“Notes from the House of the Dead” can rightfully be called the book of the century. If Dostoevsky had left behind only “Notes from the House of the Dead,” he would have gone down in the history of Russian and world literature as its original celebrity. It is no coincidence that critics assigned him, during his lifetime, a metonymic “middle name” - “the author of Notes from the House of the Dead” and used it instead of the writer’s surname. This book of Dostoevsky's books caused, as he accurately anticipated back in 1859, i.e. at the beginning of work on it, interest was “most capital” and it became a sensational literary and social event of the era.
The reader was shocked by pictures from the hitherto unknown world of Siberian “military hard labor” (military was harder than civilian), honestly and courageously painted by the hand of its prisoner - a master of psychological prose. “Notes from the House of the Dead” made a strong (though not equal) impression on A.I. Herzen, L.N. Tolstoy, I.S. Turgeneva, N.G. Chernyshevsky, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin and others. To the triumphant, but over the years, as if already half-forgotten glory of the author of “Poor People”, a powerful refreshing addition was added by the newly-minted glory of the great martyr and Dante’s House of the Dead at the same time. The book not only restored, but raised Dostoevsky’s literary and civic popularity to new heights.
However, the existence of “Notes from the House of the Dead” in Russian literature cannot be called idyllic. The censorship found fault with them stupidly and absurdly. Their “mixed” newspaper and magazine initial publication (the weekly Russkiy Mir and the magazine Vremya) lasted more than two years. The enthusiastic readership did not mean the understanding that Dostoevsky expected. He regarded the results of literary critical assessments of his book as disappointing: “In criticism”3<аписки>from Meurthe<вого>"Houses" means that Dostoevsky exposed the prisons, but now it is outdated. That's what they said in the book<ых>shops<нах>, offering another, closer denunciation of the prisons" (Notebooks 1876-1877). Critics belittled the significance and lost the meaning of Notes from the House of the Dead. Such one-sided and opportunistic approaches to “Notes from the House of the Dead” only as an “exposure” of the penitentiary-convict system and, figuratively and symbolically, in general the “house of the Romanovs” (V.I. Lenin’s assessment), an institution of state power, have not been completely overcome and have not yet been completely overcome. so far. The writer, meanwhile, did not focus on “accusatory” goals, and they did not go beyond the bounds of immanent literary and artistic necessity. That is why politically biased interpretations of the book are essentially fruitless. As always, Dostoevsky here, as a heart expert, is immersed in the elements of the personality of modern man, developing his concept of the characterological motives of people’s behavior in conditions of extreme social evil and violence.
The disaster that occurred in 1849 had dire consequences for Petrashevsky Dostoevsky. A prominent expert and historian of the royal prison M.N. Gernet eeriely, but without exaggerating, comments on Dostoevsky’s stay in the Omsk prison: “One must be amazed that the writer did not die here” ( Gernet M.N. History of the royal prison. M., 1961. T. 2. P. 232). However, Dostoevsky took full advantage of the unique opportunity to comprehend up close and from the inside, in all the details inaccessible in the wild, the life of the common people, constrained by hellish circumstances, and to lay the foundations of his own literary knowledge of the people. “You are unworthy to talk about the people; you understand nothing about them. You did not live with him, but I lived with him,” he wrote to his opponents a quarter of a century later (Notebooks 1875-1876). “Notes from the House of the Dead” is a book worthy of the people (peoples) of Russia, based entirely on the grave personal experience writer.
The creative story of “Notes from the House of the Dead” begins with secret entries in “my convict notebook.”<ую>", which Dostoevsky, violating the provisions of the law, led in the Omsk prison; from Semipalatinsk sketches “from memories<...>stay in hard labor" (letter to A.N. Maikov dated January 18, 1856) and letters of 1854-1859. (M.M. and A.M. Dostoevsky, A.N. Maikov, N.D. Fonvizina, etc.), as well as from oral stories among people close to him. The book was conceived and created for many years and surpassed in the duration of the creative time devoted to it. Hence, in particular, its genre-stylistic finishing, unusual for Dostoevsky in its thoroughness (not a shadow of the style of “Poor People” or), the elegant simplicity of the narrative is entirely the peak and perfection of form.
The problem of defining the genre of Notes from the House of the Dead has puzzled researchers. In the set of definitions proposed for the “Notes...” there are almost all types of literary prose: memoirs, book, novel, essay, research... And yet none of them matches the original in its totality of features. The aesthetic phenomenon of this original work consists of inter-genre borderliness and hybridity. Only the author of “Notes from the House of the Dead” was able to control the combination of document and address with the poetry of complex artistic and psychological writing that determined the unique originality of the book.
The elementary position of the recollector was rejected by Dostoevsky initially (see the instruction: “My personality will disappear” - in a letter to his brother Mikhail dated October 9, 1859) as unacceptable for a number of reasons. The fact of his condemnation to hard labor, well known in itself, did not represent a forbidden subject in the censorship-political sense (with the accession of Alexander II, censorship relaxations were outlined). The fictitious figure who ended up in prison for murdering his wife could not mislead anyone either. In essence, it was the mask of Dostoevsky the convict, which everyone understood. In other words, the autobiographical (and therefore valuable and captivating) story about the Omsk penal servitude and its inhabitants of 1850-1854, although overshadowed by a certain eye on censorship, was written according to the laws of an artistic text, free from the self-sufficient and restrained memory of the everyday personality memoir empiricism.
So far, no satisfactory explanation has been offered of how the writer managed to achieve a harmonious combination in a single creative process of chronicling (factography) with personal confession, knowledge of the people with self-knowledge, analyticity of thought, philosophical meditation with the epic nature of the image, meticulous microscopic analysis of psychological reality with fiction entertaining and concisely artless, Pushkin's type of storytelling. Moreover, “Notes from the House of the Dead” was an encyclopedia of Siberian hard labor in the mid-nineteenth century. The external and internal life of its population is covered - with the laconicism of the story - to the maximum, with unsurpassed completeness. Dostoevsky did not ignore a single idea of the convict consciousness. The scenes from the life of the prison, chosen by the author for scrupulous consideration and leisurely comprehension, are recognized as stunning: “Bathhouse”, “Performance”, “Hospital”, “Claim”, “Exit from hard labor”. Their large, panoramic plan does not obscure the mass of all-encompassing particulars and details, no less piercing and necessary in their ideological and artistic significance in the overall humanistic composition of the work (the penny alms given by the girl to Goryanchikov; the undressing of the shackled men in the bathhouse; the flowers of the prisoner’s argotic eloquence and etc.)
The visual philosophy of “Notes from the House of the Dead” proves: “a realist in the highest sense” - as Dostoevsky would later call himself - did not allow his most humane (by no means “cruel”!) talent to deviate one iota from the truth of life, no matter how unpleasant and tragic it was neither was. With his book about the House of the Dead, he courageously challenged the literature of half-truths about man. Goryanchikov the narrator (behind whom Dostoevsky himself visibly and tangibly stands), observing a sense of proportion and tact, looks into all corners human soul, without avoiding the most distant and darkest. Thus, not only the savage and sadistic antics of prison prisoners (Gazin, Akulkin’s husband) and executioners-executors by position (lieutenants Zherebyatnikov, Smekalov) came into his field of vision. The anatomy of the ugly and the vicious knows no bounds. “Brothers in misfortune” steal and drink the Bible, talk “about the most unnatural actions, with the most childishly cheerful laughter,” get drunk and fight on holy days, rave in their sleep with knives and “Raskolnikov’s” axes, go crazy, engage in sodomy (obscene “companionship” to which Sirotkin and Sushilov belong) get used to all sorts of abominations. One after another, from private observations of the current life of convict people, generalizing aphoristic judgments and maxims follow: “Man is a creature that gets used to everything, and, I think, this is the best definition of him”; “There are people like tigers, eager to lick blood”; “It’s hard to imagine how human nature can be distorted,” etc. - then they will join the artistic philosophical and anthropological fund of the “Great Pentateuch” and “The Diary of a Writer.” Scientists are right when they consider it not “Notes from Underground”, but “Notes from the House of the Dead” to be the beginning of many beginnings in the poetics and ideology of Dostoevsky, a novelist and publicist. It is in this work that the origins of the main literary ideological, thematic and compositional complexes and solutions of Dostoevsky the artist: crime and punishment; voluptuous tyrants and their victims; freedom and money; suffering and love; the shackled “our extraordinary people” and the nobles - “iron noses” and “fly-drags”; the chronicler narrator and the people and events he describes in the spirit of diary confession. In “Notes from the House of the Dead,” the writer received a blessing for his further creative path.
With all the transparency of the artistic-autobiographical relationship between Dostoevsky (author; prototype; imaginary publisher) and Goryanchikov (narrator; character; imaginary memoirist), there is no reason to simplify them. A complex poetic and psychological mechanism is hidden and operates latently here. It has been correctly noted: “Dostoevsky typified his cautious fate” (Zakharov). This allowed him to remain in “Notes...” himself, the unconditional Dostoevsky, and at the same time, in principle, following the example of Pushkin’s Belkin, not to be him. The advantage of such a creative “dual world” is freedom artistic thought, which, however, comes from actually documented, historically confirmed sources.
The ideological and artistic significance of “Notes from the House of the Dead” seems immeasurable, and the questions raised in them are innumerable. This is - without exaggeration - a kind of poetic universe of Dostoevsky, a short version of his complete confession about man. Here is an indirect summary of the colossal spiritual experience of a genius who lived for four years “in a heap” with people from the people, robbers, murderers, vagabonds, when, without receiving the proper creative outlet, “inner work was in full swing,” and rare, from time to time, fragmentary entries in the “Siberian Notebook” only fueled the passion for full-blooded literary pursuits.
Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov thinks on the scale of the entire geographically and nationally great Russia. A paradox arises in the image of space. Behind the prison fence (“palami”) of the House of the Dead, the outlines of an immense power appear in dotted lines: the Danube, Taganrog, Starodubye, Chernigov, Poltava, Riga, St. Petersburg, Moscow, “a village near Moscow,” Kursk, Dagestan, the Caucasus, Perm, Siberia, Tyumen, Tobolsk , Irtysh, Omsk, Kyrgyz “free Steppe” (in Dostoevsky’s dictionary this word is written with a capital letter), Ust-Kamenogorsk, Eastern Siberia, Nerchinsk, Petropavlovsk port. Accordingly, for sovereign thinking, America, the Black (Red) Sea, Mount Vesuvius, the island of Sumatra and, indirectly, France and Germany are mentioned. The narrator's living contact with the East is emphasized (oriental motifs of the “Steppe”, Muslim countries). This is consonant with the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional character of “Notes...”. The prison artel consists of Great Russians (including Siberians), Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Kalmyks, Tatars, “Circassians” - Lezgins, Chechens. Baklushin's story depicts the Russian-Baltic Germans. Named and, to one degree or another, active in “Notes from the House of the Dead” are the Kyrgyz (Kazakhs), “Muslims,” Chukhonka, Armenian, Turks, Gypsies, Frenchman, Frenchwoman. The poetically determined scattering and cohesion of topoi and ethnic groups has its own, already “novelistic” expressive logic. Not only is the House of the Dead part of Russia, but Russia is also part of the House of the Dead.
The main spiritual conflict of Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov is connected with the theme of Russia: bewilderment and pain in the face of the fact of the class alienation of the people from the noble intelligentsia, its best part. The chapter “Claim” contains the key to understanding what happened to the narrator-character and the author of the tragedy. Their attempt to stand in solidarity on the side of the rebels was rejected with deadly categoricality: they are - under no circumstances and never - “comrades” for their people. Exit from hard labor resolved the most painful problem for all prisoners: de jure and de facto, it was an end to prison bondage. The ending of “Notes from the House of the Dead” is bright and uplifting: “Freedom, new life, resurrection from the dead... What a glorious moment!” But the problem of separation from the people, not provided for by any legal codes in Russia, but which pierced Dostoevsky’s heart forever (“the robber taught me a lot” - Notebook 1875-1876), remained. It gradually - in the writer’s desire to solve it at least for himself - democratized the direction of Dostoevsky’s creative development and ultimately led him to a kind of pochvennik populism.
A modern researcher successfully calls “Notes from the House of the Dead” “a book about the people” (Tunimanov). Russian literature before Dostoevsky did not know anything like this. The central position of the folk theme in the conceptual basis of the book forces us to take it into account in the first place. “Notes...” testified to Dostoevsky’s enormous success in understanding the personality of the people. The content of “Notes from the House of the Dead” is not at all limited to what Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov personally saw and personally experienced. The other, no less significant half is what came to “Notes...” from the environment that closely surrounded the author-narrator, orally, “voiced” (and what the corpus of notes from the “Siberian Notebook” reminds of).
Folk storytellers, jokers, wits, “Petrovich Conversations” and other Zlatousts played an invaluable “co-author” role in artistic design and the implementation of "Notes from the House of the Dead". Without what I heard and directly adopted from them, the book - in the form it is - would not have taken place. Prison stories, or “chatter” (Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov’s censorship-neutralizing expression) recreate the living – as if according to the dictionary of a certain cautious Vladimir Dahl – charm of popular colloquial speech of the mid-nineteenth century. The masterpiece inside “Notes from the House of the Dead,” the story “Shark’s Husband,” no matter how stylized we recognize it, is based on everyday folk prose of the highest artistic and psychological merit. In fact, this brilliant interpretation of an oral folk tale is akin to Pushkin’s “Fairy Tales” and Gogol’s “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.” The same can be said regarding Baklushin’s fabulous romantic confession story. Of exceptional importance for the book are the constant narrative references to rumors, rumors, rumors, visits - grains of everyday folklore. With appropriate reservations, “Notes from the House of the Dead” should be considered a book, to a certain extent, told by the people, “brothers in misfortune,” so great is the proportion of colloquial tradition, legends, stories, and momentary living words in it.
Dostoevsky was one of the first in our literature to outline the types and varieties of folk storytellers, and cited stylized (and improved by him) examples of their oral creativity. The House of the Dead, which, among other things, was also a “house of folklore,” taught the writer to distinguish between storytellers: “realists” (Baklushin, Shishkov, Sirotkin), “comedians” and “buffoons” (Skuratov), “psychologists” and “anecdotes” ( Shapkin), whipping “veils” (Luchka). Dostoevsky the novelist could not have found the analytical study of the convict “Conversations of the Petrovichs” more useful than the lexical and characterological experience that was concentrated and poetically processed in “Notes from the House of the Dead” and which later fed his narrative skills (Chronicler, biographer of the Karamazovs, writer) in the Diary, etc.).
Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov equally listens to his convicts - “good” and “bad”, “near” and “distant”, “famous” and “ordinary”, “living” and “dead”. In his “class” soul there are no hostile, “lordly” or disgusting feelings towards his fellow commoner. On the contrary, he reveals a Christian-sympathetic, truly “comradely” and “brotherly” attention to the mass of people under arrest. Attention, extraordinary in its ideological and psychological purpose and ultimate goals - through the prism of the people, to explain oneself, and a person in general, and the principles of his life. This was caught by Ap. A. Grigoriev immediately after the publication of “Notes from the House of the Dead”: their author, the critic noted, “through a painful psychological process reached the point that in the “House of the Dead” he completely merged with the people...” ( Grigoriev Ap. A. Lit. criticism. M., 1967. P. 483).
Dostoevsky did not write a dispassionately objectified chronicle of hard labor, but a confessional-epic and, moreover, “Christian” and “edifying” narrative about “the most gifted, the most powerful people of all our people,” about its “mighty forces,” which in the House of the Dead “died in vain.” " In the poetic folk history of “Notes from the House of the Dead,” samples of most of the main characters of the late Dostoevsky artist were expressed: “soft-hearted,” “kind,” “persistent,” “nice” and “sincere” (Aley); indigenous Great Russian, “precious” and “full of fire and life” (Baklushin); “Kazan orphan”, “quiet and meek”, but capable of rebellion in extremes (Sirotkin); “the most decisive, the most fearless of all convicts,” heroic in potential (Petrov); in Avvakum’s style, stoically suffering “for the faith,” “meek and meek like a child,” a schismatic rebel (“grandfather”); “spidery” (Gazin); artistic (Potseykin); “superman” of hard labor (Orlov) - the entire socio-psychological collection human types, revealed in “Notes from the House of the Dead” cannot be listed. In the end, one thing remains important: the characterological studies of the Russian prison revealed to the writer the horizonless spiritual world of a man from the people. On these empirical grounds, Dostoevsky’s novelistic and journalistic thought was updated and affirmed. The internal creative rapprochement with the folk element, which began in the era of the House of the Dead, brought it to the formulated by the writer in 1871 “ law turn to nationality."
The historical merits of the author of “Notes from the House of the Dead” to Russian ethnological culture will be infringed if we do not pay special attention to some aspects of folk life that found their discoverer and first interpreter in Dostoevsky.
The chapters “Performance” and “Convict Animals” are given a special ideological and aesthetic status in “Notes...”. They depict the life and customs of prisoners in an environment close to natural, primordial, i.e. careless folk activities. The essay on the “people's theater” (the term was invented by Dostoevsky and entered the circulation of folklore and theater studies), which formed the core of the famous eleventh chapter of “Notes from the House of the Dead”, is priceless. This is the only such complete (“reporting”) and competent description of the phenomenon of folk theater of the 19th century in Russian literature and ethnography. - an indispensable and classic source on Russian theatrical history.
The drawing of the composition “Notes from the House of the Dead” is like a convict chain. The shackles are the heavy, melancholic emblem of the House of the Dead. But the chain arrangement of chapter links in the book is asymmetrical. The chain, consisting of 21 links, is divided in half by the middle (unpaired) eleventh chapter. In the main weak-plot architecture of Notes from the House of the Dead, chapter eleven is out of the ordinary, compositionally, highlighted. Dostoevsky poetically endowed her with enormous life-affirming power. This is the pre-programmed climax of the story. The writer pays tribute here to the spiritual power and beauty of the people with all the measure of his talent. In a joyful impulse towards the bright and eternal, the soul of Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov, jubilantly, merges with the soul of the people (actors and spectators). The principle of human freedom and the inalienable right to it triumphs. Folk art is set as a model, as the highest authorities in Russia can verify: “This is Kamarinskaya in all its scope, and it would really be good if Glinka even accidentally heard it in our prison.”
Behind the prison palisade, its own, so to speak, “prison-convict” civilization has developed - a direct reflection, first of all, traditional culture Russian peasant. Usually the chapter on animals is viewed from a stereotypical angle: our smaller brothers share the fate of slaves with the prisoners, figuratively and symbolically complement, duplicate and shade it. This is undeniably true. The animalistic pages really correlate with the bestial principles in people from the House of the Dead and beyond. But the idea of external similarity between human and bestial is alien to Dostoevsky. Both in the bestiary plots of “Notes from the House of the Dead” are connected by ties of natural-historical kinship. The narrator does not follow Christian traditions, which prescribe to see chimerical similarities of the divine or the devil behind the real properties of creatures. He is entirely at the mercy of healthy, this-worldly folk-peasant ideas about animals that are everyday close to people and about unity with them. The poetry of the chapter “Convict Animals” is in the chaste simplicity of the story about a man of the people, taken in his eternal relationship with animals (horse, dog, goat and eagle); relationships, respectively: loving-economic, utilitarian-self-dealing, amusing-carnival and mercifully respectful. The bestiary chapter is involved in a single “passive psychological process" and completes the picture of the tragedy of life in the space of the House of the Dead.
Many books have been written about Russian prison. From “The Life of Archpriest Avvakum” to the grandiose paintings of A.I. Solzhenitsyn and camp stories V.T. Shalamov. But “Notes from the House of the Dead” remained and will remain fundamental in this literary series. They are like an immortal parable or a providential mythologem, some all-meaning archetype from Russian literature and history. What could be more unfair than to look for them in the days of the so-called “the lie of Dostoevschina” (Kirpotin)!
A book about Dostoevsky’s great, albeit “unintentional” closeness to the people, about his kind, intercessory and infinitely sympathetic attitude towards them - “Notes from the House of the Dead” is pristinely imbued with a “Christian human-folk” view ( Grigoriev Ap. A. Lit. criticism. P. 503) to an unsettled world. This is the secret of their perfection and charm.
Vladimirtsev V.P. Notes from the House of the Dead // Dostoevsky: Works, letters, documents: Dictionary-reference book. St. Petersburg: Pushkinsky House, 2008. pp. 70-74.
“Notes from the House of the Dead” is the pinnacle work of Dostoevsky’s mature non-novel creativity. The essay “Notes from the House of the Dead”, the basis of which is based on the impressions of the writer’s four-year imprisonment in Omsk, occupies a special place both in the works of Dostoevsky and in Russian literature mid-19th V.
Being dramatic and sorrowful in its themes and life material, “Notes from the House of the Dead” is one of the most harmonious, perfect, “Pushkin” works of Dostoevsky. The innovative nature of “Notes from the House of the Dead” was realized in the synthetic and multi-genre form of an essay story, approaching the organization of the whole to the Book (Bible). The way of telling the story, the nature of the narration from the inside overcomes the tragedy of the event outline of the “notes” and leads the reader to the light of the “true Christian”, according to L.N. Tolstoy, a view of the world, the fate of Russia and the biography of the main narrator, indirectly related to the biography of Dostoevsky himself. “Notes from the House of the Dead” is a book about the fate of Russia in the unity of specific historical and metahistorical aspects, about the spiritual journey of Goryanchikov, like Dante’s wanderer in the “Divine Comedy,” who, through the power of creativity and love, overcomes the “dead” principles of Russian life and finds a spiritual fatherland ( House). Unfortunately, the acute historical and social relevance of the problems of “Notes from the House of the Dead” overshadowed its artistic perfection, innovation of this type of prose and moral and philosophical uniqueness from both contemporaries and researchers of the 20th century. Modern literary criticism, despite great amount private empirical works on the problems and understanding of the socio-historical material of the book, takes only the first steps towards studying unique nature artistic integrity“Notes from the House of the Dead”, poetics, innovation of the author’s position and the nature of intertextuality.
This article gives a modern interpretation of “Notes from the House of the Dead” through an analysis of the narrative, understood as a process of implementation of the author’s holistic activity. The author of “Notes from the House of the Dead”, as a kind of dynamic integrating principle, realizes his position in constant oscillations between two opposite (and never fully realized) possibilities - to enter inside the world he created, striving to interact with the heroes as with living people (this technique is called “getting used to it”), and at the same time, distance himself as much as possible from the work he created, emphasizing the fictionality, “composition” of the characters and situations (a technique called “alienation” by M. M. Bakhtin).
Historical and literary situation in the early 1860s. with its active diffusion of genres, giving rise to the need for hybrid, mixed forms, made it possible to realize in “Notes from the House of the Dead” an epic of folk life, which with some degree of convention can be called a “sketch story”. As in any story, the movement of artistic meaning in “Notes from the House of the Dead” is realized not in the plot, but in the interaction of different narrative plans (speech of the main narrator, oral convict narrators, publisher, rumor).
The very name “Notes from the House of the Dead” belongs not to the person who wrote them (Goryanchikov calls his work “Scenes from the House of the Dead”), but to the publisher. The title seems to have met two voices, two points of view (Goryanchikov’s and the publisher’s), even two semantic principles (the concrete chronicle: “Notes from the House of the Dead” - as an indication of the genre nature - and the symbolic-conceptual formula-oxymoron “The House of the Dead” ).
The figurative formula “The House of the Dead” appears as a unique moment of concentration of the semantic energy of the narrative and at the same time, in the most general form, outlines the intertextual channel in which the author’s value activity will unfold (from the symbolic name Russian Empire Necropolis near P.Ya. Chaadaev to allusions to the story by V.F. Odoevsky’s “Dead Man’s Mockery”, “Ball”, “Living Dead” and more broadly - the theme of dead, spiritless reality in the prose of Russian romanticism and, finally, to the internal polemics with the title of Gogol’s poem “Dead Souls”), the oxymoronic nature of such a name is, as it were, repeated by Dostoevsky in on a different semantic level.
The bitter paradox of Gogol’s name (the immortal soul is declared dead) is contrasted with the internal tension of opposing principles in the definition of “House of the Dead”: “Dead” due to stagnation, lack of freedom, isolation from the big world, and most of all from the unconscious spontaneity of life, but still a “house” “- not only as housing, warmth of the hearth, refuge, sphere of existence, but also as a family, clan, community of people (“strange family”), belonging to one national integrity.
Depth and semantic capacity literary prose“Notes from the House of the Dead” reveals itself especially clearly in the introduction about Siberia that opens the introduction. Here is the result of spiritual communication between the provincial publisher and the author of the notes: at the plot-event level, understanding, it would seem, did not take place, however, the structure of the narrative reveals the interaction and gradual penetration of Goryanchikov’s worldview into the publisher’s style.
The publisher, who is also the first reader of “Notes from the House of the Dead,” comprehends the life of the House of the Dead, at the same time looking for the answer to Goryanchikov, moving towards an increasing understanding of him not through the facts and circumstances of life in hard labor, but rather through the process of familiarization with the narrator’s worldview. And the extent of this familiarization and understanding is recorded in Chapter VII of Part Two, in the publisher’s message about the further fate of the prisoner - an imaginary parricide.
But Goryanchikov himself is looking for the key to the soul folk way painfully difficult to join the unity of national life. The reality of the House of the Dead is refracted through different types of consciousness: publisher, A.P. Goryanchikov, Shishkov, telling the story of a ruined girl (chapter “Akulkin’s Husband”); All these ways of perceiving the world look at each other, interact, correct one another, and at their border a new universal vision of the world is born.
The introduction takes a look at Notes from the House of the Dead from the outside; it ends with a description of the publisher's first impression of their reading. It is important that in the publisher’s mind there are both principles that determine the internal tension of the story: this is interest in both the object and the subject of the story.
“Notes from the House of the Dead” is a life story not in the biographical, but rather in the existential sense; it is a story not of survival, but of life in the conditions of the House of the Dead. Two interconnected processes determine the nature of the narrative of “Notes from the House of the Dead”: this is the story of the formation and growth of Goryanchikov’s living soul, which takes place as he comprehends the living, fruitful foundations of national life, revealed in the life of the House of the Dead. The narrator’s spiritual self-knowledge and his comprehension of the folk element occur simultaneously. The compositional structure of “Notes from the House of the Dead” is mainly determined by a change in the narrator’s view - both by the patterns of psychological reflection of reality in his mind, and by the direction of his attention to the phenomena of life.
“Notes from the House of the Dead,” according to the external and internal type of compositional organization, reproduces the annual circle, the circle of life in hard labor, conceptualized as the circle of existence. Of the twenty-two chapters of the book, the first and last open outside the prison; the introduction gives a brief history of Goryanchikov’s life after hard labor. The remaining twenty chapters of the book are structured not as a simple description of convict life, but as a skillful translation of the reader’s vision and perception from external to internal, from everyday to invisible, essential. The first chapter implements the final symbolic formula of “The House of the Dead”, the three chapters following it are called “First Impressions”, which emphasizes the personality of the narrator’s holistic experience. Then two chapters are titled “The First Month,” which continues the chronicle-dynamic inertia of the reader’s perception. Next, three chapters contain a multi-part reference to “new acquaintances,” unusual situations, and colorful characters of the prison. The culmination are two chapters - X and XI (“The Feast of the Nativity of Christ” and “Performance”), and in Chapter X the deceived expectations of the convicts about the failed internal holiday are given, and in the chapter “Performance” the law of the need for personal spiritual and creative participation is revealed in order for the real the holiday took place. The second part contains four of the most tragic chapters with impressions of the hospital, human suffering, executioners, and victims. This part of the book ends with the overheard story “Shark’s Husband,” where the narrator, yesterday’s executioner, turned out to be today’s victim, but never saw the meaning of what happened to him. The next five final chapters give a picture of spontaneous impulses, delusions, external actions without understanding the inner meaning of the characters from the people. The final tenth chapter, “Exit from hard labor,” marks not just the physical acquisition of freedom, but also gives the internal transformation of Goryanchikov with the light of sympathy and understanding of the tragedy of people’s life from the inside.
Based on all that has been said above, the following conclusions can be drawn: the narrative in “Notes from the House of the Dead” develops new type relationship with the reader, in the sketch story the author’s activity is aimed at shaping the reader’s worldview and is realized through the interaction of the consciousnesses of the publisher, the narrator and oral storytellers from the people, the inhabitants of the House of the Dead. The publisher acts as a reader of “Notes from the House of the Dead” and is both the subject and the object of a change in worldview.
The narrator’s word, on the one hand, lives in constant correlation with the opinion of everyone, in other words, with the truth of national life; on the other hand, it is actively addressed to the reader, organizing the integrity of his perception.
The dialogic nature of Goryanchikov’s interaction with the horizons of other narrators is not aimed at their self-determination, as in the novel, but at identifying their position in relation to common life, therefore, in many cases, the narrator’s word interacts with non-personalized voices that help shape his way of seeing.
Gaining a truly epic perspective becomes a form of spiritual overcoming of the disunity in the House of the Dead that the narrator shares with the readers; this epic event determines both the dynamics of the narrative and the genre nature of “Notes from the House of the Dead” as a sketch story.
The dynamics of the narrator’s narrative are entirely determined by the genre nature of the work, subordinated to the implementation of the aesthetic task of the genre: from a generalized view from afar, from a “bird’s eye view” to the development of a specific phenomenon, which is carried out by comparing different points of view and identifying their commonality on the basis of popular perception; further these developed measures national consciousness become the property of the reader’s inner spiritual experience. Thus, the point of view acquired in the process of familiarization with the elements of folk life appears in the event of the work as both a means and a goal.
The nature of the author's activity in “Notes from the House of the Dead” is determined by the dialectical unity of the personal and extrapersonal principles, which organizes the whole narrative world.
Thus, the introduction from the publisher gives an orientation to the genre, defamiliarizes the figure of the main narrator, Goryanchikov, and makes it possible to show him both from the inside and from the outside, as the subject and object of the story at the same time. The movement of the narrative within “Notes from the House of the Dead” is determined by two interrelated processes: the spiritual formation of Goryanchikov and the self-development of people’s life, to the extent that this is revealed as the hero-narrator comprehends it.
The internal tension of the interaction of individual and collective worldviews is realized in the alternation of the concrete momentary point of view of the narrator-eyewitness and his final point of view, distanced into the future as the time of the creation of “Notes from the House of the Dead,” as well as the point of view of general life, appearing in its specific -everyday version of mass psychology, then in the essential existence of a universal folk whole.
Akelkina E.A. Notes from the House of the Dead // Dostoevsky: Works, letters, documents: Dictionary-reference book. St. Petersburg, 2008. pp. 74-77.
Lifetime publications (editions):
1860—1861 — Russian world. The newspaper is political, social and literary. Edited by A.S. Hieroglyphic. SPb.: Type. F. Stellovsky. Year two. 1860. September 1. No. 67. pp. 1-8. Year three. 1861. January 4. No. 1. P. 1-14 (I. House of the Dead. II. First impressions). January 11. No. 3. P. 49-54 (III. First impressions). The 25th of January. No. 7. P. 129-135 (IV. First impressions).
1861—1862 —
. SPb.: Type. E Praca.
1861: April. pp. 1-68. September. pp. 243-272. October. pp. 461—496. November. pp. 325-360.
1862: January. pp. 321-336. February. pp. 565-597. March. pp. 313-351. May. pp. 291-326. December. pp. 235-249.
1862 — Part one. SPb.: Type. E. Praca, 1862. 167 p.
1862 — Second edition. SPb.: Publishing house. A.F. Bazunov. Type. I. Ogrizko, 1862. Part one. 269 p. Part two. 198 p.
1863 - SPb.: Type. O.I. Baksta, 1863. - P. 108-124.
1864 — For upper middle classes educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Second edition, corrected and expanded. Volume one. Epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I. Ogrizko, 1864. - P. 686-700.
1864 — : nach dem Tagebuche eines nach Sibirien Verbannten: nach dem Russischen bearbeitet / herausgegeben von Th. M. Dostojewski. Leipzig: Wolfgang Gerhard, 1864. B. I. 251 s. B. II. 191 s.
1865 — The edition has been reviewed and expanded by the author himself. Publication and property of F. Stellovsky. SPb.: Type. F. Stellovsky, 1865. T. I. P. 70-194.
1865 — In two parts. Third edition, revised and updated with a new chapter. Publication and property of F. Stellovsky. SPb.: Type. F. Stellovsky, 1865. 415 p.
1868 — First [and only] issue. [B.m.], 1868. — Notes from the House of the Dead. Akulkin's husband pp. 80-92.
1869 — For upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Third edition, significantly revised. Part one. Epic poetry. SPb.: Type. F.S. Sushchinsky, 1869. — Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. pp. 665-679.
1871 — For upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Fourth edition, significantly revised. Part one. Epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I.I. Glazunov, 1871. — Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. pp. 655-670.
1875 — For upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Fifth edition, significantly revised. Part one. Epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I.I. Glazunov, 1875. — Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. pp. 611-624.
1875 — Fourth edition. SPb.: Type. br. Panteleev, 1875. Part one. 244 p. Part two. 180 pp.
SPb.: Type. br. Panteleev, 1875. Part one. 244 p. Part two. 180 pp.
1880 — For upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Sixth edition (printed from the third edition). Part one. Epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I.I. Glazunov, 1879 (in the region - 1880). — Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. pp. 609-623.
Posthumous edition prepared for publication by A.G. Dostoevsky:
1881 — Fifth edition. St. Petersburg: [Ed. A.G. Dostoevskaya]. Type. Brother. Panteleev, 1881. Part 1. 217 p. Part 2. 160 p.
“Notes from the House of the Dead” attracted the attention of the public as a depiction of convicts, whom no one depicted clearly to “The House of the Dead,” wrote Dostoevsky in 1863. But since the theme of “Notes from the House of the Dead” is much broader and concerns many general issues folk life, then assessments of the work only from the perspective of the depiction of the prison subsequently began to upset the writer. Among Dostoevsky’s draft notes dating back to 1876, we find the following: “In criticism of Notes from the House of the Dead it means that Dostoevsky wore prisons, but now it is outdated. That's what they said in the bookstore, offering something else, nearest denunciation of the prisons."
The memoirist’s attention in “Notes from the House of the Dead” is focused not so much on his own experiences, but on the lives and characters of those around him. Like Ivan Petrovich in “The Humiliated and Insulted,” Goryanchikov is almost entirely occupied with the destinies of other people, his narrative has one goal: “To present our entire the prison and everything that I lived during these years, in one clear and vivid picture.” Each chapter, being part of the whole, is a completely finished work, dedicated, like the entire book, to the general life of the prison. The depiction of individual characters is also subordinated to this main task.
There are many crowd scenes in the story. Dostoevsky’s desire to make the focus not on individual characteristics, but on the general life of the mass of people, creates the epic style of “Notes from the House of the Dead.”
F. M. Dostoevsky. Notes from dead house(part 1). Audiobook
The theme of the work goes far beyond the boundaries of Siberian hard labor. Telling the stories of prisoners or simply reflecting on the customs of the prison, Dostoevsky turns to the reasons for the crimes committed there, in the “freedom”. And every time, when comparing free and convicts, it turns out that the difference is not so great, that “people are people everywhere,” that convicts live according to the same general laws, or more precisely, that even free people live according to convict laws. It is no coincidence that some crimes are even specifically committed with the aim of ending up in prison “and there getting rid of the incomparably more hard labor of life in freedom.”
Establishing similarities between the life of a convict and a “free” one, Dostoevsky concerns first of all the most important social issues: about the attitude of the people towards the nobles and the administration, about the role of money, about the role of labor, etc. As was clear from Dostoevsky’s first letter upon release from the prison, he was deeply shocked by the hostile attitude of the prisoners towards the convicts from the nobility. In “Notes from the House of the Dead” this is widely shown and socially explained: “Yes, sir, they don’t like nobles, especially political ones... Firstly, you and the people are different, unlike them, and secondly, they are all were either landowners or military rank. Judge for yourself, can they love you, sir?”
The chapter “Claim” is especially expressive in this regard. It is characteristic that, despite the severity of his position as a nobleman, the narrator understands and fully justifies the prisoners’ hatred of the nobles, who, upon leaving the prison, will again move into a class hostile to the people. These same feelings are also manifested in the attitude of the common people towards the administration, towards everything official. Even the hospital doctors were treated with prejudice by the prisoners, “because the doctors are gentlemen after all.”
The images of people from the people in “Notes from the House of the Dead” were created with remarkable skill. These are most often strong and integral natures, closely united with their environment, alien to intellectual reflection. Precisely because in their previous lives these people were oppressed and humiliated, because they were most often pushed into crimes social reasons, there is no repentance in their souls, but only a firm consciousness of their right.
Dostoevsky is convinced that the wonderful natural qualities of people imprisoned in prison, in other conditions, could have developed completely differently and found a different use for themselves. Dostoevsky’s words that the best people of the people ended up in prison are an angry accusation against the entire social order: “Mighty forces died in vain, they died abnormally, illegally, irrevocably. And who is to blame? So, who is to blame?
However positive heroes Dostoevsky does not paint rebels, but humble people; he even claims that rebellious sentiments gradually fade away in prison. Dostoevsky’s favorite characters in “Notes from the House of the Dead” are the quiet and affectionate young man Alei, the kind widow Nastasya Ivanovna, and the old Old Believer who decided to suffer for his faith. Speaking, for example, about Nastasya Ivanovna, Dostoevsky, without naming names, polemicizes with the theory of rational egoism Chernyshevsky: “Others say (I have heard and read this) that the highest love for one’s neighbor is at the same time the greatest selfishness. I just don’t understand what egoism there was.”
In “Notes from the House of the Dead,” Dostoevsky’s moral ideal was first formed, which he later never tired of promoting, passing it off as a people’s ideal. Personal honesty and nobility, religious humility and active love - these are the main traits that Dostoevsky endows with his favorite heroes. Subsequently creating Prince Myshkin (“The Idiot”) and Alyosha (“The Brothers Karamazov”), he essentially developed the trends laid down in “Notes from the House of the Dead.” These tendencies, which make “Notes” similar to the work of the “late” Dostoevsky, could not yet be noticed by the critics of the sixties, but after all the subsequent works of the writer they became obvious. It is characteristic that he paid special attention to this aspect of Notes from the House of the Dead L. N. Tolstoy, who emphasized that here Dostoevsky is close to his own beliefs. In a letter to Strakhov dated September 26, 1880, he wrote: “The other day I was not feeling well, and I was reading “The House of the Dead.” I forgot a lot, re-read and don’t know better than books from all new literature, including Pushkin. Not the tone, but the point of view is amazing: sincere, natural and Christian. A good, edifying book. I enjoyed the whole day yesterday, like I haven’t enjoyed for a long time. If you see Dostoevsky, tell him that I love him.”
PART ONE
INTRODUCTION
In the remote regions of Siberia, among the steppes, mountains or impenetrable forests, you occasionally come across small towns, with one, many with two thousand inhabitants, wooden, nondescript, with two churches - one in the city, the other in the cemetery - towns that look more like good village near Moscow than the city. They are usually quite sufficiently equipped with police officers, assessors and all other subaltern ranks. In general, in Siberia, despite the cold, it is extremely warm. People live simple, illiberal lives; the order is old, strong, sanctified for centuries. The officials, who rightly play the role of the Siberian nobility, are either natives, inveterate Siberians, or visitors from Russia, mostly from the capitals, seduced by the non-credited salaries, double passes and tempting hopes for the future. Among them, those who know how to solve the riddle of life almost always remain in Siberia and take root in it with pleasure. They subsequently bear rich and sweet fruits. But others, frivolous people who do not know how to solve the riddle of life, will soon become bored with Siberia and ask themselves with longing: why did they come to it? They eagerly serve out their legal term of service, three years, and at the end of it they immediately bother about their transfer and return home, scolding Siberia and laughing at it. They are wrong: not only from an official point of view, but even from many points of view, one can be blissful in Siberia. The climate is excellent; there are many remarkably rich and hospitable merchants; there are many extremely wealthy foreigners. The young ladies bloom with roses and are moral to the last extreme. The game flies through the streets and stumbles upon the hunter. An unnatural amount of champagne is drunk. The caviar is amazing. In some places the harvest happens as quickly as fifteen... In general, the land is blessed. You just need to know how to use it. In Siberia they know how to use it.
In one of these cheerful and self-satisfied towns, with the sweetest people, the memory of which will remain indelible in my heart, I met Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, a settler who was born in Russia as a nobleman and landowner, then became a second-class exile and convict for the murder of his wife. and, after the expiration of the ten-year term of hard labor prescribed for him by law, he humbly and quietly lived out his life in the town of K. as a settler. He, in fact, was assigned to one suburban volost, but lived in the city, having the opportunity to earn at least some food in it by teaching children. In Siberian cities one often encounters teachers from exiled settlers; they are not disdained. They teach mainly French, so necessary in the field of life and about which without them in the remote regions of Siberia they would have no idea. The first time I met Alexander Petrovich was in the house of an old, honored and hospitable official, Ivan Ivanovich Gvozdikov, who had five daughters, of different ages, who showed wonderful hopes. Alexander Petrovich gave them lessons four times a week, thirty silver kopecks per lesson. His appearance interested me. He was an extremely pale and thin man, not yet old, about thirty-five, small and frail. He was always dressed very cleanly, in a European style. If you spoke to him, he looked at you extremely intently and attentively, listening to every word of yours with strict politeness, as if he were pondering it, as if you asked him a task with your question or wanted to extract some secret from him, and, finally, he answered clearly and briefly, but weighing every word of his answer so much that you suddenly felt awkward for some reason and you yourself finally rejoiced at the end of the conversation. I then asked Ivan Ivanovich about him and found out that Goryanchikov lives impeccably and morally and that otherwise Ivan Ivanovich would not have invited him for his daughters; but that he is a terrible unsociable person, hides from everyone, is extremely learned, reads a lot, but speaks very little, and that in general it is quite difficult to get into conversation with him. Others argued that he was positively crazy, although they found that, in essence, this was not such an important flaw, that many of the honorary members of the city were ready to favor Alexander Petrovich in every possible way, that he could even be useful, write requests, etc. They believed that he must have decent relatives in Russia, maybe not even the last people, but they knew that from the very exile he stubbornly cut off all relations with them - in a word, he was harming himself. In addition, we all knew his story, we knew that he killed his wife in the first year of his marriage, killed out of jealousy and denounced himself (which greatly facilitated his punishment). Such crimes are always looked upon as misfortunes and regretted. But, despite all this, the eccentric stubbornly avoided everyone and appeared in people only to give lessons.
At first I didn’t pay much attention to him, but, I don’t know why, little by little he began to interest me. There was something mysterious about him. There was not the slightest opportunity to talk to him. Of course, he always answered my questions, and even with such an air as if he considered this his primary duty; but after his answers I somehow felt burdened to question him longer; and on his face, after such conversations, some kind of suffering and fatigue was always visible. I remember walking with him one fine summer evening from Ivan Ivanovich. Suddenly I took it into my head to invite him to my place for a minute to smoke a cigarette. I cannot describe the horror that was expressed on his face; he was completely lost, began to mutter some incoherent words and suddenly, looking angrily at me, he started running in the opposite direction. I was even surprised. From then on, whenever he met me, he looked at me as if with some kind of fear. But I didn’t calm down; I was drawn to him by something, and a month later, out of the blue, I went to see Goryanchikov. Of course, I acted stupidly and indelicately. He lived on the very edge of the city, with an old bourgeois woman who had a daughter who was sick with consumption, and that daughter had an illegitimate daughter, a child of about ten years old, a pretty and cheerful girl. Alexander Petrovich was sitting with her and teaching her to read the minute I came into his room. When he saw me, he became so confused, as if I had caught him committing some crime. He was completely confused, jumped up from his chair and looked at me with all his eyes. We finally sat down; he closely watched my every glance, as if he suspected some special mysterious meaning in each of them. I guessed that he was suspicious to the point of madness. He looked at me with hatred, almost asking: “Are you going to leave here soon?” I talked to him about our town, about current news; he remained silent and smiled evilly; It turned out that he not only did not know the most ordinary, well-known city news, but was not even interested in knowing them. Then I started talking about our region, about its needs; he listened to me in silence and looked into my eyes so strangely that I finally felt ashamed of our conversation. However, I almost teased him with new books and magazines; I had them in my hands, fresh from the post office, and I offered them to him, still uncut. He cast a greedy glance at them, but immediately changed his mind and declined the offer, citing lack of time. Finally, I said goodbye to him and, leaving him, I felt that some unbearable weight had been lifted from my heart. I was ashamed and it seemed extremely stupid to pester a person whose main goal was to hide as far away from the whole world as possible. But the job was done. I remember that I noticed almost no books on him, and, therefore, it was unfair to say about him that he reads a lot. However, driving past his windows twice, very late at night, I noticed a light in them. What did he do while he sat until dawn? Didn't he write? And if so, what exactly?
Circumstances removed me from our town for three months. Returning home in the winter, I learned that Alexander Petrovich died in the fall, died in solitude and never even called a doctor to him. The town has almost forgotten about him. His apartment was empty. I immediately met the owner of the deceased, intending to find out from her; What exactly was her tenant doing and did he write anything? For two kopecks she brought me a whole basket of papers left behind by the deceased. The old woman admitted that she had already used up two notebooks. She was a gloomy and silent woman, from whom it was difficult to get anything worthwhile. She couldn’t tell me anything special new about her tenant. According to her, he almost never did anything and for months at a time did not open a book or pick up a pen; but whole nights he walked back and forth across the room and kept thinking about something, and sometimes talking to himself; that he loved and caressed her granddaughter, Katya, very much, especially since he found out that her name was Katya, and that on Katerina’s day every time he went to serve a memorial service for someone. He could not tolerate guests; he only came out of the yard to teach the children; he even glanced sideways at her, the old woman, when she came, once a week, to tidy up his room at least a little, and almost never said a single word to her for three whole years. I asked Katya: does she remember her teacher? She looked at me silently, turned to the wall and began to cry. Therefore, this man could at least force someone to love him.
I took his papers and sorted through them all day. Three quarters of these papers were empty, insignificant scraps or student exercises from copybooks. But there was also one notebook, quite voluminous, finely written and unfinished, perhaps abandoned and forgotten by the author himself. This was a description, albeit incoherent, of the ten years of hard labor endured by Alexander Petrovich. In places this description was interrupted by some other story, some strange, terrible memories, sketched unevenly, convulsively, as if under some kind of compulsion. I re-read these passages several times and was almost convinced that they were written in madness. But the convict notes - “Scenes from the House of the Dead,” as he himself calls them somewhere in his manuscript, seemed to me not entirely uninteresting. A completely new world, hitherto unknown, the strangeness of other facts, some special notes about the lost people captivated me, and I read something with curiosity. Of course, I could be wrong. I first select two or three chapters for testing; let the public judge...
DEAD HOUSE
Our fort stood on the edge of the fortress, right next to the ramparts. It happened that you looked through the cracks of the fence into the light of day: wouldn’t you see at least something? - and all you will see is the edge of the sky and a high earthen rampart overgrown with weeds, and sentries walking back and forth along the rampart, day and night; and you will immediately think that whole years will pass, and you will come up to look through the cracks of the fence in the same way and see the same rampart, the same sentries and the same small edge of the sky, not the same sky that is above the prison, but another, distant, free sky. Imagine a large courtyard, two hundred steps in length and one and a half hundred steps in width, all surrounded in a circle, in the form of an irregular hexagon, by a high fence, that is, a fence of high pillars (pals), dug deep into the ground, firmly leaning against each other with ribs, fastened with transverse planks and pointed at the top: this is the outer fence of the fort. In one of the sides of the fence there is a strong gate, always locked, always guarded day and night by sentries; they were unlocked upon request to be released to work. Behind these gates there was a bright, free world, people lived like everyone else. But on this side of the fence they imagined that world as some kind of impossible fairy tale. It had its own special world, unlike anything else, it had its own special laws, its own costumes, its own morals and customs, and a living dead house, life - like nowhere else, and special people. It is this special corner that I begin to describe.
As you enter the fence, you see several buildings inside it. On both sides of the wide courtyard there are two long one-story log houses. These are barracks. Prisoners housed by category live here. Then, in the depths of the fence, there is another similar log house: this is a kitchen, divided into two artels; further on there is another building where cellars, barns, and sheds are located under one roof. The middle of the yard is empty and forms a flat, fairly large area. Here the prisoners are lined up, verification and roll call take place in the morning, at noon and in the evening, sometimes several more times a day - judging by the suspiciousness of the guards and their ability to quickly count. All around, between the buildings and the fence, there is still quite a large space. Here, at the back of the buildings, some of the prisoners, more unsociable and darker in character, like to walk around during non-working hours, closed from all eyes, and think their little thoughts. Meeting them during these walks, I loved to peer into their gloomy, branded faces and guess what they were thinking about. There was one exile whose favorite pastime in his free time was counting Pali. There were a thousand and a half of them, and he had them all in his account and in mind. Each fire meant a day for him; Every day he counted one pala and thus, from the remaining number of uncounted pali, he could clearly see how many days he still had left to stay in the prison before the deadline for work. He was sincerely happy when he finished some side of the hexagon. He still had to wait for many years; but in prison there was time to learn patience. I once saw how a prisoner, who had been in hard labor for twenty years and was finally released, said goodbye to his comrades. There were people who remembered how he entered the prison for the first time, young, carefree, not thinking about his crime or his punishment. He came out as a gray-haired old man, with a gloomy and sad face. Silently he walked around all our six barracks. Entering each barracks, he prayed to the icon and then bowed low, at the waist, to his comrades, asking them not to remember him unkindly. I also remember how one day a prisoner, formerly a wealthy Siberian peasant, was called to the gate one evening. Six months before this, he received the news that his ex-wife had gotten married, and he was deeply saddened. Now she herself drove up to the prison, called him and gave him alms. They talked for two minutes, both cried and said goodbye forever. I saw his face when he returned to the barracks... Yes, in this place one could learn patience.
When it got dark, we were all taken into the barracks, where we were locked up for the whole night. It was always difficult for me to return from the yard to our barracks. It was a long, low and stuffy room, dimly lit by tallow candles, with a heavy, suffocating smell. Now I don’t understand how I survived in it for ten years. I had three boards on the bunk: that was all my space. About thirty people were accommodated on these same bunks in one of our rooms. In winter they locked it early; We had to wait four hours until everyone fell asleep. And before that - noise, din, laughter, curses, the sound of chains, smoke and soot, shaved heads, branded faces, patchwork dresses, everything - cursed, defamed... yes, a tenacious man! Man is a creature that gets used to everything, and I think this is the best definition of him.
There were only two hundred and fifty of us in the prison - the number was almost constant. Some came, others completed their terms and left, others died. And what kind of people were not here! I think every province, every strip of Russia had its representatives here. There were also foreigners, there were several exiles even from the Caucasian highlanders. All this was divided according to the degree of crime, and therefore, according to the number of years determined for the crime. It must be assumed that there was no crime that did not have its representative here. The main basis of the entire prison population were exiled convicts of the civilian category (strong convicts, as the prisoners themselves naively pronounced). These were criminals, completely deprived of all the rights of fortune, cut off in chunks from society, with their faces branded as an eternal testimony of their rejection. They were sent to work for periods of eight to twelve years and then were sent somewhere in the Siberian volosts as settlers. There were also criminals of the military category, who were not deprived of their status rights, as in general in Russian military prison companies. They were sent for a short period of time; upon completion, they turned back to where they came from, to become soldiers, to the Siberian line battalions. Many of them almost immediately returned back to prison for secondary important crimes, but not for short periods, but for twenty years. This category was called "always". But the "always" were still not completely deprived of all the rights of the state. Finally, there was another special category of the most terrible criminals, mainly military, quite numerous. It was called the "special department". Criminals were sent here from all over Rus'. They themselves considered themselves eternal and did not know the duration of their work. By law, they had to double and triple their work hours. They were kept in prison until the most severe hard labor was opened in Siberia. “You get a prison sentence, but we get penal servitude,” they said to other prisoners. I heard that this category was destroyed. In addition, civil order at our fortress was destroyed, and one general military prison company was established. Of course, along with this, the management also changed. I am describing, therefore, the old days, things that are long past and past...
It was a long time ago; I dream of all this now, as if in a dream. I remember how I entered the prison. It was in the evening in December. It was already getting dark; people were returning from work; were preparing for verification. The mustachioed non-commissioned officer finally opened the doors for me to this strange house in which I had to stay for so many years, endure so many sensations about which, without actually experiencing them, I could not even have an approximate idea. For example, I could never imagine: what is terrible and painful about the fact that during all ten years of my hard labor I will never, not even for a single minute, be alone? At work, always under escort, at home with two hundred comrades, and never, never alone! However, did I still have to get used to this!
There were casual killers and professional killers, robbers and atamans of robbers. There were simply mazuriks and industrialist vagabonds for found money or for the Stolevo part. There were also those about whom it is difficult to decide: why, it seems, could they come here? Meanwhile, everyone had their own story, vague and heavy, like the fumes of yesterday’s intoxication. In general, they talked little about their past, did not like to talk and, apparently, tried not to think about the past. I even knew of them murderers who were so cheerful, so never thinking, that you could bet that their conscience never reproached them. But there were also dark days, almost always silent. In general, rarely did anyone tell their life, and curiosity was not in fashion, somehow not in custom, not accepted. So, perhaps, occasionally, someone will start talking out of idleness, while another listens coolly and gloomily. No one here could surprise anyone. “We are a literate people!” they often said, with some strange complacency. I remember how one day a drunken robber (you could sometimes get drunk in penal servitude) began to tell how he stabbed a five-year-old boy to death, how he first deceived him with a toy, took him somewhere into an empty barn and stabbed him there. The entire barracks, which had hitherto laughed at his jokes, screamed as one person, and the robber was forced to remain silent; The barracks screamed not out of indignation, but because there was no need to talk about it, because it’s not customary to talk about it. Let me note, by the way, that these people were truly literate, and not even figuratively, but literally. Probably more than half of them could read and write. In what other place, where the Russian people gather in large places, will you separate from them a group of two hundred and fifty people, half of whom would be literate? I heard later that someone began to deduce from similar data that literacy is ruining the people. This is a mistake: there are completely different reasons; although one cannot but agree that literacy develops arrogance among the people. But this is not a drawback at all. All categories differed in their dress: some had half their jackets dark brown and the other gray, and the same on their trousers - one leg was gray and the other dark brown. Once, at work, a Kalash-wielding girl approached the prisoners, peered at me for a long time and then suddenly burst out laughing. “Ugh, how not nice!” she cried, “there wasn’t enough gray cloth, and there wasn’t enough black cloth!” There were also those whose entire jacket was of the same gray cloth, but only the sleeves were dark brown. The head was also shaved in different ways: for some, half of the head was shaved along the skull, for others across.
At first glance one could notice some sharp commonality in this whole strange family; even the harshest, most original personalities, who reigned over others involuntarily, tried to fall into the general tone of the entire prison. In general, I will say that all these people - with a few few exceptions of inexhaustibly cheerful people who enjoyed universal contempt for this - were a gloomy, envious people, terribly vain, boastful, touchy and extremely formalist. The ability not to be surprised by anything was the greatest virtue. Everyone was obsessed with how to behave outwardly. But often the most arrogant look was replaced with lightning speed by the most cowardly one. There were some truly strong people; they were simple and did not grimace. But a strange thing: of these truly strong people, several were vain to the extreme, almost to the point of illness. In general, vanity and appearance were in the foreground. The majority were corrupted and terribly sneaky. Gossip and gossip were continuous: it was hell, pitch darkness. But no one dared to rebel against the internal regulations and accepted customs of the prison; everyone obeyed. There were characters that were sharply outstanding, who obeyed with difficulty, with effort, but still obeyed. Those who came to the prison were too high-handed, too out of step with the standards of freedom, so that in the end they even committed their crimes as if not of their own accord, as if they themselves did not know why, as if in delirium, in a state; often out of vanity, excited to the highest degree. But with us they were immediately besieged, despite the fact that others, before arriving at the prison, terrorized entire villages and cities. Looking around, the newcomer soon noticed that he was in the wrong place, that there was no one left to surprise here, and he visibly humbled himself and fell into the general tone. This general tone was composed from the outside out of some special personal dignity, which imbued almost every inhabitant of the prison. As if, in fact, the title of a convict, a decided one, constituted some kind of rank, and an honorable one at that. No signs of shame or remorse! However, there was also some kind of outward humility, so to speak official, some kind of calm reasoning: “We are a lost people,” they said, “we didn’t know how to live in freedom, now break the green street, check the ranks.” - “I didn’t listen to my father and mother, now listen to the drum skin.” - “I didn’t want to sew with gold, now hit the stones with a hammer.” All this was said often, both in the form of moral teaching and in the form of ordinary sayings and proverbs, but never seriously. All these were just words. It is unlikely that any of them internally admitted their lawlessness. If someone who is not a convict tries to reproach a prisoner for his crime, to scold him (although, however, it is not in the Russian spirit to reproach a criminal), there will be no end to the curses. And what masters they were all at swearing! They swore in a refined, artistic manner. They elevated swearing to a science; they tried to take it not so much with an offensive word, but with an offensive meaning, spirit, idea - and this is more subtle, more poisonous. Continuous quarrels further developed this science between them. All these people worked under pressure - consequently, they were idle, and consequently, they became corrupted: if they were not corrupted before, then they became corrupted in hard labor. All of them did not gather here of their own free will; they were all strangers to each other.
“The devil took three bast shoes before he gathered us into one heap!” - they said to themselves; and therefore gossip, intrigue, women's slander, envy, quarrel, anger were always in the foreground in this pitch-black life. No woman could be such a woman as some of these murderers. I repeat, among them there were people of strong character, accustomed to breaking and commanding their entire lives, seasoned, fearless. These people were somehow involuntarily respected; they, for their part, although they were often very jealous of their fame, generally tried not to be a burden to others, did not engage in empty curses, behaved with extraordinary dignity, were reasonable and almost always obedient to their superiors - not out of principle obedience, not from a state of duty, but as if under some kind of contract, realizing mutual benefits. However, they were treated with caution. I remember how one of these prisoners, a fearless and decisive man, known to his superiors for his brutal inclinations, was called to punishment for some crime. It was a summer day, time off from work. The staff officer, the closest and immediate commander of the prison, came himself to the guardhouse, which was right next to our gates, to be present at the punishment. This major was some kind of fatal creature for the prisoners; he brought them to the point where they trembled at him. He was insanely strict, “throwing himself at people,” as the convicts said. What they feared most about him was his penetrating, lynx-like gaze, from which nothing could be hidden. He somehow saw without looking. Entering the prison, he already knew what was happening at the other end of it. The prisoners called him eight-eyed. His system was false. He only embittered already embittered people with his frenzied, evil actions, and if there had not been a commandant over him, a noble and sensible man, who sometimes moderated his wild antics, then he would have caused great troubles with his management. I don’t understand how he could have ended safely; he retired alive and well, although, however, he was put on trial.
The prisoner turned pale when they called him. Usually he silently and resolutely lay down under the rods, silently endured the punishment and got up after the punishment as if disheveled, calmly and philosophically looking at the failure that had happened. However, they always dealt with him carefully. But this time he considered himself to be right for some reason. He turned pale and, quietly away from the escort, managed to put a sharp English shoe knife into his sleeve. Knives and all kinds of sharp instruments were terribly prohibited in prison. The searches were frequent, unexpected and serious, the punishments were cruel; but since it is difficult to find a thief when he decides to hide something in particular, and since knives and tools were an ever-present necessity in prison, despite searches, they were not transferred. And if they were selected, then new ones were immediately created. The whole prison gang rushed to the fence and looked through the cracks of their fingers with bated breath. Everyone knew that Petrov this time would not want to lie under the rod and that the end had come for the major. But at the most decisive moment, our major got into a droshky and drove off, entrusting the execution to another officer. “God himself saved!” the prisoners said later. As for Petrov, he calmly endured the punishment. His anger subsided with the major's departure. The prisoner is obedient and submissive to a certain extent; but there is an extreme that should not be crossed. By the way: nothing could be more curious than these strange outbursts of impatience and obstinacy. Often a person endures for several years, humbles himself, endures the most severe punishments, and suddenly breaks through for some small thing, for some trifle, for almost nothing. From another point of view, one might even call him crazy; Yes, that's what they do.
I have already said that for several years I have not seen among these people the slightest sign of repentance, not the slightest painful thought about their crime, and that most of them internally consider themselves completely right. It is a fact. Of course, vanity, bad examples, valor, false shame are largely the reason for this. On the other hand, who can say that he has traced the depths of these lost hearts and read in them the secrets of the whole world? But after all, it was possible, at so many years, to at least notice something, to catch, to catch in these hearts at least some feature that would indicate inner melancholy, about suffering. But this was not the case, positively not the case. Yes, crime, it seems, cannot be comprehended from given, ready-made points of view, and its philosophy is somewhat more difficult than it is believed. Of course, prisons and the system of forced labor do not correct the criminal; they only punish him and protect society from further attacks by the villain on his peace of mind. In the criminal, prison and the most intensive hard labor develop only hatred, thirst for forbidden pleasures and terrible frivolity. But I am firmly convinced that the famous cell system achieves only a false, deceptive, external goal. It sucks the life juice out of a person, enervates his soul, weakens it, frightens it, and then presents a morally withered mummy, a half-crazed man, as an example of correction and repentance. Of course, a criminal who rebels against society hates it and almost always considers himself right and him guilty. Moreover, he has already suffered punishment from him, and through this he almost considers himself cleansed, even. One can finally judge from such points of view that one almost has to acquit the criminal himself. But, despite all kinds of points of view, everyone will agree that there are crimes that always and everywhere, according to all kinds of laws, from the beginning of the world are considered indisputable crimes and will be considered such as long as a person remains a person. Only in prison did I hear stories about the most terrible, the most unnatural acts, the most monstrous murders, told with the most uncontrollable, most childishly cheerful laughter. One parricide in particular never escapes my memory. He was from the nobility, served and was something of a prodigal son to his sixty-year-old father. He was completely dissolute in behavior and got into debt. His father limited him and persuaded him; but the father had a house, there was a farm, money was suspected, and the son killed him, thirsting for an inheritance. The crime was discovered only a month later. The killer himself filed a statement with the police that his father had disappeared to an unknown location. He spent this entire month in the most depraved manner. Finally, in his absence, the police found the body. In the yard, along its entire length, there was a ditch for sewage drainage, covered with boards. The body lay in this ditch. It was dressed and put away, the gray head was cut off, put to the body, and the killer put a pillow under the head. He didn't confess; was deprived of nobility and rank and exiled to work for twenty years. The whole time I lived with him, he was in the most excellent, cheerful mood. He was an eccentric, frivolous, extremely unreasonable person, although not at all a fool. I never noticed any particular cruelty in him. The prisoners despised him not for the crime, of which there was no mention, but for his stupidity, for the fact that he did not know how to behave. In conversations, he sometimes remembered his father. Once, speaking to me about the healthy build that was hereditary in their family, he added: “My parent, until his very death, he did not complain of any illness.” Such brutal insensitivity is, of course, impossible. This is a phenomenon; here is some kind of lack of constitution, some kind of physical and moral deformity, not yet known to science, and not just a crime. Of course, I did not believe this crime. But people from his city, who should have known all the details of his history, told me his whole affair. The facts were so clear that it was impossible not to believe.
The prisoners heard him shout one night in his sleep: “Hold him, hold him! Cut off his head, head, head!..”
The prisoners almost all spoke at night and were delirious. Curses, thieves' words, knives, axes most often came to their tongues in delirium. “We are a beaten people,” they said, “our insides are broken, that’s why we scream at night.”
State convict serf labor was not an occupation, but a duty: the prisoner worked out his lesson or served his legal hours of work and went to prison. They looked at the work with hatred. Without his special, personal occupation, to which he would be devoted with all his mind, with all his calculations, a man in prison could not live. And how did all this people, developed, who had lived greatly and wanted to live, be forcibly brought here into one heap, forcibly torn away from society and from normal life, could you get along here normally and correctly, of your own will and desire? Just idleness here would have developed in him such criminal qualities that he had no idea about before. Without labor and without legal, normal property, a person cannot live, he becomes corrupted, and turns into a beast. And therefore, everyone in prison, due to natural need and some sense of self-preservation, had his own skill and occupation. The long summer day was almost entirely filled with official work; V short night there was barely time to sleep. But in winter, according to the situation, as soon as it got dark, the prisoner should already be locked up in prison. What to do during the long, boring hours of a winter evening? And therefore, almost every barracks, despite the ban, turned into a huge workshop. Actually, work and occupation were not prohibited; but it was strictly forbidden to have tools with you in the prison, and without this work was impossible. But they worked quietly, and it seems that the authorities in other cases did not look at it very closely. Many of the prisoners came to prison knowing nothing, but they learned from others and then were released into freedom as good craftsmen. There were shoemakers, shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, metalworkers, carvers, and gilders. There was one Jew, Isai Bumstein, a jeweler, who was also a moneylender. They all worked and earned a penny. Work orders were received from the city. Money is minted freedom, and therefore for a person completely deprived of freedom, it is ten times more valuable. If they only jingle in his pocket, he is already half consoled, even if he could not spend them. But money can always and everywhere be spent, especially since the forbidden fruit is twice as sweet. And in hard labor you could even have wine. Pipes were strictly prohibited, but everyone smoked them. Money and tobacco saved people from scurvy and other diseases. Work saved from crime: without work, prisoners would eat each other like spiders in a bottle. Despite the fact that both work and money were prohibited. Often sudden searches were made at night, everything forbidden was taken away, and - no matter how much money was hidden, the detectives still sometimes came across it. This is partly why they did not take care, but quickly got drunk; That’s why wine was also produced in the prison. After each search, the guilty person, in addition to losing his entire fortune, was usually severely punished. But, after each search, the shortcomings were immediately replenished, new things were immediately introduced, and everything went on as before. And the authorities knew about this, and the prisoners did not complain about the punishment, although such a life was similar to the life of those who settled on Mount Vesuvius.
Those who did not have skill made a living in a different way. There were quite original methods. Others lived, for example, only by buying and selling, and sometimes such things were sold that it would not even have occurred to anyone outside the walls of the prison not only to buy and sell them, but even to consider them as things. But penal servitude was very poor and extremely industrial. The last rag was valuable and was used for some purpose. Due to poverty, money in prison had a completely different price than in the wild. Large and complex work was paid in pennies. Some were successful in moneylending. The prisoner, exhausted and broke, carried the last of his belongings to the moneylender and received from him some copper money at terrible interest. If he did not buy these things back on time, they were immediately and mercilessly sold; usury flourished to such an extent that even government inspection items were accepted as collateral, such as government linen, shoe goods, etc. - things necessary for every prisoner at any time. But with such pledges, another turn of the matter also happened, not entirely unexpected, however: the one who pledged and received the money immediately, without further conversations, went to the senior non-commissioned officer, the nearest commander of the prison, reported about the pledge of the inspection items, and they were immediately taken away from him. the moneylender back, even without reporting to higher authorities. It is curious that sometimes there was not even a quarrel: the moneylender silently and sullenly returned what was due and even seemed to expect this to happen. Perhaps he could not help but admit to himself that if he were the pawnbroker, he would have done the same. And therefore, if he sometimes cursed later, it was without any malice, but only to clear his conscience.
In general, everyone stole from each other terribly. Almost everyone had their own chest with a lock for storing government items. This was allowed; but the chests were not saved. I think you can imagine what skilled thieves there were. One of my prisoners, a sincerely devoted person to me (I say this without any exaggeration), stole the Bible, the only book that was allowed to be had in penal servitude; He himself confessed this to me that same day, not out of repentance, but pitying me, because I had been looking for her for a long time. There were kissers who sold wine and quickly became rich. I will speak especially about this sale someday; she's pretty wonderful. There were many people who came to the prison for smuggling, and therefore there is nothing to be surprised at how, during such inspections and convoys, wine was brought into the prison. By the way: smuggling, by its nature, is some kind of special crime. Is it possible, for example, to imagine that money and profit play a secondary role for some smugglers, stand in the background? And yet this is exactly what happens. A smuggler works out of passion, out of calling. This is partly a poet. He risks everything, goes into terrible danger, cunning, inventing, getting out of his own way; sometimes he even acts out of some kind of inspiration. It's a passion as strong as playing cards. I knew one prisoner in the prison, colossal in appearance, but so meek, quiet, humble that it was impossible to imagine how he ended up in prison. He was so gentle and easy-going that during his entire stay in prison he did not quarrel with anyone. But he was from the western border, came for smuggling and, of course, could not resist and began to smuggle wine. How many times was he punished for this, and how afraid he was of the rods! And even the very act of carrying wine brought him the most insignificant income. Only one entrepreneur got rich from wine. The eccentric loved art for art's sake. He was as whiny as a woman and how many times, after punishment, he swore and swore not to carry contraband. With courage, he sometimes overcame himself for a whole month, but finally still could not stand it... Thanks to these individuals, the wine did not become scarce in the prison.
Finally, there was another income, which, although it did not enrich the prisoners, was constant and beneficial. This is alms. The upper class of our society has no idea how much the merchants, townsfolk and all our people care about the “unfortunate”. Alms are almost continuous and almost always with bread, bagels and rolls, much less often with money. Without these alms, in many places, it would be too difficult for prisoners, especially defendants, who are kept much more strictly than prisoners. Alms are religiously divided equally among the prisoners. If there is not enough for everyone, then the rolls are cut equally, sometimes even into six parts, and each prisoner certainly gets his own piece. I remember the first time I received a cash handout. It was soon after my arrival in prison. I was returning from morning work alone, with a guard. A mother and daughter walked towards me, a girl of about ten, as pretty as an angel. I've already seen them once. My mother was a soldier, a widow. Her husband, a young soldier, was on trial and died in the hospital, in the prisoner's ward, at a time when I was lying there sick. His wife and daughter came to him to say goodbye; both cried terribly. Seeing me, the girl blushed and whispered something to her mother; she immediately stopped, found a quarter of a penny in the bundle and gave it to the girl. She rushed to run after me... “Here, you unfortunate one, take a penny for Christ’s sake!” she shouted, running ahead of me and thrusting a coin into my hands. I took her penny, and the girl returned to her mother completely satisfied. I kept this little penny for myself for a long time.
Part one
Introduction
In the remote regions of Siberia, among the steppes, mountains or impenetrable forests, you occasionally come across small towns, with one, many with two thousand inhabitants, wooden, nondescript, with two churches - one in the city, the other in the cemetery - towns that look more like good village near Moscow than the city. They are usually quite sufficiently equipped with police officers, assessors and all other subaltern ranks. In general, in Siberia, despite the cold, it is extremely warm. People live simple, illiberal lives; the order is old, strong, sanctified for centuries. The officials, who rightly play the role of the Siberian nobility, are either natives, inveterate Siberians, or visitors from Russia, mostly from the capitals, seduced by the non-credited salaries, double passes and tempting hopes for the future. Among them, those who know how to solve the riddle of life almost always remain in Siberia and take root in it with pleasure. They subsequently bear rich and sweet fruits. But others, frivolous people who do not know how to solve the riddle of life, will soon become bored with Siberia and ask themselves with longing: why did they come to it? They eagerly serve out their legal term of service, three years, and at the end of it they immediately bother about their transfer and return home, scolding Siberia and laughing at it. They are wrong: not only from an official point of view, but even from many points of view, one can be blissful in Siberia. The climate is excellent; there are many remarkably rich and hospitable merchants; there are many extremely wealthy foreigners. The young ladies bloom with roses and are moral to the last extreme. The game flies through the streets and stumbles upon the hunter. An unnatural amount of champagne is drunk. The caviar is amazing. The harvest happens in other places as early as fifteen... In general, the land is blessed. You just need to know how to use it. In Siberia they know how to use it.
In one of these cheerful and self-satisfied towns, with the sweetest people, the memory of which will remain indelible in my heart, I met Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, a settler who was born in Russia as a nobleman and landowner, then became a second-class exile for the murder of his wife, and, after the expiration of the ten-year term of hard labor prescribed for him by law, he humbly and quietly lived out his life in the town of K. as a settler. He was actually assigned to one suburban volost; but he lived in the city, having the opportunity to earn at least some food in it by teaching children. In Siberian cities one often encounters teachers from exiled settlers; they are not disdained. They teach mainly the French language, which is so necessary in the field of life and which, without them, in the remote regions of Siberia they would have no idea. The first time I met Alexander Petrovich was in the house of an old, honored and hospitable official, Ivan Ivanovich Gvozdikov, who had five daughters different years who showed great promise. Alexander Petrovich gave them lessons four times a week, thirty silver kopecks per lesson. His appearance interested me. He was an extremely pale and thin man, not yet old, about thirty-five, small and frail. He was always dressed very cleanly, in a European style. If you spoke to him, he looked at you extremely intently and attentively, listened to every word of yours with strict politeness, as if he were pondering it, as if you asked him a task with your question or wanted to extract some secret from him, and, finally, he answered clearly and briefly, but weighing every word of his answer so much that you suddenly felt awkward for some reason and you yourself finally rejoiced at the end of the conversation. I then asked Ivan Ivanovich about him and found out that Goryanchikov lives impeccably and morally and that otherwise Ivan Ivanovich would not have invited him for his daughters, but that he is a terrible unsociable, hides from everyone, is extremely learned, reads a lot, but says very little and that in general it is quite difficult to talk to him. Others argued that he was positively crazy, although they found that in essence this was not such an important flaw, that many of the honorary members of the city were ready to favor Alexander Petrovich in every possible way, that he could even be useful, write requests, etc. They believed that he must have decent relatives in Russia, maybe not even the last people, but they knew that from the very exile he stubbornly cut off all relations with them - in a word, he was harming himself. In addition, we all knew his story, we knew that he killed his wife in the first year of his marriage, killed out of jealousy and denounced himself (which greatly facilitated his punishment). Such crimes are always looked upon as misfortunes and regretted. But, despite all this, the eccentric stubbornly avoided everyone and appeared in people only to give lessons.
At first I didn't pay much attention to him; but, I don’t know why, little by little he began to interest me. There was something mysterious about him. There was not the slightest opportunity to talk to him. Of course, he always answered my questions, and even with such an air as if he considered this his primary duty; but after his answers I somehow felt burdened to question him longer; and after such conversations, his face always showed some kind of suffering and fatigue. I remember walking with him one fine summer evening from Ivan Ivanovich. Suddenly I took it into my head to invite him to my place for a minute to smoke a cigarette. I cannot describe the horror that was expressed on his face; he was completely lost, began to mutter some incoherent words and suddenly, looking angrily at me, he started running in the opposite direction. I was even surprised. From then on, whenever he met me, he looked at me as if with some kind of fear. But I didn’t calm down; I was drawn to him by something, and a month later, out of the blue, I went to see Goryanchikov. Of course, I acted stupidly and indelicately. He lived on the very edge of the city, with an old bourgeois woman who had a daughter who was sick with consumption, and that daughter had an illegitimate daughter, a child of about ten years old, a pretty and cheerful girl. Alexander Petrovich was sitting with her and teaching her to read the minute I came into his room. When he saw me, he became so confused, as if I had caught him committing some crime. He was completely confused, jumped up from his chair and looked at me with all his eyes. We finally sat down; he closely watched my every glance, as if he suspected some special mysterious meaning in each of them. I guessed that he was suspicious to the point of madness. He looked at me with hatred, almost asking: “Are you going to leave here soon?” I talked to him about our town, about current news; he remained silent and smiled evilly; It turned out that he not only did not know the most ordinary, well-known city news, but was not even interested in knowing them. Then I started talking about our region, about its needs; he listened to me in silence and looked into my eyes so strangely that I finally felt ashamed of our conversation. However, I almost teased him with new books and magazines; I had them in my hands, fresh from the post office, and I offered them to him, not yet cut. He cast a greedy glance at them, but immediately changed his mind and declined the offer, citing lack of time. Finally, I said goodbye to him and, leaving him, I felt that some unbearable weight had been lifted from my heart. I was ashamed and it seemed extremely stupid to pester a person whose main goal was to hide as far away from the whole world as possible. But the job was done. I remember that I noticed almost no books on him, and, therefore, it was unfair to say about him that he reads a lot. However, driving past his windows twice, very late at night, I noticed a light in them. What did he do while he sat until dawn? Didn't he write? And if so, what exactly?
Circumstances removed me from our town for three months. Returning home in the winter, I learned that Alexander Petrovich died in the fall, died in solitude and never even called a doctor to him. The town has almost forgotten about him. His apartment was empty. I immediately met the owner of the deceased, intending to find out from her: what was her tenant especially doing and did he write anything? For two kopecks she brought me a whole basket of papers left behind by the deceased. The old woman admitted that she had already used up two notebooks. She was a gloomy and silent woman, from whom it was difficult to get anything worthwhile. She couldn’t tell me anything particularly new about her tenant. According to her, he almost never did anything and for months at a time did not open a book or pick up a pen; but whole nights he walked back and forth across the room and kept thinking about something, and sometimes talking to himself; that he loved and caressed her granddaughter, Katya, very much, especially since he found out that her name was Katya, and that on Katerina’s day every time he went to serve a memorial service for someone. He could not tolerate guests; he only came out of the yard to teach the children; he even glanced sideways at her, the old woman, when she came, once a week, to tidy up his room at least a little, and almost never said a single word to her for three whole years. I asked Katya: does she remember her teacher? She looked at me silently, turned to the wall and began to cry. Therefore, this man could at least force someone to love him.
I took his papers and sorted through them all day. Three quarters of these papers were empty, insignificant scraps or student exercises from copybooks. But there was also one notebook, quite voluminous, finely written and unfinished, perhaps abandoned and forgotten by the author himself. This was a description, albeit incoherent, of the ten years of hard labor endured by Alexander Petrovich. In places this description was interrupted by some other story, some strange, terrible memories, sketched unevenly, convulsively, as if under some kind of compulsion. I re-read these passages several times and was almost convinced that they were written in madness. But the convict notes - “Scenes from the House of the Dead,” as he himself calls them somewhere in his manuscript, seemed to me not entirely uninteresting. A completely new world, hitherto unknown, the strangeness of other facts, some special notes about the lost people captivated me, and I read something with curiosity. Of course, I could be wrong. I first select two or three chapters for testing; let the public judge...
I. House of the Dead
Our fort stood on the edge of the fortress, right next to the ramparts. It happened that you looked through the cracks of the fence into the light of day: wouldn’t you see at least something? - and all you will see is the edge of the sky and a high earthen rampart overgrown with weeds, and sentries walking back and forth along the rampart day and night, and you will immediately think that whole years will pass, and you will go in the same way to look through the cracks of the fence and you will see the same rampart, the same sentries and the same small edge of the sky, not the sky that is above the prison, but another, distant, free sky. Imagine a large courtyard, two hundred steps in length and one and a half hundred steps in width, all surrounded in a circle, in the form of an irregular hexagon, by a high fence, that is, a fence of high pillars (pals), dug deep into the ground, firmly leaning against each other with ribs, fastened with transverse planks and pointed at the top: this is the outer fence of the fort. In one of the sides of the fence there is a strong gate, always locked, always guarded day and night by sentries; they were unlocked upon request to be released to work. Behind these gates there was a bright, free world, people lived like everyone else. But on this side of the fence they imagined that world as some kind of impossible fairy tale. It had its own special world, unlike anything else; it had its own special laws, its own costumes, its own morals and customs, and a living dead house, life - like nowhere else, and special people. It is this special corner that I begin to describe.
As you enter the fence, you see several buildings inside it. On both sides of the wide courtyard there are two long one-story log houses. These are barracks. Prisoners housed by category live here. Then, in the depths of the fence, there is another similar log house: this is a kitchen, divided into two artels; further on there is another building where cellars, barns, and sheds are located under one roof. The middle of the yard is empty and forms a flat, fairly large area. Here the prisoners are lined up, verification and roll call take place in the morning, at noon and in the evening, sometimes several more times a day - judging by the suspiciousness of the guards and their ability to quickly count. All around, between the buildings and the fence, there is still quite a large space. Here, at the back of the buildings, some of the prisoners, more unsociable and darker in character, like to walk around during non-working hours, closed from all eyes, and think their little thoughts. Meeting them during these walks, I loved to peer into their gloomy, branded faces and guess what they were thinking about. There was one exile whose favorite pastime in his free time was counting pali. There were a thousand and a half of them, and he had them all in his account and in mind. Each fire meant a day for him; every day he counted one pala and thus, from the remaining number of uncounted pali, he could clearly see how many days he still had left to stay in the prison before the deadline for work. He was sincerely happy when he finished some side of the hexagon. He still had to wait for many years; but in prison there was time to learn patience. I once saw how a prisoner, who had been in hard labor for twenty years and was finally released, said goodbye to his comrades. There were people who remembered how he entered the prison for the first time, young, carefree, not thinking about his crime or his punishment. He came out as a gray-haired old man, with a gloomy and sad face. Silently he walked around all our six barracks. Entering each barracks, he prayed to the icon and then bowed low, at the waist, to his comrades, asking them not to remember him unkindly. I also remember how one day a prisoner, formerly a wealthy Siberian peasant, was called to the gate one evening. Six months before this, he received the news that his ex-wife had gotten married, and he was deeply saddened. Now she herself drove up to the prison, called him and gave him alms. They talked for two minutes, both cried and said goodbye forever. I saw his face when he returned to the barracks... Yes, in this place one could learn patience.
When it got dark, we were all taken into the barracks, where we were locked up for the whole night. It was always difficult for me to return from the yard to our barracks. It was a long, low and stuffy room, dimly lit by tallow candles, with a heavy, suffocating smell. Now I don’t understand how I survived in it for ten years. I had three boards on the bunk: that was all my space. About thirty people were accommodated on these same bunks in one of our rooms. In winter they locked it early; We had to wait four hours until everyone fell asleep. And before that - noise, din, laughter, curses, the sound of chains, smoke and soot, shaved heads, branded faces, patchwork dresses, everything - cursed, defamed... yes, a tenacious man! Man is a creature that gets used to everything, and I think this is the best definition of him.
There were only two hundred and fifty of us in the prison - the number was almost constant. Some came, others completed their terms and left, others died. And what kind of people were not here! I think every province, every strip of Russia had its representatives here. There were also foreigners, there were several exiles even from the Caucasian highlanders. All this was divided according to the degree of crime, and therefore, according to the number of years determined for the crime. It must be assumed that there was no crime that did not have its representative here. The main basis of the entire prison population were exiled convicts of the civil category ( strongly convicts, as the prisoners themselves naively pronounced). These were criminals, completely deprived of all the rights of fortune, cut off in chunks from society, with their faces branded as an eternal testimony of their rejection. They were sent to work for periods of eight to twelve years and then were sent somewhere in the Siberian volosts as settlers. There were also criminals of the military category, who were not deprived of their status rights, as in general in Russian military prison companies. They were sent for a short period of time; upon completion, they turned back to where they came from, to become soldiers, to the Siberian line battalions. Many of them almost immediately returned back to prison for secondary important crimes, but not for short periods, but for twenty years. This category was called "always". But the "always" were still not completely deprived of all the rights of the state. Finally, there was another special category of the most terrible criminals, mainly military, quite numerous. It was called the “special department”. Criminals were sent here from all over Rus'. They themselves considered themselves eternal and did not know the duration of their work. By law, they had to double and triple their work hours. They were kept in prison until the most severe hard labor was opened in Siberia. “You get a prison term, but we get penal servitude along the way,” they said to other prisoners. I heard later that this discharge was destroyed. In addition, civil order at our fortress was destroyed, and one general military prison company was established. Of course, along with this, the management also changed. I am describing, therefore, the old days, things that are long past and past...
It was a long time ago; I dream of all this now, as if in a dream. I remember how I entered the prison. It was in the evening in December. It was already getting dark; people were returning from work; were preparing for verification. The mustachioed non-commissioned officer finally opened the doors for me to this strange house in which I had to stay for so many years, endure so many sensations about which, without actually experiencing them, I could not even have an approximate idea. For example, I could never imagine: what is terrible and painful about the fact that during all ten years of my penal servitude I will never, not even for a single minute, be alone? At work, always under escort, at home with two hundred comrades, and never, never alone! However, did I still have to get used to this!
There were casual killers and professional killers, robbers and atamans of robbers. There were simply mazuriks and industrialist vagabonds for found money or for the Stolevo part. There were also those about whom it was difficult to decide: why, it seems, could they come here? Meanwhile, everyone had their own story, vague and heavy, like the fumes of yesterday’s intoxication. In general, they talked little about their past, did not like to talk and, apparently, tried not to think about the past. I even knew of them murderers who were so cheerful, so never thinking, that you could bet that their conscience never reproached them. But there were also gloomy faces, almost always silent. In general, rarely did anyone tell their life, and curiosity was not in fashion, somehow not in custom, not accepted. So is it possible that occasionally someone will start talking out of idleness, while someone else listens calmly and gloomily. No one here could surprise anyone. “We are a literate people!” - they often said with some strange complacency. I remember how one day a drunken robber (you could sometimes get drunk in penal servitude) began to tell how he stabbed a five-year-old boy to death, how he first deceived him with a toy, took him somewhere into an empty barn, and stabbed him there. The entire barracks, which had hitherto laughed at his jokes, screamed as one person, and the robber was forced to remain silent; The barracks screamed not out of indignation, but because there was no need to talk about this speak; because talk about it not accepted. By the way, I note that these people were truly literate, and not even figuratively, but literally. Probably more than half of them could read and write. In what other place where the Russian people gather in large masses, would you separate from him a bunch of two hundred and fifty people, half of whom would be literate? I heard later that someone began to deduce from similar data that literacy is ruining the people. This is a mistake: there are completely different reasons; although one cannot but agree that literacy develops arrogance among the people. But this is not a drawback at all. All categories differed in their dress: some had half their jackets dark brown and the other gray, and the same on their trousers - one leg was gray and the other dark brown. Once, at work, a Kalash-wielding girl approached the prisoners, peered at me for a long time and then suddenly burst out laughing. “Ugh, how nice isn’t it! - she shouted, “there was not enough gray cloth, and there was not enough black cloth!” There were also those whose entire jacket was of the same gray cloth, but only the sleeves were dark brown. The head was also shaved in different ways: for some, half of the head was shaved along the skull, for others across.
At first glance one could notice some sharp commonality in this whole strange family; even the harshest, most original personalities, who reigned over others involuntarily, tried to fall into the general tone of the entire prison. In general, I will say that all this people, with a few few exceptions of inexhaustibly cheerful people who enjoyed universal contempt for this, were a gloomy, envious people, terribly vain, boastful, touchy and extremely formalist. The ability not to be surprised by anything was the greatest virtue. Everyone was obsessed with how to present themselves. But often the most arrogant look was replaced with lightning speed by the most cowardly one. There were some truly strong people; they were simple and did not grimace. But a strange thing: of these real, strong people, several were vain to the extreme, almost to the point of illness. In general, vanity and appearance were in the foreground. The majority were corrupted and terribly sneaky. Gossip and gossip were continuous: it was hell, pitch darkness. But no one dared to rebel against the internal regulations and accepted customs of the prison; everyone obeyed. There were characters that were sharply outstanding, who obeyed with difficulty, with effort, but still obeyed. Those who came to the prison were too high-handed, too out of step with the standards of freedom, so that in the end they even committed their crimes as if not of their own accord, as if they themselves did not know why, as if in delirium, in a state; often out of vanity, excited to the highest degree. But with us they were immediately besieged, despite the fact that others, before arriving at the prison, terrorized entire villages and cities. Looking around, the newcomer soon noticed that he was in the wrong place, that there was no one left to surprise here, and he quietly humbled himself and fell into the general tone. This general tone was composed from the outside out of some special, personal dignity, which imbued almost every inhabitant of the prison. As if, in fact, the title of a convict, a decided one, constituted some kind of rank, and an honorable one at that. No signs of shame or remorse! However, there was also some kind of outward humility, so to speak official, some kind of calm reasoning: “We are a lost people,” they said, “we didn’t know how to live in freedom, now break the green street, check the ranks.” - “I didn’t listen to my father and mother, now listen to the drum skin.” - “I didn’t want to sew with gold, now hit the stones with a hammer.” All this was said often, both in the form of moral teaching and in the form of ordinary sayings and proverbs, but never seriously. All these were just words. It is unlikely that any of them internally admitted their lawlessness. If someone who is not a convict tries to reproach a prisoner for his crime, to scold him (although, however, it is not in the Russian spirit to reproach a criminal), there will be no end to the curses. And what masters they were all at swearing! They swore in a refined, artistic manner. They elevated swearing to a science; they tried to take it not so much with an offensive word, but with an offensive meaning, spirit, idea - and this is more subtle, more poisonous. Continuous quarrels further developed this science between them. All these people worked under pressure, as a result they were idle, and as a result they became corrupted: if they had not been corrupted before, they became corrupted in hard labor. All of them did not gather here of their own free will; they were all strangers to each other.
“The devil took three bast shoes before he gathered us into one heap!” - they said to themselves; and therefore gossip, intrigue, women's slander, envy, quarrel, anger were always in the foreground in this pitch-black life. No woman could be such a woman as some of these murderers. I repeat, among them there were people of strong character, accustomed to breaking and commanding their entire lives, seasoned, fearless. These people were somehow involuntarily respected; they, for their part, although they were often very jealous of their fame, generally tried not to be a burden to others, did not engage in empty curses, behaved with extraordinary dignity, were reasonable and almost always obedient to their superiors - not out of the principle of obedience , not out of consciousness of responsibilities, but as if under some kind of contract, realizing mutual benefits. However, they were treated with caution. I remember how one of these prisoners, a fearless and decisive man, known to his superiors for his brutal inclinations, was called to punishment for some crime. It was a summer day, time off from work. The staff officer, the closest and immediate commander of the prison, came himself to the guardhouse, which was right next to our gates, to be present at the punishment. This major was some kind of fatal creature for the prisoners, he brought them to the point that they trembled at him. He was insanely strict, “throwing himself at people,” as the convicts said. What they feared most about him was his penetrating, lynx-like gaze, from which nothing could be hidden. He somehow saw without looking. Entering the prison, he already knew what was happening at the other end of it. The prisoners called him eight-eyed. His system was false. He only embittered already embittered people with his frenzied, evil actions, and if there had not been a commandant over him, a noble and sensible man, who sometimes moderated his wild antics, then he would have caused great troubles with his management. I don’t understand how he could have ended safely; he retired alive and well, although, however, he was put on trial.
The prisoner turned pale when they called him. Usually he silently and resolutely lay down under the rods, silently endured the punishment and got up after the punishment, as if disheveled, calmly and philosophically looking at the failure that had happened. However, they always dealt with him carefully. But this time he considered himself to be right for some reason. He turned pale and, quietly away from the escort, managed to put a sharp English shoe knife into his sleeve. Knives and all kinds of sharp instruments were terribly prohibited in the prison. The searches were frequent, unexpected and serious, the punishments were cruel; but since it is difficult to find a thief when he has decided to hide something special, and since knives and tools were an ever-present necessity in prison, despite searches, they were not transferred. And if they were selected, then new ones were immediately created. The whole prison gang rushed to the fence and looked through the cracks of their fingers with bated breath. Everyone knew that Petrov this time would not want to lie under the rod and that the end had come for the major. But at the most decisive moment, our major got into a droshky and drove off, entrusting the execution to another officer. “God himself saved!” – the prisoners said later. As for Petrov, he calmly endured the punishment. His anger subsided with the major's departure. The prisoner is obedient and submissive to a certain extent; but there is an extreme that should not be crossed. By the way: nothing could be more curious than these strange outbursts of impatience and obstinacy. Often a person endures for several years, humbles himself, endures the most severe punishments, and suddenly breaks through for some small thing, for some trifle, for almost nothing. At another glance, one might even call him crazy; Yes, that's what they do.
I have already said that for several years I have not seen among these people the slightest sign of repentance, not the slightest painful thought about their crime, and that most of them internally consider themselves completely right. It is a fact. Of course, vanity, bad examples, youthfulness, false shame are largely the reason for this. On the other hand, who can say that he has traced the depths of these lost hearts and read in them the secrets of the whole world? But after all, it was possible, at so many years, to at least notice something, to catch, to catch in these hearts at least some feature that would indicate inner melancholy, about suffering. But this was not the case, positively not the case. Yes, crime, it seems, cannot be understood from given, ready-made points of view, and its philosophy is somewhat more difficult than is believed. Of course, prisons and the system of forced labor do not correct the criminal; they only punish him and protect society from further attacks by the villain on his peace of mind. In the criminal, prison and the most intensive hard labor develop only hatred, thirst for forbidden pleasures and terrible frivolity. But I am firmly convinced that the famous cell system achieves only a false, deceptive, external goal. It sucks the life juice out of a person, enervates his soul, weakens it, frightens it, and then presents a morally withered mummy, a half-crazed man, as an example of correction and repentance. Of course, a criminal who rebels against society hates it and almost always considers himself right and him guilty. Moreover, he has already suffered punishment from him, and through this he almost considers himself cleansed, even. One can finally judge from such points of view that one almost has to acquit the criminal himself. But, despite all kinds of points of view, everyone will agree that there are crimes that always and everywhere, according to all kinds of laws, from the beginning of the world are considered indisputable crimes and will be considered such as long as a person remains a person. Only in prison did I hear stories about the most terrible, the most unnatural acts, the most monstrous murders, told with the most uncontrollable, most childishly cheerful laughter. One parricide in particular never escapes my memory. He was from the nobility, served and was something of a prodigal son to his sixty-year-old father. He was completely dissolute in behavior and got into debt. His father limited him and persuaded him; but the father had a house, there was a farm, money was suspected, and the son killed him, thirsting for an inheritance. The crime was discovered only a month later. The killer himself filed an announcement with the police that his father had disappeared to an unknown location. He spent this entire month in the most depraved manner. Finally, in his absence, the police found the body. In the yard, along its entire length, there was a ditch for sewage drainage, covered with boards. The body lay in this ditch. It was dressed and put away, the gray head was cut off, put to the body, and the killer put a pillow under the head. He didn't confess; was deprived of nobility and rank and exiled to work for twenty years. The entire time I lived with him, he was in the most excellent, cheerful mood. He was an eccentric, frivolous, extremely unreasonable person, although not at all a fool. I never noticed any particular cruelty in him. The prisoners despised him not for the crime, of which there was no mention, but for his stupidity, for the fact that he did not know how to behave. In conversations, he sometimes remembered his father. Once, speaking to me about the healthy build that was hereditary in their family, he added: “Here my parent
. ... break the green street, check the rows. – The expression has the meaning: to go through a line of soldiers with spitzrutens, receiving a court-determined number of blows on the bare back.
Staff officer, the closest and immediate commander of the prison... - It is known that the prototype of this officer was the parade ground major of the Omsk prison V. G. Krivtsov. In a letter to his brother dated February 22, 1854, Dostoevsky wrote: “Platz-Major Krivtsov is a scoundrel, of which there are few, a petty barbarian, a troublemaker, a drunkard, everything disgusting you can imagine.” Krivtsov was dismissed and then put on trial for abuses.
. ... the commandant, a noble and sensible man... - The commandant of the Omsk fortress was Colonel A.F. de Grave, according to the memoirs of the senior adjutant of the Omsk corps headquarters N.T. Cherevin, “the kindest and most worthy man.”
Petrov. - In the documents of the Omsk prison there is a record that the prisoner Andrei Shalomentsev was punished “for resisting the parade-ground major Krivtsov while punishing him with rods and uttering words that he would certainly do something to himself or kill Krivtsov.” This prisoner may have been the prototype of Petrov; he came to hard labor “for tearing the epaulette off the company commander.”
. ...the famous cell system... - Solitary confinement system. The question of establishing solitary prisons in Russia on the model of the London prison was put forward by Nicholas I himself.
. ...one parricide... - The prototype of the nobleman-"parricide" was D.N. Ilyinsky, about whom seven volumes of his court case have reached us. Outwardly, in terms of events and plot, this imaginary “parricide” is the prototype of Mitya Karamazov in last novel Dostoevsky.
Alexander Goryanchikov was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor for the murder of his wife. The “house of the dead,” as he called the prison, housed about 250 prisoners. There was a special order here. Some tried to make money with their craft, but the authorities took away all the tools after searches. Many begged for alms. With the money one could buy tobacco or wine to somehow brighten up one's existence.
The hero often thought that someone was exiled for a cold-blooded and brutal murder, and the same sentence was given to a person who killed a person while trying to protect his daughter.
In the very first month, Alexander had the opportunity to see absolutely different people. There were smugglers, robbers, informers, and Old Believers here. Many bragged about the crimes they had committed, wanting the glory of fearless criminals. Goryanchikov immediately decided that he would not go against his conscience, like many, trying to make his life easier. Alexander was 1 of 4 nobles who ended up here. Despite his self-contempt, he didn't want to grovel or complain, and wanted to prove that he was capable of working.
He found a dog behind the barracks and often came to feed his new friend Sharik. Soon he began meeting other prisoners, although he tried to avoid particularly cruel murderers.
Before Christmas, the prisoners were taken to the bathhouse, which everyone was very happy about. On the holiday, the townspeople brought gifts to the prisoners, and the priest blessed all the cells.
Having fallen ill and ended up in the hospital, Goryanchikov saw with his own eyes what they lead to Physical punishment practiced in prison.
In the summer, prisoners rioted over prison food. After this, the food became a little better, but not for long.
Several years have passed. The hero had already come to terms with many things and was firmly convinced not to make any more past mistakes. Every day he became more humble and patient. On the last day, Goryanchikov was taken to a blacksmith, who removed the hated shackles from him. Freedom and a happy life lay ahead.
Picture or drawing of Notes from the House of the Dead
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