Ippolit Terentyev in Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot” is the son of Marfa Terentyeva, the “girlfriend” of the alcoholic General Ivolgin. His father died. Hippolyte is only eighteen years old, but he suffers from severe consumption, doctors tell him that his end is near. But he is not in the hospital, but at home (which was a common practice of that time), and only occasionally goes out and visits his friends.
Like Ganya, Ippolit has not yet found himself, but he stubbornly dreams of being “noticed.” In this respect, he is also a typical representative of Russian youth of that time. Hippolytus despises common sense, he is passionate about various theories; sentimentalism, with its cult of human feelings, is alien to him. He is friends with the insignificant Antip Burdovsky. Radomsky, who serves as a “reasoner” in the novel, ridicules this immature young man, which evokes a feeling of protest in Hippolyte. However, people look down on him.
Although Ippolit Terentyev in Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot” is a representative of “modern” Russia, his character is still somewhat different from Ganya and others like him. He is not characterized by selfish calculation, he does not strive to rise above others. When he accidentally meets a poor doctor and his wife who have come from the village to St. Petersburg to look for work in a government agency, he understands their difficult circumstances and sincerely offers his help. When they want to thank him, he feels joy. The desire for love is hidden in Hippolytus's soul. In theory, he protests against helping the weak, he tries his best to follow this principle and avoid "human" feelings, but in reality he is unable to treat specific people with contempt. good deeds. When others are not looking at him, his soul is good. Elizaveta Prokofyevna Epanchina sees in him a naive and somewhat “twisted” person, so she is cold with Ganya, and she welcomes Ippolit much warmer. He is not at all such a “realist” as Ganya, for whom only the “stomach” constitutes the common basis for the entire society. In some respects, young Hippolytus is a shadow of the “Good Samaritan.”
Knowing about your near death, Hippolytus writes a long "My necessary explanation." Its main provisions will then be developed into a whole theory by Kirillov from “Demons”. Their essence is that a person tries, with the help of his will, to overcome all-consuming death. If death must happen anyway, then it is better to commit suicide, and not wait for it in the face of “dark” nature; it is better if you set a limit for yourself. These arguments are seen to be influenced by the philosophy of Feuerbach and Schopenhauer.
Ippolit reads out his “Necessary Explanation” at the “full gathering” of the novel’s heroes at Lebedev’s dacha. Myshkin, Radomsky, and Rogozhin are there. After finishing this reading, he planned a spectacular ending - suicide.
This chapter is full of deep feelings, suffering and sarcasm. But it “draws us in” not because it affects our mind with Hippolytus’s “head” reasoning about overcoming death. No, in this confession of a young man who can barely stand on his feet due to illness, we are concerned primarily with his sincere feelings. This is a desperate desire to live, envy of those living, despair, resentment at fate, anger directed towards someone unknown, suffering from the fact that you are deprived of a place at this celebration of life, horror, desire for compassion, naivety, contempt... Ippolit decided to leave life, but he desperately calls out to the living.
In this most important scene, Dostoevsky mocks Ippolit. After he finishes reading, he immediately takes a pistol out of his pocket and pulls the trigger. But he forgot to put in the primer, and the gun misfires. Seeing the pistol, those present run up to Hippolytus, but when the reason for the failure becomes clear, they begin to laugh at him. Hippolyte, who seemed to believe for a moment in his death, understands that now his heartfelt speech looks extremely stupid. He cries like a child, grabs those present by the hands, tries to justify himself: they say, I wanted to do everything for real, but only my memory let me down. And the tragedy turns into a pathetic farce.
But Dostoevsky, having made Ippolit Terentyev a laughing stock in the novel “The Idiot,” does not leave him in this capacity. He will once again listen to the secret desire of this character. If the “healthy” inhabitants of this world knew this desire, they would be truly amazed.
On the day when Ippolit feels approaching death from consumption, he comes to Myshkin and tells him with feeling: “I’m going there, and this time, it seems, seriously. Kaput! I’m not out for compassion, believe me... I already went to bed today, at ten o’clock, so as not to get up at all until that time, but I changed my mind and got up again to go to you... so it’s necessary.”
Ippolit's speeches are quite frightening, but he wants to tell Myshkin the following. He asks Myshkin to touch his body with his hand and heal him. In other words, someone on the verge of death asks Christ to touch him and heal him. He is like a New Testament man suffering recovery.
Soviet researcher D. L. Sorkina, in her article devoted to the prototypes of Myshkin’s image, said that the roots of “The Idiot” should be sought in Renan’s book “The Life of Jesus”. Indeed, in Myshkin one can see Christ stripped of his greatness. And throughout the novel one can see the “story of Christ” taking place in Russia at that time. In the sketches for The Idiot, Myshkin is actually called “Prince Christ.”
As it becomes clear from the at times respectful attitude of the jester Lebedev towards Myshkin, Myshkin makes a “Christ-like” impression on the people around him, although Myshkin himself only feels that he is a person different from the inhabitants of this world. The heroes of the novel do not seem to think so, but the image of Christ still hovers in the air. In this sense, Ippolit, heading to meet Myshkin, corresponds to the general atmosphere of the novel. Ippolit expects from Myshkin miraculous healing, but we can say that he is counting on deliverance from death. This salvation is not an abstract theological concept, it is a completely concrete and bodily feeling, it is a calculation of bodily warmth that will save him from death. When Hippolytus says that he will lie “until that very time,” this is not a literary metaphor, but an expectation of resurrection.
As I have said many times, salvation from physical death permeates Dostoevsky’s entire life. Each time after an epileptic seizure he was resurrected, but the fear of death haunted him. Thus, death and resurrection were not empty concepts for Dostoevsky. In this respect, he had a "materialistic" experience of death and resurrection. And Myshkin is also characterized in the novel as a “materialist.” As already noted, while writing The Idiot, Dostoevsky suffered from frequent seizures. He constantly felt the horror of death and the desire to be resurrected. In a letter to his niece Sonya (dated April 10, 1868), he wrote: “Dear Sonya, you do not believe in the continuation of life... Let us be rewarded with better worlds and resurrection, and not death in lower worlds!” Dostoevsky exhorted her to cast off disbelief in eternal life and believe in better world, in which there is resurrection, a world in which there is no death.
The episode when Myshkin is visited by Hippolytus, whom the doctors give only three weeks to live, is not only a “turning around” of the New Testament, but also the result own experience the writer's experience of death and resurrection.
How does the “Christ-like” prince respond to Hippolytus’ appeal to him? He doesn't seem to notice him. The answer from Myshkin and Dostoevsky seems to be that death cannot be avoided. That’s why Ippolit says to him ironically: “Well, that’s enough. They regretted it, therefore, and enough for the sake of social politeness.”
Another time, when Ippolit approaches Myshkin with the same secret desire, he quietly replies: “Pass us and forgive us our happiness! - the prince said in a quiet voice. Hippolyte says: “Ha ha ha! That's what I thought!<...>Eloquent people!
In other words, " wonderful person“Myshkin shows his powerlessness and turns out to be worthy of his last name. Hippolyte just turns pale and replies that he didn’t expect anything different. He had just expected to be reborn to life, but he was convinced of the inevitability of death. The eighteen-year-old boy realizes that “Christ” has rejected him. This is the tragedy of a “beautiful” but powerless person.
In The Brothers Karamazov, his last novel, a young man also appears, who, like Hippolytus, suffers from consumption and for whom there is no place at the “celebration of life.” This is the elder brother of Elder Zosima, Markel, who died at the age of seventeen. Markel also suffers from a premonition of death, but he managed to overcome his suffering and fears, but not with the help of rationality, but with the help of faith. He feels that he, standing on the threshold of death, is present at the celebration of life, which is part of the world created by God. He manages to transform his failed fate and fear of death into gratitude for life, praise for it. For Dostoevsky, were not Ippolit and Markel the result similar work mind? Both young men strive to overcome the fear of death, they share the despair and joy that fill their lives.
: “...he is the eldest son of this short-haired captain and was in another room; I am unwell and have been lying down all day today. But he's so strange; he is terribly touchy, and it seemed to me that he would be ashamed of you, since you came at such a moment...<...>Hippolytus is a magnificent fellow, but he is a slave to other prejudices.
—You say he has consumption?
- Yes, it seems that it would be better to die sooner. If I were in his place, I would certainly wish to die. He feels sorry for his brothers and sisters, these little ones. If it were possible, if only there was money, he and I would rent a separate apartment and abandon our families. This is our dream. And you know what, when I told him about your case just now, he even got so angry, he said that the one who misses a slap in the face and does not challenge him to a duel is a scoundrel. However, he is terribly annoyed, I have already stopped arguing with him...”
Ippolit first appears at the forefront of the action in a company at the dacha, when young people showed up demanding part of the inheritance. “Ippolit was a very young man, about seventeen, maybe eighteen, with an intelligent, but constantly irritated expression on his face, on which illness had left terrible marks. He was thin as a skeleton, pale yellow, his eyes sparkled, and two red spots burned on his cheeks. He coughed incessantly; Every word he said, almost every breath was accompanied by wheezing. Consumption was visible to a very strong degree. It seemed that he had no more than two, three weeks to live..."
Ippolit Terentyev in Dostoevsky’s world is one of the most “main” suicides (along with such heroes as, ...), although his suicide attempt was unsuccessful. But the point is the very idea of suicide, which consumed him, became his idée fixe, became his essence. In addition to Ippolit, many of the characters in “The Idiot” and even from the main ones ( , ) now and then dream and talk about suicide, so, apparently, it is no coincidence that in the preliminary plans for Terentyev, this - not one of the main - hero, a significant note appears - entry: “Ippolit is the main axis of the entire novel...” Yesterday’s very young high school student, Ippolit Terentyev, was sentenced to death by consumption. Before his imminent death, he needs to resolve the most fundamental question: was there any meaning in his birth and life? And from this follows another - even more global - question: is there any meaning in life at all? And from this arises the most comprehensive question of human existence on earth, exciting and tormenting Dostoevsky himself: does immortality exist? It is, again, very significant that in the preparatory materials Hippolytus is practically compared with Hamlet with the question entry: “To live or not to live?..” In this sense, Terentyev is, as it were, the forerunner of Kirillov from “Demons”. It is important to emphasize that, as is often the case with Dostoevsky, he entrusts his innermost thoughts and problems to a hero who, it would seem, is not at all likeable: “Ippolit Terentyev,” the latter squealed unexpectedly in a shrill voice...” “Squealed in a shrill” - this strong even for Dostoevsky. And this refrain will be persistently repeated: “shout out shrilly<...> in the voice of Hippolytus,” “Ippolit screeched again,” “Ippolit screeched,” “Ippolit screeched,” etc., etc. In just one scene, on just one page of the novel, Hippolyte “squeals” four times - each time as soon as he opens his mouth. With such a “gift” it is difficult to arouse sympathy among others and make them agree with your arguments, even if you are one hundred percent right. But this is not enough. Hippolyte, as can be seen from his behavior and as he openly admits in his confession, in his “Necessary Explanation” before his death, in his relationships with others does not forget about the fundamental law of life formulated by himself: “people are created to torment each other.. But perhaps the following extravagant passage from the “Explanation” characterizes his nature, his state of mind even more clearly: “There are people who find extreme pleasure in their irritable touchiness, and especially when it comes to them (which always happens very quickly). ) to the last limit; at this moment, it even seems more pleasant for them to be offended than not to be offended...” Ippolit’s shrillness testifies to his chronically excited state, to a continuous attack of irritable touchiness. This irritable touchiness is like a protective mask. Because of his illness, he feels defective, he suspects that everyone and everything is laughing at him, that he is disgusting to everyone, that no one needs him and, in the end, is not even interesting. Moreover, we must not forget that this is, in fact, still just a boy, a teenager (almost the same age as a “future teenager”!) with all the complexes and ambitions that come with age. Hippolytus, for example, really wants to be a “teacher.” “After all, you all really love beauty and grace of forms, that’s all you stand for, isn’t it? (I have long suspected that only for them!)...,” he reprimands the whole society of adults gathered in the room, as if imitating from the story “The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants.” Ruthless, noticing this trait in poor Ippolit, cruelly ridicules him and mocks him: “... I wanted to ask you, Mr. Terentyev, is it true that I heard that you are of the opinion that all you have to do is talk to people through the window for a quarter of an hour, and he will immediately agree with you on everything and will immediately follow you...” Ippolit confirms: yes, he said and affirmed this. So, he feels in himself the gift of a preacher, or rather, an agitator-propagandist, for he considers himself an atheist. However, atheism weighs on him, atheism is not enough for him: “And you know that I’m not eighteen years old: I’ve been lying on this pillow for so long, and I’ve looked through this window for so long, and I’ve thought about so much. .. about everyone... what... U dead years doesn't happen, you know.<...>I suddenly thought: these are these people, and they will never exist again, and never! And the trees too - there will be one brick wall, red<...>you know, I am convinced that nature is very mocking... You said just now that I am an atheist, but you know that this nature...”
At this point, Ippolit broke off his confessional thought, again suspecting that his listeners were laughing at him, but his melancholy from the burden of feigned atheism bursts out uncontrollably, and he, a little later, continues: “Oh, how much I wanted! I don’t want anything now, I don’t want to want anything, I promised myself that I wouldn’t want anything anymore; let them, let them search for the truth without me! Yes, nature is mocking! Why does she,” he suddenly caught up with fervor, “why does she create the best creatures in order to then laugh at them? She did it in such a way that the only creature who was recognized on earth as perfection... she did it in such a way that, having shown him to people, she intended to tell him what was causing so much blood to be shed, that if it had been shed all at once , then people would probably choke! Oh, it's good that I'm dying! I, too, would probably have told some terrible lie, nature would have let me down like that!.. I did not corrupt anyone... I wanted to live for the happiness of all people, for the discovery and for the proclamation of the truth...<...>and what happened? Nothing! It turns out that you despise me! Therefore, the fool, therefore, is not needed, therefore, it’s time! And I couldn’t leave any memories! Not a sound, not a trace, not a single deed, not a single belief spread!.. Don't laugh at a fool! Forget it! Forget everything... forget it, please don't be so cruel! Do you know that if this consumption had not turned up, I would have killed myself...” The mention of Christ is especially important here (and what a nuance: Hippolytus does not call “atheist”, he does not dare to call Him by name!) and recognition in suicidal ideation. Hippolytus all the time seems to be walking and moving (towards death) along a narrow board between atheism and faith. “And what does it matter to all of us what happens next!..”, he exclaims and then immediately, after that, takes out of his pocket a package with his “Necessary Explanation”, which gives him at least some hope that - no, all of him won't die...
However, this teenager takes as the epigraph to his confession the most atheistic-cynical exclamation in the history of mankind, attributed to Louis XV: “Après moi le déluge!” ( fr.“After us there might be a flood!” Yes, in form and in essence, “My Necessary Explanation” is a confession. And the confession is dying. Moreover, what the listeners do not immediately guess is the confession of a suicide, for Hippolytus decided to artificially speed up his already imminent end. Hence the extreme frankness. Hence there is a clear touch of cynicism, much of it, as in the case with, feigned. Hippolytus is tormented by torment, the resentment of an unrevealed person, not understood, not appreciated. First of all, what is shocking in Hippolytus’s confession is the incredibly creepy dream about the “shell animal,” described and reproduced by him on the first pages of his “Explanation”: “I fell asleep<...> and saw that I was in the same room (but not in mine). The room is larger and higher than mine, better furnished, bright, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a sofa and my bed, large and wide and covered with a green silk quilt. But in this room I noticed one terrible animal, some kind of monster. It was like a scorpion, but not a scorpion, but nastier and much more terrible, and, it seems, precisely because there are no such animals in nature, and that it appeared to me on purpose, and that there seemed to be some kind of secret in this itself. I saw it very well: it is brown and shell-like, a reptile reptile, four inches long, at the head two fingers thick, gradually thinner towards the tail, so that the very tip of the tail is no more than a tenth of an inch thick. An inch from the head, from the body, emerge at an angle of forty-five degrees, two paws, one on each side, two inches long, so that the whole animal appears, when viewed from above, in the form of a trident. I didn’t see the head, but I saw two antennae, not long, in the form of two strong needles, also brown. There are the same two antennae at the end of the tail and at the end of each of the paws, so there are eight antennae in total. The animal ran around the room very quickly, bracing itself with its paws and tail, and when it ran, both the body and paws wriggled like snakes, with extraordinary speed, despite the shell, and it was very disgusting to look at. I was terribly afraid that it would sting me; I was told that it was poisonous, but I was most tormented by who sent it to my room, what they wanted to do to me, and what was the secret? It hid under the chest of drawers, under the closet, and crawled into the corners. I sat on a chair with my legs and tucked them under me. It quickly ran diagonally across the entire room and disappeared somewhere near my chair. I looked around in fear, but since I was sitting with my legs crossed, I hoped that it would not crawl onto the chair. Suddenly I heard behind me, almost at my head, some crackling rustling; I turned around and saw that the reptile was crawling up the wall and was already level with my head, and was even touching my hair with its tail, which was spinning and squirming with extreme speed. I jumped up, and the animal disappeared. I was afraid to lie down on the bed, lest it crawl under the pillow. My mother and some friend of hers came into the room. They began to catch the reptile, but they were calmer than me and were not even afraid. But they didn't understand anything. Suddenly the reptile crawled out again; This time he crawled very quietly and as if with some special intention, slowly twisting, which was even more disgusting, again diagonally across the room, towards the doors. Then my mother opened the door and called out to Norma, our dog - a huge thorn, black and shaggy; died five years ago. She rushed into the room and stood rooted to the spot over the reptile. The reptile also stopped, but still wriggled and clicked the ends of its paws and tail on the floor. Animals cannot feel mystical fear, if I am not mistaken; but at that moment it seemed to me that in Norma’s fear there was something very extraordinary, as if it was also almost mystical, and that she, therefore, also had a presentiment, like me, that there was something fatal in the beast and what It's a secret. She slowly moved back in front of the reptile, which was quietly and carefully crawling towards her; he seemed to want to suddenly rush at her and sting her. But despite all the fear, Norma looked terribly angrily, although she was trembling with all her limbs. Suddenly she slowly bared her terrible teeth, opened her entire huge red mouth, adjusted herself, contrived, made up her mind and suddenly grabbed the reptile with her teeth. The reptile must have jerked hard to get out, so Norma caught it again, already in flight, and twice took it into herself with her entire mouth, all on the fly, as if swallowing it. The shell cracked on her teeth; the animal's tail and paws coming out of its mouth moved with terrible speed. Suddenly Norma squealed pitifully: the reptile had managed to sting her tongue. With a squeal and howl, she opened her mouth in pain, and I saw that the chewed reptile was still moving across her mouth, releasing from its half-crushed body onto her tongue a lot of white juice, similar to the juice of a crushed black cockroach...”
Living with such a shell-like insect in your dreams, or more precisely, in your soul, is completely unbearable and impossible. This terrible allegory can even be understood and deciphered as follows: the shelled animal not only settled and grew up in the soul of Hippolytus, but in general his entire soul, under the influence of cultivated cynical atheism, turned into a shelled insect... And then the image of the shelled insect is transformed into a concrete image of a tarantula: in one of the next delusional nightmares, “someone seemed to lead” Hippolytus by the hand, “with a candle in his hands,” and showed him “some kind of huge and disgusting tarantula,” which is “that very dark, deaf and an omnipotent being” who rules the world, mercilessly destroys life, denies immortality. And the tarantula, in turn, in Hippolyta’s new nightmare is personified with..., who appeared to him in the form of a ghost. It was after this disgusting vision that Hippolytus finally decided to commit suicide. But it is especially important that the image of the tarantula and the ghost of Rogozhin (the future murderer - the destroyer of life and beauty!) follow and appear immediately after Ippolit’s memories of the picture that struck him in the Rogozhins’ house. This is Hans Holbein the Younger's painting "The Dead Christ". On canvas close up Jesus Christ, freshly taken from the cross, is depicted, moreover, in the most naturalistic, hyper-realistic manner - according to legend, the artist painted from life, and the real corpse of a drowned man served as his “model”. Earlier, there, at the Rogozhins, Prince Myshkin saw this picture and in a dialogue about it with Parfen, he heard from the latter that he loved to look at this picture. “Yes, this picture may cause someone else to lose their faith!” the prince cries out. And Rogozhin calmly admits: “Even that disappears...” According to the statement, Myshkin’s thought-exclamation is a literal reproduction of Dostoevsky’s immediate impression of Holbein’s painting when he saw it for the first time in Basel.
Thoughts about a voluntary quick death had flashed through Hippolyte’s irritated brain before. For example, in the scene when they stopped on the bridge and began to look at the Neva, Ippolit suddenly bends dangerously over the railing and asks his companion if he knows what just came into his, Ippolit’s, head? Bakhmutov immediately guesses and exclaims: “Should I really throw myself into the water?..” “Perhaps he read my thought in my face,” confirms Terentyev in “A Necessary Explanation.” In the end, Hippolytus finally decides to destroy himself, because “he is unable to obey dark force, taking the form of a tarantula." And here another fundamental and global idea-problem arises, which inherently accompanies the suicidal topic, namely, the behavior of a person before the act of suicide, when human and, in general, all earthly and heavenly laws no longer have power over him. A person is given the opportunity to step over this line of boundless permissiveness, and this step is directly dependent on the degree of a person’s anger at everything and everyone, on the degree of his cynical atheism, and on the degree of insanity, finally. Hippolyte reaches this thought, which is extremely dangerous for those around him, and slips into it. He was even amused by the idea that if he had decided to kill ten people now, then no court would have power over him and no punishment would be terrible for him, and he, on the contrary, last days would be spent in the comfort of a prison hospital under the supervision of doctors. Hippolytus, however, argues on this hot topic in connection with consumption, but, it is clear that a consumptive patient who decides to commit suicide is even more willful in crime. By the way, later, when the suicide scene happened and ended, Evgeny Pavlovich Radomsky, in a conversation with Prince Myshkin, expresses a very poisonous and paradoxical conviction that Terentyev is unlikely to make a new suicide attempt, but he is quite capable of killing “ten people” before death and advises the prince to try not to become one of these ten...
In Hippolytus’ confession, the right of a terminally ill person to commit suicide is substantiated: “... who, in the name of what right, in the name of what motivation, would now want to challenge me for my right to these two or three weeks of my term? Who cares about this? Who exactly needs me to not only be sentenced, but also to honorably endure the sentence? Does anyone really need this? For morality? I also understand that if I, in the bloom of health and strength, had encroached on my life, which “could be useful to my neighbor,” etc., then morality could still reproach me, according to the old routine, for I disposed of my life without asking, or to what extent I myself know. But now, now that the sentence has already been read to me? What morality is needed beyond your life, and the last wheezing with which you will give up the last atom of life, listening to the consolations of the prince, who will certainly reach in his Christian proofs the happy thought that in essence it is even better that you are dying. (Christians like him always come to this idea: it’s their favorite hobby.)<...>Why do I need your nature, your Pavlovsk Park, your sunrises and sunsets, your blue sky and your all-satisfied faces, when did this whole feast, which has no end, begin with the fact that I was the only one considered superfluous? What is there to me in all this beauty, when every minute, every second I must and am now forced to know that even this tiny fly that is now buzzing around me in a ray of sunshine, and even a participant in this whole feast and chorus, knows its place? , loves him and is happy, but I just had a miscarriage, and it’s only due to my cowardice that I still haven’t wanted to understand this!..”
It would seem that Hippolytus is proving his right to dispose own life before people, but in fact he is trying to declare his right, of course, before heaven and the mention of Christians here is very eloquent and, in this regard, unambiguous. And then Hippolytus directly blurts out: “Religion! Eternal life I admit it, and perhaps I always have. Let the consciousness be ignited by will higher power, let it look back at the world and say: “I am!”, and let it suddenly be ordered to be destroyed by this higher power, because there it is for some reason - and even without an explanation for what - it is necessary, let it all I admit this, but again the eternal question: why was my humility needed? Is it really not possible to just eat me without requiring me to praise the thing that ate me? Will anyone really be offended by the fact that I don’t want to wait two weeks? I don’t believe this...” And his completely hidden thoughts on this especially burning topic for him break through at the end of “A Necessary Explanation”: “And yet, even despite all my desire, I could never imagine that future life and there is no providence. It is most likely that all this exists, but that we do not understand anything about the future life and its laws. But if it is so difficult and completely impossible to understand, then will I really be responsible for the fact that I was unable to comprehend the incomprehensible?..”
The struggle between faith and unbelief through an effort of will ends in Hippolytus with the victory of atheism, the affirmation of self-will, the justification of rebellion against God, and he formulates the most fundamental postulate of suicide: “I will die, directly looking at the source of strength and life, and I will not want this life! If I had the power not to be born, I probably would not have accepted existence on such mocking conditions. But I still have the power to die, although I am giving back what has already been counted. Not great power, not great rebellion.
Last explanation: I am not dying because I am unable to endure these three weeks; Oh, I would have enough strength, and if I wanted, I would already be sufficiently consoled by the mere consciousness of the insult inflicted on me; but I don't French poet and I don’t want such consolations. Finally, a temptation: nature has limited my activities to such an extent with its three-week sentence that, perhaps, suicide is the only thing that I can still manage to start and finish according to my own will. Well, maybe I want to take advantage of the last opportunity of the matter? Protest is sometimes no small matter..."
The act of suicide, so spectacularly conceived by Ippolit, carefully prepared and arranged by him, did not work out, it fell through: in the heat of the moment, he forgot to put a primer in the pistol. But he pulled the trigger, but he fully experienced the moment-second of transition to death. He nevertheless died of consumption. “Ippolit died in terrible excitement and somewhat earlier than expected, two weeks after the death of Nastasya Filippovna...”
Ippolit Terentyev is one of the characters in F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot”. This is a seventeen or eighteen year old youth who is mortally ill with consumption.
Everything in Hippolyta’s appearance speaks of his illness and imminent death. He is terribly emaciated and thin, like a skeleton, has a pale yellow complexion, on which an expression of irritation appears every now and then.
Hippolytus is very weak and needs rest every now and then. He speaks in a “shrill, cracked” voice, while constantly coughing into his handkerchief, which greatly frightens those around him.
Terentyev only causes pity and irritation among his friends. Many of them cannot wait for the young man to finally die. However, this is exactly what the young man himself wants for himself.
One day, at an evening in honor of the birthday of Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin, Ippolit performs with his own literary composition"My necessary explanation." After reading this work, the hero tries to shoot himself, but it turns out that the gun is not loaded.
His friend Kolya Ivolgin sincerely sympathizes with Ippolit. He supports the young man and even wants to rent a separate apartment with him, but there is no money for this. Prince Myshkin also treats Terentyev kindly, despite the fact that Ippolit often communicates sarcastically with him.
At the end of the novel, about two weeks after the murder
1.3. The revolt of Hippolytus.
Ippolit Terentyev's rebellion, which found expression in his confession and intention to kill himself, is polemically directed against the ideas of Prince Myshkin and Dostoevsky himself. According to Myshkin, compassion, which is the main and perhaps the only “law of existence” of all humanity and “single goodness,” can lead to the moral revival of people and, in the future, to social harmony.
Hippolytus has his own view on this: “individual good” and even the organization of “public alms” do not solve the issue of personal freedom.
Let us consider the motives that led Hippolytus to the “rebellion”, the highest manifestation which should have been suicide. In our opinion, there are four of them.
The first motive, it is only outlined in “The Idiot”, and will continue in “Demons”, is rebellion for the sake of happiness. Hippolytus says that he would like to live for the happiness of all people and for the “proclamation of the truth”, that only a quarter of an hour would be enough for him to speak and convince everyone. He does not deny “individual good,” but if for Myshkin it is a means of organizing, changing and reviving society, then for Ippolit this measure does not solve the main issue - about the freedom and well-being of mankind. He blames people for their poverty: if they put up with this situation, then they themselves are to blame, they were defeated by “blind nature.” He is firmly convinced that not everyone is capable of rebellion. This is only for strong people.
This gives rise to the second motive for rebellion and suicide as its manifestation - to declare one’s will to protest. Only selected, strong individuals are capable of such an expression of will. Having come to the idea that it is he, Ippolit Terentyev, who can do this, he “forgets” the original goal (the happiness of people and his own) and sees the acquisition of personal freedom in the very expression of will. Will and self-will become both a means and a goal. “Oh, rest assured that Columbus was happy not when he discovered America, but when he discovered it... The point is in life, in one life - in its discovery, continuous and eternal, and not in the discovery at all!” (VIII; 327). For Hippolyte, the results that his actions can lead to are no longer important; the process of action and protest itself is important to him; it is important to prove that he can, that he has the will to do it.
Since the means (expression of will) also becomes the goal, it no longer matters what to do or in what to show will. But Hippolytus is limited in time (the doctors “gave” him a few weeks) and he decides that: “suicide is the only thing that I can still manage to start and finish according to my own will” (VIII; 344).
The third motive for rebellion is disgust at the very idea of gaining freedom through expression of will, which takes on ugly forms. In a nightmare, life and all the surrounding nature appear to Hippolytus in the form of a disgusting insect, from which it is difficult to hide. Everything around is pure “mutual devouring.” Hippolyte concludes: if life is so disgusting, then life is not worth living. This is not only a rebellion, but also a surrender to life. These beliefs of Hippolyte become even more solid after he saw Hans Holbein’s painting “Christ in the Tomb” in Rogozhin’s house. “When you look at this corpse of an exhausted man, one special and curious question arises: if such a corpse (and it certainly should have been exactly like that) was seen by all his disciples, his main future apostles, saw the women who walked behind him and stood at the cross, everyone who believed in him and adored him, then how could they believe, looking at such a corpse, that this martyr would rise again?.. When looking at this picture, nature seems to be in the form of some huge, inexorable, dumb beast... ”, which swallowed “dumbly and insensitively a great and priceless creature, which alone was worth all of nature and all its laws” (VIII, 339).
This means that there are laws of nature that stronger than God who allows such mockery of his best creations - people.
Hippolytus asks the question: how to become stronger than these laws, how to overcome the fear of them and of their highest manifestation - death? And he comes to the idea that suicide is the very means that can overcome the fear of death and thereby get out of the power of blind nature and circumstances. The idea of suicide, according to Dostoevsky, is a logical consequence of atheism - the denial of God and immortality. The Bible repeatedly says that “the beginning of wisdom, morality and obedience to the law is the fear of God. We are talking here not about the simple emotion of fear, but about the incommensurability of two such quantities as God and man, and also about the fact that the latter is obliged to recognize the unconditional authority of God and His right to undivided power over himself.” And this is not at all about the fear of afterlife, hellish torment.
Hippolytus does not take into account the most important and fundamental idea of Christianity - the body is only a vessel for the immortal soul, the basis and purpose of human existence on earth - love and faith. “The covenant that Christ left people is a covenant selfless love. There is neither painful humiliation nor exaltation in it: “A new commandment I give to you, love one another, as I have loved you” (John XIII, 34).” But in Hippolyte’s heart there is no faith, no love, and the only hope is in the revolver. That is why he suffers and suffers. But suffering and torment should lead a person to repentance and humility. In the case of Hippolytus, his confession-self-execution is not repentance because Hippolytus still remains closed in his own pride (arrogance). He is not able to ask for forgiveness, and, therefore, cannot forgive others, cannot sincerely repent.
Hippolyte's rebellion and his capitulation to life are interpreted by him as something even more necessary, when the very idea of gaining freedom through a declaration of will in practice takes on ugly forms in Rogozhin's actions.
“One of the functions of the image of Rogozhin in the novel is precisely to be a “double” of Ippolit in bringing his idea of expression of will to its logical conclusion. When Ippolit begins reading his confession, Rogozhin is the only one who understands him from the very beginning main idea“There’s a lot to talk about,” said Rogozhin, who had been silent all the time. Ippolit looked at him, and when their eyes met, Rogozhin grinned bitterly and biliously and slowly said: “This is not how this object should be handled, guy, not like that...” (VIII; 320).
Rogozhin and Ippolit are brought together by the power of protest, manifested in the desire to express their will.” The difference between them is, in our opinion, that one declares it in the act of suicide, and the other - murder. Rogozhin for Ippolit is also a product of an ugly and terrible reality, this is precisely why he is unpleasant to him, which aggravates the thought of suicide. “This special incident, which I described in such detail,” says Ippolit about Rogozhin’s visit to him during delirium, “was the reason that I completely “decided”... It is impossible to remain in a life that takes such strange forms that offend me. This ghost humiliated me” (VIII; 341). However, this motive of suicide as an act of “rebellion” is not the main one.
The fourth motive is associated with the idea of fighting against God and this is what, in our opinion, becomes the main one. It is closely related to the above motives, prepared by them and follows from thoughts about the existence of God and immortality. It was here that Dostoevsky’s thoughts about logical suicide had an impact. If there is no God and immortality, then the path to suicide (and murder, and other crimes) is open, this is the writer’s position. The thought of God is needed as moral ideal. He is gone - and we are witnessing the triumph of the principle “after me, even a flood,” taken by Hippolytus as an epigraph for his confession.
According to Dostoevsky, this principle can only be opposed by faith - a moral ideal, and faith without evidence, without reasoning. But the rebel Hippolytus opposes this, he does not want to blindly believe, he wants to understand everything logically.
Hippolytus rebels against the need to humble himself before the circumstances of life only because it is all in the hands of God and everything will pay off in the next world. “Is it really not possible to simply eat me, without demanding from me praise for what ate me?”, “Why was my humility needed?” - the hero is indignant (VIII; 343-344). Moreover, the main thing that deprives a person of freedom, according to Hippolytus, and makes him a toy in the hands of blind nature, is death, which will come sooner or later, but it is unknown when it will be. A person must obediently wait for her, not freely managing the duration of his life. For Hippolytus, this is unbearable: “... who, in the name of what right, in the name of what motivation would want to challenge me now for my right to these two or three weeks of my term?” (VIII; 342). Hippolytus wants to decide for himself how long to live and when to die.
Dostoevsky believes that these claims of Ippolit logically follow from his disbelief in the immortality of the soul. The young man asks the question: how to become stronger than the laws of nature, how to overcome the fear of them and of their highest manifestation - death? And Hippolyte comes to the idea that suicide is the very means that can overcome the fear of death and thereby get out of the power of blind nature and circumstances. The idea of suicide, according to Dostoevsky, is a logical consequence of atheism - the denial of immortality, illness of the soul.
It is very important to note the place in Hippolytus’s confession where he deliberately draws attention to the fact that his idea of suicide, his “main” conviction, does not depend on his illness. “Let anyone who gets into the hands of my “Explanation” and who has the patience to read it, consider me a madman or even a high school student, or, most likely, sentenced to death... I declare that my reader will be mistaken and that my conviction is complete regardless of my death sentence" (VIII; 327). As you can see, one should not exaggerate the fact of Hippolyte’s illness, as A.P. Skaftymov did, for example: “Hippolyte’s consumption plays the role of a reagent that should serve as a manifestation of the given properties of his spirit... a tragedy of moral deficiency was needed... resentment.”
Thus, in Hippolytus's rebellion, his denial of life is indisputably consistent and compelling.
CHAPTER 2. Transformation of the image " funny man": from logical suicide to preacher.
2.1. “The Dream of a Funny Man” and its place in the “Diary”
writer."
The fantastic story “The Dream of a Funny Man” was first published in the “Diary of a Writer” in April 1877 (the early draft dates back to approximately the first half of April, the second to the end of April). It is interesting to note that the hero of this story - a “funny man”, as he characterizes himself already in the first line of the story - had his dream in “last November,” namely November 3, and last November, that is, in November 1876, Another fantastic story was published in the “Diary of a Writer” - “The Meek” (about the untimely death of a young life). Coincidence? But, be that as it may, “The Dream of a Funny Man” develops philosophical theme and solves the ideological problem of the story “The Meek One”. These two stories include one more - “Bobok” - and our attention is presented to the original cycle of fantastic stories published on the pages of the “Diary of a Writer”.
Note that in 1876, on the pages of the “Diary of a Writer,” a confession of a suicide “out of boredom” entitled “The Verdict” also appeared.
“The Verdict” gives the confession of a suicidal atheist who suffers from the lack of higher meaning in his life. He is ready to give up the happiness of temporary existence, because he is sure that tomorrow “all humanity will turn into nothing, into the former chaos” (XXIII, 146). Life becomes meaningless and unnecessary if it is temporary and everything ends with the disintegration of matter: “... our planet is not eternal and humanity’s term is the same moment as mine” (XXIII, 146). Possible future harmony will not save us from corrosive cosmic pessimism. The “logical suicide” thinks: “And no matter how rationally, joyfully, righteously and holy humanity has settled on earth, destruction is still inevitable,” “all this will also be equal to the same zero tomorrow” (XXIII; 147). For a person who is aware of spiritual freedom in himself eternal beginning, life that arose according to some omnipotent, dead laws of nature is offensive...
This suicide - a consistent materialist - proceeds from the fact that it is not consciousness that creates the world, but nature that created it and its consciousness. And this is what he cannot forgive nature; what right did she have to create him “conscious”, therefore “suffering”? And in general, wasn’t man created as some kind of blatant test to see if such a creature could live on earth?
And the “suicide out of boredom,” citing quite convincing logical arguments, decides: since he cannot destroy the nature that produced him, he destroys himself alone “solely out of boredom, enduring a tyranny for which there is no one to blame” (XXIII; 148). According to E. Hartmann, “the desire for individual negation of will is just as absurd and aimless, even more absurd than suicide.” He considered the end of the world process necessary and inevitable due to the internal logic of its development, and religious grounds do not play a role here. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, on the contrary, argued that a person is not able to live if he does not have faith in God and in the immortality of the soul.
This was Dostoevsky’s thought at the end of 1876, and six months after “The Verdict” he published the fantastic story “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” and in it he recognized the possibility of a “golden age of humanity” on earth.
As for the genre, Dostoevsky “filled the story with deep philosophical meaning, gave it psychological expressiveness and serious ideological significance. He proved that a story can solve such problems high genres(poem, tragedy, novel, story) as a problem moral choice, conscience, truth, meaning of life, place and destiny of man.” Anything could be a story - any life situation or incident - from love story before the hero's sleep.
What others see (all others, not some), and, relying on the sum of everything, they see everything that others do not see." Both Pascal and Dostoevsky can be called strategic thinkers who considered the fundamental projects for the development of the world "with God" and “without God,” in the combination of the main signs of greatness and poverty in the dramatic mystery of human existence, and the very methodology of their thinking...
At the Well in “Miserables” by Victor Hugo; it pierces the heart once, and then the wound remains forever” (13; 382). Absolutely special role in Dostoevsky’s work he played Hugo’s novel “The Last Day of a Man Condemned to Death” (1828) - one of the first in European literature samples of a psychological novel, the content of which was not external events, and the movement of thought isolated from people, locked in...
Life and gives life “for a single glance.” Akhmatova’s woman acts as the guardian of that lofty and eternal, tragic and painful feeling, whose name is love. Akhmatovsky Petersburg (materials for essay) Petersburg in the literature of the last century existed in two traditions. The first is Pushkin’s city, “beauty and wonder of midnight lands,” proud and beautiful, the city is the fate of Russia, “a window into...
Herbart translated the “statics and dynamics of ideas” into a language accessible to empirical analysis. The transition from speculative constructions, which included the concept of the unconscious psyche (in particular, the philosophy of Schopenhauer), to use in experimental science began in mid-19th century century, when the study of the functions of the sense organs and higher nerve centers prompted natural scientists to turn to...