I. Kireevsky Review of the current state of literature. Review of the current state of literature Text of a scientific work on the topic “Literary criticism of senior Slavophiles: I. V. Kireevsky”

29.06.2020

REVIEW OF THE CURRENT STATE OF THE LITERATURE.

(1845).

There was a time when, saying: literature, usually meant elegant literature; in our time, fine literature constitutes only a small part of literature. Therefore, we must warn readers that, wishing to present the current state of literature in Europe, we will inevitably have to pay more attention to works of philosophy, history, philology, political-economics, theology, etc., than to works of art themselves.

fine literature has become the confidant of other heroines of our time; we read a lot, we read more than before, we read everything we can get our hands on; but all in passing, without participation, as an official reads incoming and outgoing papers, when he reads them. When reading, we do not enjoy, much less can we forget; but we only take it into consideration, we seek to derive application, benefit; - and that lively, disinterested interest in purely literary phenomena, that abstract love for beautiful forms, that pleasure in the harmony of speech, that delightful self-forgetfulness in the harmony of verse, which we experienced in our youth ,—the coming generation will know about it only from legend.

They say that one should rejoice at this; that literature was replaced by other interests because we became more productive; that if before we were chasing a verse, a phrase, a dream, now we are looking for significance, science, life. I don't know if this is fair; but I admit, I feel sorry for the old, unapplicable, useless literature. There was a lot of warmth in it for the soul; and what warms the soul may not be completely unnecessary for life.

In our time, fine literature has been replaced by magazine literature. And one should not think that the nature of journalism belongs to periodicals alone: it extends to all forms of literature, with very few exceptions.

*) Goethe had already foreseen this direction; at the end of my life I argued that true poetry is poetry of chance ( Gelegenheits - Gedicht ).—However, Goethe understood this in his own way. In the last era of his life, most of the poetic occasions that aroused his inspiration were a court ball, an honorary masquerade, or someone's birthday. The fate of Napoleon and the Europe he overturned barely left traces in the entire collection of his creations. Goethe was the all-encompassing, greatest and probably the last poet individual life, which has not yet penetrated into one consciousness with universal human life.

some social conviction, a quotation in favor of some modern view; - philosophy, with the most abstract contemplations of eternal truths, is constantly occupied with their relation to the current moment; - even theological works in the West, for the most part, are generated by some outsider circumstance of external life. More books have been written on the occasion of one bishop of Cologne than on account of the prevailing unbelief of which the Western clergy so complains.

However, this general desire of minds for the events of reality, for the interests of the day, has its source not only in personal benefits or selfish goals, as some people think. Although private benefits are connected with public affairs, the general interest in the latter does not arise from this calculation alone. For the most part, it's just compassionate interest. The mind is awakened and directed in this direction. The thought of man has merged with the thought of humanity. This is a desire for love, not profit. He wants to know what is happening in the world, in the fate of those like him, often without the slightest regard for himself. He wants to know in order to only participate in thought in general life, to sympathize with it from within his limited circle.

Despite this, however, it seems that many people complain, not without reason, about this excessive respect for the moment, about this all-consuming interest in the events of the day, in the external, business side of life. Such a direction, they think, does not embrace life, but concerns only its outer side, its insignificant surface. The shell is, of course, necessary, but only for preserving the grain, without which it would be a waste; Perhaps this state of mind is understandable as a transitional state; but nonsense, as a state of higher development. The porch to the house is as good as a porch; but if we settle down to live on it, as if it were the whole house, then we may feel cramped and cold.

the majority is already backward; it no longer constitutes the expression of the century; advanced thinkers decisively moved into another sphere, into the field of social issues, where the first place is no longer occupied by the external form, but by the inner life of society itself, in its real, essential relations.

I consider it unnecessary to stipulate that by direction towards social issues I do not mean those ugly systems that are known in the world more by the noise they make than by the meaning of their half-thought-out teachings: these phenomena are curious only as a sign, but in themselves are unimportant; no, I see interest in social issues, replacing the former, exclusively political concern, not in this or that phenomenon, but in the whole direction of European literature.

Mental movements in the West are now carried out with less noise and brilliance, but obviously have more depth and generality. Instead of the limited sphere of daily events and external interests, thought rushes to the very source of everything external, to man as he is, and to his life as it should be. A sensible discovery in science is already more occupied by minds than a pompous speech in the Chamber. The external form of legal proceedings seems less important than the internal development of justice; the living spirit of the people is more significant than its external structures. Western writers are beginning to understand that beneath the loud rotation of social wheels lies the silent movement of the moral spring on which everything depends, and therefore, in their mental concern, they try to move from phenomenon to cause, from formal external issues they want to rise to that volume of ideas of society where the momentary The events of the day, and the eternal conditions of life, and politics, and philosophy, and science, and craft, and industry, and religion itself, and with them the literature of the people, merge into one vast task: the improvement of man and his life relations.

the complete absence of any conviction that could be called not only general, but even dominant. Each new effort of thought is expressed by a new system; each new system, as soon as it is born, destroys all the previous ones, and destroying them, it itself dies at the moment of birth, so that, constantly working, the human mind cannot rest on any achieved result; constantly striving to build some great, transcendental building, he finds no support anywhere to establish even one first stone for a foundation that does not shake.

That is why in all any remarkable works of literature, in all important and unimportant phenomena of thought in the West, starting with the latest philosophy of Schelling and ending with the long-forgotten system of Saint-Simonists, we usually find two different sides: one almost always arouses sympathy in the public , and often contains a lot of true, practical and forward-moving thought: this is the side negative, polemical, refutation of systems and opinions that preceded the stated belief; the other side, if sometimes it arouses sympathy, is almost always limited and quickly passing: this is the side positive, that is, exactly what constitutes the peculiarity of a new thought, its essence, its right to life beyond the limits of the first curiosity.

The reason for this duality in Western thought is obvious. Having completed its previous ten-century development, the new Europe has come into conflict with the old Europe and feels that to begin a new life it needs a new foundation. The basis of people's life is conviction. Not finding a ready-made one that meets its requirements, Western thought is trying to create a conviction for itself by effort, to invent it, if possible, by the effort of thinking - but in this desperate work, in any case curious and instructive, until now each experience has been only a contradiction of the other.

by the power of inner thought. From the depths of his soul, he must bring out, in addition to beautiful forms, the very soul of beauty: his living, integral view of the world and man. No artificial constructs of concepts, no reasonable theories will help here. His sonorous and trembling thought must come from the very secret of his inner, so to speak, supraconscious conviction, and where this sanctuary of being is fragmented by the heteroglossia of beliefs, or empty by their absence, there can be no talk of poetry, nor of any powerful influence of man on man. .

This state of mind in Europe is quite new. It belongs to the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The eighteenth century, although it was predominantly an unbeliever, nevertheless had its ardent convictions, its dominant theories, on which thought calmed down, with which the feeling of the highest needs of the human spirit was deceived. When the impulse of rapture was followed by disappointment in his favorite theories, then the new man could not stand life without heartfelt goals: despair became his dominant feeling. Byron testifies to this transitional state, but the feeling of despair, in its essence, is only momentary. Coming out of it, Western self-consciousness split into two opposing aspirations. On the one hand, thought, not supported by the highest goals of the spirit, fell into the service of sensual interests and selfish views; hence the industrial direction of minds, which penetrated not only into external social life, but also into the abstract field of science, into the content and form of literature, and even into the very depths of home life, into the sanctity of family ties, into the magical secret place of the first youthful dreams. On the other hand, the absence of basic principles awakened in many the consciousness of their necessity. The very lack of conviction produced the need for faith; but the minds that sought faith did not always know how to reconcile its Western forms with the present state of European science. From this, some resolutely abandoned the latter and declared irreconcilable enmity between faith and reason; others, trying to find their agreement, either force science in order to squeeze it into Western forms of religion, or want to transform the very forms of religion according to their science, or, finally, not finding

In the West, in forms that correspond to their mental needs, they invent for themselves a new religion without a church, without tradition, without revelation and without faith.

The boundaries of this article do not allow us to present in a clear picture what is remarkable and special in the modern phenomena of literature in Germany, England, France and Italy, where a new, noteworthy religious and philosophical thought is now also emerging. In subsequent issues of the Moskvitian we hope to present this image with all possible impartiality. Now, in quick essays, we will try to identify in foreign literature only what they represent that is most strikingly remarkable at the present moment.

In Germany, the dominant trend of minds still remains predominantly philosophical; adjacent to it, on the one hand, is the historical-theological direction, which is a consequence of one’s own, deeper development of philosophical thought, and on the other, the political direction, which, it seems, for the most part should be attributed to someone else’s influence, judging by the predilection of the most remarkable writers of this kind to France and its literature. Some of these German patriots go so far as to place Voltaire, as a philosopher, above German thinkers.

Schelling's new system, so long awaited, so solemnly accepted, did not seem to agree with the expectations of the Germans. His Berlin auditorium, where in the first year of his appearance it was difficult to find a place, is now said to have become spacious. His method of reconciling faith with philosophy has not yet convinced either believers or philosophists. The first reproach him for the excessive rights of reason and for the special meaning that he puts into his concepts about the most basic dogmas of Christianity. His closest friends see him only as a thinker on the path to faith. “I hope,” says Neander, (dedicating a new edition of his church history to him) “I hope that the merciful God will soon make you completely ours.” Philosophers, on the contrary, are offended by the fact that he accepts as the property of reason, dogmas of faith, not developed from reason according to the laws of logical necessity. "If

“his system was the holy truth itself,” they say, “even in this case it could not be an acquisition of philosophy until it was its own product.”

However, it should be noted that the word Hegelianism is not associated with any specific way of thinking, or with any permanent direction. The Hegelians agree among themselves only in the method of thinking and even more in the method of expression; but the results of their methods and the meaning of what is expressed are often completely opposite. Even during Hegel’s lifetime, between him and Hans, the most brilliant of his students, there was a complete contradiction in the applied conclusions of philosophy. The same disagreement is repeated among other Hegelians. For example, the way of thinking of Hegel and some of his followers reached extreme aristocracy; while other Hegelians preach the most desperate democratism; there were even some who derived from the same principles the doctrine of the most fanatical absolutism. In religious terms, others adhere to Protestantism in the strictest, ancient sense of the word, without deviating not only from the concept, but even from the letter of the teaching; others, on the contrary, reach the most absurd atheism. In relation to art, Hegel himself began by contradicting the newest trend, justifying the romantic and demanding the purity of artistic genera; Many Hegelians have remained with this theory even now, while others preach the latest art in the most extreme contrast to the romantic and with the most desperate uncertainty of forms and confusion of characters. Thus, oscillating between opposite directions, now aristocratic, now popular, now religious, now godless, now romantic, now new-life, now purely Prussian, now suddenly Turkish, now finally French—Hegel’s system in Germany had different characters, and not only at these opposite extremes, but also at every degree of their mutual distance, formed and left a special school of followers, who more or less incline now to the right, now to the left. Therefore, nothing can be more unfair than to attribute to one Hegelian the opinion of another, as sometimes happens in Germany, but more often in other literatures where Hegel’s system is not yet well known. As a result of this misunderstanding, most of Hegel’s followers suffer completely undeserved accusations. For it is natural that the harshest, ugliest thoughts of some

They are most likely distributed among the surprised public as an example of excessive courage or amusing oddity, and, not knowing the full flexibility of Hegel’s method, many unwittingly attribute to all Hegelians what belongs, perhaps, to one.

However, speaking about Hegel’s followers, it is necessary to distinguish those of them who are engaged in applying his methods to other sciences, from those who continue to develop his teaching in the field of philosophy. Of the first, there are some writers remarkable for the power of logical thinking; of the latter, not a single one of particular genius is still known, not a single one who would rise even to the living concept of philosophy, would penetrate beyond its external forms and would say at least one fresh thought that was not literally drawn from the writings of the teacher. Is it true, Erdman At first he promised original development, but then, however, for 14 years in a row he does not get tired of constantly turning over the same well-known formulas. The same external formality fills the essays Rosencrantz, Mishleta, Marheineke, Goto Roetscher And Gabler, although the latter also somewhat alters the direction of his teacher and even his very phraseology - either because he really understands him this way, or perhaps wants to understand him this way, sacrificing the accuracy of his expressions for the external benefit of the entire school. Werder for some time he enjoyed a reputation as a particularly gifted thinker, while he did not publish anything and was known only for his teaching to Berlin students; but having published a logic filled with commonplaces and old formulas, dressed in a worn but elaborate dress, with plump phrases, he proved that teaching talent is not a guarantee for the dignity of thinking. The true, only true and pure representative of Hegelianism remains to this day Hegel and he alone, although perhaps no one more than himself contradicted in his applications the basic principles of his philosophy.

innocence, in the relation of pure thinking to its fundamental principle. But here, as in all modern thinking, the destructive force of Trendelenburg is in clear imbalance with the creative one.

The attacks of the Herbartians have, perhaps, less logical irresistibility, but a more significant meaning, because in the place of the destroyed system they put not the emptiness of meaninglessness, from which the human mind has even more disgust than physical nature; but they offer another, ready-made, very worthy of attention, although still little appreciated Herbart’s system.

However, the less satisfactory the philosophical state of Germany is, the more religious need is revealed in it. In this respect, Germany is now a very curious phenomenon. The need for faith, so deeply felt by the highest minds, amid the general fluctuation of opinions, and, perhaps, as a result of this fluctuation, was revealed there by a new religious mood of many poets, the formation of new religious and artistic schools and, most of all, a new direction in theology. These phenomena are all the more important because they seem to be only the first beginning of a future, powerful development. I know that they usually say the opposite; I know that they see in the religious direction of some writers only an exception to the general, dominant state of mind. And indeed it is an exception, judging by the material, numerical majority of the so-called educated class; for it must be admitted that this class, more than ever, now belongs to the very left extreme of rationalism. But we must not forget that the development of popular thought does not come from the numerical majority. The majority expresses only the present moment and testifies more to the past, active force than to the advancing movement. To understand the direction, you have to look in the wrong direction. where there are more people, but where there is more inner vitality and where there is a fuller correspondence of thought to the crying needs of the age. If we take into account how noticeably the vital development of German rationalism has stopped; how mechanically he moves in unimportant formulas, going over the same worn-out positions; like anything

the original trembling of thought apparently breaks out of these monotonous shackles and strives for another, warmer sphere of activity; then we will be convinced that Germany has outlived its real philosophy, and that a new, profound revolution in beliefs will soon await it.

To understand the latest direction of her Lutheran theology, one must recall the circumstances that served as the reason for its development.

At the end of the last and at the beginning of the present century, the majority of German theologians were, as we know, imbued with that popular rationalism which arose from the mixture of French opinions with German school formulas. This trend spread very quickly. Land surveyor, at the beginning of his career, was proclaimed a free-thinking new teacher; but at the end of his activity and without changing his direction, he himself suddenly found himself with the reputation of an obdurate Old Believer and a extinguisher of reason. The state of theological teaching around him changed so quickly and so completely.

In contrast to this weakening of faith, a small circle of people closed in a barely noticeable corner of German life intense believers, the so-called Pietists, who were somewhat close to the Herrnhuters and Methodists.

But the year 1812 awakened the need for higher convictions throughout Europe; Then, especially in Germany, religious feeling awoke again with renewed vigor. The fate of Napoleon, the revolution that took place throughout the entire educated world, the danger and salvation of the fatherland, the re-inception of all the foundations of life, brilliant, young hopes for the future - all this seething of great questions and enormous events could not help but touch the deepest side of human self-consciousness and awakened its highest powers. spirit. Under such influence, a new generation of Lutheran theologians was formed, which naturally came into direct conflict with the previous one. From their mutual opposition in literature, in life and in government activities, two schools arose: one, at that time new, fearing the autocracy of reason, adhered strictly to the symbolic books of its confession; the other allowed herself a reasonable interpretation. Per-

Val, opposing the excessive, in her opinion, rights of philosophizing, joined her extreme members to the Pietists; the latter, while defending reason, sometimes bordered on pure rationalism. From the struggle of these two extremes an infinite number of middle directions have developed.

Meanwhile, the disagreement of these two parties on the most important issues, the internal disagreement of different shades of the same party, the disagreement of different representatives of the same shade, and finally, the attacks of pure rationalists, who are no longer among the believers, against all these parties and shades taken together, all this aroused in the general opinion the consciousness of the need for a more thorough study of the Holy Scriptures than it had been done until that time, and most of all: the need for a firm definition of the boundaries between reason and faith. The new development of historical and especially philological and philosophical education in Germany coincided with this requirement and was partly strengthened by it. Instead of previously university students barely understanding Greek, now gymnasium students began to enter universities with a ready-made stock of thorough knowledge in the languages: Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Philological and historical departments were occupied by people of remarkable talents. Theological philosophy counted many famous representatives, but it was especially revived and developed by its brilliant and thoughtful teaching Schleiermacher, and another, the opposite of it, although not brilliant, but no less profound, although barely understandable, but, by some inexpressible, sympathetic connection of thoughts, the professor’s surprisingly fascinating teaching Dauba. These two systems were joined by a third, based on the philosophy of Hegel. The fourth party consisted of the remnants of the former Breitschneiderian popular rationalism. Behind them came the pure rationalists, with naked philosophizing without faith.

The more clearly the various directions were defined, the more multilaterally private issues were processed, the more difficult was their general agreement.

Meanwhile, the side of predominantly believers, strictly adhering to their symbolic books, had a great outward appearance.

great benefit over others: only followers of the Augsburg Confession, which enjoyed state recognition, as a result of the Peace of Westphalia, could have the right to the protection of state power. As a result, many of them demanded the removal of those who opposed them from their places.

On the other hand, this very benefit was perhaps the reason for their little success. Against the attack of thought, resorting to the protection of an external force seemed to many to be a sign of internal failure. Moreover, their position had another weak side: the Augsburg Confession itself was based on the right of personal interpretation. To allow this right before the 16th century and not to allow it after seemed to many to be another contradiction. However, for one reason or another, but rationalism, suspended for a while and not defeated by the efforts of legitimate believers, began to spread again, now acting with redoubled force, strengthened by all the acquisitions of science, until, finally, following the inexorable flow of syllogisms, divorced from faith, he achieved the most extreme, most disgusting results.

Thus, the results that revealed the power of rationalism also served as its denunciation. If they could bring some momentary harm to the crowd imitatively repeating other people's opinions; for this reason, people who openly sought a solid foundation separated themselves from them the more clearly and the more decisively chose the opposite direction. As a result, the previous views of many Protestant theologians have changed significantly.

.—Instead of the previous desire to justify all uprisings against the Church of Rome, they are now more inclined to condemn them. They readily accuse the Waldenses and Wyclifites, with whom they previously found so much sympathy; Gregory VII and Innocent III are acquitted, and even Goose is condemned for resistance to the legitimate authority of the Church,—The goose, which Luther himself, as legend says, called the predecessor of his swan song.

In accordance with this trend, they want some changes in their worship and especially, following the example of the Episcopal Church, they want to give greater predominance to the liturgical part itself over the sermon. For this purpose, all the liturgies of the first centuries were translated, and the most complete collection of all old and new church songs was compiled. In the matter of pastoring, they require not only teachings in church, but also exhortations in homes, along with constant monitoring of the lives of parishioners. To top it all off, they want to return to custom the former church punishments, ranging from a simple admonition to a solemn eruption, and even rebel against mixed marriages. Both of these in the Old Lutheran Church *) are no longer desires, but dogmas introduced into actual life.

*) Old Lutheran Church there is a new phenomenon. It arose from the resistance of some part of the Lutherans against their union with the Reformed. The present King of Prussia has allowed them to profess their doctrine openly and separately; As a result, a new church was formed, called the Old Lutheran. It had its full Council in 1841, issued its own special decrees, established for its governance its Supreme Church Council, independent of any authorities, sitting in Breslau, on which alone the lower councils and all the churches of their confession depend. According to their decrees, mixed marriages are strictly prohibited for all those taking part in church administration or education. Others, if not directly prohibited, are at least advised against as reprehensible. They call mixed marriages not only the union of Lutherans with Catholics, but also Old Lutherans with Lutherans of the united, so-called Evangelical Church.

my dogmatist. On the contrary, their differences are even more significant than might seem at first glance. So, for example, Julius Müller, who is revered by them as one of the most legal-minded, nevertheless deviates from others in his teaching about sin; despite the fact that this question almost belongs to the most central questions of theology. " Getstenberg, the most cruel opponent of rationalism, not everyone finds sympathy for this extreme of his bitterness, and among those who sympathize with him, very many disagree with him in some particulars of his teaching, such as, for example, in the concept of Prophecy, although a special concept of prophecy must certainly lead to a special concept of the very relationship of human nature to the Divine, that is, of the very basis of dogma. Toluca, the most warm-hearted in his beliefs and the most warm-hearted in his thinking, is usually considered by his party to be an overly liberal thinker, while one or another attitude of thinking to faith, with consistent development, should change the entire character of the doctrine. Neander they blame his all-forgiving tolerance and kind-hearted sympathy with other teachings, a feature that not only determines his distinctive view of the history of the church, but also the internal movement of the human spirit in general, and therefore separates the very essence of his teaching from others. Draw And Lykke They also disagree with their party in many ways. Everyone puts into his confession the distinctiveness of his personality. Despite the fact, however, Beck, one of the most remarkable representatives of the new religious movement, demands from Protestant theologians the compilation of a general, complete, scientific dogma, pure from personal opinions and independent of temporary systems. But, having considered all that has been said, we may, it seems, have some right to doubt the feasibility of this requirement.—

in a matter of science; there every thought of science and literature turns into a question of life. Xiu's famous novel resonated not so much in literature as in society; its results were: a transformation in the structure of prisons, the formation of humane societies, etc. His other novel, now published, obviously owes its success to non-literary qualities. Balzac, who had such success before 1830 because he described the then dominant society, is now almost forgotten for precisely the same reason. The dispute between the clergy and the university, which in Germany would have given rise to abstract discussions about the relationship between philosophy and faith, state and religion, like the dispute about the Bishop of Cologne, in France only aroused greater attention to the current state of public education, to the nature of the activities of the Jesuits and to the modern direction of public education . The general religious movement of Europe was expressed in Germany by new dogmatic systems, historical and philological research and scientific philosophical interpretations; in France, on the contrary, it hardly produced one or two remarkable books, but it was all the more powerful in religious societies, in political parties and in the missionary action of the clergy on the people. The natural sciences, which have achieved such enormous development in France, despite the fact that they are not only based exclusively on empiricism, but also in the very fullness of their development are devoid of speculative interest, caring primarily about application to business, about the benefits and benefits of existence , - while in Germany every step in the study of nature is defined from the point of view of a philosophical view, included in the system and assessed not so much by its benefits to life, but in relation to its speculative principles. So in Germany theology And philosophy constitute two most important subjects of general attention in our time, and their agreement is now the dominant need of German thought. In France, on the contrary, philosophical development is not a necessity, but a luxury of thinking. The essential question of the present moment is the agreement between religion and society. Religious writers, instead of dogmatic development, seek real application,

Meanwhile, political thinkers, even not imbued with religious conviction, invent artificial beliefs, striving to achieve in them the unconditionality of faith and its supramental immediacy.

The modern and almost equivalent excitement of these two interests: religious and social, two opposite ends, perhaps, of one torn thought, forces us to assume that the participation of modern France in the general development of human enlightenment, its place in the field of science in general, should be determined by that special the sphere from which both emanate and where these two different directions merge into one. But what result will come from this aspiration of thought? Will a new science be born from this: science public life,—as at the end of the last century, from the combined action of the philosophical and social mood of England, was born there new science of national wealth? Or will the effect of modern French thinking be limited only to changing some principles in other sciences? Is France destined to make or only begin this change? To guess this now would be idle daydreaming. A new direction is just beginning, and even then barely noticeably, to appear in literature—still unconscious in its specificity, not yet collected even into one question. But in any case, this movement of science in France cannot but seem to us more significant than all other aspirations of its thinking, and it is especially interesting to see how it begins to express itself in contradiction to the previous principles of political economy, the science with the subject of which it is most in contact. Questions about competition and monopoly, about the relationship between the excess of luxury products and the people's satisfaction, the cheapness of products to the poverty of workers, state wealth to the wealth of capitalists, the value of work to the value of goods, the development of luxury to the suffering of poverty, violent activity to mental savagery, the healthy morality of the people to their industrial education - all these questions are presented by many in a completely new form, directly contrary to the previous views of political economy, and now arouse the concern of thinkers. We are not saying that new views should enter science. They are still too much for this

immature, too one-sided, too imbued with the blinding spirit of the party, obscured by the complacency of the newborn. We see that the latest courses in political economy are still compiled according to the same principles. But at the same time, we notice that attention has been aroused to new questions, and although we do not think that they could find their final solution in France, we cannot help but admit that its literature is destined to be the first to introduce this new element into the general laboratory of the human enlightenment.

This direction of French thinking seems to stem from the natural development of the entire body of French education. The extreme poverty of the lower classes served only as an external, accidental reason for this, and was not the cause, as some people think. Evidence of this can be found in the internal incoherence of those views for which popular poverty was the only outcome, and even more so in the fact that the poverty of the lower classes is incomparably greater in England than in France, although there the dominant movement of thought took a completely different direction.

IN England Although religious questions are aroused by the social situation, they nevertheless turn into dogmatic disputes, as, for example, in Puseism and its opponents; public issues are limited to local demands, or raise a cry (and cry , as the English say), display the banner of some belief, the significance of which lies not in the strength of thought, but in the strength of the interests corresponding to it and gathering around it.

society and, based on the results of his calculations, forms his own way of thinking. The names: Whig, Tory, Radical, and all the countless shades of English parties express not the personal characteristics of a person, as in France, and not the system of his philosophical belief, as in Germany, but the place that he occupies in the state. The Englishman is stubborn in his opinion because it is due to his social position; The Frenchman often sacrifices his position for his heartfelt conviction; and the German, although he does not sacrifice one to the other, still cares little about their agreement. French education moves through the development of prevailing opinion, or fashion; English - through the development of government; German - through armchair thinking. That is why the Frenchman is strong in his enthusiasm, the Englishman in his character, and the German in his abstract and systematic fundamentality.

But the more, as in our time, folk literature and personalities come closer together, the more their features are erased. Among the writers of England, who enjoy more than others the fame of literary success, two writers, two representatives of modern literature, completely opposite in their directions, thoughts, parties, goals and views, despite the fact, however, both, in different forms, reveal one truth: that the hour has come when the islander separateness of England is beginning to give way to the universality of continental enlightenment and merge with it into one sympathetic whole. Besides this similarity, Carlyle And Disraeli have nothing in common with each other. The first bears deep traces of German predilections. His style, filled, as English critics say, with a hitherto unheard of Germanism, meets with deep sympathy among many. His thoughts are clothed in German dreamy uncertainty; its direction expresses the interest of thought, instead of the English interest of the party. He does not pursue the old order of things, does not resist the movement of the new; he appreciates both, he loves both, respects the organic fullness of life in both, and, himself belonging to the party of progress, by the very development of its fundamental principle he destroys the exclusive desire for innovation.

Thus here, as in all modern phenomena of thought in Europe, newest direction contradicts new, who destroyed old.

Disraelinot infected by any foreign addiction. He's a representative young England,—a circle of young people expressing a special, extreme section of the Tory party. However, despite the fact that young England acts in the name of the most extreme conservation principles, but, if you believe Disraeli’s novel, the very basis of their beliefs completely destroys the interests of their party. They want to retain the old, but not in the form in which it exists in its current forms, but in its former spirit, which requires a form that is in many ways opposite to the present. For the benefit of the aristocracy, they want a living rapprochement and sympathy everyone classes; for the benefit of the Anglican Church, they want its rights to be equal with the Church of Ireland and other dissidents; to maintain agricultural superiority, they demand the abolition of the grain law, which protects it. In a word, the view of this Tory party obviously destroys the entire peculiarity of English Toryism, and at the same time the entire difference between England and other European countries.

But Disraeli is a Jew, and therefore has his own special views, which do not allow us to fully rely on the fidelity of the beliefs of the younger generation he depicted. Only the extraordinary success of his novel, which is, however, devoid of literary merits proper, and most of all the success of the author, if you believe the magazines, in high English society, gives some credibility to his presentation.

Having thus enumerated the most remarkable movements in the literatures of Europe, we hasten to repeat what we said at the beginning of the article, that by denoting the modern, we did not mean to present a complete picture of the current state of literature. We only wanted to point out their latest trends, which are barely beginning to express themselves in new phenomena.

Meanwhile, if we collect everything that we have noticed into one result and compare it with the character of the European Enlightenment, which, although it developed earlier, continues to be dominant to this day, then from this point of view some results will be revealed to us that are very important for understanding of our time.

— Separate types of literature were mixed into one indefinite form.

- Individual sciences no longer remain within their former boundaries, but strive to get closer to the sciences adjacent to them, and in this expansion of their limits they adjoin their common center - philosophy.

- Philosophy in its final final development seeks such a principle, in the recognition of which it could merge with faith into one speculative unity.

— Individual Western nationalities, having reached the fullness of their development, strive to destroy the features that separate them and merge into one pan-European education.

This result is all the more remarkable because it developed from the exact opposite direction. It mainly arose from the desires of each people to study, restore and preserve their national identity. But the more deeply these aspirations developed in historical, philosophical and social conclusions, the more they reached the fundamental foundations of separate nationalities, the more clearly they encountered not special, but general European principles, equally belonging to all private nationalities. For in the general basis of European life there is one dominant principle.

— Meanwhile, this dominant principle of European life, separating from nationalities, thereby appears as outdated, as past in its meaning, although still continuing in fact. Therefore, the modern feature of Western life lies in the general, more or less clear consciousness that this the beginning of European education, which developed throughout the history of the West, in our time turns out to be unsatisfactory for the highest requirements of enlightenment. Let us also note that this consciousness of the unsatisfactoriness of European life came from the consciousness that is directly opposite to it, from the conviction of the recently passed time that European enlightenment is the last and highest link of human development. One extreme turned to the other.

- But recognizing the unsatisfactory nature of European education, the general feeling thereby distinguishes it from other principles of all-human development and, designating it as special, reveals to us distinctive character-

fallen enlightenment in its parts and totality, as a primary desire for personal and original rationality in thoughts, in life, in society and in all the springs and forms of human existence. This character of unconditional rationality was also born from a long-past desire that preceded it, from a previous effort not to educate, but to forcibly lock thought in one scholastic system.

- But if the general feeling of unsatisfactoriness from the very beginnings of European life is nothing more than a dark or clear consciousness the inadequacy of unconditional reason, then although it produces a desire for religiosity in general However, by its very origin from the development of reason, it cannot submit to a form of faith that would completely reject reason, nor be satisfied with one that would make faith dependent on it.

- The arts, poetry and even almost every creative dream were only possible in Europe until then, as a living, necessary element of its education, until the dominant rationalism in its thought and life reached the last, extreme link of its development; for now they are possible only as a theatrical decoration that does not deceive the inner feelings of the viewer, who directly takes it for an artificial untruth that amuses his idleness, but without which his life will not lose anything essential. The truth for Western poetry can only be resurrected when a new beginning is accepted into the life of European enlightenment.

This alienation of art from life was preceded by a period of general striving for artistry, which ended with the last artist of Europe - with the great Goethe, who expressed the death of poetry with the second part of his Faust. The worries of daydreaming turned into the worries of industry. But in our time, the disagreement between poetry and life has become even more clear.

- From all that has been said, it also follows that the modern character of the European Enlightenment, in its historical, philosophical and life meaning, is completely unambiguous with the character of that era of Roman-Greek education, when, having developed to the point of contradicting itself,

by natural necessity she had to to accept another, new beginning, stored among other tribes that did not have world-historical significance until that time.

Each time has its own dominant, its own vital question, prevailing over all, containing all others, on which alone their relative significance and limited meaning depend. If everything we have noticed about the present state of Western education is true, then one cannot help but be convinced that at the bottom of the European enlightenment, in our time, all particular questions about the movements of minds, about the directions of science, about the goals of life, about the various structures of societies, about the characters of people , family and personal relationships, about the dominant principles of the external and inner life of a person - all merge into one essential, living, great question about the attitude of the West to that hitherto unnoticed beginning of life, thinking and education, which lies at the foundation of the world of Orthodoxy. Slavyansky.

When we turn from Europe to our fatherland, from these general results deduced by us from Western literatures, we move on to a review of literature in our fatherland, we will see in it a strange chaos of underdeveloped opinions, contradictory aspirations, discordant echoes of all possible movements of literatures: German, French, English, Italian, Polish, Swedish, various imitation of all possible and impossible European trends. But we hope to have the pleasure of talking about this in the next book.

________

We also consider it inappropriate to explain this phenomenon: its reasons lie in the history of our education. But having noticed it, realizing this all-accepting sympathy, this unconditional dependence of our literature on the various literatures of the West, we see in this very character of our literature, along with external similarities, its fundamental difference from all European literatures.

Let's expand our thought.

The history of all literature in the West presents us with an inextricable connection between literary movements and the entire totality of popular education. The same inextricable connection exists between the development of education and the first elements that make up the people's life. Certain interests are expressed in the corresponding structure of concepts; a certain way of thinking is based on certain relationships in life. What one experiences without consciousness, another seeks to comprehend with thought and expresses it in an abstract formula, or, conscious in the movement of the heart, pours it out in poetic sounds. No matter how different the incoherent, unaccountable concepts of a simple artisan or an illiterate plowman may seem, at first glance, from the captivatingly harmonious worlds of a poet’s artistic imagination, or from the deep systematic thought of an armchair thinker, upon careful examination it is obvious that between them lies the same internal gradualism , the same organic sequence that exists between the seed, flower and fruit of one tree.

How the language of a people represents the imprint of its natural logic and, if it does not fully express its way of thinking, then at least represents the foundation from which its mental life incessantly and naturally emanates; so the torn, undeveloped concepts of a people who do not yet think form the root from which the highest education of a nation grows. That is why all branches of education, being in living interpenetration, form one inextricably articulated whole.

For this reason, every movement in the literature of Western peoples flows from the internal movement of their education, which in turn is influenced by literature. Even those words that are subject to the influence of others

145

peoples, accept this influence only when it meets the requirements of their internal development, and assimilate it only to the extent that it is in harmony with the nature of their enlightenment. For them, what is foreign is not a contradiction of their particularity, but only a step in the ladder of their own ascent. If we see that at the present moment all literatures sympathize with each other, merging, so to speak, into one pan-European literature, then this could only happen because the education of different peoples developed from the same beginning and, each passing its own path, finally achieved the same result, the same meaning of mental existence. But despite this similarity, even now the Frenchman not only does not fully accept German thought, but perhaps does not even fully understand it. In Germany, for the most part, the Jews are Frenchized, brought up in a break with popular beliefs and only later accepting philosophical Christianity. The English are even less able to free themselves from their national characteristics. In Italy and Spain, although the influence of French literature is noticeable, this influence is more imaginary than significant, and French ready-made forms serve only as an expression of the internal state of their own education; for it is not French literature in general, but only the literature of the 18th century that still dominates in these belated lands *).

*) Rosmini’s thoughtful writings, which promise the development of new original thinking in Italy, are familiar to us only from magazine reviews. But as far as one can judge from these torn extracts, it seems that the 18th century will soon end for Italy, and that a new era of mental renaissance now awaits it, emanating from a new beginning of thinking, based on the three elements of Italian life: religion, history and art.

secret history, hard-earned by life, obscured by its complex relationships and heterogeneous interests, ascends through the power of literary activity along the ladder of mental development, from the lower strata of society to its highest circles, from unconscious desires to the last stages of consciousness, and in this form it is no longer a witty truth , not an exercise in the art of rhetoric or dialectic, but an internal matter of self-knowledge, more or less clear, more or less correct, but in any case essentially significant. Thus, she enters the sphere of general human enlightenment, as a living, inalienable element, as a person with a voice in the matter of general council; but it returns to its inner foundation, to the beginning of its origin, as the conclusion of the mind to unsolved circumstances, as the word of conscience to unconscious instincts. Of course, this mind, this conscience can be obscured, corrupted; but this corruption does not depend on the place that literature occupies in the education of the people, but on the distortion of their inner life; how in man the falsity of reason and the corruption of conscience arise not from the essence of reason and conscience, but from his personal corruption.

147

The knowledge of the ancient classics, the extraordinary development of mental and social talents, surprised travelers and formed the constant subject of reports of the observant papal nuncios of that time *). As a result of this education, literature was amazingly rich. It consisted of learned commentaries of ancient classics, successful and unsuccessful imitations, written partly in dandy Polish, partly in exemplary Latin, numerous and important translations, some of which are still considered exemplary, such as the translation of Tassa; others prove the depth of enlightenment, such as the translation of all the works of Aristotle, made back in the 16th century. During one reign of Sigismund III, 711 famous literary names shone, and printing houses worked continuously in more than 80 cities**). But there was nothing in common between this artificial enlightenment and the natural elements of the mental life of the people. Because of this, a split occurred in the entire education of Poland. While the learned gentlemen wrote interpretations of Horace, translated Tassa and undeniably sympathized with all the phenomena of the European enlightenment of their time, this enlightenment was reflected only on the surface of life, without growing from the root, and thus, devoid of original development, all this abstract mental activity, this scholarship, this brilliance, these talents, these glories, these flowers plucked from foreign fields, all this rich literature disappeared almost without a trace for Polish education, and completely without a trace for the enlightenment of universal humanity, for that European education to which she was too faithful reflection ***). True, one phenomenon in the field of science

*) See: Niemcetmcz: Zbior pamiçtnikow o dawney Polszcze.

**) Look : Chodzko, Tableau de la Pologne ancienne et moderne.

***) This is what K says. Mekherinsky in hisHistorya języka lacinskiego w Polsce, Krakow, 1835:

Then there was a general opinion that everything worthy of respect and reasonable could only be written in Latin.—Meanwhile, the Krakow Academy (founded in 1347), warning all German universities, opened for Poland a new Latium, where the ancient Muses The Hesperia had already chosen a permanent residence, and the Poles no longer needed to look for science beyond the Alps.

Soon the Jagiellonian educational institutions eclipsed many European ones in their glory.

Poland is proud, she brought one tribute to the treasury of all-human enlightenment: the great Copernicus was a Pole; but let us not forget that Copernicus left Poland in his youth and was brought up in Germany.

Thank God: there is not the slightest similarity between present-day Russia and old Poland, and therefore, I hope no one will reproach me for an inappropriate comparison and will not interpret my words into a different meaning if we say that in our attitude to literature such a thing is noticeable. the same abstract artificiality, the same flowers without roots, plucked from other people's fields. We translate, imitate, study other people's words, follow their slightest movements,

The theologian-orators sent (from Poland) to the Basel Council took first place there after the Bonnon Tullians.

Kazimir Jagaidovich started many Latin schools and was very concerned about the spread of the Latin language in Poland; he even issued a strict decree so that everyone who is looking for any significant position should be able to speak Latin well. Since then, it became a custom that every Polish noble spoke Latin... Even women zealously studied Latin. Yanotsky says, among other things, that Elisabeth, the wife of Casimir II, herself wrote the essay: De institutione regii pueri.

As before mathematics and jurisprudence, at this time the fine sciences flourished in Poland, and the study of Latin quickly rose.

Jor. Lud. Decius(contemporary of Sigismund I -go) indicates that among the Sarmatians you rarely meet a person from a good family who does not know three or four languages, but everyone knows Latin.

Queen Barbara, the wife of Sigismund, not only completely understood the Latin classics, but also wrote to the king, her husband, in Latin....

And among Latium, says Cromer, there would not be so many people who could prove their knowledge of the Latin language. Even girls, both from the nobility and from ordinary families, both in homes and monasteries, read and write equally well in Polish and Latin.—And in the collection of letters from 1390 to 1580. Kamusara, a modern writer, says that out of a hundred nobles it is hardly possible to find two who do not know the languages: Latin, German and Italian. They learn them in schools, and this happens by itself, because there is no poor village in Poland, or even a tavern, where there are not people who speak these three languages, and in every village, even the smallest one, there is a school (see. Mémoires de F. Choisin ). This important fact has a very deep meaning in our eyes. Meanwhile, the author continues, the folk language for the most part remained only in the mouths of common people

The thirst for European glory forced me to write in the universal Latin language; for this, Polish poets received crowns from German emperors and popes, and politicians acquired diplomatic connections

To what extent is Poland in X V and X VI century, surpassed other peoples in knowledge of ancient literature, as can be seen from many testimonies, especially foreign ones. De Thou, in his history, under the year 1573, describing the arrival of the Polish embassy in France, says that of the large crowd of Poles who entered Paris on fifty horse-drawn horses drawn by fours, there was not a single one who did not speak Latin in perfection; that the French nobles blushed with shame when they only had to wink in response to questions from guests; that in the whole court there were only two who

we assimilate other people's thoughts and systems, and these exercises constitute the decoration of our educated living rooms, sometimes have an impact on the very actions of our life, but, not being connected with the fundamental development of our historically given education, they separate us from the internal source of domestic enlightenment, and at the same time, they make us fruitless for the common cause of human enlightenment. The works of our literature, as reflections of European ones, cannot have any interest for other peoples, except for statistical interest, as an indication of the measure of our student success in the study of their samples. For ourselves, they are curious as an addition, as an explanation, as an assimilation of other people's phenomena; but even for ourselves, with the general spread of knowledge of foreign languages, our imitations always remain somewhat lower and weaker than their originals.

It goes without saying that I am not talking here about those extraordinary phenomena in which the personal power of genius operates. Derzhavin, Karamzin, Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Gogol, even if they followed someone else’s influence, even if they paved their own special path, will always act strongly, with the power of their personal talent, regardless of the direction they have chosen. I am not talking about exceptions, but about literature in general, in its ordinary state.

There is no doubt that there is a clear disagreement between our literary education and the fundamental elements of our mental life, which developed in our ancient history and are now preserved in our so-called uneducated people. Disagreement is happening

could answer these envoys in Latin, for which they were always put forward. The famous Muret, comparing learned Poland with Italy, expresses himself this way: which of the two nations is ruder? Was he not born in the bosom of Italy? Among them you can hardly find a hundredth of those who would know Latin and Greek, and would love science. Or the Poles, who have a lot of people who speak both of these languages, and they are so attached to the sciences and arts that they spend their whole century studying them. (see M. Ant. Mureti Ep. 66ad Paulum Sacratum, ed. Kappii, p. 536).—The famous member of the learned Triumvirate, Justus Lipsy (one of the first philologists of that time), says the same thing in a letter to one of his friends, who then lived in Poland: How can I be surprised at your knowledge? You live among those people who were once a barbarian people; and now we are barbarians before them. They received the Muses, despised and expelled from Greece and Latium, into their warm and hospitable embrace (see.Epist. Cont. ad Germ, et Gail. er. 63).

not from the difference in degrees of education, but from their complete heterogeneity. Those principles of mental, social, moral and spiritual life that created the former Russia and now constitute the only sphere of its national life, did not develop into our literary enlightenment, but remained untouched, divorced from the successes of our mental activity, while passing them by, without our relationship to them, our literary enlightenment flows from foreign sources, completely different not only from the forms, but often even from the very beginnings of our beliefs. This is why every movement in our literature is determined not by the internal movement of our education, as in the West, but by the phenomena of foreign literature that are accidental to it.

Perhaps those who claim that we Russians are more capable of understanding Hegel and Goethe than the French and English think rightly; that we can sympathize more fully with Byron and Dickens than the French and even the Germans; that we can appreciate Beranger and Georges Sand better than the Germans and the British. And in fact, why can’t we understand, why can’t we evaluate the most opposite phenomena? If we break away from popular beliefs, then no special concepts, no definite way of thinking, no cherished passions, no interests, no ordinary rules will hinder us. We can freely share all opinions, assimilate all systems, sympathize with all interests, accept all beliefs. But submitting to the influence of foreign literature, we cannot, in turn, act on them with our pale reflections of their own phenomena; we cannot even act on our own literary education, which is directly subject to the strongest influence of foreign literature, and we cannot act on the education of the people; , because between her and us there is no mental connection, no sympathy, no common language.

I readily agree that, looking at our literature from this point of view, I have expressed here only one side of it, and this one-sided view, appearing in such a harsh form, not softened by its other qualities, does not give a complete, real idea of the whole character of our literature.

But this sharp or softened side nevertheless exists, and exists as a disagreement that requires resolution.

How can our literature emerge from its artificial state, acquire significance, which it still does not have, come into agreement with the entire totality of our education and appear at the same time as an expression of its life and the spring of its development?

Here two opinions are sometimes heard, both equally one-sided, equally unfounded, both equally impossible.

Some people think that the complete assimilation of foreign education can, over time, recreate the entire Russian people, just as it recreated some writing and non-writing writers, and then the entire totality of our education will come into agreement with the character of our literature. According to their concept, the development of certain basic principles should change our fundamental way of thinking, change our morals, our customs, our beliefs, erase our peculiarities and thus make us European enlightened.

Is it worth refuting this opinion?

a few living truths, more or less still surviving amid the general destruction of all special beliefs, then these truths are not European, because in contradiction with all the results of European education; they are the preserved remnants of Christian principles, which, therefore, belong not to the West, but more to us, who accepted Christianity in its purest form, although, perhaps, the existence of these principles is not assumed in our education by unconditional admirers of the West, who do not know the meaning of our enlightenment and mix in it the essential with the accidental, their own, necessary with extraneous distortions of foreign influences: Tatar, Polish , German, etc.

As for the actual European principles, as they expressed themselves in the latest results, taken separately from the previous life of Europe! and placed as the basis for the education of a new people, what will they produce, if not a pitiful caricature of enlightenment, like a poem arising from the rules of literature? , would be a caricature of poetry? The experiment has already been done. It seemed what a brilliant destiny lay ahead for the United States of America, built on such a reasonable foundation, after such a great beginning!—And what happened? Only external forms of society developed and, deprived of the internal source of life, crushed man under external mechanics. The literature of the United States, according to the reports of the most impartial judges, serves as a clear expression of this condition *).—A huge factory of mediocre verses, without the slightest shadow of poetry; official epithets that express nothing and, despite this, are constantly repeated; complete insensitivity to everything artistic; obvious contempt for any thinking that does not lead to material benefits; petty personalities with no common ground; plump phrases with the narrowest meaning, desecration of holy words: love of mankind, fatherland, public good, nationality, to the point that their use became not even hypocrisy, but a simple, generally understandable stamp of selfish calculations; outward respect for the external side of laws, with the most arrogant

*) Cooper, Washington Irving and other reflections of English literature cannot serve to characterize American literature itself.

their violation; the spirit of complicity for personal gain, with the unblushing infidelity of the persons united, with a clear disrespect for all moral principles *), so that at the basis of all these mental movements, obviously lies the smallest life, cut off from everything that raises the heart above personal self-interest, drowned in activity of egoism and recognizing material comfort, with all its service forces, as its highest goal. No! If the Russian is already destined, for some unrepentant sins, to exchange his great future for the one-sided life of the West, then I would rather dream with the abstract German in his intricate theories; It’s better to be lazy to death under the warm sky, in the artistic atmosphere of Italy; It’s better to spin with the Frenchman in his impetuous, momentary aspirations; It is better to petrify with the Englishman in his stubborn, unaccountable habits than to suffocate in this prose of factory relations, in this mechanism of selfish anxiety.

We have not moved away from our subject. The extreme of the result, although not conscious, but logically possible, reveals the falsity of the direction.

Another opinion, opposite to this unconscious worship of the West and equally one-sided, although much less widespread, lies in the unconscious worship of the past forms of our antiquity, and in the idea that over time the newly acquired European enlightenment will again have to be erased from our mental life by the development of our special education .

Both opinions are equally false; but the latter has a more logical connection. It is based on the awareness of the dignity of our previous education, on the disagreement between this education and the special character of European enlightenment, and, finally, on the inconsistency of the latest results of European enlightenment. It is possible to disagree with each of these points; but, having once admitted them, one cannot reproach the opinion based on them for a logical contradiction, just as, for example, one can reproach the opposite opinion,

*) Es finden allerdings rechtliche Zustände, ein formelles Rechtsgesetz statt, aber diese Rechtlichkeit ist ohne Rechtschaffenheit,—say Hegel in his Phil. East.

preaching Western enlightenment and unable to point to any central, positive principle in this enlightenment, but content with some particular truths or negative formulas.

Meanwhile, logical infallibility does not save opinions from significant one-sidedness; on the contrary, it makes it even more obvious. Whatever our education may be, its past forms, which appeared in some customs, preferences, relationships and even in our language, precisely because they could not be a pure and complete expression of the internal principle of people's life, because they were its external forms, therefore, the result of two various figures: one, the expressed principle, and the other, local and temporary circumstance. Therefore, any form of life, once passed, is no longer returnable, like the feature of time that participated in its creation. restoring these forms is the same as resurrecting a dead person, reviving the earthly shell of the soul, which has already flown away from it once. A miracle is needed here; Logic is not enough; Unfortunately, even love is not enough!

Moreover, no matter what the European enlightenment may be, if we once became participants in it, then it is beyond our power to destroy its influence, even if we wished to do so. You can subordinate it to another, higher one, direct it to one or another goal; but it will always remain an essential, already inalienable element of any future development of ours. It is easier to learn everything new in the world than to forget what you have learned. However, even if we could even forget at will, if we could return to that separate feature of our education from which we came, then what benefit would we receive from this new separation? It is obvious that sooner or later, we would again come into contact with European principles, would again be subject to their influence, would again have to suffer from their disagreement with our education, before we had time to subordinate them to our principles; and thus would continually return to the same question that occupies us now.

But besides all the other inconsistencies of this direction, it also has that dark side that, while unconditionally rejecting everything European, thereby cuts us off from

any participation in the general cause of human mental existence; for we must not forget that European enlightenment inherited all the results of the education of the Greco-Roman world, which in turn absorbed all the fruits of the mental life of the entire human race. Divorced in this way from the general life of humanity, the beginning of our education, instead of being the beginning of the living, true, complete enlightenment, will necessarily become a one-sided beginning and, therefore, will lose all its universal significance.

The direction towards nationality is true among us, as the highest level of education, and not as stuffy provincialism. Therefore, guided by this thought, one can look at European enlightenment as incomplete, one-sided, not imbued with the true meaning, and therefore false; but to deny it as if it does not exist means to constrain one’s own. If the European is, in fact, false, if it really contradicts the beginning of true education, then this beginning, as true, should not leave this contradiction in the mind of a person, but, on the contrary, accept it into itself, evaluate it, put it within its boundaries and, subordinating it to such image of one’s own superiority, to convey to it its true meaning. The supposed falsity of this enlightenment does not in the least contradict the possibility of its subordination to the truth. For everything that is false, at its core, is true, only put in someone else’s place: there is no essentially false, just as there is no essentiality in a lie.

Thus, both opposing views on the relationship of our indigenous education to European enlightenment, both of these extreme opinions are equally unfounded. But we must admit that in this extreme of development, in which we have presented them here, they do not exist in reality. True, we constantly meet people who, in their way of thinking, deviate more or less to one side or the other, but they do not develop their one-sidedness to the last results. On the contrary, the only reason they can remain in their one-sidedness is that they do not bring it to the first conclusions, where the question becomes clear, because from the area of unaccountable predilections it passes into the sphere of rational consciousness, where the contradiction is destroyed

in your own expression. That is why we think that all disputes about the superiority of the West, or Russia, about the dignity of European history, or ours, and similar arguments are among the most useless, the most empty questions that the idleness of a thinking person can come up with.

And what, in fact, is the benefit for us to reject or discredit what was or is good in the life of the West? Is it not, on the contrary, an expression of our own beginning, if our beginning is true? As a result of his dominion over us, everything beautiful, noble, Christian is, of necessity, our own, even if it is European, even if it is African. The voice of truth does not weaken, but is strengthened by its consonance with everything that is true, anywhere.

On the other hand, if the admirers of the European Enlightenment, from unconscious predilections for one or another form, for one or another negative truth, wanted to rise to the very beginning of the mental life of man and people, which alone gives meaning and truth to all external forms and private truths; then, without a doubt, they would have to admit that the enlightenment of the West does not represent this highest, central, dominant principle, and, therefore, they would be convinced that introducing particular forms of this enlightenment means destroying without creating, and that if in these forms, in in these particular truths there is something essential, then this essential can only be assimilated to us when it grows from our root, will be a consequence of our own development, and not when it falls to us from the outside, in the form of a contradiction to the entire structure of our conscious and ordinary existence .

condemnation and occasional shortcomings and the very essence of our education? What can we say about those who are effeminately seduced by the external splendor of European education, without delving into the basis of this education, or its internal meaning, or the nature of contradiction, inconsistency, self-destruction, which, obviously, lies not only in the general result of Western life, but even in each of its individual phenomena, obviously, I say, in the case when we are not content with the external concept of the phenomenon, but delve into its full meaning from the basic beginning to the final conclusions.

However, while saying this, we feel that our words will now find little sympathy. Zealous admirers and disseminators of Western forms and concepts are usually content with such small demands from enlightenment that they can hardly reach the awareness of this internal disagreement in European education. They think, on the contrary, that if the entire mass of humanity in the West has not yet reached the final boundaries of its possible development, then at least its highest representatives have reached them; that all essential problems have already been solved, all secrets have been laid out, all misunderstandings are clear, doubts are over; that human thought has reached the extreme limits of its growth; that now all that remains for it is to spread into general recognition, and that in the depths of the human spirit there are no longer any significant, glaring, unsilencing questions left to which it could not find a complete, satisfactory answer in the comprehensive thinking of the West; for this reason, we can only learn, imitate and assimilate other people's wealth.

It is obviously impossible to argue with this opinion. Let them be comforted by the completeness of their knowledge, proud of the truth of their direction, boast of the fruits of their external activity, and admire the harmony of their inner life. We will not break their happy charm; they earned their blissful contentment by the wise moderation of their mental and heartfelt demands. We agree that we are not able to convince them, because their opinion is strong with the sympathy of the majority, and we think that only over time it can be shaken by the force of its own development. But until then

For now, let us not hope that these admirers of European perfection will comprehend the deep meaning that is hidden in our education.

For two educations, two revelations of mental powers in man and peoples, are presented to us by impartial speculation, the history of all centuries, and even daily experience. Education alone is the internal structure of the spirit by the power of the truth communicated in it; the other is the formal development of the mind and external knowledge. The first depends on the principle to which a person submits and can be communicated directly; the second is the fruit of slow and difficult work. The first gives meaning and meaning to the second, but the second gives it content and completeness. For the first there is no changing development, there is only direct recognition, preservation and spread in the subordinate spheres of the human spirit; the second, being the fruit of centuries-old, gradual efforts, experiments, failures, successes, observations, inventions and all the successively rich mental property of the human race, cannot be created instantly, nor guessed by the most brilliant inspiration, but must be composed little by little from the combined efforts of all individual understandings. However, it is obvious that the first only has significant significance for life, investing in it one or another meaning; for from its source flow the fundamental convictions of man and peoples; it determines the order of their internal and the direction of their external existence, the nature of their private, family and social relationships, is the initial spring of their thinking, the dominant sound of their mental movements, the color of language, the cause of conscious preferences and unconscious biases, the basis of morals and customs, the meaning of their history.

as the development of artistic technique, like the cognizing mind itself, when it acts in isolation from other human abilities and develops on its own, not carried away by low passions, not illuminated by higher thoughts, but silently transmitting one abstract knowledge that can be equally used for benefit and harm, to serve the truth or to reinforce lies.

The very spinelessness of this external, logical-technical education allows it to remain in a people or a person even when they lose or change the internal basis of their being, their initial faith, their fundamental beliefs, their essential character, their life direction. The remaining education, experiencing the dominance of the higher principle that controlled it, enters the service of another, and thus passes unharmed all the various turning points of history, constantly growing in its content until the last minute of human existence.

Meanwhile, in the very times of turning points, in these epochs of decline of a person or a people, when the basic principle of life bifurcates in his mind, falls apart and thus loses all its strength, which consists primarily in the integrity of being: then this second education, rationally external, formal, is the only support of unconfirmed thought and dominates, through rational calculation and balance of interests, over the minds of internal convictions.

History presents us with several similar epochs of turning point, separated from each other by millennia, but closely connected by the inner sympathy of the spirit, similar to the sympathy that is noticed between the thinking of Hegel and the inner basis of the thinking of Aristotle.

Usually these two educations are confused. From this, in the half of the 18th century, an opinion could arise, first developed by Lessing and Condorset, and then becoming universal - the opinion of some kind of constant, natural and necessary improvement of man. It arose in contrast to another opinion, which asserted the immobility of the human race, with some periodic fluctuations up and down. Perhaps there was no thought more confusing than these two. For if in fact human

the race has improved, then why does man not become more perfect? If nothing in man developed or grew, then how could we explain the indisputable improvement of some sciences?

One thought denies in man the universality of reason, the progress of logical conclusions, the power of memory, the possibility of verbal interaction, etc.; the other kills his freedom of moral dignity.

But the opinion about the immobility of the human race had to give way in general recognition to the opinion about the necessary development of man, for the latter was the consequence of another error belonging exclusively to the rational direction of recent centuries. This misconception lies in the assumption that it is the living understanding of the spirit, the inner structure of man, which is the source of his guiding thoughts, strong deeds, reckless aspirations, sincere poetry, strong life and higher vision of the mind, as if it can be composed artificially, so to speak mechanically, from one development of logical formulas. This opinion was dominant for a long time, until, finally, in our time, it began to be destroyed by the successes of higher thinking. For the logical mind, cut off from other sources of knowledge and not yet fully experiencing the extent of its power, although it first promises a person to create an internal way of thinking for him, to communicate a non-formal, living view of the world and himself; but, having developed to the final boundaries of its scope, it itself recognizes the incompleteness of its negative knowledge and, as a result of its own conclusion, demands for itself another higher principle, unattainable by its abstract mechanism.

This is now the state of European thinking, a state that determines the attitude of European enlightenment to the fundamental principles of our education. For if the former, exclusively rational character of the West could have a destructive effect on our life and mind, now, on the contrary, the new demands of the European mind and our fundamental beliefs have the same meaning. And if it is true that the main principle of our Orthodox-Slavic education is true (which, however, I consider neither necessary nor appropriate to prove here), - if it is true, I say that this is the supreme, living principle of our enlightenment

is true: it is obvious that just as it was once the source of our ancient education, so now it should serve as a necessary complement to European education, separating it from its special directions, clearing it of the character of exclusive rationality and imbuing it with a new meaning; Meanwhile, European education, like the mature fruit of all-human development, torn from the old tree, should serve as food for new life, be a new stimulating means for the development of our mental activity.

Therefore, the love for European education, as well as the love for ours, both coincide at the last point of their development into one love, into one desire for a living, complete, all-human and truly Christian enlightenment.

On the contrary, in their underdeveloped state they are both false: for one does not know how to accept someone else’s without betraying his own; the other, in her close embrace, strangles what she wants to preserve. One limitation comes from belated thinking and ignorance of the depth of teaching that underlies our education; the other, aware of the shortcomings of the first, is too passionately in a hurry to become in direct contradiction to it. But despite all their one-sidedness, one cannot help but admit that both can be based on equally noble motives, the same strength of love for enlightenment and even for the fatherland, despite the outward opposition.

It was necessary for us to express this concept of ours about the correct relationship of our national education to European education and about two extreme views before we begin to consider the particular phenomena of our literature.

III.

Having been a reflection of foreign literature, our literary phenomena, like Western ones, are predominantly concentrated in journalism.

But what is the nature of our periodicals?

It is difficult for a magazine to express its opinion about other magazines. Praise can seem partial; blame has the appearance of self-praise. But how can we talk about our literature without understanding what constitutes its essential character? How to determine the real meaning of literature, not to mention magazines? Let us try not to worry about the appearance that our judgments may have.

Now remains older than all other literary magazines Reading Library. Its dominant character is the complete absence of any definite way of thinking. She praises today what she condemned yesterday; today he puts forward one opinion and now he preaches another; for the same subject has several opposing views; expresses no special rules, no theories, no system, no direction, no color, no conviction, no definite basis for his judgments; and, despite this, he constantly pronounces his judgment on everything that appears in literature or science. She does this in such a way that for each special phenomenon she composes special laws, from which her condemnatory or approving verdict randomly comes and falls on the happy one. For this reason, the effect that every expression of her opinion produces is the same as if she had not uttered any opinion at all. The reader understands the judge’s thought separately, and the object to which the judgment relates also lies separately in his mind: for he feels that there is no other relationship between the thought and the object except that they met by chance and for a short time, and having met again not get to know each other.

It goes without saying that this special kind of impartiality deprives Library for Reading every opportunity to have an influence on literature as a magazine, but does not prevent it from acting as a collection of articles, often very interesting. In her editor, in addition to her extraordinary, multifaceted and often amazing scholarship, she also has a special, rare and precious gift: to present the most difficult questions of science in the clearest and most understandable form, and to enliven this presentation with her own, always original, often witty remarks. This quality alone could

163

to make every periodical publication famous, not only here, but even in foreign lands.

But the most lively part of B. d. Ch. lies in the bibliography. her reviews are full of wit, fun and originality. You can't help but laugh while reading them. We have happened to see authors whose works were dismantled, and who themselves could not resist good-natured laughter while reading the verdicts on their works. For in the judgments of the Library such a complete absence of any serious opinion is noticeable that its most outwardly evil attacks take on a fantastically innocent character, so to speak, good-naturedly angry. It is clear that she laughs not because the subject is actually funny, but only because she wants to laugh. She alters the words of the author according to her intention, connects those separated by meaning, separates those connected, inserts or releases entire speeches to change the meaning of others, sometimes composes phrases completely unprecedented in the book from which she is copying, and she herself laughs at her composition. The reader sees this and laughs with her, because her jokes are almost always witty and cheerful, because they are innocent, because they are not embarrassed by any serious opinion, and because, finally, the magazine, joking in front of him, does not announce any claims What other success than the honor of making the audience laugh and amuse them?

through his rare qualities to take possession of the minds of readers, to develop his conviction strongly, to spread it widely, to attract the sympathy of the majority, to become a judge of opinions, perhaps to penetrate from literature into life itself, to connect its various phenomena into one thought and, thus dominating the minds, form a tightly closed and highly developed opinion that can be a useful engine of our education? Of course, then she would be less funny.

The character of the Library for Reading is completely opposite to that of Mayak and Otechestvennye Zapiski. Meanwhile, the Library as a whole is more a collection of heterogeneous articles than a journal; and in its criticism its sole purpose is to amuse the reader, without expressing any definite way of thinking: on the contrary, Otechestvennye Zapiski and Mayak are each imbued with their own sharply defined opinion and each express their own, equally decisive, although directly opposite direction to one another.

Domestic Notes strive to guess and appropriate to themselves that view of things, which, in their opinion, constitutes the newest expression of European enlightenment, and therefore, often changing their way of thinking, they constantly remain faithful to one concern: to express the most fashionable thought, the newest feeling from Western literature.

Mayak, on the contrary, notices only that side of Western enlightenment that seems to him harmful or immoral, and, in order to more accurately avoid sympathy with it, rejects all European enlightenment completely, without entering into dubious proceedings. That is why one person praises what another scolds; one admires what arouses indignation in another; even the same expressions that in the dictionary of one magazine mean the highest degree of dignity, for example. Europeanism, the last moment of development, human wisdom, etc., - in the language of another they have the meaning of extreme censure. Therefore, without reading one magazine, you can know his opinion from another, understanding only all his words in the opposite sense.

Thus, in the general movement of our literature, the one-sidedness of one of these periodicals

usefully balanced by the opposite one-sidedness of the other. Mutually destroying each other, each of them, without knowing it, complements the shortcomings of the other, so that the meaning and meaning, even the way of thinking and content of one, are based on the possibility of the existence of the other. The very polemics between them serve as the reason for their inextricable connection and constitute, so to speak, a necessary condition for their mental movement. However, the nature of this controversy is completely different in both journals. Mayak attacks Otechestvennye Zapiski directly, openly and with heroic tirelessness, noticing their misconceptions, errors, reservations and even typos. Domestic Notes care little about Mayak as a journal, and even rarely talk about it; but for this they constantly keep in mind its direction, against the extreme of which they try to set up the opposite, no less passionate extreme. This struggle supports the possibility of life for both and constitutes their main significance in literature.

This is the confrontation between Mayak and Fatherland. We consider notes to be a useful phenomenon in our literature because, expressing two extreme trends, they, by their exaggeration of these extremes, necessarily present them somewhat in caricature, and thus involuntarily lead the reader’s thoughts onto the path of prudent moderation in errors. In addition, each magazine of its kind reports many interesting, practical and useful articles for the dissemination of our education. For we think that our education should contain the fruits of both directions; We only do not think that these directions should remain in their exclusive one-sidedness.

However, when we talk about two directions, we mean more the ideals of the two journals than the journals themselves in question. For, unfortunately, neither the Lighthouse nor Otechestvennye Zapiski far achieve the goal that they envisage.

but, taking it as its goal, the Lighthouse mixes with it some heterogeneous, random and clearly arbitrary principles, which sometimes destroy its main meaning. So, for example, putting the holy truths of our Orthodox faith as the basis for all his judgments, he at the same time takes other truths as his basis: the provisions of his self-created psychology, and judges things according to three criteria, four categories and ten elements. Thus, mixing his personal opinions with general truths, he demands that his system be accepted as the cornerstone of national thinking. As a result of this same confusion of concepts, he thinks to render a great service to literature by destroying, along with the Fatherland Notes, that which constitutes the glory of our literature. Thus, he proves, among other things, that Pushkin’s poetry is not only terrible and immoral, but that there is also no beauty, no art, no good poetry, or even correct rhymes. So, taking care of improving the Russian language and trying to give it softness, sweetness, sonorous charm who would do his common language throughout Europe, he himself, at the same time, instead of speaking in Russian, uses the language of his own invention.

That is why, despite the many great truths expressed here and there by the Lighthouse, and which, if presented in their pure form, should have gained him the living sympathy of many; It is difficult, however, to sympathize with him because the truths in him are mixed with concepts, at least strange ones.

Domestic Notes, for their part, also destroy their own power in a different way. Instead of conveying to us the results of European education, they are constantly carried away by some particular phenomena of this education and, without fully embracing it, think to be new, being in fact always belated. For the passionate pursuit of fashionable opinion, the passionate desire to assume the appearance of a lion in the circle of thinking, in itself already proves a distance from the center of fashion. This desire gives our thoughts, our language, our entire appearance, that character of self-doubt harshness,

that kind of flamboyant exaggeration that serves as a sign of our alienation from precisely the circle to which we want to belong.

Arrivé de province à Paris, says one thoughtful and venerable magazine(I think l’Illustration or Guêpes), arrivé a Paris il voulut s’habiller à la mode du lendemain; U eut exprimer les émotions de son âme par les noeuds de sa cravatte et il abusa de l"épingle.

Of course, O.Z. take their opinions from the newest books of the West; but they accept these books separately from the entirety of Western education, and therefore the meaning that they have there appears to them in a completely different meaning; that thought that was new there, as an answer to the totality of questions surrounding it, having been torn away from these questions, is no longer new with us, but just an exaggerated antiquity.

Thus, in the sphere of philosophy, without presenting the slightest trace of those tasks that constitute the subject of modern thinking in the West, 0. 3. they preach systems that are already outdated, but add to them some new results that do not fit with them. Thus, in the sphere of history, they accepted some of the opinions of the West, which appeared there as a result of the desire for nationality; but having understood them separately from their source, they derive from them the denial of our nationality, because it does not agree with the nationalities of the West, just as the Germans once rejected their nationality because it is unlike the French. Thus, in the field of literature, the Fatherland was noticed. Notes that in the West, not without benefit for the successful movement of education, some undeserved authorities were destroyed, and as a result of this remark, they seek to humiliate all our fame, trying to reduce the literary reputation of Derzhavin, Karamzin, Zhukovsky, Baratynsky, Yazykov, Khomyakov, and in their place extol I. Turgenev and F. Maykov, thus placing them in the same category with Lermontov, who probably would not have chosen this place for himself in our literature. Following the same beginning, O.Z. are trying to update our language with their special words and forms.

That is why we dare to think that both O.Z. and Mayak express a direction that is somewhat one-sided and not always true.

The Northern Bee is more a political newspaper than a literary magazine. But in its non-political part it expresses the same desire for morality, improvement and decency that O. Z. displays for European education. She judges things according to her moral concepts, conveys in quite a variety of ways everything that seems wonderful to her, communicates everything that she likes, reports everything that is not to her heart’s content, very zealously, but perhaps not always fairly.

We have some reason to think that this is not always fair.

In the Literary Newspaper we were not able to open any special direction. This reading is mostly light - dessert reading, a little sweet, a little spicy, literary sweets, sometimes a little greasy, but all the more pleasant for some undemanding organisms.

Along with these periodicals, we must also mention Sovremennik, because it is also a literary magazine, although we admit that we would not like to confuse its name with other names. It belongs to a completely different circle of readers, has a goal completely different from other publications, and especially does not mix with them in the tone and method of its literary action. Constantly maintaining the dignity of his calm independence, the Contemporary does not engage in heated polemics, does not allow himself to lure readers with exaggerated promises, does not amuse their idleness with his playfulness, does not seek to show off the tinsel of alien, misunderstood systems, does not anxiously chase news of opinions and does not base his convictions on fashion authority; but freely and firmly goes his own way, without bending before outward success. That is why, from the time of Pushkin until now, it remains a constant repository of the most famous names of our literature; Therefore, for lesser-known writers, publishing articles in Sovremennik already has some right to respect from the public.

torus contradicts its name. For in our time, purely literary dignity is far from being an essential aspect of literary phenomena. Therefore, when, analyzing some work of literature, a Contemporary bases his judgments on the rules of rhetoric or literature, we involuntarily regret that the power of his moral purity is exhausted in the worries of his literary purity.

The Finnish Herald is just beginning, and therefore we cannot yet judge its direction; Let’s just say that the idea of bringing Russian literature closer to Scandinavian literatures, in our opinion, is not only one of the useful, but also one of the most interesting and significant innovations. Of course, an individual work of some Swedish or Danish writer cannot be fully appreciated in our country if we do not compare it not only with the general state of the literature of his people, but, more importantly, with the state of everything private and general, internal and external life these little-known lands among us. If, as we hope, the Finnish Herald will introduce us to the most interesting aspects of the internal life of Sweden, Norway and Denmark; if he presents to us in a clear manner the significant questions that occupy them at the present moment; if he reveals to us the full importance of those little-known mental and vital movements in Europe that are now filling these states; if he presents to us in a clear picture the amazing, almost incredible, prosperity of the lower class, especially in some areas of these states; if he satisfactorily explains to us the reasons for this happy phenomenon; if he explains the reasons for another, no less important circumstance, the amazing development of certain aspects of folk morality, especially in Sweden and Norway; if he presents a clear picture of the relations between different classes, relations completely different from other states; if, finally, all these important questions are connected with literary phenomena into one living picture: in this case, without a doubt, this magazine will be one of the most remarkable phenomena in our literature.

Our other journals are primarily of a special nature, and therefore we cannot talk about them here.

Meanwhile, the spread of periodicals to all corners of the state and to all circles of literate society, the role they obviously play in our literature, the interest they arouse in all classes of readers—all this indisputably proves to us that the very character of our literary education is mostly magazine.

However, the meaning of this expression requires some explanation.

A literary magazine is not a literary work. He only informs about modern literary phenomena, analyzes them, indicates their place among others, and pronounces his judgment about them. A journal is to literature what a preface is to a book. Consequently, the predominance of journalism in literature proves that in modern education the need enjoy And know, gives in to needs judge, - bring your pleasures and knowledge under one review, be aware of it, have an opinion. The dominance of journalism in the field of literature is the same as the dominance of philosophical writings in the field of science.

But if the development of journalism in our country is based on the desire of our very education for a reasonable report, for an expressed, formulated opinion on the subjects of science and literature, then, on the other hand, the vague, confusing, one-sided and at the same time contradictory nature of our magazines proves that literary We have not yet formed our opinions; that in the movements of our education there is more need opinions than opinions themselves; more sense of need for them at all than a certain inclination towards one direction or another.

people who present some private thought, fragmentarily understood by them, as their own definite opinion, - people who call their book concepts by the name of beliefs; but these thoughts, these concepts are more like a school exercise in logic and philosophy; this is an imaginary opinion; one outer garment of thoughts; a fashionable dress in which some smart people dress up their minds when they take it to salons, or youthful dreams that fly apart at the first pressure of real life. This is not what we mean by persuasion.

There was a time, not very long ago, when it was possible for a thinking person to form a firm and definite way of thinking, embracing together life, mind, taste, habits of life, and literary preferences - it was possible to form a definite opinion solely from sympathy with the phenomena of foreign literature: there were complete, whole, complete systems. Now they are gone; at least there are no generally accepted, unconditionally dominant ones. In order to build your complete view from contradictory thoughts, you need to choose, compose yourself, search, doubt, ascend to the very source from which conviction flows, that is, either remain forever with wavering thoughts, or bring with you something already prepared, not from literature. learned belief. Compose belief from different systems is impossible, just as impossible draw up nothing alive. Living things are born only from life.

Now there can no longer be Voltaireans, Jean-Jacqueists, Jean-Paulists, Schellingians, Bayronibtes, Goethists, Doctrinaires, or exceptional Hegelians (excluding perhaps those who, sometimes without having read Hegel, pass off as his named after your personal guesses); Now everyone must form his own way of thinking, and therefore, if he does not take it from the entire totality of life, he will always remain with only book phrases.

For this reason, our literature could have complete meaning until the end of Pushkin’s life, and now has no specific meaning.

We think, however, that this state of affairs cannot continue. Due to natural, necessary laws

human mind, the emptiness of meaninglessness must someday be filled with meaning.

And in fact, for some time, in one corner of our literature, an important change has already begun, although still barely noticeable in some special shades of literature - a change that is not so much expressed in the works of literature, but is revealed in the state of our education itself in general, and promising to transform the character of our imitative subordination into a peculiar development of the inner principles of our own life. Readers will guess, of course, that I am talking about that Slavic-Christian movement, which, on the one hand, is subject to some, perhaps exaggerated biases, and on the other, is persecuted by strange, desperate attacks, ridicule, slander; but in any case, it is worthy of attention as an event that, in all likelihood, is destined to occupy not the last place in the fate of our enlightenment.

We will try to identify it with all possible impartiality, collecting into one whole its individual signs, scattered here and there, and even more noticeable in the thinking public than in book literature.

The page was generated in 0.05 seconds!

Perhaps, since the very era of the so-called renaissance of sciences in Europe, fine literature has never played such a pitiful role as it does now, especially in the last years of our time - although, perhaps, so much has never been written in all kinds and has never been read everything that is written is so greedy. Even the 18th century was predominantly literary; Even in the first quarter of the 19th century, purely literary interests were one of the springs of the mental movement of peoples; great poets aroused great sympathy; differences of literary opinion produced passionate parties; the appearance of a new book resonated in people's minds as a public matter. But now the relation of fine literature to society has changed; Of the great, all-fascinating poets, not a single one remains; with many poems and, let’s say, with many wonderful talents, there is no poetry: even its needs are imperceptible; literary opinions are repeated without participation; the former, magical sympathy between the author and readers is interrupted; from the first brilliant role, graceful literature has descended into the role of confidante of other heroines of our time; we read a lot, we read more than before, we read everything we can get our hands on; but all in passing, without participation, as an official reads incoming and outgoing papers, when he reads them. When reading, we do not enjoy, much less can we forget; but we only take it into consideration, we seek to derive application and benefit; - and that lively, disinterested interest in purely literary phenomena, that abstract love for beautiful forms, that pleasure in the harmony of speech, that rapturous self-forgetfulness in the harmony of verse, which we experienced in our youth - the coming generation will know about it only from legend .

In fact, wherever we look, everywhere thought is subordinated to current circumstances, feeling is attached to the interests of the party, form is adjusted to the requirements of the moment. The novel turned into statistics of morals; – poetry in verses for the occasion; - history, being an echo of the past, tries to be at the same time a mirror of the present, or proof of some social belief, a quotation in favor of some modern view; – philosophy, with the most abstract contemplations of eternal truths, is constantly occupied with their relation to the current moment; – even theological works in the West, for the most part, are generated by some extraneous circumstance of external life. More books have been written on the occasion of one bishop of Cologne than on account of the prevailing unbelief of which the Western clergy so complains.

However, we note that the strictly political, governmental issues that have worried the minds of the West for so long are now beginning to fade into the background of mental movements, and although upon superficial observation it may seem as if the problems are still in their former strength, because they are still occupy the majority of heads, but this majority is already backward; it no longer constitutes the expression of the century; advanced thinkers decisively moved into another sphere, into the field of social issues, where the first place is no longer occupied by the external form, but by the inner life of society itself, in its real, essential relations.

But it must be admitted that if particular literary phenomena are therefore more significant and, so to speak, more juice, then literature in its total volume represents a strange chaos of contradictory opinions, unconnected systems, airy scattering theories, momentary, fictitious beliefs, and at the core of all: the complete absence of any conviction that could be called not only general, but even dominant. Each new effort of thought is expressed by a new system; each new system, as soon as it is born, destroys all the previous ones, and destroying them, it itself dies at the moment of birth, so that, constantly working, the human mind cannot rest on any achieved result; constantly striving to build some great, transcendental building, he finds no support anywhere to establish even one first stone for a foundation that does not shake.

The reason for this duality in Western thought is obvious. Having completed its previous ten-century development, the new Europe has come into conflict with the old Europe and feels that to begin a new life it needs a new foundation. The basis of people's life is conviction. Not finding a ready-made one that meets its requirements, Western thought tries to create a conviction for itself by effort, to invent it, if possible, by the effort of thinking - but in this desperate work, in any case curious and instructive, until now each experience has been only a contradiction of the other.

Multithinking, the heteroglossia of seething systems and opinions, with the lack of one common conviction, not only fragments the self-awareness of society, but must necessarily act on a private person, bifurcating every living movement of his soul. That is why, by the way, in our time there are so many talents and there is not a single true poet. For the poet is created by the power of inner thought. From the depths of his soul, he must bring out, in addition to beautiful forms, the very soul of beauty: his living, integral view of the world and man. No artificial constructs of concepts, no reasonable theories will help here. His sonorous and trembling thought must come from the very secret of his inner, so to speak, supraconscious conviction, and where this sanctuary of being is fragmented by the heteroglossia of beliefs, or empty by their absence, there can be no talk of poetry, nor of any powerful influence of man on man. .

This state of mind in Europe is quite new. It belongs to the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The eighteenth century, although it was predominantly an unbeliever, nevertheless had its ardent convictions, its dominant theories, on which thought calmed down, with which the feeling of the highest needs of the human spirit was deceived. When the impulse of rapture was followed by disappointment in his favorite theories, then the new man could not stand life without heartfelt goals: despair became his dominant feeling. Byron testifies to this transitional state, but the feeling of despair, in its essence, is only momentary. Coming out of it, Western self-consciousness split into two opposing aspirations. On the one hand, thought, not supported by the highest goals of the spirit, fell into the service of sensual interests and selfish views; hence the industrial direction of minds, which penetrated not only into external social life, but also into the abstract field of science, into the content and form of literature, and even into the very depths of home life, into the sanctity of family ties, into the magical secret place of the first youthful dreams. On the other hand, the absence of basic principles awakened in many the consciousness of their necessity. The very lack of conviction produced the need for faith; but the minds that sought faith did not always know how to reconcile its Western forms with the present state of European science. From this, some resolutely abandoned the latter and declared irreconcilable enmity between faith and reason; others, trying to find their agreement, either force science in order to squeeze it into Western forms of religion, or want to transform the very forms according to their science, or, finally, not finding in the West a form that corresponds to their mental needs, they invent a new religion for themselves without the church , without tradition, without revelation and without faith.

The boundaries of this article do not allow us to present in a clear picture what is remarkable and special in the modern phenomena of literature in Germany, England, France and Italy, where a new, noteworthy religious and philosophical thought is now also emerging. In subsequent issues of the Moskvitian we hope to present this image with all possible impartiality. – Now, in quick sketches, we will try to identify in foreign literature only what they represent that is most strikingly remarkable at the present moment.

Schelling's new system, so long awaited, so solemnly accepted, did not seem to agree with the expectations of the Germans. His Berlin auditorium, where in the first year of his appearance it was difficult to find a place, is now said to have become spacious. His method of reconciling faith with philosophy has not yet convinced either believers or philosophists. The first reproach him for the excessive rights of reason and for the special meaning that he puts into his concepts about the most basic dogmas of Christianity. His closest friends see him only as a thinker on the path to faith. “I hope,” says Neander (dedicating a new edition of his church history to him), “I hope that the merciful God will soon make you completely ours.” Philosophers, on the contrary, are offended by the fact that he accepts as the property of reason, faith, not developed from reason according to the laws of logical necessity. “If his system were the holy truth itself,” they say, “then even in that case it could not be an acquisition of philosophy until it was its own product.”

This, at least outward failure of a world-significant cause, with which so many great expectations were connected, based on the deepest needs of the human spirit, confused many thinkers; but at the same time he was the cause of triumph for others. Both have forgotten, it seems, that the innovative thought of centuries-old geniuses should be in disagreement with their closest contemporaries. Passionate Hegelians, completely satisfied with the system of their teacher and not seeing the possibility of leading human thought beyond the boundaries shown by them, consider every attempt of the mind to develop philosophy beyond its present state as a sacrilegious attack on the truth itself. But, meanwhile, their triumph over the imaginary failure of the great Schelling, as can be judged from philosophical brochures, was not entirely thorough. If it is true that Schelling’s new system, in the particular way in which it was presented by him, found little sympathy in present-day Germany, nevertheless, his refutations of previous philosophies, and mainly Hegel’s, had a deep and increasing effect every day. Of course, it is also true that the opinions of the Hegelians are constantly spreading more widely in Germany, developing in applications to the arts, literature and all sciences (including the natural sciences); it is true that they have even become almost popular; But for that, many of the first-class thinkers have already begun to realize the insufficiency of this form of wisdom and I do not feel the needs of a new teaching based on higher principles, although they still do not clearly see from which side they can expect an answer to this unquenchable need of the aspiring spirit. Thus, according to the laws of the eternal movement of human thought, when a new system begins to descend into the lower strata of the educated world, at that very time advanced thinkers are already aware of its unsatisfactory nature and look ahead into that deep distance, into the blue infinity, where a new horizon opens up to their vigilant premonition. However, it should be noted that the word Hegelianism is not associated with any specific way of thinking, or with any permanent direction. The Hegelians agree among themselves only in the method of thinking and even more in the method of expression; but the results of their methods and the meaning of what is expressed are often completely opposite. Even during Hegel’s lifetime, between him and Hans, the most brilliant of his students, there was a complete contradiction in the applied conclusions of philosophy. The same disagreement is repeated among other Hegelians. For example, the way of thinking of Hegel and some of his followers reached extreme aristocracy; while other Hegelians preach the most desperate democratism; there were even some who derived from the same principles the doctrine of the most fanatical absolutism. In religious terms, others adhere to Protestantism in the strictest, ancient sense of the word, without deviating not only from the concept, but even from the letter of the teaching; others, on the contrary, reach the most absurd atheism. In relation to art, Hegel himself began by contradicting the newest trend, justifying the romantic and demanding the purity of artistic genera; Many Hegelians have remained with this theory even now, while others preach the latest art in the most extreme contrast to the romantic and with the most desperate uncertainty of forms and confusion of characters. Thus, oscillating between opposite directions, now aristocratic, now popular, now religious, now godless, now romantic, now new-life, now purely Prussian, now suddenly Turkish, now finally French - Hegel’s system in Germany had different characters, and not only at these opposite extremes, but also at every degree of their mutual distance, formed and left a special school of followers, who more or less incline now to the right, now to the left. Therefore, nothing can be more unfair than to attribute to one Hegelian the opinion of another, as sometimes happens in Germany, but more often in other literatures where Hegel’s system is not yet well known. As a result of this misunderstanding, most of Hegel’s followers suffer completely undeserved accusations. For it is natural that the harshest, ugliest thoughts of some of them are most likely to spread among the surprised public, as an example of excessive courage or amusing strangeness, and, not knowing the full flexibility of Hegel's method, many unwittingly attribute to all the Hegelians what belongs, perhaps, to alone.

However, speaking about Hegel’s followers, it is necessary to distinguish those of them who are engaged in applying his methods to other sciences, from those who continue to develop his teaching in the field of philosophy. Of the first, there are some writers remarkable for the power of logical thinking; of the latter, not a single one of particular genius is still known, not a single one who would rise even to the living concept of philosophy, would penetrate beyond its external forms and would say at least one fresh thought that was not literally drawn from the writings of the teacher. Is it true, Erdman At first he promised original development, but then, however, for 14 years in a row he does not get tired of constantly turning over the same well-known formulas. The same external formality fills the essays Rosencrantz, Mishleta, Marheineke, Goto Roetscher And Gabler, although the latter also somewhat alters the direction of his teacher and even his very phraseology - either because he really understands him this way, or perhaps wants to understand him this way, sacrificing the accuracy of his expressions for the external benefit of the entire school. Werder for some time he enjoyed a reputation as a particularly gifted thinker, while he did not publish anything and was known only for his teaching to Berlin students; but having published a logic filled with commonplaces and old formulas, dressed in a worn but elaborate dress, with plump phrases, he proved that teaching talent is not a guarantee for the dignity of thinking. The true, only true and pure representative of Hegelianism remains to this day Hegel and he alone - although perhaps no one more than himself contradicted in his applications the basic principles of his philosophy.

Among Hegel's opponents it would be easy to count out many remarkable thinkers; but deeper and more devastating than others, it seems to us, after Schelling, Adolf Trendelenburi, a man who has deeply studied the ancient philosophers and attacks Hegel's method at the very source of its vitality, in the relation of pure thought to its fundamental principle. But here, as in all modern thinking, the destructive force of Trendelenburg is in clear imbalance with the creative one.

To understand the latest direction of her Lutheran theology, one must recall the circumstances that served as the reason for its development.

But the year 1812 awakened the need for higher convictions throughout Europe; Then, especially in Germany, religious feeling awoke again with renewed vigor. Napoleon, the revolution that took place throughout the entire educated world, the danger and salvation of the fatherland, the re-inception of all the foundations of life, brilliant, young hopes for the future - all this seething of great questions and enormous events could not help but touch the deepest side of human self-consciousness and awakened the highest powers of his spirit . Under such influence, a new generation of Lutheran theologians was formed, which naturally came into direct conflict with the previous one. From their mutual opposition in literature, in life and in government activities, two schools arose: one, at that time new, fearing the autocracy of reason, adhered strictly to the symbolic books of its confession; the other allowed herself a reasonable interpretation. Perval, opposing the excessive, in her opinion, rights of philosophizing, joined her extreme members to the Pietists; the latter, while defending reason, sometimes bordered on pure rationalism. From the struggle of these two extremes an infinite number of middle directions have developed.

Meanwhile, the disagreement of these two parties on the most important issues, the internal disagreement of different shades of the same party, the disagreement of different representatives of the same shade, and finally, the attacks of pure rationalists, who are no longer among the believers, against all these parties and shades taken together - all this aroused in the general opinion the consciousness of the need for a more thorough study of the Holy Scriptures than it had been done until that time, and most of all: the need for a firm definition of the boundaries between reason and faith. The new development of historical and especially philological and philosophical education in Germany coincided with this requirement and was partly strengthened by it. Instead of previously university students barely understanding Greek, now gymnasium students began to enter universities with a ready-made stock of thorough knowledge in the languages: Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Philological and historical departments were occupied by people of remarkable talents. Theological philosophy counted many famous representatives, but it was especially revived and developed by its brilliant and thoughtful teaching Schleiermacher, and another, the opposite of it, although not brilliant, but no less profound, although barely understandable, but, by some inexpressible, sympathetic connection of thoughts, the professor’s surprisingly fascinating teaching Dauba. These two systems were joined by a third, based on the philosophy of Hegel. The fourth party consisted of the remnants of the former Breitschneiderian popular rationalism. Behind them came the pure rationalists, with naked philosophizing without faith.

The more clearly the various directions were defined, the more multilaterally private issues were processed, the more difficult was their general agreement.

Meanwhile, the side of predominantly believers, strictly adhering to their symbolic books, had a great external advantage over others: only followers of the Augsburg Confession, which enjoyed state recognition as a result of the Peace of Westphalia, could have the right to the patronage of state power. As a result, many of them demanded the removal of those who opposed them from their places.

On the other hand, this very benefit was perhaps the reason for their little success. Against the attack of thought, resorting to the protection of an external force - for many it seemed a sign of internal failure. Moreover, their position had another weak side: the Augsburg Confession itself was based on the right of personal interpretation. To allow this right before the 16th century and not to allow it after seemed to many to be another contradiction. However, for one reason or another, but rationalism, suspended for a while and not defeated by the efforts of legitimate believers, began to spread again, now acting with redoubled force, strengthened by all the acquisitions of science, until, finally, following the inexorable flow of syllogisms, divorced from faith, he achieved the most extreme, most disgusting results.

There is a party belonging to the most recent times, which looks at Protestantism no longer as a contradiction to Catholicism, but, on the contrary, separates Papism and the Council of Trent from Catholicism and sees in the Augsburg Confession the most legitimate, although not yet the last, expression of the continuously developing Church. These Protestant theologians, even in the Middle Ages, no longer recognize a deviation from Christianity, as Lutheran theologians have said until now, but its gradual and necessary continuation, considering not only internal, but even external uninterrupted churchliness one of the necessary elements of Christianity. – Instead of the previous desire to justify all uprisings against the Roman Church, now they are more inclined to condemn them. They readily accuse the Waldenses and Wyclifites, with whom they previously found so much sympathy; Gregory VII and Innocent III are acquitted, and even Goose is condemned for resistance to the legitimate authority of the Church, - The goose, which Luther himself, as legend says, called the predecessor of his swan song.

In accordance with this trend, they want some changes in their worship and especially, following the example of the Episcopal Church, they want to give greater predominance to the liturgical part itself over the sermon. For this purpose, all the liturgies of the first centuries were translated, and the most complete collection of all old and new church songs was compiled. In the matter of pastoring, they require not only teachings in church, but also exhortations in homes, along with constant monitoring of the lives of parishioners. To top it all off, they want to return to custom the former church punishments, ranging from a simple admonition to a solemn eruption, and even rebel against mixed marriages. Both of these in the Old Lutheran Church are no longer desires, but dogmas introduced into actual life.

However, it goes without saying that this trend does not belong to everyone, but only to some Protestant theologians. We noticed it more because it was new than because it was strong. And one should not think that in general, lawful believing Lutheran theologians, who equally recognize their symbolic books and agree with each other in rejecting rationalism, therefore agree in dogmatics itself. On the contrary, their differences are even more significant than might seem at first glance. So, for example, Julius Müller, who is revered by them as one of the most legal-minded, nevertheless deviates from others in his teaching about sin; despite the fact that this question almost belongs to the most central questions of theology. " Getstenberg, the most cruel opponent of rationalism, not everyone finds sympathy for this extreme of his bitterness, and among those who sympathize with him, very many disagree with him in some particulars of his teaching, such as, for example, in the concept of Prophecy, - although a special concept of prophecy must certainly lead to a special concept of the very relationship of human nature to the Divine, that is, of the very basis of dogma. Toluca, the most warm-hearted in his beliefs and the most warm-hearted in his thinking, is usually considered by his party to be an overly liberal thinker - meanwhile, one or another attitude of thinking to faith, with consistent development, should change the entire character of the doctrine. Neander they blame his forgiving tolerance and kind-hearted sympathy with other teachings, a feature that not only determines his distinctive view of the history of the church, but also the internal movement of the human spirit in general, and therefore separates the very essence of his teaching from others. Draw And Lykke They also disagree with their party in many ways. Everyone puts into his confession the distinctiveness of his personality. Despite the fact, however, Beck, one of the most remarkable representatives of the new religious movement, demands from Protestant theologians the compilation of a general, complete, scientific dogma, pure from personal opinions and independent of temporary systems. But, having considered all that has been said, we may, it seems, have some right to doubt the feasibility of this requirement. –

About the latest status French literature we will say only very little, and that, perhaps, is superfluous, because French literature is known to Russian readers, hardly more than domestic. Let us only note the contrast between the direction of the French mind and the direction of German thought. Here every question of life turns into a question of science; there every thought of science and literature turns into a question of life. Xiu's famous novel resonated not so much in literature as in society; its results were: a transformation in the structure of prisons, the formation of humane societies, etc. His other novel, now published, obviously owes its success to non-literary qualities. Balzac, who had such success before 1830 because he described the then dominant society, is now almost forgotten for precisely the same reason. The dispute between the clergy and the university, which in Germany would have given rise to abstract discussions about the relationship between philosophy and faith, state and religion, like the dispute about the Bishop of Cologne, in France only aroused greater attention to the current state of public education, to the nature of the activities of the Jesuits and to the modern direction of public education . The general religious movement of Europe was expressed in Germany by new dogmatic systems, historical and philological research and scientific philosophical interpretations; in France, on the contrary, it hardly produced one or two remarkable books, but it was all the more powerful in religious societies, in political parties and in the missionary action of the clergy on the people. The natural sciences, which have achieved such enormous development in France, despite the fact that they are not only based exclusively on empiricism, but also in the very fullness of their development are devoid of speculative interest, caring primarily about application to business, about the benefits and benefits of existence , - meanwhile, in Germany, every step in the study of nature is determined from the point of view of a philosophical view, included in the system and assessed not so much by its benefits to life, but in relation to its speculative principles. So in Germany theology And philosophy constitute two most important subjects of general attention in our time, and their agreement is now the dominant need of German thought. In France, on the contrary, philosophical development is not a necessity, but a luxury of thinking. The essential question of the present moment is the agreement of society. Religious writers, instead of dogmatic development, seek real application, while political thinkers, even not imbued with religious conviction, invent artificial beliefs, trying to achieve in them the unconditionality of faith and its supramental immediacy.

The modern and almost equivalent excitement of these two interests: religious and social, two opposite ends, perhaps, of one torn thought, forces us to assume that the participation of modern France in the general development of human enlightenment, its place in the field of science in general, should be determined by that special the sphere from which both emanate and where these two different directions merge into one. But what result will come from this aspiration of thought? Will a new science be born from this: science public life, - as at the end of the last century, from the combined action of the philosophical and social mood of England, was born there new science of national wealth? Or will the effect of modern French thinking be limited only to changing some principles in other sciences? Is France destined to make or only begin this change? To guess this now would be idle daydreaming. A new direction is just beginning, and even then barely noticeably, to appear in literature - still unconscious in its specificity, not yet collected even into one question. But in any case, this movement of science in France cannot but seem to us more significant than all other aspirations of its thinking, and it is especially interesting to see how it begins to express itself in contradiction to the previous principles of political economy, the science with the subject of which it is most in contact. Questions about competition and monopoly, about the relationship between the excess of luxury products and the people's satisfaction, the cheapness of products to the poverty of workers, state wealth to the wealth of capitalists, the value of work to the value of goods, the development of luxury to the suffering of poverty, violent activity to mental savagery, the healthy morality of the people to their industrial education - all these questions are presented by many in a completely new form, directly contrary to the previous views of political economy, and now arouse the concern of thinkers. We are not saying that new views should enter science. They are still too immature for this, too one-sided, too imbued with the blinding spirit of the party, too darkened by the complacency of the newborn. We see that the latest courses in political economy are still compiled according to the same principles. But at the same time, we notice that attention has been aroused to new questions, and although we do not think that they could find their final solution in France, we cannot help but admit that its literature is destined to be the first to introduce this new element into the general laboratory of the human enlightenment.

IN England Although religious questions are aroused by the social situation, they nevertheless turn into dogmatic disputes, as, for example, in Puseism and its opponents; public questions are limited to local demands, or they raise a cry (and cry, as the English say), display the banner of some conviction, the significance of which lies not in the power of thought, but in the strength of the interests that correspond to it and gather around it.

In outward form, the way of thinking of the French is often very similar to the way of thinking of the English. This similarity seems to stem from the similarity of the philosophical systems they adopted. But the internal character of the thinking of these two peoples is also different, just as both of them are different from the character of the German thinking. The German laboriously and conscientiously develops his conviction from the abstract conclusions of his mind; The Frenchman takes it without thinking, out of heartfelt sympathy for this or that opinion; The Englishman arithmetically calculates his position in society and, based on the results of his calculations, forms his way of thinking. The names: Whig, Tory, Radical, and all the countless shades of English parties express not the personal characteristics of a person, as in France, and not the system of his philosophical belief, as in Germany, but the place that he occupies in the state. The Englishman is stubborn in his opinion because it is due to his social position; The Frenchman often sacrifices his position for his heartfelt conviction; and the German, although he does not sacrifice one to the other, still cares little about their agreement. French education moves through the development of prevailing opinion, or fashion; English - through the development of government; German - through armchair thinking. That is why the Frenchman is strong in his enthusiasm, the Englishman in his character, and the German in his abstract and systematic fundamentality.

Disraeli not infected by any foreign addiction. He's a representative young England, - a circle of young people expressing a special, extreme section of the Tory party. However, despite the fact that young England acts in the name of the most extreme conservation principles, but, if you believe Disraeli’s novel, the very basis of their beliefs completely destroys the interests of their party. They want to retain the old, but not in the form in which it exists in its current forms, but in its former spirit, which requires a form that is in many ways opposite to the present. For the benefit of the aristocracy, they want a living rapprochement and sympathy everyone classes; for the benefit of the Anglican Church, they want its rights to be equal with the Church of Ireland and other dissidents; to maintain agricultural superiority, they demand the abolition of the grain law, which protects it. In a word, the view of this Tory party obviously destroys the entire peculiarity of English Toryism, and at the same time the entire difference between England and other European countries.

– Individual sciences no longer remain within their former boundaries, but strive to get closer to the sciences adjacent to them, and in this expansion of their limits they adjoin their common center - philosophy.

– Philosophy in its final final development seeks such a principle, in the recognition of which it could merge with faith into one speculative unity.

– Individual Western nationalities, having reached the fullness of their development, strive to destroy the features that separate them and merge into one pan-European education.

- Meanwhile, this dominant principle of European life, separating from nationalities, thereby appears as outdated, as past in its meaning, although still continuing in fact. Therefore, the modern feature of Western life lies in the general, more or less clear consciousness that this the beginning of European education, which developed throughout the history of the West, in our time turns out to be unsatisfactory for the highest requirements of enlightenment. Let us also note that this consciousness of the unsatisfactoriness of European life came from the consciousness that is directly opposite to it, from the conviction of the recently passed time that European enlightenment is the last and highest link of human development. One extreme turned to the other.

– But recognizing the unsatisfactory nature of European education, the general feeling thereby distinguishes it from other principles of all-human development and, designating it as special, reveals to us distinctive character fallen enlightenment in its parts and totality, as a primary desire for personal and original rationality in thoughts, in life, in society and in all the springs and forms of human existence. This character of unconditional rationality was also born from a long-past desire that preceded it, from a previous effort - not to educate, but to forcibly lock thought in one scholastic system.

– But if the general feeling of unsatisfactoriness from the very beginnings of European life is nothing more than a dark or clear consciousness the inadequacy of unconditional reason, then although it produces a desire for religiosity in general However, by its very origin from the development of reason, it cannot submit to a form of faith that would completely reject reason, nor be satisfied with one that would make faith dependent on it.

– The arts, poetry and even almost every creative dream were only possible in Europe until then, as a living, necessary element of its education, until the dominant rationalism in its thought and life reached the last, extreme link of its development; for now they are possible only as a theatrical decoration that does not deceive the inner feelings of the viewer, who directly takes it for an artificial untruth that amuses his idleness, but without which his life will not lose anything essential. The truth for Western poetry can only be resurrected when a new beginning is accepted into the life of European enlightenment.

This alienation of art from life was preceded by a period of universal striving for artistry, which ended with the last artist of Europe - with the great Goethe, who expressed the second part of his Faust in poetry. The worries of daydreaming turned into the worries of industry. But in our time, the disagreement between poetry and life has become even more clear.

– From all that has been said, it also follows that the modern character of the European Enlightenment, in its historical, philosophical and life meaning, is completely unambiguous with the character of that era of Roman-Greek education, when, having developed to the point of contradicting itself, it, by natural necessity, had to to accept another, new beginning, stored among other tribes that did not have world-historical significance until that time.

In the first article of our review, we said that Russian literature represents the totality of all possible influences of various European literatures. It seems to us unnecessary to prove the truth of this remark: every book can serve as obvious evidence of this. We also consider it inappropriate to explain this phenomenon: its reasons lie in the history of our education. But having noticed it, realizing this all-accepting sympathy, this unconditional dependence of our literature on the various literatures of the West, we see in this very character of our literature, along with external similarities, its fundamental difference from all European literatures.

Let's expand our thought.

For this reason, every movement in the literature of Western peoples flows from the internal movement of their education, which in turn is influenced by literature. Even those literatures that are subject to the influence of other peoples accept this influence only when it meets the requirements of their internal development, and assimilate it only to the extent that it is in harmony with the nature of their enlightenment. For them, what is foreign is not a contradiction of their particularity, but only a step in the ladder of their own ascent. If we see that at the present moment all literatures sympathize with each other, merge, so to speak, into one pan-European literature, then this could only happen because the education of different peoples developed from the same beginning and, each passing its own path, finally achieved the same result, the same meaning of mental existence. But despite this similarity, even now the Frenchman not only does not fully accept German thought, but perhaps does not even fully understand it. In Germany, for the most part, the Jews are Frenchized, brought up in a break with popular beliefs and only later accepting the philosophical. The English are even less able to free themselves from their national characteristics. In Italy and Spain, although the influence of French literature is noticeable, this influence is more imaginary than significant, and French ready-made forms serve only as an expression of the internal state of their own education; for it is not French literature in general, but only the literature of the 18th century that still dominates in these belated lands.

This national fortress, this living integrity of the education of the European peoples, regardless of the falsity or truth of the direction, gives literature its special significance. It serves there not as amusement for some circles, not as a decoration for salons, not as a luxury of the mind that can be dispensed with, and not as a school task for students; but it is necessary, as a natural process of mental breathing, as a direct expression, and at the same time as an inevitable condition for any development of education. Unconscious thought, developed by history, suffered through life, obscured by its complex relationships and heterogeneous interests, ascends through the power of literary activity along the ladder of mental development, from the lower strata of society to its highest circles, from unconscious drives to the last stages of consciousness, and in this form it already appears not a witty truth, not an exercise in the art of rhetoric or dialectics, but an internal matter of self-knowledge, more or less clear, more or less correct, but in any case essentially significant. Thus, she enters the sphere of general human enlightenment, as a living, inalienable element, as a person with a voice in the matter of general council; but it returns to its inner foundation, to the beginning of its origin, as the conclusion of the mind to unsolved circumstances, as the word of conscience to unconscious instincts. Of course, this mind, this conscience can be obscured, corrupted; but this corruption does not depend on the place that literature occupies in the education of the people, but on the distortion of their inner life; how in man the falsity of reason and the corruption of conscience arise not from the essence of reason and conscience, but from his personal corruption.

One state, among all our Western neighbors, presented an example of contrary development. In Poland, through the influence of Catholicism, the upper classes separated very early from the rest of the people, not only by morals, as was the case in the rest of Europe, but also by the very spirit of their education, the basic principles of their mental life. This separation stopped the development of public education and, even more so, accelerated the education of the upper classes cut off from it. So the heavy carriage, laid down by the goose, will stand in place when the front lines burst, while the torn off forerunner is carried forward all the more easily. Unconstrained by the peculiarities of national life, neither by customs, nor by ancient legends, nor by local relations, nor by the dominant way of thinking, nor even by the peculiarities of language, brought up in the sphere of abstract issues, the Polish aristocracy in the 15th and 16th centuries was not only the most educated, but also the most learned, the most brilliant in all of Europe. A thorough knowledge of foreign languages, a deep study of the ancient classics, and the extraordinary development of mental and social talents surprised travelers and were the constant subject of reports from observant papal nuncios of that time. As a result of this education, literature was amazingly rich. It consisted of learned commentaries of ancient classics, successful and unsuccessful imitations, written partly in dandy Polish, partly in exemplary Latin, numerous and important translations, some of which are still considered exemplary, such as the translation of Tassa; others prove the depth of enlightenment, such as the translation of all the works of Aristotle, made back in the 16th century. During one reign of Sigismund III, 711 famous literary names shone, and printing houses worked continuously in more than 80 cities. But there was nothing in common between this artificial enlightenment and the natural elements of the mental life of the people. Because of this, a split occurred in the entire education of Poland. While the learned gentlemen wrote interpretations of Horace, translated Tassa, and undeniably sympathized with all the phenomena of the European enlightenment of their time, this enlightenment was reflected only on the surface of life, without growing from the root, and thus, devoid of original development, all this abstract mental activity, this scholarship, this brilliance, these talents, these glories, these flowers plucked from foreign fields, all this rich literature disappeared almost without a trace for Polish education, and completely without a trace for the enlightenment of universal humanity, for that European education to which she was too faithful reflection True, Poland is proud of one phenomenon in the field of science, it brought one tribute to the treasury of universal human enlightenment: the great Copernicus was a Pole; but let us not forget that Copernicus left Poland in his youth and was brought up in Germany.

Thank God: between present-day Russia and old Poland there is not the slightest similarity, and therefore, I hope no one will reproach me for an inappropriate comparison and will not interpret my words into a different meaning if we say that in our attitude to literature such a the same abstract artificiality, the same flowers without roots, plucked from other people's fields. We translate, imitate, study other people's words, follow their slightest movements,

The theologian-orators sent (from Poland) to the Basel Council took first place there after the Bonnon Tullians.

As before mathematics and jurisprudence, at this time the fine sciences flourished in Poland, and the study of Latin quickly rose.

Jor. Lud. Decius(a contemporary of Sigismund I) testifies that among the Sarmatians you rarely meet a person from a good family who does not know three or four languages, and everyone knows Latin.

Queen Barbara, the wife of Sigismund, not only completely understood the Latin classics, but also wrote to the king, her husband, in Latin....

And among Latium, says Cromer, there would not be so many people who could prove their knowledge of the Latin language. Even girls, both from the nobility and from ordinary families, both in their homes and in monasteries, read and write equally well in Polish and Latin. – And in the collection of letters from 1390 to 1580. Kamusara, a modern writer, says that out of a hundred nobles it is hardly possible to find two who do not know the languages: Latin, German and Italian. They learn them in schools, and this happens by itself, because there is no poor village in Poland, or even a tavern, where there are not people who speak these three languages, and in every village, even the smallest one, there is a school (see. Mémoires de F. Choisnin). This important fact has a very deep meaning in our eyes. Meanwhile, the author continues, the folk language for the most part remained only in the mouths of common people

The extent to which Poland in the 15th and 16th centuries surpassed other peoples in knowledge of ancient literature is clear from many testimonies, especially foreign ones. De Thou, in his history, under the year 1573, describing the arrival of the Polish embassy in France, says that of the large crowd of Poles who entered Paris on fifty horse-drawn horses drawn by fours, there was not a single one who did not speak Latin in perfection; that the French nobles blushed with shame when they only had to wink in response to questions from guests; that in the whole court there were only two who assimilated other people's thoughts and systems, and these exercises constitute the decoration of our educated living rooms, sometimes have an influence on the very actions of our life, but, not being connected with the fundamental development of our historically given education, they They separate us from the internal source of national enlightenment, and at the same time they make us fruitless for the common cause of enlightenment for all mankind. The works of our literature, as reflections of European ones, cannot have any interest for other peoples, except for statistical interest, as an indication of the measure of our student success in the study of their samples. For ourselves, they are curious as an addition, as an explanation, as an assimilation of other people's phenomena; but even for ourselves, with the general spread of knowledge of foreign languages, our imitations always remain somewhat lower and weaker than their originals.

could answer these envoys in Latin, for which they were always put forward. – The famous Muret, comparing learned Poland with Italy, puts it this way: which of the two nations is ruder? Was he not born in the bosom of Italy? Among them you can hardly find a hundredth of those who would know Latin and Greek, and would love science. Or the Poles, who have a lot of people who speak both of these languages, and they are so attached to the sciences and arts that they spend their whole century studying them. (see M. Ant. Mureti Ep. 66 ad Paulum Sacratum, ed. Kappii, p. 536). – The famous member of the learned Triumvirate, Justus Lipsy (one of the first philologists of that time), says the same thing in a letter to one of his friends, who then lived in Poland: How can I be surprised at your knowledge? You live among those people who were once a barbarian people; and now we are barbarians before them. They received the Muses, despised and expelled from Greece and Latium, into their warm and hospitable embrace (see Epist. Cont. ad Germ, et Gail. ep. 63). not from the difference in degrees of education, but from their complete heterogeneity. Those principles of mental, social, moral and spiritual life that created the former Russia and now constitute the only sphere of its people’s life, did not develop into our literary enlightenment, but remained untouched, divorced from the successes of our mental activity, while passing them by, without our relationship to them, our literary enlightenment flows from foreign sources, completely different not only from the forms, but often even from the very beginnings of our beliefs. This is why every movement in our literature is determined not by the internal movement of our education, as in the West, but by the phenomena of foreign literature that are accidental to it.

Here two opinions are sometimes heard, both equally one-sided, equally unfounded, both equally impossible.

Is it worth refuting this opinion?

Its falsity seems obvious without proof. It is just as impossible to destroy the peculiarity of a people’s mental life as it is impossible to destroy its history. It is as easy to replace the fundamental beliefs of a people with literary concepts as it is to change the bones of a developed organism with an abstract thought. However, even if we could admit for a moment that this assumption could actually be fulfilled, then in that case its only result would not be enlightenment, but the destruction of the people themselves. For what is a people if not a body of convictions, more or less developed in its morals, in its customs, in its language, in its concepts of the heart and mind, in its religious, social and personal relations, in a word, in the entire fullness of its life ? Moreover, the idea, instead of the beginnings of our education, to introduce among us the beginnings of European education, already destroys itself because in the final development of European enlightenment there is no dominant principle. One contradicts the other, mutually destroying. If there are still a few living truths left in Western life, more or less still surviving amid the general destruction of all special beliefs, then these truths are not European, because they are in contradiction with all the results of European education; - these are the surviving remnants of Christian principles, which, therefore, belong not to the West, but more to us, who accepted it in its purest form, although, perhaps, the existence of these principles is not assumed in our education by unconditional admirers of the West, who do not know the meaning of our enlightenment and confuse it contains the essential with the accidental, its own, the necessary with extraneous distortions of foreign influences: Tatar, Polish, German, etc.

As for the actual European principles, as they expressed themselves in the latest results, taken separately from the previous life of Europe! and laid as the basis for the education of a new people, what will they produce, if not a pitiful caricature of enlightenment, like a poem arising from the rules of literature? , would be a caricature of poetry? The experiment has already been done. It seemed what a brilliant destiny lay ahead for the United States of America, built on such a reasonable foundation, after such a great beginning! - And what happened? Only external forms of society developed and, deprived of the internal source of life, crushed man under external mechanics. The literature of the United States, according to the reports of the most impartial judges, furnishes a clear expression of this condition. - A huge factory of mediocre poems, without the slightest shadow of poetry; official epithets that express nothing and, despite this, are constantly repeated; complete insensitivity to everything artistic; obvious contempt for any thinking that does not lead to material benefits; petty personalities with no common ground; plump phrases with the narrowest meaning, desecration of holy words: love of mankind, fatherland, public good, nationality, to the point that their use became not even hypocrisy, but a simple, generally understandable stamp of selfish calculations; outward respect for the external side of laws, even in the most blatant violation of them; a spirit of complicity for personal gain, with the unblushing infidelity of the persons united, with a clear disrespect for all moral principles, so that at the basis of all these mental movements, obviously lies the smallest life, cut off from everything that raises the heart above personal self-interest, drowned in the activity of selfishness and recognizing material comfort, with all its service forces, as its highest goal. No! If the Russian is already destined, for some unrepentant sins, to exchange his great future for the one-sided life of the West, then I would rather dream with the abstract German in his intricate theories; It’s better to be lazy to death under the warm sky, in the artistic atmosphere of Italy; It’s better to spin with the Frenchman in his impetuous, momentary aspirations; It is better to petrify with the Englishman in his stubborn, unaccountable habits than to suffocate in this prose of factory relations, in this mechanism of selfish anxiety.

We have not moved away from our subject. The extreme of the result, although not conscious, but logically possible, reveals the falsity of the direction.

Both opinions are equally false; but the latter has a more logical connection. It is based on the awareness of the dignity of our previous education, on the disagreement between this education and the special character of European enlightenment, and, finally, on the inconsistency of the latest results of European enlightenment. It is possible to disagree with each of these points; but, once they have been admitted, one cannot blame the opinion based on them for a logical contradiction, just as, for example, one can blame the opposite opinion, which preaches Western enlightenment and cannot point out in this enlightenment any central, positive principle, but is content with some particular truths or negative formulas.

But besides all the other incongruities of this trend, it also has that dark side that, unconditionally rejecting everything European, thereby cuts us off from any participation in the general cause of human mental existence; for we must not forget that European enlightenment inherited all the results of the education of the Greco-Roman world, which in turn absorbed all the fruits of the mental life of the entire human race. Divorced in this way from the general life of humanity, the beginning of our education, instead of being the beginning of the living, true, complete enlightenment, will necessarily become a one-sided beginning and, therefore, will lose all its universal significance.

Thus, both opposing views on the relationship of our indigenous education to European enlightenment, both of these extreme opinions are equally unfounded. But we must admit that in this extreme of development, in which we have presented them here, they do not exist in reality. True, we constantly meet people who, in their way of thinking, deviate more or less to one side or the other, but they do not develop their one-sidedness to the last results. On the contrary, the only reason they can remain in their one-sidedness is that they do not bring it to the first conclusions, where the question becomes clear, because from the realm of unaccountable predilections it passes into the sphere of rational consciousness, where the contradiction is destroyed by its own expression. That is why we think that all disputes about the superiority of the West, or Russia, about the dignity of European history, or ours, and similar arguments are among the most useless, the most empty questions that the idleness of a thinking person can come up with.

This consideration is usually overlooked even by those writers who, with a conscientious desire for truth, try to give themselves a reasonable account of the meaning and purpose of their mental activity. But what about those who act unaccountably? Those who are carried away by the Western only because it is not ours, because they know neither the character, nor the meaning, nor the dignity of the principle that lies at the foundation of our historical life, and not knowing it, do not care to find out, frivolously mixing condemnation and random shortcomings into one and the very essence of our education? What can we say about those who are effeminately seduced by the external splendor of European education, without delving into the basis of this education, or its internal meaning, or the nature of contradiction, inconsistency, self-destruction, which, obviously, lies not only in the general result of Western life, but even in each of its individual phenomena, - obviously, I say, in the case when we are not content with the external concept of the phenomenon, but delve into its full meaning from the basic beginning to the final conclusions.

Submitting to the direction of this higher education and supplementing it with its content, the second education arranges the development of the external side of thought and external improvements in life, without itself containing any compulsory force in one direction or another. For, in its essence and in isolation from extraneous influences, it is something in between good and evil, between the power of elevation and the power of distortion of man, like any external information, like a collection of experiences, like an impartial observation of nature, like the development of artistic technique, like the cognizing mind itself, when it acts isolated from other human abilities and develops self-propelledly, not being carried away by low passions, not illuminated by higher thoughts, but silently transmitting one abstract knowledge that can be equally used for benefit and harm, to serve the truth or to reinforce a lie .

This is now the state of European thinking - a state that determines the attitude of European enlightenment to the fundamental principles of our education. For if the former, exclusively rational character of the West could have a destructive effect on our life and mind, now, on the contrary, the new demands of the European mind and our fundamental beliefs have the same meaning. And if it is true that the main principle of our Orthodox-Slavic education is true (which, however, I consider neither necessary nor appropriate to prove here), - if it is true, I say, that this supreme, living principle of our enlightenment is true: then it is obvious that just as it was once the source of our ancient education, so now it should serve as a necessary complement to European education, separating it from its special directions, clearing it of the character of exclusive rationality and imbuing it with a new meaning; Meanwhile, European education, like the ripe fruit of all-human development, torn from the old tree, should serve as food for new life, be a new stimulating means for the development of our mental activity.

Having been a reflection of foreign literature, our literary phenomena, like Western ones, are predominantly concentrated in journalism.

But what is the nature of our periodicals? It is difficult for a magazine to express its opinion about other magazines. Praise can seem partial; blame has the appearance of self-praise. But how can we talk about our literature without understanding what constitutes its essential character? How to determine the real meaning of literature, not to mention magazines? Let us try not to worry about the appearance that our judgments may have.

Now remains older than all other literary magazines Reading Library. Its dominant character is the complete absence of any definite way of thinking. She praises today what she condemned yesterday; today he puts forward one opinion and now he preaches another; for the same subject has several opposing views; expresses no special rules, no theories, no system, no direction, no color, no conviction, no definite basis for his judgments; and, despite this, he constantly pronounces his judgment on everything that appears in literature or science. She does this in such a way that for each special phenomenon she composes special laws, from which her condemnatory or approving verdict randomly comes and falls - on the happy one. For this reason, the effect that every expression of her opinion produces is the same as if she had not uttered any opinion at all. The reader understands the judge’s thought separately, and the object to which the judgment relates also lies separately in his mind: for he feels that there is no other relationship between the thought and the object except that they met by chance and for a short time, and having met again not get to know each other.

Meanwhile, although we sometimes look through these reviews with great pleasure, although we know that this playfulness is probably the main reason for the success of the magazine, however, when we consider at what price this success is bought, how sometimes, for the pleasure of amusing, loyalty is sold words, the reader's trust, respect for truth, etc. - then the thought involuntarily comes to us: what if words were combined with such brilliant qualities, with such wit, with such learning, with such versatility of mind, with such originality Still other virtues, for example, sublime thought, a firm and unchanging conviction, or even impartiality, or even his outward appearance? - What effect could B.D.Ch. have then, not on our literature, but on the entire totality of our education? How easily could she, through her rare qualities, take possession of the minds of readers, develop her conviction strongly, spread it widely, attract the sympathy of the majority, become a judge of opinions, perhaps penetrate from literature into life itself, connect its various phenomena into one thought and, ruling Thus, over the minds, to form a tightly closed and highly developed opinion, which can be a useful engine of our education? Of course, then she would be less funny.

Thus, in the general movement of our literature, the one-sidedness of one of these periodicals is usefully balanced by the opposite one-sidedness of the other. Mutually destroying each other, each of them, without knowing it, complements the shortcomings of the other, so that the meaning and meaning, even the way of thinking and content of one, are based on the possibility of the existence of the other. The very polemics between them serve as the reason for their inextricable connection and constitute, so to speak, a necessary condition for their mental movement. However, the nature of this controversy is completely different in both journals. Mayak attacks Otechestvennye Zapiski directly, openly and with heroic tirelessness, noticing their misconceptions, errors, reservations and even typos. Domestic Notes care little about Mayak as a journal, and even rarely talk about it; but for this they constantly keep in mind its direction, against the extreme of which they try to set up the opposite, no less passionate extreme. This struggle supports the possibility of life for both and constitutes their main significance in literature.

To reject everything Western and recognize only that side of our education that is directly opposite to the European one is, of course, a one-sided direction; however, it could have some subordinate meaning if the magazine expressed it in all the purity of its one-sidedness; but, taking it as its goal, the Lighthouse mixes with it some heterogeneous, random and clearly arbitrary principles, which sometimes destroy its main meaning. So, for example, putting the holy truths of our Orthodox faith as the basis for all his judgments, he at the same time takes other truths as his basis: the provisions of his self-created psychology, and judges things according to three criteria, four categories and ten elements. Thus, mixing his personal opinions with general truths, he demands that his system be accepted as the cornerstone of national thinking. As a result of this same confusion of concepts, he thinks to render a great service to literature by destroying, along with the Fatherland Notes, that which constitutes the glory of our literature. Thus, he proves, among other things, that Pushkin’s poetry is not only terrible and immoral, but that there is also no beauty, no art, no good poetry, or even correct rhymes. So, taking care of improving the Russian language and trying to give it softness, sweetness, sonorous charm who would do his common language throughout Europe, he himself, at the same time, instead of speaking in Russian, uses the language of his own invention.

Domestic Notes, for their part, also destroy their own power in a different way. Instead of conveying to us the results of European education, they are constantly carried away by some particular phenomena of this education and, without fully embracing it, think to be new, being in fact always belated. For the passionate pursuit of fashionable opinion, the passionate desire to assume the appearance of a lion in the circle of thinking, in itself already proves a distance from the center of fashion. This desire gives to our thoughts, our language, our entire appearance, that character of self-doubting sharpness, that cut of bright exaggeration, which serve as a sign of our alienation from precisely the circle to which we want to belong.

Arrivé de province à Paris, says one thoughtful and respectable magazine (I think l’Illustration or Guêpes), arrivé a Paris il voulut s’habiller à la mode du lendemain; U eut exprimer les émotions de son âme par les noeuds de sa cravatte et il abusa de l"épingle.

Thus, in the sphere of philosophy, without presenting the slightest trace of those tasks that constitute the subject of modern thinking in the West, 0. 3. they preach systems that are already outdated, but add to them some new results that do not fit with them. Thus, in the sphere of history, they accepted some of the opinions of the West, which appeared there as a result of the desire for nationality; but having understood them separately from their source, they deduce from them the denial of our nationality, because it does not agree with the nationalities of the West, just as the Germans once rejected their nationality because it is unlike the French. Thus, in the field of literature, the Fatherland was noticed. Notes that in the West, not without benefit for the successful movement of education, some undeserved authorities were destroyed, and as a result of this remark, they seek to humiliate all our fame, trying to reduce the literary reputation of Derzhavin, Karamzin, Zhukovsky, Baratynsky, Yazykov, Khomyakov, and in their place extol I. Turgenev and F. Maykov, thus placing them in the same category with Lermontov, who probably would not have chosen this place for himself in our literature. Following the same beginning, O.Z. are trying to update our language with their special words and forms.

That is why we dare to think that both O.Z. and Mayak express a direction that is somewhat one-sided and not always true. The Northern Bee is more a political newspaper than a literary magazine. But in its non-political part it expresses the same desire for morality, improvement and decency that O. Z. displays for European education. She judges things according to her moral concepts, conveys in quite a variety of ways everything that seems wonderful to her, communicates everything that she likes, reports everything that is not to her heart’s content, very zealously, but perhaps not always fairly.

We have some reason to think that this is not always fair.

Meanwhile, the direction of the Contemporary is not predominantly, but exclusively literary. Articles by scientists aimed at the development of science, and not words, are not included in its composition. That is why his way of looking at things is in some contradiction with his name. For in our time, purely literary dignity is no longer an essential aspect of literary phenomena. Therefore, when, analyzing some work of literature, a Contemporary bases his judgments on the rules of rhetoric or literature, we involuntarily regret that the power of his moral purity is exhausted in the worries of his literary purity.

Meanwhile, the spread of periodicals to all corners of the state and to all circles of literate society, the role they obviously play in our literature, the interest they arouse in all classes of readers - all this indisputably proves to us that the very character of our literary education is mostly magazine.

However, the meaning of this expression requires some explanation.

However, could it have been otherwise? Considering the general character of our literature, it seems that in our literary education there are no elements for forming a general definite opinion, there are no forces for the formation of an integral, consciously developed direction, and there cannot be any as long as the dominant color of our thoughts is a random shade of foreign beliefs. Without a doubt, it is possible, and indeed one constantly encounters people, who present some private thought, fragmentarily understood by them, as their own definite opinion, – people who call their book concepts by the name of beliefs; but these thoughts, these concepts, are more like a school exercise in logic and philosophy; – this opinion is imaginary; one outer garment of thoughts; a fashionable dress in which some smart people dress up their minds when they take it to salons, or youthful dreams that fly apart at the first pressure of real life. This is not what we mean by persuasion.

There was a time, and not very long ago, when it was possible for a thinking person to form a firm and definite way of thinking, embracing together life, mind, taste, habits of life, and literary preferences - it was possible to form a definite opinion solely from sympathy with the phenomena of foreign literature: there were complete, whole, complete systems. Now they are gone; at least there are no generally accepted, unconditionally dominant ones. In order to build your complete view from contradictory thoughts, you need to choose, compose yourself, search, doubt, ascend to the very source from which conviction flows, that is, either remain forever with wavering thoughts, or bring with you something already prepared, not from literature. learned belief. Compose persuasion from different systems is impossible, as in general it is impossible draw up nothing alive. Living things are born only from life.

For this reason, our literature could have complete meaning until the end of Pushkin’s life, and now has no specific meaning.

We think, however, that this state of affairs cannot continue. Due to the natural, necessary laws of the human mind, the emptiness of meaninglessness must someday be filled with meaning.

Goethe had already foreseen this direction; at the end of my life I argued that true poetry is poetry of chance (Gelegenheits-Gedicht). - However, Goethe understood this in his own way. In the last era of his life, most of the poetic occasions that aroused his inspiration were a court ball, an honorary masquerade, or someone's birthday. Napoleon and the Europe he turned upside down barely left traces in the entire collection of his creations. Goethe was the all-encompassing, greatest and probably the last poet individual life, which has not yet penetrated into one consciousness with universal human life.

Old Lutheran Church there is a new phenomenon. It arose from the resistance of some part of the Lutherans against their union with the Reformed. The present King of Prussia has allowed them to profess their doctrine openly and separately; As a result, a new one was formed, called Old Lutheran. It had its full Council in 1841, issued its own special decrees, established for its governance its Supreme Church Council, independent of any authorities, sitting in Breslau, on which alone the lower councils and all the churches of their confession depend. According to their decrees, mixed marriages are strictly prohibited for all those taking part in church administration or education. Others, if not directly prohibited, are at least advised against as reprehensible. They call mixed marriages not only the union of Lutherans with Catholics, but also Old Lutherans with Lutherans of the united, so-called Evangelical Church.

Rosmini's thoughtful writings, which promise the development of new, original thinking in Italy, are familiar to us only from magazine reviews. But as far as one can judge from these torn extracts, it seems that the 18th century will soon end for Italy, and that a new era of mental renaissance now awaits it, emanating from a new beginning of thinking, based on the three elements of Italian life: religion, history and art.

"Review of the current state of literature"

In 1844, Pogodin decided to transfer the magazine “Moskvityanin” to Kireyevsky. During 1845, the first four books of the magazine were published under the editorship of IV. with a number of his articles, mainly of a literary nature.

Previously, “Moskvityanin” was published under the patronage of Count Uvarov and expressed the official ideology - nationality. Although the Slavophiles did not fully share these ideas, the general patriotic and Orthodox spirit of the magazine, its opposition to Westernizing trends in education, forced them to publish in this magazine in the absence of their own printed organ.

The manifesto of the new “Moskvitian” was Kireyevsky’s article “Review of the Current State of Literature.” The work was published in parts in three issues of the magazine and remained unfinished.

The article is of great importance for studying our issue. The philosopher highlights: the most important condition for creating the integrity of the spirit: the presence of conviction, from which, as from a single root, all mental ideas of a person and his daily activities are built. Kireyevsky returns here again to the problem of the creative subject: “His sonorous and trembling thought must come from the very secret of his inner, so to speak, subconscious conviction, and where this sanctuary was fragmented by the heteroglossia of beliefs or simply their absence, there can be no question of poetry, not about any powerful influence of man on man.”

Conviction must be found not only in an individual, but also in an entire nation. There must be one conviction, because “many thoughts,” the heteroglossia of seething systems and opinions with the lack of one conviction, not only fragments the self-awareness of society, but must necessarily act on a private person, dividing every living movement of his soul.” From this quote it is clear how erroneous this was a tradition that arose at the end of the last century to bring Slavophilism closer to liberalism.43 The latter doctrine, with its utilitarian character, the priority of the sovereign individual, secularized morality and the cult of formal relations, can serve as a characteristic example of the spiritual fragmentation of society and man, which was criticized by the Slavophiles.

In his article, Kireyevsky proclaimed an inextricable connection between “the first elements that make up the people’s life” with the highest achievements of literature. Concepts that are based on the traditional relations of national life “form the root from which the highest education of the nation grows.” The philosopher called these first elements, certain stereotypes of thinking reflected in the language of the people, the basic principles of enlightenment.

The state of the integrity of the spirit does not require any conviction, but one based on the Christian faith, the extinction of which in Europe led to the fact that “...On the one hand, thought, not supported by the highest goals of the spirit, fell into the service of sensual interests and selfish views, hence the industrial direction of minds." On the other hand, “the very lack of convictions produced the need for faith,” but this faith cannot be reconciled with abstract reason. Then a duality arises in a person, forcing him to invent for himself “a new religion without a church, without tradition, without revelation and without faith.”

So, the disadvantage of Western religions is their excessive preoccupation with issues of formal reason, which takes a person away from living communication with God and leads to unbelief.

Kireevsky distinguishes two types of education: “One education is the internal structure of the spirit by the power of the truth communicated in it; the other is the formal development of the mind and external knowledge. The first depends on the principle to which a person submits and can be communicated directly; the second is the fruit of slow and difficult work. The first gives meaning and meaning to the second, but the second gives it content and completeness. For the first there is no changing development, there is only direct recognition, preservation and distribution in the subordinate spheres of the human spirit; the second, being the fruit of centuries of gradual efforts, experiments, failures, successes, observations, inventions and all the successively rich mental property of the human race, cannot be created instantly, nor guessed by the most brilliant inspiration, but must be composed little by little from the combined efforts of all private understandings “44 This is one of Kireevsky’s first detailed definitions of spiritual integrity and formal rationality in their opposition.

Integrity of the Spirit in the West Kireyevsky believes that the West was characterized by the education of the integrity of the spirit, but due to a one-sided enthusiasm for syllogistics, abstract reason took precedence over the convictions of the spirit, and the European world lost the integrity of being. Therefore, the missionary duty of the Orthodox-Slavic world is to remind the West of the highest principles of the human spirit, inaccessible to the abstract mechanism of formal thinking

However, reason as such does not threaten the integrity of the spirit; the danger comes from its isolation, its unconditional priority over other cognitive abilities. Reason must be enlightened by faith, serving as the first step for a higher level of knowledge.

The article “Review of the Current State of Literature” is interesting, first of all, because it is the first time that it expresses in detail those thoughts that will subsequently become dominant for the philosopher, on the development of which he will work EfCe in subsequent years. Among European philosophers, Kireyevsky gave clear preference to thinkers striving for spiritual integrity, such as Stephens and Pascal.

Complete collection of works in two volumes. Kireevsky Ivan Vasilievich

Review of the current state of literature. (1845).

Review of the current state of literature.

There was a time when, saying: literature, they usually understood fine literature; In our time, fine literature constitutes only a small part of literature. Therefore, we must warn readers that, wanting to present the current state of literature in Europe, we are forced? We will have to pay more attention to works of philosophy, history, philology, political-economics, theology, etc., rather than works of art.

Perhaps, since the very era of the so-called revival of sciences in Europe, fine literature has never played such a pitiful role as it does now, especially in the last years of our time - although, perhaps, so much has never been written in all of history. birth and never read so greedily everything that is written. Even the 18th century was predominantly literary; Even in the first quarter of the 19th century, purely literary interests were one of the springs of the intellectual movement of peoples; great poets aroused great sympathy; differences in literary opinions produced passionate parties; the appearance of a new book resonated in the minds as a public matter. But now the relationship of fine literature to society has changed; Of the great, all-fascinating poets, not a single one remains; with sets? poems and, let’s say, with multitudes? remarkable talents - no poetry: even its needs are invisible; literary opinions are repeated without participation; the former, magical sympathy between the author and readers is interrupted; From the first brilliant role, elegant literature has descended into the role of confidante of other heroines of our time; we read a lot, we read more than before, we read everything we can get our hands on; but all in passing, without participation, like an official reading incoming and outgoing papers, when he reads them. When reading, we do not enjoy, and even less can we forget; but we only take it into consideration, we seek to derive application and benefit; - and that lively, disinterested interest in purely literary phenomena, that abstract love for beautiful forms, that pleasure in the harmony of speech, that delightful self-forgetfulness in the harmony of verse, which we experienced in our youth - the coming generation will know about it isn't it? only according to legend.

They say that one should rejoice at this; that literature has been replaced by other interests because we have become longer; that if before we were chasing a poem, a phrase, a dream, now we are looking for significance, science, life. I don't know if this is fair; but I confess, mn? It’s a pity for the old, unusable, useless literature. There was a lot of warmth in her for the soul; and what saddens the soul may not be completely unnecessary for life.

In our time, fine literature has been replaced by magazine literature. And one should not think that the nature of journalism belongs only to periodicals: does it apply to everything? forms of literature, with very few exceptions.

In fact, everywhere we look, everywhere? thought is subordinated to current circumstances, feeling is attached to the interests of the party, form is adjusted to the demands of the moment. The novel turned into statistics of morals; - poetry in verses for the occasion; - history, being an echo of the past, tries to be in place? and a mirror of the present, or proof of some social belief, a quotation in favor of some modern view; - philosophy, with the most abstract contemplations of eternal truths, is constantly occupied with their relation to the current moment?; - even theological works on the West?, for the most part, are generated by some extraneous circumstance of external life. More books have been written on the occasion of one bishop of Cologne, for what reasons? the prevailing neu?ria, about which the Western clergy complains so much.

However, this general desire of minds for the events of reality, for the interests of the day, has its source in more than one place. personal benefits or selfish goals, as some people think. Although private benefits are connected with public affairs, the general interest in the latter does not arise from this calculation alone. For the most part, it's just sympathy interest. The mind is awakened and directed in this direction. The thought of a person has merged with the thought of humanity. This is a desire for love, not profit. He wants to know what is going on in the world, in fate? people like him, often without the slightest regard for themselves. He wants to know in order only to participate with thought in general life, to sympathize with it from within his limited circle.

Despite this, however, it seems, not without reason, that many complain about this excessive respect for the minute, this all-consuming interest in the events of the day, in the external, business aspects of the day. life. Such a direction, they think, does not embrace life, but concerns only its outer side, its insignificant surface. The shell, of course, is necessary, but only for preserving the grain, without which it is useless; Perhaps this state of mind is understandable as a transitional state; but nonsense, like a state of higher development. The porch to the house is as good as a porch; but if we settle down to live on it, as if it were the whole house, then it may make us both cramped and cold.

However, let us note that the strictly political, governmental issues that have worried the minds of the West for so long are now beginning to fade into the background of mental movements, and although upon superficial observation it may seem as if they are still in their former strength, because still occupy the majority of heads, but this majority is already backward; it no longer constitutes an expression in the world; progressive thinkers decisively moved into another sphere, into the field of social issues, where? The first place is no longer taken by the external form, but by the inner life of society itself, in its real, essential relations.

I think it is unnecessary to stipulate that in the direction of social issues, I don’t think so. ugly systems that are known to the world? more in terms of the noise they made than in the meaning of their half-thought-out teachings: these phenomena are interesting only as a sign, but in themselves? insignificant; No, I see interest in social issues, replacing the former, exclusively political concern, not in this or that phenomenon, but in the whole trend of European literature.

Mental movements to the West? are now carried out with less noise and brilliance, but obviously they have more depth and generality. Instead of the limited sphere of events of the day and external interests, thought rushes to the very source of everything external, to a person as he is, and to his life as it should be. A long discovery in science? Already more occupies the minds than the lush river in the Chambers. The external form of legal proceedings seems less important than the internal development of justice; the living spirit of the people is more important than its external structures. Western writers are beginning to understand that beneath the loud rotation of social wheels lies the inaudible movement of a moral spring on which everything depends, and therefore in mental concerns? in their own way they are trying to move from phenomena to causes?, from formal external issues they want to rise to that volume of the idea of society where? and the momentary events of the day, and the eternal conditions of life, and politics, and philosophy, and science, and craft, and industry, and religion itself, and instead? with them the literature of the people merge into one boundless task: the improvement of man and his life relationships.

But it must be admitted that if private literary phenomena give them greater significance and, so to speak, more juice, why literature in general? in its own way represents a strange chaos of contradictory opinions, unconnected systems, airy scattering theories, momentary, invented innovations, and at the basis of everything: the complete absence of any belief that could be called not only general, but even dominant. Each new effort of thought is expressed by a new system; Each new system, as soon as it is born, destroys everything? the previous one, and destroying them, itself dies at the moment of birth, so that, working incessantly, the human mind cannot rest on any achieved result?; constantly striving to build some great, transcendental building, nowhere? there is no support to confirm even one first stone for the shaky foundation.

That’s why in all the most remarkable works of literature, in all the important and unimportant phenomena of thought in the West, starting with the modern philosophy of Schelling and ending with the long-forgotten system of Saint-Simonists, we usually find two? different sides: one almost always arouses sympathy in the public?, and often includes? a lot of true, long-lasting and forward-moving thought: this is the side negative, polemical, refutation of systems and opinions that preceded the stated belief; the other side, if sometimes arouses sympathy, is almost always limited and quickly passing: this is the side positive, that is, precisely what constitutes the peculiarity of a new thought, its essence, its right to life beyond the first curiosity.

The reason for this duality in Western thought is obvious. Having completed its previous ten-century development, the new Europe has come into conflict with the old Europe and feels that to begin a new life it needs a new foundation. The basis of people's life is belief. Not finding something ready that meets its requirements, Western thought is trying to create itself? conviction by effort, imagine it, if possible, by the tension of thinking - but in this desperate work?, in any case? curious and instructive, until now each experience was only the opposite of the other.

Multiplicity of thoughts, diversity of boiling systems and many others, with a lack of? one common belief not only fragments the self-consciousness of society, but must also have an effect on a private person, dividing every living movement of his soul. That’s why, by the way, in our time there are so many talents and not a single true poet. For a poet is created by the power of inner thought. From the depths of his soul he must bring out the edge? beautiful forms, even the very soul of beauty: your living, whole view of the world and man. No artificial construction of concepts, no reasonable theories will help here. His sonorous and trembling thought must come from the very secret of his inner, so to speak, supraconscious conviction, and where? this sanctuary of being is fragmented by disorganization, or empty by their absence; there can be no talk of poetry, nor of any powerful influence of man on man.

Is this the state of mind in Europe? pretty new. It belongs to the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The eighteenth century, although it was predominantly irreligious, but it no less had its ardent convictions, its dominant theories, on which thought calmed down, with which the feeling of the highest needs of the human spirit was deceived. When the rush of rapture was followed by disappointment in his favorite theories, then the new man could not stand life without heartfelt goals: despair became his dominant feeling. Byron testifies to this transitional state, but the feeling of despair, in its essence, is only momentary. Coming out of it, Western self-consciousness split into two opposing aspirations. On the one hand, thought, not supported by the highest goals of the spirit, fell into the service of sensual interests and selfish views; hence the industrial trend of minds, which penetrated not only into external social life, but also into the abstract field of science, into the content and form of literature, and even into the very depths of home life, into the sanctity of family ties, into the magical secret of the first youthful dreams. On the other hand, the absence of basic principles awakened in many people the consciousness of their necessity. The very lack of satisfaction created the need for money; but the minds that searched for the world were not always able to reconcile its Western forms with the current state of European science. Those who resolutely rejected the last days and declared irreconcilable enmity between the army and reason; others, trying to find their agreement, either rape science in order to incorporate it into Western forms of religion, or want to transform the very forms of religion according to their science?, or, finally, not finding it in the West? forms that correspond to their mental needs, invent themselves? a new religion without a church, without tradition, without revelation and without faith.

The boundaries of this article do not allow us to present a clear picture? what is remarkable and special in modern phenomena of literature in Germany, England, France and Italy, where? a new religious-philosophical thought is also now igniting, worthy of attention. In subsequent issues of the Muscovite, we will try to present this image with all possible impartiality. - Now, in short essays, we will try to indicate in foreign literature only what he? represent the most strikingly remarkable thing at the present moment.

Въ Germany the dominant direction of minds still remains predominantly philosophical; adjacent to it, on the one hand, is the historical-theological direction, which is a consequence of one’s own, deeper development of philosophical thought, and on the other, the political direction, which, it seems, for the most part should be attributed to someone else’s influence, judging by the bias remarkable writers of this kind to France and its literature. Some of these German patriots go so far as to place Voltaire, as a philosopher, above German thinkers.

Schelling's new system, so long expected, so solemnly accepted, did not seem to agree with the expectations of the N?mtsev. His Berlin auditorium, where? in the first year of its appearance it was difficult to find a place, but now, as they say, it has become spacious. His method of reconciling faith with philosophy has not yet convinced either believers or philosophizers. The first reproach him for the excessive rights of reason and for the special meaning that he puts into his concepts about the most basic dogmas of Christianity. His closest friends see in him only a thinker on the way to v?r?. “I hope,” says Neander, (dedicating a new edition of his church history to him) “I hope that the merciful God will soon destroy you completely.” ours.” Philosophers, on the contrary, are offended by the fact that he accepts, as the property of reason, dogmas of the faith, not developed from reason according to the laws of logical necessity. “If his system were the holy truth itself,” they say, “then in this case? it could not be the acquisition of philosophy until it was its own product.”

This, at least in the world, outward failure of a world-significant cause, with which was connected so many great expectations based on the deepest needs of the human spirit, confused many thinkers; but vm?st? was the cause of celebration for others. Et? and others have forgotten, it seems that the innovative thought of the great geniuses should to be at odds with one’s closest contemporaries. Passionate Hegelians, quite? content with the system of their teacher and not seeing the possibility of leading human thought beyond the boundaries shown by him, they consider every attempt of the mind to develop philosophy beyond its present state as a sacrilegious attack on the truth itself. But, by the way, is their triumph despite imaginary failures? the great Schelling, as can be judged from philosophical brochures, was not entirely thorough. If it is true that Schelling’s new system, in the particular way in which it was set out by him, has found little sympathy in present-day Germany, then no less his refutations of previous philosophies, and mainly Hegel’s, have been profound and with everyone more increasing effect during the day. Of course, it is also true that the opinions of the Hegelians are constantly spreading more widely in Germany, developing in applications to the arts and literature? and all sciences (including natural sciences); It’s true that they even became almost popular; but many of the first-class thinkers have already begun to realize the insufficiency of this form of wisdom and clearly feel the needs of a new teaching based on higher principles, although they still do not clearly see from which side they can expect a response to this unstoppable aspiring spirit need. So, according to the laws of the eternal movement of human thought, when a new system begins to descend into the lower strata of the educated world, at that very time advanced thinkers are already aware of its unsatisfactoriness and look ahead, into that deep distance, into the blue immensity, where? A new horizon opens up for their vigilant premonition.

However, it should be noted that the word Hegelianism is not associated with any specific way of thinking, or with any permanent direction. Do the Hegelians agree among themselves only on method? thinking and even more in a way? expressions; but the results of their methods and the meaning of what is expressed are often completely opposite. Even during Hegel’s lifetime, between him and Hans, the most brilliant of his students, there was a complete contradiction in the accepted conclusions of philosophy. The same disagreement is repeated among other Hegelians. So, for example, the way of thinking of Hegel and some of his followers reached extreme aristocracy; Meanwhile, like other Hegelians, they preach the most desperate democracy; There were even some who derived from the same principles the doctrine of the most fanatical absolutism. In religious terms, do others adhere to Protestantism in the strictest, ancient sense? this word, without deviating not only from the concept, but even from the letter of the teaching; others, on the contrary, reach the most absurd atheism. In relation to art, Hegel himself began by opposing the new direction, justifying the romantic and demanding the purity of artistic genera; Many Hegelians still remain with this theory, while others preach a new art in the most extreme contrast to the romantic and with the most desperate uncertainty of forms and confusion of characters. So, oscillating between opposite directions, now aristocratic, now popular, now religious, now godless, now romantic, now new-life, now purely Prussian, now suddenly Turkish, now finally French - Hegel’s system in Germany named after him? La different characters, and not only at these opposite extremes, but also at each stage of their mutual distance, formed and left a special school of followers who are more or less inclined either to the right or to the left side. Therefore, nothing can be more unfair than to attribute to one Hegelian something less than another, as sometimes happens in Germany, but more often in other literatures, where? Hegel's system is not yet well known. Because of this misunderstanding, most of Hegel’s followers suffer completely undeserved accusations. For it is natural that the harshest, the ugliest thoughts of some of them most quickly spread among the surprised public, as an example of excessive courage or amusing strangeness, and, not knowing all the flexibility of Hegel’s method, many unwittingly attribute everything “To the Hegelians that which belongs, perhaps, to one.

However, speaking about Hegel’s followers, it is necessary to distinguish those of them who are engaged in applying his methods to other sciences, from those who continue to develop his teaching in the field of philosophy. Of the first, there are some writers who are remarkable for the power of logical thinking; of the latter, not a single one of particular genius is still known, not a single one who would rise even to the living concept of philosophy, would penetrate its external forms and would say at least one fresh thought that was not literally drawn from teacher's writings. Is it true, Erdman At first he described the development as original, but then, however, 14 years in a row he does not get tired of constantly turning over one? etc? well-known formulas. The same external formality fills the works Rosencrantz, Mishleta, Marheineke, Goto Rötcher And Gabler, although the last? Moreover, he somewhat alters the direction of his teacher and even his very phraseology - or because of what he actually did? so understands him, or maybe so wants understand, sacrificing the accuracy of his expressions for the external good of the entire school. Werder For some time he enjoyed the reputation of a particularly gifted thinker, while he did not publish anything and was known only for his teaching to Berlin students; but having published a logic filled with commonplaces and old formulas, dressed in a worn but elaborate dress, with plump phrases, he proved that the talent of teaching is not a guarantee for the dignity of thinking. The true, only valid and pure representative of Hegelianism remains to this day Hegel and he alone - although perhaps no one more than himself contradicted in his comments the basic principle of his philosophy.

Among Hegel's opponents it would be easy to count out many remarkable thinkers; but deeper and more devastating than others, it seems to us, the last? Schelling, Adolf Trendelenburg, a man who has deeply studied the ancient philosophers and attacks Hegel's method at its very source? its vitality, in relation to pure thinking to its basic principle. But here, as in all modern thinking, the destructive power of Trendelenburg is clearly unequal to the creative.

The attacks of the Herbartians have, perhaps, less logical invincibility, but for that they have a more significant meaning, because in the place of the destroyed system they do not put the emptiness of thoughtlessness, from which the human mind is even more powerful to them. disgust, physical nature; but they offer another, already ready-made, very worthy of attention, although still little appreciated Herbart’s system.

However, what is less satisfactory is the philosophical state of Germany, the more strongly the religious need is revealed in it. In this respect, Germany is now a very curious phenomenon. The need for faith, so deeply felt by the highest minds, among the general hesitation of mine, and, perhaps, as a result of this hesitation, was revealed there by a new religious mood of many poets, the formation of new religious and artistic schools and, most of all, a new direction theology. These phenomena are so important that they seem to be only the first beginning of a future, stronger development. I know that they usually say the opposite; I know that they see in the religious direction of some writers only an exception to the general, dominant state of mind. And really? it is an exception, judging by the material, numerical majority of the so-called educated class; for it must be admitted that this class, more than ever, now belongs to the very left extreme of rationalism. But we must not forget that the development of popular thought does not come from the numerical majority. The majority expresses only the present moment and testifies more about past, active forces than about the upcoming movement. To understand the direction, you need to look in the wrong direction, where? more people, but where? more inner vitality and where? complete correspondence of thoughts with the crying needs of the world. If we take into account how noticeably the vital development of German rationalism has stopped; How mechanically does he move through unimportant formulas, going through this and that? worn-out positions; how every original flutter of thought apparently breaks out of these monotonous shackles and strives for another, warmer sphere of activity; - then we will be convinced that Germany has outlived its real philosophy, and that soon it will face a new, profound revolution in its beliefs.

To understand the latest direction of her Lutheran theology, it is necessary to recall the circumstances that served as the reason for its development.

In the end? past and in the beginning? of the present century, the majority of German theologians were, as is known, imbued with that popular rationalism, which arose from the confusion of French opinions with German school formulas. This trend spread very quickly. Zemler, did you start? his field, was proclaimed a free-thinking new teacher; but at the end? his activities and without changing his direction, he himself suddenly found himself with a reputation as a stubborn old man and an extinguisher of reason. So quickly and so completely did the state of theological teaching around him change.

In contrast to this weakening of the faith, in a barely noticeable corner? A small circle of people has closed in German life tensely in?, the so-called Pietists, who were somewhat close to the Herrnhuters and Methodists.

But 1812 awakened the need for higher convictions throughout Europe; Then, especially in Germany, religious feeling awoke again with renewed vigor? The fate of Napoleon, the revolution that took place throughout the entire educated world, the danger and salvation of the fatherland, the re-inception of all the foundations of life, brilliant, young hopes for the future - all this seething of great questions and enormous events could not but touch the deepest side of people? Czech self-awareness and awakened the highest powers of his spirit. Under such influence a new generation of Lutheran theologians was formed, which naturally came into direct conflict with the previous one. From their mutual opposition in literature, in life and in government activity, two things arose. schools: one, at that time new, fearing the autocracy of reason, adhered to strictly symbolic books of its confession; did the other one allow herself? their reasonable interpretation. The first, opposing the rights of philosophizing that were unnecessary, in her opinion, aligned her extreme members with the poetists; the latter, while defending reason, sometimes bordered on pure rationalism. From the struggle of these two extremes an infinite number of middle directions developed.

Meanwhile, the disagreement of these two parties on the most important issues, the internal disagreement of different shades of one and the same party, the disagreement of different representatives of the same shade, and finally, the attacks of pure rationalists, no longer belonging to the number in? ruining, for everything? these batches and shades vm?st? taken - all this aroused in the general consciousness the need for a more thorough study of the Holy Scriptures than it had been done until that time, and most of all: the need for a firm definition of the boundaries between reason and war. The new development of historical and especially philological and philosophical education in Germany agreed with this requirement and, in part, strengthened it. Instead of the fact that previously university students barely understood Greek, now gymnasium students began to enter universities with a ready-made stock of thorough knowledge in the languages: Latin, Greek and Hebrew. The philological and historical departments were occupied by people of remarkable talents. Theological philosophy counted many famous representatives, but it was especially revived and developed by its brilliant and thoughtful teaching Schleiermacher, and another, opposite to it, although not brilliant, but no less profound, although barely understandable, but, by some inexpressible, sympathetic cluster of thoughts, surprisingly fascinating teaching of the professor Dauba. These two systems were joined by a third, based on the philosophy of Hegel. The fourth party consisted of the remnants of the former Breitschneiderian popular rationalism. Behind them came the pure rationalists, with naked philosophizing without faith.

The more clearly the various directions were defined, the more multilaterally the individual issues were processed, the more difficult was their general agreement.

Meanwhile, the side of the predominantly believers, strictly adhering to their symbolic books, had a great external advantage over others: only the followers of the Augsburg Confession, which enjoyed state recognition, as a result of the Peace of Westphalia, could have it the right to the protection of state power. As a result, many of them demanded the removal of counter-thinkers from the places they occupied.

On the other hand, this very benefit was, perhaps, the reason for their little success. Against the attack of thought, resorting to the protection of external force - for many it seemed a sign of internal failure. Moreover, their position had another weak side: the Augsburg Confession itself was based on rights? personal interpretation. Allow this right until the 16th century and not allow it after? - for many it seemed like a contradiction to others. However, for one reason or another, but rationalism, suspended for a while and not defeated by the efforts of those who believe in law, began to spread again, now acting with redoubled force, strengthened by all the acquisitions of science until, finally, following the inexorable flow of syllogisms, divorced from the faith, he achieved the most extreme, most disgusting results.

So the results, which revealed the power of rationalism, served as a substitute? and his reproof. If they could bring any momentary harm to the crowd, imitatively repeating other people's opinions; For this reason, people who openly sought a solid foundation clearly separated from them and then decisively chose the opposite direction. As a result of this, the previous views of many Protestant theologians changed significantly.

There is a party belonging to the most recent times, which looks at Protestantism no longer as contrary to Catholicism, but on the contrary, Papism and the Council of Trent are separated from Catholicism and sees in the Augsburg Confession the most legitimate, although not yet the most recent an expression of the continually developing Church. These Protestant theologians, even in the middle ages, no longer recognize a deviation from Christianity, as Lutheran theologians have said until now, but its gradual and necessary continuation, considering not only internal, but even external uninterrupted churchliness one of the necessary elements Christianity. - Do you have the same desire to justify everything? rebellion against the Roman Church, now they are more inclined to condemn them. They readily accuse the Waldensians and Wicliffites, with whom they previously found so much sympathy; Gregory VII and Innocent III are acquitted, and Goose is even condemned for resistance to the legitimate authority of the Church, - The goose, which Luther himself, as legend says, called the predecessor of his swan song.

In accordance with this trend, they want some changes in their worship and especially, following the example of the Episcopal Church, they want to give greater predominance to the actual liturgical part over the sermon. For this purpose, everything was translated? liturgy of the first centuries, and the most complete collection of all old and new church songs has been compiled. In d?l? Do they require pastorship not only for teaching in the temple, but also for preaching in houses, instead of? with constant monitoring of the lives of parishioners. To top it all off, they want to return to the custom of the previous church punishments, ranging from simple admonishment to solemn ejection, and even rebel against seditious marriages. Both of these in the Old Lutheran Church are no longer desires, but dogmas introduced into real life.

However, it goes without saying that such a trend does not belong to everyone, but only to some Protestant theologians. We noticed it more because it is new than because it is strong. And it is not necessary to think that in general legitimate Lutheran theologians, who equally recognize their symbolic books and agree among themselves in rejecting rationalism, therefore agree in dogmatism itself? On the contrary, their differences are even more significant than one might imagine at first glance. So, for example, Julius Müller, who is revered by them as one of the most legal-minded, that is, no less deviates from others in his teaching about gr?x?; despite the fact that this question almost belongs to the most central questions of theology. Hengstenberg, the most cruel opponent of rationalism, does not find sympathy among everyone for this extreme of his bitterness, and among those who sympathize with him, very many disagree with him in some particulars of his teaching, such as, for example, in the concept of Prophecies?, - although there is a special concept about prophecies? must certainly lead to a special concept about the very relationship of human nature to the Divine, that is, about the very foundations? dogmatists. Toluk, the most warm-minded in his evolution and the most warm-hearted in his thinking, is usually considered by his party to be an overly liberal thinker - meanwhile, somehow this or that attitude of thinking to the world, with consistent development, should change the entire character of the teaching. Neander blame his all-forgiving tolerance and kind-hearted sympathy with other teachings, a feature that not only determines his distinctive view of the history of the church, but instead? and on the internal movement of the human spirit in general, and therefore separates

the very essence of his teaching from others. Draw And Lykke They also disagree with their party in many ways. Everyone puts into their confession the distinctiveness of their personality. Despite this, however, Bekk, one of the most remarkable representatives of the new emerging trend, demands from Protestant theologians the compilation of a general, complete, scientific dogmatics, pure from personal opinions and independent of temporary systems. But, having considered everything that has been said, we may, it seems, have some right to doubt the feasibility of this requirement. -

About the new state French literature we will say only very little, and that, perhaps, is superfluous, because French literature is known to Russian readers, hardly more than domestic literature. Let us only note the contrast between the direction of the French mind and the direction of the German thought. Here every question of life turns into a question of science; there, every thought of science and literature turns into a question of life. Xiu's famous novel resonated not so much in literature, but in societies?; its results were: transformation into devices? prisons, the formation of human-loving societies, etc. His other novel, now published, obviously owes its success to non-literary qualities. Balzac, who was so successful before 1830 because he described the then dominant society, is now almost forgotten precisely for the same reasons? The dispute between the clergy and the university, which in Germany would have given rise to abstract discussions about the relationship between philosophy and faith, state and religion, like the dispute about the Bishop of Cologne?, in France only aroused greater attention to the present state of public education, to the nature of the activities of the Jesuits and to the modern direction of public education. The general religious movement of Europe was expressed in Germany by new dogmatic systems, historical and philological research and scientific philosophical interpretations; in France, on the contrary, it hardly produced one or two? wonderful books, but their strength was revealed in religious societies, in political parties and in the missionary action of the clergy on the people. The natural sciences, which have achieved such enormous development in France, are, however, not only based exclusively on empiricism, but also in their entirety? their development is shunned by speculative interest, caring primarily about application to business, about the benefits and benefits of existence, while in Germany every step in the study of nature is defined from the point of view of a philosophical view, included in the system and ots?nen not so much for its benefits? for life, as much as in relation to speculative principles.

Thus in Germany theology and philosophy In our time, they constitute two important objects of general attention, and their agreement is now the dominant need of German thought. In France, on the contrary, philosophical development is not a need, but a luxury of thinking. The essential question of the present moment is the agreement religions And society. Religious writers, instead of dogmatic development, are looking for real application, while political thinkers, even not imbued with religious convictions, invent artificial beliefs, trying to achieve in them the unconditionality of faith and its overmind spontaneity.

The modern and almost equivalent excitement of these two interests: religious and social, two opposite ends, perhaps, of one torn thought, forces us to assume that the participation of modern France in the general development of human enlightenment, its place field of science in general must be determined by that special sphere from which both come and where? These two different directions merge into one. But what result will come from this aspiration of thought? Will a new science be born from this: science public life, - how in the end? of the past century, from the joint effect of the philosophical and social mood of England, a new one was born there science of national wealth? Or will the action of modern French thinking be limited only to changing some principles in other sciences? Is France destined to make or only begin this change? To guess this now would be idle daydreaming. A new direction is just beginning, and even then barely noticeably, to manifest itself in literature - still unconscious in its specificity, not yet collected even into one question. But in any case? This movement of science in France cannot but seem to us significant than all other aspirations of its thinking, and it is especially curious to see how it begins to express itself in opposition to the previous principles of political economy, a science with the subject of which it is related. everything is in contact. Questions about competition and monopoly, about the relationship between the excess of luxury products and the people's satisfaction, the cheapness of products to the poverty of workers, state wealth to the wealth of capitalists, the value of work to the value of goods, the development of luxury to the suffering of poverty, forced labor? attitude towards mental savagery, healthy morality of the people towards their industrial education - everything? These questions are presented by many in a completely new form, directly contrary to the previous views of political economy, and now arouse the concern of thinkers. We are not saying that new views should already enter science. For this they are still too immature, too one-sided, too imbued with the blinding spirit of the party, darkened by the complacency of the newborn. We see that to this day the newest courses in political economy are still compiled according to the same principles. But vm?st? With this, we note that attention has been aroused to new questions, and although we do not think that they could find their final solution in France, we cannot help but admit that her literature is destined to be the first to introduce this new element into general laboratory of human education.

This trend in French thinking seems to stem from the natural development of the entire body of French education. The extreme poverty of the lower classes served only as an external, accidental reason for this, and was not the cause, as some people think. Evidence of this can be found in the internal incoherence of those views for which popular poverty was the only outcome, and even more so in the circumstances that the poverty of the lower classes is incomparably significant in England, which in France, although there the prevailing movement of thought took a completely different direction.

Въ England Although religious questions are aroused by the social situation, they no less turn into dogmatic disputes, such as, for example, into Puseism? and his opponents; Are public questions limited to local demands, or do they raise a cry (a cry, as the English say), display the banner of some kind of belief, the meaning of which lies beyond the power? thoughts, but in strength? interests that correspond to him and gather around him.

In outward appearance, the way of thinking of the French is often very similar to the way of thinking of the English. This similarity seems to stem from the similarity of the philosophical systems they adopted. But the internal character of the thinking of these two peoples is also different, just as they are both different from the character of the thinking of the German. N?mets hardworkingly and conscientiously develops his belief from the abstract conclusions of his mind; The Frenchman takes it without thinking, out of heartfelt sympathy for one or another opinion; Does the Englishman arimetically calculate his position in society? and, based on the results of his calculations, forms his own way of thinking. Names: Whig, Tory, Radical, and all? The countless shades of the English parties express not the personal characteristics of a person, as in France, and not the system of his philosophical beliefs, as in Germany, but the place that he occupies in the state. The Englishman is stubborn in his opinion, because it is in connection with his social position; The Frenchman often sacrifices his position for his heart's desire; and N?mets, although he does not sacrifice one to the other, nevertheless cares little about their agreement. French education moves through the development of prevailing opinion, or fashion; English - through the development of government; N?metskaya - through armchair thinking. That is why the Frenchman is strong in his enthusiasm, the Englishman in his character, and the German in his abstract and systematic fundamentality.

But the more, as in our time, the literature and personalities of the people come closer together, the more their features are erased. Among the writers of England, who enjoy the fame of literary success more than others, there are two writers, two representatives of modern literature, completely opposite in their directions, thoughts, parties, goals and views, despite this, however, both, in in various forms, they reveal one truth: that the hour has come when the islander isolation of England is already beginning to yield to the universality of continental enlightenment and merge with it into one sympathetic whole. Chrome? this similarity Carlyle And Disraeli They have nothing in common with each other. The first bears deep traces of German predilections. His syllable, filled, as English critics say, with something hitherto unheard of? Germanism meets with deep sympathy among many. His thoughts are clothed in German dreamy uncertainty; its direction expresses the interest of thought, instead of the English interest of the party. He does not persecute the old order of things, does not resist the movement of the new; he appreciates both, he loves both, respects the organic fullness of life in both, and, himself belonging to the party of progress, by the very development of its fundamental principle he destroys the exclusive desire for innovation.

This is how it is here, as in all modern phenomena of thought in Europe, newest opposite direction new, who destroyed old.

Disraeli not infected with any foreign addiction. He is a representative young England, - a circle of young people expressing a special, extreme section of the Tory party. However, despite the fact that young England acts in the name of the most extreme conservation principles, but, if you believe Disraeli’s novel, the very basis of their beliefs completely destroys the interests of their party. They want to retain the old, but not in the form in which it exists in its present forms, but in its former spirit, which requires a form that is in many ways opposite to the present. For the benefit of the aristocracy, they want a living rapprochement and sympathy all?x classes; for the benefit of the Anglican Church, they want it to have equal rights with the Church of Ireland and other dissidents; to maintain the agricultural surplus, they demand the abolition of the grain law that protects it. In a word, the view of this Tory party obviously destroys the entire peculiarity of English Toryism, and instead? with this and all the differences between England and other European countries.

But Disraeli is a Jew, and therefore has his own special views, which do not fully allow us? rely on the veracity of the beliefs of the younger generation depicted by him. Only the extraordinary success of his novel, which, however, is devoid of literary merits itself, and most of all the success of the author, if we are to believe the magazines in high English society, gives some credibility to his presentation.

Having thus counted the remarkable literary movements of Europe, shall we repeat what we said at the beginning? articles that, by denoting the modern, we do not intend to present a complete picture of the current state of literature. We would only like to point out their latest trends, which are barely beginning to express themselves in new phenomena.

Meanwhile, if we collect everything we have noticed into one result and compare it with the character of the European Enlightenment, which, although it developed earlier, continues to be dominant to this day, then from this point of view? It will reveal to us some results that are very important for the understanding of our time.

From the book Capital by Marx Karl

Previous period 1845-1860 1845. The rise of the cotton industry. Very low prices for cotton. L. Horner writes about this time: “Over the past 8 years I have not observed a single period of such intense revival in business as last summer and autumn, in

From the book Volume 21 author Engels Friedrich

ENGLAND IN 1845 AND 1885 Forty years ago England faced a crisis which, in all likelihood, could only be solved by violence. The gigantic and rapid development of industry far outstripped the expansion of foreign markets and the growth of demand. Every ten years

E. A. Baratynsky. (1845). Baratynsky was born in 1800, i.e. in the same year as Pushkin; both were the same age in?ku. - From nature he received extraordinary abilities: a deeply sensitive heart, a soul filled with an unsleeping love for beauty, a bright mind,

From the book Modern Literary Theory. Anthology author Kabanova I.V.

Stephens' life. (1845). Stephens, one of the first-class engines of science in Germany, is especially famous as a literary philosopher. A friend of Schelling, at first his original follower, then the original creator of his own direction, he did not form,

From the author's book

Schelling's Ruch. (1845). Schelling is not giving lectures this winter. But at the Berlin Academy of Sciences, on the occasion of the celebration of the birthday of Frederick the Great (30 January), he read a speech: about the significance of the Roman Janus. This essay, as the magazines say, will soon be published, and

From the author's book

Agriculture. (1845). Opening to a magazine? Scientific and literary special department for agriculture, the editors are guided by the idea that in our time and especially in our fatherland? the science of agriculture is no longer limited exclusively to industrial purposes, but

From the author's book

Bibliographic articles. (1845). Will the New Year of 1845 be a new year for our literature? will he give her some great, brilliant creation that can lift her fallen spirit, revive her frozen strength, kill, destroy her petty activities and

From the author's book

SPEECH FEBRUARY 8, 1845 Gentlemen! As you have just heard - however, I will allow myself to consider this already generally known - we live in a world of free competition. Let us consider in some detail this free competition and the social order it created. In our

From the author's book

SPEECH FEBRUARY 15, 1845 Gentlemen! At our last meeting I was reproached for the fact that all my examples and references related almost exclusively to other countries, especially to England. They said that we don’t care about France and England, that we live in Germany and our task is

From the author's book

1845 20 MARX - TO ARNOLD RUGE IN PARIS [Paris, January] 1845 To Mr. Dr. Ruge. I have learned from reliable sources that there are orders in the police prefecture ordering you, me and some others to leave Paris within 24 hours, and France - in the shortest possible time.

From the author's book

Hans Robert Jauss Literary history as a challenge to literary theory The reader’s literary experience can be described without slipping into psychology if we use the concept of reader expectations: for each work, reader expectations are formed at the moment of its appearance

Keywords

I.V. KIREEVSKY / METHODOLOGY OF CRITICISM / IDEOLOGY OF SLAVICOPHILISM / CATHEDRAL FEELING / EPIC THINKING / SACRALIZATION OF ART AND DENIAL OF ITS SECULAR CHARACTER/ IVAN KIREYEVSKY / CRITICISM METHODOLOGY / SLAVOPHILE IDEOLOGY / CONCILIAR SENSE / EPIC IDEATION / CONSIDERING ART BEING SACRAL WITH DENIAL ITS SECULAR NATURE

Annotation scientific article on linguistics and literary criticism, author of the scientific work - Tikhomirov Vladimir Vasilievich

The article characterizes the specificity of the literary-critical method of one of the founders of Slavophilism I. V. Kireevsky. The traditional point of view that Kireyevsky’s Slavophile ideas were formed only towards the end of the 1830s is called into question. Already in his youth, he set the goal of determining a special path for the development of national literature in Russia on the basis of Orthodox traditions, which are based not on a combination of aesthetic and ethical factors in artistic creativity. The interest of the publisher of The European in Western civilization was explained by his desire to study it in detail in order to understand the main differences. As a result, Kireevsky came to the conclusion that it was impossible to combine the principles of Russian Orthodox culture with European culture, based on Catholicism and Protestantism. The methodology of Slavophile literary criticism is based on this. Ethical principle, the unity of “beauty and truth”, according to conviction ideologist of Slavophilism, is rooted in the traditions of the Russian national Orthodox cathedral feeling. As a result, Kireevsky’s concept of artistic creativity acquired a kind of party, ideological character: he affirms the sacred foundations of culture as a whole, excluding its secular, secularized version. Kireyevsky hopes that in the future Russian people will read exclusively spiritual literature; for this purpose, the critic suggests studying Church Slavonic, rather than European languages, in schools. In accordance with his views on the nature of artistic creativity, the critic positively assessed mainly writers close to the Orthodox worldview: V.A. Zhukovsky, N.V. Gogol, E.A. Baratynsky, N.M. Yazykova.

Literary criticism of the founders of the Slavophile movement: Ivan Kireyevsky

The specificity of the literary-critical method of one of the founders of the Slavophilia Ivan Kireyevsky is characterized in the article. The traditional view that the Slavophile ideas in Ivan Kireyevsky formed only at the end of the 1830s, is being questioned. He already in his youth set a target to define a particular path of development of language and literature of the Russian nation in the Empire on the basis of Orthodox traditions that relied on a combination of aesthetic and ethical dimensions of artistic creativity. Interest of the publisher of “The European Literary Magazine” of Western civilization was due to his desire to study it in detail in order to understand the main peculiarities. As a result, Ivan Kireyevsky came to the conclusion that it was impossible to reconcile the principles of Russian Orthodox culture with the European one, being based on Catholicism and Protestantism. Methodology of Slavophil literary criticism is based on this. The ethical principle of the unity of “truth and beauty”, the conviction of the Slavophile ideologue, rooted in the traditions of Russian national feelings of the Orthodox conciliar. As a result, the concept of art according to Ivan Kireyevsky, acquired a kind of character of a political party, of ideology: he claims culture to be on the whole of sacred foundations, that excludes its wordly, secularized version. Ivan Kireyevsky hopes that in the future, Russian people will read spiritual literature exclusively; for this purpose, the critic offers to study in schools Church Slavonic other than European languages. In accordance with his views on the nature of art, the critic was positively evaluated mainly by writers who were close to the Orthodox worldview: Vasily Zhukovsky, Nikolai Gogol, Yevgeny Baratynsky, Nikolay Yazykov.

Text of scientific work on the topic “Literary criticism of senior Slavophiles: I. V. Kireevsky”

Tikhomirov Vladimir Vasilievich

Doctor of Philology, Professor, Kostroma State University. N.A. Nekrasova

LITERARY CRITICISM OF SENIOR SLAVOPHILES: I.V. KIREEVSKY

The article characterizes the specificity of the literary critical method of one of the founders of Slavophilism - I. V. Kireevsky. The traditional point of view that Kireyevsky’s Slavophile ideas were formed only towards the end of the 1830s is called into question. Already in his youth, he set the goal of determining a special path for the development of national literature in Russia on the basis of Orthodox traditions, which are based not on a combination of aesthetic and ethical factors in artistic creativity. The interest of the publisher of The European in Western civilization was explained by his desire to study it in detail in order to understand the main differences. As a result, Kireevsky came to the conclusion that it was impossible to combine the principles of Russian Orthodox culture with European culture, based on Catholicism and Protestantism. The methodology of Slavophile literary criticism is based on this. The ethical principle, the unity of “beauty and truth,” according to the ideologist of Slavophilism, is rooted in the traditions of the Russian national Orthodox conciliar feeling. As a result, Kireevsky’s concept of artistic creativity acquired a kind of party, ideological character: he affirms the sacred foundations of culture as a whole, excluding its secular, secularized version. Kireyevsky hopes that in the future Russian people will read exclusively spiritual literature; for this purpose, the critic suggests studying Church Slavonic, rather than European languages, in schools. In accordance with his views on the nature of artistic creativity, the critic positively assessed mainly writers close to the Orthodox worldview: V.A. Zhukovsky, N.V. Gogol, E.A. Baratynsky, N.M. Yazykova.

Key words: I.V. Kireyevsky, methodology of criticism, ideology of Slavophilism, conciliar feeling, epic thinking, sacralization of art and denial of its secular character.

Many thorough works have been written about Slavophil literary criticism, in which its connections with the aesthetics of romanticism, the movement of Russian philosophers of the 1820s - 1830s, with the philosophy of mythology of Schelling and other philosophical teachings of Europe have been convincingly defined. In the works of B.F. Egorova, Yu.V. Manna, V.A. Kosheleva, V.A. Kotelnikova, G.V. Zykova rightly points out the Slavophiles’ rejection of a purely aesthetic analysis of works of art and the correlation of literature with moral categories. In most cases, the analysis of Slavophil criticism concerned specific assessments of various literary phenomena and their connection with the literary process. The methodological foundations of Slavophile ideas about the unity of aesthetic and ethical factors in the works of art themselves and, accordingly, in their analysis, as well as the Orthodox origins of the Slavophile program of artistic creativity, have not been sufficiently clarified. This article is devoted to the specific features of the methodology of this line of criticism.

Researchers of Slavophilism (and specifically the activities of I.V. Kireevsky) constantly emphasize that he experienced the complex and dramatic evolution of a European-educated Russian intellectual, an admirer of German philosophy, who later became one of the founders of the Slavophil doctrine. However, this traditional idea of the development of Kireevsky’s worldview needs clarification. Indeed, he carefully and with interest studied the history of European civilization, including religious, philosophical, aesthetic issues,

literary. Kireevsky needed this for self-determination, for understanding the deep, in his opinion, differences in the spiritual foundations of Europe and Orthodox Russia. How else can one explain, for example, his judgments expressed in a letter to A.I. Koshelev back in 1827, at the age of 21, before the start of active journalistic activity: “We will return the rights of true religion, we will agree gracefully with morality, we will arouse the love of truth, we will replace stupid liberalism with respect for the laws and we will elevate the purity of life above the purity of style.” Somewhat later, in 1830, he writes to his brother Peter (a famous collector of Russian folklore): beauty “can be understood only with one feeling: the feeling of brotherly love” - “brotherly tenderness.” Based on these statements, it is already possible to formulate the basic principles of future Slavophil criticism: the organic unity of aesthetic and ethical principles in a work of art, the sacralization of beauty and the aestheticization of truth (naturally, in the specific Orthodox understanding of both). From a young age, Kireevsky formulated the tasks and prospects of his religious-philosophical and literary-critical quests. At the same time, the literary position of Kireyevsky, like that of other Slavophiles, does not need to be justified or accused; it is necessary to understand its essence, motivation, and development of traditions.

Kireevsky’s basic aesthetic and literary-critical principles were already evident in his first article, “Something about the character of Pushkin’s poetry” (“Moskovsky Vestnik”, 1828, No. 6). The connection of this article with the principles of philosophy that were emerging at that time in Russian literary criticism

Bulletin of KSU named after. H.A. Nekrasova No. 2, 2015

losophical direction is obvious. Philosophical criticism was based on the traditions of romantic aesthetics. “The aesthetics of early Slavophilism could not but bear traces of the romantic trends in the literary and philosophical life of Russia in the 30s,” rightly notes V.A. Cochet the lion. Significant is Kireyevsky’s determination to define precisely the “character” of Pushkin’s poetry, by which the critic means the uniqueness and originality of Pushkin’s creative manner (la maniere) - the critic introduces into verbal circulation a French expression that is apparently not yet sufficiently familiar in Russia.

In order to comprehend a certain pattern in the development of Pushkin’s creativity, Kireevsky proposed systematizing it in stages, according to certain features - with the triple law of dialectics. At the first stage of Pushkin’s work, the critic notes the poet’s predominant interest in objective figurative expression, which is replaced at the next stage by the desire for a philosophical understanding of existence. At the same time, Kireevsky discovered in Pushkin, along with European influence, a Russian national principle. Hence, according to the critic, the poet’s natural transition to the third period of creativity, which is already distinguished by its national identity. The “distinctive features” of “original creation” are not yet defined clearly enough by the critic, mainly on the emotional level: these are “picturesqueness, some kind of carelessness, some special thoughtfulness and, finally, something inexpressible, understandable only to the Russian heart<...>". In “Eugene Onegin” and especially in “Boris Godunov” Kireevsky finds evidence of the manifestation of the “Russian character”, its “virtues and shortcomings”. The predominant feature of Pushkin’s mature work, according to the critic, is immersion in the surrounding reality and the “current moment.” In the development of Pushkin the poet, Kireevsky notes “continuous improvement” and “correspondence with his time.”

Later, in the poem “Poltava”, the critic discovered “the desire to embody poetry in reality.” In addition, he was the first to define the genre of the poem as a “historical tragedy” containing an “essay on the century.” In general, Pushkin’s work became for Kireyevsky an indicator of nationality, originality, overcoming the traditions of European romanticism with its penchant for reflection - a personal quality unacceptable for the ideologist of Slavophilism, who emphasized the advantage of holistic epic thinking, supposedly characteristic of Russians to a greater extent than of Europeans.

Finally, the critic formulates his ideas about the nationality of creativity: in order for the poet “to be

people”, you need to share the hopes of your fatherland, its aspirations, its losses - in a word, “live its life and express it involuntarily, expressing yourself.”

In the “Review of Russian Literature of 1829” (“Dennitsa, almanac for 1830”, published by M. Maksimovich, b. m., b. g.), Kireevsky continued to characterize Russian literature in philosophical and historical terms, while simultaneously assessing the social function of the artist: “A poet is to the present what a historian is to the past: a guide to popular self-knowledge.” Hence, in literature, “respect for reality” is associated with the historical direction of “all branches of human existence.<...>Poetry<...>should also have passed into reality and concentrated in a historical manner.” The critic is referring to both the widespread general fascination with historical topics in the 1820s and 1830s, and the “permeation” with an understanding of the historical significance of the pressing problems of our time (“the seeds of the desired future are contained in the reality of the present,” Kireevsky emphasized in the same article - ). “The rapid development of historical and philosophical-historical thought, of course, could not help but affect literature - and not only externally, thematically, but also on its internal artistic properties,” states I.M. Tóibín.

In modern Russian literature, Kireevsky reveals the influence of two external factors, “two elements”: “French philanthropism” and “German idealism”, which united “in the pursuit of a better reality”. In accordance with this, a work of art combines “essentiality” and “additional thought” of the poet, that is, objective and subjective creative factors. This reveals the dualistic concept of artistic creativity, characteristic of romantic aesthetics. Kireevsky states that as a sign of overcoming romantic dualism, “the struggle of two principles - dreaminess and materiality”, which “should<...>precede their reconciliation."

Kireevsky’s concept of art is part of the philosophy of reality, since, in his opinion, in literature there is “a desire to reconcile imagination with reality, the correctness of forms with freedom of content.” Art is replaced by “an exclusive desire for practical activity.” The critic notes in poetry and philosophy “the convergence of life with the development of the human spirit.”

Ideas about artistic creativity characteristic of European aesthetics, based on the principle of overcoming dualism, according to

in Kireevsky’s opinion, “an artificially found middle,” although the principle is relevant for the historical direction of modern literature: “beauty is synonymous with truth.” As a result of his observations, Kireevsky concludes: “It is precisely from the fact that Life displaces Poetry that we must conclude that the desire for Life and Poetry have converged and that<...>the hour has come for the poet of Life."

The critic formulated these last conclusions in the article “The Nineteenth Century” (“European”, 1832, No. 1, 3), because of it the magazine in which Kireevsky was not only the publisher and editor, but the author of most publications was banned. Kireyevsky’s ideas about the essence of artistic creativity at this time seemed to fit into the system of European philosophy of art, however, critical notes also appeared towards European traditions in Russian literature. Like many contemporaries who adhered to the romantic concept of art, Kireevsky states: “Let us be impartial and admit that we do not yet have a complete reflection of the mental life of the people, we do not yet have literature.

The author of the article considers the dominance of logical, rational thinking to be an important reason for the spiritual crisis in Western Europe: “The entire result of such thinking could only consist in negative knowledge, for the mind, which develops itself, is limited by itself.” This is also related to the attitude towards religion, which in Europe is often reduced to a ritual or “individual belief.” Kireyevsky states: “For complete development<...>religion needs the unanimity of the people,<...>development in unambiguous legends, intertwined with the state structure, personified in unambiguous and nationwide rituals, aligned to one positive principle and palpable in all civil and family relations.”

Naturally, the question arises about the relationship between European and Russian enlightenment, which are fundamentally different in historical terms. Kireevsky relies on the law of dialectics, according to which “each era is conditioned by the previous one, and the previous one always contains the seeds of the future, so that in each of them the same elements appear, but in full development.” Of great importance is the fundamental difference between the Orthodox branch of Christianity and the Western branch (Catholicism and Protestantism). The Russian Church has never been a political force and has always remained “purer and brighter.”

Along with stating the differences and advantages of Orthodoxy over Western Christianity, Kireyevsky admits that Russia in its history is clearly

the civilizing force of antiquity (“the classical world”), which played a large role in the “education” of Europe, was lacking. Therefore, “how could we achieve education without borrowing from outside? And shouldn’t borrowed education be used in the fight against a nationality alien to it?” - states the author of the article. Nevertheless, “a people beginning to be educated can borrow it (enlightenment - V.T.), directly adopt it without the previous one, directly applying it to their present life.”

In the “Review of Russian Literature for 1831” (“European”, 1832, part 1, No. 1-2), much more attention is paid to the characteristics of the modern literary process. The author of the article emphasizes the desire of readers in Europe and Russia to update the content of works of art. He claims that “pure literature, valuable in itself, is barely noticeable in the midst of the general desire for more significant matters,” especially in Russia, where literature remains “the only indicator of our mental development.” The dominance of the artistic form does not satisfy Kireevsky: “Artistic perfection<...>there is a secondary and relative quality<...>“, his dignity is not original and depends on the inner, animating poetry”, therefore, it has a subjective character. In addition, Russian writers are still judged “by someone else’s laws,” because their own have not been developed. The combination of objective and subjective factors, according to the critic, is the most important condition for artistic creativity: a work of art must consist “of a true and at the same time poetic representation of life,” as it is “reflected in the clear mirror of the poetic soul.”

In the article “On Yazykov’s Poems” (“Telescope”, 1834, No. 3-4), Kireevsky appears new ideas about the specifics of artistic creativity, based not on the condition of correspondence of content and form, but on their organic unity, mutual conditionality. According to the author of the article, “before a painting by a creative artist, we forget art, trying to understand the thought expressed in it, to comprehend the feeling that gave rise to this thought.<...>At a certain degree of perfection, art destroys itself, turning into a thought, turning into a soul.” Kireyevsky rejects the very possibility of a purely artistic analysis of a work of art. To critics who “want to prove beauty and force you to enjoy according to the rules,<.>Ordinary works, for which there are positive laws, remain as a consolation.”<.>. In poetry, the “unearthly world” and the world of “real life” come into contact, as a result of

a “true, pure mirror” of the poet’s personality is created. Kireevsky concludes that poetry is “not just a body into which a soul has been breathed, but a soul that has accepted the evidence of the body,” and “poetry that is not imbued with essentiality cannot have influence.”

The concept of artistic creativity formulated by Kireyevsky traces the opposition between pagan art (“a body into which a soul was breathed” - a clear reminder of the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea) and Christian art (a soul that has accepted the “evidence of the body”). And as if in continuation of this thought in the famous article “In response to A.S. Khomyakov" (1839), where, according to researchers, Kireevsky finally formulated his Slavophil doctrine, he directly states that romanticism bowed to paganism and that for a new art to appear to the world, "a new servant of Christian beauty." The author of the article is confident that “someday Russia will return to that life-giving spirit that its church breathes,” and for this there is no need to return to the past “peculiarities of Russian life” 3, [p. 153]. So, it has been determined that the basis for the development of Russian civilization, its spiritual revival, including the formation of its own direction in artistic creativity, is Orthodoxy. This opinion was shared by all Slavophiles.

In his “Note on the direction and methods of the initial education of the people” (1839), Kireyevsky insists that literacy education and artistic creativity should be subordinated to “concepts of faith” “predominantly before knowledge,” since faith “is a conviction associated with life, giving a special color<...>, a special warehouse for all other thoughts<.>in its relation to dogma, faith has something in common with the sense of grace: not a single philosophical definition of beauty can convey to the concept of it in that completeness and strength,<.>which informs his one view of an elegant work.” The religious basis of all artistic creativity is again emphasized.

Kireyevsky’s most extensive article, “Review of the Current State of Literature” (“Moskvityanin”, 1845, No. 1, 2, 3) contains a fairly complete Slavophile program of artistic creativity. The critic pronounces the final verdict on the cult of beauty in art: gone are “abstract love for beautiful forms,<...>enjoying the harmony of speech,<...>delightful self-forgetfulness in the harmony of verse<...>" But, Kireevsky continues, he “feels sorry for the old, useless literature that is not applied to business. There was a lot of warmth in it for the soul<.>fine literature was replaced by magazine literature.<.>Everywhere thought is subject to current circumstances<...>, the form is adapted to the requirements

minutes. The novel turned into statistics of morals, poetry - into verses for the occasion<...>". Literature with an emphasis on the priority of content and ideas over form also does not satisfy the critic: in it there is noticeable “excessive respect for the minute”, an all-consuming interest in the events of the day, in the external, business side of life (here we clearly mean the years "natural school"). Kireevsky claims that this literature “does not embrace life, but concerns only its outer side,<...>unimportant surface." Such a work is a kind of “shell without grain.”

The critic sees European influence in literature with a clear civic tendency, but emphasizes that Russian writers’ imitation of Europe is rather superficial: Europeans focus on “the very inner life of society,<...>where are the minute events of the day and the eternal conditions of life,<...>and religion itself, and together with them the literature of the people, merges into one boundless task: the improvement of man and his life relations.” In addition, in European literature there is always a “negative side, polemical, refutation of systems of opinions,” and a “positive side,” constituting “the peculiarity of new thought.” This, according to Kireyevsky, is lacking in modern Russian literature.

The specificity of European thinking, the critic believes, is the ability for “many thoughts,” which “fragments the self-awareness of society” and “private people.” Where “the sanctuary of existence is fragmented by the heteroglossia of beliefs or empty by their absence, there can be no speech<...>about poetry". The poet “is created by the power of inner thought. From the depths of his soul, in addition to beautiful forms, he must bring out the very soul of beauty: his living, integral view of the world and man.”

Kireevsky states the crisis of European spiritual values, arguing that Europeans “are inventing a new religion for themselves without a church, without tradition, without revelation and without faith.” This is also a reproach to European literature, which is hampered by “the dominant rationalism in its thought and life.” Works of Russian literature still remain “reflections of European ones,” and they are “always somewhat lower and weaker.”<.>originals". The traditions of the “former Russia,” which “now constitute the only sphere of its people’s life, did not develop into our literary enlightenment, but remained untouched, divorced from the successes of our mental activity.” For the development of Russian literature, it is necessary to combine European and our own, which “coincide at the last point of their development into one love, into one desire for the living,

complete<.. .>and true Christian enlightenment." The “living truths” of the West are “remnants of Christian principles,” albeit distorted; “an expression of our own beginning” is what should be “at the foundation of the Orthodox-Slovenian world.”

The critic does not completely erase the achievements of Western Europe, although he considers Western Christianity to distort the foundations of the true faith. He is confident that Orthodoxy should become the basis of genuine Russian literature, but has not yet specified its distinctive features; perhaps it was planned to write about this in a continuation of the article, which did not follow.

Kireevsky found confirmation of his ideas about original Russian literature in the historical and literary concept of S.P. She-vyryov, to whose public readings he dedicated a special article (“Moskvityanin”, 1845, No. 1). Shevyrev did not belong to the Slavophiles, but turned out to be like-minded in understanding the role of Orthodoxy in the development of Russian literature. It is no coincidence that Kireevsky emphasizes that the lectures of Shevyrev, who essentially opened ancient Russian literature to Russian society, represent an event of “historical self-knowledge.” Shevyrev is characterized by the concept of “literature in general as a living expression of the inner life and education of the people.” The history of Russian literature, in his opinion, is the history of the “Old Russian Enlightenment,” which begins with the impact of “the Christian faith on our people.”

Orthodoxy and nationality are the foundations of future Russian literature, as Kireyevsky represents it. He believes that the work of I.A. is imbued with nationality. Krylov, although in a rather narrow fable form. “What Krylov expressed in his time and in his fable sphere, Gogol expresses in our time and in a broader sphere,” the critic asserts. Gogol’s work turned out to be a true gain for the Slavophiles; in Gogol they found the embodiment of their cherished hopes for a new, original Russian literature. From the time the first volume of Dead Souls appeared in print (1842), a real struggle for Gogol unfolded between the Slavophiles and their opponents, primarily Belinsky, each side sought to “appropriate” the writer for itself, updating his work in its own way.

In a bibliographic note (“Moskvityanin”, 1845, No. 1), Kireyevsky claims that Gogol represents with his work “the strength of the Russian people,” the possibility of combining “our literature” and “the life of our people.” Kireevsky’s understanding of the specifics of Gogol’s creativity is fundamentally different from how it was interpreted by the theorist of “natural

schools" V.G. Belinsky. According to Kireevsky, “it is not because Gogol is popular that the content of his stories is taken for the most part from Russian life: the content is not character.” In Gogol, “special sounds lurk in the depths of his soul, because special colors shine in his words, special images live in his imagination, exclusively characteristic of the Russian people, that fresh, deep people who have not yet lost their personality in imitating foreign ones.”<...>. This feature of Gogol contains the deep meaning of his originality.” His work conceals “folk beauty, surrounded by an invisible structure of sympathetic sounds.” Gogol “does not separate the dream from the sphere of life, but<...>connects artistic pleasure, subject to consciousness."

Kireevsky does not reveal the details of Gogol’s creative method, however, in the critic’s judgments there is an important idea about the predominantly subjective, personal beginning in his works. According to Kireevsky, it is necessary “to judge the thought of a work of art by the data contained in it itself, and not by guesses applied to it from the outside.” This is again a hint of the critical position of supporters of the “natural school”, who in their own way, mainly in a social sense, perceived Gogol’s work.

In another case, formulating his idea of the characteristics of fiction, Kireevsky expressed the opinion that a work requires a thought “passed through the heart.” The author's idea, heartened by personal feeling, becomes an indicator of the spiritual values inherent in the artist and manifested in his work.

Kireevsky's reflections on Russian literature were accompanied by an increasing confidence that it was necessary to revive and strengthen its (literature) fundamental basis - Orthodoxy. In a review of F. Glinka’s story “Luka da Marya” (“Moskvityanin”, 1845, No. 2), the critic recalls that from time immemorial among the Russian people “the lives of saints, the teachings of the holy fathers and liturgical books constitute<...>his favorite subject of reading, the source of his spiritual songs, the usual sphere of his thinking." Previously, before the Europeanization of Russia, this was “the entire way of thinking of all classes of society<...>, the concepts of one class were a complement to another, and the general thought held strong and intact in the common life of the people<.>from one source - the church."

In modern Russian society, the reviewer continues, “mainstream education” has moved away from “the beliefs and concepts of the people,” and this has not benefited both sides. New civic literature offers the people “books

easy reading<...>, amusing the reader with the strangeness of the effects”, or “books of heavy reading”, “not adapted to his ready-made concepts<...>. In general, reading, instead of the goal of edification, becomes the goal of pleasure.”

Kireyevsky openly insists on reviving the tradition of the sacred word in literature: “From faith and conviction come holy deeds in the moral sphere and great thoughts in the sphere of poetry.” It is no coincidence that one of the first researchers of the literary activity of the Slavophiles, historian K.N. Bestuzhev-Ryumin noted: “They believe in the holiness of the word<...>". This calls into question the need for the existence of modern secular, secularized literature, which also contains spiritual and moral principles, but without open didacticism and the desire for fundamental churchliness. Kireyevsky even considers it necessary to study the Church Slavonic language instead of the new European ones.

The nature of artistic creativity, its essence, the origins of the poetic word, naturally, also remained a subject of close interest to Kireevsky. Aesthetic problems became relevant due to the popularity in Europe in the 1830s - 1840s of the philosophical ideas of F. Schelling, who was close to romanticism, and somewhat later of his opponent, G. Hegel. Russian Slavophiles took into account the theoretical research of German philosophers, especially Schelling. In an article entitled "Schelling's Speech" (1845), Kireyevsky focused on his philosophy of mythology, perceiving mythology as the original form of "natural religion" in which the "great, universal<...>the process of inner life", "real being in God". Religious revelation, the author of the article summarizes Schelling’s views, “independent of any teaching,” represents “not just an ideal, but also a real, relationship of man to God.” Kireevsky admits that “the philosophy of art cannot help but touch upon mythology,” moreover, mythology gave birth to the philosophy of art and art itself, “the fate of every people lies in its mythology,” and is largely determined by it.

One of the essential principles of Schelling’s aesthetics, which was taken into account by Kireevsky, is as follows: “Schelling’s real contains the ideal as its highest meaning, but also has irrational concreteness and vital fullness.”

The discussion of the problem of the development of Russian literature was continued by Kireyevsky in the article “On the nature of the enlightenment of Europe and its relation to the enlightenment of Russia” (“Moscow collection”, 1852, vol. 1). Here Kireyevsky advocates that

so that in the spiritual life of the people “the meaning of beauty and truth is preserved in<.>unbreakable connection,<.>which protects the overall integrity of the human spirit,” while “the Western world, on the contrary, has based its beauty on a deception of the imagination, on a deliberately false dream, or on the extreme tension of a one-sided feeling born from a deliberate split in the mind.” The West does not realize that “reverie is a lie of the heart and that the inner integrity of being is necessary not only for the truth of reason, but also for the fullness of graceful pleasure.” In these conclusions, there is a clear opposition between the traditions of integrity, the conciliarity of the Russian worldview (as the Slavophiles understood it) and the individualistic “fragmentation of the spirit” of the European. This, according to the critic, determines the fundamental differences in cultural traditions and features of understanding the nature of the art of speech in Europe and in Russia. Kireyevsky's reasoning is largely speculative; it is based on the a priori assumptions of the Slavophiles about the special historical, religious and civilizational path of Russia.

Of the Russian writers contemporary to Kireyevsky, those closest to him were the poets V.A. Zhukovsky, E.A. Baratynsky, N.M. Languages. In their work the critic found a spiritual, moral and artistic beginning that was dear to him. He characterized Zhukovsky’s poetry as follows: “This simple-minded sincerity of poetry is exactly what we lack.” In the “Odyssey” translated by Zhukovsky, Kireevsky finds “stilted poetry”: “Each expression is equally suitable for beautiful verse and living reality,<...>everywhere there is equal beauty of truth and proportion.” The Odyssey “will affect not only literature, but also the moral mood of a person.” Kireevsky constantly emphasizes the unity of ethical and aesthetic values in a work of art.

To understand Baratynsky’s poetry, the critic claims, there is not enough attention to the “external decoration” and “external form” - the poet has a lot of “deep, sublime moral<...>delicacy of mind and heart." Baratynsky “in fact discovered<...>Possibility of poetry<...>. Hence his assertion that everything true, fully represented cannot be immoral, and that is why the most ordinary events, the smallest details of life are poetic when we look at them through the harmonic strings of his lyre<...>... all the accidents and all the ordinariness of life take on the character of poetic significance under his pen.”

The closest to Kireevsky spiritually and creatively was N.M. Languages, about which the critic expressed the idea that when perceiving

his poetry “we forget art, trying to understand the thought expressed in it, to comprehend the feeling that gave birth to this thought.” For a critic, Yazykov’s poetry is the embodiment of the broad Russian soul, capable of manifesting itself in different qualities. The peculiarity of this poetry is defined as “the desire for spiritual space.” At the same time, a tendency was noticed for the poet to penetrate deeper “into life and reality” and to develop the poetic ideal “to greater significance.”

Kireevsky selects for critical analysis the literary material that is closer to him, which helps to formulate the basic principles of his philosophical, aesthetic and literary critical position. As a critic, he is clearly unbiased; his criticism bears the features of a kind of journalism, since he is guided by certain, pre-formulated

ideologemes, strives to revive the traditions of sacred Russian literature based on Orthodox values.

Bibliography

1. Alekseev S.A. Schelling // F. Schelling: pro et contra. - St. Petersburg: Russian Christian Humanitarian Institute, 2001. - 688 p.

2. Bestuzhev-Ryumin K.N. Slavophil teaching and its fate in Russian literature // Otechestvennye zapiski. - 1862. - T. CXL. - No. 2.

3. Kireevsky I.V. Criticism and aesthetics. - M.: Art, 1979. - 439 p.

4. Koshelev V.A. Aesthetic and literary views of Russian Slavophiles (1840 - 1850s). - L.: Nauka, 1984. - 196 p.

5. Toibin I.M. Pushkin. Creativity of the 1830s and issues of historicism. - Voronezh: Voronezh University Publishing House, 1976. - 158 p.

I. Kireevsky Review of the current state of literature. Review of the current state of literature Text of a scientific work on the topic “Literary criticism of senior Slavophiles: I. V. Kireevsky”

"Review of the current state of literature"

Review of the current state of literature. (1845).

Annotation scientific article on linguistics and literary criticism, author of the scientific work - Tikhomirov Vladimir Vasilievich

Related topics scientific works on linguistics and literary criticism, author of the scientific work - Tikhomirov Vladimir Vasilievich

Literary criticism of the founders of the Slavophile movement: Ivan Kireyevsky

Text of scientific work on the topic “Literary criticism of senior Slavophiles: I. V. Kireevsky”