The Idiot” and other novels.
11. Roulette For 10 years, every time he went abroad, Fyodor Mikhailovich continued this literally fatal passion. Was he attracted by the possibility of a big win, which would allow him to pay off his late brother’s multi-thousand-dollar debts at once? And he won so much at one time that it would be enough to live abroad for several months - and then immediately lost it. Or, when he approached the roulette table, did he simply go on another “gaming binge”? There is no answer, but it doesn’t matter anymore. When he lost, he either wrote letters to Anna that were humiliating for both of them, asking them to pawn anything (and she pawned them - sets, earrings and coats) and to send money. Or, if she was in the same city, he fell on his knees in front of his wife, sobbed and again asked for money. But in both cases he lost again.
And suddenly - it was cut off. According to family legend, this happened when Fyodor Mikhailovich suddenly realized that during the cold season he had left his pregnant wife without warm clothes. And because of his destructive passion, a child may die.
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http://www.kabanik.ru/page/15-facts-about-dostoevsky
“How I wish I could say everything I feel about Dostoevsky.<…>I had never seen this man and never had a direct relationship with him, and suddenly, when he died, I realized that he was the closest, dearest, and most necessary person to me. I was a writer, and writers are all vain, envious, at least I am such a writer. And it never occurred to me to measure myself against him - never. Everything he did (the good, real thing he did) was such that the more he did, the better I would be. Art arouses envy in me, and the mind too, but the work of the heart is only joy. I just considered him my friend and didn’t think otherwise than that we would see each other, and that now it just wasn’t necessary, but that it was mine. And suddenly at lunch - I was having lunch alone, I was late - I read: he died. Some support bounced off me. I was confused, but then it became clear how dear he was to me, and I cried and now I’m crying.”
Tolstoy sent this letter to his friend and long-time correspondent, philosopher Nikolai Strakhov, as soon as he learned of Dostoevsky’s death. The letter is in the nature of a confession, written in 1881, that is, just at the time when Tolstoy felt especially lonely on his new path. He calls a person whom he has never seen, with whom he often disagrees in views and aesthetic tastes, his friend, the closest, dearest, necessary (“this is mine”), a support that “suddenly jumped back " The presence of Dostoevsky in Tolstoy’s world was very important, necessary, according to Tolstoy’s feeling. With the departure of Dostoevsky, something changed significantly. Why?
Both great Russian writers were contemporaries, but never met or exchanged a single line in their letters. In addition, they were very different people and looked at the world very differently. That is why in relation to them I used a special term - “non-meeting”.
Speaking about the non-meetings of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, I mean ideological meetings - intersections at the crossroads of thoughts, feelings, intuition, history, when, for some important circumstances related to the peculiarities of the psycho-spiritual constitution, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky diverge in different directions. Or, even more formally, these are meetings of their texts and meetings in their texts, when they either directly talk about each other, or talk about something important for both, that is, they discuss, in fact, the same issues, but no longer necessarily mentioning each other. These intersections always show how differently these two men viewed life and faith. And it turns out that there were quite a lot of such ideological non-meetings in their lives, but only once Tolstoy and Dostoevsky had a real physical opportunity to meet each other.
On March 10, 1878, they both attended a public lecture by the young master of philosophy, associate professor at Moscow University, and future father of Russian religious philosophy, Vladimir Solovyov. Solovyov’s St. Petersburg lectures, given on behalf of the Society of Lovers of Spiritual Enlightenment, began with Lent in January 1878 and formed the famous cycle of “Readings on God-manhood.” The writers did not even suspect that they were both in the lecture hall at the same time. Moreover, Dostoevsky attended the lecture with his wife Anna Grigorievna. In the same room there was a man who was familiar with Tolstoy, Solovyov, and Dostoevsky - this was the mentioned Nikolai Strakhov. But for some mysterious reason, still not fully understood, he did not consider it necessary to introduce the two writers. Now there is a whole scientific literature on the question of why Strakhov didn’t do this.
The situation really was completely paradoxical: two great Russian writers were unable to get to know each other, while each of them individually was well acquainted with many other contemporaries - Turgenev, Goncharov, Nekrasov, Ostrovsky. Apparently, some special circumstance was important here. The fact is that Nikolai Strakhov - a complex, suspicious and envious man - understood his own importance in conveying to the whole world this or that information about Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and did not want this position of a friend, confidant (in the first place turn for Tolstoy) and the correspondent to lose. For acquaintance and friendship with Tolstoy is “considerable moral capital” Quote by: Igor Volgin. "The Last Year of Dostoevsky: Historical Notes." M., 1991..
It is possible, however, as literary critic Igor Volgin believes, that Tolstoy did not want this meeting either. During the period of aggravation of his religious quests, the count was not afraid to meet with famous elders, theologians and church leaders. And, moreover, not only was he not afraid, but he also consciously sought out these contacts. But it was precisely the meeting with Dostoevsky, a man of the same spiritual scale and dimension, that Tolstoy might not have wanted and even feared for some reason.
Unfortunately, at that moment and immediately after, both writers did not even know that they were in the same room. Much later, after Dostoevsky’s death, when his widow personally talked with Tolstoy for the only time in her life and informed him of her presence at this lecture with her husband, the count was very upset and uttered a meaningful phrase: “How sorry I am! Dostoevsky was a dear person to me and, perhaps, the only one whom I could ask about many things and who could answer me a lot.” Anna Grigorievna Dostoevskaya writes about this in her memoirs.
I would like to draw your attention to one more very important non-meeting. Tolstoy’s cousin, countess and maid of honor Alexandra Andreevna Tolstaya, having met Dostoevsky shortly before his death, admitted in her memoirs that “she often asked herself whether Dostoevsky would have been able to influence Tolstoy.” We can guess as much as we want on this topic, but it is known for certain that 17 days before Dostoevsky’s death, namely on January 11, 1881, Alexandra Andreevna Tolstaya gave the latter one of the letters she received from Tolstoy. After reading it, Dostoevsky grabbed his head and exclaimed: “Not that, not that!”
But what exactly is “wrong”? The text that Dostoevsky saw and read was a letter from Tolstoy to his aunt dated February 2 or 3, 1880. In this letter, Tolstoy declares that he cannot believe in what seems to him a lie, and not only cannot, but is also sure that it is impossible to believe in it. That the “grandmother” (as the writer jokingly called the maid of honor, who was 11 years older than him) believes “with natu-gi,” that is, forces herself to believe in what neither her soul nor this relationship needs souls with God. Such violence against the soul and conscience is blasphemy and service to the prince of this world. In this same letter, Tolstoy proclaims that faith in the Resurrection, the Mother of God, and redemption is for him also blasphemy and a lie created for earthly purposes.
It is interesting that Tolstoy points out the impossibility for men with a “grandmother’s” education to believe in such truths. At the end of the letter, Tolstoy calls on “grandmother” to check whether the ice on which she is standing is strong, and tells her: “Farewell!” The writer himself “a little bit since yesterday” discovered this new faith for himself, but his whole life changed from that moment: “Everything was turned upside down, and everything that was previously upside down became upside down.” Of course, for Dostoevsky this discovery of Tolstoy could not be something close and akin. He planned to respond to Tolstoy, but, unfortunately for all of us, he was unable to realize his plan due to his sudden death.
A very interesting commentary on Dostoevsky’s reaction, this “Not this, not that!” Alexandra Andreevna responds to Tolstoy’s letter in her later letter to the writer’s wife Sofya Andreevna Tolstoy. Comparing Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, the “grandmother” notes that both burned with love for people, but the latter, that is, Dostoevsky, I quote, “is somehow broader, without a frame, without material details and all those little things that Lyovochka emphasized.” foreground. And when Dostoevsky spoke about Christ, one felt that real brotherhood that unites us all in one Savior. You can’t forget the expression on his face or his words. And then it became so clear to me the enormous influence that he had on everyone without distinction, even on those who could not fully understand him. He took nothing from anyone, but the spirit of his truth revived everyone.”
When talking about Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, you are always amazed at how differently their biographies developed. Both future writers were representatives of the same generation: Dostoevsky was born in 1821, and Tolstoy in 1828. And both of them are nobles. But how different: Tolstoy was the most famous Russian writer and was related to the most famous noble families of Russia. Almost all of Tolstoy's ancestors belonged to the local nobility and went through the “sovereign service.” It is noteworthy that among his distant relatives there are not only famous Tolstoys (artist and medalist Fyodor Tolstoy, poet Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Minister of Internal Affairs Dmitry Andreevich Tolstoy), but also among his ancestors - Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin (on his mother’s side, the sister of the poet’s great-grandmother Dovo - is the great-great-grandmother of the writer), as well as Tolstoy’s relatives were Fyodor Tyutchev, Alexander Odoevsky, philosopher Pyotr Chaadaev, Decembrists Volkonsky and Trubetskoy, Chancellor Gorchakov and, in general, many others.
Dostoevsky cannot boast of such a biography and family. All his life, unlike Tolstoy, he experienced great need. Moreover, if Tolstoy could quite easily pay off gambling debts with the help of his landowner income, then Dostoevsky did not have such income and he, also having a penchant for intense gaming sensations, was subsequently forced to pay bitterly for this, to live simply in debt, taking money from publishing houses in advance for unwritten essays.
Both writers were in rather difficult life circumstances in the mid-50s. But if Tolstoy in the Crimea during the war had the opportunity to engage in literature, keep a diary, and became, according to contemporaries, a brave officer, then Dostoevsky, deprived of all the rights of his fortune, in hard labor and in exile in Siberia, had to actually start life anew, having the opportunity read only one book, and that book was the Gospel.
And so it is in everything - or almost everything. If one is rich, then the other is poor. If one receives fabulous fees, then the other writes for a piece of bread. If one literally idolizes Rousseau and reveres him for his call to return to the natural state of humanity, then the other is very critical and indifferent to Rousseau. And vice versa, Voltaire did not play a significant role in Tolstoy’s life, but for Dostoevsky he is a very important author, whose influence, for example, is very clearly visible in the skepticism of Ivan Karamazov. If one becomes a world-famous writer immediately after the release of Anna Karenina, then the second will have to prove his genius for a long time. In the mid-1850s, both created two extremely remarkable documents. These are unique “symbols of faith,” that is, texts that reflect their religious beliefs. Although these texts were created by fairly young people, they are of great importance for understanding their worldview.
Here is Tolstoy’s “symbol”, dating back to 1855:
“Yesterday, a conversation about the divine and faith brought me to a great, enormous thought, the implementation of which I feel capable of devoting my life to. This thought is the foundation of a new religion, corresponding to the development of humanity, the religion of Christ, but purified of faith and mystery, a practical religion that does not promise future bliss, but gives bliss on earth. I understand that only generations consciously working towards this goal can bring this thought to fruition. One generation will bequeath this idea to the next, and someday fanaticism or reason will bring it to fruition. To act consciously to unite people with religion - this is the basis of the thought that I hope will captivate me.”
And this is what Dostoevsky’s “symbol” looks like. It was formulated in a letter sent to Natalya Dmitrievna Fonvizina from Omsk, where Dostoevsky was serving exile at that moment. Natalya Fonvizina is the wife of the Decembrist Mikhail Fonvizin, who followed her husband into exile in Siberia in 1828. Acquaintance with the wives of the Decembrists greatly supported Dostoevsky on his way to hard labor. In January 1850, Natalya Dmitrievna gave Dostoevsky the only book that, as I said, he, in accordance with the strict rules of imprisonment, would be able to read - this is the Gospel. And in a letter of 1854, Dostoevsky, recalling this episode, simultaneously formulates his understanding of faith in Christ:
“I heard from many that you are very religious, N<аталия>D<ми-триев-на>. Not because you are religious, but because I myself have experienced and felt it, I will tell you that in such moments you crave faith, like “withered grass,” and you find it, in fact, because in misfortune it becomes clearer true. I will tell you about myself that I am a child of the century, a child of disbelief and doubt to this day and even (I know this) to the grave. What terrible torment it cost me and now costs me this thirst to believe, which is the stronger in my soul, the more contrary arguments I have. And yet, God sometimes sends me moments in which I am completely calm. In these moments I love and find that I am loved by others, and in such moments I have formed within myself a symbol of faith in which everything is clear and holy to me. This symbol is very simple, here it is: to believe that there is nothing more beautiful, deeper, simpa<ти>more valuable, more intelligent, more courageous, more perfect than Christ, and not only is it not, but with jealous love I tell myself that it cannot be. Moreover, if someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and it really were that the truth is outside Christ, then I would rather remain with Christ than with the truth.”
Let's try to compare these two texts, which, as I said, appeared almost at the same time. One gets the impression that both writers in the first half of the 1850s were moving in the same direction, looking for a starting point, a foundation of faith. And both experienced a deep ideological and religious crisis. And for both, Christ became the foundation of a new life.
What was common and different between the writers in their perception of Christ? The general thing, I would say, is the stamp of a humanistic understanding of his image, highlighting and emphasizing the human dimension in it. Nietzsche will soon speak his banner of “too human” “Human, all too human. A Book for Free Minds" is a work by Nietzsche, published in 1878.. Tolstoy writes about this directly, trying to free this image from everything that contradicts his own ideas and the ideas of his teachers - the enlighteners of the 18th century. In the “symbols” of the writer, created already in his early youth, the contrast between the Christ whom Tolstoy wants to know and the Christ whom he does not want and cannot know is expressed quite clearly. But Dostoevsky, from my point of view, does not have this opposition. There is only Christ whom he wants to love. And admire them. But he also emphasizes in his vision of Christ only human qualities, pay attention: “beautiful”, “deep”, “lovely”, “reasonable”, “courageous”, “perfect”. This is also still “too human.” Perhaps only beauty here stands somewhat apart: for Dostoevsky throughout his life this concept meant much more than just an aesthetic category. So, the image of Christ is a problem that is one of the central ones in Dostoevsky’s work, and in this form it almost did not exist for Tolstoy.
It’s amazing, but very often one or another of Dostoevsky’s formulations was actually a response to Tolstoy’s questions, which Dostoevsky simply could not have known. Let me remind you that Dostoevsky died in 1881, that is, at the moment of Tolstoy’s religious crisis. After this, Tolstoy lived another 30 years. Dostoevsky’s entire life is spent reflecting on the question that was so relevant for Tolstoy: “Is it possible to believe?”, “Is it possible to seriously and truly believe?”, “Is it possible to believe, being civilized, that is, a European, that is, to believe unconditionally in the divinity of the Son of God Jesus Christ?” (for this is what all faith consists of). And finally, one more wording: “Is it possible to believe in everything that Orthodoxy tells us to believe in?” And all these formulations are taken from the preparatory materials for Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons”. In one of his letters, Dostoevsky says that the most important question for him is how to force the intelligentsia to agree with Christianity: “Try to speak - either they will eat you or consider you a traitor.”
Quite rightly, the Russian literary critic and theologian, professor at the Paris St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute Konstantin Mochulsky points out:
“With merciless logic, a tragic dilemma is outlined - either believe, or “burn everything.” In all of world literature, the question of the possibility of faith for a civilized person of the 19th century was not posed with such fearless frankness as in this draft for “Demons.” The salvation of Russia, the salvation of the world, the fate of all mankind is in this one question: do you believe?”
So, already in the early “symbols” of the two writers there is an important difference. Tolstoy, with his, so to speak, panmoralistic attitude towards life and reality, wants to hear Christ; for him the main thing is the doctrine expressed in the Sermon on the Mount. Tolstoy is able to admire and be inspired by this teaching. For Tolstoy, Christ is only a teacher, albeit a great teacher. This is an ethical criterion, but he does not want - rather cannot - see Christ. For Dostoevsky, the main thing here is not to hear, but to see. The aesthetic criterion is decisive. First of all, what is important is not the teaching of Christ, but the face of Christ itself, which is inextricably linked with beauty. The beauty of Christ’s face is, as Dostoevsky will say a little later, a terrible force that saves the world. Saving, of course, both by teaching and commandments.
Already in the 20th century, after the first horrors and atrocities of the Bolshevik revolution, the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev would write that Tolstoy’s moralistic nihilism was for Russia a global misfortune, an obsession, a seductive lie, the antidote to which should have been “prophetic Dostoevsky's insights." Even from this short analysis it is clear that the Enlightenment humanism of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky has common roots, but different fruits. We can say that this is a contrast between ethical and aesthetic humanism.
Something else is also important. Tolstoy's “symbol” is incredibly rigidly outlined and closed. It seems that this is a final, hammered formulation in which no one can change, moreover, oriented towards someone else’s perception (“humanity”). On the contrary, Dostoevsky’s “symbol” is open to movement, dynamics, creative rethinking and, what is very important, to enrich one’s small and imperfect experience with something fundamentally and absolutely different from it. But it is easy to see that for Dostoevsky, too, the opposition “Christ is the truth,” so succinctly formulated in a letter to Natalya Fonvizina, poses a huge problem. Subsequently, he will return to this plot many times in his work. I think this opposition was the main stumbling block and temptation for all educated contemporaries of the two writers, for all those who sought faith. The merciless war that the secular world, exploiting knowledge, science and rationality as the fundamental principle of life, declared on the Gospel, Christ and the Church - this war was a challenge for everyone who was destined to be born in the 19th century.
Now I would like to say a little about different methods- methods of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. This difference in their methods is, from my point of view, a fairly clear illustration of what was said above, and this difference in methods is both creative and, one might say, spiritual. Here I use the word “method” in a very broad sense: it is an artistic method, and spiritual attitudes, and everything connected with it.
Tolstoy's method is the identification of the “instinct of the Divine” in living beings. What this is can be seen from the following quote, that is, from an entry made by Tolstoy in his diary in 1865:
“Yesterday I saw a crushed dog’s footprint in the snow on an unsold human footprint. Why is her fulcrum small? So that she does not eat all the hares, but exactly as many as necessary. This is the wisdom of God. But this is not wisdom, not intelligence, this is the instinct of the Divine. We have this instinct in us.”
So, what does Tolstoy want to tell us? Every person has an innate instinct, which, in particular, gives him an idea of \u200b\u200bGod. But not only about God. For example, this instinct gives commander Kutuzov in the novel “War and Peace” a way not to disturb the natural course of events and wait, so to speak, for the natural end, when the enemy, that is, the French, Napoleon, is defeated not with the help of some special military tricks and strategic plans, but simply because this is the logic of war. This instinct is as natural as the scent of a dog or the flight of a bee in search of pollen.
Now we understand why Dmitry Merezhkovsky called Tolstoy “the secret seer of the flesh.” The fact is that for Tolstoy there are no secrets in this earthly world. He knows what a horse is thinking about, how a dog steps in the snow, where and why bees fly, and exactly how many flowers they should land on. But it is important that this is always an earthly perspective, it is always a spiritual horizontal. Tolstoy's thought, as a rule, never rises to the sky, does not strive for the mountain, Tolstoy is not interested in questions about the immortality of the soul, about resurrection. Tolstoy's thought is tied precisely to the earth. And the same Merezhkovsky called Dostoevsky “a seer of the spirit.” Why? Because, according to Dostoevsky, human nature is based on other worlds. “Other worlds” is an expression of the elder Zosima from Dostoevsky’s last novel “The Brothers Karamazov”. What are these other worlds? Elder Zosima says that the human “I” does not fit into the earthly order of things, but is looking for something other than the earth, “to which it also belongs.” There is only one highest idea on earth - the idea of the immortality of the human soul. All other higher human ideas flow from this one. If this idea is so significant for man, for his existence, then immortality is the normal state of man and all humanity. The immortality of the human soul, from Dostoevsky’s point of view, undoubtedly exists. That is why Dostoevsky himself defined the essence of his method (both the artistic method and the spiritual one) with the following expression: “realism in the highest sense.” This is a very important wording. What does it mean? The fact is that the method of realism itself, of course, was very widespread in the 19th century and beyond; realism is an attempt to depict reality as it appears to us, with all its intricacies, with all the dirt, and so on and so forth.
So, Dostoevsky claims that in this sense, realism does not depict reality, it simply copies it. Because behind this lining that we see and which appears in writers, in the works of writers, there is some religious underlying basis, one might say an evangelical underlying basis. Dostoevsky's method is to reveal this evangelical underlying basis. That is why in Dostoevsky’s novels very often a certain gospel episode is key. For example, in the novel “Crime and Punishment,” the turning point is Sonya Marmeladova’s reading to Raskolnikov of the story of the resurrection of Lazarus. Let me remind you that the resurrection of Lazarus is one of the main, key episodes of the Gospel of John, the fourth Gospel, which says that Christ raises a four-day-old dead man, that is, according to all the laws of human life and human logic, this a person can no longer be resurrected. But Christ resurrects him, and the resurrection of Lazarus becomes a prototype of the resurrection of Christ himself. And in the novel “The Brothers Karamazov”, such an episode that is very important for understanding the plot of the novel and Dostoevsky’s plan is the chapter “Cana of Galilee”. Cana of Galilee is also an episode taken from the Gospel of John, from the second chapter, where it is said that Christ performs his first miracle: he turns simple water into very tasty wine. And this miracle, firstly, is the first miracle performed by Christ, as the Evangelist John describes it. And secondly, this is also a very important prototype from the point of view of the logic of the Gospel. This is a prototype of the Savior’s suffering, an indication of his blood, which will become redemptive for all humanity, and it is also an indication of future communion, the sacrament of the Eucharist. Both of these passages - the resurrection of Lazarus and Cana of Galilee - are very mystical episodes. Dostoevsky says that realism in the highest sense is the revelation of this evangelical thought in real life.
The outstanding Russian theologian and philosopher of the 20th century Sergei Bulgakov, later Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov, once noted that both writers, visiting Optina Pustyn, saw, in essence, the same thing with the most famous Optina elder Ambrose: they both saw a crowd people who came from all over Russia. But one of them, namely Tolstoy, painted a gloomy, sad, cold picture, without love and compassion and somewhat hopeless. Well, for example, main character Tolstoy's story "Father Sergius", a priest, commits a grave sin and leaves his ministry. And Dostoevsky paints a bright, joyful, and in some ways even cheerful picture. Here I mean the chapter “Believing Women” in the novel “The Brothers Karamazov”. In this novel, Elder Amvrosy Optinsky became one of the prototypes of Father Zosima. But, of course, both writers were involved in the mystery of God's world. That’s why Dostoevsky exclaimed “It’s not that, it’s not that!” He was searching with Tolstoy for where That. That is why Tolstoy cried about the death of Dostoevsky, a person so dear to him.
I want to end the lecture with the words of the wonderful Russian philosopher Vasily Rozanov, which he said about the three giants of the 19th century - Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Leontiev Konstantin Leontyev(1831-1891) - Russian thinker, writer; author of the treatise “Byzantineism and Slavism”, articles “On the novels of Count Tolstoy”, “Dostoevsky on the Russian nobility”. From 1880 he lived in Optina Hermitage, where he met Tolstoy. At the end of his life he took monastic vows.. I will quote this excerpt from one of Rozanov’s articles:
“... Leontyev parted ways with Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, like their gloomy and unrecognized brother, a brother of a pure heart and great mind. But he is precisely from their category. So Cook discovered Australia, Columbus - America, and although they sailed according to the point of different compass readings, the history of both of them is described in the same chapter: “great navigators.” The essence of this “great voyage” lies in immersion in the mental ocean, in surrendering oneself, to the last fiber, to misadventures, to danger and personal misfortune, to the wonders of its depths and remoteness. All three of them, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Leontiev, did not like the shore, they were bored on the shore. The shore is us, our reality, the “Vronskys.”
Both, each in their own way, spent their entire lives searching for truth.
I would like to illuminate the issue of the relationship between secular and spiritual education through the prism of the creativity and phenomenon of religious faith of two outstanding representatives of Russian classical literature: writers F. M. Dostoevsky and L. N. Tolstoy, who celebrated his 185th birthday last year.
Since the study of literature is included in the compulsory curriculum of secondary schools, it is very important from what angle a particular topic is presented. After all, there is no doubt that the artistic heritage and religious and philosophical worldview of these two authors had in their time and continue to have a significant influence on the spiritual formation of the individual.
In search of truth
Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were contemporaries living in the same country. They knew about each other, but never met. However, both, each in their own way, spent their entire lives searching for truth. Tolstoy’s religious quests led to the fact that he, according to the apt remark of the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, K. Pobedonostsev, became “a fanatic of his own teaching,” the creator of another false Christian heresy. The works of F. M. Dostoevsky still help to comprehend the main secrets of the existence of God and man. In my life I have met many people who do not like to read Dostoevsky. This is understandable: too much undisguised, frank, sometimes quite painful truth about a person is revealed to us in his novels. And this truth is not only impressive, it makes us think deeply about the most important question that each of us must decide for ourselves, positively or negatively. “The main question with which I have been tormented consciously and unconsciously all my life is the existence of God...” – Dostoevsky would write as a mature man. It may seem strange, but in the last month before his death, according to the recollections of eyewitnesses, the genius of world literature L. Tolstoy reread Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Wasn’t the classic looking for an answer in the works of another?
Tolstoy regretted that he was never able to meet Dostoevsky, because he considered him perhaps the only serious author in Russian literature with whom he would really like to talk about faith and God. Not particularly appreciating Fyodor Mikhailovich as a writer, Leo Tolstoy saw in him a religious thinker capable of significantly influencing the mind and soul of a person through his works.
Dostoevsky’s daughter, in her memoirs, cites the story of the then Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, who wished to attend the reading of the Psalter for the deceased writer in the Church of the Holy Spirit of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. After spending part of the night in the church, the Metropolitan watched the students, who, on their knees, all the time took turns reading psalms at the tomb of the late Dostoevsky. “I have never heard such reading of psalms! - he recalls. “The students read them with voices trembling with excitement, putting their souls into every word they uttered. What kind of magical power did Dostoevsky possess to turn them back to God like that?” Researcher of Dostoevsky’s work Tatyana Kasatkina writes that “...according to the testimony of many Orthodox priests, in the 70s of the 20th century, when the third generation of atheists was growing up in Russia, and their grandchildren were raised by grandmothers - former Komsomol members, and it seemed that young people were completely lost to the Church , suddenly young people in large numbers began to be baptized and join the church. When the priests asked them, “What brought you to church?” - many answered: “I read Dostoevsky.” That is why in Soviet time literary critics did not favor the author of The Brothers Karamazov and his works were not very willingly included in the school curriculum. And if they were included, then the emphasis was more on the rebellious tendencies of Raskolnikov and Ivan Karamazov, and not on the Christian virtues of Elder Zosima.
Why does it happen that the works of one lead people to God, and the works of another lead people away from Him?
Creative dominants
The creative dominants of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are different. That is why the result is different. Tolstoy's religious and philosophical approach is rational, Dostoevsky's is irrational. The author of War and Peace lived his whole life with a proud desire to explain everything in his own way; author of The Brothers Karamazov - a thirst for faith. Back in 1855, at the age of 26, Leo Tolstoy wrote in his diary: “The conversation about the divine and faith brought me to a great, enormous thought, the implementation of which I feel capable of devoting my life to. This thought is the foundation of a new religion, corresponding to the development of humanity, the religion of Christ, but purified from faith and mystery, a practical religion that does not promise future bliss, but gives bliss on earth.” That is why one saw in Christ only an ideologist and teacher, and the other saw the Truth: “...If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and it really were that the truth is outside of Christ, then I would rather remain with Christ than with the truth.” . This philosophical credo of Dostoevsky found its confirmation and development in his literary works.
Tolstoy's rational “religion without faith” found its development in the ideology of Theosophy and the modern New Age movement, where everything is mainly built on pantheistic monism. Dostoevsky was always attracted by the sincere faith in Christ, which he saw among the simple Russian people. Tolstoy believed that people did not understand the Gospel and Christianity as they should. By the way, this approach of Tolstoy is very prophetically depicted in many episodes of some of Dostoevsky’s novels. The well-known hero Alyosha Karamazov conveys to Kolya Krasotkin the opinion of a German who lived in Russia: “Show a Russian schoolchild a map of the starry sky, which he had no idea about until now, and tomorrow he will return this entire map corrected.” “No knowledge and selfless conceit - that’s what the German wanted to say about the Russian schoolboy,” says Alyosha. Against the background of such a “revision of the universe,” the self-confident author of “A Study of Dogmatic Theology,” Leo Tolstoy, really looks like a schoolboy. In 1860, Tolstoy came up with the idea of writing a “materialistic Gospel” (a distant prototype of the code of the builder of communism). Many years later, he would realize his intention by creating his own translation of the New Testament, which, however, would not make an impression even on the followers of the Tolstoyan heresy. There was no one willing to delve into the materialistic ravings of the great genius.
Another hero of Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons” is the atheist Stepan Verkhovensky, who, like Leo Tolstoy, for the sake of a “great idea”, leaving a comfortable life, embarks on his last wandering, also obsessed with the thought of “presenting his Gospel to the people.” The answer to the question of how the revision of the gospel truths and Christian values might end can again be found in the works of Dostoevsky. He is interested not so much in life in its sensory-tangible manifestations (although partly this too), but in the metaphysics of life. Here the writer does not strive for external verisimilitude: for him, the “ultimate truth” is more important.
The idea “if there is no God, then everything is permitted” is not new in the novels of Dostoevsky, who does not imagine morality outside of Christ, outside of religious consciousness. However, one of the heroes of the novel “Demons” goes to its logical conclusion in this idea, asserting what none of the consistent atheists dared to do: “If there is no God, then I am God myself!” Using evangelical symbolism, the hero of the novel Kirillov seems to make just a formal rearrangement of parts of the word, but it contains the core of his idea: “He will come, and his name is Man-God.”
Scripture tells us about the God-man - Jesus Christ. And we are deified in Him to the extent that we are faithful and follow Him. But here it is not the eternal God who acquires human flesh, but, on the contrary, having rejected Christ, the “old false God,” who is “the pain of the fear of death,” man himself becomes an omnipotent and absolutely free God. It is then that everyone will know that “they are good” because they are free, and when everyone becomes happy, the world will be “completed”, and “there will be no more time”, and the person will even be reborn physically: “Now a person is not yet that person. There will be a new person, happy and proud.”
But the creation of not only a new person, but also a whole new, chosen race with superpowers is one of the main tasks of modern occult and near-occult teachings (suffice it to recall Hitler’s organization “Ananerbe” with its attempts to penetrate Shambhala to obtain sacred knowledge and super-destructive weapons).
It should be noted that this idea of Kirillov (one of the heroes of the novel “Demons”) turned out to be one of the most attractive and fruitful for the development of philosophical literature and philosophical thought of the late 19th – early 20th centuries. F. Nietzsche also used it in his own way, the writer A. Camus largely based his version of existentialism on it, and even in the early works of M. Gorky, an uncompromising ideological opponent of Dostoevsky, Kirill’s programmatic ideas about the new, free, happy and Proud Man (especially symptomatic is the coincidence of the epithets “new man”, “happy and proud man” in Kirillov and “Man - that sounds proud” in M. Gorky). So that the last comparison does not look far-fetched, we should also cite V. G. Korolenko’s review of Gorky’s poem “Man”: “Mr. Gorky’s man, as far as one can discern his features, is precisely the Nietzschean “superman”; Here he goes “free, proud, far ahead of people... he is higher than life...”
It is no coincidence that the novel is called “Demons.” All these Verkhovenskys, Kirillovs, Shigalevs (the heroes of the novel) are trying to “arrange” future happiness for people, and no one asks the people themselves whether they need this very “happiness”? After all, indeed, people are just “material”, “a trembling creature”, and they “have the right”. Here it is appropriate to recall the slogan nailed to the gates of the Gulag: “Let us drive humanity into happiness with the iron fist of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Tormented by God
Through the mouth of one of his negative heroes, Dostoevsky says: “...God has tormented me all my life.” This painful question of “the existence or non-existence of God” is obvious to many, for if He does not exist, then “everything will be allowed to man.” And now demons enter the Russian people. The writer’s prophecy sounded long before 1917. This prophecy reeked of tragedy. After all, evil in any of its forms is life in emptiness, it is an imitation of life, a counterfeit of it. It's like shavings curled around emptiness. After all, evil is not existential, it has no real nature, it is only the other side of truth and truth. The devil can only be an imitator of life, love and happiness. After all, true happiness is participation, the coincidence of parts: my part and God’s part; only then is a person truly happy. It is in the words of the prayer that the secret of such participation is contained: “Thy will be done.”
The secret of false happiness is contained in the proud: “Not Your will, but mine be done.” Therefore, the devil can only be an imitator of life, for evil is a paradoxical existence in the non-existent, in what in the Jewish tradition is called “Malchut”. Evil therefore arises as we move away from God. Just as going into the shadows no longer provides an excess of light and warmth, and going into the basement completely hides this light from us, so moving away from the Creator increases sin in us and at the same time makes us thirst for genuine truth and light.
The face of Stavrogin, the central character of “Demons,” not only resembled a mask, but, in essence, was a mask. The right word here is “personality.” Stavrogin himself is not there, because he is possessed by the spirit of non-existence, and he himself knows that he does not exist, and hence all his torment, all the strangeness of his behavior, these surprises and eccentricities, with which he seems to want to dissuade himself of his non-existence, as well as that the death that he inevitably and inexorably brings to the creatures associated with him. A “legion” lives in it. How is such a rape of the free human spirit, the image and likeness of God, possible? What is this obsession, this black grace of demon possession? Doesn’t this question come into contact with another question, namely, how the healing, saving, regenerating and liberating grace of God works; How is redemption and salvation possible? And here we come to the deepest mystery in the relationship between God and man: Satan, who is the monkey of God, the plagiarist and the thief, sows his black grace, binding and paralyzing the human personality, which only Christ frees. “And when they came to Jesus, they found a man from whom the demons had gone out, and sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind” (Luke 8:35).
Leo Tolstoy, too, was “tormented by God” all his life, like Dostoevsky’s heroes. But Christ as God and Savior was never born in his heart. One Western theologian said wonderful words about this: “Christ could have been born as many times as he wanted anywhere on our planet. But if He is not born one day in your heart, then you are lost.” This human pride - to become a god besides God - is a substitution of deification for mankind. “The beginning of pride is the removal of a person from the Lord and the retreat of his heart from his Creator; for the beginning of sin is pride” (Sir. 10:14). In essence, pride is the desire, conscious or unconscious, to become a god besides God by showing selfishness.
Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk writes: “What evil behavior we notice in cattle and beasts, the same exists in man, unregenerate and unrenewed by the grace of God. We see pride in cattle: it wants to devour food, greedily grabs it and devours it, other cattle do not allow it and drive it away; the same is true in man. He himself does not tolerate offense, but he offends others; He himself does not tolerate contempt, but he despises others; he doesn’t want to hear slander about himself, but he slanders others; does not want his property to be stolen, but he himself steals someone else’s... In a word, he wants to be in every prosperity and avoids misfortune, but he neglects others, like himself. This is bestial and vile pride!”
Saint Dmitry of Rostov echoes him: “Do not boast yourself and do not accept praise from others with pleasure, so as not to accept reward for your good deeds with human praise. As the prophet Isaiah says: “Your leaders lead you astray and corrupt the way of your paths.” For from praise comes self-love; from self-love - pride and arrogance, and then separation from God. It is better to do nothing glorious in the world than to be immensely proud when you have done it. For the Pharisee, who did something glorious and boasted, perished by heaping up; The publican, who had done nothing good, humbly escaped. For one, his good deeds became a pit from praise, while the other was pulled out of the pit through humility; for it is said that the publican “went justified into his house...ˮ (Luke 18:14).”
Tolstoy's graceless humanism (that is, religion purified from faith in God) lays, according to Dostoevsky's observation, the foundations for the inevitable depravity of man and society, since the criterion of truth is transferred from the sacred sphere to the area of human self-will. Therefore, there can be no unity of Truth, as well as moral unity, under the dominance of such a system. “And without faith it is impossible to please God; therefore, everyone who comes to God must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him.”
Dostoevsky therefore rejects such abstract humanism and writes: “The Russian people are entirely in Orthodoxy and in its idea. There is nothing more in him and he has - and there is no need, because Orthodoxy is everything. Orthodoxy is the Church, and the Church is the crown of the building and is forever... He who does not understand Orthodoxy will never understand anything about the people. Moreover, he cannot even love the Russian people, but will love them only as he would like to see them.”
In contrast to Tolstoy’s tossing and turning, it was love for Christ that made Dostoevsky realize and feel that the fullness of Christ’s truth is associated solely with Orthodoxy. This is a Slavophile idea: only one who owns its fullness can unite everyone in the Truth. Therefore, the Slavic idea, according to Dostoevsky, is: “The great idea of Christ, there is no higher. Let us meet Europe in Christ." The Savior Himself said: “You are the light of the world; you are the salt of the earth. If the salt loses its strength, what will you do to make it salty…” Such a salt that salts everything in the recording of Dostoevsky’s thoughts is precisely the idea of Orthodoxy. He writes: “Our purpose is to be a friend of nations. By serving them, we are the most Russian... We bring Orthodoxy to Europe.” (It is enough to recall the contribution of Russian emigration to the work of the Orthodox mission, which is associated with the names of Archpriests John Meyendorff, Georgy Florovsky, Sergius Bulgakov, Vasily Zenkovsky, Vladimir Lossky, I. Ilyin, N. Berdyaev, etc.).
The writer ends his diary this way: “Slavophiles lead to true freedom, reconciling. Russian all-humanity is our idea.” And the essence of freedom is not rebellion against God, because the first revolutionary was the devil, who rebelled against God; In a similar way, Tolstoy raised a protest against the royal world order, becoming overnight the “mirror of the Russian revolution.” Whereas about Dostoevsky it should be noted that the Gospel revealed to him the secret of man, testified that man is not a monkey or a holy angel, but the image of God, which in its original God-given nature is good, pure and beautiful, but due to sin has been deeply distorted, and the earth “thorns and thistles” began to grow in his heart. That is why the human state, which is now called natural, is in reality sick, distorted, in it the seeds of good and the chaff of evil are simultaneously present and mixed together. It is no coincidence that all of Dostoevsky’s work is about suffering. All of his work is a theodicy: the justification of God in the face of evil. It is suffering that burns out the tares of evil in a person: “Through great sorrows one must enter the Kingdom of Heaven”; “Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many will go there... Strive to enter through the strait gate, for the strait gate and narrow is the way that leads to eternal life,” Scripture testifies.
The godless pursuit of happiness is misfortune and the death of the soul. After all, true happiness is the desire to learn how to make others happy: “We have nothing, but we enrich everyone,” says the apostle. And you say that “... you are rich, have become rich and have no need for anything; but you do not know that you are wretched and pitiful and naked and poor and blind...” (Rev. 3:17).
Suffering, through which sin is eliminated, cleanses the soul and gives true happiness to its owner. It should be remembered that temporary earthly happiness, if it does not grow into eternity, cannot satisfy a person. The paradox is that the criteria for spiritual happiness are acquired by self-restraint of earthly pleasures and joys.
Not by overthrowing state foundations and institutions, Dostoevsky is looking for new “horizons of truth” in the life of mankind, but by narrating one of the characteristic episodes in the novel “Crime and Punishment.” This episode is the semantic and energetic hub of the writer’s entire work. Where Sonya Marmeladova reads to Raskolnikov, at his request, the Gospel episode of the resurrection of Lazarus - this gives a powerful cleansing discharge to the human soul. Without faith, resurrection is impossible, because the Savior Himself said what Raskolnikov heard in Sonya’s reading: “I am the resurrection and the life; He who believes in Me, even if he dies, will live..." (John 11:25). The resurrection of Lazarus is the greatest miracle performed by the Savior in His earthly life. And such a miracle was possible only for God, and not for man. Disbelief in the authenticity of this event is disbelief in the omnipotence of God.
The murder of the old woman turned into Raskolnikov’s suicide, as he himself says: “I didn’t kill the old woman - I killed myself.” Allowing yourself to bleed out of conscience is the fatal limit of choice. Everything else is just a consequence. For internal readiness for sin is already sin. Sin always begins with a pretext, which is essentially the starting point of sin. That is, a pretext is always the source of an illness, and an act is only a consequence. Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk wrote: “Satan plunges us into vanity, so that we seek our own glory, and not God’s.” Therefore, at all times it sounds, without stopping: “You will be like gods...” To establish your selfhood is an unquenchable thirst, and this thirst can never be quenched in the godless space of humanism (which is what Tolstoy was so wrong about!). Lazarus cannot resurrect himself; a person cannot overcome his powerlessness: “Without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).
Not Tolstoy’s creation of “his own religion”, free from faith, but the churching of all humanity - this is Dostoevsky’s main idea. However, there is a force that prevents this - Catholicism, which is based on three components: miracle, mystery and authority. Catholic papocaesarism is an attempt by the church to rely on the sword of state, where political ideas and worldly preferences become priorities. The Orthodox Saint Theophan the Recluse said this about this: “The more addictions, the smaller the circle of freedom.” Being seduced, a person dreams of himself, as if enjoying complete freedom. The bonds of this captive are an addiction to non-spiritual persons, things, ideas, which are painful to part with. But true freedom is inseparable from the truth, since the latter frees you from sin: “Know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32).
For communist ideologists, whose arrival was essentially sanctioned by Tolstoy, the concept of freedom is rooted not in the word of the Gospel, but in the story of the fall of man (the novel “Demons”), who picks the fruits from the forbidden tree in order to “become God himself.” The proud man opposes freedom as obedience to God's will with the freedom of revolutionary initiative (the godless International). The struggle between these two freedoms represents the main problem of all humanity: “The devil fights with God, and the battlefield is human hearts” (Dostoevsky).
The writer, through the ugliness of revolutionary ideas, strives to gain insight into the mountainous Truth that will save the world. Understanding Beauty and the very idea of saving the world with Beauty is impossible without revealing the nature of this Beauty. Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev wrote: “Throughout his entire life, Dostoevsky carried an exceptional, unique feeling of Christ, a kind of frenzied love for His Face. In the name of Christ, out of endless love for Christ, Dostoevsky broke with the humanistic world of which Belinsky was the prophet. Dostoevsky’s faith in Christ passed through the crucible of doubt and was tempered in fire.”
“Beauty will save the world” - these words belong to F. M. Dostoevsky.
Later the poet Balmont will write:
There is only one Beauty in the world,
Love, sadness, renunciation,
And voluntary torment
Christ crucified for us.
On the contrary, L. Tolstoy came to deny the Divine nature of Christ the Savior. He initially rejects faith and the mystery of His Resurrection as the basis of his new religion invented by him - and therefore lowers the hope for future bliss from heaven to earth. His faith is pragmatic - the establishment of the Kingdom of freedom here on earth, “in justice.” The idea of immortality is not needed in this case, because for the writer, immortality is us in generations. The commandments now do not carry any sacred meaning, because Christ Himself is only a man-philosopher who “successfully formulated his thoughts,” which explains His success. Tolstoyism, in essence, is the arrangement of the earthly kingdom on a rational basis through one’s own efforts. But human nature damaged by sin will not lead to harmony for all of humanity. This is now an axiom that does not require proof: “If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit,” as Scripture says. The communists seduced the Russian people and took them into this very “pit”. Being themselves slaves of sin, they decided to “bless” humanity with their delusional ideas - all this demonic army, led by the Lenins, Sverdlovs, Dzerzhinskys and other rabble, plunged humanity into bloody chaos, and did not lead them onto the path of freedom and love. How many maternal tears and curses fell on these monsters, and Heaven, obviously, heard these tears. So the unburied mausoleum corpse hangs between heaven and earth as God’s punishment as a reproach to all tribes, peoples and languages... And the ideologist of the “Kingdom of God on earth” Tolstoy himself died without parting words and funeral service, a hateful death, buried not even in a cemetery, but in grove, without a cross on the grave. Truly, God cannot be mocked!
Tolstoy’s indignation against civilization was expressed in the fact that he called for “simplification of life” - he began to wear bast shoes, a blouse, took up the plow, and gave up meat. This is how the master had fun from the many fats on his family estate... Why not act like a fool and play Tolstoy with a considerable estate, serfs, numerous household members, with his faithful wife Sofya Andreevna, with whom he had thirteen children; called for the destruction of all state institutions, but at the same time enjoyed all the benefits that these same institutions provided him...
Right of free choice
If Dostoevsky thought of happiness in a soteriological aspect (soteriology is the doctrine of salvation), then Tolstoy absolutizes the eudaimonic perception of the world (eudaimonism considers the meaning of life as good. But what is it?). Of course, Tolstoy is talented as an artist. But as a religious thinker, human pride hinders him.
In his Critique of Dogmatic Theology, he rejects the dogma of the Holy Trinity. The question of human freedom also became a stumbling block for the writer. He recognized it as impossible in the system of Orthodox dogma. The first thing that, in his opinion, hinders human freedom is the Providence of God. He writes: “The theologians have tied themselves a knot that cannot be untangled. Almighty, good God, Creator and Provider of man - and unhappy, evil and free man - two concepts that exclude each other.” If you look at it superficially, the writer is right: if human free will operates, then there is no place for Providence. And vice versa, if Providence dominates, you only need to obey it. Where then is freedom?
God gives us the right to free choice, and we choose. Prayer becomes a sign of our choice. In prayer, we express our consent to collaborate with God in the matter of our salvation and show our faith that everything He sends is good for us: “Thy will be done...” Thus, a person’s prayer and his participation in the Sacraments is a sign free acceptance of the Grace of God, a sign of collaboration with God in the implementation of the Sacraments. Here the believer seems to say: “Lord, I know that You can do this according to Your will regardless of me, but you want me to desire and accept the action of Your will, so I ask that Your will be done.” If a person does not pray, does not participate in the Sacraments, then this expresses his reluctance to Grace. And God does not perform the Sacraments against the will of man. Therefore, there are no contradictions here.
The writer's need for the common good is inextricably linked with the despotic pride of reason and the pride of virtue outside of God. Striving for unity in love, Tolstoy, contrary to his will and intention, paved the way for Bolshevism with the idea of “graceless holiness,” which saw its ally in the writer, calling him “the mirror of the Russian revolution.” This duality of consciousness of the “godless harmony of humanity” responded in the depths of his existence with a craving for non-existence. Going into “nothing” is, in essence, Tolstoy’s understanding of salvation. (Just as Bolshevism “went into nothingness,” into oblivion, rejecting the “living, precious and cornerstone,” which is Christ Himself).
Tolstoy’s “departure” from Yasnaya Polyana, his tossing and turning in the last days of his life, convulsive attempts to reconcile with the Church are fraught with providential meaning. They give a lesson to the whole world: denial of the Resurrection inevitably gives rise to a thirst for non-existence.
Professor Chernyshev V.M.
