In order to live forever, you have to fight. Living people of Dostoevsky and dead souls of Gogol

Russian literature of the 2nd half of the 19th century

“In order to live honestly, one must be torn, confused, fought, made mistakes ... and calmness is spiritual meanness” (L. N. Tolstoy). (According to the novel by L. N. Tolstoy “War and Peace”)

“War and Peace” is one of the rarest examples of the epic novel genre in world literature. Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy is one of the most widely read Russian authors abroad. The work had an explosive effect on world culture. "War and Peace" - a reflection of Russian life early XIX century, life high society, advanced

nobility. In the future, the sons of these people will come out on Senate Square uphold the ideals of freedom, will go down in history under the name of the Decembrists. The novel was conceived precisely as a disclosure of the motives of the Decembrist movement. Let's figure out what could serve as the beginning of such a great search.
L. N. Tolstoy, as one of the greatest Russian thinkers and philosophers, could not ignore the problem human soul and the meaning of existence. In his characters, the views of the writer on what a person should be are clearly visible. Tolstoy has his own view of how a person should be. The main quality that characterizes the greatness of the soul for him is simplicity. Noble simplicity, not pretentiousness, lack of artificiality, embellishment. Everything should be simple, clear, open and this is great. He likes to create conflicts between small and great, sincere and far-fetched, illusory and real. On the one hand, simplicity and nobility, on the other - pettiness, weakness, unworthy behavior.
Tolstoy does not accidentally create critical, extreme situations for his heroes. It is in them that the true essence of man is manifested. It is important for the author to show that what causes intrigues, strife and squabbles, is unworthy of the spiritual greatness of a person. And it is in the awareness of his own spiritual beginning that Tolstoy sees the meaning of the existence of his heroes. So, the impeccable Prince Andrei only on his deathbed realizes that he really loves Natasha, although life throughout the novel gave him lessons, but he was too proud to learn them. Therefore, he dies. There was an episode in his life when, almost by a hair's breadth, he was able to renounce even the proximity of death, seeing the purity and calmness of the sky over Austerlitz. At that moment, he could understand that everything around is vain and, in fact, insignificant. Only the sky is calm, only the sky is eternal. Tolstoy does not then introduce war into the plot in order to get rid of unnecessary characters or to follow historical themes. For him, war is, first of all, a force that cleanses the world mired in lies and squabbles.
Secular society does not give peace of mind or happiness the best heroes Tolstoy. They do not find a place for themselves among pettiness and malice. Both Pierre and Prince Andrei are trying to find their way in life, because both understand the greatness of their destiny, but they cannot determine what it is or how to realize it.
The path of Pierre is the path of the search for truth. He passes the temptation of copper pipes - he owns almost the most extensive ancestral lands, he has huge capital, marriage to a brilliant secular lioness. Then he enters the Masonic order, but he cannot find the truth there either. Tolstoy sneers at the mysticism of "free masons" as a person who sees meaning not in paraphernalia, but in essence. Pierre is waiting for captivity, a critical and humiliating situation in which he finally realizes the true greatness of his soul, where he can come to the truth: “How? Can they capture me? My immortal soul?!” That is, all the suffering of Pierre, his inability to social life, bad marriage, the ability to love that did not show itself was nothing more than from ignorance of one's inner greatness, one's true essence. After this turning point in his destiny, everything will work out, he will find peace of mind as the long-awaited goal of his search.
The path of Prince Andrei is the path of a warrior. He goes to the front, the wounded returns to the light, tries to start a quiet life, but again ends up on the battlefield. The pain he has experienced teaches him to forgive, and he accepts the truth through suffering. But, being still too proud, he cannot, having known, stay alive. Tolstoy deliberately kills Prince Andrei and leaves Pierre to live, full of humility and unconscious spiritual search.
A worthy life for Tolstoy consists in a constant search, in striving for truth, for light, for understanding. It is no coincidence that he gives his best heroes such names - Peter and Andrei. The first disciples of Christ, whose mission was to follow the truth, for he was the way, and the truth, and the life. The heroes of Tolstoy do not see the truth, and only its search makes up their life path. Tolstoy does not recognize comfort, and the point is not that a person is not worthy of it, the point is that a spiritual person will always strive for the truth, and this state cannot be comfortable in itself, but only it is worthy of human essence, and only so he is able to fulfill his purpose.

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“In order to live honestly, one must be torn, confused, fought, made mistakes ... and calmness is spiritual meanness” (L. N. Tolstoy). (According to the novel by L. N. Tolstoy “War and Peace”)
Diaries Letters 90-volume collected works

Guide to journalism (author - Irina Petrovitskaya)

LETTER TO A. A. TOLSTOY. 1857

Returning from abroad to Yasnaya Polyana On October 20, Tolstoy writes to his aunt a very important letter, now known to many:
“Eternal anxiety, work, struggle, deprivation - these are necessary conditions from which not a single person should dare to think of getting out even for a second. Only honest anxiety, struggle and labor based on love is what is called happiness. Yes, happiness is a stupid word; not happiness, but good; and dishonest anxiety based on self-love is unhappiness. Here you have in the most concise form the change in outlook on life that has taken place in me lately.

It’s funny for me to remember how I thought and how you seem to think that you can arrange for yourself a happy and honest little world in which you can live calmly, without mistakes, without repentance, without confusion, and do everything slowly, carefully, only good. Funny! You can’t ... To live honestly, you have to tear, get confused, fight, make mistakes, start and quit, and start again, and quit again, and always fight and lose. And peace is spiritual meanness. From this, the bad side of our soul desires peace, not foreseeing that achieving it is associated with the loss of everything that is beautiful in us.

Rereading his correspondence with Alexandra Andreevna, prepared for publication, in his last year, 1910, Tolstoy spoke of this letter in his Diary as follows: said another.

PSS, vol. 58, p. 23.

* L. N. Tolstoy and A. A. Tolstaya. Correspondence (1857–1903). - M., 1911; 2nd ed. – 2011.

V. PETROV, psychologist.

If we are interested in the problem of man and we want to understand what is truly human, eternal in people, and science can do little to help in this, then our path, undoubtedly, first of all to F. M. Dostoevsky. It was him that S. Zweig called "a psychologist from psychologists", and N. A. Berdyaev - "a great anthropologist". "I know only one psychologist - this is Dostoevsky", - contrary to his tradition of overthrowing all earthly and heavenly authorities, wrote F. Nietzsche, who, by the way, had his own and far from superficial view of man. Another genius, N.V. Gogol, showed the world people with an extinct spark of God, people with a dead soul.

Science and life // Illustrations

Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy, Stendhal, Proust provide much more for understanding human nature than academic philosophers and scientists - psychologists and sociologists ...

N. A. Berdyaev

EVERY PERSON HAS "UNDERGROUND"

Dostoevsky is difficult for readers. Many of them, especially those who are accustomed to seeing everything clear and easily explained, do not accept the writer at all - he deprives them of the feeling of comfort in life. It’s hard to believe right away that the path of life can be exactly like this: in continuous throwing between extremes, when a person drives himself into a corner at every step, and then, as if in a state of drug withdrawal known to our time, turning inside out, gets out of the impasse, does things and then, repenting of them, he suffers under the torture of self-abasement. Who among us admits that he can "love pain and fear", be in "rapture from the painful state of meanness", live, feeling "a terrible disorder in everything"? Even dispassionate science puts this out of the brackets of the so-called norm.

By the end of the 20th century, psychologists suddenly began to say that they were finally approaching the understanding of the intimate mechanisms of a person's mental life, as Dostoevsky saw and showed them in his heroes. However, a science built on logical foundations (and there can be no other science) cannot understand Dostoevsky, because his ideas about man cannot be bound by a formula, a rule. Here we need a super-scientific psychological laboratory. It was given to a brilliant writer, was acquired by him not in university classrooms, but in the boundless torments of his own life.

The entire 20th century was awaited for the "death" of Dostoevsky's heroes and himself as a classic, a genius: they say that everything he wrote is outdated, left in the 19th century, in old petty-bourgeois Russia. The loss of interest in Dostoevsky was predicted after the fall of the autocracy in Russia, then in the middle of the 20th century, when the intellectualization of the population began to boom, and finally, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the victory of the "brain civilization" of the West. But what is it really? His heroes - illogical, bifurcated, tormented, constantly fighting with themselves, not wanting to live according to the same formula with everyone, guided only by the principle of "satiety" - and at the beginning of the 21st century remain "more alive than all living things." There is only one explanation for this - they are true.

The writer managed to show a person not in some standard, civilized and familiar way. public opinion version, but in complete nudity, without masks and camouflage suits. And it is not Dostoevsky's fault that this view turned out to be, to put it mildly, not quite salon-like and that it is unpleasant for us to read the truth about ourselves. After all, as another genius wrote, we love "the deception that elevates us" more.

Dostoevsky saw the beauty and dignity of human nature not in concrete manifestations of life, but in those heights from which it originates. Its local distortion is inevitable. But beauty is preserved if a person has not come to terms with the vanity and dirt, and therefore rushes about, tears, tries, again and again covered with impurities, to cleanse himself, to preserve the freedom of his soul.

Forty years before Freud, Dostoevsky declares: a person has an "underground", where another "underground" and independent person lives and actively acts (more precisely, counteracts). But this is a completely different understanding of the human underside than in classical psychoanalysis. Dostoevsky's "underground" is also a boiling cauldron, but not of imperative, unidirectional attractions, but of continuous confrontations and transitions. Not a single benefit can be a permanent goal, each aspiration (immediately after its realization) is replaced by another, and any stable system of relations becomes a burden.

And yet there is one strategic goal, a "special advantage" in this "terrible mess" of the human "underground". The inner man, by each of his actions, does not allow his real living opponent to finally and irrevocably "catch" on something earthly, to be captured by one unchanging belief, to become a "pet" or a mechanical robot living strictly according to instincts or someone's program. . This is the highest meaning of the existence of the looking-glass double, he is on guard of the freedom of man and the opportunity granted to him from above through this freedom. special relationship with God.

And that is why Dostoevsky's heroes are constantly engaged in an internal dialogue, arguing with themselves, repeatedly changing their own position in this dispute, alternately defending polar points of view, as if the main thing for them is not to be forever captive to one conviction, one life purpose. This feature of Dostoevsky’s understanding of a person was noted by the literary critic M. M. Bakhtin: “Where they saw one quality, he revealed in him the presence of another, opposite quality. Everything that seemed simple in his world became complex and multicomponent. In every voice he knew how to hear two arguing voices, in every gesture he caught confidence and uncertainty at the same time ... "

All the main characters of Dostoevsky - Raskolnikov ("Crime and Punishment"), Dolgoruky and Versilov ("Teenager"), Stavrogin ("Demons"), Karamazovs ("The Brothers Karamazov") and, finally, the hero of "Notes from the Underground" - are infinitely contradictory . They are in constant motion between good and evil, generosity and vindictiveness, humility and pride, the ability to confess the highest ideal in the soul and almost simultaneously (or after a moment) commit the greatest meanness. Their destiny is to despise man and dream of the happiness of mankind; having committed a mercenary murder, disinterestedly give away the loot; always be in a "fever of hesitation, decisions taken forever and a minute later repentance comes again."

Inconstancy, the inability to unequivocally determine one's intentions leads to a tragic ending, the heroine of the novel "The Idiot" Nastasya Filippovna. On her birthday, she declares herself the bride of Prince Myshkin, but immediately leaves with Rogozhin. The next morning, he runs away from Rogozhin to meet with Myshkin. After some time, the wedding with Rogozhin begins to prepare, but the future bride again disappears with Myshkin. Six times the pendulum of mood throws Nastasya Filippovna from one intention to another, from one man to another. The unfortunate woman, as it were, rushes between the two sides of her own "I" and cannot choose from them the only, unshakable one, until Rogozhin stops this throwing with a knife blow.

Stavrogin, in a letter to Darya Pavlovna, is perplexed about his behavior: he exhausted all his strength in debauchery, but did not want it; I want to be decent, but I do meanness; Everything in Russia is alien to me, but I can't live anywhere else. In conclusion, he adds: "I will never, never be able to kill myself ..." And shortly after that, he commits suicide. “If Stavrogin believes, then he does not believe that he believes. If he does not believe, then he does not believe that he does not believe,” Dostoevsky writes about his character.

"PEACE - MENTAL meanness"

The struggle of multidirectional thoughts and motives, constant self-punishment - all this is torment for a person. Perhaps this state is not his natural feature? Maybe it's only for a certain type of person, or national character, for example, Russian, as many critics of Dostoevsky (in particular, Sigmund Freud) like to assert, or is there a reflection of a certain situation that has developed in society at some point in its history - for example, in Russia in the second half of the 19th century?

The "psychologist of psychologists" rejects such simplifications, he is convinced that this is "the most common trait in people ... a trait inherent in human nature in general." Or, as his hero from "The Teenager", Dolgoruky, says, the constant clash of various thoughts and intentions is "the most normal state, and by no means a disease or damage."

At the same time, it must be admitted that Dostoevsky's literary genius was born and demanded by a certain era. The second half of the 19th century is the time of transition from patriarchal existence, which still retained the real tangibility of the concepts of "soulfulness", "cordiality", "honor", to a rationally organized and devoid of former sentimentality of life in the conditions of all-conquering technization. Another, already frontal offensive is being prepared against the human soul, and the nascent System, with even greater impatience than in former times, is determined to see it "dead". And, as if anticipating the impending slaughter, the soul begins to rush about with particular desperation. It was given to feel and show Dostoevsky. After his era, mental turmoil did not cease to be a normal state of a person, however, in turn, the 20th century has already succeeded a lot in rationalizing our inner world.

"Normal state of mind" felt not only Dostoevsky. As you know, Lev Nikolaevich and Fedor Mikhailovich did not really honor each other in life. But each of them was given (like no experimental psychology) to see the deep in a person. And in this vision, the two geniuses were one.

Alexandra Andreevna Tolstaya, a cousin and soulmate of Lev Nikolaevich, complains to him in a letter dated October 18, 1857: "We are always waiting for peace to settle in, peace of mind to come in our souls. We feel bad without him." This is just a diabolical calculation, a very young writer writes in response, the evil in the depths of our soul desires stagnation, the establishment of peace and tranquility. And then he continues: “In order to live honestly, one must tear, get confused, fight, make mistakes, start and quit, and start again and quit again, and always fight and lose ... And peace is spiritual meanness. From this, the bad side of our soul and desires peace, not having a presentiment that achieving it is associated with the loss of everything that is beautiful in us, not human, but from there.

In March 1910, rereading his old letters, Lev Nikolaevich singled out this phrase: "And now I would not say anything else." The genius maintained his conviction all his life: the peace of mind that we are looking for is destructive, first of all, for our soul. It was sad for me to part with the dream of peaceful happiness, he notes in one of his letters, but this is a "necessary law of life", the destiny of man.

According to Dostoevsky, man is a transitional being. Transitivity is the main, essential thing in it. But this transitivity does not have the same meaning as that of Nietzsche and many other philosophers, who see in the transitional state something transient, temporary, unfinished, not brought to the norm, therefore subject to completion. Dostoevsky has a different understanding of transitivity, which only towards the end of the 20th century begins to gradually break through to the forefront of science, but is still in "Through the Looking Glass" practical life of people. He shows on his heroes that there are no permanent states in the mental activity of a person at all, there are only transitional ones, and only they make our soul (and a person) healthy and viable.

The victory of any one side - even, for example, absolutely moral behavior - is possible, according to Dostoevsky, only as a result of the rejection of something natural in oneself, which cannot be reconciled with any life finality. There is no unambiguous place "where the living thing lives"; there is no specific state that can be called the only desirable one - even if you "drown yourself in happiness completely with your head." There is no feature that determines everything in a person, except for the need for transitions with obligatory suffering and rare moments of joy. For duality and the inevitable accompanying fluctuations, transitions are the path to something Higher and True, with which "the outcome of the soul is connected, and this is the main thing." Only outwardly it seems that people are chaotically and aimlessly rushing from one to another. In fact, they are in an unconscious inner search. According to Andrei Platonov, they do not wander, they seek. And it is not the fault of a person that most often on either side of the amplitude of the search, he stumbles upon a blank wall, gets into a dead end, again and again finds himself in captivity of the untrue. Such is his fate in this world. Hesitation allows him at least not to become a complete prisoner of the untrue.

The typical hero of Dostoevsky is far from the ideal according to which we today build family and school education, to which our reality is oriented. But he, undoubtedly, can count on the love of the Son of God, who also in his earthly life was tormented more than once by doubts and, at least for a while, felt like a helpless child. Of the heroes of the New Testament, "Dostoevsky's man" looks more like a publican who doubts and executes himself, whom Jesus called to be an apostle, than like the Pharisees and scribes that we understand well.

"And verily, I love you because you do not know how to live today, O higher people!"
Friedrich Nietzsche

The higher comes, Dostoevsky believed, only to those whom something earthly has not completely and irrevocably taken possession of, who is capable of purifying his soul through suffering. That is the only reason why Prince Myshkin has a pronounced childishness and inability to real life turn into spiritual insight, the ability to foresee events. Even the ability of Smerdyakov (from The Brothers Karamazov) to wake up at the end of all his impure deeds for a deep human experience and remorse makes it possible to revive the "face of God", which had previously been deeply walled up, to life. Smerdyakov passes away, refusing to take advantage of the fruits of his crime. Another character of Dostoevsky - Raskolnikov, having committed a mercenary murder, after painful experiences, gives all the money to the family of the deceased Marmeladov. Having performed this act of healing for the soul, he suddenly feels himself, after long, already, it seemed, eternal suffering, in the power of "one, new, immense sensation of suddenly surging full and powerful life."

Dostoevsky rejects the rationalistic idea of human happiness in the "Crystal Palace", where everything will be "calculated according to the tablet." A person is not a "damask in an organ shaft." In order not to go out, to remain alive, the soul must continuously flicker, break the darkness of what has been established once and for all, what can already be defined as "twice two is four." Therefore, it insists, requires a person to be new every day and moment, continuously, in agony, to look for another solution, as soon as the situation becomes a dead scheme, to continuously die and be born.

This is the condition for the health and harmonious life of the soul, and therefore the main benefit of a person, "the most beneficial benefit, which is dearest to him."

GOGOL'S BITTER SHARE

Dostoevsky showed the world a tossing, painfully looking for more and more new solutions and therefore always a living person, whose “spark of God” flickers continuously, tearing the veil of everyday stratification over and over again.

As if supplementing the picture of the world, another genius shortly before that saw and showed the world people with an extinguished spark of God, with a dead soul. Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" at first was not even passed by the censors. There is only one reason - in the name. For an Orthodox country, it was considered unacceptable to say that souls could be dead. But Gogol did not back down. Apparently, in this name was for him special meaning, not fully understood by many, even those spiritually close to him. Later, the writer was repeatedly criticized for this title by Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Rozanov, Berdyaev. The general motive of their objections is as follows: there cannot be "dead souls" - in everyone, even the most insignificant person there is a light which, as it is said in the Gospel, "shines in the darkness".

However, the name of the poem was justified by its heroes - Sobakevich, Plyushkin, Korobochka, Nozdrev, Manilov, Chichikov. Other heroes of Gogol's works are similar to them - Khlestakov, the mayor, Akaky Akakievich, Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich ... These are sinister and lifeless " wax figures"personifying human insignificance," eternal Gogol's dead "from the sight of which" a person can only despise a person "(Rozanov). Gogol depicted" beings completely empty, insignificant and, moreover, morally ugly and disgusting "(Belinsky), showed" savage faces " (Herzen) Gogol has no human images, but only "muzzles and faces" (Berdyaev).

Gogol himself was no less horrified by his own offspring. These, in his words, "pig snouts", frozen human grimaces, some soulless things: either "slaves of uselessness" (like Plyushkin), or having lost their individual features and becoming a kind of serial production items (like Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky), or having turned themselves into devices for copying papers (like Akaky Akakievich). It is known that Gogol suffered deeply from the fact that he produced such "images" and not positive edifying heroes. In fact, he drove himself to madness by this suffering. But he couldn't help himself.

Gogol always admired Homer's Odyssey, the majestic beauty of the actions of its heroes, wrote with extraordinary warmth about Pushkin, his ability to show everything great in a person. And the harder he felt in the vicious circle of his insignificant, covered with laughter from above, but inside deadly gloomy images.

Gogol tried to find and show something positive, bright in people. They say in the second volume" dead souls"He somewhat transformed the characters known to us, but was forced to burn the manuscript - he was unable to revive his heroes. An interesting phenomenon: he suffered, passionately wanted to change, improve, but, with all his talent, he could not do it.

Equally painful is the personal fate of Dostoevsky and Gogol - the fate of a genius. But if the first, having gone through the deepest suffering, managed to see the essence of man in the soul actively resisting the pressure of the world, then the second discovered only a soulless, but purposefully acting "image". It is often said that Gogol's characters are from a demon. But, perhaps, the Creator, through the genius of the writer, decided to show what a person will be like who has lost the spark of God, who has become the finished product of the demonization (read - rationalization) of the world? Providence was pleased on the threshold of an era of scientific and technological progress to warn mankind about the deep consequences of future actions.

It is impossible to depict a sincere person in the form of an unambiguous, dead scheme, to imagine his life always cloudless and happy. In our world, he is forced to worry, doubt, search for solutions in torment, blame himself for what is happening, worry about other people, err, make mistakes ... and inevitably suffer. And only with the "death" of the soul does a person acquire a certain stability - he always becomes prudent, cunning, ready to lie and act, to break all obstacles on the way to a goal or to satisfy passion. This gentleman no longer knows empathy, he never feels guilty, he is ready to see in those around him the same hypocrites as he is. With a grimace of superiority, he looks at all the doubters - from Don Quixote and Prince Myshkin to his contemporaries. He does not understand the use of doubt.

Dostoevsky was convinced that man is inherently good. Evil in him is secondary - life makes him evil. He showed a person split in two from this and, as a result, an immeasurably suffering person. Gogol was left with "secondary" people - finished products of a steadily formalizing life. As a result, he gave characters that were more focused not on his time, but on the coming century. Therefore, the "Gogol dead" are tenacious. It doesn't take much to make them look completely normal. modern people. Gogol also remarked: "My heroes are not villains at all; if I added only one good trait to any of them, the reader would make peace with them all."

WHAT BECAME THE IDEAL OF THE 20TH CENTURY?

Dostoevsky, for all his interest in living people, also has one hero completely "without a soul." He is like a scout from another time, from the approaching new age. This is the socialist Pyotr Verkhovensky in Possessed. The writer, through this hero, also gives a forecast for the coming century, predicts an era of struggle with mental activity and the heyday of "devilry".

A social reformer, a "benefactor" of humanity, striving to bring everyone to happiness by force, Verkhovensky sees the future well-being of people in dividing them into two unequal parts: one tenth will dominate nine tenths, who, through a series of rebirths, will lose their desire for freedom and spirituality. dignity. "We will kill desire," proclaims Verkhovensky, "we will put out every genius in infancy. All to the same denominator, complete equality." He considers such a project the only possible one in the matter of building an "earthly paradise." For Dostoevsky, this hero is one of those whom civilization has made "nastier and more bloodthirsty." However, it is precisely this kind of firmness and consistency in achieving the goal at any cost that will become the ideal of the 20th century.

As N. A. Berdyaev writes in the article "Gogol in the Russian Revolution", there was a belief that "a revolutionary thunderstorm will cleanse us of all filth." But it turned out that the revolution only laid bare, made everyday what Gogol, tormented for his heroes, bashfully covered up with a touch of laughter and irony. According to Berdyaev, "scenes from Gogol are played out at every step in revolutionary Russia". There is no autocracy, but the country is full" dead souls". "Everywhere masks and doubles, grimaces and shreds of a person, nowhere can you see a clear human face. Everything is based on lies. And it is no longer possible to understand what is true in a person, what is false, false. It's all fake."

And this is not only Russia's problem. In the West, Picasso artistically depicts the same non-humans that Gogol saw. They are similar to the "folding monsters of cubism." AT public life"Khlestakovism" flourishes in all civilized countries - especially in the activities of political leaders of any level and persuasion. Homo Sovetikus and Homo Ekonomikus are no less ugly in their unambiguity, "one-dimensionality" than Gogol's "images". It is safe to say that they are not from Dostoevsky. Modern " dead Souls“They only became more educated, learned to be cunning, smile, talk smart about business. But they are soulless.

Therefore, it no longer seems an exaggeration that the well-known American publicist E. Shostrom described in the book "Anti-Carnegie ..." the briefing conducted by an experienced Mexican among his fellow countrymen traveling to the United States for the first time: "Americans - the most beautiful people, but there is one point that touches them. You should not tell them that they are corpses. "According to E. Shostrom, here - the maximum precise definition"diseases" modern man. He is dead, he is a doll. His behavior is indeed very similar to the "behavior" of a zombie. He has serious difficulties with emotions, a change of experiences, the ability to live and react to what is happening according to the "here and now" principle, change decisions and suddenly, unexpectedly even for himself, without any calculation, put his "want" above all.

"The true essence of the 20th century is slavery."
Albert Camus

N.V. Gogol showed the life of a "man in a case" long before the thinkers of the 20th century suddenly discovered that peace of mind more and more of their contemporaries find themselves, as it were, locked in a "cage" of unequivocal convictions, entangled in networks of imposed attitudes.

The writing

“It’s funny for me to remember how I thought and how you seem to think that you can arrange for yourself a happy and honest little world in which you can live calmly, without mistakes, without repentance, without confusion, and do everything slowly, carefully, only good things. Ridiculous!.. To live honestly, you have to tear, get confused, fight, make mistakes, start and quit, and start again and quit again, and forever fight and lose. And peace is spiritual meanness. These words of Tolstoy from his letter (1857) explain a lot in his life and work. Glimpses of these ideas arose early in Tolstoy's mind. He repeatedly recalled the game, which he loved very much as a child.

It was invented by the eldest of the Tolstoy brothers - Nikolenka. “So, when my brothers and I were - I was five, Mitenka was six, Seryozha was seven years old, he announced to us that he had a secret, through which, when it was revealed, all people would become happy; there will be no illnesses, no troubles, no one will be angry with anyone, and everyone will love each other, everyone will become ant brothers. (Probably these were the “Moravian brothers”; whom he heard or read about, but in our language they were ant brothers.) And I remember that the word “ant” was especially liked, reminiscent of ants in a tussock.

The secret of human happiness was, according to Nikolenka, "written by him on a green stick, and this stick was buried by the road on the edge of the ravine of the Old Order." To find out the secret, it was necessary to fulfill many difficult conditions ... The ideal of the "ant" brothers - the brotherhood of people from all over the world - Tolstoy carried through his whole life. “We called it a game,” he wrote at the end of his life, “and yet everything in the world is a game, except for this ...” Tolstoy's childhood years passed in the Tula estate of his parents - Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy did not remember his mother: she died when he was not two years old.

At the age of 9, he also lost his father. A participant in foreign campaigns during the Patriotic War, Tolstoy's father was one of the nobles who were critical of the government: he did not want to serve either at the end of the reign of Alexander I, or under Nicholas. “Of course, I didn’t understand anything about this in my childhood,” Tolstoy recalled much later, “but I understood that my father never humiliated himself before anyone, did not change his lively, cheerful and often mocking tone. And this feeling dignity which I saw in him increased my love, my admiration for him.

The teacher of the orphaned children of the Tolstoys (four brothers and sister Mashenka) was a distant relative of the family, T. A. Yergolskaya. “The most important person in terms of influence on my life,” the writer said about her. Auntie, as her pupils called her, was a person of a decisive and selfless character. Tolstoy knew that Tatyana Alexandrovna loved his father and her father loved her, but circumstances separated them. Tolstoy's children's poems dedicated to "dear aunt" have been preserved. He began writing at the age of seven. A notebook for 1835 has come down to us, entitled: “Children's fun. The first section…” Here are the different breeds of birds. Tolstoy received his initial education at home, as was customary then in noble families, and at the age of seventeen he entered Kazan University. But classes at the university did not satisfy the future writer.

A powerful spiritual energy awakened in him, which he himself, perhaps, was not yet aware of. The young man read a lot, thought. “... For some time,” T. A. Ergolskaya wrote in her diary, “the study of philosophy occupies his days and nights. He only thinks about how to delve into the mysteries of human existence. Apparently, for this reason, the nineteen-year-old Tolstoy left the university and went to Yasnaya Polyana, which he inherited. Here he tries to find a use for his powers. He keeps a diary in order to give himself “a report every day in terms of those weaknesses from which you want to improve”, draws up “rules for the development of the will”, takes on the study of many sciences, decides to improve. But the plans for self-education turn out to be too grandiose, and the peasants they understand the young master and do not want to accept his blessings. Tolstoy rushes about, looking for goals in life. He is either going to go to Siberia, then he goes to Moscow and spends several months there - by his own admission, “very carelessly, without service, without employment, without a goal”; then he goes to St. Petersburg, where he successfully passes the exams for the degree of candidate at the university, but does not complete this undertaking either; then he is going to enter the Horse Guards Regiment; then he suddenly decides to rent a postal station ... In the same years, Tolstoy was seriously engaged in music, opened a school for peasant children, took up the study of pedagogy ... In a painful search, Tolstoy gradually comes to the main thing to which he devoted the rest of his life - literary creativity. The first ideas arise, the first sketches appear.

In 1851, together with his brother Nikolai Tolstoy, he went; to the Caucasus, where there was an endless war with the highlanders, he went, however, with the firm intention of becoming a writer. He participates in battles and campaigns, gets close to people new to him and at the same time works hard. Tolstoy conceived to create a novel about the spiritual development of man. In the first year of the Caucasian service, he wrote "Childhood". The story has been revised four times. In July 1852, Tolstoy sent his first completed work to Nekrasov in Sovremennik. This testified to the young writer's great respect for the magazine.

An insightful editor, Nekrasov highly appreciated the talent of the novice author, noted the important advantage of his work - "the simplicity and reality of the content." The story was published in the September issue of the magazine. So a new outstanding writer appeared in Russia - it was obvious to everyone. Later, "Boyhood" (1854) and "Youth" (1857) were published, which, together with the first part, made up an autobiographical trilogy.

Main character trilogy is spiritually close to the author, endowed with autobiographical features. This feature of Tolstoy's work was first noted and explained by Chernyshevsky. "Self-deepening", tireless observation of oneself was for the writer a school of knowledge human psyche. Tolstoy's diary (the writer kept it from the age of 19 throughout his life) was a kind of creative laboratory. The study of human consciousness, prepared by self-observation, allowed Tolstoy to become a deep psychologist. In the images he created, the inner life of a person is exposed - a complex, contradictory process, usually hidden from prying eyes. Tolstoy reveals, according to Chernyshevsky, "the dialectics of the human soul", i.e. "hardly perceptible phenomena ... of inner life, replacing one another with extreme speed and inexhaustible variety."

When the siege of Sevastopol began by the Anglo-French and Turkish troops (1854), the young writer sought to be transferred to the active army. The thought of defending his native land inspired Tolstoy. Arriving in Sevastopol, he informed his brother: "The spirit in the troops is beyond any description ... Only our army can stand and win (we will still win, I am convinced of this) under such conditions." Tolstoy conveyed his first impressions of Sevastopol in the story "Sevastopol in December" (in December 1854, a month after the start of the siege).

The story, written in April 1855, showed Russia for the first time the besieged city in its true grandeur. The war was depicted by the author without embellishment, without loud phrases that accompanied the official news about Sevastopol on the pages of magazines and newspapers. The everyday, outwardly disorderly bustle of the city that has become a military camp, the overcrowded infirmary, nuclear strikes, grenade explosions, the torment of the wounded, blood, dirt and death - this is the situation in which the defenders of Sevastopol simply and honestly, without further ado, did their hard work. “Because of the cross, because of the name, because of the threat, people cannot accept these terrible conditions: there must be another, high motivating reason,” Tolstoy said. “And this reason is a feeling that is rarely manifested, bashful in Russian, but lies in in the depths of everyone's soul is love for the motherland.

For a month and a half, Tolstoy commanded a battery on the fourth bastion, the most dangerous of all, and wrote Youth and Sevastopol Tales there between the bombardments. Tolstoy took care of maintaining the morale of his comrades-in-arms, developed a number of valuable military-technical projects, worked on creating a society to educate soldiers, and publishing a magazine for this purpose. And for him it became more and more obvious not only the greatness of the defenders of the city, but also the impotence of feudal Russia, which was reflected in the course of the Crimean War. The writer decided to open the eyes of the government to the position of the Russian army.
In a special note intended for transmission to the king's brother, he opened main reason military failures: “In Russia, so powerful in its material strength and strength of its spirit, there is no army; there are crowds of oppressed slaves who obey thieves, oppressive mercenaries and robbers ... ”But an appeal to a high-ranking person could not help the cause. Tolstoy decided to tell Russian society about the disastrous situation in Sevastopol and the entire Russian army, about the inhumanity of the war. Tolstoy fulfilled his intention by writing the story "Sevastopol in May" (1855).

Tolstoy paints war as madness, making people doubt the mind. There is an amazing scene in the story. A truce is called to remove the corpses. The soldiers of the armies at war with each other "with greedy and benevolent curiosity strive one for the other." Conversations begin, jokes and laughter are heard. Meanwhile, a ten-year-old child wanders among the dead, collecting blue flowers. And suddenly, with dull curiosity, he stops in front of the headless corpse, looks at it and runs away in horror. “And these people - Christians ... - the author exclaims, - will they not suddenly fall on their knees with repentance ... will they not embrace like brothers? Not! The white rags are hidden, and again the instruments of death and suffering whistle, honest, innocent blood is shed again, and groans and curses are heard. Tolstoy judges the war from a moral point of view. It exposes its influence on human morality.

Napoleon, for the sake of his ambition, destroys millions, and some ensign Petrukov, this "little Napoleon, little monster, is now ready to start a battle, kill a hundred people just to get an extra star or a third of the salary." In one of the scenes, Tolstoy draws a clash between "little monsters" and ordinary people. Soldiers, wounded in a heavy battle, wander into the infirmary. Lieutenant Nepshitshetsky and adjutant Prince Galtsin, who watched the battle from afar, are convinced that there are many malingerers among the soldiers, and they shame the wounded, reminding them of patriotism. Galtsin stops a tall soldier. “Where are you going and why? he shouted sternly at him. right hand he was cuffed and covered in blood above the elbow. - Wounded, your honor! - What hurt? - Here, it must be with a bullet, - said the soldier, pointing to his hand, - but already here I can’t know what hit my head, - and he, bending it, showed the bloody, matted hair on the back of his head. - Whose gun is the other one? - Stutser French, your honor, took away; yes, I wouldn’t go if it wasn’t for this soldier to see him off, otherwise he would fall unequally ... ”Here even Prince Galtsin felt ashamed. However, shame did not torment him for long: the very next day, walking along the boulevard, he boasted of his "participation in the case" ... The third of the "Sevastopol stories" - "Sevastopol in August 1855" - is dedicated last period defense. Again, before the reader is the everyday and all the more terrible face of the war, hungry soldiers and sailors, officers exhausted by inhuman life on the bastions, and away from the fighting - quartermaster thieves with a very militant appearance.

From individuals, thoughts, destinies, the image of a heroic city is formed, wounded, destroyed, but not surrendered. Work on life material related to the tragic events in the history of the people prompted the young writer to determine his artistic position. Tolstoy ends the story “Sevastopol in May” with the words: “The hero of my story, whom I love with all the strength of my soul, whom I tried to reproduce in all its beauty and who has always been, is and will be beautiful, is true.” The last Sevastopol story was completed in St. Petersburg, where Tolstoy arrived at the end of 1855 as an already famous writer.

"We did the impossible because we didn't know it was impossible."

W. Isaacson

To live honestly means to live and act according to the truth. An honest person is always sincere and highly moral, has no intentions, supported by self-interest, the desire to harm another person. An honest life is a kind of synonym for a righteous life, and only a few have enough strength for it: it would seem that even the most sincere people, but one day they still make a mistake.

And if you look at the actions of each person, it turns out that absolute honesty without the slightest misconduct is a real miracle, which is very rare. I believe that the pursuit of honesty is a long and difficult path, and any path lies through a series of mistakes, right and wrong decisions.

Honesty is achieved through the internal struggle of the human soul with various desires that are contrary to morality. This is a process of forming a worldview that requires a lot of work. There are many writers in literature whose main task was to describe the human soul and changes in it as a result of various events. However, it is worth highlighting the writer who paid the most attention to reflections on the dialectic of the soul of his characters, Leo Tolstoy.

In his works, the great Russian writer makes literary heroes undergo a huge number of tests.

In the novel War and Peace, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky goes through a long journey of internal clashes and changes. He goes to war with the French, but ends up in another war - with himself. An honest, disinterested life does not imply a desire for material, earthly values, it is aimed at doing good and renouncing evil. Prince Bolkonsky followed his dreams of glory, and this fact does not allow his deeds to become feats. In the battle of Austerlitz, he, seeing that the standard-bearer was killed, sitting on a white horse, picked up the banner and rushed ahead of the soldiers with it.

But was it heroism? Prince Andrei first of all wanted the "beauty of the picture", where he looks like a hero, but all this was insincere, only for his own sake. And only one incident opened his eyes: he began to realize that he was not living honorably when he was wounded in battle, lying under open sky and seeing nothing but nature. This experience, which brought him closer to death, opened his eyes to all the mistakes, all the wrong aspirations by which Andrei Bolkonsky lived. The desire for glory, the greatness of Napoleon, the beauty of his own exploits - everything seemed to him false. In this short time of reflection, he goes a long way, leading him to a true understanding of an honest, heroic life. In the battle near the village of Borodino, a completely different prince Andrei Bolkonsky appears - sincere, honest, who, through his own experience, realized the real values \u200b\u200bof life and understood all his mistakes. Tolstoy proves the idea that an honest life becomes such only through a huge path of one's own mistakes and experience.

An honest person - who does not always think only about himself, and especially a person who thinks first of all about others without thinking about his own advantage - is extremely rare, so much so that it seems almost impossible or is perceived as almost wildness. In the story" Matrenin yard Alexander Issaevich Solzhenitsyn main character, Matryona Vasilievna, appears before the reader as an image of a person with a truly honest life. There were a huge number of obstacles on her way, but she passed each of them and did not break down spiritually, did not make mistakes. She fought, and got confused, and faced many difficulties, experienced the injustice of fate, lost her closest people - children, in a word, did the impossible, but for her it was not a feat. Mistakes were made by all the other people who treated her as a consumer, who realized this only after the death of Matryona Vasilievna - because everything good eventually becomes familiar, if not completely "mandatory", and an understanding of true value comes only with its loss. Unfortunately, people often mistakenly treat those who choose an honest life unfairly.

Honor only at first glance seems like an easy way, but in fact it is a difficult path that requires a person to be ready to "torn, get confused, fight, make mistakes ..."

Updated: 2016-12-11

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Women's Portal Flero

Russian literature of the 2nd half of the 19th century

“In order to live honestly, one must be torn, confused, fought, made mistakes ... and calmness is spiritual meanness” (L. N. Tolstoy). (According to the novel by L. N. Tolstoy “War and Peace”)

LETTER TO A. A. TOLSTOY. 1857

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