“...If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and it really were that the truth is outside Christ, then I would rather remain with Christ than with the truth...
Russia must realize what a treasure it alone possesses in order to throw off the German and Westernized yoke and become itself with a clear sense of purpose.”
Dostoevsky F. M.
About faith in God. Eternal questions - About immortality - About Christ - Answer to Christ-fighters - About conscience and morality - About Orthodoxy, truth - About elders and eldership -Russia and Orthodoxy, the purpose of the Russian people - The West and Russia - Holy Scripture - About pride - About sin, pride, conceit - About love - About atheism - About raising children, reading - About studying foreign languages— About good and evil — About vices —
Dostoevsky F. M. (1821-1881):
About faith in God. Eternal questions
There is no God, there is no immortality, then what is there to live for?
The immortality of the soul and God are all one, one and the same idea.
If there is a God then I am immortal.
Anyone who wants to see the living God should look for him not in the empty firmament of his own mind, but in human love.
The most serious problems modern man occur because he has lost the sense of meaningful cooperation with God in His intentions for humanity.
About immortality
Without faith in one's soul and in its immortality, human existence is unnatural, unthinkable and unbearable.
Realists are incorrect, because man is a whole only in the future, and is not at all exhausted by the present.
As a result, it is clear that suicide, with the loss of the idea of immortality, becomes a complete and even inevitable necessity for every person who has risen a little in his development above the beasts. On the contrary, immortality, promising eternal life, the stronger the connection between a person and the earth. There would even seem to be a contradiction here: if there is so much life, i.e. besides the earthly one - and immortal, then why would one value earthly life so much? But it turns out just the opposite, because Only with faith in his immortality does a person comprehend his entire rational goal on earth. Without conviction of his immortality, a person’s connections with the earth are interrupted, become thinner, more rotten, and the loss of the highest meaning of life (felt even only in the form of the most unconscious melancholy) undoubtedly leads to suicide...
The idea of immortality is life itself, living life, its final formula and the main source of truth and right consciousness for humanity.
Only from one belief in the immortality of the soul comes the entire highest meaning and meaning of life, the desire and desire to live.
Belief in the immortality of the soul is the only source of living life on earth - life, health, healthy ideas and healthy conclusions.
About Christ
I led out of rebellion and proved the necessity of faith in Christ.
On earth, truly, we seem to be wandering. And if there were no precious image of Christ before us, we would perish and be completely lost, like the human race before the flood.
There is only one single phenomenon of absolute beauty in the world - Christ.
In adversity the truth becomes clear. I will tell you about myself that I am a child of the century, a child of unbelief and doubt to this day... What terrible torment this thirst to believe has cost me and is now costing me, which is the stronger in my soul, the more contrary arguments I have. And yet, God sometimes sends me moments in which I am completely calm; in these moments I love and find that I am loved by others, and in such moments I formed within myself a symbol of faith in which everything is clear and sacred to me. This symbol of faith is very simple, here it is: to believe that there is nothing more beautiful, deeper, more sympathetic, more reasonable, more courageous and more perfect than Christ, and not only is there not, but with jealous love I tell myself that it cannot be. Moreover, if someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and it really were that the truth is outside Christ, then I would rather remain with Christ than with the truth.
It's impossible to believe that "The word became flesh" that is, to believe that the ideal has been embodied physically, and at the same time not to believe that this ideal is achievable for humanity. And in general, can humanity do without such consolation? But Christ came for this purpose, so that humanity would understand that earthly nature, the human spirit, can appear here completely bodily in such heavenly splendor and not only spiritually, as an ideal, but that this is possible and natural. The disciples of Christ proved what a blessing it is to carry this incarnation within yourself, to imitate the perfection of this Face and to believe in His incarnation. Others, who have seen what happiness this incarnation gives to a person, as soon as a person begins to truly participate in His beauty, are surprised and amazed and, finally, want to enjoy this bliss themselves: they become Christians and rejoice in advance at their torment. And all because that the Logos truly became a body. This is all the faith and all the consolation of humanity, which it will never renounce.
Answer to Christ-fighters
You, gentlemen, who deny God and Christ, you haven’t even thought about how without Christ everything suddenly becomes disgusting and sinful. You condemn Christ and mock God, but what example are you setting for humanity? How petty, dissolute, evil and vain you are! By eliminating Christ, you destroy the unattainable ideal of beauty and kindness in the human race. And what similar value can you offer in return?
However, you could take Him away from humanity if you were able to offer them something better than Christ. The question is: do you have anything similar?
Give me another ideal and I will follow you. Although, however, you can deprive me of faith in the divinity of Christ if you only show me something better than Christ. Well, show me!
Gentlemen, Russian enlightened Europeans, show me your righteous people whom you put in place of Christ!
About conscience and morality
Conscience without God is horror, she can get lost to the most immoral. It is not enough to define morality by adherence to one's beliefs. We must constantly raise the question in ourselves: are my beliefs true? There is only one test for them - Christ..
I cannot recognize the one who burns heretics moral person, because I do not recognize your thesis that morality is agreement with internal convictions. This is only honesty, not morality. I have a moral model and ideal - Christ. I ask: would He burn the heretics - no. Well, that means burning heretics is an immoral act. The inquisitor is already immoral because in his heart, in his conscience, the idea of the need to burn people could coexist...
I...will say on the contrary that it is immoral to act according to one's convictions.
You don’t consider shedding blood moral, but you consider shedding blood out of conviction to be moral...
If we do not have authority in faith and in Christ, then we will be lost in everything...Moral ideas always flow from religious feeling and cannot be proven logically. The Jesuit lies because he is convinced that his lies are useful if they serve good. You praise him because he is true to his convictions. And it turns out that in one case a lie is bad, but in another, according to conviction, then it is good. What does this mean?.. You will then be defeated when you accept that moral ideas are feelings from Christ.
Life is boring without a moral goal, it is not worth living just to eat, the worker knows this - therefore, life requires a moral occupation.
About Orthodoxy, truth
All the secrets of how to lead oneself to perfection and brotherhood are given in Orthodoxy and in its discipline - self-improvement.
Personal self-improvement is not only the beginning of everything, but also the continuation and outcome of everything.
And is it really a dream that in the end a person will find his joys only in feats of enlightenment and mercy, and not in cruel joys, as now - in gluttony, fornication, arrogance, boasting and envious excess of one another?
Anyone who wants the truth is already terribly strong.
Don't lose your life, take care of your soul, believe in the truth. But look for it carefully all your life, otherwise it’s terribly easy to get lost.
About elders and eldership
An elder is someone who takes your soul, your will into his soul and into his will. Having chosen an elder, you renounce your will and give it to him in complete obedience, with complete self-denial. This temptation, this terrible school of life, one who condemns himself accepts voluntarily, in the hope, after a long trial, to conquer himself, to master himself so that he can finally achieve, through the obedience of his entire life, already perfect freedom, that is, freedom from himself, to avoid the fate of those who who have lived their whole lives, but have not found themselves in themselves. This invention, that is, eldership, is not theoretical, but was derived in the East from practice, which in our time is already thousands of years old. Responsibilities to the elder are not like ordinary “obedience”, which has always been the case in our Russian monasteries. Here the eternal confession of all those who strive to the elder and the indestructible bond between the bound and the bound are recognized... Eldership is a proven thousand-year-old tool for the moral rebirth of a person from slavery to freedom and to moral improvement.
Russia and Orthodoxy, the purpose of the Russian people
The Russian people live only by Orthodoxy and its ideas; except Orthodoxy there is nothing else in him and he does not need anything, because Orthodoxy is everything, Orthodoxy is the Church, and the Church is the crown of everything, moreover, in eternity.
Russia carries within itself a treasure that is not found anywhere else - Orthodoxy, ... it is the keeper of Christ's truth, but already the true truth, the real image of Christ, obscured in all other faiths and in all other peoples.
Perhaps the most important pre-elected purpose of the Russian people in the destinies of mankind is only to preserve this Divine image of Christ in all its purity, and when the time comes, to reveal this image to a world that has lost its ways, because only in Orthodoxy is the truth and the salvation of the Russian people, and in the future of all humanity.
Is not the spirit of Christ present in our people - dark, but good, ignorant, but not barbaric? Yes, Christ is his strength, our Russian strength.
The people have undeniably developed and strengthened the concept that all of Russia exists solely to serve Christ and protect the entire universal Orthodoxy from infidels.
The essence of the Russian vocation lies in the revelation of the Russian Christ to the world, Christ, not known to the world, but preserved in our Orthodox Church. In my opinion, this is the whole essence of our powerful future civilization and the resurrection of all Europe from the dead; This is the whole essence of our powerful life in the future.
We preserve the image of Christ, and it will shine as precious diamond to the whole world.
We bring to the world only what we can give it, and at the same time, what it only needs - Orthodoxy, true and strong, eternal confession of Christ and complete moral renewal... Elijah and Enoch will come from us to fight the Antichrist, with the spirit of the West, embodied in the West.
All our folk principles came entirely from Orthodoxy.
Russian faith, Russian Orthodoxy there is everything that only the Russian people consider to be their shrine; it contains his ideals, the whole truth and truth of life.
The greatest of the greatest purposes that the Russians have already created in their future is a universal purpose, there is a common service to humanity, not only to Russia, not only to the common Slavs, but to all humanity.
West and Russia
It is necessary... for our Christ, Whom we preserved and Whom they did not know, to shine in opposition to the West! Not slavishly falling on the hook of the Jesuits, but bringing our Russian civilization to them...
We only reject the exclusively European form of civilization and say that it does not suit us.
To save Christ, i.e. Orthodoxy, we must save ourselves, become ourselves. The tree bears fruit when it has developed and strengthened. And therefore, Russia must realize what a treasure it alone possesses, in order to throw off the German and Westernized yoke and become itself with a clear awareness of the goal.
The most amazing miracle of our planet, its eternal meaning, its eternal joy, its eternal consolation is the Face of Christ, lost in the West, which in all the light of its purity has been preserved in Orthodoxy.
The Image of Christ, lost by the West, was preserved in all the radiance of its purity in Orthodoxy, therefore nothing else is needed, for Orthodoxy is everything.
We are not Europe at all, and everything about us is so special that, in comparison with Europe, we are almost like sitting on the moon.
Is it really possible that even here they will not and will not allow the Russian organism to develop nationally, with its organic strength, and certainly impersonally, servilely imitating Europe? But what should one do with the Russian organism then? Do these gentlemen understand what an organism is? Separation, “detachment” from their country leads to hatred, these people hate Russia, so to speak, naturally, physically: for the climate, for the fields, for the forests, for the order, for the liberation of the peasant, for Russian history, in a word, for everything, They hate me for everything.
The measure of a people is not what it is, but what it considers beautiful and true.
The highest and most characteristic feature of our people is a sense of justice and a thirst for it.
There is no higher idea than to sacrifice your own life, defending your brothers and your fatherland...
Scripture
God! What kind of book is this Holy Scripture, what a miracle and what power is given to man with it!.. And how many secrets - resolved and revealed! Death of the people without the word of God...
About pride
About the pride of Satan’s thought, it is difficult for us on earth to comprehend it, and therefore it is so easy to fall into error and join in with it, and even believing that you are doing something great, and metaphysical evil will begin to operate in life; then, as the inevitable result of this, an atheistic rebellion will begin, which usually ends in the denial of God and His creation - the world. Such a person, voluntarily or unwittingly, consciously or unconsciously, allows an otherworldly evil force to begin to use his mind and heart as tools for his anti-God theology, for the theology of a demon is always anti-God.
Humble yourself, proud man, and above all, break your pride. Humble yourself, idle man, and, first of all, work in your native field... The truth is not outside of you, but in yourself, find yourself in yourself, subjugate yourself, master yourself and see the truth. This truth is not in things. Not outside of you and not overseas somewhere, but, first of all, in your own work on yourself. You will conquer yourself, you will pacify yourself - and you will become free as you never imagined, and you will begin a great work, and you will make others free, and you will see happiness, for your life will be filled, and you will finally understand your people and their holy truth.
About sin, pride, conceit
Sin is the unwillingness to leave the state of self-identity, the identity “I=I”, or, more precisely, “I”! Affirmation of oneself as oneself, without one’s relationship to another, i.e. to God and to all creation, the self-emphasis of not losing oneself is the root sin or the root of all sins. In other words, sin is that force of protecting oneself as oneself, which makes a person a “self-image”, an idol of oneself, “explains” the “I” through the “I”, and not through God, grounds the “I” on the “I”, and not on God. Sin is that fundamental desire of the “I” by which the “I” is affirmed in its ability, in its unity and makes itself the only point of reality. Sin is that which closes all reality from the “I”, for to see reality means precisely to step out of oneself and transfer one’s “I” into the non-“I”, into something else, into the visible, i.e. to fall in love. Hence, sin is the mediastinum that the “I” puts between itself and reality—the covering of the heart with a bark. Sin is opaque - darkness, darkness, darkness, which is why it is said: "The darkness blinded his eyes"(1 John 2:11). Sin in its pure, ultimate development, i.e. Gehenna is darkness, hopelessness, gloom... Light is the manifestation of reality; darkness, on the contrary, is isolation, fragmentation of reality - the impossibility of appearing to each other, invisibility for each other. The very name of hell or Hades indicates such a Gehenish gap in reality, the isolation of reality, solipsism, for there everyone says: “Solus ipse sum!..” Hell is that place, that state in which there is no appearance, which is devoid of “ visibility”, which is invisible and in which it is not visible.
If you want to conquer the whole world, defeat yourself.
Immense pride and conceit is not a sign of self-esteem.
He who is easily inclined to lose respect for others, first of all, does not respect himself.
About love
Love is so omnipotent that it regenerates ourselves.
Falling in love does not mean loving... You can fall in love while hating.
About atheism
It is easy for a Russian person to become an atheist, easier than for everyone else in the world! And Russians not only become atheists, but will certainly believe in atheism as a new faith, without noticing in any way that they have believed in zero.
About raising children, reading
Without the beginnings of the positive and beautiful, a person cannot emerge from childhood into life., without the beginnings of the positive and beautiful, one cannot set a generation on its way.
Without the sacred and precious, carried away into life from childhood memories, a person cannot live. Others, apparently, do not even think about it, and yet unconsciously retain these memories, and at the same time the most powerful and influential memories are almost always those that remain from childhood.
Study and read. Read serious books. Life will do the rest.
About learning foreign languages
Only having mastered the initial material, that is, our native language, to the possible perfection, will we be able to master a foreign language to the possible perfection, but not before.
About good and evil
Justify, do not punish, but call evil evil.
Become the sun, everyone will see you.
I do not want and cannot believe that evil is the normal state of people.
Strength needs no abuse.
Anyone who wants to be useful can do a great deal of good even with literally tied hands.
Beauty will save the world.
About vices
There are three kinds of scoundrels in the world: naive scoundrels, that is, convinced that their meanness is the highest nobility, scoundrels who are ashamed of their own meanness with the inevitable intention of finishing it, and, finally, just scoundrels, purebred scoundrels.
Only scoundrels lie.
He who lies to himself and listens to his own lies reaches such a point that he no longer discerns any truth either in himself or around him, and therefore begins to disrespect both himself and others.
Wine brutalizes and brutalizes a person, hardens him and distracts him from bright thoughts, dulls him.
ABOUT dark forces, spiritual warfare
Disbelief in the devil is a French thought, it is an easy thought.
The devil fights with God, and the battlefield is the hearts of people.
In everything there is a line beyond which it is dangerous to cross; for once you have stepped over, it is impossible to go back.
To what degree of stupefaction can rabies bring a person! Never do anything in anger.
The Gospel was Dostoevsky's main book.
“I came from a Russian and pious family,” Dostoevsky wrote in 1873. - Ever since I can remember, I remember my parents’ love for me. In our family, we knew the Gospel almost from early childhood. I was only ten years old when I already knew almost all the main episodes of Russian history from Karamzin, which my father read aloud to us in the evenings. Every time a visit to the Kremlin and Moscow cathedrals was something solemn for me. Others, perhaps, did not have the same kind of memories as I did” (D., XXI, 134).
Dostoevsky recalled his family upbringing with warm feeling: “the idea of an indispensable and highest aspiration in best people(in the literal, highest sense of the word) was the main idea of both our father and mother, despite all their deviations” (D., XXIX. Book II, 76).
There was a “shrine” in the family, a “precious memory” - a book from which Fyodor and other children learned to read - this is “One Hundred and Four Sacred Stories of the Old and New Testaments.” My younger brother Andrei recalled this book and home education:
“We all had the same first book to read. This is the Sacred History of the Old and New Testaments in Russian, actually One Hundred and Four Sacred Histories of the Old and New Testaments. – She had several rather bad lithographs with her depicting: the Creation of the World, the Stay of Adam and Eve in Paradise, the Flood, and other Main Sacred Facts. – I remember how quite recently, namely in the 70s, when talking with my brother Fyodor Mikhailovich about our childhood, I mentioned this book; and with what delight he announced to me that he had managed to find this same copy of the book (that is, our children's one) and that he was protecting it as a Shrine.
I have already mentioned above that I could not witness the initial teaching of the alphabet by the older brothers. As I begin to remember, I found the brothers already able to read and write and preparing to enter the boarding school. I remember their stay at home without going to a boarding house for a short period of a year, about a year and a half.
At this time, two teachers came to our house. The first is the deacon, who taught the Law of God. This deacon almost served at the Catherine Institute; at least; I probably know that he was a teacher there. When he arrived, a card table was always laid out in the Hall, and four of us children sat at this table, along with the teacher. Mama always sat to the side, doing some kind of work.
I subsequently had many teachers of the law, but I don’t remember anyone like Father Deacon. He had an excellent gift of speech, and spent the entire lesson, which lasted 1½ to 2 hours according to the old times, in stories, or as we said in the interpretation of Holy Scripture. Sometimes he would come, spend a few minutes doing his homework, and immediately start telling stories. He spoke especially well about the flood, about the adventures of Joseph, about the Nativity of Christ, so that it happened that mamma, leaving her work, began not only to listen, but also to look at the inspired teacher. I can positively say that with his lessons and his stories he touched our children’s hearts. Even I, then a 6-year-old boy, listened to these stories with pleasure, not at all getting tired of their length. I really regret that I don’t remember either the first or last name of this venerable teacher, we just called him Father Deacon.
Despite all this, he demanded that the lessons be taught literally according to the manual, without omitting a single word, that is, as they say in slang, because then this was required everywhere during the entrance exams. The guidance was the well-known Firstfruits, which began like this: One God, worshiped in the Holy Trinity, is eternal, that is, has neither the beginning nor the end of His God, but has always been, is and will be…. etc. It's more likely philosophical essay, rather than a manual for children. But since this leadership was necessarily accepted in all educational institutions, then it is clear that Father Deacon himself adhered to it.”
During home readings, the Dostoevsky children became familiar with world literature. Mikhail’s words, written in May 1838, are significant: “Daddy! How can I thank you for the education you gave me! How sweet, how gratifying to think about Shakespeare, Schiller, Goethe! how these moments are valued!”
According to the later memoirs of A. M. Dostoevsky, the family reading circle also included Russian literature: poetry and prose by Derzhavin, Karamzin, Zhukovsky, Pushkin. In the mid-thirties, the Dostoevskys subscribed to the magazine “Library for Reading,” which published works modern literature- her future masterpieces. Fyodor Mikhailovich himself believed that in childhood “impressions of the beautiful” are necessary (D., XXX. Book I, 212; cf. 16–18).
In 1880, defining the program children's reading, Dostoevsky wrote: “I’ll just say in general: take and give only what makes wonderful impressions and gives rise to lofty thoughts.” Concluding his advice, the writer pointed out: “Above everything, of course, is the Gospel, New Testament in translation. If he can read in the original (that is, in Church Slavonic), then everything would be better. The Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles - sine qua non” (D., XXX. Book I, 237–238). Behind these tips is the spiritual experience of the writer himself, who was aptly called a “genius reader” by one of Dostoevsky’s experts.
The literary debut was a difficult test, when the writer defended his religious beliefs in disputes and quarrels with atheistic rulers of thoughts. Dostoevsky spoke about this with indignation in his notebooks for “Demons” - the author intended to give these words to Stepan Trofimovich: “Oh, in reality and in understanding real things, Belinsky was very weak. Turgenev said the truth about him that he knew very little even scientifically, but he understood better than all of them. You laugh, as if you want to say: “Everyone understood a lot.” My friend, I do not pretend to understand the details of real life. I started talking about Belinsky, I remember the writer D - then still almost a youth, B converted him to atheism and, in response to D’s objection, who defended Christ, scolded Christ swearing. “And he will always make such a sad, murdered face when I curse,” said Be, pointing at D with the most good-natured, innocent laugh” (D., XI, 73).
Sincerely, but within the framework of literary decency, this episode is revealed in the “Diary of a Writer” for 1873. Dostoevsky found Belinsky a “passionate socialist,” and he directly began “with atheism”: “He, as a socialist, had to destroy the Teachings of Christ, calling it false and ignorant love of humanity, condemned by modern science and economic principles; but still the radiant face of the God-Man* remained, his moral unattainability, his wonderful and miraculous beauty. But in his continuous, unquenchable delight, Belinsky did not stop even before this insurmountable obstacle, just as Renan stopped, proclaiming in his book “Vie de Jésus” full of unbelief that Christ is after all the ideal of human beauty, an unattainable type, which can no longer be repeat even in the future” (D., XXI, 10–12).
Dostoevsky not only argued and was not afraid to be funny in his polemics with Belinsky, he defended his beliefs among the Petrashevskyites.
S. D. Yanovsky recalled this: “...visiting his friends and acquaintances at the behest of his loving heart and visiting Petrashevsky for the same reasons, he brought with him the moral development of man, at the basis of which he laid only the truths of the Gospel, and not at all what the Social Democratic Charter of 1848 contained. Fyodor Mikhailovich loved his neighbor as only a person who sincerely believes can love him, he was inexhaustible in his kindness, and he was a man of the heart, the like of whom I have never known in my life. He formed his own circle everywhere and in this circle he loved to conduct conversations in his special whisper; but this conversation was always either purely literary, or if he sometimes touched on politics and sociology, then always in the foreground was an analysis of some fact or situation, followed by a practical conclusion, but one that did not contradict with the Gospel” (F.M.D. in modern memoirs, I, 169).
By a fateful coincidence, Dostoevsky was charged with reading Belinsky’s atheistic letter to Gogol, with whose ideas and pathos he clearly did not agree. On April 23, 1849, he was arrested in the “Petrashevsky case,” on whose “Fridays” (reception day) St. Petersburg freethinkers gathered, who read permitted and prohibited books, often published in French, discussed state and political issues, including serfdom and military service, and dreamed of free, uncensored speech. The authorities mistook them for conspirators, although it had not yet reached the point of a real conspiracy.
In the Peter and Paul Fortress, Dostoevsky wrote a “Children's Tale”, later called “The Little Hero”, which tells about the awakening of love in the soul young hero: he, like a faithful “page”, saves the honor of the lady of his heart and performs his “knightly” feat selfless love- the feat of serving another person.
Regarding this story, Dostoevsky spoke to Vs. S. Solovyov: “... then fate helped me, hard labor saved me... I became a completely new person... When I found myself in the fortress, I thought that this was the end for me, I thought that I couldn’t stand it for three days, and suddenly I completely calmed down. After all, what was I doing there?.. I wrote “ Little hero“- read it, is there any anger or torment visible in it? I dreamed of quiet, good, good dreams, and then the further it went, the better it was. ABOUT! This was great happiness for me: Siberia and hard labor! They say: horror, anger, they talk about the legitimacy of some kind of anger! most terrible nonsense! It was only there that I lived a healthy, happy life, I understood myself there, my dear... I understood Christ... I understood the Russian man and felt that I myself was Russian, that I was one of the Russian people. All my best thoughts came to my head then, now they are only returning, and even then not so clearly” (F. M. D. in the memoirs of contemporaries, II, 199–200).
These facts explain the “degeneration of beliefs” that began on the Semyonovsky parade ground and took place in hard labor.
On December 22, 1849, when the verdict was announced and preparations were made for the execution of the convicts, Dostoevsky was sure that in a few minutes he would die and “be with Christ.” He experienced the unexpected pardon as a resurrection from the dead. Later, this was recalled more than once in novels and in conversations with contemporaries, but for the first time it was told in a letter to his brother, written on that amazing day when, within a few minutes, his life and.
In this letter, he said goodbye to his old life and began a new life: “Brother! I was not sad or discouraged. Life is life everywhere, life is in ourselves, and not in the external. There will be people next to me, and to be a person among people and to remain one forever, in any misfortunes, not to become discouraged and not to fall - that is what life is, what is its task. I realized this. This idea entered my flesh and blood. Yes it is true! that head that created, lived the highest life of art, that recognized and got used to the sublime needs of the spirit, that head has already been cut off from my shoulders. What remains is the memory and images created and not yet embodied by me. They will ulcerate me, really! But the heart and the same flesh and blood remain in me, which can also love, and suffer, and desire, and remember, and this is still life!” (D., XXVIII. Book I, 162).
The worst thing for him in hard labor was the deprivation of the opportunity to write - this torment was already tormenting him: “Will I never pick up a pen? I think in 4 years it will be possible. I will send you everything I write, if I write anything. My God! How many images, survived, created by me again, will perish, fade away in my head or spill out like poison in my blood! Yes, if I can’t write, I will die. Better fifteen years in prison and a pen in hand” (D., XXVIII. Book I, 163).
Anticipation future life colored with a bright feeling: “There is no bile and malice in my soul, I would like to love and hug at least someone from the past at this moment. This is a joy, I experienced it today, saying goodbye to my loved ones before death.
When I look back at the past and think about how much time was wasted, how much of it was lost in delusions, in mistakes, in idleness, in the inability to live; no matter how much I valued him, how many times I sinned against my heart and spirit, so my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute could be a century of happiness. Si jeunesse savait! Now, changing my life, I am reborn into new uniform. Brother! I swear to you that I will not lose hope and will keep my spirit and heart pure. I will be reborn for the better. This is all my hope, all my consolation” (D., XXVIII. Book I, 164).
He felt like a new man, and life at first justified his enthusiastic aspirations. This expectation of a new life permeates the jubilant farewell letter to his brother from the Peter and Paul Fortress; this joyful feeling was remembered four years later, after leaving hard labor, in a story about how in holidays from Christmas to Epiphany they transported him, Durov and Yastrzhembsky from St. Petersburg to Tobolsk across vast Russia.
The move from Europe to Siberia was of particular significance: “It was a sad moment of moving through the Urals. The horses and wagons got stuck in the snowdrifts. There was a snowstorm. We got out of the carts, it was at night, and stood waiting for the carts to be pulled out. There is snow and blizzard all around; the border of Europe, ahead of Siberia and the mysterious fate in it, behind and everything that had passed - it was sad, and tears burst into my eyes” (D., XXVIII. Book I, 168).
During their almost two-week stay in the Tobolsk prison castle, the recent Petrashevites felt “the liveliest sympathy” and participation of the “exiles of the old time” and their wives. And here Dostoevsky received his first sign of fate: the wives of the Decembrists presented him with a symbolic gift - the New Testament in the Russian translation of the 1823 edition.
The Gospel given to Dostoevsky on the way to prison
This gift became an event in Dostoevsky’s life, the guarantee of his future “rebirth of beliefs,” the foundation of his “new life.”
A “new life” began with imprisonment in the House of the Dead. Dostoevsky recalled hard labor with different feelings, sometimes difficult ones; but the older the writer became, the more grateful he was to fate for this life lesson. And yet, the words he said, later repeated more than once, exhaust the truth: “I count those 4 years as the time in which I was buried alive and closed in a coffin” (D., XXVIII. Book I, 181).
How he lived during these years, Dostoevsky told in “Notes from House of the Dead”, but the hard labor, full of hardships, was for him, first of all, a spiritual test. The writer perceived hard labor as a purifying suffering associated with Golgotha and the resurrection of Christ. Going to hard labor, Dostoevsky realized: “Now, changing my life, I am reborn into a new form. Brother! I swear to you that I will not lose hope and will keep my spirit and heart pure. I will be reborn for the better. This is all my hope, all my consolation” (D., XXVIII. Book I, 164).
The expectation was fulfilled - in hard labor there was a “rebirth of beliefs.” Dostoevsky expressed the essence of what happened with a capacious formula: “ideas change, but the heart remains the same” (D., XXVIII. Book I, 208).
“Rebirth of Beliefs” - difficult topic for Dostoevsky himself. He confessed this to his brother immediately after leaving hard labor: “I won’t tell you what happened to my soul, to my beliefs, to my mind and heart in these four years. It's a long story. But the eternal concentration in myself, where I ran away from bitter reality, bore its fruits” (D., XXVIII. Book I, 171).
In another letter, a letter to A.N. Maikov, he realizes the impossibility of expressing himself on paper: “Here you need to speak eye to eye, so that the soul can be read on the face, so that the heart is expressed in the sounds of the word. One word spoken with conviction, with complete sincerity and without hesitation, eye to eye, face to face, means much more than dozens of sheets of written paper” (D., XXVIII. Book I, 206).
At hard labor, Dostoevsky recognized the people: “How much did I take out of hard labor? folk types, characters! I got used to them and therefore, it seems, I know them fairly well. In general, time is not lost for me. If I didn’t get to know Russia, I got to know the Russian people well, and as well as perhaps not many people know them. But this is my little pride! I hope it’s forgiven” (D., XXVIII. Book I, 172–173).
This knowledge distinguishes Dostoevsky from all those who have written and are writing about the people: for him the people were not a subject of study. Dostoevsky lived with the people, shared their fate and beliefs: “I assure you that I, for example, am related to everything Russian to such an extent that even the convicts did not frighten me - these were the Russian people, my brothers in misfortune, and I had the good fortune to find more than once even in the soul of a robber there is generosity, because, in fact, he could understand him; for he was Russian himself. My misfortune gave me a lot to learn practically; perhaps this practice had a lot of influence on me, but I also learned practically that I have always been Russian at heart. You can make a mistake in an idea, but you cannot make a mistake in your heart and through a mistake you cannot become unscrupulous, that is, act against your convictions. But why, why am I writing all this to you? After all, I know that I won’t say anything” (D., XXVIII. Book I, 208–209).
Dostoevsky spoke about the “degeneration of beliefs” in a letter to E.I. Totleben: “I was convicted lawfully and fairly; a long experience, difficult and painful, sobered me up and changed my thoughts in many ways” (D., XXVIII. Book I, 224). And further: “Thoughts and even beliefs change, the whole person changes, and what is it like now to suffer for what no longer exists, what has changed in me to the opposite, to suffer for previous errors, the unfoundedness of which I myself already see, to feel the strength and abilities , to do at least something to atone for the uselessness of the past and - languish in inaction! (D., XXVIII. Book I, 225).
In intense spiritual work, “delusions” and “mistakes of the mind” disappeared, but “convictions of the heart” remained. Dostoevsky’s political views changed, but the writer himself established himself in the ideal and in “new” ideas, many of which he expressed even before hard labor. “Freedom-loving dreams” were replaced by “soilism.” The writer embraced the people's truth and faith with all his heart. Dostoevsky treasured this knowledge of the people, acquired through suffering, this newfound understanding of their life.
Dostoevsky did not idealize the people, but in rough, dirty, sometimes scary people he saw the ideal face of the people. “The ideal of the people is Christ” - this is the main point of the new beliefs.
This was expressed in a personal creed, which Dostoevsky set out in a famous letter to N.D. Fonvizina, sent from Omsk shortly after leaving hard labor: “I will tell you about myself that I am a child of the century, a child of unbelief and doubt until now and even (I know this) to the grave. What terrible torment this thirst to believe has cost me and is now costing me, which is the stronger in my soul, the more contrary arguments I have. And yet, God sometimes sends me moments in which I am completely calm; in these moments I love and find that I am loved by others, and in such moments I have formed within myself a symbol of faith in which everything is clear and sacred to me. This symbol is very simple, here it is: to believe that there is nothing more beautiful, deeper, sweeter, more intelligent, more courageous and more perfect than Christ, and not only is there not, but with jealous love I tell myself that it cannot be. Moreover, if someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and it really were that the truth is outside Christ, then I would rather remain with Christ than with the truth” (D., XXVIII. Book I, 176).
“Rebirth of beliefs” became the acquisition of spiritual “soil”, people’s truth, awareness of the Truth and complete acceptance of Christ and the Gospel Word.
Dostoevsky's Gospel has absorbed the traces of the writer's many years of reading and thinking over the pages of the eternal book, absorbed convict sweat and dirt, and preserves the earliest convict marks - fingernail marks. It overshadows the life and work of a genius.
While in hard labor, Dostoevsky read the Gospel and permitted spiritual works. It was forbidden to read other books, but the worst thing was that the writer was deprived of the right to write. It is amazing that here, too, Dostoevsky remained a writer.
Parting with his brother, he consoled him: “When I get out of hard labor, I’ll start writing. During these months I experienced a lot, I experienced a lot within myself, and what I will see and experience ahead will be something to write about...” (F. M. D. in the memoirs of contemporaries, I, 192). The ban on writing terrified the pardoned Petrashevite: “Better than fifteen years in prison and a pen in hand” (D., XXVIII. Book I, 163). Dostoevsky wrote to his brother in February 1854 about entire volumes of “black, miserable life” that took shape in his head at hard labor. Maikov January 18, 1856.
At hard labor, Dostoevsky violated the ban. Contrary to the verdict, he wrote - at first, apparently, on separate sheets of paper during his stay in the hospital; later, when it became possible to safely store the notes, he compiled them into a separate notebook, which was filled out until the end of the 50s (the last entry is chronologically marked with a significant date, it will be discussed below: “Eheu: departure of M. 6 September 860”) .
Dostoevsky created an amazing work, which he called the “convict notebook,” and researchers called it the Siberian notebook. This homemade one-eighth-sheet notebook still contains traces of secretive, fitfully progressing work.
As folklore and ethnographic records, Dostoevsky’s collecting work has always been extremely highly valued, but this is where their underestimation lies. Now, thanks to many years of research by V.P. Vladimirtsev, summarized in this volume(V. D., III, 766–848), we can appreciate the spiritual feat of Dostoevsky, who remained a Writer even in hard labor - and it could not be otherwise. V. P. Vladimirtsev revealed artistic nature These recordings, their truly folk polyphony, saw in them sketches of future works, sketches in which the writer achieved the utmost concentration and laconicism of artistic meaning.
“The Siberian Notebook” fully reveals the voice of the Russian people heard by Dostoevsky. Thanks to his conscious selection, the recordings form an artistic whole - a unity that creates scenes, proverbs, sayings, “cautious talk”, convict humor, plots of future works.
The format of the “Siberian Notebook” coincides with the Gospel, and this is not a coincidence. In the Gospel, Dostoevsky kept his most expensive and memorable things. Knowing this, I once suggested that Dostoevsky kept the “Siberian Notebook” in the Gospel. And so, when the “Siberian Notebook” and the Gospel finally appeared next to each other on my table in the reading room of the manuscript department of the Russian State Library, I received confirmation of my assumption: the “Siberian Notebook” ideally fits into the middle and end of the New Testament.
The Gospel was truly “Good News” for Dostoevsky, an old and ever new revelation about man, the world and the truth of Christ. From this book Dostoevsky drew spiritual strength in the House of the Dead; from it he taught the Dagestan Tatar Aley to read and write in Russian, who confessed to him at parting that he had made him a man from a convict.
He never parted with her and took her with him on the road. During creative night vigils, she lay in plain sight on the desk. When I went to bed, I always put it down so that the Gospel was at hand. Using this book, he verified his doubts, guessed his fate and the fates of his heroes, wishing, like the hero of N. Ogarev’s poem “Prison” who guessed from the “old Bible”,
So that they come to me by the will of fate -
And the life, and sorrow, and death of the prophet.
In relation to Dostoevsky one can say: a Christian prophet.
This Gospel is described by Dostoevsky in the novel “The Humiliated and the Insulted” (1861): “There were two books on the table: a brief geography and a new testament in the Russian translation, scribbled in the margins with a pencil and marked with a fingernail” (DV., IV,). Using these books, old Smith taught his granddaughter Nellie to read and understand the world: “Grandfather bought the New Testament and Geography and began to teach me; and sometimes he told me what lands there are in the world and what people live, and what seas are and what happened before and how Christ forgave us all. When I asked him myself, he was very happy; That’s why I began to ask him often, and he told me everything and talked a lot about God” (F., IV,).
In world literature there were many writers who knew the Holy Scriptures excellently, studied it, and used ideas and images in their work. But there is hardly anyone else who, like Dostoevsky, not only read only one Gospel for four years, but experienced and lived it as his destiny - the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ as his death in the House of the Dead and his resurrection into a new life. This book absorbed not only suffering, but also the spiritual experience of the writer - his marks with pencil and ink and fingernail marks in the text and in the margins.
The result of these hard thoughts was a composed but unrecorded article “on the purpose of Christianity in art,” about which he wrote to Baron A.E. Wrangel on Good Friday 1856: “All of it up to last word I thought about it back in Omsk. There will be a lot of original, hot stuff. I vouch for the presentation. Perhaps many will disagree with me in many respects. But I believe in my ideas and that’s enough. I would like to ask you to read the article first. Maykova. Some chapters will contain entire pages from the pamphlet. This is actually about the purpose of Christianity in art. It’s just a matter of where to put it?” (28; 1, 229). The article remained unwritten - there was nowhere to place it, but Dostoevsky’s view on this topic is expressed throughout his entire work.
Dostoevsky had an almost religious concept of creativity. Like a priest in confession, the writer was the confessor of his heroes. Their sins became his sins, adding to the weight of his cross. The heroes and their author resolve their guilt through the very act of creativity: confession, repentance and atonement for their own and others’ sins.
This idea was later expressed in the ministry and teachings of Elder Zosima: to make oneself responsible for the sin of others. Everyone is to blame. Everyone has their own level of guilt. Some are to blame for what they did, others for what they didn’t do. Apparent innocence is only an illusion: everyone is responsible for the world’s evil. The spiritual resurrection and salvation of any person is possible (the conversion of Saul to Paul). This redemptive journey of man is a metaphor for Christ's saving sacrifice and resurrection. 
The Gospel provides more for understanding Dostoevsky than any study about him, including the brilliant Bakhtin. Aesthetic principle The plurality of points of view in the tetra-gospels anticipates “ polyphonic novel” and the dialogism of poetics, the Christian concept of man and the world largely explains Dostoevsky’s anthropological discoveries. Dostoevsky's originality does not lie in exceptional novelty, but in his consistent and uncompromising adherence to the truths of the Gospel.
Dostoevsky was one of those who expressed the idea of Christian realism through his work. Christian realism is a realism in which God lives, the presence of Christ is visible, and the revelation of the Word is revealed.
He contrasted the well-known principle “Man is the measure of all things” with another: “Christ is the measure of all things.” Dostoevsky gave a new understanding of art as service to Christ, the meaning of which he saw in his apostolic calling (preaching the Holy Spirit).
The path of Russian literature in its highest achievements of recent centuries is the path of Russian realism finding the Truth, which was revealed by Christ and “was the Word.”
The Gospel word permeates Dostoevsky's text. It illuminates the work of the Russian genius with the flicker of Truth.
Notes
1. Cultural monuments. New discoveries. 1980. M., 1981. P. 78.
2. Sine qua non (lat.) - an indispensable condition.
3. Bem A.L. Dostoevsky - a brilliant reader // About Dostoevsky. Prague, 1933. pp. 7–24.
* Capital letter restored by lifetime edition(ed.).
4. If only youth knew! (French – ed.)
5. Ogarev N.P. Selected works. M., 1956. T. 2. P. 212.
drawing by M.A. Pobuzhdinsky
for the book by N.P. Antsiferova
“Dostoevsky’s Petersburg” (Pb., 1923)
And when studying literature, researchers cannot limit themselves to analyzing only the structure of a literary text or studying its connections with other texts; It is also necessary to study the biography of the writer. One of the most difficult issues here is the question of his faith in God.
Yours own attitude Different people experience God differently. For some, this is a deeply personal, intimate feeling that they do not want to discuss publicly. Others are easily willing to talk at length and openly about their faith. All this must be explained to students so as not to hurt the feelings of any of them.
Speaking about the writer’s attitude to religion, it is necessary to immediately separate two problems:
1) in addition to the author’s own religiosity, one must take into account his use of religious symbols and motifs in his works simply as “well-known” to readers: an atheist author (for example, Mayakovsky) can also often turn to Christian symbols; 2) personal religious beliefs, features of faith, relationships with God may not coincide in how the artist himself feels them in the depths of his soul (which we can guess by analyzing his works of art) and how he explains them to others (which we learn from journalistic notes, letters); Let's say a writer can openly declare his atheism, but deep religiosity can be read in literary texts (or vice versa).
The question of Dostoevsky’s attitude to religion cannot be considered sufficiently studied, although readers began to think about this topic already during his lifetime, since questions about faith were raised directly both in his novels and in the famous “Diary of a Writer.”
The range of opinions ranges from the assertion that Orthodox religiosity forms the basis of all of Dostoevsky’s work, to doubts: whether his understanding of God and Orthodoxy corresponds to canonical doctrine.
Let's give a typical example. Priest Fr. Alexy spoke about Dostoevsky (the statement came to us in the transmission of a third person): “This is a harmful writer! It is all the more harmful because in his works he exalts the charm of life.<...>This is a teacher from life<...>and not from the spirit<...>He has, mind you, all sorts of Aglayas and Anastasia Filippovnas... And when he talks about them, he feels some kind of delight<...>And the worst thing is that the reader sees that the author is a human being supposedly a believer(emphasis added - S.Zh.), even a Christian. In reality, he is not a Christian at all, and all his deepenings are just a mask hiding skepticism and unbelief.” The characterization may be naive, but in many ways it is not unfounded.
The problem is further complicated by the fact that such statements sometimes belong to religious thinkers and writers, whose faith is also not always recognized as unconditional by everyone. So, Vladimir Solovyov, for example, wrote to K.N. Leontyev about Dostoevsky: “For him, religion was some kind of new, unprecedented country, in the existence of which he fervently believed, and sometimes he looked at its outlines through a telescope, but he was not able to get on religious soil.” But the faith of both Leontyev and Solovyov raises serious questions among many religious thinkers.
In addition, Dostoevsky was not a theologian, he did not treat religion as a doctrine, he did not have special articles on Christianity, his thoughts on this have to be collected, read from individual statements, sometimes contradicting each other.
Religious feelings arose in Dostoevsky's soul already in early childhood. His parents were believers, as childhood memories testify to. The writer’s brother Andrei Dostoevsky recalled: “We all had one first book to read. This is the Sacred History of the Old and New Testaments in Russian<…>It was actually called “One Hundred and Four Sacred Stories of the Old and New Testaments”<…>I remember how, not long ago, I was talking with my brother<…>mentioned this book; and with what delight he announced to me that he had managed to find this same copy of the book (that is, ours - for children) and that he was protecting it like a shrine.” Among the writer's first home teachers was a deacon who taught the Law of God. A.M. Dostoevsky writes that he does not remember meeting such a good teacher in this subject in the future.
At the same time, it cannot be said that upbringing was purely religious. According to recollections, the so-called family readings. However, the names here are secular books: this is “History” by Karamzin, poems by Derzhavin, Zhukovsky. It is unlikely that the Bible represented any special kind of reading for the young Dostoevsky.
Childhood impressions and experiences of a religious nature were deposited in Dostoevsky’s memory. According to his wife, he remembered how his mother gave him communion in church when he was two years old, and he remembered how “a dove flew from one window to another.” He also preserved almost the earliest childhood memory, how “one day the nanny brought him, about three years old, in the presence of guests to the living room, forced him to kneel before the images and, as always happened before bedtime, read a prayer.” Let’s not find fault with the word “forced,” especially since it sounded somewhat different then. It is not recorded anywhere in the memoirs that young Dostoevsky ever felt hostility towards Orthodoxy or church rituals, but as an artist this feeling, repeatedly described in world literature, was well understood and familiar to him. Let us note that in the sketches for the unwritten novel “The Life of a Great Sinner” there is an entry: “First Confession. Disgustingness: is there a God? The Bible and Reading.”
There are recollections that Dostoevsky’s religiosity was so noticeable that his schoolmates even laughed at him. However, it probably manifested itself in the general flow of romantic moods of the future writer. Consider, for example, this statement from a letter to his brother: “The poet, in a fit of inspiration, unravels God, and therefore fulfills the purpose of philosophy.”
From a young age, Dostoevsky became addicted to literature, and a variety of books always had a strong effect on his impressionable nature. It is curious that already in his mature years he writes about the Bible: “The Bible belongs to everyone, atheists and believers alike. This is the book of humanity." That is, he does not single out the Bible: after all, the same can be said about any other great book; both Shakespeare and Homer also belong to all humanity, both atheists and believers. This is what young Dostoevsky writes about Homer and Christ, placing them side by side, as phenomena of the same series: “After all, in the Iliad, Homer gave the entire ancient world an organization of both spiritual and earthly life in absolutely the same power as Christ to the new.” What is this? Is the legendary Homer raised to the level of the divine Christ or is Christ reduced to a genius, but still a man? It is difficult to answer, but similar convergences were characteristic of Dostoevsky’s religious worldview and later.
And in the future, religion and art were perceived by Dostoevsky in many ways similar. It is known what a strong impression she made on him religious painting- paintings by Hans Holbein, Titian, Raphael (it is not known that he was so strongly influenced, for example, by an icon).
From 1837 to 1848 Dostoevsky lived in St. Petersburg. First he studies, and after graduating from college in 1844, like the biblical prodigal son, having refused the guardianship of a rich relative and having received his share of a small inheritance, he becomes professional writer. He becomes close to people imbued with more or less atheistic and revolutionary sentiments. These are writers who united around Belinsky and - later - Nekrasov. Then there is the Petrashevsky circle, in which Dostoevsky joins the most radical part, where there was talk of preparing a peasant uprising and organizing a secret printing house to conduct revolutionary propaganda. The writer’s relationships with all these people were uneven; later he recalled his youthful hobbies in very different ways. He later wrote about Belinsky: “He, of course, had pride, but there was no self-drawnness in him.” He also spoke about him this way: “He could not notice how much there was in him.<…>petty pride, anger, impatience, irritability, meanness, and most importantly - self-love,” called him “a stinking insect,” “a stupid and shameful phenomenon of Russian life,” writing “filthy articles,” and on the other hand, “really suffering, pure and a sincere person."
The friendship with Belinsky did not last long; gradually, mutual cooling was growing in relations with him and his entourage; As you know, there were many reasons. Firstly, Dostoevsky had to choose a publication with which he would collaborate, and the choice fell not on the journal of Belinsky and Nekrasov “Sovremennik”, but on “Notes of the Fatherland” by A. Kraevsky. Secondly, Dostoevsky was extremely suspicious and touchy; he could not forgive sometimes good-natured, and sometimes not so good-natured, banter from his elders and even more famous writers"Contemporary" mug. So one should not see the reason for the conflict with Belinsky only in differences in matters of faith, although there are grounds for this (“scolding Christ,” Dostoevsky recalls, “he never said to himself: what are we going to put in his place, are we really ourselves, while we so disgusting." So, let us repeat, there were many reasons - ideological, material, and personal.
As for the Petrashevsky circle, with which Dostoevsky became close after the break with Belinsky, its attitude towards Christianity was ambiguous. Petrashevsky himself was apparently a consistent atheist; they recall that he cynically spoke of Christ as “a demagogue who ended his career somewhat unsuccessfully.” But among the Petrashevists, the ideas of the French socialists, Saint-Simon, Fourier and others are popular. It is Saint-Simon, as you know, who coined the term “new Christianity”; in his work of the same name, he addressed religion, justifying new principles for organizing a fair social order.
The encyclopedic dictionary created by the Petrashevites was more than half devoted to issues of religion and Christianity. Later, Dostoevsky recalled his then hobbies as a disease, but it was, so to speak, a “high disease”: “...The nascent socialism was then compared<…>with Christianity and was taken only for the amendment and improvement of the latter, in accordance with the age and civilization.<…>The topic seemed majestic and stood far above the level of the then dominant concepts - and this was what seduced. Those of us, that is, not just among the Petrashevites, but in general among all those infected at that time, but who subsequently rejected all this dreamy nonsense radically, all this darkness and horror prepared for humanity in the form of its renewal and resurrection - those of us then They did not yet know the causes of their illness, and therefore could not yet fight it.”
Since socialist ideas were largely based on Christianity, those biographers of Dostoevsky are largely right when they imagine the evolution of his views not as a radical revision of his youthful beliefs and a complete rejection of previous (revolutionary, socialist) positions in adulthood, but as a development and deepening the same ideas.
In 1848, members of the Petrashevsky circle were arrested and sentenced to death, which was commuted to last moment exile to Siberia. Finding himself face to face with death, standing awaiting execution and mentally saying goodbye to life, Dostoevsky experienced a severe shock when life was returned to him again. Going to hard labor, he is full of hopes for the future and sends an enthusiastic letter to his brother: “Don’t worry, for God’s sake, don’t worry about me! Know that I am not discouraged, remember that hope has not left me.<...>After all, today I was near death, I lived for three quarters of an hour with this thought, I was at the last moment and now I live again!<...>Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute could be a century of happiness.<...>Brother! I swear to you that I will not lose hope and will keep my spirit and heart pure. I will be reborn for the better. This is all my hope, all my consolation.<...>Now I don’t care about deprivation, and therefore don’t be afraid that some material burden will kill me.”
In prison, the writer could read only one book - the Gospel, which was given to him by the wife of the exiled Decembrist N.D., who met him on the way to hard labor. Fonvizina. Of course, the writer thought a lot about the lines of the New Testament; he kept this edition of the Gospel as a relic all his life. However, it cannot be said that the threat of execution, miraculous salvation, the hardships of hard labor and liberation made Dostoevsky a religious writer. Religious quests were, albeit very important, but still only part of his thoughts about the meaning of human existence, which accompanied him throughout his life. A.E., who knew the writer in exile closely. Wrangel recalled: “We talked little about religion with Dostoevsky. He was rather devout, but he rarely went to church and did not like priests, especially Siberian ones. He spoke about Christ with delight.” Upon his release from prison, when the opportunity arose to read books of his choice, Dostoevsky asks his brother to urgently send him books, most of them not Christian, but of a very different nature: “Send me European historians, economists, holy fathers, if possible, all the ancients (Herodotus , Thucydides, Tacitus, Pliny, Flavius, Plutarch and Diodorus, etc.).<...>Finally, the Koran and the German lexicon.<…>Send me Pisarev’s physics and some physiology too.”
Sometimes they say that a serious interest in Christianity and Orthodoxy was formed in Dostoevsky’s consciousness precisely after prison; at the same time, he developed his special patriotism, faith and conviction that the Russian people had a great future ahead of them, that they were destined to play special role in the destinies of humanity. Of course, it was in hard labor that the writer had to exist side by side with ordinary people, communicate with them especially closely. Later, in the “Diary of a Writer” for 1876, Dostoevsky wrote a short story-memoir “The Peasant Marey”, where he recounts an incident that happened to him in childhood, when a simple peasant, a plowman, and a serf of his father calmed and supported a little baron who seemed to that somewhere nearby there is a wolf. It is important that Dostoevsky remembered this incident not during his noisy, bohemian life in St. Petersburg, but precisely then, in prison, when after the holiday the convicts, having gotten drunk, beat one of their fellow sufferers half to death. One political exile said in French: “I hate these robbers!” It was here that the writer remembered an incident from his childhood. This chapter from the “Diary of a Writer,” while certainly being programmatic, denotes the author’s attitude both to the Russian people and to their faith. There are many discussions about the Orthodox faith in the “Diary of a Writer”; Orthodox Christianity is constantly contrasted with Protestantism and Catholicism as the true faith, behind which lies the future and salvation of mankind.
However, Dostoevsky did not begin to write truly persistently and a lot about Russian Orthodoxy immediately after hard labor. Two large novels were written - “The Humiliated and Insulted” and “Crime and Punishment”, large stories - “Uncle’s Dream” and “The Village of Stepanchikovo”, the novel “The Player”, biographical book about hard labor "Notes from the Dead House". In all these works, not so much and not so sharply is said about the greatness of the Russian people, and especially about the Orthodox faith. In the magazines published by Dostoevsky together with his brother, religious topics were almost not touched upon. Close at that time to the writer N.N. Strakhov recalled: “From our private conversations, I don’t remember almost a single case when Fyodor Mikhailovich directly expressed the religious mood that, apparently, did not fade away in him for a single year of his life.” True, during close communication and collaboration in the magazine with the critic of the Slavophil (“soil”) orientation Apollo Grigoriev there was a lot of talk about the special character of the Russian person, his ability to synthetically absorb all the best that Europe has achieved, about what exactly in common man, and not in the European educated elite, one must look for support (“soil”), but still there is relatively little talk about faith, about Christ.
Dostoevsky spoke seriously about Orthodoxy in the novel “The Idiot,” written fifteen years after hard labor. Next in the remaining three novels- “Demons”, “Teenager” and “The Brothers Karamazov” - this theme sounds persistently and a monk, an elder, appears as one of the ideologically most important characters (except for “The Idiot”, where the main character himself takes on this role). Let us add that in 1873 the periodical “A Writer’s Diary” began to be published, where religious issues were constantly posed by the author. It is quite natural to assume that Dostoevsky’s turn to the ideas of Orthodoxy and nationality intensified not after hard labor, but during a long four-year stay abroad from 1867 to 1871.
We can probably say that Dostoevsky’s religiosity was constantly increasing. In addition to abroad, the writer was influenced by a whole series events, such as a failed execution, hard labor, the almost simultaneous death of his beloved brother and first wife (the relationship with her in recent years could not be called simple, but she always remained a close, important person for him in the writer’s life), second marriage, creation family, birth of children.
The first statement about the Christian faith, full of deep thoughts, appeared shortly after leaving hard labor. We find it in a letter to the same Fonvizina who gave the writer a book so dear to him. A fragment from this letter is sometimes cited as proof of Dostoevsky’s unconditional religiosity, but meanwhile it is easy to see that in addition to the affirmation of faith, it also talks about terrible doubts.
“I heard from many that you are very religious, N<аталья>D<митриевна>. Not because you are religious, but because I myself have experienced and felt it, I will tell you that in such moments you thirst, like “withered grass,” for faith, and you find it, in fact, because in misfortune the truth becomes clear. I will tell you about myself that I am a child of the century, a child of disbelief and doubt to this day and even (I know this) to the grave. What terrible torment this thirst to believe has cost me and is now costing me, which is the stronger in my soul, the more contrary arguments I have. And yet, God sometimes sends me moments in which I am completely calm; in these moments I love and find that I am loved by others, and in such moments I formed within myself a symbol of faith in which everything is clear and sacred to me. This symbol is very simple, here it is: to believe that there is nothing more beautiful, deeper, more sympathetic, more reasonable, more courageous and more perfect than Christ, and not only is there not, but with jealous love I tell myself that it cannot be. Moreover, if someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and it really were that the truth is outside Christ, then I would rather remain with Christ than with the truth.”
This letter shows how difficult it was for Dostoevsky to question faith; “Hosanna passed through the crucible of doubt,” as he said later. By “the century of unbelief and doubt” we understand, perhaps, not only the 19th century, but also the 18th century of rationalist philosophy. Interest in logic and rational proof was characteristic of Dostoevsky; most of his heroes, such as Raskolnikov, always try to find convincing arguments that would somehow justify and confirm their attitude to life. Raskolnikov, as we know, even indulges in arithmetic calculations, “one life - and a hundred lives in return,” he recalls words accidentally overheard in a conversation between a student and an officer. Dostoevsky himself, as we see, writes here not so much about faith as about the “thirst to believe.” This is reminiscent of Shatov’s words from the novel “Demons.” When asked whether he believes in God, he cannot answer positively and says: “I will believe,” as if setting himself a goal that must be achieved.
Dostoevsky writes in the quoted letter about “contrary arguments,” to which he contrasts not arguments in defense of faith, but precisely “thirst.” It is not arguments, but the need for faith that should solve the dilemma. He says that he formed a “symbol of faith” for himself, but this symbol was formed in rare moments of peace and happiness, when “I love and find that others love me.” This symbol itself is not entirely ordinary: after all, we are talking not about God, but about Jesus Christ, and the argument is the idea that there is nothing “more reasonable, more courageous and more perfect.”
Finally, how can we understand the terrible assumption for a believer: “If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and it really would be that the truth is outside of Christ”? Of course, this does not contradict the very idea of faith: “I believe because it is absurd,” wrote the famous theologian of the 3rd century, but still “absurd” and “truth outside of Christ” are not the same thing. Just as admiration for the person of Christ and faith in the triune Christian God are not the same thing. At the same time, even the deepest and most painful doubts do not contradict true faith; absolute faith, without questions or doubts, is given only to ascetics close to holiness, so Dostoevsky’s doubts can neither confirm nor refute his faith. He himself admitted more than once that he trusts even the most complete atheism more than indifference: “Oh, if only you were cold or hot! - he quoted from the Apocalypse. “But because you are warm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.” “The main question<…>- the same one with which I have been tormented consciously and unconsciously all my life, the existence of God.”
After the death of his wife, Dostoevsky, deeply shocked, left a note beginning with the words: “Masha is lying on the table, will I see Masha.” The recording was made on the second day after death and literally in front of the body of the deceased; it does not contain any consistent, clear statement of views, but rather anxiety and an attempt to understand what happened. Dostoevsky comes to the idea of the need to believe in an afterlife, but at the same time, to the conviction that this life is impossible in the form in which we live here in this world. There will be an afterlife, but will I see my wife there? Complex reflections, which the writer himself may not have fully understood (let us remember under what circumstances the recording was made), lead him to no less complex conclusions that man on earth strives to overcome his human nature, to achieve an ideal, and it means to stop being human, because the ideal is Christ, and human nature contradicts such an ideal (“man strives on earth for an ideal that is opposite to his nature”), this ideal is achievable only after death. “The living, not dead even before its very achievement and reflected in the final ideal, must come to life into a final, synthetic, endless life. We will be persons, without ceasing to merge with everything, without encroaching or marrying, and in various categories<…>Everything will then feel and know itself forever. But how it will be, in what form, in what nature, it is difficult for a person to completely imagine.” Dostoevsky was a man with a very concrete way of thinking; for him it was important to somehow tangibly, objectively imagine both the afterlife and God. Perhaps that is why he preferred to talk about Jesus rather than about God the Father.
Dostoevsky observed church rituals, followed the religious education of his children, prayed fervently and sincerely, his wife recalled how she did not want to approach her husband so as not to disturb him when she found him in the depths of the church praying alone - he was so absorbed in himself during prayer . Dostoevsky died with the Gospel in his hands, asking his wife to tell fortunes for him using this book; the book opened with the words “do not hold back.”
After a long stay abroad, criticism of non-Orthodox Christian denominations - Catholicism and Protestantism - begins to sound in Dostoevsky's texts. But the writer’s negative, sometimes to the point of irritation, attitude towards Catholicism should be understood historically. Dostoevsky nowhere speaks out on any dogmatic issue dividing Catholicism and Orthodoxy. He is not interested in such problems as the purity of the Mother of God, the origin of the Holy Spirit, etc. The only thing that causes his irreconcilable objections is the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope, but this point was new for that time and caused controversy and schism within Catholicism itself. In the 70s of the 19th century, the Roman Catholic Church actually waged a decisive struggle for power, this confused even many Catholics. It can be assumed that Dostoevsky’s attacks against the Catholic Church were more national and political than religious, much less theological in nature.
What conclusion can be drawn from everything that has been said about Dostoevsky’s attitude to the Orthodox faith and Christianity in general, what can be “taken into service” school teacher? Unfortunately, we have to admit that the question of the great writer’s religiosity cannot be considered resolved. Of the three possible answers -
1) an atheist, 2) hesitant and seeking faith,
3) an unconditional believer - only the first should be definitely excluded. This is probably what should be explained to students: scientists who unconditionally insist on the second or third answer as the true one are unlikely to be right.
We encounter the same difficulties when we turn to works of art Dostoevsky. Is it possible to contrast Sonya Marmeladova with Raskolnikov, Elder Zosima with Ivan Karamazov, Tikhon with Stavrogin as a solution found, a way out of the impasse into which the heroes have reached? Critics disagree, which means that for the student these questions remain unanswered. It is more correct to refer to the theory of polyphony in Dostoevsky’s novels, to say that they contain a dialogue, a dispute, and not a solution. We cannot quote, say, Kirillov’s words from “Demons” that a person is unhappy because he does not know that he is happy, and forget about Kirillov, who hides from Verkhovensky behind a closet when he is afraid to commit the promised suicide.
How should a teacher take into account all kinds of biblical allusions, reminiscences, quotes, and what to say about Orthodoxy to understand the meaning and form of Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment”?
In the drafts for the novel, the writer makes a note, often quoted by researchers:
“THE IDEA OF A NOVEL. ORTHODOX VIEW, WHAT IS ORTHODOXY.” From this phrase, sometimes an unambiguous conclusion is drawn that the main thing in the novel is the idea of the Orthodox faith. Of course, thoughts about Orthodoxy were extremely important for Dostoevsky, main character the novel is the bearer of precisely this faith. The given phrase in the preparatory materials is not the only one; there is, for example, this: “NB: LAST LINE: The ways in which God finds a person are mysterious.” And yet the meaning of the words about the “idea of the novel” should not be exaggerated. After the quoted title there are words that cannot be unequivocally reduced to the declared idea of Orthodoxy: “There is no happiness in comfort, happiness is bought by suffering. This is the law of our planet, but this direct consciousness, felt by the everyday process, is such a great joy, for which you can pay for years [of suffering].” Even the very words that the writer chooses are “ law our planet”, “direct consciousness, felt everyday process” (emphasis added - S.Zh.) - clearly indicate that Dostoevsky’s thinking was not uniquely religious.
Let us also note that the famous entry was not made at the beginning of work on the novel; it can be interpreted as one of the attempts to somehow clearly, vividly and briefly formulate the main idea of an almost written work. There are quite a few such attempts, and Dostoevsky often does without religious symbolism at all: “THE MAIN ANTINOMY OF THE NOVEL: Collision with reality and logical exit to nature and (duty)” (our italics - S.Zh.). Dostoevsky always had many sketches, which he marked for himself with words such as “ main idea; main idea, main thing nota bene”, etc. He usually looks for some bright image, a symbol that will help him remember an important mood for him, the feeling of a particular episode or idea being pursued. For example, he writes: “Capital. Porfiry visits him. The conversation is private.”
In the same vein, one should read the notes that touch on the religious issues of the novel - without underestimating, but also not exaggerating their significance: “On the one hand, a funeral and a curse, on the other - [resurrection]” - this is also a note for the entire novel, and interpret as an expression of a religious worldview is an exaggeration; there are clearly two sides to this. The very title of the novel does not contain any hint of religiosity (unlike, say, Tolstoy’s “Resurrection”); on the contrary, it refers to the criminal chronicle of modern periodicals, to the educational treatise of C. Beccaria.
Nevertheless, without any doubt, several powerful religious ideas can be identified that are important for understanding the essence of the entire novel. Of course, this is first and foremost idea of resurrection man, his return from oblivion. Secondly, the cross-cutting motive is motive of human fall, in particular - fallen woman, harlot. The third most important figurative idea of the novel is thought about the end of the world, about the final result of human, earthly existence, human suffering. Finally, the fourth thought - the thought of life after death, of immortality.
The first thought is expressed first of all, as is known, parable of the resurrection of Lazarus, almost completely given in the novel, and it can be interpreted very widely. The most important is the statement about the possibility of a miracle and the impossibility of final solutions here on this Earth. A miracle is produced by God, by a power from above, in which a person must unconditionally believe. This miracle was also produced by the power of love, since, as it is said, Jesus loved the deceased very much. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Dostoevsky chose the story about Lazar. It is also important that this miracle is one of the most detailed described in the New Testament. Should the lesson dwell on the fact that the story of the resurrection of Lazarus is given in only one of the four Gospels? It’s unlikely, since talking about this can lead far away from the content and problems of the novel. But it is necessary to emphasize that of the miracles performed by Christ, this is probably the most wonderful, since Lazarus has been lying in the tomb for four days.
Sometimes they say that the number “4” is also significant because Raskolnikov killed the old woman four days ago. Of course, Dostoevsky was not indifferent to the symbolism of numbers, but, firstly, such symbolism is always easy to “adjust” as convenient for us: “on the fourth day after the murder” or “four days passed after the murder.” Another thing is important: that Lazarus has not been alive for several days, he is not among people, Jesus resurrects not only someone who has just died, but someone who has already been dead for a long time. A physiological point should also be noted: the body has already begun to stink, so they are afraid to even “take away” the stone.
Physiology, the physical existence of a person after death, as we recalled, was a fundamental issue for Dostoevsky. This problem is posed in different ways. Even the well-known - and in no way resolved - dispute about when exactly Raskolnikov committed his real, main crime: when he killed the old woman or long before that, when he composed his inhuman theory - this dispute concerns the same problem. The writer also painfully experienced the physical suffering of Christ before his death; he was afraid to look at Holbein’s painting, which, according to Prince Myshkin and in his own words, could shake a person’s faith.
Sometimes they see various echoes with the theme of Lazarus in other places in the novel. For example, Raskolnikov hid his treasure under a stone. The symbolism is visible here: under the stone he placed his dead soul, and when he confessed to the murder and took the path of repentance, pointed out where the stone was, the stone was “taken away” and his dead soul began to resurrect. Such observations will be greeted with enthusiasm by students, but they are unlikely to help significantly deepen either their understanding of the novel or their attitude towards literature in general. And the commentators themselves point out that such a motif as a treasure hidden under a stone is found in folklore and myths of different peoples.
Image of a harlot, forgiven by Jesus, is also one of the most significant in the novel. It is controversial in itself. To what extent can Sonya be considered a criminal, how forced was her decision to take the path of prostitution in order to provide for her family? On the one hand, she had no other choice. Is it possible to compare her with Raskolnikov, if he ruined someone else’s life, and she ruins her own? If he decided to commit a crime not so much to help his mother and sister, but to “resolve his thoughts”? I would like to answer - no. But, on the other hand, her decision, according to Marmeladov’s story, looks sudden: as if everything happened suddenly after Katerina Ivanovna’s harsh words. Then Sonya's step also resembles a riot. Dostoevsky did not describe how long it took her to reach the terrible decision. Did she, like Raskolnikov, have to spend days painfully thinking about it as possible? Sonya herself, unlike Raskolnikov, considers herself a “great sinner.” Should we believe her and agree that she ruined her soul, like Raskolnikov? Or should she not be considered a sinner, since she considers herself such?
The image of the harlot also relates to physiology, and this is important. After all, a prostitute gives pleasure to men, the lifestyle of a prostitute does not always correlate only with such categories as suffering, humiliation, loneliness, but also with debauchery, wasting one’s life, carelessness, loss of a sense of shame, pleasure, enjoyment. Such turns of thought were well known to Dostoevsky. He was sensitive to the rude, vulgar joke that Christ forgave the harlot because she “loved much,” and called it a “junker thought.” “Christ did not forgive for such love!” - exclaims the indignant Father Joseph to Fyodor Karamazov, who is trying to make dirty jokes. The same point is repeated in “The Idiot” and in the drafts for “A Writer’s Diary” for 1876.
Sonya's painfully ambiguous position is constantly emphasized: this is the cleanliness of her room, and her presence in the same room with Raskolnikov's mother and sister on her first meeting with him, and her bright clothes at the bedside of her dying father. There is an assumption that initially these features of Sonya - not only as a victim, but also as an embodiment of temptation - were sharpened, but at the request - or at the request - of the publishers, Dostoevsky significantly reworked individual episodes concerning the image of Sonya.
However, a very difficult turn of the theme is reconstructed: Sonya, in her humiliation - or in her deepest love for people - sacrificed herself to those men to whom she gave herself. Of course, this has nothing to do with the Sonya we see in the final text. Moreover, with multiple reprints of the novel, Dostoevsky did not try to change anything essentially, therefore, the instructions or demands of Katkov and Leontyev coincided with his own position. True, here too one can object: the absence of attempts to restore what was distorted in the first edition in subsequent editions does not prove anything, since Dostoevsky did not seriously change anything in the works once published. So the question of some deep foundations on which the image of Sonya Marmeladova is built remains unclear.
There are attempts to correlate the image of Sonya with the Mother of God: this is suggested by the symbolism of color, and there are indeed several of them maternal attitude to Raskolnikov, and the fact that the criminals called her “mother”, “mother”; but, I think, such a comparison is controversial. Here we should rather talk about general proximity, about coincidence.
The third important thought for Dostoevsky is about end of the world. It is presented in two ways. First of all, this is the theme of the possibility of salvation. She rises in Marmeladov’s speeches: “And he will judge and forgive everyone, both the good and the evil, both the wise and the humble... And when he has finished with everyone, then he will say to us: “Come out,” he will say, you too! Come out drunk, come out weak, come out drunk!” And we will all go out without shame and stand. And he will say: “You pigs! the image of the beast and its seal; but come too!” And the wise will say, the wise will say: “Lord! Why do you accept these? And he will say: “That is why I accept them, the wise, because I accept them, the wise, because not one of these himself considered himself worthy of this...”
Porfiry’s question to Raskolnikov, whether he believes in the New Jerusalem, relates to the same topic. The expression “New Jerusalem” is taken from the Apocalypse, its meaning is interpreted as a designation of a new life, a transformed world, cleansed of sin. It is important to recall that both this expression and the idea itself were relevant for the utopian socialists, the Saint-Simonists.
The fundamental idea is about teleology, predetermination, the final outcome of earthly existence: for what we live and what we will come to. Closely related to this is the thought of immortality: will we turn into nothing or continue to exist, and if we continue, in what form? Dostoevsky here again strives to present it as concretely as possible. The idea of the afterlife as a stupid infinity, of a bathhouse with spiders in Svidrigailov’s delirium is very typical. It has echoes with different texts Dostoevsky - with “Dream” funny man"or with a fragment from the same "Crime and Punishment", when someone says that he would prefer to stand on a ledge of a rock for eternity than to die.
It is necessary to acquaint students with the problem of theodicy, as far as this can be done. True, it is not presented in “Crime and Punishment” with such directness as in “The Brothers Karamazov,” but still it is precisely the reasoning about the injustice of the very presence of evil that leads Raskolnikov to his criminal theory. The problem of justifying evil is an open problem. Leibniz wrote about her: “This is the limit of faith... - to believe that he is just who, of his own arbitrariness, makes us worthy of condemnation... If it were possible to somehow understand how God is merciful and just, showing such wrath and injustice, there would be no need for [faith].”
Reply from Yla Sasha along the highway...[guru]
“...it seems to me that I believe, without really believing that I believe”
A question that cannot have a clear answer...
Dostoevsky's attitude towards God is fraught with a certain paradox. Nowadays, his religiosity is successfully confirmed both by an analysis of his work and by numerous extra-literary evidence - biographical facts, memoirs of contemporaries, etc. But this was not always the case. More recently, it was not considered indecent to hint at atheistic motives in his works for the sake of the current situation. And there were testimonies of those who doubted his faith.
A. Camus completely considered Dostoevsky an atheist. He believed that Dostoevsky was the predecessor of Nietzsche. According to Camus, if we want to see the authentic in Dostoevsky, we must see this atheism, which he expresses through his heroes.
Sometimes the question of Dostoevsky’s religiosity is considered in terms of his ideological evolution. N. Lossky believed that a short-term, just a few years, “loss of Christ” happened to the writer in the mid-40s, while the turning point towards special religiosity came in the 60s. But Dostoevsky’s general commitment to Christian ideas does not raise doubts in Lossky.
There is probably no writer in world literature whose work, to such a degree and, most importantly, at such a level of artistry, would be saturated with Christian images, plots, and ideas.
But how then can we explain the above-mentioned ambiguity in assessments of Dostoevsky’s religiosity? Where does the very possibility of divergent characteristics arise in a situation where, it would seem, this ambiguity should be excluded?
The point here is not so much in Dostoevsky, but in the very phenomenon of faith. The question that Dostoevsky’s heroes so often ask each other: do you believe? - can be asked not only to Dostoevsky himself, but also to any believer. It is as natural as it is natural to ask about any atheist whether he really does not believe. Faith and unbelief always intersect with each other.
They are connected through doubt.
The point is, however, that both the pole of faith and the pole of disbelief are only in the general view, only from a bird’s eye view can be likened to geometric points, unambiguous “yes, I believe” and “no, I don’t believe.” A non-geometric point is no longer a point, but a certain space, the content of which is not covered by categorical “yes” or “no”. Upon closer examination, each of the poles unfolds into its own microfield with a complex structure, with its own special coordinate system. The boundaries between pole and field are blurred.
For a writer of such intellectual power, such intensity moral quest It couldn’t be otherwise. And if indeed God endowed man with reason, then he thereby provoked the now famous principle of universal doubt: human thought is impossible without doubt.
Dostoevsky's DOUBTS permeated his entire religiosity, but above all they concerned the main point - the very existence of God.
F. M. Dostoevsky himself, in a famous letter to A. Maikov, called the question of the existence of God the main question, “with which I have been tormented consciously and unconsciously all my life.” In his famous letter to Fonvizina, Dostoevsky writes:
“I will tell you about myself that I am a child of the century, a child of disbelief and doubt to this day and even (I know this) to the grave. What terrible torment this thirst to believe has cost me and is now costing me, which is the stronger in my soul, the more contrary arguments I have.” And then the especially famous words: “...if someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and it really were that the truth is outside Christ, then I would rather remain with Christ than with the truth.”
IN Dostoevsky’s CONSCIOUSNESS, in this painful confrontation of faith and reason, truth and Christ confronted each other “on equal terms.” Dostoevsky could not completely subordinate reason to faith. A completely adequate view of the faith of a thinking and doubting person.
Interesting article:
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To the 175th anniversary of his birth
On November 11, 1996, an evening dedicated to the 175th anniversary of the birth of the great Russian writer F. M. Dostoevsky took place at the Publishing House of the Moscow Patriarchate as part of the “Publishing Environments”. The evening was organized by the Department of Church Charity and Social Service of the Moscow Patriarchate, headed by Archbishop Sergius of Solnechnogorsk. Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy A.I. Osipov made a report on the work of the Christian writer. We bring this report to the attention of our readers.
The best people are recognized by the highest moral
development and higher moral influence.
F. M. Dostoevsky
belongs to that relatively small part of humanity that is called living people, people who carry within themselves a fire that never ceases to warm their souls in the search for the Truth and following it. Perhaps the best background for depicting these people is another part of humanity, about which the Lord Jesus Christ said to His disciple: “Let the dead bury their dead” (). These others are ideologically indifferent people. They do not think about the soul, about moral responsibility before conscience and God, about truth, about some other meaning of life other than this, the exclusively earthly, the transitory. These are the “lukewarm” ones about whom Scripture says: “I will spit you out of My mouth” ().
How far from them in terms of his personality type Dostoevsky! With all the complexity of character and moral manifestations of his complex nature, this was a man burning with quest, looking for something sacred, the highest Truth - not a philosophical abstract truth, which for the most part does not oblige a person to anything, but the eternal Truth, which must be brought to life and save a person from spiritual death. However, only from the point of view of eternity can, according to Dostoevsky, speak about Truth, for it is God Himself, and therefore renunciation of the idea of God will inevitably lead humanity to destruction. In the mouth of the demon in The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky puts the following significant words: “In my opinion, there is no need to destroy anything, but all we need to do is destroy the idea of God in humanity, that’s where we need to get down to business! This is where we must begin - oh, blind people who understand nothing! Once humanity completely renounces God, then by itself, without anthropophagy, all the old worldview and, most importantly, all the old morality will fall, and everything new will come. People will copulate in order to take from life everything that it can give, but certainly for happiness and joy in this world alone. Man will be exalted by the spirit of divine, titanic pride and a man-god will appear... and to him “everything is permitted”... There is no law for God! Where God becomes, there is already God’s place! Wherever I stand, there will immediately be first place... “everything is permitted” and the Sabbath! Fyodor Mikhailovich expresses and develops the idea of the great importance for a person of faith in God and the immortality of the soul in many of his writings and speeches, and it, undoubtedly, contains the main core of his life and creativity, the source of his entire life, which passed in great intellectual and moral struggles God-seeking, which led him to Christ and Orthodox Church.
F. M. Dostoevsky as a person, speaking about him in his own words about a person, “is wide... too wide, I would narrow it down.” But you cannot “narrow” it, otherwise it will no longer be Dostoevsky. Therefore, in order to sin against him as little as possible, we will not touch upon the “breadth” of his personality, evaluate his brilliant works, leave the details of his life and work, avoid analyzing the artistic merits and demerits of his works, and remain silent even about the colossal influence that His creative legacy has had and still has an impact on all thinking humanity. Now we will try, as far as possible, to illuminate only one question, which lies not at all in the horizontal dimension of the writer’s personality and his work, but in that depth of the soul from which flowed the unusually rich flow of values left by the Russian genius to his descendants. So, what is the fundamental idea, or more precisely, the spirit of Dostoevsky’s creativity and how could it be characterized not from the point of view of earthly human merits, but sub specie aeternitatis?
Edgar Poe once wrote: “If any ambitious man dreams of revolutionizing by one effort the whole world of human thought, human opinion and human feeling, the opportunity is in his hands - the road to immortality lies directly before him, it is open and unobstructed. All he has to do is write... a little book. Its title should be simple - three clear words: “My Naked Heart.” But this little book must be true to its title."
If we turn to the history of human thought, it turns out that Edgar Allan Poe was at least two thousand years late with his proposal. Such a book has already been written, and it has revealed with utmost completeness the depths of the human heart. True, this little book is called a little differently - the Gospel. It opened the way for the world to complete knowledge of the human soul: both its inexpressible beauty, which, in the words of Macarius of Egypt, has no equal in heaven or on earth, and also that immeasurable evil that arose in the same heart due to man’s retreat from Herself. Truth and Life - God. It, the Gospel, became for people living in spirit the source and basis of knowledge of both their own hearts and knowledge of man in general, and the creation of many “little books.”
One of the very rare writers who began to build the building of his artistic creativity on this basis, - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.
What is the main subject of Dostoevsky's thought? This question is easy to answer - a person, his heart, his soul. “And he loved, first of all, the living human soul in everything and everywhere, and he believed that we are all the race of God, he believed in the infinite power human soul“, triumphant over all external violence and over all internal fall,” - this is what V. S. Solovyov said at Dostoevsky’s grave on February 1, 1881.
But Dostoevsky did not view man as usual, not as the majority. He saw his task not in a simple depiction of his life, visible to everyone, not in realism, often reminiscent of naturalism, but in revealing the very essence of the human soul, its deepest driving principles, from where all feelings, moods, ideas, all human behavior arise and develop . And here Fyodor Mikhailovich showed himself to be an unsurpassed psychologist. What is a person in the understanding of Dostoevsky?
To answer this question, it is necessary to recall the main points of view that dominated the enlightened society of that time. There are three of them.
1. Man is an insidious, sensual and selfish monkey, carrying within himself the heritage of his animal ancestors.
2. Man is kind, loving, capable of self-sacrifice, etc. The bad qualities that we notice in man are not the properties of his nature, but direct consequences of the development of civilization, which has brought disharmony into man, alienating him from nature, from the natural life.
3. A person is not evil or kind by nature, he is a blank slate on which only the social environment in all the diversity of its factors puts the appropriate writing.
Dostoevsky in the essence of his views is very far from all these theories. For him, the first point of view is unnatural, although, apparently, rarely has any writer been able to depict with such strength and brightness the “bottom” of the human soul as he has. Dostoevsky also does not agree with the second theory, despite the fact that the very idea of indelible and always active goodness and truth in a person was leading in all his work. In the “Diary of a Writer” we even read this: “Evil lurks deeper in a person than is usually assumed.” The third theory also provokes sharp criticism from Dostoevsky. He does not agree that “if society is organized normally, then all crimes will disappear at once, since there will be nothing to protest for and everyone will become righteous in an instant.” “In no social structure,” he wrote, “can you escape evil... the human soul will remain the same... abnormality and sin come from it itself.”
Fyodor Mikhailovich has a different view of man, a view that can be called emanating from the Gospel.
The “little book” - the Gospel - revealed to him the secret of man, revealed that man is not a monkey or a holy angel, but that image of God, which, although in its God-created nature is good, pure, beautiful, however, due to the Fall of man, it was deeply distorted, as a result, “thorns and thistles” began to grow on the earth of his heart. Thus, in fallen man, whose nature is now called natural, there are simultaneously both the seeds of good and the tares of evil. What is the salvation of man according to the Gospel? In the experimental knowledge of the deep damage of one’s nature, the personal inability to eradicate this evil, and through this - the effective recognition of the need for Christ as one’s only Savior, that is, living faith in Him. This faith itself arises in a person only through sincere and constant forcing of oneself to do the good of the Gospel and the fight against sin, which reveals to him his real powerlessness and humbles him.
Dostoevsky’s greatest merit lies in the fact that he not only recognized his fall, humbled himself and came through the most difficult struggle to true faith in Christ, as he himself said: “It is not like a boy that I believe in Christ and confess Him, but through a great crucible doubts, my hosanna has passed,” but also that in an unusually bright, strong, deep artistic form revealed this path of the soul to the world. Dostoevsky, as it were, once again preached Christianity to the world, and in a way that, apparently, none of the secular writers had done before or after him.
Dostoevsky sees humility as the basis for the moral rebirth of man and for his acceptance by God and people. Without humility there can be no correction, which is needed by all living people without exception, for evil, and great evil, is present in everyone. “If only,” says Dostoevsky through the lips of the prince in “The Humiliated and Insulted,” “it could be (which, however, human nature can never be), if only it were possible for each of us to describe all his ins and outs, but in such a way that he would not be afraid to express not only what he is afraid to say and would never tell people, not only what he is afraid to tell his best friends, but even what he is sometimes afraid to admit to himself, then such a stench would arise in the world that we would all have to suffocate.”
That is why, everywhere and everywhere, if not directly in words, then in the entire life of the hero, his downfalls and uprisings, Dostoevsky calls on a person to humility and work on himself: “Humble your pride, proud man, work in the field, idle man!” And how can someone who looks directly at himself and honestly admits everything to himself not resign himself? Humility does not humiliate a person, but, on the contrary, puts him on the solid ground of self-knowledge, a realistic view of himself, of man in general, since humility is the light thanks to which only a person sees himself as he really is. It is evidence of the great courage of a man who was not afraid to face the most formidable and inexorable opponent - his conscience. For the proud and vain, this is beyond the power. Humility is the solid foundation, the salt of all virtues. Without it, they degenerate into hypocrisy, hypocrisy, and pride.
This idea constantly sounds in Dostoevsky’s works. She is for him a kind of foundation on which he builds a psychoanalysis of a person that is rare in the depth of insight. Hence the extraordinary truth of his depiction of the inner world of man, the innermost movements of his soul, his sin and fall, and at the same time his deep purity and the holiness of the image of God. At the same time, the author never feels the slightest condemnation of the man himself. Dostoevsky puts wonderful words into the mouth of Elder Zosima. “Brothers,” the elder teaches, “do not be afraid of the sin of people, love man even in his sin, for this similarity of Divine love is the height of love on earth... And do not let the sin of people bother you in your work, do not be afraid that it will overshadow your work will not allow it to be accomplished. Flee this despondency... Remember especially that you cannot be anyone’s judge. For there cannot be a judge of a criminal on earth until the judge himself recognizes that he is just as much a criminal as the one standing before him, and that for the crime of the one standing before him, he may be guilty above all others.”
But this is not so easy to know. Not many people are able to see in themselves “that he is just as much a criminal.” Most people think of themselves as generally good. That is why the world is so bad. Those who become able to see that “everyone is to blame for everyone,” to see their personal crime before the internal law of truth and repent, are deeply transformed, because they begin to see God’s truth, God, in themselves.
And what do all human deeds mean before God! All of them are nothing more than the “onion” about which Alyosha Grushenka speaks (“The Brothers Karamazov”): “I’ve only given some kind of onion all my life, I’m the only one with virtues.” The same thing is said to Alyosha in a dream by his righteous elder Zosima, who was honored with the honor of being at the wedding feast of the Lord. The elder approached Alyosha and said to him: “Also, dear, also called, called and called. Let's have fun. I served the onion, and here I am. And many here only served an onion, just one small onion... What are we doing?” This state is truly the state of the gospel publican, who left the temple, according to the word of the Lord Himself, justified.
We see a similar mood in the drunkard Marmeladov (“Crime and Punishment”), when he speaks about the Last Judgment of God: “And he will judge and forgive everyone, both good and evil, and wise and meek... And when he ends over everyone, then He will also say to us: “Come out, he will say, you too! Come out drunk, come out weak, come out drunk!” And we will all go out without shame and stand. And he will say: “You pigs! The image of the beast and its seal; but come too!” And the wise will say, the wise will say: “Lord! Why do you accept these people?” And he will say: “That is why I accept them, the wise ones, because I accept them, the wise ones, because not one of these himself considered himself worthy of this”... And he will stretch out His hand to us, and we will fall down... and cry... and we will understand everything! Then we will understand everything... and everyone will understand.” So amazingly Dostoevsky transposed the beginning and basis of the Gospel teaching about salvation - “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for of them is the Kingdom of Heaven” - into the language of modern times: “because not a single one of these considered himself worthy of this.”
Only on this unshakable basis of “poverty of spirit” is it possible to achieve the goal of Christian life – love. The Gospel affirms it as the law of life: only in it does it promise good, the happiness of man and humanity. This love, as a healing, regenerating force, is preached by Dostoevsky in all, one might say, works; he calls people to it.
We are not talking about romantic love, of course. Dostoevsky’s love is the pity of the same Prince Myshkin for the merchant Rogozhin who hit him, this is compassion for his neighbor who is suffering in body and soul, non-judgment of him: “Brothers, do not be afraid of the sin of people, love a person even in his sin.”
Let us remember the final scene from The Brothers Karamazov, when Rakitin, a seminarian, angrily rejoicing, brings Alyosha to Grushenka, hoping to see the shame of a righteous man. But the shame did not happen. On the contrary, Grushenka was shocked by Alyosha’s pure love—compassion for her. Everything bad disappeared from her at once when she saw this. “I don’t know,” she told Rakitin, “I don’t know, I don’t know anything, that he said that to me, it affected my heart, he turned my heart upside down... He was the first to feel sorry for me, the only one, that’s what! “Why didn’t you come before, cherub,” she turned to Alyosha, falling to her knees in front of him, as if in a frenzy. “All my life I’ve been waiting for someone like you, I knew that someone like that would come and forgive me.” I believed that someone would love me too, the disgusting one, not just for my shame!” “What did I do to you,” Alyosha answered, smiling tenderly, bending over to her and taking her hands, “I gave you an onion, one very small onion, only, only!” And, having spoken, he himself began to cry.”
Dostoevsky wanted to show and showed with all the power of his talent that God lives in man, goodness lives in man, despite all the superficial dirt with which he covers himself. Although man is not an angel in his life, he is not an evil animal in his essence either. He is precisely the image of God, but fallen. That is why Dostoevsky does not pronounce judgment on the sinner, because he sees in him the spark of God as the guarantee of his rebellion and salvation. Here is Dmitry Karamazov, an eccentric, dissolute man with a daring, unbridled disposition. What is going on in the soul of this terrible person, who is he? The world pronounced its final judgment about him - a villain. But is this true? "No!" - Dostoevsky asserts with all the strength of his soul. And in this soul, in the depths of it, it turns out that a lamp is burning. This is what Dmitry confesses to Alyosha, his brother, in one of his conversations: “... I happened to plunge into the deepest shame of debauchery (and that’s all that happened to me) ... And in this very shame I suddenly begin a hymn. May I be cursed, may I be low, vile, but may I kiss the hem of the robe in which my God is clothed; let me follow the devil at the same time, but I am still Your son, Lord, and I love You, and I feel joy, without which the world cannot stand and be...”
That is why, in particular, Dostoevsky believed so much in the Russian people, despite all their sins. “Whoever is a true friend of humanity,” he urged, “who has at least once had a heart beat for the suffering of the people, will understand and forgive all the impenetrable alluvial mud in which our people are immersed, and will be able to find diamonds in this mud. I repeat: judge the Russian people not by the abominations that they so often commit, but by those great and holy things for which even in their very abomination they constantly sigh... No, judge our people not by what they are, but by what you would like to become. But his ideals are strong and holy, and it was they who saved him in centuries of torment.”
How Dostoevsky wanted to show this beauty of the purified human soul, this priceless diamond, which for the most part is completely littered, cluttered, polluted with the dirt of lies, pride and carnality, but begins to sparkle again, washed by tears of suffering, tears of repentance! Dostoevsky was convinced that this is why man sins, this is why he is often evil and bad, because he does not see his true beauty, he does not see his real soul. In the materials for “Demons” we find the following from him: “Christ then came so that humanity would know that his earthly nature, the human spirit, could appear in such heavenly splendor in reality and in the flesh, and not just in one dream and ideally, that this is both natural and possible.” Kirillov in “Demons” says about all people: “They are not good because they do not know that they are good. They need to know that they are good, and they will all immediately become good, every single one of them.” It was about this beauty, presented to the spiritually purified gaze of man, that Dostoevsky spoke when he asserted that “beauty will save the world” (“The Idiot”).
But it turns out that this saving beauty, as a rule, is revealed to a person in suffering, through the courageous bearing of his cross. It is no coincidence that suffering occupies a dominant place in Dostoevsky’s work, and he himself is rightly called the artist of suffering. With them, like gold with fire, the soul is purified. They, becoming repentance, revive the soul to a new life and turn out to be the redemption that every person longs for, deeply aware and experienced of his sins, his abominations. And since everyone is a sinner, suffering, according to Dostoevsky, is necessary for everyone, like food and drink. And it’s bad for the soul that doesn’t feel this need. “If you want,” he writes in the “Notebook,” “a person must be deeply unhappy, because then he will be happy. If he is constantly happy, he will immediately become deeply unhappy.” “You will see great grief,” says Elder Zosima to Alyosha, “and in grief you yourself will be happy. Here’s a behest for you: look for happiness in grief.” For through suffering, which sometimes leads to terrible crimes, a person is freed from his inner evil and its temptations and again turns to God in his heart and is saved.
Dostoevsky sees this salvation only in Christ, in Orthodoxy, in the Church.
Christ for Dostoevsky is not abstract moral ideal, not an abstract philosophical truth, but an absolute, supreme personal Good and perfect Beauty. Therefore, he writes to Fonvizina: “If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and it really were that the truth is outside Christ, then I would rather remain with Christ than with the truth.” That is why he speaks with such sarcasm through Alyosha Karamazov about pseudo-following Christ: “I cannot give two rubles instead of just two, and instead of “follow Me,” I can only go to mass.” In this case, what really remains of Christ is only “a dead image, which is worshiped in churches on holidays, but which has no place in life.”
But Christ, according to Dostoevsky’s deep conviction, was preserved intact only in Orthodoxy, in the Slavic peoples, and especially in the Russian people. Hence the peculiarity of Dostoevsky’s view of the Russian people as a God-bearing people, a people who can and must save Europe - this is “a dear,” in the words of Ivan Karamazov, “a cemetery (it has long been a cemetery, and nothing more),” and with it and the whole world. “Everything, everything that the Russian people are looking for,” he writes, “lies for them in Orthodoxy—in Orthodoxy alone and the truth and salvation of the Russian people”; “The most important pre-elected purpose of the Russian people in the destinies of all mankind is that the Divine face of Christ, preserved in Orthodoxy, when the time comes, should be revealed to the whole world, which has lost its way.”
Why does Dostoevsky write this way? Wasn't Europe Christian? “In Europe,” he replies, “even now there are Christians, but there is an awful lot of perverted understanding of Christianity” (“ Notebook"). “In the West,” he writes to N. Strakhov (1871), “they lost Christ – thanks to Catholicism, and that’s why the West is falling.” Hence the fatal consequences for Europe. A year before his death, Dostoevsky wrote: “Yes, it is on the eve of a fall, your Europe, universal and general. The anthill that had long been created in it without the Church and without Christ, with the moral principle shaken to its foundations, having lost everything general and everything absolute—this anthill that was being built has been completely undermined.”
Dostoevsky sees the reason for the spiritual death of Europe in the perversion of the very foundations of Christianity in Catholicism. This is what led the West to a grandiose religious catastrophe in the 16th century, and it has now given rise to a great tragedy European culture. At the same time, Dostoevsky emphasizes: “I’m not talking about the Catholic religion alone, but about the whole Catholic idea.” In The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor, Dostoevsky reveals his understanding of this idea. He is convinced that Catholicism, in essence, rejected Christ, because it rejected the most important premise of His teaching: the gospel of man’s free, and only free, appeal to God, of man’s free response to God’s love. The Catholic Church, according to Dostoevsky, strives by any means, including violence and cunning, to subjugate a person to the power of Rome. And this idea does not come from love for Christ, but from a proud desire for dominion over all humanity. That is, the goal of Catholicism is purely earthly, unspiritual, and therefore it is Christ who most of all hinders its implementation by His preaching about love and freedom as indispensable conditions for man to achieve true good. Dostoevsky puts a terrible confession into the mouth of the Grand Inquisitor. “I don’t want Your love,” he says to Christ, “because I myself don’t love You. Maybe you want to hear our secret from my lips, so listen: we are not with You, but with him, this is our secret.”
Rejecting the Catholic Church, Dostoevsky at the same time resolutely insists on the need for the Orthodox Church as the unconditional spiritual principle of life and the bearer of the true culture that Russia should bring to the world. The archpriest wrote: “Churchification of all life is the positive ideal that animated Dostoevsky and which he understood not as the external subordination of all life to the Church (as Catholicism thought exactly), but as the free and internal assimilation of Christian principles by life in all its forms.” . But long before him, V. Solovyov said the same thing: “If we want to denote in one word the social ideal to which Dostoevsky came, then this word will be ... Church” (“First Speech in Memory of Dostoevsky”).
Thus, speaking about Dostoevsky’s work, we can say without a doubt that his main direction and spirit are evangelical (although from a theological point of view he had some erroneous statements and ideas). Just as the entire Gospel is permeated with the spirit of repentance, the need for a person to realize his sinfulness, humility - in a word, the spirit of the tax collector, the harlot, the robber, who fell with tears of repentance to Christ and received purification, moral freedom, joy and light of life - so is the entire spirit of the works Dostoevsky breathes the same things. Dostoevsky, it seems, only writes about “poor people”, about the “humiliated and insulted”, about the “Karamazovs”, about “crimes and punishments” that revive man. “Renaissance,” the Metropolitan emphasizes, “this is what Dostoevsky wrote about in all his stories: repentance and rebirth, the fall and correction, and if not, then fierce suicide; It’s only around these moods that the whole life of all his heroes revolves.” He also writes about children. Children are everywhere in Dostoevsky's works. And everywhere they are holy, everywhere as angels of God in the midst of a terrible, corrupt world. But isn’t it children who are the Kingdom of God!
The last minutes of Dostoevsky’s life are remarkable, revealing to us the spiritual structure of the author of immortal creations. “At 11 o’clock the throat bleeding recurred. The patient felt unusual weakness. He called the children, took them by the hands and asked his wife to read the parable about prodigal son" This was the last repentance, which crowned the far from simple life of Fyodor Mikhailovich and showed the faithfulness of the spirit of his creations to the “little book” - the Gospel.
V. Solovyov said correctly in his “Second Speech” about Dostoevsky: “People of faith create life. These are those who are called dreamers, utopians, holy fools - they are also prophets, truly the best people and leaders of humanity. We commemorate such a person today!”
A. I. OSIPOV,
professor MDA
1. Solovyov V. Second speech in memory of Dostoevsky // Works in 2 volumes. T. 2. M., 1988. ^
2. Russian thinkers and Europe. Paris, 1995. P. 245. ^
3. Dostoevsky F. M. Works. St. Petersburg, 1911. T. 2. P. 469. ^
From the words spoken by Vladimir Solovyov
at Dostoevsky's grave
“He loved, first of all, the living human soul in everything and everywhere, and he believed that we are all the race of God, he believed in the infinite power of the human soul, triumphing over all external violence and over all internal fall. Having accepted into his soul all the malice of life, all the hardship and darkness of life and overcoming all this with the infinite power of love, Dostoevsky proclaimed this victory in all his creations. Having experienced the Divine power in the soul, breaking through all human weakness, Dostoevsky came to the knowledge of God and the God-man. The reality of God and Christ was revealed to him in inner strength love and all-forgiveness and this same all-forgiving power of grace he preached as the basis for the external realization on earth of that kingdom of truth, which he longed for and to which he strove all his life.”
Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, No. 1, 1997