Come in and sit down, dear reader, the table is already set. Our today's menu includes pies and pickles, oysters and roast beef, dumplings, pancakes and other dishes that appeared on the pages of Russian classical literature XIX. To paraphrase the famous saying of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, food in Russian classics can be safely called "more than food." And it’s not just about mouth-watering descriptions: often it was through “food” images and vocabulary that writers managed to convey subtle nuances meaning.

Shchi vs. Oysters: A duel of life philosophies

Russian literature owes the first truly appetizing lines to G.R. Derzhavin. Already in his ode “Felitsa”, he sings of “the glorious Westphalian ham” and, not without voluptuousness, is recognized through the lips of a lyrical hero: “I drink waffles with champagne and forget everything in the world”. In Praise of Rural Life, the poet goes even further and sets the key gastronomic dichotomy of Russian literature: refined overseas food versus traditional homemade food. He's drawing cozy picture a homemade landowner's dinner with the family with a pot of "hot, good cabbage soup", after which oysters and everything else "what the French feed us" seems tasteless.

Subsequently, this opposition appeared on the pages of many Russian classics, developing and deepening, but the essence remained the same: French cuisine carried the symbolism of secular brilliance, isolation from home and the desire for a “beautiful life”, while traditional Russian food personified nepotism, simplicity of morals and adherence to the "habits of dear old times."

This clash of two worlds is clearly manifested in "Eugene Onegin" by A.S. Pushkin: it’s hard to find two less similar meals than Yevgeny’s gourmet feast in a St. Petersburg restaurant and Tatyana’s name day at the Larins’ house. On one pole "bloody roast-beef", truffles, pineapple and expensive French wines, on the other - fat cake, roast, domestic Tsimlyansk champagne and tea with rum. Can characters with such different habits understand each other? Hardly. The dissimilarity of culinary traditions and attitudes towards everyday life emphasizes the incompatibility and mutual misunderstanding of our heroes even before Tatyana's final “no” sounds.

The dissimilarity of culinary traditions and attitudes towards everyday life emphasizes the incompatibility and mutual misunderstanding of our heroes even before Tatyana's final “no” sounds.

However, Pushkin is not a moralizer and does not condemn "everything French", paying tribute to each of the two worlds and describing them with the same observation and warmth.

No less expressive is the conflict between “simple” and “secular” food in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Stiva Oblonsky's sumptuous dinners with oysters and parmesan are contrasted with the simple meals of Levin, who loves cabbage soup and porridge and sometimes shares prison with peasants. Despite the fact that the author's sympathies are certainly on the side of folk cuisine, he paints Stiva's feasts with skill. However, the duality of the gastronomic universes in Anna Karenina serves not only to reveal the characters' personalities, it contains a much deeper symbolism. Attitude to food becomes a reflection of attitude to life and moral choice.

One of the through images of the novel is kalach, which has a metaphorical meaning of temptation. In a dialogue with Oblonsky, this image is clothed in words: Levin compares betrayal of his beloved wife to how a well-fed person steals a loaf, and Oblonsky objects, “Kalach sometimes smells so that you can’t resist.”

After reading this episode, the symbolic meaning of the scene from the beginning of the novel becomes clear, where Stiva Oblonsky, who recently cheated on his wife, eats a kalach with butter with pleasure and shakes off his crumbs from his chest (there is a parallel with a bitten forbidden fruit). Levin, a supporter of the “do not steal kalach” position, interacts with the ill-fated bakery product in a different way: before asking for Kitty’s hand in marriage, he orders a kalach in a tavern, but does not feel the desire to eat it and in the end ... spits it out.

Of course, this detail may indicate that in the excitement the hero lost all appetite, but the metaphorical interpretation cannot be discounted.

The "food" comparisons in the novel do not end there. The image of kalach is only one of the links in the unbreakable chain that binds the concepts of love and passion, hunger and gourmetism in Anna Karenina. “I am like a hungry person who was given food,” Anna says of her love for Vronsky. Experiencing Vronsky's cooling down, she remarks: "Yes, that taste is no longer in me for him." There is also a noticeable difference in perceptions: for her, love is the satisfaction of spiritual hunger, a vital necessity, and for him it is just a taste that can fade. In this respect, Anna turns out to be closer to Levin, who eats in order to “get full sooner,” and not to regale himself longer. At the end of the novel, Anna also loses her taste for food (and life) - she does not touch bread and cheese, and at the station her attention is attracted by dirty ice cream in an ice cream maker's tub and the boys' greedy glances at him. “We all want sweet, tasty things,” she thinks with disgust, and, of course, the meaning of this sentence is not only a statement of the universal love for sweets.

Pies with love Gogol

The theme of food and its correlation with love and passion is found in many works of the Russian classical literature XIX century. Chaste in portraying carnal passions, she was not as ascetic in regard to food pleasures. All the richness of tastes, colors, the whole range of pleasures associated with food are displayed in it, sometimes with voluptuous sensuality. This relationship is especially expressive in the works of N.V. Gogol.

Researchers have written a lot about the significance of food images in Gogol's work, primarily for revealing the characters' characters, but we want to focus our attention on the relationship between passion and gluttony. They so often go side by side in his books that one can derive the formula "love = food", and vice versa.

During further development events, the equality of love and food turns into a sum: the hero combines both pleasures, holding a dumpling in one hand, and embracing the mistress's "portly camp" with the other.

A vivid embodiment of this Gogol's axiom is a parody scene from the Sorochinskaya Fair, where the characters flirt with each other using gastronomic vocabulary against the background of an appetizingly laid table. In the course of the further development of events, the equality of love and food turns into a sum: the hero combines both pleasures, holding a dumpling in one hand, and hugging the “burly camp” of the hostess with the other.

But the most romantic and even lyrical gluttony is described by Gogol in The Old World Landowners. The ironic ode to the happy life together of Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna is an ode to mutual care, expressed primarily in the desire to feed deliciously. Pulcheria Ivanovna constantly regales her beloved husband with pies, dumplings, homemade pickles, fruits and other "products of old delicious cuisine." The world outside the fence of the garden does not exist for them, the old people have no children, and, closed on each other, they strive to fill the life of their beloved creature with pleasures. In fact, that's all they have left. Love is melted into food, and judging by its quantity, this feeling is huge. Food becomes the only opportunity to create something from their mutual love, and this care turns into self-realization, into the meaning of life.

It is not for nothing that Pulcheria Ivanovna’s first “everyday” request to the housekeeper on her deathbed is “so that what he [Afanasy Ivanovich] loves is cooked in the kitchen”, and the confused husband, not knowing how to help the dying old woman, offers her “something to eat” . And, destroying their happy food cycle for the first time, she doesn't respond to it and dies. But the memory of her is also perceived by the widower through the prism of food: seeing the little ones with sour cream once beloved by the deceased, Afanasy Ivanovich, despite all attempts to restrain himself, cries bitterly and inconsolably. It is noteworthy that the premonition of death comes to the old man precisely in the garden, in which the spouses loved to walk together and whose amazing fertility evokes clear associations with the Garden of Eden.

The parallel "love-food" is clearly manifested in other works of Russian literature. Returning to Anna Karenina, let us recall the huge pear that Stiva Oblonsky brings to his wife (and on the same day he, happy and careless, will be exposed as a traitor). Equally indicative is a touching moment from A.N. Tolstoy, where Telegin awkwardly tries to take care of Dasha on their first meeting by choosing the most "delicate" sandwich for her and offering caramels from his pocket. “Just my favorite caramels,” the girl replies, trying to please him - and on a metaphorical level accepts his courtship, sympathy and, ultimately, Telegin himself.

Gastronomic paradise or killer pancakes

Another major novel in which the symbolism of food is infinitely important is Oblomov by I.A. Goncharova. Food in it also becomes synonymous with love. The ideal image of Oblomovka in the imagination of Ilya Ilyich is a heavenly picture woven from love and sleep. The fullness of life is embodied in a dinner table bursting with food, and it is not surprising that Oblomov understands the “food” love language of the troublesome hostess Agafya Timofeevna, who treats him with various delicacies, rather than the beautiful Olga’s attempts to awaken him to life.

Even Pshenitsyna's surname is "talking", and in the novel her image now and then echoes with the theme of baking. Either Oblomov will look at her as if she were a “hot cheesecake”, then the hostess treats the master with a pie that is “no worse than Oblomov’s”.

Moreover, each time this process of treats is emphatically corporal and sensual: Agafia's bare hand sticks out from behind the curtain with a plate on which a freshly baked pie is smoking.

The pleasure of eating is combined with the eroticism of a naked body - and plunges the unfortunate Ilya Ilyich deeper and deeper into the abyss of sleepy earthiness. Oblomov's ailment - "thickening of the heart" - is also associated with the theme of gluttony, and it is also significant that he, realizing that "to overfill the stomach every day is a kind of gradual suicide", still cannot stop. Here the theme of food takes on another dimension: its correlation with the theme of absorption and death. There are plenty of associative examples in the novel: an afternoon nap in Oblomovka, called by the author "a true likeness of death"; the mention of country geese, which are suspended motionless so that they swim in fat; the master’s thoughts about Agafya’s “unyielding” hands, which “will feed, drink, dress and shoe and put them to sleep, and at death they will close<…>eyes".

Even more interesting is the relationship between food and death played out in the novel by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "Lord Golovlev". Yudushka Golovlev, a lover of diminutive endings and conversations over tea, a strict zealot of "lunches" and "panikhidas" is more than once called "empty-womb" in the book. This definition can be attributed both to the inner emptiness of the hero, and to his insatiable hunger for material wealth. This hunger, a sense of need and his stinginess gradually envelops the entire lordly estate, as Porfiry Vladimirovich seizes more and more new possessions.

The trio "hunger-taste-satiety" runs through the entire text of the novel. Judas' long-winded rebukes are compared to "a stone served to a hungry man", and the author himself wonders if the hero is aware "that this is a stone, not bread", but in any case, "he had nothing else." At the end of the novel, Golovlevo appears to Anninka's imagination as "death itself, vicious, hollow," as a place where they feed on rotten corned beef and reproach with every extra piece.

The pleasure of eating is combined with the eroticism of a naked body - and plunges the unfortunate Ilya Ilyich deeper and deeper into the abyss of sleepy earthiness.

The theme of rotting and decomposition becomes a natural "bridge" between the theme of food and death, and the story from the beginning of the book about how an Englishman ate a dead cat on a dare is naturally woven into this metaphorical series.

Another food parallel - "bittersweet" - often appears in the speeches of Judas. As a rule, in relation to the “bitter”, but well-deserved parental words and the desire for “sweet”, which must be restrained. The only one whom Golovlev does not refuse sweets for the time being is his mother, whom her son has "both warm and satisfying." The conflict with the brothers is also often conveyed through “food” images, starting from childhood, when Yudushka hid an apple in his closet, and brother Volodya found it and ate it, and continues with a comparison of disinherited children with “thrown pieces”. The separation of these "pieces" deepens the theme of fragmentation, decomposition, division of the whole into parts and their absorption.

It is noteworthy that the pie, a symbol of family unity and abundance, so often mentioned in many Russian works, rarely appears in The Golovlev Gentlemen. However, the context of its appearance is always "speaking". In the course of the action, there is a mention twice that a mother does not give a cake to her children, whom she keeps starving - both when they were small and when they grew up. The unloved eldest son Styopka the Stupid climbed into the kitchen as a child and stole a pie there (an illustrative metaphor for getting love at all costs), but, becoming an adult, he realized the hopelessness of his efforts. Arriving to visit his mother, he learns that, among other things, a raspberry pie with cream is expected for dinner, and bitterly summarizes: “it will rot, but<мне>will not give".

The only cake, the eating of which is described personally in the novel, is a funeral one, combining the symbolism of both food and death.

Food and death are directly connected in a small but very expressive humoresque by A.P. Chekhov "About frailty". In it, the court adviser Semyon Petrovich Podtykin carefully prepares to eat pancakes: he pours them with oil, caviar, sour cream, covers them with fatty pieces of salted fish, and ... dies of apoplexy without having time to taste the treats. Was Podtykin's killer an absurd accident or, at least in part, an immoderate passion for food was to blame? When we say “passion,” we also mean the erotic connotation that now and then peeps through this sketch: at the sight of rich appetizers, the face of the court adviser “twistled with voluptuousness,” and the pancakes themselves were “chubby, like a merchant’s daughter’s shoulder.”

This is not the only mention by the writer of pancakes in the context of Thanatos. In the Shrovetide story "The Stupid Frenchman" Chekhov also refers to the theme of deadly (in every sense) gluttony. The visiting French clown Purkua witnesses the gluttony of a Russian reveler, and, watching how he orders more and more dishes for himself, he comes to the conclusion that he wants to commit suicide. The Frenchman decides to save the unfortunate and everything ends, as is often the case in the works of Anton Pavlovich, with embarrassment. The theme of gluttony, no longer in a “deadly” context, also appears in other stories and plays by Chekhov. Sometimes as a tragicomic opposition to the feelings of the characters (the famous "smelly sturgeon" in "The Lady with the Dog"), and sometimes as an object of almost sympathetic irony. The clearest example is the story "Siren", entirely dedicated to the invincible "food voluptuousness".

Sturgeon of the second freshness and Narzan from another life

From the image of death to the image of paradise (including the lost one) is just one step, and many writers (especially in the 20th century) interpreted food precisely as a reflection of the “lost paradise”. It is this feeling that is created when reading the novel “The Summer of the Lord” by I. Shmelev.

Children's joy of life, abundance and multicolor of the surrounding world, admiration for its every little thing - all this creates a feeling of an ideal world, which at the end of the book collapses before the reader's eyes along with the death of the protagonist's father.

But, until the fateful event happens, we are presented with an expressive picture of the lenten market, and the table set for various religious holidays, and children's delicacies.

In The Year of the Lord, food becomes a symbol of bliss, and it is based on certainty. The festive calendar is strictly observed in the family of the protagonist, and through this series of events, in the stream of strictly regulated time, he perceives the world. The change of traditional dishes on the table month after month makes the rhythm of life tangible and predictable. The stronger is the boy's encounter with grief when, in connection with deadly disease father, the traditional course of things is broken. And again, it is food that helps the author to demonstrate the tragic split of the children's universe into "before" and "after": the protodeacon, who was unction of the hero's dying father, trying to console the children, gives them a "wedding" candy. This inappropriateness of a festive treat at a funeral produces deep impression on a child and becomes the first harbinger of difficult life changes that await him later. In the later work of I. Shmelev "The Sun of the Dead" about difficult times civil war"hunger, and fear, and death" are described in a frighteningly tangible way. The word "satiety" and its derivatives are found in the text of the book only 2 times. (For comparison - the word "hunger" and its derivatives - 67 times). But this "summer" will forever remain in the memory of the lyrical hero tasty and cloudless.

The only cake, the eating of which is described personally in the novel, is a funeral one, combining the symbolism of both food and death.

Another writer whose attitude to food can no doubt be called “nostalgic” is M.A. Bulgakov. In the terrible years of the revolution, the subsequent “starvation” and the global social reorganization, the food culture also completely changed. The writer addressed a lot of evil irony on the pages of his novels and stories to the new world order, paying attention to gastronomic changes. How not to recall "second-fresh sturgeon" and Krakow sausage, venomous remarks about "third-day zanders" and "normal food" canteens. All these innovations are felt by the author as violations of the norm, the established rhythm of life, and the author, although not without self-irony, yearns for an irretrievable past.

This longing for the past is shared by his heroes: the intellectual Professor Preobrazhensky from “ dog heart”, who is trying to preserve the domestic order as it was before the revolution, Foka and Ambrose from The Master and Margarita, yearning for sterlet, sirloin, woodcock and cocotte eggs. However, the seal of doom already lies on the salmon, cut into the thinnest slices and caviar in a silver tub, overlaid with snow. “Eating” Preobrazhensky and “eating” Sharikov are incompatible, both on a semantic and purely phonetic level. Lost heaven floats away into the past and becomes unattainable. And when Bulgakov, with jokingly exaggerated delight, nostalgizes through the mouths of two gourmets about the dishes of past times and “narzan hissing in the throat,” barely audible tears sound in this hiss.

Love and death, satiety and all-consuming hunger, heavenly abundance or poison and rot - the theme of food is fraught with dozens, if not hundreds of possible interpretations. The attitude to eating affects both the bodily and spiritual aspects of the human personality, and it is their fusion and mutual enrichment that makes gastronomic images in literature so understandable and tangible. However, food has not only been included in literature for a long time - literature itself is often discussed with the help of culinary categories: “good taste”, “food for the mind”, “delicious” text. It remains only to avoid book fast food and enjoy the art of brilliant chefs of the word. ■

Natalia Makuni

Literature

1. Chekhov A.P. About frailty, 1886.
2. Saltykov-Shchedrin M.E. Lord Golovlevs, 1875-1880.
3. I. A. Goncharov. Collected Works in eight volumes. T. 4. M .: State publishing house of fiction, 1953.
4. Gogol N.V. Old world landlords. // Gogol N.V. Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. Mirgorod. Tales. Comedy "Inspector". - Alma-Ata: Zhazushi, 1984.
5. Tolstoy A.N. The Road to Calvary. 1921-1941.
6. Tolstoy L.N. Anna Karenina. // Tolstoy L.N. Anna Karenina: A novel in 8 hours. Moscow: Khudozh. Lit., 1985.
7. Pushkin A. S. "Eugene Onegin". // A. S. Pushkin. Selected works in 2 volumes. Vol. 2. Novels. Tales. M.: RIPOL CLASSIC, 1996.
8. Derzhavin G.R. Felitsa // G.R. Derzhavin. Poems. L.: Soviet writer, 1957.

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev (21.IX / 3.X.1873, Moscow - 24.VI.1950, Bussy-en-Otte, buried near Paris) made his debut as a prose writer in 1895, publishing in the journal " Russian wealth» story «At the mill». In 1897, his book of travel essays "On the Rocks of Valaam" was published, which was not successful with readers. To literary work he returned ten years later. His works of the 1900s were written on modern material, their hero is a “small” person (“Wahmister”, “Ivan Kuzmin”, “In a hurry”, “Disintegration”, “Citizen Ukleykin”).

Literary fame was brought to I. Shmelev by the story “The Man from the Restaurant”, published in 1911 in the XXXVI collection “Knowledge”, in which N.V. Gogol and "Poor people" F.M. Dostoevsky the theme of the poor and disenfranchised, "little" people, as well as the Znaniev orientation towards social conflicts and protests, towards the condemnation of the contented and well-fed. The narration of the waiter Yakov Skorokhodov about the prosperous visitors of the restaurant presents a social cross-section of the rich Russian estates. However, already in this story, I. Shmelev announced his interpretation of the traditional, well-established theme in Russian literature. He oriented the reader not to compassion for the “little” man according to Dostoevsky and not to his social opposition according to Gorky, but to the salvation of man, his spiritual rebirth through the mobilization of the inner forces given to him by the Lord. Skorokhodov is to some extent a Christian moralist, he consoles himself with the Higher Providence. The theme of the inner victory of a person, the concentration of his spiritual and physical capabilities as a result of the Orthodox worldview, declared by I. Shmelev in The Man from the Restaurant, dominates all his work.

The next step in creative destiny I. Shmeleva was associated with the "Book Publishing House of Writers in Moscow", with that circle of writers whom the critics united with the concept of "neorealism". Social themes, orientation towards an objective reflection of reality, eventfulness gave way to other, neorealistic tendencies, the author's vision of the world, the characters' impressions of what is happening, lyricism in the depiction of reality, plot incompleteness, etc. became priority. In Rosstany (1913), I. Shmelev paid maximum attention to everyday details, which not only served as an artistic background, but primarily expressed the emotional, subjective beginning of the story.

In the same period, I. Shmelev turned to another hero - to the patriarchal peasant. Already in his pre-revolutionary work, the concept of national character and in this regard, the theme of primordiality, Russianness (for example, the cycle "Severe Days", 1916), which, along with the theme of the rebirth of man, his overcoming earthly evil, becomes one of the main ones in the post-revolutionary work of the writer.

Like many intellectuals, the writer believed in the February Revolution and categorically rejected the October Revolution. Together with his family, he settled in Alushta. Here he created the story "The Inexhaustible Chalice", the cycle "To Siberia for the Liberated", "Spots", fairy tales. He still had hopes to overcome the devastation, the strength and consciousness of the owner, the restoration of the usual way of life. However, in the Crimea, he witnessed the tragedy of the thousands of Volunteer Army, the mass executions of the White Guards. In the same place, his son was shot by the Reds.

In the spring of 1922, I. Shmelev returned to Moscow, he managed to obtain permission to leave Russia, on November 20, together with his wife, he left his homeland. Shmelev settled in Berlin, then, from January 1923, in Paris. In Russia, he published 53 books of his works, their re-edition was an eight-volume collection of novels and short stories.

The revolution was perceived by Shmelev as a Russian apocalypse. In 1923, he wrote an autobiographical prose about the Crimea of ​​the time of the Bolsheviks "The Sun of the Dead", about the dying of the world once created by the Lord, the genre of which he designated as "epopee". Contemplating the death of the earthly paradise, the hero-narrator, surrounded by hungry Crimean living creatures, in his thoughts, like an Old Testament husband, turns to eternity - the scorching sun, sea, wind and finds comfort in God. The Lord strengthens his faith in the infinity of the world, in the eternal life of the soul, helps to maintain peace and will, not to be his own in that bestial, ancient, cave life, where cats are eaten, cows are stolen, libraries are confiscated, driven out of their own homes, where a handful of wheat is more expensive person and where "they go to kill."

Written in a parable manner, the chapter on the punitive mission of the Reds “Who Go to Kill” expresses the eschatological, apocalyptic theme of the “epopee”: time has turned back, to the cave ancestors, the devils are about to “begin to hit the walls, shake our house, dance on the roof”, and a lot of work was added to those “who go to kill” - “beyond the mountains, under the mountains, by the sea”, they got tired, “it was necessary to organize massacres, enter numbers for balance, sum up”, it was necessary to kill a lot, more than one hundred and twenty thousand .

The two characters in The Sun of the Dead - the narrator and the doctor - are arguing about history, time, death, and eternity. If the Crimea has become a “jubilant cemetery” with the uselessness of days, and if “freedom to kill came from Bela Kun himself,” then the clock, as the doctor notes, is strictly forbidden, and time has stopped for him, and he already smells of decay. The doctor ceases to believe in the immortality of the soul. He is sure that now a person's life fits between the "garbage heap" into which the Reds have turned the earth, and non-existence ("from the garbage heap to nothing"). The doctor perceives the new government in a providential way: the "hooligan" came and tore the veil from the "secrets".

In the doctor's personal life, the existence of a "garbage dump" was expressed in the death of his wife and the impossibility of burying her like a human being. She finds her last refuge in her own dowry - a closet in which apricot jam was once stored serves as a coffin. The doctor is ready to create a philosophy of real unreality, a religion of "non-existence of a garbage dump", in which a nightmarish tale becomes a reality and a Bakhchisaray Tatar, like Baba Yaga, salts and eats his wife. All over the Crimea, in three months, the doctor counted eight thousand carriages of human meat, the corpses of people who were shot without trial or investigation - that was "a contribution to the history of ... socialism."

The tragedy of the doctor is not only that the world is perishing, but also that his soul has lost faith, a state of peace and will. He conducts an experiment on himself and comes to the conclusion that hunger paralyzes the will. His death during a fire is like a punishment by hellfire for disbelief in God's help, the power of good and an immortal soul. He was rewarded according to his faith.

The doctor's opponent, the narrator, believes in the "bright end of life", in his eternal soul, its endless coexistence with the blue Crimean mountains. The concept of life by I. Shmelev is close to the philosophical theme of the infinity of being in the work of I. Bunin. The "Sun of the Dead" expresses the idea that underlies I. Bunin's 1925 philosophical essay "Night". The hero of the "epopee" argues: "When will these deaths end! There will be no end, all the ends are confused - the ends are the beginnings, life knows no ends, beginnings ... "The Lord rewards the hero for his faith - and the old Tatar sends him a gift: apples, flour, tobacco. The hero perceives this parcel as a message from heaven. It is important for Shmelev to convey the theme of righteousness to the reader: more than one narrator is faithful to God, the girl Lyalya believes in the resurrection of the dead, and the righteous still live by the sleeping Crimean Sea and their “life-giving spirit” is with them.

The symbol of the sun of the dead was given by Shmelev in accordance with the Orthodox faith. He defines as the dead life of those who are well-fed, prosperous, accept life according to the newspapers and are deaf to human grief, who have not loved their neighbor.

The author's focus on the themes of the struggle for the soul, spiritual overcoming of evil, retribution by faith, on the conflict of apocalyptic phenomena and the resurrection distinguishes the "epic" from those close to it in genre, in autobiographical material, in diary form, in an enhanced subjective lyrical beginning " cursed days» I. Bunin and A. Remizov's "Whirlwind Russia". However, critics of the Russian emigration singled out completely different motives in The Sun of the Dead and in the work of I. Shmelev, for the writer, in fact, they are no longer the main, secondary ones: the opinion was established about the influence of the emigrant period on his prose artistic world F.M. Dostoevsky with his themes of pain and suffering. So, G. Struve reduced the metaphysical meaning of the image of the doctor to a straightforward association with the heroes of Dostoevsky’s works: “The half-mad doctor Mikhail Vasilyevich in The Sun of the Dead, suffering from some speech incontinence, telling “amusing” stories, jumping from subject to subject and ending with burns himself in his dacha and his burnt remains are recognized by some special bandage, which he liked to talk about, as if he had come out of the pages of Dostoevsky, although there is not for a moment a doubt about the veracity and vitality of his image. G. P. Struve saw “Dostoevism” in Shmelev’s novels written later.

G. Adamovich in the book "Loneliness and Freedom", published in New York in 1955, also interpreted I. Shmelev's émigré work within the framework of the Dostoevsky tradition and reproached the writer for "Dostoevskyism", that is, for depicting only the atmosphere created by Dostoevsky , namely, pity, resentment, suffering, impotence and other things, while Dostoevsky's philosophy, Ivan Karamazov's doubts or Stavrogin's longing eluded him.

A different view on the work of I. Shmelev was expressed by the philosopher I. Ilyin. In a number of articles and the book "On Darkness and Enlightenment", published in Munich in 1959, he defined the main theme of the writer - overcoming suffering and sorrow, without which there is no history of Russia, through "spiritual burning", prayer, "the ascent of the soul to the true , all overpowering reality.

The idea that the people can defeat Bolshevism only with God formed the basis of I. Shmelev's journalism. In 1924, he wrote the article “The Soul of the Motherland”, in which he reproached the Russian pre-revolutionary intelligentsia for godlessness: it “scratched Nietzsche’s rapids and plunged into the Marxist quagmire”, it rejected the true God and made man a god; it stifled the conscience of the people, instilling in them the ideas of freedom, equality and fraternity; instead of God, she showed the people "malice, envy and - the collective." But the writer expressed the belief that there are still Russian people who "carry God in their souls, keep the soul of Russia in themselves." The first of them are “our hot youth”, “the violent blood of Russia, from the Pacific Don and the Kuban, is the Cossack strength”, they are “alive”. I. Shmelev was faithful to the monarchy, close to the ideas of the White Cause, one of the inspirers of which was I. Ilyin. In “little” people, former people, he first of all sought to show those who are able to dare in the name of God and the liberation of Russia: “And only then will all the blood and all the torment pay off; only with such daring!”

In the 1920s, I. Shmelev published collections of stories “About an old woman. New stories about Russia" (1927), "The Light of Reason. New stories about Russia" (1928), "Entry to Paris. Stories about Russia abroad "(1929); in 1931 the collection “Native. About our Russia. Memories".

The theme of the stories written in a fairy tale style, united by I. Shmelev in the collection “About an Old Woman”, is the tragedy of a “former” person who survived the revolution, lost his family, job, cut off from normal life, unnecessary to Soviet Russia, unprotected, but trying not only to survive , to overcome evil, but also to regain a devastated way of life. The heroine of the story "About one old woman" becomes a "bag-maker", "speculator", a getter of food for her starving grandchildren, she curses her son-expropriator because he "robbed and mocked".

In the “Letter of a Young Cossack”, in the form of a lamenting tale, a homeless Cossack who lost his homeland, found himself in emigration is displayed; he hears rumors about executions, executions and atheism in the Pacific Don. In the story, the tragedy of the “former” coexists with his belief that he won’t be “loitering about other people’s stocks” for long, which will help him and his parents on the Don Nikolai Ugodnik, the Most Holy Theotokos and the Savior. The folklore and ancient Russian book tradition of the people affected the vocabulary and syntax of writing, it is saturated with classical popular consciousness images: the horse has “silk fur” and “white legs”, the wind “whispered” to the hero, and “a black bird croaks, a white swan sharpens its claws”, “white hands cry with blood”, Quiet Don- “father”, the sun is “red”, the month is “clear”, etc. The story is written in the rhythm of lamentation: “Why are you silent, why don’t you speak, how are you lying in the ground? Al the Quiet Don doesn’t flow, and the wind doesn’t carry, doesn’t the flying bird scream? It can't be, my heart can't feel it,” etc. In the speech of the “former” person, there is that spiritual culture that gives him the strength to overcome evil.

The same disobedience of the individual, gaining strength to resist the new order, the desire to preserve their usual way of life despite the course of history is also expressed in the fate of the Crimeans - the romantic intellectual Ivan Stepanovich deceived by the revolution and the prudent Ivan (“Two Ivans”), and the Russian sailor Ivan Bebeshin, who understood that under the Soviets "Russian power cannot be seen" and "sons of bitches" - the revolutionaries deceived him ("Eagle"), and the "former" person Feognost Alexandrovich Melshaev, under the old government - a professor, and under the Soviet - a phantom, emanation, from which stinks of soup from vobliny eyes and sour lamb, turned into a "European" ("On Stumps").

From the theme of resisting evil, overcoming suffering with the power of the spirit, I. Shmelev in the 1930s logically moved on to his ideal - to the themes of Holy Russia, to Orthodox canons, and this choice contrasted his prose with Russian literature with its characteristic critical tendency.

Creating in 1930-1931 the autobiographical prose "Praying Man" and "Summer of the Lord" (1934-1944), the writer turned to the past of Russia. In the "Summer of the Lord" the metaphysical content and related themes of the aspiration of the soul and life of a Russian person to the Kingdom of Heaven, the Orthodox cyclical world order and national mentality connected with the motives of the labor cycle, the family way of the Zamoskvoretsky court of the "middle hand" of the Shmelev merchants, the life of Moscow in the eighties of the XIX century. The composition of the "Summer of the Lord" corresponds to the annual cycle of Orthodox holidays, which in turn is consistent with the history of Christianity. If in the "Sun of the Dead" it was about the destruction of the world, then in the "Summer of the Lord" - about its emergence from the birth of Christ and about eternal development. The boy Vanya and his mentor Gorkin do not just live their earthly life with its Annunciation, Easter, the feast of the Iberian Mother of God, the Trinity, the Transfiguration of the Lord, Christmas, Christmas time, Baptism, Shrovetide, they not only live according to the canon, according to which apples are removed on the Transfiguration of the Savior , and on the eve of Ivan the Lent they salt cucumbers, but they believe in the Lord and the infinity of life. This is the concept of being according to Shmelev.

Appearance new topic in the work of I. Shmelev caused a mixed reaction in the Russian diaspora. The national and even everyday accent, which the writer deliberately introduced into the religious theme, served as a pretext for G. Adamovich to reproach the writer. In Loneliness and Freedom, the critic expressed the opinion that the religious feeling of I. Shmelev is not free from the “conditionally national tone” associated with the way of life, the death of which for Shmelev is more significant, according to Adamovich, than the very “imperishable essence” of the world.

The opposite view was expressed by I. Ilyin, who noted in the everyday and metaphysical principles of I. Shmelev's prose not a contradiction, but a synthesis. I. Ilyin, reflecting on the unity in the Russian consciousness of two suns, “material”, otherwise - “planetary”, and “spiritual-religious”, wrote: “And now Shmelev shows us and the rest of the world how this series of two-solar rotation lay down on the Russian folk life of the common people, and how the Russian soul, building Russia for centuries, filled these periods of the year of the Lord with its work and its prayer. That's where this title "Summer of the Lord" comes from, meaning not so much art object how much the structure and rhythm of the figurative system borrowed from the two God's Suns.

Henri Troyatt, in his article about I. Shmelev, defined the non-national, general humanistic meaning of "The Summer of the Lord" - a work about the "calendar of conscience", about the "movement of the inner sun of the soul":

“Ivan Shmelev, without realizing it, went further than his goal. He wanted to be only a national writer, but became a world writer.”

In the history of literature, "Summer of the Lord" and "Praying Man" are perceived along with such works about the formation of a child's soul as "Childhood" and "Adolescence" by L. Tolstoy, "Childhood of Bagrov-grandson" by S. Aksakov, "Steppe" by A. Chekhov. "Praying Man" - a story about the pilgrimage of Vanya, the carpenter Gorkin, the old coachman Antipas, Fedi the ram. Domna Panferovna with her granddaughter from Zamoskvorechye to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. The plot is woven from road episodes that Vanya witnesses, from a description of the fate of the pilgrims: a young and mute beauty who lost the power of speech after sleeping her firstborn, and was healed during the pilgrimage, a paralyzed Oryol guy, Fedi the ram.

The series of events, the earthly path of the heroes to the Lavra is connected in the work with the heavenly, spiritual path, with the ascent of pilgrims to God's truth. The crowning glory of the pilgrimage is the blessing of the elder Barnabas. The meeting with the elder causes tears of religious delight and purification in the boy: “And it seems to me that light shines from his eyes. I see his little gray beard, his pointed cap, his bright, kind face, his cassock dripped thickly with wax. I feel good from kindness, my eyes fill with tears, and I, not remembering myself, touch the wax with my finger, scratch the cassock with my fingernail.

However, Lavra, a symbol of faith, cannot replace the layman for the life that fate has prepared for him. A person, according to I. Shmelev, accomplishes his Orthodox feat in the world, therefore the elder Barnabas does not approve of Fedya’s desire to go to a monastery: “... the Lord is with you, good things are needed in the world! ..”

The same theme of fulfilling one’s duty in the world was voiced in I. Shmelev’s 1918 story “The Inexhaustible Chalice”, the hero of which, a serf artist, chooses worldly asceticism instead of a monastic feat, goes to study in Europe. In I. Shmelev's artistic essay "Old Valaam" (1935), the writer and his young wife, during their honeymoon trip to Valaam, feel grace, consolation, enlightenment, which, as he notes, you will not experience either from the Stirners, or from the Spencers, or from the Strauss nor from Shakespeare; young people return to the sinful world, and it is in it that after Balaam they are ready to live by inspiration, accepting the joy of being and believing in the future.

The narrator of "Old Valaam" sympathizes with Father Nikolai from the Olonets province, who was exiled to Valaam "under command, for correction", has been atoning for his sins there for three years and yearns for life in the world - for the priest, his six children and freedom, "for a sinful the will is torn, ”as the old novice notes,“ I didn’t get used to cutting off my own will. The narrator is “terrified by these words”, he understands the drama of Father Nikolai - the peasant vein was strong in the priest.

The "Old Valaam" describes the monastery of the righteous, elders and novices, who, unlike Father Nicholas, accepted the monastic life as their feat. I. Shmelev describes the chosen people. They do not indulge the body, “because it is dust”, but they care about the soul, they test themselves with humility, finding in it the path to salvation. For them, Valaam is an image of paradise. As the novice says, an old man in a skullcap, in the spring there is paradise, "nightingales", "angelic breath of the air, flowers of the Lord." It is on Valaam that eldership, “the Lord's sowing”, is indestructible.

Balaam gives the young couple faith in the immortality of the soul. Characteristic is the conversation between the Shmelevs and Father Antipas. They are oppressed by conversations about death, about crosses, about graves, it is difficult for them to accept the image of earthly life only as a preparation for death, to which Father Antipas replies: “Behind the grave, ... eternal life will open. In Christ ... a spiritual person, ”and from this“ admonishment ”it became easy for them and believed in infinity.

"The Summer of the Lord", "Praying Man", "Old Valaam", as well as the story "Kulikovo Field" (1939-1947) reflected I. Shmelev's conviction in the exclusivity of the Russian people, which, as he believed, was created to seek God's truth. Trying to find an explanation for the very fact of the victory of the Bolsheviks in Russia, he argued that it was in the name of searching for God's truth that the Russian people “followed Bolshevism, but were cruelly deceived and insulted. He naively believed in the "truth" of Bolshevism. The writer believed in the insight of the people. In a June 1926 letter to M. Vishniac, he wrote that soon "the banners ... of the bearers of socialism would be kicked out."

Mystical events take place with the heroes of the story “Kulikovo Field”, which confirm the idea of ​​​​I. Shmelev about the historical chosenness of the Russian people. Orthodox people, as Shmelev writes, cannot part with faith in the truth “almost physically”. Mystical events symbolize the highest indication, the finger of God. Vasily Sukhov, a forest ranger under the merchants and under the Soviet regime, a man who experienced both personal grief (one son was killed in the war, the other “the committee of the poor shook up for a hot word”), and popular, cathedral (“everything died, and for nothing” ), St. Sergius of Radonezh appears on the Kulikovo field, with whom he passes an old copper cross, a sign of salvation, to his masters Sredny in Sergiev Posad.

The heroes of the story are "former" (former investigator, former professor, former student IN. Klyuchevsky). And the daughter of Professor Srednov Olya, who believes in God's Providence, and the materialist Professor Srednov, and the narrator of little faith, the investigator, are forced to believe that the envoy who appeared in Sergiev Posad is Sergius of Radonezh.

The inner transformation of the heroes of the story reveals philosophical theme of all the works of I. Shmelev - immortality and peace of mind as God-given happiness. As soon as the investigator decides to look into the mysterious story with the cross, he gets the feeling that “ time is gone... centuries have closed ... there will be no future, but everything is now ”; Olya, after meeting with the elder, felt, “as if time was gone, the past was gone, but everything is there”, and the deceased mother and the deceased brother are with her, because “whether we live or die, we are always of the Lord”, “the Lord has nothing dies, but everything is there! no loss but... always, everything lives". From the words of the elder, Vasily Sukhov breathed peace; in Srednov's house there was a breath of "calmness of the way of the vanished world", after meeting with the elder, the professor became like a traveler, "who has found the desired peace"; father and daughter, after the blessing of the elder, experience a feeling of "serene peace"; it seemed to the investigator that the Lavra “breathed with peace”, and when he nevertheless believed in the appearance of the Saint, he himself became “lightly calm”, and therefore his “heart rejoices” and he experiences a “feeling of liberation”. The peace that descended on the heroes of the story brings them a sense of will. With the help of God, the narrator wins an inner victory "over the emptiness in himself."

In exile, I. Shmelev created several novels: Love Story (1929), Nanny from Moscow (1936), Ways of Heaven (1937-1948); the novel “Soldiers”, the publication of which began “Sovremennye zapiski” in 1930, and “Foreigner”, published in “Russian Notes” in 1930, remained unfinished.

The novel "The Nanny from Moscow" was written by I. Shmelev in the style of a tale: an old Russian nanny who found herself in exile spoke over a cup of tea about Russian troubles - the 1917 revolution, the flight from Russia, the life of refugees, and also about the adventurous novel developing according to the canon love story her pupil Katya and a young neighbor. The tale artistically motivated the shift of time periods - emigrant and Moscow. The nanny Daria Stepanovna Sinitsyna herself was for Shmelev the personification of the people: in a letter to K.V. Denikina, he pointed out the connection of this character with the “man from the restaurant”, the right of the nanny to judge the gentlemen according to her own, popular, truth. So, from the nurse’s story, the reader learned that Katya’s father, a famous Moscow doctor, spent money not only on kept women and runs (“And what did this money go for, and ... into the abyss, for pampering, to your mammon”), but also for the revolution. The nanny considers it expedient to spend the master's money "for the soul" ("Well, they would give it to the church, for the soul, or help the orphans ..."). Only before his death, the doctor realized that he had been deceived by revolutionary ideals.

"Love Story" tells how young Tonya, under the impression of "First Love" by I. Turgenev, experiences the delights and torments of love for the maid Pasha and for the young neighbor Serafima. Love yearning dies as soon as he discovers during a love meeting that the beautiful Seraphim is the owner of a glass eye. The dead gaze of the temptress Seraphim is an image of carnal sin: on the eve of the Orthodox holiday, she takes Tonya to the Devil's Ravine and there she decides to teach him love. Pasha leaves for the monastery, in a metaphysical sense - his savior. I. Shmelev contrasted love-instinct with saving love.

In "The Ways of Heaven" the writer put his heroes before the choice of "earthly," sinful, carnal, or "heavenly," virtuous ways. Victor Alekseevich Weidenhammer, having taken a great interest in German philosophy and natural sciences, “became no one by faith”; a passion grew in him to "spiritually empty himself." He believed that "the whole universe is a free play of material forces", without God and the devil, without good and evil. In love, for him there were no concepts of morality and debauchery, since love itself is “only a physiological law of selection, a call, which, as a natural phenomenon, is more useful to obey than to resist.” Thus, the theme of love, already declared in Russian literature by I. Bunin, as a natural human need, was presented by I. Shmelev in this novel negatively - in an absurd version.

The spiritual maturation of the hero, his comprehension of the "paths of heaven", faith in God - all this developed in the hero as his love for Darinka, the "gold seamstress girl", an orphan, a novice in the monastery, blossomed. The spiritual mission of the heroine is to bring her beloved to God; Elder Barnabas sees her earthly duty in this.

The novel ended with God's forgiveness of the earthly passions of the heroes, their carnal sins. Weidenhammer, following Darinka, turned to " heavenly ways". The sign of heaven was the shower of stars at the end of the novel. As I. Shmelev wrote, “from that dead hour of the night, the “path of ascent” begins, in the joys and languor of earthly existence.” As in the finale of "Crime and Punishment" F.M. Dostoevsky Raskolnikov, referring to the Gospel brought by Sonya, is close to the idea of ​​​​consent, the unity of her convictions and feelings with his convictions, feelings and aspirations, and in the finale of the Ways of Heaven, the Gospel presented by Darinka to Viktor Alekseevich became a sign of their spiritual unity in God.

I. Shmelev condemned their forbidden love, illegal cohabitation as a sin. If in the life of Viktor Alekseevich Darinka became a means of “release from the darkness”, then for her love was “sinful happiness, redeemed suffering”. Life "in fornication" is punished by the Lord - Darinka becomes barren. Jewelers, dressmakers, the Passage, falling in love with the handsome Vagaev, the silver-brown rotunda and so on - all this in Darinka's perception was a temptation, a seduction. Her "earthly path" turned into mental anguish, her soul lost its peace. Characteristic are the titles of the chapters of the novel - "Seduction", "Darkening", "Fall", "Seduction", "Despair", "Devil's haste", etc. The mention that Viktor Alekseevich read L. Tolstoy's novel "Anna Karenina" is significant.

Any event is understood by the heroine as a sign, a sign, a reminder of the mournful and eternal. The St. Petersburg passion of Viktor Alekseevich for a Hungarian woman in green velvet is interpreted by I. Shmelev as demonic temptation, intoxication with the plague: this love story reminded the repentant hero of Pushkin's lines "And we drink the breath of the rose-maidens - / Perhaps - full of the Plague!"

The soul of Darinka, like the soul of Viktor Alekseevich, is presented in the novel in Christian traditions - it is "a battlefield between the Lord's light and evil darkness." The heroine manages to avoid the fall: she sacrifices her passion for Vagaev. She was saved from carnal sin with him by the "dream of the Cross": she saw her own crucifixion on the cross and thereby "participated in the Lord." In her image, the influence of the moral norms of life definitely affected, she has the features of righteous wives from the works of ancient Russian literature.

In "The Ways of Heaven" the author argues with those writers who have taken a firm place on the literary Olympus. So, the philosophical definition of love in the novel by I.S. Shmelev was the opposite of what I.A. Bunin, for whom all love, including sinful, unprestigious, secret, is holy. Rejecting the idea of ​​the sinfulness of love, not separating the earthly and heavenly principles in love, he justified this feeling with Christian morality. In the story of 1914 "The Saints", Bunin, referring to the tradition of the hagiographic genre, narrated about the sinful love of the harlot and martyr Elena, who received forgiveness, since love, according to the apostolic teaching, covers a myriad of sins. This conclusion of the narrator Arsenich was essentially a free quote from the First Epistle of the Apostle Peter. It is noteworthy that Darinka, carried away by Vagaev, “rushed about”, called herself a harlot and at the same time sought to justify her passions in the sins of holy sinners, referring to the lives of the Monk Taisia ​​the harlot, who deceived many with her beauty, the martyr Evdokia, the maiden-charm Meletinia; she wished “by daring to fall below everyone, to become corrupted by sin and crucify herself with repentance.” However, God's providence kept the heroine from the fatal test. Thus, the Christian teaching in the works of Shmelev and Bunin was a justification for mutually exclusive concepts of love. It is noteworthy that Shmelev condemned Bunin for the Dark Alleys cycle.

The first volume of the novel was published in 1937, the second - in 1948. I. Shmelev planned to write two more volumes, but the plan was never realized. The author called "The Ways of Heaven" "an experience spiritual romance". His main topic- salvation of the soul, overcoming the abyss between man and God. To a certain extent, the novel by I. Shmelev opposed the philosophical concepts of the existentialists. The love plot became for him a means of expressing spiritual, religious quests. Herself story line The hero of the novel was significant - at the beginning of the century, during the First World War, some Russian intellectuals took monasticism.

However, contemporaries noted in the novel sentimentality, religious mysticism and moralizing. So, G. Struve wrote: “In the novel, at almost every step, there are symbols and“ miracles ”, the very abundance of which (and sometimes their triviality) weakens their effect and soon satisfies and tires the reader ... Neither Darinka herself, nor her relationship to Weidenhammer cannot be considered convincing. Shmelev, apparently, was toying with the idea of ​​writing a third volume, so we don’t know what final fate he prepared for his heroes, but the theme of “providentiality” was carried out with excessive pedal pressure in the first two volumes ... But in general, “Ways heavenly" make a lurid impression. Often, when Shmelev wants to achieve a pathetic effect, he causes an involuntary smile in the reader. The metaphysical meaning of "The Ways of Heaven" was recognized by A. Amfiteatrov, who in his 1937 article "Holy Simplicity" stated that writing a novel with a confession of firm faith in the era of materialism is a feat.

I. Shmelev worked on the second part of "The Ways of Heaven" during the war. After the war, he was reproached for collaborationism. In May 1947, in the article “A Necessary Answer”, the writer was forced to give explanations regarding his cooperation in the “Paris Vestnik”, a Russian newspaper published with the permission of the occupation authorities. I. Shmelev wrote: "And I say quite the opposite: I worked against the Germans, against the goal pursued by them - in relation to Russia." By publishing chapters from "The Summer of the Lord" and the story "Christmas in Moscow" in the Parizhsky Vestnik, he sought to show the true face of Russia at a time when German propaganda represented it as a "historical misunderstanding", "the great steppe", Russians - "savages" .

I.S. Shmelev died on June 24, 1950 in the monastery of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos in Bussy-en-Otte, 150 kilometers from Paris, from a heart attack.