Great bad writer. Dostoevsky was scolded by everyone: from Leo Tolstoy to Nabok

From his Western ancestors, the baby inherited the right to use the famous Polish noble coat of arms “Radwan”. And also a surname that came from the village of Dostoevo in Pinsk Povet, which was granted back in the 16th century. Subsequently, readers and critics will appoint this Polish-Tatar nobleman as the main person responsible for matters of the mysterious Russian soul. The newborn's name was Fyodor Dostoevsky.

However, one still had to live to see this “later”, which Dostoevsky failed to do. During his lifetime, many considered him an unimportant, or even a bad writer. Moreover, they are secondary, falling somewhere in the category of Eugene Sue, the author of police and feuilleton novels, which, they say, are written in a month, read in the evening and forgotten after a couple of days. By the way, Dostoevsky himself highly valued him and even intended to translate one of Sue’s most odious novels, “Matilda,” into Russian.

The bad attitude towards Dostoevsky is evidenced, for example, by the fact that even The Brothers Karamazov was considered something like a hastily made everyday crime novel. And when translated with the excellent wording “as unnecessary”, the chapter about the “Grand Inquisitor” was thrown out of it.

Troubadour of platitudes

The classics were inherited both from their contemporaries and from their heirs. Gleb Uspensky says: “Rare descriptions in his novels are colorless and banal to the point of impossibility, and besides, they are incredibly careless.” Here Belinsky confesses in a letter to the memoirist and literary historian Pavel Annenkov: “We, my friend, have fooled ourselves with Dostoevsky the genius!” Here Leo Tolstoy more or less delicately remarks: “Dostoevsky - serious attitude to the point, but bad form, monotonous techniques, monotony in language.” But Vladimir Nabokov cuts straight from the shoulder: “Dostoevsky is nothing more than a base trick, which has no equal in stupidity in all world literature. In addition, all his famous works were created in conditions of extreme haste.”

The most interesting thing is that there is a fair amount of truth in all this. Perhaps it is precisely the “conditions of extreme haste” that can explain Dostoevsky’s now textbook “blunder”: “In the living room there was a round table oval in shape." And about the banalities... Various heroines “with traces of former beauty on their faces,” which became a fierce cliche even during Dostoevsky’s childhood, populate his novels so densely that it’s time to thin them out. The young and malicious Antosha Chekhonte trampled on such clichés to his heart’s content in his short story “What is most often found in novels, stories, etc.” In his opinion, most often, for example, “Blonde friends and red-haired enemies” occur. You can conduct an experiment and re-read, say, “Crime and Punishment” to see for yourself: all the positive characters there are thin, and all the negative ones are either fat or “slightly fatty.”

Well, Dostoevsky’s negligence mentioned by Uspensky manifested itself not only in his novels, but also in public, and very responsible, speeches. It is to this negligence that we owe the fact that in every school essay in “Eugene Onegin” you can find a passage about the tragedy of Tatyana Larina, who was married off to an old general. In fact, it clearly follows from Pushkin’s text that “that fat general” and Onegin are almost the same age. But Dostoevsky, in his speech at the opening of the monument to Pushkin, for some mysterious reasons, was pleased to call Tatyana’s husband an old man, and now this “old man”, it seems, cannot be cut out with an ax, which indicates the monstrous, all-suppressing authority of the “bad writer.”

Russian boy

Was he that bad? Theoretically, colleagues' attacks on Dostoevsky can be explained by elementary envy. There is, however, one exception, which bears the name of Leo Tolstoy. Literary scholars say that he, they say, “was not satisfied with the principles of Dostoevsky’s worldview.” This can be translated into human language simply: Tolstoy was not motivated by envy, which is funny to talk about, but by jealousy. And there was something to be jealous of - the question was being decided who in literature would be “the main confessor of the mysterious Russian soul.” The one who fought like Tolstoy, or the one who sat like Dostoevsky.

History judged them in its own way, and, it seems, quite fairly. Firstly, a hundred years later in Russian literature, this dilemma was resolved by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who, like Dostoevsky, ended up in prison for a political article and, just like Tolstoy, fought with the rank of artillery captain. Well, secondly, the heroes of the novels of both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky have firmly entered our everyday life at the most important, everyday level. Here, the well-known jokes about Natasha Rostova (“Hussars, keep quiet!”) and about Rodion Raskolnikov (“Well, don’t tell me! Ten old women are already a ruble!”) are definitely on par. And the vulgar, mechanically cobbled-together definition of Russian literature “Tolstoyevsky is solid” is worth a lot!

Nevertheless, it still seems that Dostoevsky is taking the lead in this race. The maximum that can be blamed on him is that the town of Skotoprigonyevsk (the setting of The Brothers Karamazov) never became the Russian analogue of Baskerville Hall, although the intrigue in the Russian novel is no worse than that of Conan Doyle.

Apparently, this is precisely where the phenomenon of “Russian boys”, masterfully drawn by Dostoevsky, manifested itself: “Give a Russian schoolchild a map starry sky, and the next day he will return it to you corrected.” And Fyodor Mikhailovich himself turned out to be so cool that he was able to turn an ordinary police detective story into a high psychological novel, which will forever be amazed and from which “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” will no longer be thrown out.

The well-known classic of Russian literature, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, continues to remain unknown in many ways. We know more about Dostoevsky's life than we do. And the reason for this is Fyodor Mikhailovich himself.
Dostoevsky was a complex, contradictory person, in some ways even vicious. He carefully hid the unsightly pages of his biography. And his life in many ways continues to remain a mystery.
The recent television series “Dostoevsky,” a kind of “film glamour,” only added “gloss” and gave rise to even more questions.
Dostoevsky generally left us with more questions than answers. And we have been looking for answers to his “damned questions” for a hundred and fifty years now.

I have read quite a lot of books about Dostoevsky and his work, watched many films, repeatedly participated in conferences in St. Petersburg and Staraya Russa dedicated to the work of Dostoevsky, and am familiar with many Dostoevsky scholars.
Most publications about Dostoevsky are devoted to the creation of a myth about the great classic of Russian literature.

Vladimir Khotinenko’s new film “Dostoevsky,” which was recently shown on the Rossiya TV channel, was shot in the “biopic” genre Biopic - biographical picture (biography film) - very popular now in Europe and America. Perhaps it is the desire to sell the film to Western television companies that explains many of the shortcomings of the film biography.

Overall, I personally liked the film. Very good camera work. Although some “glance” prevented us from seeing the full tragic depth of Dostoevsky’s personality.
Khotinenko’s Dostoevsky turned out to be “kind”, “good”, whole. But the real Fyodor Mikhailovich was by no means “good”, and very contradictory.
The film does not show those great doubts through which, in the words of Dostoevsky himself, “his hosanna” passed.
The tragic question near the coffin of his first wife - “Will I see Masha?” – also not in the film. But this question tormented Dostoevsky all his life. And it’s clear why - after all, he actually betrayed his wife by going to his mistress in Paris. His wife was dying of consumption, and he traveled with Apollinaria Suslova around Europe.

I believe that in a biographical film no “gag” is acceptable. But screenwriter Eduard Volodarsky changed the story of the execution on the Semyonovsky parade ground, apparently to glorify Dostoevsky. He put Dostoevsky to a post and put a bag on him, which is completely inconsistent with the true story and eyewitness accounts.

Probably, if there had been a literary consultant on the film crew, he would not have allowed such a distortion of the biography of the great classic. Well, since there is no consultant, then “everything is permitted.”

Dostoevsky recalled “ten terrible, immensely terrible minutes of waiting for death.” On December 22, 1849, they were brought from the Peter and Paul Fortress (where they spent 8 months in solitary confinement) to the Semenovsky parade ground. The confirmation of the death sentence was read to them; a priest in a black robe approached with a cross in his hand, they broke the sword over the heads of the nobles; Everyone except Palma was put on death shirts. Petrashevsky, Mombelli and Grigoriev were blindfolded and tied to a pole. The officer ordered the soldiers to take aim... Dostoevsky was eighth in line, which means he had to go to the pillars in third place.

The famous scholar of honor (and my good friend), Doctor of Philology Lyudmila Saraskina, assessed Khotinenko’s series this way in an interview “ Rossiyskaya newspaper"(from 05/27/2011): "Unfortunately, this film does not correspond much to the real biography of Dostoevsky. Actually, there is no biography here at all, but there is a series of dotted lines that are poorly connected with each other... And the execution scene itself is shown with gross distortions - as if there were not hundreds of living witnesses, there were no memories of the participants in the execution, including letters from Dostoevsky himself. It seems that the filmmakers were not at all concerned about the problem of authenticity - there are so many absurd violations of the truth, overexposure, unacceptable and inexplicable self-will in this film.”

The “conspiracy” for which Dostoevsky was convicted raises more questions than it has answers. To condemn him to death only “for failure to report the dissemination of a criminal letter about religion and government by the writer Belinsky and a malicious essay by Lieutenant Grigoriev...” was too much even in those harsh times. As experts say, what was written in the verdict was only partly true, and was intended to hide the true scale and goals of the conspiracy from the public.

I probably agree with the famous literary critic Natalya Ivanova (we met at the scientific conference “St. Petersburg Text Today”, held at the House of Writers in St. Petersburg), who published a review in Ogonyok about the series: “I want volume, first of all for figures of genius." Natalya Ivanova writes: “How did Dostoevsky become clearer in Dostoevsky? Through what “crucibles of doubt” did his “hosanna” come?
I hope this is a typo, since Dostoevsky literally wrote the following: “It is therefore not like a boy that I believe in Christ and confess him, but through a great crucible of doubts my hosanna has passed.”

The film by Vladimir Khotinenko is more of a screened biography in the spirit of a “caravan of stories” than a history spiritual transformation. The key moments in the formation of Dostoevsky's worldview are not shown in the film.

For all the skill of Yevgeny Mironov, his Dostoevsky clearly lacks tragic depth, inconsistency and the eternal confrontation between faith and doubt. And although Yevgeny Mironov carefully distorted his voice beyond recognition, Mironov still made Dostoevsky cinematic, and therefore everyday and understandable.
But Dostoevsky still remains incomprehensible - and this is the secret of his genius!

I didn’t feel Dostoevsky the philosopher played by Yevgeny Mironov at all. But in Alexander Zarkhi’s film “26 Days in the Life of Dostoevsky,” I liked Fyodor Mikhailovich performed by Anatoly Solonitsyn more. And Anna Grigorievna Snitkina (performed by Evgenia Simonova) is played more convincingly. The drama of Dostoevsky’s love for Apollinaria Suslova is also well shown, which makes it clear how Apollinaria became the prototype of Nastasya Filippovna and Grushenka.

Andrei Tarkovsky also wanted to make a film about Dostoevsky. He certainly wouldn't make a biopic.
In Khotinenko’s series, I liked the moment of losing in a casino. I kept waiting for the scene to be played when Anna Grigorievna, disguised as a beggar, would beg for alms from the loser Dostoevsky, and he wouldn’t even recognize her. Unfortunately, in the film this important point is absent, like other “deep spots” in Dostoevsky’s life.

I liked Chulpan Khamatova in the role of Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, but Apollinaria Suslova is not in the film. It is unclear how Dostoevsky could fall in love with such a “nihilist.” But it was passion, a painful passion, to the point of a desire to kill...

Today in the West, interest in Dostoevsky is no longer what it used to be. Despite the abundance of books about Dostoevsky, we do not know many of the dark sides of his life, which he himself preferred to remain silent about. To this day, his personal life remains a mystery, especially from the moment the first novel “Poor People” was recognized and until his execution on the Semyonovsky parade ground. Where he spent the huge fees for those times, how he managed the borrowed sums is still not known.
It is only known how he spent the entire dowry of his second wife Anna Grigorievna in the casino.

For some reason, it is customary for us to consider the classics of literature to be morally positive people. But neither Fyodor Dostoevsky, nor Leo Tolstoy, nor Ivan Turgenev, nor Pushkin, nor Lermontov, nor Chekhov were far from angels, to say the least. But is it really possible to tell children how Leo Tolstoy sent to the village for a “soldier” to satisfy lust, and Pushkin with his “Don Juan list” was still that “son of a bitch”.

Since the inclusion of Dostoevsky's works in school curriculum, are persistently trying to create a myth about the great classic of Russian literature, which was almost ideal person. And why? Yes, because we don’t have people capable of being an example of a highly spiritual life. So we invent a moral ideal from what we have.

I am categorically against turning Dostoevsky into an icon. He wasn't just a good man, as it was not and simply bad person. Dostoevsky, using the example of his heroes, showed that black and white colors are not enough - “a broad man...”

Dostoevsky’s strength lies in the fact that he was not afraid to talk about human (his) vices, he honestly examined them, and did not idealize the complex human nature. “They call me a psychologist,” wrote Fyodor Mikhailovich, “which is not true, I am only a realist in the highest sense, that is, I depict all the depths of the human soul.”

It is known how talentedly Dostoevsky picked up and developed other people’s ideas in his own way. The story “The Double” is from Hoffmann, sympathy for unfortunate children from Dickens, “Dream” funny man" echoes Milton's Paradise Lost. The idea of ​​the tandem of a prostitute girl and a criminal student in the novel “Crime and Punishment” was also borrowed by F.M. Dostoevsky, just as he borrowed the idea of ​​the “Grand Inquisitor”, as well as 100 thousand rubles in banknotes burning in the fireplace at the will of Nastasya Filippovna.
Of course, this is not plagiarism, but creative borrowing. The entire culture is built on borrowings. Dostoevsky did it brilliantly!

From experience I will say that the writer most convincingly presents what he personally experienced. And the most believable characters are those who are similar to himself.
It has been proven that Rodion Raskolnikov suffered from drug addiction - there are obvious signs of the disease in the text of the novel.
Contemporaries recall Dostoevsky's words about the molestation of a young girl. Dostoevsky himself later explained that it was not he, but his hero... Child molestation occurs in the novel Crime and Punishment, as well as in The Possessed. But we know how often Dostoevsky put his own thoughts into the mouths of his heroes.

For example, Prince Myshkin recalls the treasury, which exactly coincides with the description of Dostoevsky’s execution on the Semyonovsky parade ground. The novel “The Gambler” was written based on Dostoevsky’s personal experience of loss in Baden-Baden and his affair with Apollinaria Suslova. “Notes from Underground” is the reflections of Dostoevsky himself. And aren’t the prince’s revelations in the novel “Humiliated and Insulted” the thoughts of Fyodor Mikhailovich?

It is known that a typical mistake is to identify heroes with their author. But in the case of Dostoevsky this is almost a complete coincidence.
I am a supporter of the “biographical method” in literary criticism, and therefore I believe that “you need to look into a book over the shoulder of the author.”

Dostoevsky is the first metaphysician in our literature; he was the first to try to understand our world by looking at it from the outside in the story “The Dream of a Funny Man.” I really like this work, and I even used the final words of the story as an epigraph to my true-life novel “The Wanderer” (mystery). I wanted to go further, to see what Dostoevsky did not have time to see.

Although I like the work of Fyodor Mikhailovich, I am free from reverence for him as a person.
Some people think that he was a bad writer, and that the person in general is rubbish - a collection of all possible vices.

This is what Nikolai Strakhov, who knew Dostoevsky closely, writes in a letter to Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy on November 28, 1883:
“I cannot consider Dostoevsky either a good or a happy person (which, in essence, coincides). He was angry, envious, depraved, he spent his whole life in such unrest that made him pathetic and would have made him funny if he had not been so angry and so smart. He himself, like Rousseau, considered himself the best of people, and the happiest.
In Switzerland, in front of me, he pushed the servant around so much that he was offended and reprimanded him: “I am also a man.” I remember how amazing it was to me at the time that this was said to a preacher of humanity and that the concepts of free Switzerland about human morals were echoed here.
...and the worst thing is that he enjoyed it, that he never fully repented of all his dirty tricks.
He was drawn to dirty tricks and boasted about them. ...Please note that with animal voluptuousness, he had no taste, no feeling female beauty and charms. This is evident in his novels. The persons most similar to him are the hero of Notes from the Underground, Svidrigailov in Prest. and Nak. and Stavrogin in Besy; Katkov did not want to publish one scene from Stavrogin (molestation, etc.), but D. read it to many here...
With such a nature, he was very inclined to sweet sentimentality, to high and humane dreams, and these dreams are his direction, his literary muse and road. In essence, however, all his novels constitute self-justification, proving that all sorts of abominations can coexist with nobility in a person.
But just elevating oneself into a wonderful person, just intellectual and literary humanity - God, how disgusting that is!
He was a truly unhappy and bad man who imagined himself lucky, a hero and tenderly loved only himself.”

I have no goal to discredit the “great classic of Russian literature,” but I am not a supporter of turning Dostoevsky into an “Orthodox saint.”
I don’t want to idealize Dostoevsky, because I want to understand him as much as possible, for “another’s soul is darkness,” especially the soul of Dostoevsky.
I believe that the idea of ​​“the life of a great sinner” also came from the depths of the writer’s own soul. All the features of Karamazovism were present in Dostoevsky himself. And Fyodor Pavlovich, and Dmitry Karamazov, Ivan, Alexei, and even Smerdyakov - all these are facets of the soul of Dostoevsky himself.

They also don’t like to talk about the cause of Dostoevsky’s death - there is still a lot of mystery in it. But there is evidence that the day before Dostoevsky’s death, his relatives visited him regarding the discovery of his inheritance. Although Dostoevsky was not a poor man at that time, he did not renounce his share of the inheritance, as he had done in his youth. A conflict has arisen. A day later, Fyodor Mikhailovich died.

Some, in their love for the classic, are inclined to almost deify Fyodor Dostoevsky. For example, Doctor of Philology Tatyana Kasatkina in the book “On the Creative Nature of the Word,” which she gave me.

In recent years, a whole new direction has emerged in the study of Dostoevsky, which studies his legacy from the point of view of evangelical ethics and aesthetics (a series of publications by Petrozavodsk University “The Gospel Text in Russian Literature”). New categories of Dostoevsky’s poetics are substantiated, such as “Christian realism” (V.N. Zakharov), “the category of conciliarity in Russian literature” (I.A. Esaulov), “theophanic principle of poetics” (V.V. Ivanov), etc.

Leo Tolstoy was very critical of Dostoevsky's work. On October 12, 1910, Tolstoy writes in his diary: “After lunch I read Dostoevsky. The descriptions are good, although some jokes, verbose and not very funny, get in the way. Conversations are impossible, completely unnatural...” On October 18, when asked by his doctor how he liked the Karamazovs, he responded: “Disgusting. Unartistic, far-fetched, unrestrained... Wonderful thoughts, religious content... It’s strange how he enjoys such fame.”

Nowadays “Dostoevsky” is a brand, and this brand is actively defended by the great-grandson of Fyodor Mikhailovich, even challenging the right to name a hotel and a diner after “Dostoevsky”.

Priest Father Dmitry Dudko made a proposal for the canonization of five Russian writers, putting F.M. in first place among them. Dostoevsky. As an argument, the priest cites Dostoevsky’s creed, which he outlined in a letter to N.F. Fonvizina in February 1854:
“This symbol is very simple, here it is: to believe that there is nothing more beautiful, deeper, more sympathetic, more reasonable, more courageous and more perfect than Christ, and not only is it not, but with jealous love I tell myself that it cannot be. Moreover, if If someone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and indeed it were that the truth is outside Christ, then I would rather stay with Christ than with the truth.”

Personally, I find it difficult to imagine how Christ could be outside the truth. Christ is the Truth embodied in man. And if we imagine that the truth is outside of man, then I would prefer to follow the truth.
A man outside the truth is just a man; a person without truth is most often a bad person.
Give up the truth for the sake of a person? Follow a man who is outside the truth?
“Socrates is my friend, but the truth is dearer”!
And this is not the position of an ancient Gnostic, but the position of a person who believes that Christ is the Truth!

Dostoevsky is a mysterious genius. He believed in Christ and doubted all his life. Perhaps this is why I loved Hans Holbein’s painting “Dead Christ in the Tomb” so much.

And although many supported the proposal to canonize Fyodor Dostoevsky, in order to canonize a person, evidence of the miracle he performed is necessary. And such a miracle was found. The now living great-grandson of the writer Dmitry Andreevich Dostoevsky said that the life of his father Andrei Fedorovich Dostoevsky during the war years was saved by a small bronze bust of the writer, which he never parted with. Already at the end of the war, a bullet ricocheted against this piece of metal and lightly wounded the writer’s grandson. This was the only injury during all the years of the war.

The famous Dostoevsky scholar Igor Volgin believes that we still do not know all the secrets of Dostoevsky’s life, and the reason for this is he himself.
Some researchers are trying to expose Dostoevsky and expose his vices to everyone.
“Man loves the fall of the righteous and his shame,” wrote Fyodor Mikhailovich.
“It’s terrible that you can’t say anything and they use you like a doll. During life they curse, and after death they erect monuments. Hypocrites! Dead things are closer and dearer to them than living things. They assert themselves, satisfy their vanity, joining the authority of the great. They themselves cannot create anything. They study me, investigate me, try to fit me into their schemes! They just don’t understand anything!
They were shackled in their definitions, swaddled with formulations. I am no longer me, but their invention. And if I come to them, they’ll kick me out. Why do they need the truth? - they each have their own truth! They need to show their importance by standing next to me. They are not me, they are exalting themselves!
I wish I could say everything I think about them, look at their faces! But how do you say it? After all, they won’t listen. They will say: “Why did you come to disturb us? We know you better than you know yourself. We have researched, we are studying, we will explain things to you that you didn’t even think about. For each your word ours are five, for each volume of your works, ours are ten. You are inexhaustible! More than one generation will feed on your inheritance. And what you don’t have, we’ll think of it, we’ll enrich it, so to speak! If only they would finance it!
They love me because they get paid for it, and if they didn’t pay me, they wouldn’t love me and wouldn’t study me. It’s not me who needs to be studied - they won’t understand anyway, I don’t fully understand myself either! - you need to study yourself, improve yourself; not me, but to love people.
They would love me so much alive! But loving a dead person doesn’t require much effort. They don't love me, they love themselves! Although they don’t seem to love themselves or me. Because if they loved, they would not be engaged in studying creativity, but in fulfilling what I left for them. Otherwise, it’s easier to explore than to love!”

“I do not want and cannot believe that evil is the normal state of people.”
“But you can’t sit idly by, otherwise you will finally reach the point of self-justification, the consciousness of your own powerlessness before the power of circumstances: what do I have to do with it, the era is to blame, what a time, they say! - Nero!..”
“Or is it really the highest meaning precisely in this meaninglessness: spiritual passions, torments of conscience, flights of thought, impulses of creative inspiration, unshakability of faith are nothing more than a monstrous grin at poor humanity, an empty play of the imagination in order to forget at least for a brief moment, to distract from the terrible inevitability this last truth, from this universal, insatiable spider god - the womb?
- I can’t, I don’t want to believe it! How then to live if the body really takes precedence over the soul? Or is the main law of life - survive?
- “It’s better to bend than to break; if you bend and straighten up, you’ll be straighter.”
“I cannot look indifferently at people’s pain, as people wish for death. Everything around us seems absurd, devoid of any meaning.
- “If you think about it - woe, if you think about it - it’s the will of the Lord.”
-Wherever you look, power reigns. And all the calls for love and goodness do not stop evil people, love does not conquer hatred, good does not destroy evil.
- "Beauty will save the world."
- But how?! I am ready to sacrifice my life just to understand the meaning of what is happening, that there is a person.
- “Man is a mystery. It must be unraveled, and if you spend your whole life unraveling it, then don’t say that you wasted your time; I am working on this mystery, because I want to be a man.”
LOVE CREATES NECESSITY!
(from my true-life novel “The Wanderer” (mystery) on the New Russian Literature website

P.S. I hope that Lyudmila Saraskina’s book “Dostoevsky,” which will be published in the ZhZL series this summer, will provide answers to many questions, but at the same time preserve the secret of the writer’s genius.

What do you think: SHOULD FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY BE CANONIZED?

© Nikolay Kofirin – New Russian Literature –

Literary critics are strange people. It would seem: crackers, buried in their books... But it happens differently - when concentration on literature gives amazing inner light and humor, and wisdom.

And the case of Lyudmila Saraskina is very special: her book “Solzhenitsyn” burst out of the multi-volume mass grave of literary research, once receiving the most prestigious prize in the country, “Big Book”.

And her life is by no means confined to the four walls of institutes and libraries. Behind the scenes, Lyudmila Ivanovna tells me about herself, her wife, her son and granddaughters. (“We must always share their interests! That’s why I studied Harry Potter for my granddaughters, and Freddie Mercury for my son...”) And in the frame - of course, her Dostoevsky, A new book in the series “ZhZL”. What will be the fate of this book?

— Lyudmila Ivanovna, this is the second large-scale biography you have written. Is it selling well? What do you think are the chances of winning any major prize?

“I can’t even think about it.” I'm afraid to see the person who buys my book, so I don't go to bookstores. I would like the Dostoevsky story to remain private. But Dostoevsky is my all-time favorite. It’s a joy to finally write something you’ve been thinking about for many years. The profession of a literary historian is such that you lay your only life at the feet of another person. My life is no less interesting to me, but... it was given to Fyodor Mikhailovich.

How not to go crazy from Dostoevsky?

- But Dostoevsky is such a nerve. What person with even the slightest feeling soul can even read it without shaking hands? And to study him methodically, to delve into his life and work... You are a living person, how come you haven’t gone crazy?

- It was both painful and difficult! There was no question of any cold calculation. You see,I don’t smoke, I can’t stand any alcohol, I don’t even drink coffee, I’m a vegetarian ; I don’t have the usual ways of invigorating and relaxing. But I tried not to work later than two in the morning. Otherwise you won't sleep. You have to force yourself to turn off the computer and calm your nerves. It doesn't come easy. Sometimes I thought I was getting sick. But it’s lucky that there is night cinema! He saved me. However, you cannot choose a movie in advance! You need surprise: you turn on the TV and you are captivated.

— So you already have recipes for how to write about Dostoevsky and not go crazy?

- Yes! You can only write such a book in one gulp; you have to plunge to the very bottom of this fate, catch the nerve, experience the drive. Then, I have family joys and I have a girlfriend - a miniature gray cat. He lives behind the lid of my laptop, like behind a stove. He sticks out his muzzle, stretches out his paws, looks at me expressively... and returns me to reality.

Tolstoy vs Dostoevsky?

— There is an opinion: Dostoevsky is irrelevant today. This is not his time: no one needs this anguish today. It's something like Tolstoy's! Family thought, military thought...

- I don’t agree. They were contemporaries (Dostoevsky was 7 years older than Tolstoy and died 30 years before him) and were compatible in Russian life in the 19th century. Likewise, they are compatible and in demand today. Each of them in its own way reflects the various extremes of Russian life. But you shouldn’t think that Tolstoy is coming to court now. Against! The state is afraid of Tolstoy. Writing like this is against the institution of the state! In his treatise “The Way of Life,” Tolstoy wrote, for example, that a Christian should not take part in the affairs of the state, that church faith is slavery. Only Voltaire had such speeches against the church as Tolstoy. And although Tolstoy was not formally excommunicated, it hung over him like a dark shadow. Look at the diaries of John of Kronstadt, who is recognized as a saint in our country: he prayed that death would take away Tolstoy. He called the great writer Satan, fiery Gehenna... I keep thinking: is it Christianity to pray for the death of another?

Last year 100th anniversary Tolstoy's death was celebrated everywhere - in Peru, Venezuela, Brazil... Except in Russia. We - seriously, at the state level - had nothing: Tolstoy was actually excommunicated from the state. This summer I was in Yasnaya Polyana for a conference. A film is shown on TV, the author of which, Eduard Sagalayev, comes to Optina Pustyn and asks a young monk about Tolstoy. And the monk says: may this Satanist burn in hell forever. Said so easily! Newlyweds from Tula often come to venerate Tolstoy’s grave as a shrine on their wedding day.A grave without a cross! The grave of a man who spent his whole life independently searching for the path to God, who was furious, stubborn, and tormented... Isn’t this worthy of respect?

- And Dostoevsky? Today he is valued more as a psychologist.

- Those who believe that he is only a psychologist, it seems to me, are deeply wrong. Some of our ideologists and politicians are greatly harmed by Dostoevsky. Anatoly Chubais, who “re-read” Dostoevsky several years ago, immediately wanted to tear him into small pieces. Agree,Because of psychology alone, there is no need to tear someone into small pieces. Moreover, virtually: you will no longer reach either his grave or his world fame.I want to! Why? Dostoevsky exposed all this brazen grab of our oligarchs. Here is the novel “Teenager”, where Arkady Dolgorukov wants to be rich like Rothschild. Dream 20 year old a boy who never saw an extra piece of bread in his childhood. Dostoevsky's contemporaries were amazed: where did he see such youth, what kind of crazy nonsense is this - wanting to be as rich as Rothschild and rule the world. Today this is a common place.

- What about Rothschild, is it really money...

— Yes, today “like Rothschild” is somehow not enough! Mayer Rothschild accumulated his wealth from the end of the 18th century, his sons founded European banking; their banks and their dynasty are still thriving today. In our country, such wealth appears in two years, in five years... How is this possible, today’s teenagers ask, give the recipe, provide the technology! And Dostoevsky was the first to “understand everything and put an end to everything” (this is from Akhmatova). Look in Crime and Punishment not only at Raskolnikov, but also at Luzhin! The first “new Russian” in our literature.

- Another Chichikov.

- Yes, but with an adventurous twist. We are not used to seeing honest people in businessmen: well, crooks, and crooks without brakes or conscience. Today this is becoming the norm - what rich person can you blame for stealing? Stealing is normal, asking is indecent. Dostoevsky showed this entire mechanism in detail. That's why our oligarchs want to tear it into pieces.

So both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, each for his part, turn out to be a mirror of our life today!When you take binoculars called “Dostoevsky” - priests of light, here they are, demons. Here is Verkhovensky, who says: there is no need for education, we will extinguish every genius in infancy, science will suffice. Isn't that what we hear today? We will unleash unheard of debauchery...It is necessary for a person to turn into a disgusting, cowardly, cruel, selfish scum! Isn't this what we see on TV screens?

Sympathy for the "sheep"

- Let's go down from the state level to a small private life. Why should people, tired after work, read Dostoevsky - gloomy, dreary, always with a bad ending?

— Several years ago, when “The Idiot” by V. Bortko was shown on TV, on buses and in the subway people - for the first time in their lives - read this novel. And they asked each other: what’s next, how will it end? What heartfelt sympathy people felt for this “sheep,” Prince Myshkin! Yevgeny Mironov admitted that he used to think that the heroes of Russian literature could only be strong people, demonic machos, Pechorinites. He did not suspect that the hero to whom the girls write and confess their love could be Myshkin. And they brought him letters in bags from high school girls who finally sawhow pure, noble, selfless a person can be. It suddenly attracted me. We are used to the fact that only the strong and rich are loved. Society has forgotten that it is possible to love a fragile and vulnerable person.But I immediately remembered! The series was shown 130 years after the release of the novel, which became a national bestseller for the first time in its history. All publications were swept off the shelves. Suddenly people wanted to understand what kind of phenomenon this was - kind, funny, devoid of pride... Prince Christ - that’s what Dostoevsky called Prince Myshkin in his drafts. Christ is risen, for God. But as a man, in his human hypostasis, he was crucified. People devoid of egoism are not residents of this world. Such is the fate of Myshkin...

- Yes. But the series passed - and how it didn’t happen.

- Worse. This year something happened to Dostoevsky terrible story. I mean the film by V. Khotinenko. The authors did not believe that Dostoevsky’s biography could be attractive if one follows the truth, and filled it with malicious fiction. They were afraid that the truth would be lackluster and would not give a rating. And they made the writer almost a pedophile, relishing debauchery. This is a cultural crime, in my opinion. There are teachers who praise the film, writing: let it be, but the students will find it interesting. Attract by any means? If you want to show a pedophile, take a real one, they show them on TV every day, they talk about the pedophile lobby in the State Duma... No, they take Dostoevsky. Stavrogin's crime is bravely addressed to him. A writer is a dangerous profession: by creating a negative character with bad actions, he risks that sooner or later all this will be attributed to him.

— According to a survey by MK, 27% of readers “don’t like Dostoevsky, he’s too heavy a writer.”

- Well, what can you say?! For me, this is a bright writer. In his works, the light is himself. If readers are looking for a happy ending, yes, you won’t find that in Dostoevsky. There is no happy ending in The Brothers Karamazov. But there is a lesson: just as the family broke up and died with the brothers being completely insensitive to their father and to each other, so the country will die. After all, for there to be brotherhood, you need brothers! And brotherly attitude. At a minimum - in the family, at a maximum - in humanity.

— You quote from the drafts of the novel: “God gave us relatives to learn love from them.”

- Yes, this is from Zosima’s commandments, he longed for it! Therefore, he calls on Alyosha to leave the monastery, to be near both brothers, next to his father. And if he had been constantly with them, had fulfilled his duty, there would have been no murder! But he was too busy with himself... Selfishness rules a person different levels. Dostoevsky tells us: we must fulfill our duty, and then theology - and then you will find God... And uniform Orthodoxy without action is zero... Dostoevsky is not a writer of happy endings, but a writer of foresight and warnings.

“Educated, humanized and happy”?

— If Dostoevsky is a bright writer, then it was all the more strange to me: you didn’t write a word about “White Nights.” But the story is brighter - perhaps “ Garnet bracelet» Kuprina...

— You see, at the very beginning they expected Dostoevsky to be the second or new Gogol. But he didn’t want to be second, none of us wants to be second. There is no writer without ambition, without ambition. Dostoevsky always had colossal ambitions, a desire to have his say in literature. Therefore, all my young years, before my arrest in 1849,he was looking for his way. The sentimental story “White Nights” is a search for oneself. The White Nights line did not become dominant. She then grew into “Humiliated and Offended.” If Dostoevsky had remained at the level of White Nights, he would never have become Dostoevsky. "White Nights" - type searches. There is still no awareness that life in general is tragic - if only because a person dies. But at the same time - what light! He says: I want to believe that someday all my compatriots - look at the words - will be “educated, humanized and happy.” This is his civil symbol of faith. Such a triad. “Educated” comes first! But this has not been achieved yet! Our education is getting worse and worse, our humanity is getting worse and worse, and when it comes to happiness...

— F.M. himself were you happy? Such a complex person...

- Certainly! Many times! And especially in childhood. He is one of those Russian writers whose parents never hit him.

“Whoever doesn’t know, thinks that, on the contrary, he was beaten.”

- Never! This is despite all the poverty (after all, they lived in a government apartment, if the father of the family leaves the service - that’s it, there is no apartment). In Darovo there is their “manor’s” house - but now the rich don’t even build sheds like that. Tiny one-story house. Poverty! And he was very happy as a child. He loved his mother, his older brother Misha, his younger sisters... The father, despite all the poverty, gave his sons to the best educational institution. He believed that we are poor, so we will take advantage of education.

— You tell in the book what kind of total corruption there was in this “best educational institution.”

- Of course, and it was a cruel disappointment! It turned out that everything there was due to connections. Later F.M. experienced the happiest literary debut when Nekrasov and Belinsky read his first novel, when he became their favorite... And then again a break, an insult - he crossed to the other side of the sidewalk, seeing his former benefactors. But there was happiness! Moments of happiness helped to survive everything, not to drown in the Neva, not to hang myself...

Overdose of “Nastasya Filippovna” in the blood

— He didn’t attempt suicide, did he?

- No, although he thought about it a lot. After all, look: Belinsky was kicked out of the circle, the Beketov brothers left, but he wanted communication, close friends. He started going to Petrashevsky’s circle because there was nowhere else to go. There were moments of spiritual closeness with Nikolai Speshnev, I think. But everything had its own downsides. Just like the style of Dostoevsky’s novels: a wedding turns into a funeral, a ball turns into a fire. This duality of the world always accompanied him. But there were bright moments. “I’m a miserable madman,” he said when he desperately and selflessly fell in love with his first wife. Love is like a deadly disease. So it was with Apollinaria Suslova. With his second wife he experienced marital and paternal happiness - and cruel grief when two of his four children died... You can call him a bright writer. After all, who else could write such a novel about love as “Demons”? A grandiose love story - hopeless, endless, crazy, devoid of any hint of happiness. Lisa - how crazy she is about Stavrogin. Dasha - how she sacrificially loves him, with what joy she forgives everything. There is only one such heroine in Russian literature - Vera in "A Hero of Our Time". He knows that happiness is impossible, but he still loves. Such a lack of female egoism, such dedication! And yet she is rejected. Stavrogin doesn’t need Dasha, she irritates him, but she knows this and is still ready to run after him. It’s amazing: Dostoevsky believed that there were such women. Without pike egoism, without aggression of the owner. There is no such female love in literature. At Tolstoy's, Anna Karenina only sensed the smell of betrayal, began to go crazy, and became addicted to opium. And Dasha accepted everything quietly and humbly. After all, from the drafts it is clear that there was a love affair, there was an unsuccessful pregnancy. But never a reproach, not a hint...

- You say wonderful things. And I keep thinking: in reality, who needs this? After all, there are no such people.

- You're right. Here is Nastasya Filippovna. I believe there is a certain substance, a certain substance called “Nastasya Filippovna”. Every woman has it in small quantities. It all depends on concentration.

- What kind of substance? What does it include?

- A feeling of colossal pride. If it is affected - hysteria. Huge selfishness. Willingness to take revenge for failed love, to torment anyone who comes close. For what? For coming closer! God forbid she even gave herself up - but for that she will tear her to pieces and kill her. He dared to come to me... In the novel “The Idiot” this substance is prescribed in the maximum dose. There is no such thing in life.Dostoevsky is interested in the ultimate state of one or another quality in a person.He checks: to what point will a woman reach if she is offended, wounded, hates, wants to take revenge...

I've been doing it since my student years. Every time I think about some topic: well, that’s all, we’ve passed it, it’s irrelevant, it’s exhausted. And it never runs out! A new decade is coming... It seemed that something had dried up and disappeared, but no: it has multiplied and is triumphant.

The professor of Russian language and literature answered this question Cambridge University Irina Kirillova.

Irina Arsenyevna Kirillova was born in London. She belongs to the so-called “second generation” of the old emigration, that is, to the generation of people who were born in the most different countries, where Russians were thrown, forced to flee the horrors of the 1917 revolution and Civil War. Irina Arsenyevna’s family was mostly military: father, uncle, grandfather.

Our parents tried to pass on to us what they themselves knew and loved; they instilled in us moral rules and the values ​​by which the pre-revolutionary Russian intelligentsia lived. We inherited the most precious things from our parents - faith, language and culture. It was our sacred duty to preserve all this. Thus, we remained Russian people,” says Irina Kirillova.

Today, at 85 years old, she is full of vitality. She has been coming to Russia regularly since 1957, but this was her first time in our city. In the regional library named after Gorky, Irina Arsenyevna gave a lecture to Ryazan residents on the works of F.M. Dostoevsky, spoke about the connection of the writer’s works with Christian values. Almost forty years I.A. Kirillova taught Russian classical literature at the University of Cambridge.

About times and problems

I really love the work of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. Having read his novels for the first time at the age of 15, I thought: “They have everything! You don’t have to read anything else.” I know Russian classical literature well, as well as French literature, because I was brought up in a French lyceum and studied the works of English authors. But I have not read anything from any writer that Dostoevsky had not already written about.

Why should it be read in our time? The works of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy have become our history. You need to know them in order to have an idea about Russia XIX century. And Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky remains not only a modern, but also a very timely author. He explores the theme of a city in which ordinary people and minor officials live. This is our reality. No matter what city we live in, there are neighborhoods where poor people make ends meet. We experience all the same spiritual, psychological, social, everyday difficulties that Dostoevsky wrote about. His approach to covering moral, philosophical and spiritual problems of man remains relevant today.

We recently opened an exhibition of portraits of Russian creative figures from the Tretyakov Gallery in London. And on one wall they hung portraits of Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. The contrast was striking. Turgenev and Tolstoy were landowners, nobles of the 19th century, they lived in abundance. Although Lev Nikolaevich wrote about the life of peasants, he remained a gentleman. And Dostoevsky’s artist V.G. Perov was portrayed as an intellectual with a beard and a shabby coat. You look at the portrait and see an absolutely modern person.

Parallel realities

Particularly relevant are the novels “Crime and Punishment”, “The Idiot”, “Teenager”, “The Brothers Karamazov”, as well as the story “Notes from Underground”, the story and several stories “Notes from the House of the Dead”. All this needs to be read and re-read. As Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, who knew Dostoevsky’s work well, said, “the only novel that I would never reread is “Demons.” The power of evil is too palpable in him.”

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky is a realist writer, novelist and psychologist. His father was a military doctor and often let little Fedor into his library. There was a lot of medical literature and books on psychology. The boy was interested in them. And at the same time, as an adult, he never forgot how his deeply religious mother took him and his brothers to church and on pilgrimages to monasteries.

There is a lot of symbolism in Dostoevsky's work. Each of his works is read simultaneously at the level of physical and spiritual reality. It is the symbol that helps to comprehend the invisible reality that lies beyond the boundaries of concrete earthly reality.

Man in man

Dostoevsky's most enigmatic and mysterious novel "The Idiot". You can think and reflect on it all your life. The author wanted to portray a positive, wonderful person and begins with an attempt to create a Christ-like hero - Prince Myshkin. In emigration, Dostoevsky was often called a religious writer. In fact, he is not. Speaking about higher realism, he understood by this the invisible spiritual consciousness of his hero, he tried to understand “how much man there is in a man.”

Myshkin sows goodness and calls himself the Prince of Christ. But the Gospel Christ cannot be the hero of a realistic novel. The initial bright image of Myshkin gradually changes, is exposed to human weakness and turns into tragedy.

The work ends with the scene for which, according to Dostoevsky, he wrote the entire novel. Although the name Anastasia - one of the brightest images in the novel - translated from Greek means “resurrection”. "Christos Anesti!" - they say in Greece at Easter. But Dostoevsky has no resurrection, which is very scary. In the finale we see the dead body of Nastasya Filippovna, covered with matting, from which legs stick out instead of a head and shoulders. Orthodox custom. And instead of candles - the personification of prayer - there are jars of disinfection. A fly flies nearby - a symbol of horror, according to Dostoevsky, and a sure sign of decay. Prince Myshkin falls into epilepsy and finally loses his human appearance.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, with his creativity, gives food for thought and opens up a huge field of questions for us. Or maybe, on the contrary, it poses just one question: who are we and what are we created for?