Gogol as a prophet of Orthodox culture. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol and Orthodoxy

N.V. Gogol, as an outstanding artist of the word, is our universally recognized genius, but a special genius - rather, he is from a cohort of "strange geniuses." On the one hand, he passionately denounced the human and social vices of Russia at that time, and on the other hand, at the end of his life, he kindled such a sacrificial fire in his soul that many of his works, full of great insights of the mind, were irretrievably lost in its flame ...

The stamp of time lies on his work: it still echoes us with a powerful echo today. Yes, in the minds of most of his contemporaries, Gogol was a classic type of satirist, castigator of human vices, a brilliant master of laughter. But another Gogol, a religious thinker and publicist, the author of Reflections on the Divine Liturgy, was never recognized by his contemporaries. We may be reproached and referred to in his "Selected passages from correspondence with friends"; but those, as you know, were published with large censorship exceptions and were misunderstood by most readers.

During Gogol's lifetime, all his spiritual prose remained unpublished. here he was truly “an artist of the highest level; but he also possessed a sharpened religious talent, and it prevailed in him over the purely artistic thirst for creativity. Gogol was aware that art, no matter how high it ascended, would remain among the treasures on earth. For Gogol, however, treasures in heaven were always more necessary. Gogol's religious wandering was not without wanderings and falls. One thing is certain: it is

Gogol directed Russian literature to the conscious service of the Orthodox Truth. And, perhaps, the first to clearly formulate this in 1934 was K.V. Mochulsky in the book “Gogol's Spiritual Path”: “In the moral field, Gogol was brilliantly gifted; he was destined to turn all Russian literature sharply away from the aesthetics of religion, to move it from the path of Pushkin to the path of Dostoevsky. All the features that characterize “great Russian literature” that has become world literature were outlined by Gogol: its religious and moral structure, its civic and public nature, its militant and practical character, its prophetic pathos and messianism.

From Gogol begins a wide road, world expanses. As you know, the 18-year-old author of the poem "Hanz Kühelgarten" (1827), as well as many Russian writers of the early 19th century, did not escape the temptation of the German philosophy of F. Schiller's aesthetic idealism with his "frantic" pro-testant romanticism. But this bright flash of European romanticism was short-lived, because it had no spiritual ground, and therefore it tempted rather with external emotional and aesthetic temptations, without touching the core of the creative search of Russian writers. And yet, as M.M. Dunaev, "romanticism has left some scars in the souls of many." Therefore, when Gogol confessed in a letter to S.P. Shevyrev of February 11, 1847, that “he came to Christ rather by the Protestant ... way” (9, 362), such evidence is important: “albeit not deeply, the Protestant temptation scratched his soul, reflecting on the romantic treatment of Gogol’s muse” . And not only.

A surge of “romantic enthusiasm and protestant temptation” manifested itself in Gogol and in the “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” (1831-1832), which brought him fame, in which an outlandish mixture of Little Russian folklore, German romanticism and Gogol’s own humor with its virtuoso fantasy pulsates, acting akin to Hoffmann's mysticism; however, Gogol fused all the bizarreness of his imagination with magical traditions learned in his native land. But here's the paradox: Gogol's overflowing gaiety in "Evenings" is basically generated by the state of extreme despondency of their author. It is despondency that appears as a manifestation of graceless spirituality. Gogol himself understood this very well: “In all our undertakings and actions, most of all we must beware of one of our most powerful enemies ... This enemy is despondency. Despondency is the true temptation of the spirit of darkness, with which he attacks us, knowing how difficult it is for a person to fight with him. Despondency is contrary to God. It is a consequence of our lack of love for Him... and therefore, more than all sins, it is hated by God” (6, 284). Noteworthy here is the remark of M.M. Dunaeva: “Why, laughter itself came out of the spirit of despondency, it was not immediately recognized as a means of combating evil - but only as a means of external distraction from painful anguish”5. And further: “Where contemporary humanity beheld only ordinary and boring everyday life, Gogol in horror saw the appearance of the devil without a mask. And from such knowledge - how not to fall into melancholy?

Gogol's laughter becomes an expression of this melancholy - that's the feat of overcoming what he was called to ... Didn't he feel the very breath of hell, which he expressed in all these terrifying fantastic images that abundantly filled his creations? … For Gogol, his struggle against evil was deepened by the fact that his very art, the very gift of a satirical writer became a source of temptation. In art, he managed to reach the highest heights. A brilliant writer, he suddenly saw with horror in the very nature of his genius its fused interweaving with a craving for many temptations. But this helped him to discern and realize evil not in the external world, to which he was inclined at the beginning, but in the depths of his own soul. Darto was all the same from above. All this forced Gogol to take a stricter look at his literary work and at his talent, for which, he believed, he would answer God. In the 40s, a new period in his life begins.

In The Author's Confession, Gogol wrote about it this way: “From now on, man and the soul of man have become, more than ever, the subject of observation. I left everything modern for a while; I drew attention to the recognition of those eternal laws by which man and mankind in general move. Books for legislators, soul-searchers and observers of human nature became my reading... and on this road, insensitively, almost not knowing how, I came to Christ, seeing that in Him is the key to the human soul" (6, 214). "Gift from above" pointed out by M.M. Dunaev, consistently strengthened in Gogol his spiritual height, awareness of the greatness of Orthodoxy for the fate of his native Fatherland, his place in the fight against world evil. Here an important place belongs to the heroic story "Taras Bulba", especially its second edition (1842), which has become canonical. In it, the onslaught of the world, where the “spirit of evil” reigns, is opposed by the true faith of the Russian people: the whole nation “rose up to avenge the ridicule of its rights, the shameful humiliation of its morals, outrage of foreign lords, for oppression, for union, for the shameful rule of the Jews on Christian land - for everything that accumulated and aggravated the harsh hatred of the Cossacks for a long time" (2, 315).

Defending the Fatherland, the Russian people defend Orthodoxy - this idea is the main one in this heroic epic. Please note that the Cossacks are nowhere opposed to the Russian people (like the Poles and Tatars). No, the Cossacks are Russian people, and therefore Russian because they are Orthodox. “So Gogol anticipates Dostoevsky, who identified the concepts of Russian and Orthodox.” And what is even more important, Orthodoxy is directly connected with the notion of catholicity, which is the antithesis of Western individualism and egocentrism. True, the doctrine of catholicity was developed somewhat later by A.S. Khomyakov, but Gogol, in fact, anticipated the understanding of Russian catholicity, embodying it in an application to fellowship, presented in the famous monologue of Taras Bulba, which has not lost its relevance in our time.

Of course, partnership is not a direct synonym for catholicity in its entirety, but in Gogol's story there is a noticeable "coincidence of 'superpersonal duty' and free self-determination of the characters. For Bulba (as well as for other Cossacks), the duty towards the conciliar “partnership” is not something imposed from the outside… The boundaries of the individual and the “partnership” simply coincide. The Kozak does not live “inside” his homeland, as if he is enclosed on all sides by its borders; the borders of his being and the borders of his homeland are the same”8. And if the Western type of thinking denies freedom in the service of the individual to the supra-personal principle, then Orthodox wisdom sees lack of freedom in the refusal to follow the transpersonal truths of faith. And the well-known words of the Savior can serve here as a criterion of truth: “There is no greater love than if a man lays down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

That is why the author of "Taras Bulba" claims: "there is no power stronger than faith" (2, 315). And isn’t she, the gospel wisdom, symbolically prophesying consolation to the soul of a warrior who laid down his life for faith and the Fatherland: “He led Kukubenko around him with his eyes and said: “Thank God that I happened to die in front of your eyes, comrades! let them live better after us than we do, and may the Russian land forever loved by Christ flaunt!” And a young soul flew out. The angels lifted her by the arms and carried her to heaven: it would be good for him there. “Sit down, Kukubenko, at my right hand! Christ will tell him. “You didn’t betray fellowship, you didn’t do a dishonorable deed, you didn’t betray a person in trouble, you guarded and protected My Church” (2, 295296). But the exit from the conciliar partnership, on the contrary, turns into a lack of freedom of the individual; such is the fate of Andriy, the youngest son of Bulba: having committed graceless self-will, having renounced the Fatherland, comrades, father and brother, he becomes a slave to his passion; so the betrayal of the Fatherland turns into a betrayal of faith.

Let us turn to another famous scene from the heroic story about the Cossacks - the painful death of Ostap. And do not lines appear in Gogol that directly echo the Gethsemane prayer of the Son to His Heavenly Father before His suffering on the Cross? As the Savior crying from his knees “was heard for His reverence” (Heb. 5:7), and “an angel appeared to Him from heaven and strengthened Him” (Luke 22:43), so Ostap, like many other Christian martyrs and confessors, receives consolation in his difficult dying moments: “And when they brought him to the last mortal torments, it seemed as if his strength began to flow ..., he would now like to see a firm husband who would refresh him with a reasonable word and console him with death. And he fell with strength and cried out in mental weakness: “Father! where are you? do you hear?” — “I hear!” resounded in the midst of the general silence, and the whole million people shuddered at the same time” (2, 314). With the intensification of a tense inner life, his spiritual disorder grew in the writer on the thorny path to God. And the most difficult year for Gogol was 1845.

At the beginning of that year, the writer of the soul found himself in Paris with Count A.P. Tolstoy. He wrote about this time to N.M. Yazykov: “He lived inwardly, as in a monastery, and, in addition to that, he did not miss almost a single mass in our church.” Almost daily church vigils created a high spiritual mood in Gogol. And at the end of February of the same year, in a letter to A.O. He reports to Smir to the new that “he was vouchsafed by God and among the stupidest moments of his state of mind to taste the heavenly and sweet minutes.” It was at this time that he carefully studied the rites of the liturgies of John Chrysostom and Basil the Great in Greek, using the library of Archpriest Dimitry Vershinsky, who was a deep connoisseur of patristic literature and published his translations in the journal Christian Reading. And it was here, in Paris, that Gogol came to grips with work on a book on the Divine Liturgy, which, as you know, remained unfinished and was published only after his death.

The purpose of this spiritual and enlightening work, as Gogol defined it, "is to show the fullness and inner deep connection in which our Liturgy is served to young men and people who are still beginners, who are still little acquainted with its meaning." However, the desire to understand the hidden meaning of the Liturgy arose in Gogol much earlier; back in 1842, finishing the “Theatrical journey”, imbued with the thought of consoling the word of a grieving person, he wrote to his mother: “There are many secrets in the depths of our souls that a person has not yet discovered and which can give him wonderful blessings. If you feel that your word has found access to the heart of a suffering soul, then go straight to church with him and listen to the Divine Liturgy. Like a cool forest among the scorching steppes, then his prayer will accept it under its shade. And, perhaps, hence the strengthening of the spiritual principle in the new edition of the Inspector General (1842). The bureaucratic city leaders, headed by the mayor, are not firm in faith.

This is precisely the basis of their vulgarity: anyone will be robbed, preferring the earthly to the detriment of the heavenly; In a word, they steal from God. And Gogol uses the old technique of ancient drama - deus ex machina (Latin lit. "God from the machine") - only rethinking this technique in accordance with his own worldview: the play's finale condemns the vulgarity of its characters as apostasy. It was not for nothing that the epigraph appeared in The Inspector General at that time, reinforcing the inner meaning of the play: “There is no need to blame the mirror if the face is crooked” (4, 203). “This folk proverb,” points out V.A. Voropaev, “understood the Gospel by a mirror, which Gogol’s contemporaries, who spiritually belonged to the Orthodox Church, knew perfectly well”10. Let us note that the spiritual idea of ​​the Gospel as a mirror has long and firmly existed in the Orthodox consciousness. Thus, one of Gogol's favorite spiritual writers, St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, whose writings he re-read more than once, says: “Christians! what a mirror is to the sons of this age, let the gospel and the blameless life of Christ be to us. They look in the mirror, correct their bodies and cleanse the vices on their faces... Let us, therefore, offer this clean mirror before our spiritual eyes, let us look into that: is our life in conformity with the life of Christ? The Holy Righteous John of Kronstadt in his diaries, from the data entitled “My Life in Christ”, remarks “to those who do not read the Gospel”: “Are you pure, holy and perfect, without reading the Gospel, and you do not need to look into this mirror? Or are you mentally very ugly and afraid of your ugliness?..” And the very title of the play, The Inspector General, is multidimensional in meaning: term. The plot and spiritual plan are combined in the title”12. By the way, the same is in the title of the poem “Dead Souls” (1842): “the plot plan is connected with the specific circumstances of Chichikov’s adventure, who buys dead peasants (dead souls), formally, according to the revision tale, listed as if they were alive.”

A clear indication of the general idea behind the design of Dead Souls can be gleaned from a comparison of the two passages. First, the famous question, which was raised at the end of the first volume: “Rus, where are you going? give me an answer" (5, 224). The answer was given by the author in “The Inspector’s Denouement”: “Let’s unanimously prove to the whole world that in the Russian land everything, from small to large, strives to serve the same, Whom everything should serve, everything on earth rushes there, up to the Supreme Eternal Beauty!” (4, 465). The spiritual plan is revealed in Gogol's dying note: “Be not dead, but living souls. There is no other door than that indicated by Jesus Christ, and everyone, crawling otherwise, is a thief and a robber” (6, 392). In both works, Gogol appeals, first of all, to the spiritual world of the Russian people. “If The Inspector General showed a soulful city, now [in Dead Souls] a whole soulful country arose. Gogol's types personified individual bad traits of human character, primarily discovered by the author in himself, in his own soul. Gogol, no doubt, was aware that "the burning word of reproof is only the beginning of the prophetic ministry" and that "the prophet will only fully fulfill his purpose when his word conveys to living human souls the grace of heavenly truth."

Actually, the holistic idea of ​​"Dead Souls" was associated with such an author's messianic aspiration. In the second volume of the poem, this feature is greatly enhanced, for Gogol combined with him his intention to transfer the prophetic ministry to a new quality. “There is a time,” he wrote in “Selected passages from correspondence with friends” in the 4th letter to various people about “Dead Souls”, “that one should not even talk about high and beautiful without immediately showing it as clear as day, ways and roads to it for everyone” (6, 8283). This is the most important idea of ​​the plan for the second volume, which Gogol struggled with when creating it, but was never able to bring it to life.

If we proceed from the Gogol testimonies themselves, then the poem "Dead Souls" in its completed form should have been a tripartite book: the first volume was supposed to show (and showed) "the whole depth of real abomination", the second - the road to the high beauty for everyone, and the third was to become an image of this beauty itself. It turned out that, as it happens, perhaps at the suggestion of A.I. Gercen, the overall composition of Dead Souls had to correspond to the three-part composition of Dante's Divine Comedy: the content of each of the three volumes was symbolically determined by the concepts of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. Let's face it, there is some plausibility in this assumption: overflowing with sinful "dead souls" who have fallen away from God, the first volume, as it were, is that "hell" into which the then Russian life was immersed with the hated serfdom that dominated it; positive images from the chapters of the second volume of the poem that have come down to us (Kostan zhoglo, Murazov, the prince governor), as outlining the way to purify and revitalize the soul, mark a transitional state, the elimination of sin - a kind of "purgatory". But about "paradise" can only be judged, as they say, guesswork: all the materials at the disposal of researchers cannot give definite conclusions. In addition, it has long been noted that such a triad does not correspond at all to the Orthodox dogma and the Orthodox type of thinking, but rather to the Catholic mentality. “That is precisely why, apparently, just the second volume became a stumbling block for the writer: the stepwise, “Catholic” way of salvation is not realized and could not be realized by Gogol within the nineteenth century, the “golden age” of Russian literature.

The Orthodox tradition significantly transformed this idea - and in the text of the poem, which we know as the final one, Gogol inherits precisely this tradition. And, perhaps, the idea (if Gogol really had such an intention) of the paradise life of the inwardly reborn heroes of the poem is not quite clear. Moreover, as is known from all spiritual literary practice, "paradise is not the subject of earthly art"16a. And besides, the fate of the second volume of "Dead Souls" is not quite clear. According to the established opinion, which has existed for more than a century and a half, Gogol burned it in a fit of madness. But is it? And it is perhaps impossible to answer this question unequivocally without referring to the last decade of the writer's life: yes, the burning of the manuscripts of the second volume of Dead Souls must be considered taking into account Gogol's dying illness and the circumstances of Gogol's death. Sudden, for no apparent reason, it literally shocked contemporaries, who perceived it as the end of the tragedy of the life and work of the great soul-seeking writer.

Here are just a few of these stunning lines from I.S. Turgenev to I.S. Aksakov (beginning of March 1852): “This terrible death - a historical event - is not immediately clear; this is a mystery, a heavy formidable mystery - one must try to unravel it ... But the one who solves it will not find anything encouraging in it. All Gogol's contemporaries were shocked by the news that ten days before his death, on the night of February 11-2, he burned a whole portfolio of his manuscripts. In the obituary "The Death of Gogol" M.P. Pogodin asked about this sad event: “Was this action the greatest feat of Christian self-sacrifice ... or was there a deeply hidden fruit of the subtlest self-deception, the highest spiritual delusion, or, finally, one cruel mental illness was at work here?”17 Yes, many Gogol's contemporaries, including those close to him, believed that Gogol died precisely as a result of mental illness. Moreover, they saw signs of its growth long before the death of the writer. So, I.S.

Turgenev, who visited with M.S. Shchepkin Gogol in October 1851, recalled that they "went to him as to an extraordinary man of genius, who had something in his head ... All of Moscow had such an opinion about him." And later, in the twentieth century, many domestic psychiatrists (N. Bazhenov, V. Chizh, G. Segalin and G. Galant, A. Lichko) based on printed materials tried to substantiate or refute this opinion, but they could not do this. And already in our time, Professor D.E. Melekhov (1899-1979) made an attempt to solve this "mystery of the century", relying on the Christian (Orthodox) approach to such ailments and Gogol's spiritual (religious) dispensation. In his unfinished work "Psychology and problems of spiritual life" D.E. Melekhov devoted one of the chapters to N.V. Gogol18. “The last attack of the disease from which Gogol died,” he writes, “ proceeded malignantly, against the background of a growing affect with delusional ideas of self-accusation and death, ... progressive exhaustion and with a complete refusal of food ... He lies in a tense position in bed for ten days, not speaking to anyone until death (due to rapidly growing exhaustion). But, we note at once, the learned psychiatrist here repeats the popular opinion that Gogol, in a state of illness, starved himself to death.

There has long been a version that in the last days of his life, Gogol, who suffered from mental illness, "moved his mind." Nor can the assertion that Gogol was buried alive, immersed in lethargy, stand up to criticism. In reality, however, everything seemed to be quite different. And in fact, according to Count A.P. Tolstoy, in whose house Gogol reposed, it is known that in the last days of his life Gogol ate food twice a day, but very little of everything. And the paramedic A. Zaitsev, who took part in the treatment of Gogol, recalled that during these days he talked with him about literature and even corrected Zaitsev's poem, saying in parting: "Read more, my friend." According to D.E. Melekhov, in the last attack of Gogol's illness "there was already a complete dominance of delirium of sinfulness, self-humiliation, loss of faith in the possibility of forgiveness." In the meantime, before his death, Gogol twice confessed and communed the Holy Mysteries, and was unction with oil.

He listened to everything laid down at the Council of the Gospel "in full memory, in the presence of all his mental powers, with contrition of a heart full of prayer, with warm tears." In his study, D.E. Melekhov also refers to the burning of the second volume of "Dead Souls" by Gogol and indicates that it was "performed during a deep depression with a painful consciousness of his guilt and the sinfulness of his work."

To refute such an opinion, one can cite the words of the Rzhev priest Matthew Konstantinovsky. In a conversation with him, T.I. Filippov asked him: “They even say that Gogol burned his creations because he considered them sinful?” “Hardly,” Father Matthew said in bewilderment, “hardly…” He seemed to hear such an assumption for the first time. “Gogol burned it, but he didn’t burn all the notebooks that were at hand, and he burned them because he considered them weak.”

This means that Gogol acted quite consciously, just as he consciously destroyed the written chapters of the second volume of Dead Souls back in 1845. And then it was not a manifestation of madness, but cruel demands on oneself as an artist of the word and a thinker. About the reasons for the burning of the manuscript at that time, Gogol himself said definitely: “There is a time when one should not even talk about the lofty and beautiful without immediately showing, as clear as day, the roads to it for everyone”; however, “it was small and poorly developed,” and “should have been almost the main thing. That is why he was burned” (6, 8283). As for Gogol's last burning of the second volume of Dead Souls, there is important evidence. Such, for example, is the note by A.M. Zederholm, daughters of M.N. Pogodina, now stored in the Pushkin House: “[Gogol] spent the whole night in prayer - at three o’clock he woke his boy ... He ordered to bring a briefcase, took out papers from it and lit it ... When he burned them, he felt sorry, and he said to the boy: “Some places definitely needed to be burned, but there were also those for which many would have prayed to God for me, but God will let me recover, I will fix everything.”

The question remains open: what exactly did Gogol burn before his death? Most of Gogol's contemporaries and his later biographers are of the opinion that the white version of the second volume of Dead Souls has perished. Assumptions were made that, most likely, the Meditations on the Divine Liturgy, on which Gogol worked in the last years of his life, were destroyed. And even a version is put forward that Gogol did not burn anything at all, and the manuscripts were hidden somewhere by Count A.P. Tolstoy. However, all these hypotheses are not documented. Besides, we don't know if Gogol finished the second volume of Dead Souls. But after all, it was precisely about this - about the second volume as a completely completed manuscript - that A.T. Tarasenko, Gogol's attending physician: "The Liturgy and Dead Souls were transcribed in white with his own hand, in very good handwriting." However, he, like all other memoirists, was based, perhaps, on the stories of Count A.P. Tolstoy. He could not see the manuscripts of the second volume with his own eyes, since he was invited to Gogol only on February 13, that is, after he had burned the manuscripts, and Gogol received him only on the 16th.

Separate chapters of the second volume (most likely the first seven) Gogol read to his friends, and most of all - S.P. Shevyre wu. On April 2, 1852, he wrote to Gogol's sister M.N. Sinelnikova: “From the second volume, he read me ... seven chapters. He read them, one might say, by heart, according to the written outline, containing the final finishing in his head. The last person to read the chapters of the second volume of Dead Souls was Gogol's spiritual mentor, Father Matthew: this probably happened during his last meeting with Gogol shortly before the burning of the manuscripts. He is often blamed for the fact that it was he who inspired the writer to such an act.

Father Matthew denied that it was on his advice that Gogol burned the second volume, although he said at the same time that he did not approve of several sketches and even asked to be destroyed. The already mentioned interlocutor of the priest T.I. Filippov directly asked him a question: “They say that you advised Gogol to burn the second volume of Dead Souls?” “Not true and not true…” replied Father Matthew. - Gogol used to burn his failed works and then restore them again in the best possible way. Yes, he hardly had the second volume ready; at least I didn't see it. It was like this: Gogol showed me several scattered notebooks with the inscriptions: Chapter, as he usually wrote in chapters. I remember that on some it was written: chapter I, II, III, should be 7, and others were without a sign; asked me to read and give my opinion. I refused, saying that I was not a connoisseur of secular works, but he urged, and I took and read ... Returning the notebooks, I opposed the publication of some of them. And the reason was as follows: according to Father Matthew, “the priest was described in one or two notebooks”; in it he recognized himself, and therefore "opposed the publication of these notebooks, even asked to be destroyed." “The testimony of Father Matthew is extremely important for us because he is almost the only person who at that time could be an authority for Gogol, even more so - a judge of his work, which acquired for the author himself not so much literary as moral significance.

It is hard to imagine that Gogol, having a finished draft, gave him scattered notebooks with sketches for judgment. Probably, both Shevyrev and Father Matthew knew the same chapters, and, most likely, it was these chapters that were destroyed on the night of April 11-12. The well-known literary critic V.A. Voropaev that “it is not so important to establish an accurate diagnosis of Gogol's near-death illness as to clarify the general picture of his spiritual state before his death. There is no doubt that the image of Father Matthew, who has become a kind of classic, as a gloomy fanatic who almost ruined the writer, is extremely far from the truth. As Gogol's spiritual father, he did not teach him what and how to write, but only cared about the eternal salvation of his spiritual son. Gogol, apparently, did not complete the second volume of Dead Souls, because the goals set by him went beyond the scope of fiction. And Gogol's goals were inseparable from "Selected passages from correspondence with friends" and "most directly connected with the continuation of Gogol's main work, called to solve, as he said, the riddle of his life. The book turned out to be a kind of lyric-philosophical equivalent of the second volume of Dead Souls: individual letters of the article (primarily addressed to Count Tolstoy) sound like outlines of a poem”30. Work on "Selected Places ..." demanded from Gogol an incredibly high return of spiritual and moral strength, and this could not but seriously complicate further work on the favorite brainchild of his whole life - "Dead Souls". Could they hastily appear from the demanding pen of an outstanding master of the word, philosopher and thinker? Is it by chance that in August 1847 Gogol complained in a letter to S.T. Aksakov: “Seeing that I would not soon cope with my“ Dead Souls ”, ... I hastened to talk about those issues that I was preparing to develop or create in living images and faces.” And we agree with M.M. Dunaev that “there are too many mysteries in this story, and it is hardly possible to solve them now.

One thing is certain: Gogol felt the impotence not of his own, but of his art, in the face of the task he had set before himself of prophetic pronouncement of the heavenly truth. There is no other way to explain the destruction of the second volume of the poem (whole or part - it is not so important), not to solve the paradoxical riddle why the writer, who has not lost the strength of his great talent, has not given literature a single line of artistic text in the last ten years of his life. . The creative and spiritual breakdown, which intensified in Gogol, aroused in him the desire to go into monasticism. So, in the letter “You need to travel around Russia”, addressed to Count A.P. Tolstoy and included in “Selected Places…”, he writes: “There is no higher rank than the monastic one, and may God grant us someday to put on a simple robe of a monk, so desired by my soul, about which even the thought of me is a joy. But without the call of God, this cannot be done. In order to acquire the right to withdraw from the world, one must be able to say goodbye to the world. ... No, for you, just as for me, the doors of the desired abode are locked. My hardy is yours - Russia! As we can see, “the artistic principle won in Gogol; his crisis is a consequence of the deepest internal conflict between spiritual aspirations and the gift of writing”32. According to Professor I.M. Andreev, "a huge gift of verbal artistic creativity was sent down to Gogol from above: on the one hand, as an evangelical talent that requires multiplication and growth, and on the other, as an exceptional wealth that impedes the achievement of the Kingdom of Heaven"33. It is known that at least twice Gogol tried, if not to become a monk, then at least to approach the monastery: at the end of his life he was going to Athos and several times went to Optina Hermitage. However, Gogol's monastic ideal had a special form: it was about the purification not only of the soul, but along with it, of artistic talent. It was at this time that Gogol was hard at work on his most important spiritual work, Meditations on the Divine Liturgy. And the desire to get away from worldly fuss, to become a humble monk and thus serve the Creator matures more and more in Gogo.

The morality of his artistic and spiritual creativity is increasing, which is acquiring new features. So, according to V.A. Voropaev, “if we take the moralistic side of Gogol’s early work, then it has one characteristic feature: he wants to elevate people to God by correcting their shortcomings and social vices - that is, by external means. The second half of Gogol's life and work is marked by his orientation towards the eradication of shortcomings in himself - and in this way he follows the inner path. And this "cleansing of the soul", "the coming of God into the soul" became the main components in the writer's spiritual quest. So, in “Selected Places…” Gogol writes: “only first find the key to your own soul; when you find it, then with the same key you will unlock the souls of all” (6, 36). And the feeling of his own chosenness, messianism, is growing in the writer more and more. This desire for teaching grew stronger and stronger.

According to Fr. Vasily Zenkovsky, the feeling of “standing before God” more and more often gives Gogol the idea that God Himself is in charge of his life; and his work is increasingly acquiring the features of teaching. Gogol is sure that “his word is now invested with power from above” (1841). “Gogol becomes almost intrusive in advising friends, as if he were their elder or spiritual leader; he often demands from his friends that he follow his advice.” This "teaching" and goes in "Selected places from correspondence with friends" from individuals to all. And we should not forget that this work is the central thing of the late Gogol, where, as in a focus, all the problems of his writing and personal biography are collected and concentrated. And it is no accident that he calls his book “the confession of a man who spent several years inside himself.” Yes, “Selected Places…” is a direct attempt by Gogol to comprehend life through Orthodoxy and practically apply patristic wisdom to the reality of that time. “Education should take place in constant reflection on one’s duty ..., in comparing all this with the law of Christ”: everything that does not contradict Christ, then accept, in which it does not correspond to His law, then reject; for “everything that is not of God is not true” (6, 284). These words from Gogol's "Rules of Living in the World" (1843) just beg to become an epigraph to "Selected Places ...", which "represent a peculiar combination of the genres of sermon and confession" and, moreover, bear "features of pilgrimage", speaking " as the path of the author and reader from death to resurrection. In other words, the chapters of the book are a kind of successive steps of the ladder leading to Christ. In a word, according to the plan of Gogol himself, the book was intended to “connect the secular and spiritual spheres. However, its “borderliness” prevented Gogol's contemporaries from recognizing this work as a positive value, which led to attacks on the writer from two sides at once. And here it is important to refer to the following remark by one of the researchers of Gogol's spiritual creativity: “Gogol's book is a great lesson about collecting heavenly treasures. But since people “of this world” have loved this world immeasurably, such teachings are not in their honor. Yes, and people do not like teachings, prophetic instructions - they do not love even more than denunciations and ridicule. And the censorship dealt the first very tangible blow to Gogol's book: five letters of the articles were removed in their entirety, significant exceptions were made in others, and certain passages were distorted.

Gogol was alarmed and distressed by all this. Here are the lines from his letter to Countess A.M. Vielgorskaya: “In this book, everything was calculated by me and the letters were placed in a strict sequence in order to enable the reader to be gradually introduced into what is wild and incomprehensible to him. The connection is broken. The book came out a bit of a bummer." “But it turned out to be much more painful for Gogol that “Selected Places ...” were met with hostility by critics and the majority of the reading public; The book came as a complete surprise to many. Gogol, as it were, violated the laws of the genre and, in a secular work, spoke about such issues that were traditionally considered the privilege of spiritual prose. Here, of course, Gogol's reputation as a comic writer interfered. So, P.A. Vyazemsky, not without wit, wrote to S.P. Shevyrev in March 1847: “Our critics look at Gogol as a master would look at a serf who in his house took the place of a storyteller and amusement and suddenly ran away from home and took the veil as a monk.” In disputes, the main trend quickly emerged - the rejection of the book. She was unconditionally condemned by A.I. Herzen, V.G. Belinsky and people of the Western direction. But P.Ya. Chaadaev expresses his opinion here in a very peculiar way. “With some pages weak, and others even sinful,” he wrote to Prince P.A. Vyazemsky, - in his [Gogol's] book there are pages of amazing beauty, full of boundless truth; the pages are such that when you read them, you rejoice and are proud that you speak the language in which such things are said.

In Slavophil circles, Gogol's book was received in different ways. A.S. Khomyakov defended her, but in the “peaceful” Aksakov family, opinions were divided. Sergei Timofeevich reprimanded Gogol: “You were grossly and pathetically mistaken. You have completely gone astray, confused, constantly contradicting yourself and, thinking to serve Heaven and humanity, offend both God and man. (True, he subsequently repented of his harsh statements). His son Konstantin saw Gogol's book as a lie: “A lie is not in the sense of deceit or not in the sense of a mistake - no, but in the sense of insincerity, first of all. This is the inner untruth of a person with himself ... " Ivan Aksakov, on the contrary, believed that "Gogol is right and appears in this book as the ideal of a Christian artist"45. Among the few who unconditionally accepted Gogol's book was P.A. Pletnev.

In a letter to Gogol at the beginning of 1847, he wrote: “Yesterday a great deed was done: the book of your letters was published. But this work will exercise its influence only on the elect; the rest will not find food for themselves in your book. And she, in my opinion, is the beginning of proper Russian literature. Everything that has happened so far seems to me like a student's experience on topics selected from an anthology. You were the first to scoop up thoughts from the bottom and fearlessly brought them to the light. But it is unlikely that this letter suited Gogol, especially the lines that his book "will exercise its influence only over the elect." The clergy, who traditionally did not interfere in the affairs of secular literature, reacted with restraint to Gogol's book. S.T. Aksakov, in a letter to his son Ivan in February 1847, conveyed the opinion of Metropolitan Philaret (Drozdov) of Moscow: “although Gogol is mistaken in many respects, one must rejoice in his Christian direction.”

Archbishop Innokenty (Borisov) also expressed his attitude to Gogol's "Selected Places ..." in a letter to M.P. Pogodin: “I remember and respect him, but I still love him, I rejoice at the change with him; only I ask him not to parade with piety: she loves the inner cell. However, it is not that he was silent. His voice is needed, especially for young people, but if it is immoderate, then they will ridicule it, and there will be no benefit. Apparently, a sharply negative opinion about the "Correspondence" was also expressed by Gogol's spiritual mentor, Father Matthew, who, on the recommendation of Count A.P. Tolstoy, Gogol sent the book. Father Matthew’s review has not been preserved, but it can be judged from the answer of Gogol, who wrote to him in May 1847: “I cannot hide from you that your words frightened me very much, that my book should produce a harmful effect and I will give an answer for it God."

In all likelihood, Father Matthew reproached Gogol for self-proclaimed teaching. Saint Ignatius (Bryanchaninov), at that time an archimandrite, rector of the Trinity Sergius Hermitage near St. Petersburg, one of the most authoritative spiritual writers of the 19th century, also responded to “Selected Places…”. His review of Gogol's book is rather critical: “It emits both light and darkness from itself. His religious concepts are indefinite, moving in the direction of heart inspiration, unclear, indistinct, spiritual, and not spiritual”48. And, it must be said, Gogol himself in many respects biasedly assessed the response of St. Ignatius: as can be seen from the letter to P.A. Pletnev from Naples in May 1847, he believed that for a monk, darkness is the whole area of ​​worldly life that is unfamiliar to them. But Gogol’s wrong here is more than obvious: “the saint came to the monastery, having overcome a long way through worldly life, and knew it firsthand. from which the writer was never able to get rid of and which is capable of distorting the most correct content, even moving away from Orthodoxy. Gogol's enthusiastic tone comes from a claim to the spiritual teaching of the entire people, to whom he deliberately seeks to show the means to salvation. The genre of individual teachings in “Selected Places…” can be described as imitation of the Apostles and Holy Fathers”,49 especially the Catholic theologian Thomas of Kempis.

And St. Ignatius, who subtly felt the lack of spirituality, the falsity of Thomas the Kempis's "Imitation of Jesus Christ," could not be deceived about his imitation of Gogol's "Selected Places ...". But Gogol, as well as many of his contemporaries, including Pushkin, put this work of a Catholic spiritual writer almost on a par with the Gospel. And just as Gogol highly appreciated the book of Thomas of Kempis, St. Ignatius sharply condemned it: “This book was written “out of opinion” and leads its readers directly to communion with God without repentance.” St. Ignatius, moreover, was disgusted by Gogol's sense of his own chosenness, his excessive teaching, which was born from the spirit of proud passion of arrogance: the truth, spoken in pride, as you know, irritates, but does not bow. However, one should not exaggerate the extent of Gogol's divergence from the great pastor of the Russian Church and other clergy. The most favorable review of the "Selected Places ..." of the clergy belonged to Archimandrite Theodore (Bukharev) and was contained in his book "Three Letters to N.V. Gogol", which saw the light only 12 years after its creation.

Archim. Theodore sought to connect Selected Places with all of Gogol's work, and in particular with Dead Souls, the main idea of ​​which he saw in the resurrection of a fallen man: already a martyr of moral loneliness. It should be noted that all the reviews of the clergy on "Selected Places ..." were of a personal nature: with the exception of the book by Archimandrite Theodore, as already mentioned, published after the death of Gogol, all of them were contained only in private correspondence. And, on the contrary, a shaft of secular criticism fell upon the "Selected Places ..." from the magazine pages; onato, in the first place, and created a sharply unfriendly opinion about the book in society. But Gogol was upset not so much by magazine criticism as by the offensively harsh attacks of his friends.

And, perhaps, “it can be said that the public’s rejection of Selected Places ... predetermined the failure of the second volume of Dead Souls, which Gogol, apparently, did not have a chance to finish”52. He poured out his heartache from such unfair attacks of friends in a letter to S.T. Aksakov in July 1847: “My soul is languishing, no matter how strong I am and how hard I try to be cold-blooded ... You can still endure the battle with the most fierce enemies, but God save everyone from this terrible battle with friends!” It must not be forgotten that for Gogol his "Selected passages from correspondence with friends" were composed in mental anguish as his spiritual credo. And, perhaps, Gogol was most saddened by the angry, passionately sharp letter of his literary mentor V.G. Belinsky sent from Salzbrunn in July 1847. Such a sharp rejection by the frantic Vissarion of "Selected Places ..." was literally stunning for Gogol. And the letter was special: it undoubtedly influenced the formation of revolutionary ideas in Russia. In fact, it formulated the cornerstones of the ideology of the so-called liberation movement. And we should not forget: for a large section of the then Russian society, Belinsky was a true ruler of thoughts; for many years his articles were awaited eagerly, they were read with pleasure.

I.S. Turgenev, who, although he did not share Belinsky’s revolutionary ideas, nevertheless spoke highly of his skill as a critic and publicist: “he immediately recognized the beautiful and the ugly, the true and the false ... When a new talent, a new novel, a poem, a story appeared, no one , neither before Belinsky, nor better than him, did he utter a correct assessment, a real decisive word. Lermontov, Gogol, Goncharov - wasn't he the first to point them out, explain their meaning? And how many others! And among “these others” are Turgenev himself, and also Grigorovich, Dostoevsky, Nekrasov… But “the frantic Vissarion” is a tragic figure in many respects. The essence of this tragedy was convincingly expressed by the spiritual writer, teacher of the Moscow Theological Academy M.M. Dunaev: “The tragedy of the problem is ... that people like Belinsky were morally high, pure in conscience”, but “here is the tragedy: good people with a clear conscience sacrificed their lives in the name of the satanic cause. Later they will be replaced by the Nechaevs and other demons of the Russian revolution. In the meantime, they burn with faith in the truth of their struggle. “He who is not with Me is against Me; and whoever does not gather with Me, he squanders” (Mt. 12:30), thus the Savior established that division, in which both the noble Belinsky and the moral degenerate Nechaev find themselves on the same side. There is only one criterion: they are not with Christ, they are against Christ.

We must remember that - not to judge, but to be able to avoid such errors. And to be able to truly test for truth any noble aspiration of any era. Yes, the path turned out to be difficult and thorny for the creator of The Inspector General and Dead Souls - the literary and spiritual path from Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka with rampant infernal forces in them, through the darkness of "furious" European romanticism, through the spiritual fog of Catholicism and Protestantism - to the heights of the Divine Liturgy. His path to the mountain heights was also difficult. Three weeks before his death, on February 2, 1852, Gogol wrote to V.A. Zhukovsky: “Pray for me so that my work is truly conscientious, and that I am at least somehow worthy to sing a hymn to Heavenly Beauty.” Gogol sang this hymn to the Heavenly Beauty in his spiritual creations.

Gogol tried to use his main idea about the role of Providence in history to partially justify the First Rome. In his discussion “On the Middle Ages,” he writes about the rise of the Pope in the following way: “I will not talk about abuse and the severity of the shackles of a spiritual despot. Penetrating more into this great event, we will see the amazing wisdom of Providence: if this omnipotent power had not seized everything in its own hands ... - Europe would have crumbled ... ".

In the same 1834, Gogol allowed himself the only sharp attack in his life against Eastern Rome in its initial, subsequent existence: “The Eastern Empire, which very rightly began to be called Greek, and even more justly could be called the empire of eunuchs, comedians, favorites of the stadiums, conspiracies, low murderers and disputing monks ... ”(On the movement of peoples at the end of the 5th century), - an opinion clearly inspired by Western historiography.

However, even then, in Gogol's soul, the intuition of the artist contradicted the views of the scientist. He combined his historical articles and published them in 1835 as part of the collection Arabesques. The three fiction stories included in the same collection, written on behalf of different narrators who did not coincide in their views with Gogol himself, left a special imprint of detachment from the author's personality on the entire book, and therefore on the articles in it. On the whole, various shades of the magical worldview are reproduced, reflected, expressed in Arabesques, and some general “impurity” of the book is emphasized by the number of selected articles: there are 13 of them, and the one that contains an attack against Byzantium is placed exactly in 13th place - before eloquently closing the book "Notes of a Madman".

The unifying underlying basis of all the constituent parts of "Arabesques" was pantheism, directing the consciousness of narrators and heroes to self-deification, and in reality - to self-destruction, dissolution in the elements of natural existence. Gogol hinted at this already in the title, which was immediately noticed by the sensitive F.V. Bulgarin, who responded as follows: “Arabesques are called in painting and sculpture fantastic decorations made up of flowers and figures, patterned and wayward. Arabesques were born in the East, and therefore they do not include images of animals and people, which are forbidden to be drawn by the Koran. In this respect, the title of the book is aptly tidied up: for the most part, images without faces» .

The spirit of magical pantheism is imbued not only with the fictional stories of Arabesques, but also with articles where, for example, according to S. Karlinsky, bloody conquerors (Attila and the like) “are regarded as evil magicians who sometimes receive retribution from the hands of medieval popes and saints, depicted by good magicians ". As part of Arabesques, this acts in two ways: on the one hand, most of the articles in the collection are sustained in a magical spirit, and magic tends to see itself everywhere, including in Christianity; on the other hand, Gogol, hiding behind his magically minded narrators, points to signs of a real, from the Orthodox point of view, deviation of Catholicism towards magic.

Wanting to fully comprehend the essence of the First Rome, Gogol strives to Italy, as he once sought to Petersburg. Departing for Europe in July 1836, from March 1837 he begins his life in Rome. Now he completely indulges in the charm of Italian nature and the ancient city and finds himself more than ever far from Russia and Orthodoxy. It is noteworthy that along with sympathy for Catholicism in the letters of 1838-1839, Gogol also reveals a passion for paganism and magic. In April 1838, he writes from Rome to M.P. Balabina: “It seemed to me that I saw my homeland ... the homeland of my soul ... where my soul lived even before me, before I was born into the world.” The non-Christian idea of ​​the pre-existence of souls (internally connected with the pantheistic idea of ​​the reincarnation of souls) is supplemented in the same letter by a general equalization of the merits of Christianity and paganism. The first Rome, according to Gogol, "is already beautiful in that ... that on one half of it the pagan age breathes, on the other the Christian, and both are the biggest two thoughts in the world." Such an equalization of the merits of essentially different types of spirituality is a sign of magical consciousness. Gogol seems to be trying to turn history back, to return to paganism, and therefore designates his letter not with Christian, but with Roman-pagan chronology: "the year 2588 from the founding of the city." The thought: "... in Rome alone they pray, in other places they show only the appearance that they are praying" - sounds in this letter not only pro-Catholic, but partly in paganism.

Catholic priests in Rome tried to convert Gogol to their faith. Rumors about that reached Russia. When Gogol justifies himself in a letter home on December 22, 1837, his words sound non-Orthodox: "... I will not change the rites of my religion ... Because both our religion and the Catholic one are exactly the same."

At the end of the 1830s, the writer sympathizes with the Catholic hope, learned from Judaism, in the “kingdom of God” (or “paradise”) on earth, which is allegedly possible to arrange by the will and forces of churched humanity. The seed of this "paradise", of course, was the First Rome. On January 10, 1840, Gogol, who returned to Moscow, writes to M.A. Maksimovich: “I can’t wait for spring and it’s time to go to my Rome, my paradise ... God, what a land! what a land of miracles! .

The turning point in the writer's "Roman" self-awareness, which took place in the autumn of 1840, seems all the more weighty. The external cause was a mysterious dangerous disease that happened in Vienna, shaking the soul and crushing the body. Barely recovering and arriving in Rome, Gogol confessed to M.P. Pogodin: “Neither Rome, nor the sky, nor that which would so enchant me, nothing now has an influence on me. I don't see them, I don't feel them. I would like a road now, but a road in the rain, slush, through forests, through the steppes, to the ends of the world "-" even to Kamchatka "(letter dated October 17, 1840).

Since then, love for the First Rome has been supplanted by an attraction to the Third, to Moscow, so that in December 1840 Gogol wrote to K.S. Aksakov from the capital of Italy: “I send you a kiss, dear Konstantin Sergeevich, for your letter. It boils strongly with Russian feeling and smells of Moscow from it ... Your calls for snow and winter are also not without fascination, and why not get cold sometimes? This is often great. Especially when there is plenty of inner heat and hot feelings. It is noteworthy that this is written by a person, most of all, it seems, who was afraid of frost.

The failure of the Russian-Italian Catholics in converting Gogol to the Latin faith is also noteworthy: since 1839, the writer pointedly opposed their seductions. Many even the most fleeting acquaintances are mentioned in Gogol's Roman letters, but there is "not the slightest hint of such, in any case, close acquaintances of the poet as the young Semenenko and Kaysevich," the priests who left Poland, strenuously trying to convert Gogol. This speaks of the writer's initially cautious attitude towards Catholic influences, of the initial internal rejection (despite the fact that in Rome it was very beneficial for him to maintain good relations with Catholics).

The change in consciousness, of course, was reflected in Gogol's artistic work. Moreover, initially, on a whim, feeling the deep foundation of his views and the coming manifestation of this foundation, he expressed his attraction to the First Rome not on his own behalf, but through the detached consciousness of the narrators and heroes. So, if in the "Portrait" (1834-1842) the narrator speaks of "wonderful Rome", and in "Rome" (1838-1842) another narrator develops this image in every possible way, then behind their voices one hears a more restrained judgment of the writer himself, who shows , as, for example, in "Rome" the protagonist and the narrator are carried away by the element of pagan pantheism - it exudes the ruins of ancient Rome and the surrounding nature and drowns the Christian face of the city along with the souls of its inhabitants.

The story "Rome" is dominated by the image of a fading, setting ( Western) of the sun. In its seductive, languorous, beckoning into darkness, ghostly light, souls dissolve with the features of the Roman world, pagan and Christian reflected in them: all these “tombs and arches” and “the most immeasurable dome” of the Church of the Apostle Peter. And then, "when the sun was already hiding ... everywhere the evening established its dark image." In this ghostly half-existence, "luminous flies" hover, like some fallen spirits, flickering with magical fire stolen from the sun. They surround the frenzied human soul, which has forgotten about God and about itself, and among them is "a clumsy winged insect, rushing upright, like a man, known under the name of the devil."

In the syllable of "Rome" signs of ancient-pagan worship of beauty are stable. The story reveals the chaotic, elemental, pantheistic underlying basis of the outwardly decorous pagan veneration of the "divine" beauty of man and nature. The triumph of chaos over the seemingly bright orderliness of the pagan vision of beauty is emphasized in the story by images of ancient ruins swallowed up by violent nature, the image of sunset light drying up in darkness, and the most confusingly unexpected abruptness of the “excerpt”, given, nevertheless, by Gogol to print.

In "Rome", the young prince felt "some mysterious meaning in the word "eternal Rome"" after he looked at his Italian fatherland from afar, from vain Paris. Meanwhile, Gogol himself, working in Italian Rome on a story about a Roman prince, finally began to understand the Roman, world-sovereign dignity of his own homeland and its ancient capital - Moscow. This understanding was reflected in the first volume of "Dead Souls", completed simultaneously with the story "Rome": "Rus! Rus! I see you, from my wonderful, beautiful far away I see you: poor, scattered and uncomfortable in you ... But what kind of incomprehensible, secret force attracts you? And menacingly, a mighty space embraces me, reflecting with terrible power in my depths; My eyes lit up with an unnatural power: wow! what a sparkling, wonderful, unfamiliar distance to the earth! Russia!..” The narrator, who argues in this way, is already extremely close to Gogol himself, and it is no coincidence that he is called the “author”. The first volume of “Dead Souls” ends with a direct proclamation of the unsurpassed sovereign power of Russia: “... the air torn to pieces rumbles and becomes a wind; everything that is on earth flies past, and, looking sideways, step aside and give it way to other peoples and states.

Chichikov, who, according to Gogol's plan, was supposed to be reborn in the Orthodox sovereign spirit, already in the first volume touches on the foundations of the corresponding teaching, although not very close to him yet: with great praise about its space, said that even the most ancient Roman monarchy was not so great, and foreigners are rightly surprised ... "

Returning from abroad to his homeland, Gogol prefers to live in Moscow, and since the end of the 1840s, after traveling to the Holy Places, a desire has been growing in his soul not to leave the Fatherland at all and even not to leave Moscow at all: “No way I would not leave Moscow, which I love so much. And in general, Russia is getting closer and closer to me. In addition to the property of the motherland, there is something in it even higher than the motherland, as if it were the land from where it is closer to the heavenly homeland ”(letter to A.S. Sturdze dated September 15, 1850).

Russia for the mature Gogol is precisely the Third Moscow Rome: not a sweet paradise on earth, but a harsh temporary fortress that protects the souls faithful to Christ from visible and invisible enemies and allows you to safely move from a short earthly life to an eternal afterlife with a possible subsequent settlement (if Christ whatever you like) into the Kingdom of God, which is “not of this world.”

An ancient image of such a Christian fortress on earth is a monastery, and Gogol in Selected Places from Correspondence with Friends directly writes: “Your monastery is Russia!” The Christian humility of a Russia-monastery turns into militancy only when there is a threat to the sanctuary of faith: “... or you don’t know what Russia is for a Russian. Remember that when trouble came to her, then monks came out of the monasteries and stood in ranks with others to save her. The blacks of Oslyablya and Peresvet, with the blessing of the abbot himself, took a sword that was contrary to a Christian.

Moscow for the late Gogol is the holiest place in the Russia-monastery, and St. Petersburg is the furthest from holiness: “There is a freer, more convenient time for our conversations than in dissolute Petersburg”; in Moscow conversations about “truly Russian goodness” “the stronghold of our character is brought up and the mind is illuminated with light” (letter to A.O. Smirnova dated October 14, 1848). Driven by this idea, Gogol in "The denouement of the Inspector General" (1846) puts into the mouth of the "first comic actor" the thought: "... we hear our noble Russian breed ... we hear the order from the Highest to be the best of others!" . In "Bright Sunday", the final chapter of "Selected Places ...", Gogol assures himself and his compatriots that it is in Russia that the purity of ancient Christianity, which was lost everywhere, will be restored sooner, and restored, since in Russia it is most preserved. The essence of Christianity is faith in the incarnation of Christ God, His death on the cross for the sins of people and the Resurrection from the dead - so that the fallen people will be resurrected. About the Bright Sunday of Christ, Gogol writes: “Why does it still seem to one Russian that this holiday is celebrated as it should be, and is celebrated in this way in his own land? Is it a dream? But why does this dream not come to anyone other than the Russian?.. Such thoughts are not invented. By the inspiration of God, they are born at once in the hearts of many people ... I know for sure that more than one person in Russia ... firmly believes in this and says: “In our country, before any other land, the Bright Sunday of Christ will be celebrated!”

Each official of the Russian Orthodox state, according to Gogol, must be at the same time "an honest official of God's great state" (Decoupling ""), which is displayed and preexisting on earth with its threshold - in the form of Russian: "Let's unitely prove to the whole world that in the Russian land everything everything, from small to large, strives to serve the same, Whom everything should serve, everything on the whole earth, rushes there ... up, to the Supreme eternal beauty! , - expresses the "first comic actor" thoughts close to Gogol himself. Russia must show the erring world an example of sovereign worship.

AT<«Авторской исповеди»>Gogol sums up his sovereign teaching: “So, after many years and labors, and experiments, and reflections ... I came to what I already thought about during my childhood: that the purpose of a person is to serve and our whole life is a service. It is only necessary not to forget that a place in an earthly state was taken in order to serve the Heavenly Sovereign in it and therefore keep His law in mind. Only by serving in this way can one please everyone: the sovereign, and the people, and one's land. This is one of the possible definitions of the Orthodox-"Roman" symphony of Church and State. The Church and the service to God carried out through her is the content of state life, and the state is the fence of the Church as the people of God.

In the chapter “Selected Places…” “A few words about our Church and clergy”, Gogol reminds his compatriots and all mankind of the true essence of Orthodoxy and the role of Russia in its development: “This Church, which, like a chaste virgin, has survived alone from the time of the apostles in an its original purity, this Church, which ... alone is able to solve all the knots of perplexity and our questions, which can work an unheard-of miracle in the sight of all Europe, forcing us to enter into their legitimate boundaries and boundaries and, without changing nothing in the state, to give power to Russia to amaze the whole world with the harmonious harmony of the same organism with which she hitherto frightened - and this Church is unknown to us! And this Church, created for life, we still have not introduced into our lives!” .

The focus of church life is worship, liturgy, and Gogol, reflecting on “our liturgy” (. 1845-1851), points, among other things, to the “Roman” symbolism in it, for example, in the “Cherubic Song” (“... like the King of all raise, angelic invisibly dorinosima chinmi, hallelujah!”): “The ancient Romans had the custom of bringing the newly elected emperor to the people, accompanied by legions of troops, on a shield under the fall of many spears bent over him. This song was composed by the emperor himself, who fell to the dust with all his earthly majesty before the majesty of the King of all, carried by spears by cherubim and legions of heavenly powers: in the original times, the emperors themselves humbly stood in the ranks of servants when carrying out the Holy Bread ... At the sight of the King of all, carried in a humble form The lamb, lying on a diskos, as if on a shield, surrounded by instruments of earthly suffering, as if by spears of countless invisible hosts and officials, all bow down their heads and pray with the words of the robber who cried out to Him on the cross: “Remember me, Lord, when you come to His kingdom."

"What can you tell about Gogol's fatal delusions?...

Gogol's mystical moods, inspired by him by the church fathers with their gloomy and backward philosophy, led and could not but lead to the spiritual collapse of the great Russian writer. As a result of this collapse, he burns the second volume of "Dead Souls", which, however, was weaker than the first volume, because it turned out to be saturated with the corrupt spirit of churchmen hiding in the catacombs and gloomy nooks and crannies of Optina Hermitage and other haunts of militant obscurantists ...

Well well. Of course, you have read the second volume, and that is why you so confidently deny it?

No. All this was told to us in the village by a teacher of literature. (3, p. 5).

This episode from "The Sad Detective" by V. Astafyev is a sad evidence of how for many years our school "passed through" "Selected places from correspondence with friends" by N.V. Gogol. And this is at best, at worst - Gogol remained only the author of the first volume of Dead Souls, and everything that followed the poem, including Selected Places from Correspondence with Friends, seemed to not even exist.

In Soviet literary criticism, creativity and life, and the whole inner image of Gogol were illuminated in a biased way. There is no need to go far for an explanation of the reasons - everything was dictated by the ideology of an anti-church nature.

Only today the study of Gogol begins from the only correct position of the Orthodox worldview, because such is the worldview of Gogol himself. It is good that today we have the opportunity to discover Gogol as an Orthodox writer - educator, to look at his works from new positions, not keeping silent about Gogol's difficult path to the true faith, to evaluate "The Chosen Places ..." not only from the "only correct" position of V. G. Belinsky.

The purpose of this work is to try to identify the religious and moral guidelines declared by Nikolai Vasilyevich in an epistolary genre that was somewhat unexpected for him, and to give, with the help of the works of K.V. Mochulsky, M.M. Dunaeva, S.L. Frank, oh Zenkovsky, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, an assessment of Gogol's writing work.

The volume of this work does not allow dwelling in detail on the analysis of Gogol's works, and this does not meet the purpose of this work. Spiritual searches of the writer are included first of all in a circle of considered problems.

1. Fundamentals of Gogol's worldview

1.1. Gogol's worldview in the 30s.

“God, how sad our Russia is,” Pushkin exclaimed when Gogol read to him excerpts from Dead Souls. This assessment of the great Russian poet served as a measure for judgments about Gogol's artistic creations until the end of the 19th century. Gogol was perceived and hailed as a great realist and satirist; if in the Slavophile circles close to Gogol the nationalities of his types rejoiced, then the radical Westerners honored in him a social critic who, in his own words, noticed “through the laughter visible to the world, tears unknown to the world invisible” and - so they thought, denounced the poverty of Russian life, injustice and the corruption of the existing order.

But this was not the whole truth about Gogol. Only the generation of the end of the 19th century, according to S.L. Frank, in a completely new situation, more favorable for the knowledge of spiritual reality, a deep penetration into the life of the soul and artistic creativity of Gogol was possible. Rozanov, Merezhkovsky, Bryusov drew attention to many remarkable features of the rare religious and metaphysical sensation of life already in the writer's works. From the very beginning, in the universally recognized detractor of morals, a mystical gifted spirit was revealed, which in its images of life did not express external reality, but its own internal anxiety; satirical images turned out to be the product of his excruciatingly painful fantasy. His personal essence was distinguished by a sharp innate sense of the presence of the demonic in the world's existence - equally terrible, as well as vulgar and evil. It seems that this attitude was innate in him.

One of the best researchers of the writer's work K.V. Mochulsky believes that this is apparently due primarily to the enormous influence of his beloved mother, Maria Ivanovna, a devout, superstitious woman with oddities. All her life she lived in inexplicable, painful anxieties. Her sincere and genuine religiosity is colored by the fear of impending disasters and death. Gogol is like his mother: sometimes cheerful and cheerful, sometimes “lifeless”, as if he was intimidated and frightened for life from childhood. The most terrible memory of childhood will be the mother's story about the Last Judgment, about the eternal torment of sinners. He will never forget about this shock: “... it shocked and awakened sensitivity in me, it planted and subsequently produced the highest thoughts in me” (19, p. 8). From this episode it is clear that Gogol's religious consciousness will grow out of the harsh image of Retribution.

An important feature of Gogol's artistic creativity will become too evident already in "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka": there are a lot of unclean people in the figurative system, and demons are often commemorated not only by the characters, but also by the author himself. Merezhkovsky and Rozanov give extreme estimates to this. One is ready to see in almost every character of Gogol one of the incarnations of the demon, the other identifies the author himself with him. But let's not forget the opinion of the author himself: “For a long time now, I have been only bothering about this, so that after my composition a person will laugh at the devil to his heart's content” (quoted from: 13, p. 136). Gogol did not lie when he said so, but not all demons under his pen become ridiculous. Evidence of this is his further work.

MM. Dunaev writes: “We dare to assume that Gogol was given a special gift: a sharpened vision and a sense of world evil, which is rarely given to anyone in the world. This is both a gift and a test of the soul, a call from above to internal struggle with the horror revealed to man” (13, p. 137).

The primary experiences in his soul really become experiences of cosmic horror. These experiences would become the main mystical experiences in all of his early writings. We meet this unexpected confession in the middle of a touching, lovingly written story about the peaceful life of an old married couple (“Old World Landowners” in the collection “Mirgorod”), where he describes his mystical experience of childhood with extraordinary power.

“You, no doubt, have ever heard a voice calling you by name, which the common people explain by the fact that the soul yearns for a person and calls him, and after which death immediately follows. I confess that I have always been afraid of this mysterious call. I remember that in childhood I often heard it: sometimes suddenly someone behind me clearly pronounced my name ... I usually then ran with the greatest fear and was holding my breath from the garden, and whom he drove out this terrible heart desert ”(12, p. 88).

In the article "Iconostasis" P. Florensky writes about the peculiarities of mystical consciousness: "... And the same thing - in mysticism. The general law is the same everywhere: the soul admires from the invisible and, having lost sight of it, admires into the region of the invisible ... And, having soared grief into the invisible, it descends again to the visible, and then symbolic images of the invisible world appear before it - faces of things, ideas ... There is a temptation to take for the spiritual, for spiritual images, instead of ideas - those dreams that surround, confuse and seduce the soul, when the path to another world opens before it ... Bordering on the other world, they, although of local nature, are likened to beings and realities spiritual world; when approaching the limit of this world, we enter into conditions of existence, although continuously new, but very different from the usual conditions of everyday life. And this is the greatest spiritual danger of approaching the limit of the world... The danger lies in deceptions and self-deceptions that surround the traveler on the brink of the world... these phantoms, as they are, having received an influx of reality from the soul of one who looks back, become strong ”(22, p. 28).

Sometimes it seems that Gogol comes very close to this line. The gloomy, boring picture of the world in many of his works grows out of Gogol's inner attitude, this is obvious, he himself always spoke about this. But on the other hand, it is completely wrong, S.L. Frank, take Gogol's gloomy picture of the world as a purely subjective image of Gogol's morbid spirit and, on this basis, declare it to have no objective significance. Dostoevsky also confirms this idea, saying that the idea that only healthy people can know the truth, while the mentally ill deal with subjective images of fantasy, is a completely unfounded prejudice; it is precisely the sick who can possess especially acute abilities to perceive the world, which are absent in healthy people: in fact, thanks to the morbid inclination of his spirit, Gogol succeeds in the most important universal religious knowledge, and, in particular, in a penetrating look at the true essence of his environment and his broken century.

Let us turn again to the idea of ​​a special ability to comprehend the depth of religious knowledge. The same S.L. Frank notes in the article "Gogol's Religious Consciousness" that the writer is credited with feeling and depicting the demon of the non-Christian and anti-Christian world. Already only this intuition, in his opinion, speaks of the depth and religious significance of this rare spirit. Gogol's religious and historical views were, as we now understand, in close connection with the peculiarities of his artistic intuition. With a heightened sense of evil and vulgarity in human life, reaching to painfulness, of demonic power in the world; in his artistic work, a deeply hidden, barely noticeable at first glance, passionate desire for salvation is combined. (Maybe that's why in his early works God is still stronger than Satan). Sometimes it breaks out, as in Notes of a Madman, when a little official who fell ill with megalomania, after an indescribably funny outpouring of thoughts, suddenly fills the world with a soul-grabbing cry: “Mother, save me! Can't you see how your child is suffering?" (quoted from: 23, p. 311). Later, in the "Author's Confession", Gogol himself will talk about how, in his striving for a true artistic comprehension of various human types, he gradually came to search for the essence of the human soul and from there to Christ, as the only true expert on the human soul.

Such are the religious and moral convictions of Gogol in the 1930s.

Gogol calls the thirty-sixth year "a great turning point, a great era in my life", developing this idea in the "Author's Confession". In it, he divides his life into youth, when "a smart person comes up with stupid things"; during these years he "composed, not at all caring about why it was, for what and to whom what benefit would come of it." The second half is maturity; he entered into it with the help of Pushkin. Gogol began to think about the benefits that his "fables" could bring. The idea of ​​the self-sufficing power of humor, that the poet himself is his own supreme court, began to seem narrow to him. The researcher of Gogol's work I. Zolotussky writes: “Pushkin did not notice this. He did not notice how, from the territory allotted to Gogol by criticism and to him, Pushkin, he moved to the field where the image was made the servant of the idea, behind which stood the new, religious worldview of the author. Gogol became Gogol, that is, who he was finally destined to be: a creator for whom literature is not a profession, but a service to God, who has invested in him a special talent ”(17, p. 31).

According to the same I. Zolotussky, it is difficult to imagine that Pushkin could have published a book similar to the book of Gogol's letters. Pushkin was the guardian of "decency" in literature, which meant for him:

• non-intervention too personal in the works of the poet;
• reader's non-intervention too personal.

Gogol from the first lines of "Selected passages from correspondence with friends" will challenge this rule. In the "Will" opening the book, he declared: "Away with empty propriety!" And in the "Author's Confession", which appeared as a response to criticism of "Selected Places", he will say about his book: with the other difference that it yelled noisier and louder, as in a writer, in whom everything that is in the soul, asks for light ... ”(12, p. 665).

Let us pay attention and later return to this idea that he does not confess to one person, his confessor is a street, a square, Russia from St. Petersburg to Kamchatka. The publicity of his confessions is shocking, but also shocking by the purity of the goal. Gogol, out of moral conviction, violates Pushkin's covenant and, according to I. Zolotussky, "opens the way for Russian literature to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy" (17, p. 33).

Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov notes another property of Gogol's talent, which already exists in his works, but has not yet fully manifested itself: “Most of the talents sought to depict human passions in luxury. Depicted by singers, depicted by painters, depicted by music is evil in every possible variety. Human talent, in all its strength and unfortunate beauty, has developed in the depiction of evil; in the depiction of goodness, he is generally weak, pale, tense ... When the gospel character is assimilated to talent - and this is associated with labor and internal struggle - then the artist is illuminated by inspiration from above, only then can he speak holy, sing holy, paint holy "(cit. according to: 7, p. 219).

So, in the thirty-sixth year, Gogol really experienced a "great turning point", "realizing himself as a national Russian writer" (19, p. 22).

1.2. Gogol's worldview in the 40s.

The forties pass in Gogol's life under the sign of a foreign land. If the first foreign period (1836-1839) is full of cheerfulness, carelessness, creative upsurge, then life abroad in the period from 1842 to 1847. full of trials, illnesses and spiritual quests.

Accusations against Gogol of being fascinated by Catholicism date back to this period. But according to the testimony of the writer V. Veresaev (5, p. 476) and from the letters of the writer himself, one can judge the frivolity of such an assessment.

Moreover, it was in the forties that the tone of his letters to friends changed, according to S.T. Aksakov, he even changes outwardly: “This year (1841) was followed by a new, big change in Gogol, not in relation to appearance, but in relation to his temper and qualities. However, even in appearance he became thin, pale, and quiet obedience to the will of God was heard in his every word ”(quoted from: 19, p. 26).

Gogol's spiritual path begins with a desire, incomprehensible to many, to expose himself to public denunciation and shame. The publication of "Dead Souls" seems to him an auspicious occasion; he asks friends, writers and ordinary readers to criticize his work as severely as possible. In the face of all of Russia, he is ready to listen to the denunciation of his sins (this word replaced the word "shortcomings" in his speech) and to repent. Someone saw foolishness in this thirst to bare one's soul, someone - shamelessness. Someone regarded it as a humiliation, someone considered a feat. Gogol's friends took this for eccentricity, for an absurd caprice. Both Mochulsky and Frank note that Gogol clearly mixed up three different plans: for him, his shortcomings as a writer, the vices of a person, and the sins of a Christian were equivalent. Gogol's friends, and perhaps no one in Russia, were ready for such an identification of an artist with a Christian. It should be noted that spiritual changes took place with Gogol far from Russia, his relatives often saw the result of these changes, and often this result frightened them. For example, neither S.T. Aksakov, neither Zhukovsky, nor Pletnev, nor Shevyryov can accept his teaching, which pervades his letters to Russia. “But listen: now you must listen to my word,” he wrote to Danilevsky in 1841, “for my word has doubly power over you and woe to anyone who does not listen to my word. O believe my words! Endowed with supreme authority from now on my word» (19, p.26).

This is the basis of future misunderstanding and rejection of the "Selected Places". Ready to accept Gogol, a satirist and humorist, the public is not ready to accept and understand Gogol, a spiritual teacher and preacher. When Gogol stopped laughing and started talking about God, no one believed that a comic writer could be a teacher. In such teaching, many see not humility, but pride. This is also confirmed by an excerpt from a letter from S. Shevyryov to Gogol, cited in Veresaev’s book: “You were spoiled by all of Russia: bringing glory to you, she nourished self-esteem in you. In your book it expressed itself colossally, sometimes monstrously. Self-love is never so monstrous as when combined with faith. In faith it is ugliness” (5, p. 483).

Frank also denies Gogol the high gift of teaching: “... Gogol did not have the calling of a pastor and preacher; something artificial is felt in this” (23, p. 303).

Meanwhile, in the forties, the writer did a tremendous spiritual job: he reads church books, ordering them from Moscow, they gradually crowd out secular literature; he gets acquainted with the experience of eldership, first makes friends in absentia, and then personally with Father Matthew, the spiritual father of the writer. Not everyone immediately noticed and understood that Gogol's new worldview was complete and deeply spiritual. Gone was the gloomy mysticism of the first period of creativity, Gogol discovered the truth about the religious meaning of human life and believed in it ardently and completely. The unusualness of his behavior, which so struck his contemporaries, was, according to the researchers of his work, that he began to put his program into practice. Seeing in the vocation of the artist the way to the salvation of the soul, Gogol took upon himself the burden of this responsibility. His new convictions will sound in the second volume of "Dead Souls", in "Theatrical tour after the presentation of a new comedy", in "Reflections on the Divine Liturgy", conceived in 1845.

After a serious and mysterious illness in 1845, Gogol's main attention was finally directed to the inner path - spiritual self-education.

V.A. Voropaev notes: “If we take the moralizing side of Gogol’s early work, then it has one characteristic feature: he wants to lead people to God by correcting them shortcomings and social vices - that is, by external means. The second half of Gogol's life and work was marked by his focus on eradicating shortcomings. in yourself– and thus, he follows the inner path” (6, p. 7). According to Gogol, external life is life outside of God, and internal life is in God.

From now on he thinks:

• to create beauty, one must be beautiful oneself;
• the artist must be an integral and moral person;
• his life must be as perfect as his art.
• Service to beauty is a moral deed and a religious achievement.
• In order to fulfill the duty to humanity assigned to him, the writer must enlighten and purify his soul,
• that is, the writer must be righteous.
• The words “feat” and “field” begin to sound double meaning: the ascetic path and creativity are a single ladder leading to God.
• A person unprepared for inner rebirth needs an “invisible step towards Christianity” and art can become such.

This is the only justification for art for him. And the higher his view of art becomes, the more demanding he becomes of himself as a writer.

Awareness of the responsibility of the artist for the word and for everything he wrote came to Gogol very early. Even in the “Portrait” edition of 1835, the old monk shares his religious experience with his son: “Watch out, my son, at the terrible power of the demon. He tries to penetrate everything: into our affairs, into our thoughts, and even into the very inspiration of the artist. Gogol understood the enormous gift of verbal artistic creativity as a gift from above, on the one hand, as an evangelical talent that required multiplication and growth, and on the other, as an exceptional wealth that impeded the achievement of the Kingdom of Heaven. Gogol sought to dispose of his wealth, that is, his talent, in the gospel way. “The ability to create is a great ability,” he wrote to Smirnova on February 22, 1847, “if only it is revived by the blessing of the highest God. I also have a part of this ability, and I know that I will not be saved if I do not use it properly, in business ”(quoted from: 7, p. 217).

And in a letter to V.A. Zhukovsky on January 10, 1848, as it were, continues this idea about the responsibility of the artist: “... How to portray people if you did not know first what the human soul is? A writer, if only he is gifted with the creative power to create his own images, first educate yourself as a man and a citizen of your land, and then take up your pen! Otherwise, everything will be out of place. What is the use of striking a shameful and depraved person by exposing him to everyone, if the ideal of a beautiful person opposite to him is not clear in yourself? How to expose the shortcomings and unworthiness of man, if he did not ask himself a question: what is the dignity of man? …It will mean destroying the old house before you have the opportunity to build a new one in its place. But art is not destruction. The seeds of creation, not destruction, are hidden in art…” (20, p. 65).

In Selected Places from Correspondence with Friends, he once again turns to his inner tormenting reflections on creativity. He will also speak about this in the Divine Liturgy. The conclusion that the writer will come to at the end of his life will be connected with the religious understanding of art: the path to great art, Gogol believed, lies through the personal feat of the artist. One must die for the world in order to be re-created internally, and then return to creativity.

However, a deeply spiritual understanding of his writing mission will become for Gogol himself another step towards tragedy. In the aesthetic and romantic atmosphere of the era, this religious teaching was unexpected and strange, and Gogol's words simply did not reach.

It was under such conditions that "Selected passages from correspondence with friends" would be published in 1847.

2. "Selected passages from correspondence with friends" and their role in the development of Gogol as a spiritual writer

2.1. Religious views on power and the state

"Selected Places" was published on the eve of the European revolutions, and one of them - the unrest in Naples in January 1848 - Gogol found before leaving for his homeland. For him in 1847 the question of choosing a path (both for himself and for Russia) was a fundamental question, a question of questions. With radicals (Herzen, Petrashevists, and in Europe socialists and communists) or with Pushkin?

Gogol was writing his book when the split in Russian educated society became obvious. If under Pushkin it was relatively intact and only the events of December 14 revealed the contradictions in it, then in 1847 the noble intelligentsia began to diverge into poles. There were parties professing views incompatible with each other. An ideological war began in society. If the radicals began to create secret societies and plot against the tsar, then their historical opponents, who did not hope to “melt the eternal pole” in an instant (Tyutchev’s words from a poem dedicated to the Decembrists), chose peaceful service to the fatherland. Gogol also dreams of bringing his comforting - and conciliatory - voice into the Russian strife. He does not belong to any of the parties - neither to the "Western" party, nor to the "Eastern" party, because the truth cannot be usurped by any one trend. In the chapter "Disputes" he says that "Old Believers" and "New Believers" see the same object from different angles. And in order to form a complete picture of the subject, one should take into account the judgments of all. Gogol, like Pushkin, is a supporter of a reasonable middle, although his sympathies lean towards the "Eastern". "Eastern" are close to him respect for tradition. Behind them is not only knowledge of Russia, but also knowledge of Russian history. They honor their native language and, despite all the excesses in the praises of Russia, they are on their way to the pinnacle of love for their neighbor - to Christianity.

The softening of power, limiting its arbitrariness - this is what, according to Gogol (and according to Pushkin), the task of the poet in this difficult time. In his discussions on the topic "poet and power" he is both on the side of the poet and on the side of power.

“How cleverly Pushkin defined,” Gogol writes in the chapter “On the Lyricism of Our Poets,” “the meaning of a full-powered monarch, and how smart he was in general in everything he said lately in his life. “Why is it necessary,” he said, “for one of us to become above all and even above the law itself? Then, that the law is a tree; in the law, a person hears something harsh and unfraternal ... a higher mercy is needed, softening the law, which can appear to people only in one full-powered power. A state without a powerful monarch is an automaton: a lot, a lot, if it reaches what the United States has reached. What is the United States? Carrion; the person in them has faded to the point that it’s not worth a damn thing ... Everything noble, disinterested, everything that elevates the human soul is suppressed by inexorable egoism and a passion for contentment (comfort) ”(11, p. 210).

But all these discussions about the role of power in the life of society are an attempt at external influence on human souls and on social existence. Discussing them, Gogol only once again becomes convinced of the unfaithfulness of this path, chooses the path of internal purification of the soul and makes his hard-won book sound like a great lesson about collecting heavenly treasures.

Very few understood the meaning of this book. The main part of Russian society, people "of this world" loved this world immensely and such teachings were not honored by them.

These thoughts of Gogol turned out to be alien to his friend S.T. Aksakov, but are close to P.A. Pletnev, who writes to Gogol: “Yesterday a great deed was accomplished: the book of your letters was published ... it, in my opinion, is the beginning of proper Russian literature. Everything that has happened so far seems to me like a student's experience on topics selected from an anthology. You were the first to scoop up thoughts from the bottom and fearlessly brought them to the light ... Be adamant and consistent. Whatever others say, go your own way ”(quoted from: 12, p. 669). And the moderate Turgenev described the book as "a nasty mixture of pride and quest, hypocrisy and vanity, a prophetic and greedy tone, the like of which we do not know in all literature" (cited in: 23, p. 303).

Not everyone accepted the book even among the clergy, whose assessment was especially important to Gogol. For example, Father Matthew did not accept Gogol's creations. The priest’s opinion about the book with which his acquaintance with Gogol began was negative, judging by the surviving letters of Gogol, for the reason already indicated: Father Matthew did not accept teaching and, apparently, reproached Gogol for being fascinated by secular topics (in particular, he attacked article "On the theater, on a one-sided view of the theater and, in general, on one-sidedness" as leading society away from the Church). We can judge this from Gogol’s letter dated January 12, 1848: “I took very note of everything that you say about teaching and, as a result, of course, looked more closely at himself and at the teacher” (6, p. 33) .

Stepan Shevyryov, analyzing "Selected Places", also notes that the weakest side in it is the personality of the author - the desire to teach others, give advice in what the teacher himself is hardly smart about, and, finally, sometimes expose the shortcomings of his neighbor. But he continues further: “Reproaching Gogol's teachings, no one noticed the unusualness of the very phenomenon that happened in our eyes. An artist, covered with universal glory in his own country, an artist whose every book was scattered magically all over Russia, abandons his art, leaves the tripod of inspiration and runs into a teacher, wants to be a preacher, to say the right word to a person, to take care of his soul and durable business of life. Let us suppose that his preaching is baby talk; let us suppose that it does not reach the goal, but how can one fail to notice the importance of the event? How can you only allow yourself to laugh at him, or be angry with him, or rebuke him in contradictions? ... People who understand the significance of the artist and his attitude to life cannot and should not remain indifferent to such an event and, exposing, perhaps, the shortcomings of his teachings, they must nevertheless recognize the importance of the matter itself ”(24, p. 442).

Saints Philaret (Drozdov) and Innokenty (Borisov) responded favorably to the book. Archimandrite Theodore (Bukharev) supported Gogol unconditionally. The most significant, of course, should accept the judgment of the saint (archimandrite at that time) Ignatius (Bryanchaninov). It was he who gave, perhaps, the most accurate review of Gogol's book: "It emits both light and darkness from itself" (21, p. 437). The saint believes that Gogol is guided primarily by his inspiration, “from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt. 12, 34), and therefore the purity of the writer’s thought alone is not enough: “in order for the lantern to shine, it is not enough to wash the glass cleanly, it is necessary that there was a candle” (21, p. 436). Gogol's religious concepts are not defined, they move in the direction of heart inspiration, unclear, indistinct, spiritual, and not spiritual.

The darkness in Gogol's "Selected Places" is not in the errors of worldview, notes Dunaev, but in the very tone, from which the writer could not get rid of and which is capable of distorting the most correct content, even moving away from Orthodoxy. Gogol's enthusiastic tone comes from a claim to the spiritual teaching of the whole people, to whom he deliberately seeks to show the means to salvation. Many of the clergy, and even secular admirers, perceived Gogol's teaching as a product of arrogance. The feeling of his own chosenness had taken possession of Gogol before, at moments of a spiritual turning point, it only intensified in him. This has already been discussed above.

“But still, the light of the “Selected Places” overcomes the darkness,” writes Dunaev (13, p. 160). Gogol created a book that Russian literature can be proud of, the civic sound of which is the best tradition since the times of Lomonosov and Derzhavin. In an attempt to solve the most pressing issues of Russian life - the continuation of this tradition. The intensity of his moral consciousness borders on clairvoyance, on the fiery inspiration of the biblical prophets. He has a special perception of evil in the world, K. Mochulsky believes (19, p. 37). In the most intense form, Gogol experiences his responsibility for evil, believes that the writer cannot be silent, since he is called upon to serve his Fatherland, to bring real and direct benefit the people, be a good citizen and a hard worker. Art, literature, aesthetics are justified only by the benefit they bring to humanity, - Gogol believes. He does not want the individual salvation of the soul, it is possible to be saved only by the whole world, he believes. “There is no higher rank than the monastic one… But this cannot be done without the call of God… Your monastery is Russia. Clothe yourself mentally with the cassock of a black man and having killed all of yourself for yourself, not for her, go to asceticism in it ... or you don’t know what Russia is for a Russian ”(19, p. 39).

Gogol's asceticism is for the service of Russia. The love that resounds in his book is not abstract - for humanity, but living - for neighbors. Gogol's religion is catholic. People are brothers, living for each other, bound by common guilt before the Lord, mutual responsibility and responsibility. In this idea of ​​catholicity and "service", stated in "Selected Places", the deepest truth of Eastern Orthodoxy is revealed.

As if continuing the thought stated in the letter “On the lyricism of our poets”, where Gogol touches on the relationship between power and the poet, then he continues: do not tear a single tradition, for all institutions, laws, positions and regulations are perfect: God himself built invisibly with his hands sovereigns. Social evil is not in laws and institutions, but in their perversion by sinful people. When positions and estates enter the legal boundaries, Russia will return to its original patriarchal system. Its basis is a hierarchy based on love.

The governor is a true father to all his subordinates; all officials are his children; the union of love binds the highest levels of society to the lowest. The governor explains to the nobles their duty towards the peasants, “so that they take care of them (peasants) truly, as if they were their blood and relatives, and not as strangers, and so they would look at them like fathers look at their children” (11 , S.287). In the letter “The Russian Landowner,” Gogol sets out a peculiar economy: the landowner, the owner, the father of his peasants, must build his economy on Holy Scripture, explaining to the peasants that God Himself commanded them to work, to praise exemplary peasants, and to scold the “villains”: “Ah you unwashed snout!" In the same letter there is a Christian justification for wealth: “Into which the village only Christian life has looked, there men are rowing silver with shovels”; and defense of ignorance: “Our people are not stupid that they run like hell from any written paper” (11, p.290). In a word, the ideal of Christianity is a rich master, like those whom he showed in the second volume of Dead Souls. Subsistence economy, based on forced peasant labor, is headed by the main owner - the king, who must report to the Heavenly Host. Both the state and society Gogol thought only in terms of economics. Its construction can be called, according to Mochulsky's definition, economic utopianism.

The social pyramid with its tip rests on the sky; The king is the mediator between heaven and earth. “The power of the Sovereign,” writes Gogol, “is a meaningless phenomenon if he does not feel that he should be a model of God on earth ... Having loved everything in his state, to a single person of every class and rank, and turning everything that is in him, as if in his own body, sick in spirit for everyone, grieving, sobbing, praying day and night for his suffering people, the Sovereign would acquire that almighty voice of love, which alone can be accessible to sick humanity ”(quoted from: 19, p. 42). From all steps of the social ladder, waves of love rush to one point - to the throne; and an equally strong stream of royal love strives to meet them. In this meeting of two love currents, in the concentration and unification of the whole people in love, is, according to Gogol, the meaning of the monarchy.

Of course, this is purely a romantic utopia. It seems that Gogol saw before him not Nikolaev Russia, but a mystical kingdom, a certain holy city of Kitezh; the king appeared to him not in the form of a powerful and formidable ruler, but in the form of a sufferer and prayer book. He is the embodiment of heavenly love, the image of the suffering Christ.

2.2. Religious views on people and culture

From the religious concept of power, Gogol moves on to the idea of ​​the Russian people, of their high appointment. He praises the people not for what they are, but for those principles that are inherent in them, for what they could be if they were aware of these principles in themselves and would bring them into action in various branches of human life. In many places of "Correspondence ..." he expresses his deep respect for the Russian people, and especially for that part of it that other writers deeply despise as ignorant, or dishonor with slander, or mimic for their own amusement and others. In the letter "The Russian Landowner", perhaps more important than the advice that Gogol gave to the landowners, is the high opinion that the writer reveals about the Russian peasant. Deeply religious advice, advice offered by him in dealing with a Russian peasant: “In all reproaches and reprimands that you will make to someone convicted of theft, laziness or drunkenness, put him in front of God, and not in front of your own face, show him what he sins against God, not against you” (11, p. 288). When one is guilty, reproaches should fall not on him alone, but also on his wife, on his relatives, on neighbors, on the whole world, which allowed a person to ruin himself.

Who thinks of the people that he is capable of confessing his guilt sincerely only before God, and not before any person; that there is in him a sense of responsibility not only for his own morality, but also for the morality of his neighbor; that even he who is right will never recognize himself as right before God - he, of course, has the highest thoughts about the religion and moral principles of such a people. In the article "On the Odyssey translated by Zhukovsky", Gogol expresses his opinion about the critical abilities of the Russian people, which he, as an artist, imagined reading the "Odyssey" and reasoning about it. In a literate people, Gogol recognizes the existence of not only Petrushkas, who, reading whatever comes to hand, are occupied with one process of reading, but also recognizes such people who are able to understand the deep moral meaning of the highest content of Homer's work. “To teach a peasant to read and write in order to give him the opportunity to read empty little books ... is really nonsense ... if a desire for literacy is truly born in someone ... to read those books in which God’s law is inscribed to a person, then another matter” (11, C .290).

Nowhere was Gogol's reverence for the natural qualities and gifts of the Russian people expressed so fully as in his characterization of our poets. All that he says about them in three articles: “On the reading of Russian poets before the public”, “On the lyricism of our poets”, and about “What, finally, is the essence of Russian poetry and what is its peculiarity?” - belongs after the articles on the Russian Church and the bright Resurrection of Christ to the best pages of the "Correspondence". “Our poets,” he says, “are still almost unknown to the public. They talked a lot about them in the magazines, analyzed them, but expressed more of themselves than of the analyzed poets. The magazines have only succeeded in misleading and confusing the notions of our public about poets, so that in its eyes the personality of each poet now doubles, and no one can imagine definitively what each of them is in his essence ”(11, p. 224) . Gogol said a lot of bright and new things about Russian poets, and he gave some freshness and news to what was said before him. But he explained all the brilliant properties of our poets not from individual personalities, but from the properties of that great unit in which they are all fractions, from the unit of the Russian people. All these properties, - he says, - were discovered by our poets, the essence of our national properties, which only developed more clearly in them; poets do not come from somewhere across the sea, but come from their own people. These are the fires that have flown out of him, the foremost messengers of his strength” (24, p. 457). But although Russian poets discovered the various properties of their people, none of them, according to Gogol, drew from that native key that beat in the chest of the people even then, as the very name of poetry was not yet on anyone's lips. This key lies in three sources: folk songs, in which there is little attachment to life and its objects, but a lot of attachment to some kind of boundless revelry, to the desire to go somewhere along with the sounds; the second source is proverbs, in which the extraordinary fullness of the people's mind is visible; the third is the word of church pastors, a simple, inarticulate word, but remarkable in its striving to rise to the height of that holy dispassion to which a Christian is determined to ascend, in its striving to direct a person not to heartfelt hobbies, but to higher intellectual spiritual sobriety.

Gogol feeds such a lofty opinion about the treasures of our popular word, which are hidden in the depths of the people's life itself. He puts hope for the future in Russian poetry in them.

Gogol sees the main danger of art in an idle word: “It is dangerous for a writer to joke with words. Let no rotten word come out of your mouth!” (cited in: 13, p. 162). It should be noted that the theme of the writer's responsibility for the word coming from his mouth is heard in the literature for the first time. Gogol sees service to Christ in art, he abandoned the idea of ​​a prophetic transformation of the world. Art must become an invisible step towards Christianity, otherwise it cannot avoid idle thought and idle talk (he discusses this in the letter “On the Theater, on a One-sided View of the Theater and on One-sidedness in General”).

Another side of this issue is touched upon by Gogol in his letter “On the Odyssey translated by Zhukovsky”: how to fulfill his purpose, in what language to communicate to people the Truths of the Mountain - the language of direct preaching or through an aesthetic figurative system, that is, remaining a pure artist? Is wisdom not of this world subject to the language of worldly art? Gogol was destined to turn all Russian literature abruptly from aesthetics to religion. The same idea sounds in his letters of recent years: “You need to deal with the word honestly. It is God's highest gift to man. The trouble is to pronounce it to the writer ... when his own soul has not yet come into harmony: such a word will come out of him that will disgust everyone. And then, with the purest desire for good, evil can be produced” (7, p. 218).

In understanding the truly Christian image of the people, Gogol had predecessors in the circle of his friends, the Slavophiles. But the great difference between him and the Slavophils was that the latter, while idealizing the folk traditions of Russian life, optimistically saw in them a perfectly adequate expression of the Russian religious faith, while Gogol, on the contrary, noted with irritated harshness the contradiction between the actual way of life and the Christian faith and therefore called for religious renewal. Gogol put forward an ideal that, after the Russian catastrophe of 1917, begins to have an effect in religiously inclined Russian souls: this is the ideal of "churching life."

2.3. Religious views on the role of the Church

The religious concept of power and the people, the assessment of the possibilities of Russian poetry lead Gogol to the main and final idea of ​​his book: to the construction of a single Christian culture, to the religious justification of the state and economy, to the complete churchization of the world. And if in building the Christian kingdom Gogol was hindered by his complete ignorance of Russian reality, here in the teaching about the Church there was no such obstacle: he knew the Church. He deeply felt and understood the spirit of Orthodoxy. This part of the "Correspondence" is the most significant. “Never before in Russian literature has the voice of such filial love, sorrow and reverence for the Orthodox Church been heard,” writes Mochulsky (19, p. 43). In his call to church life, Gogol extended his hand to Khomyakov, Ivan Kireevsky, and other Slavophiles and confronted Russian literature with the problem of the religious justification of culture.

“In general, we know our church poorly,” writes Gogol. “We own a treasure that has no price, and not only do we not care to feel it, but we don’t even know where they put it. The Church ... alone, in the power to solve all the knots of perplexity and our questions, can produce an unheard-of miracle in the sight of all Europe - and this Church is unknown to us. And this Church, created for life, we have not yet introduced into our life... With our life we ​​must defend our Church, which is all life” (quoted from: 19, p. 43).

Gogol dreams of the leading, enlightening role of the Church; European civilization, based on the natural sciences and technology, he opposes genuine, spiritual enlightenment. “To enlighten,” writes Gogol, “does not mean to teach or instruct, or educate, or even illuminate, but to enlighten a person through and through with all his might, and not in one mind, to carry his whole nature through some kind of purifying fire. This word is taken from our Church... The bishop, in his solemn service, raising in both hands both the three-shinger, signifying the Trinity of God, and the double-shinger, signifying His Word descending to earth in His dual nature, both Divine and human, illuminates them all, saying: "The light of Christ enlightens all."

The author is aware that his book will not be understood and condemned, that neither his teaching nor his prophetic ministry will be recognized. And he justifies his boldness, as all the prophets have justified him at all times - by calling from above. “They blame me,” says Gogol, “that I started talking about God ... What should I do if they talk about God? What is to be done when such a time comes that one involuntarily speaks of God? How to be silent when the stones are ready to scream about God? (19, p. 43).

It is felt that in Gogol the consciousness of an unusually great historical and religious task has awakened; we are talking about the internal renewal of the entire modern secular way of life and education, which arose outside the Christian life and in opposition to it. It is clear that the accomplishment of this task is not within the power of one person. But it was he who was given the realization of the deep abyss that yawns between reality and the ideal. It is Gogol who pronounces a terrible prediction: “In Europe, such turmoil is now being brewed everywhere that no human remedy will help, in front of which our current feeling of fear is only a quiet premonition ... It is felt that the world is on the road, and not at the pier, not at the lodging for the night, not at a temporary station or vacation. Everyone is looking for something, everyone is striving forward somewhere ”(quoted from: 24, p. 309). Behind all the political and social aspirations that unsettled the world, Gogol sees a spiritual quest, an inexplicable longing. In his letter "Bright Sunday", considering the Russian custom of meeting all acquaintances with a fraternal kiss on Easter, Gogol notes that one can think that this day is closest to the heart of our century with its magnanimous and philanthropic dreams of universal happiness, of fraternal reconciliation of all people and internal human dignity. But the expression of Christian brotherhood on Easter Day remained an empty form, the writer believes, which indisputably testifies to how empty and insincere the supposed Christian aspirations of our age are. Modern man is ready to embrace the whole of humanity, but not his neighbor. “There is a terrible obstacle, an insurmountable obstacle to the truly Christian celebration of this day, and its name is pride” (11, p. 374). In our time, for the first time, pride has consciously acted as a force. Gogol sees the clearest expression of this spiritual power in what he calls the pride of reason. Modern man doubts everything, but not his mind. It is not the passions of the senses, but the passions of the mind, as expressed in party hatred, that dominate the world. The greatest trouble comes not from stupid people, but, on the contrary, from smart people who rely too much on their strength and reason. Reason becomes fashionable, and how fashion then dominates reason itself. No one is afraid to transgress the first and sacred commandments of Christ every day, but trembles before fashion. God's messengers stand silently aside, the world is dominated by fashion makers. The world sees the dark force, but, as if enchanted, does not rise up against it. This triumph of demonia is a terrible mockery of humanity, which dreams of progress. That is why “the earth has already caught fire with an incomprehensible longing: life becomes callous and callous; everything is getting smaller and smaller. Everything is deaf… God, it becomes empty and gloomy in Your world” (19, p. 46).

It was given to Gogol to achieve a really deep understanding of the tragedy and mental confusion of the coming century. He felt with all his heart that the age that had turned its back on God and wanted to rely only on human pride was heading towards disaster.

And yet, - asks Gogol, - why is Bright Sunday celebrated so joyfully and solemnly in Russia alone? We are no better than other nations and no closer in life to Christ than others. But we believe that in Slavic nature there is “the beginning of the brotherhood of Christ”, there is the courage of repentance and love, there is our disorder, which gives us the flexibility of “molten metal”, there is the unity of all classes. “Not a grain of what is truly Russian in it and what is sanctified by Christ Himself will not die from our antiquity. It will resound with the sonorous strings of poets, it will be announced by the fragrant lips of the saints, the faded will flare up - and the feast of the Bright Resurrection will be celebrated as it should be among us, rather than among other peoples ”(11, p. 379).

Cutting Russian life from top to bottom in his book, destroying its institutions, Gogol then tries to reassemble it with the effort of his poetic dream and, perhaps, save it from the impending catastrophe. There was no such cell of Russian life that he would not touch. Everything - from the government of the state to the management of relations between husband and wife - became the object of his revision, his indifferent interest, his undisguised interference. “His dreams took the form of advice, instructions, reproaches, teachings. This ... betrayed the swing of Gogol's book: it seemed to sum up everything that Russian thought had expressed before it on these issues ”(16, p. 385).

Gogol himself believed that in the book, despite its shortcomings, the desire for good came out too clearly. Despite many indefinite and obscure passages, the main thing is clearly seen in it, and after reading it you come to the same conclusion that the supreme authority of everything is the Church and the resolution of the questions of life is in it. Therefore, after his, Gogol's, book, someone can turn to the Church, and in the Church he will also meet the teachers of the Church, who will indicate what he should take from his book for himself, or maybe they will give him other books instead of his books - more significant more useful, and for which he will leave his book, just as a pupil abandons warehouses when he learns to write on top.

Later, on May 9, 1847, Fr. He writes to Matthew: “It seems to me that if someone only thinks about becoming the best, then he will certainly meet Christ later, seeing clearly as day that without Christ it is impossible to become the best, and, having abandoned my book, take up the gospel” (quoted in: 7, 217).

3. Belinsky and Gogol

So, Gogol argued that the meaning of the national existence of Russia is religious; that it is a messianic country, called to spread the Light of Christ's Enlightenment throughout the world. On behalf of the Russian intelligentsia, Belinsky answered Gogol's thesis - he put forward a reverse thesis. “Russia,” writes Belinsky, “sees its salvation not in mysticism, not in asceticism, not in pietism, but in the successes of civilization, enlightenment and humanity. She does not need sermons (she heard enough of them), but the awakening in the people of a sense of human dignity ...

In your opinion, the Russian people are the most religious people in the world: a lie... Take a closer look and you will see that they are deeply atheistic people by nature” (quoted from: 19, p. 44).

It is surprising that almost no one at that time had a simple question: could a person, hard-coded by the European Enlightenment, which he endlessly praised, know the Russian people enough to make such statements on behalf of a certain part of Russian society? Leskov's justly venomous remark that such people judge the people by conversations with St. Petersburg cabbies.

The dispute was submitted to the court of the whole society. Belinsky for the first time clearly and clearly formulated an understanding of the goals and objectives of art from the point of view of the ideas of the liberation movement. With his light hand, such an understanding was firmly established in the ideology of the revolutionaries. His main ideas boiled down to the following: “The public sees in Russian writers its only leaders, defenders and saviors from Russian autocracy, Orthodoxy and nationality” (cited in: 13, p. 164).

He contrasted the system of treasures on earth with spiritual treasures received through preaching and prayer. He opposed the wisdom of this world, common sense, to divine revelation. He easily separated prayer and the awakening of a sense of human dignity. But it is precisely in the striving to unite spiritually with God - through faith, through prayer - that a person can only realize his true dignity as the image and likeness of God.

But the furious Bessarion commits the greatest madness when he excommunicates the Church from Christ (or Christ from the Church - it makes no difference to him). “For Vissarion (the spiritual commissar of the 19th century!), writes Voropaev, “Christ is nothing more than an ideologue of social doctrine, and not a Savior. He sees in Him only earthly meaning. And it turns out, in fact, that if for N. Gogol Christ is the Truth, then for V. Belinsky it is a lie” (6, p. 6).

Belinsky is especially zealous in his attacks on the Orthodox Church, on the paternal clergy. In his hatred for “priests, bishops, metropolitans, patriarchs,” he is ready to reconcile even with the Catholic clergy, which, in his opinion, “once was something,” while the Orthodox “never was anything but a servant and slave of secular power.

Vissarion Belinsky did not notice that the answer to him is contained in "Selected Places ...", where Gogol bitterly points out the usual misfortune of many educated people who undertake to judge Russian life: "Ignorance of Russia in the middle of Russia is great" (quoted from: 13, S. 165).

“The lawsuit between Gogol and Belinsky was decided in favor of the latter. Gogol's call turned out to be a voice in the desert. Only a handful of Slavophiles heard him; a huge majority followed Belinsky. Russia was entering the era of the 1950s and 1960s, the era of liquidation of idealism, renunciation of the spirit and immersion in matter; the ideological level began to decline, the twilight of culture began. But Dostoevsky responded to Gogol's voice,” writes Mochulsky (19, p. 44).

On behalf of our contemporaries, V.P. Astafiev. In one of his articles, he writes: “The great man knew the worthlessness of vain thought, the sinfulness of a destructive word, the vanity of discord and the price of wounded pride. He is great because he is above flattery and blasphemy, and great mercy is characteristic of him. Taking pity on the noisy, stubborn, but mortally ill author of an equally ardent as offensive message, showing mercy to the sick, he (Gogol) tore the paper, after the publication of which little would have remained of the frantic demagogy of the unsuccessful novelist and "ruler of thoughts." Gogol believed in God, Belinsky in democracy. Gogol saw the depth of the abyss that separated them, and could measure his strength. The champion of "advanced thought" strove to jump over the abyss through the air, irresponsibly ignoring the danger and the torments that torment the thinker from the consciousness of gigantic contradictions tearing apart the world and the human soul. Gogol was always with the reader and remained with him, the champion of true democracy also sprouted in time, and his calls received a visual embodiment, so much so that the world shuddered! Some act outrageously, speak, denounce, edify, even………. in the eyes, others are silent or, licking their lips, repeat: “God's dew! God's dew...

"Furious Vissarion" accuses Gogol of all mortal sins, including ignorance of the village. Oh, how useful this testament will later be to progressive leaders and thinkers! The subsequent generations of the reformers of Russia will rush to correct the Russian people, to build a new village and a new society without any “prayers” there, and so earnestly they will begin to teach how to plow and sow, build, raise the backward village to unprecedented heights, that the earth will stop giving birth, the Russian village will become empty , the people from it will be scattered over cities and villages, where only “advanced thinkers” and demagogy can be born. Nothing more can be born in stones and bricks ... But Gogol cannot be outshone, compromised, killed. He is unique. And not only by his creations, but also by his way of life, a painful death, the meaning of which by modern verbiage, found in the field of miserable atheistic propaganda, which has long and fruitlessly confusing the modern reader, is reduced to the death of a village fool or an opera holy fool who fell under the influence of church maniacs. The spiritual state of a genius, the way of his thoughts and the way of his life is the life of a titan, and his torments are titanic. …

In order to comprehend Gogol, I repeat, one must either be born a Gogol, or, improving spiritually, overcome the reader's stereotypes and mental inertia, learn to read and think anew. We are too self-confident and from self-confidence we are superficial readers. Gogol, on the other hand, requires a mature reader who would create and create with him. From the last century, it has grown with all its roots into our reality ...

I believe that, developing together with a genius and with the help of a genius, people - readers of the future will move further and higher towards spiritual perfection, for the genius of mankind is eternally alive, eternally on an exhausting journey towards light and reason ”(quoted from: 12, pp. 621-622).

Leaving outside the scope of the work the story of the terrible suffering of the writer after the forced apostasy from his creation, let us turn to one more fact of Gogol's life. He wanted to write a book so that from it the path to Christ was clear to everyone: “... there is a time when one should not even talk about the lofty and beautiful without immediately showing, as clear as day, the ways and roads to it for everyone” ( 7, p.218). The goals set by Gogol went far beyond literary creativity. Gogol even served his idea with his life: after his death, all the personal property of the writer consisted of several tens of silver rubles, books and old things - and meanwhile the fund he created "to help poor young people involved in science and art" amounted to more than two cents. half thousand rubles. Truly, “... blessed is the one who has all his wealth with him - he is not afraid of fire or thieves ...” (quoted from 7, p. 220).

Among Gogol's papers after his death, an appeal to friends, drafts of a spiritual testament, and prayers were found: “I pray for my friends. Hear, O Lord, their desires and prayers. Save them, God. Forgive them, O God, as well as me, a sinner, every sin against You. “Be not dead, but living souls. There is no other door than that indicated by Jesus Christ…” (quoted from 7, p.220).

So did Gogol succeed as an Orthodox writer? His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II answered this question in one of his speeches: “The true face of Gogol as a great spiritual writer of Russia is revealed to our contemporaries.” (9, p.219).

“Precisely today, in the time of the spiritual confusion of the Russian intelligentsia and demonic revelry, the figure of N. Gogol acquires an enduring significance for Russian literature, education and culture, showing us the path of a saving movement” (6, p. 7-8).

Conclusion

Outside of this work are the last years of the life of the writer N. V. Gogol. He lived them in ascetic poverty and homelessness, but his spirit, despite the developing illness, was bright and his state of mind was joyful. These are the years of his acquaintance and spiritual rapprochement with the Optina Elders, finding a spiritual mentor in the person of Father Matthew, acquaintance with the handwritten book of the “clairvoyant monk” (15, p.105) by Isaac the Syrian, which became a revelation for him, revision of his own positions. On the margins of chapter 11 of Dead Souls (a copy of the first edition donated to the library of Optina Pustyn), against the place where it refers to “inborn passions”, Gogol makes a note: “I wrote this in charm, this is nonsense - inborn passions - evil , and all the efforts of the reasonable will of a person should be directed to eradicate them ... ". (15, p. 104-105).

But this is also the most tragic moment of his life: the entire edifice of teaching, public service, public benefit erected by him collapses at once; a return to artistic creativity is impossible. Gogol is going through the last and most severe crisis - a religious one. A spiritual crisis will not violate the inner integrity of his personality. In the "Author's Confession" he will announce his coming to Christ, as the only true expert on the human soul.

In literature, with the advent of Selected passages from correspondence with friends, “Pushkin’s era ended: Gogol was destined to abruptly turn all Russian literature from aesthetics to religion, to move it from the path of Pushkin to the path of Dostoevsky. All the features that characterize the great Russian literature, which has become world, were outlined by Gogol: its religious and moral structure, its citizenship and public, its militant and practical character, its prophetic pathos and messianism ”(19, p. 51).

Much has been said about the significance of Gogol for the history of Russian literature. But discarding the religious aspect, or interpreting it incorrectly, it is impossible to understand either the work of N. Gogol or his actions. Meanwhile, this writer was the first in the history of Russian literature to critically realize, think through and understand the true role and purpose of art, and sacrificed his subtle and vulnerable soul to this understanding, giving himself up to be mercilessly torn to pieces in the name of Christ by criticism and all secular society, which were not able, by virtue of his non-religious consciousness, to comprehend and appreciate the significance of the life and work of Nikolai Vasilyevich, who did a great job on himself.

“Gogol’s thought about the need to harmonize the entire structure of our life with the requirements of the Gospel, so persistently expressed by him in our literature for the first time, was that good seed that grew into a magnificent fruit of later Russian literature in its best and dominant ethical direction. The call to society to renew the principles of Christianity, preserved in the Orthodox Church, was and remains Gogol's great merit to the fatherland ... "7, p. 220).

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N.V. Gogol was a religious, sincere believer and continued to search for new depths of faith until the end of his life. But even here he remained quite a sane person. On the one hand, he gave one of the most detailed descriptions and interpretations of the divine liturgy (“Divine Liturgy”, pp. 315-372), on the other hand, he was very practical, for example, he talked about the state of the priestly class:

- "A village priest can say much more that is truly necessary for a peasant than all these little books" (p. 159).

In the same time:

- "... the reason for the evil of everything is that the priests began to carelessly fulfill their posts" (p. 150). And generally speaking:

- “... many of the spiritual, as I know, are despondent from the many outrages that have arisen recently, they are almost convinced that no one is listening to them (40s of the 19th century! - S.Kh.), that words and sermons are falling on air and evil has taken root so deeply that it is no longer possible to even think about its eradication ”(S. 135-6). That's why:

- "... also pay attention to the city priests ... Do not neglect any of them, despite the simplicity and ignorance of many" (S. 148-9). “Who is rude and backward (from city priests - S.Kh.), threaten him bishop"(p. 150).

Through the question of the priests, Gogol again comes to the topic of the day:

- “It is not yet clear and not quite revealed the terrible truth of the present age that now everyone sins to the last, but they sin not directly, but indirectly. The preacher himself has not yet heard this well; that is why his preaching is dropped into the air, and people are deaf to his words” (p. 136); “… after such a sermon… he will still be proud of his sinlessness” (ibid.).

- “... I am rather of the opinion that it is better for a priest who is not fully instructed in his work and not familiar with the people around him not to preach at all” (p. 161).

According to Gogol, the church is "... the supreme authority of everything ... and the solution of life's questions is in it" (p. 313). According to Gogol, “the thought of introducing some kind of innovation in Russia, bypassing our Church, without asking her blessing for that” is also insane (p. 109). Gogol even makes a reservation about "such a criminal offense as non-recognition of God in the form in which God's Son Himself commanded to recognize Him" ​​(p. 99).

What can you say? Everyone in the other finds what is close, important, dear to him. The religious "bias" in Gogol is obvious. But the completely secular nature of the bulk of his specific reasoning is also obvious. In the very religious aspect in Gogol we find a lot of wonderful philosophical generalizations. This is evidenced by his characteristics of a Christian, the knowledge contained in Christian texts:

- "... a Christian is a sage in every place, a doer of work everywhere" (p. 188).

- “All this universality of the philanthropic law of Christ, all this relation of man to humanity can be transferred from us to everyone in his small field” (p. 308).

Here are Gogol's advice on divine authority:

- “... put him in front of God, and not in front of your face; show him how he sins against God, and not against you” (p. 156).

- “You can beg everything from God ... Just act smart. “Pray and row to the shore,” says the proverb (p. 175). Etc.

In Gogol's statements, the reflexive nature of reasoning about divine authority is revealed - this fellow traveler of any emerging philosophy:

- “God knows, maybe this was also the will of Him, without whose will nothing is done in the world ...” (p. 310). Or:

“Without the will of God, it is impossible to love Him. And how can one love the One Whom no one has seen?” (p. 128).

Aesthetics of Gogol

(on the example of Russian poetry of the 18th - the first half of the 19th centuries)

Above were the statements of N.V. Gogol, containing obvious aesthetic elements: about the insight of ideals in their perverted, caricatured forms; about a one-sided ideal representation of an object, a hero, etc. They can be supplemented with:

- "... that's the calling of the poet, in order to take from us and return us to us in a purified and better form" (p. 231).

N.M. Yazykov:

- “Exalt the inconspicuous worker in a solemn hymn” (p. 105). "Exalt their beautiful poverty so that ... everyone ... would like to be poor himself" (ibid.).

Continuing the theme of the transformed ideal, about Fonvizin's comedy "Undergrowth":

- “These are those irresistibly terrible ideals of coarsening, to which only one person of the Russian land, and not another people, can achieve” (p. 247).

Gogol's aesthetics is just as dialectical and objective (realistic) as all other aspects of his philosophical culture. Whatever the subject of the poet himself, in Gogol the poet himself is taken as a special objective phenomenon that develops in itself and through others. It suffices to refer to his judgments about Lomonosov, Krylov, Pushkin and others:

- "Lomonosov stands ahead of our poets, like an introduction ahead of a book" (p. 215).

- “One can say about Derzhavin that he is a singer of greatness” (p. 217).

- “Before our other poets, Zhukovsky is the same as a jeweler before other masters, that is, a master engaged in the final finishing of a case” (p. 224-5).

About Krylov: “The poet and the sage merged into one in him” (p. 243).

About Lermontov: "No one has ever written in our country such a correct, beautiful and fragrant prose" (p. 235).

Gogol's Goethe is a personality full of "some kind of German decorum and a theoretically German claim to fit in with all times and ages" (p. 228).

- “... Pushkin appeared. It has a middle. Neither the abstract ideality of the first (Derzhavin - S.Kh.), nor the abundance of voluptuous luxury of the second (Zhukovsky - S.Kh.) ”(S. 226).

- “None of our poets was so stingy with words and expressions as Pushkin, so carefully looked after himself, so as not to say immoderate and superfluous” (ibid.). “Recently, he has accumulated a lot of Russian life and spoke about everything aptly and intelligently, that at least write down every word: it was worth his best poems” (p. 232).

- "The Captain's Daughter" - "decidedly the best Russian work in the narrative kind" (p. 231).

Gogol's Pushkin is "a wonderful image, responding to everything and only not finding a response to himself" (p. 228).

The greatest writer Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, being a mystic and poet of Russian life, a realist and a satirist, was endowed with the gift of a religious prophet.

“Gogol,” according to Archpriest V. Zenkovsky, “is the first prophet of a return to a holistic religious culture, a prophet of Orthodox culture, ... he feels as the main untruth of modernity its departure from the Church, and he sees the main path in returning to the Church and restructuring the entire life in her spirit.

N.V. Gogol loved his people and saw that they "heard God's hand more than others." He personally sees the disorder of society contemporary to Gogol in the fact that “we still have not introduced the Church, created for life, into our life.” According to the memoirs of colleagues, religiosity and a penchant for monastic life were noticeable in Gogol "from childhood." When later the writer was ready to "replace his secular life with a monastery," he only returned to his original mood and state.

The concept of God sunk into Gogol's soul from an early age. In a letter to his mother in 1833, he recalled:

“I asked you to tell me about the Last Judgment, and you told me, a child, so well, so clearly, so touchingly about the blessings that await people for a virtuous life, and so strikingly, so terribly described the eternal torment of sinners that it shocked and awakened my sensitivity. This planted and subsequently produced in me the highest thoughts.

The first strong test in the life of young Nikolai was the death of his father. He writes a letter to his mother, in which despair is humbled by deep submission to the will of God:

“I endured this blow with the firmness of a true Christian ... I bless you, sacred faith! In you alone I find a source of consolation and satisfaction of my grief!.. Resort as I resorted to the Almighty.

Reflections on fasting in "Petersburg Notes, 1836" are very indicative:

“Calm and formidable Great Lent. A voice seems to be heard: “Stop, Christian; look back at your life." The streets are empty. There are no cards. In the face of a passer-by, reflection is visible. I love you, time for thought and prayer. My thoughts will flow more freely, more deliberately... Why is our irreplaceable time flying so fast? Who is calling him? Great Lent, what a calm, what a solitary fragment of it!

Gogol's early work

Gogol's early work, if you look at it from a spiritual point of view, opens from a side unexpected for ordinary perception. It is not only a collection of funny stories in the folk spirit, but also an extensive religious teaching, in which there is a struggle between good and evil, and good invariably wins, and sinners are punished (the stories "The Night Before Christmas", "Viy", "Sorochinsky Fair", etc. ). The same struggle, but in a more subtle form, sometimes with invisible evil, is also presented in St. Petersburg stories; it appears as a direct defense of Orthodoxy in Taras Bulba.

According to the stories of Nezhin fellow students, Gogol, even in his school years, could never pass by a beggar, so as not to give him something, and if there was nothing to give, he always said: "Sorry." Once he even happened to be indebted to a beggar woman. To her words: “Give me for Christ’s sake,” he replied: “Reckon me.” And the next time she turned to him with the same request, he gave her twice, adding: "Here is my duty."

There is a characteristic feature in Gogol's early work. He wants to raise people to God by correcting their shortcomings and social vices - that is, by the external way.

second half of life

The second half of the life and work of the writer is characterized by his orientation towards the eradication of shortcomings in himself.

“It is impossible to speak and write about the highest feelings and movements of a person by imagination;

It was the Gospel that Gogol tested all his spiritual movements. In his papers, an entry was preserved on a separate sheet:

“If someone called us a hypocrite, we would be deeply offended, because everyone abhors this low vice; however, reading in the first verses of the 7th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, does not the conscience of each of us reproach us that we are precisely the hypocrite to whom the Savior calls: Hypocrite, take the first log from your eye. What a rush to condemnation…”

Gogol gradually develops ascetic aspirations. In April 1840, he wrote: "Now I am more fit for a monastery than for secular life." G. P. Galagan, who lived with Nikolai Vasilyevich in Rome, recalled:

“Gogol seemed to me already then very devout. Once all the Russians gathered in the Russian church for the vigil. I saw that Gogol also entered, but then I lost sight of him. Before the end of the service, I went out into the porch and there, in the twilight, I noticed Gogol standing in the corner ... on his knees with his head bowed. With well-known prayers, he bowed.

Gogol read a lot of books of spiritual content, mainly patristic literature: the works of the holy fathers, the works of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, St. Demetrius of Rostov, Bishop Innokenty (Borisov), "Philokalia". He studied the rites of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great in Greek.

The result of this spiritual work was a manuscript of church songs and canons copied by him from the service Menaia. Gogol made these extracts not only for spiritual self-education, but also for the intended purposes of writing. Gogol wrote: “He lived inwardly, as in a monastery, and in addition to that, he did not miss almost a single mass in our church.”

creations

In the Author's Confession, Gogol wrote the following about this period of his life: “I left everything modern for a while, I paid attention to the recognition of those eternal laws by which man and mankind in general move. The books of legislators, psychics and observers of human nature have become my reading. Everything that only expressed the knowledge of people and the soul of a person, from the confession of a secular person to the confession of an anochorite and a hermit, occupied me, and on this road, insensibly, almost without knowing how, I came to Christ, seeing that in Him the key to the soul person." “The Church alone is able to resolve all knots, perplexities and our questions; there is a reconciler of everything within the earth itself, which is not yet visible to everyone - our Church.

The Epistles of the Holy Apostle Paul not only influenced Gogol's Christian worldview, but were also most directly reflected in his work. In the Bible that belonged to Gogol, the largest number of notes and entries refers to the apostolic epistles of Paul. The concept of "inner man" becomes central to Gogol's work in the 1840s. This expression goes back to the words of the holy Apostle Paul: "... but if our outer man also smolders, both the inner one is renewed all the days" (2 Cor. 4, 16). In his Bible, Gogol wrote against this verse: "Our outer man is smoldering, but the inner is renewed"

Gogol's concern about the fate of a society remote from the Church pushes him to work on a book that reveals the inner, hidden meaning of the Divine Liturgy and aims to bring secular society closer to the Church.

"Reflections on the Divine Liturgy"

At the beginning of 1845, in Paris, Gogol began to work on the book Meditations on the Divine Liturgy, which remained unfinished and was published after his death. The purpose of this spiritual and educational work, as Gogol himself defined it, is “to show in what fullness and inner deep connection our Liturgy is celebrated, to young men and people who are still beginners, who are still little acquainted with its meaning.”

In working on the book, Gogol used works on liturgy by ancient and modern authors, but all of them served him only as manuals. The book also embodies Gogol's personal experience, his desire to comprehend the liturgical word.

“For anyone who only wants to move forward and become better,” he wrote in his Conclusion, “it is necessary to attend the Divine Liturgy as often as possible and listen attentively: it insensibly builds and creates a person. And if society has not yet completely disintegrated, if people do not breathe complete, irreconcilable hatred among themselves, then the hidden reason for this is the Divine Liturgy, which reminds a person of holy, heavenly love for a brother.

For the first time, "Reflections on the Divine Liturgy" were published in St. Petersburg in 1857 in a small format, as Gogol wanted, but his second desire was not fulfilled - to publish it without the name of the author.

Gogol expressed his inner spiritual feelings in his reflections: “The rule of living in the world”, “Bright Sunday”, “A Christian goes forward”, “A few words about our Church and clergy”.

In the last decade of his life, he had little appreciation for his previous writings, revising them through the eyes of a Christian. In the preface to "Selected places from correspondence with friends" Gogol says that with his new book he wanted to atone for the uselessness of everything he had written so far. These words caused a lot of criticism and prompted many to think that Gogol was repudiating his previous works. Meanwhile, it is quite obvious that he speaks of the uselessness of his writings in a religious, spiritual sense, for, as Gogol writes further, in his letters, according to those to whom they were written, there is more necessary for a person than in his writings.

Nikolai Vasilyevich was convinced of the special mission of Russia, which, according to him, feels God's hand on everything that comes true in it, and senses the approach of another kingdom. This special mission of Russia was associated with Orthodoxy as the most true, undistorted Christianity.

In his dying note, literally addressed to all of us, Nikolai Vasilyevich bequeathed:

“Be not dead, but living souls. There is no other door than that indicated by Jesus Christ, and everyone, climbing otherwise, is a thief (thief, swindler) and a robber.

Alexander A. Sokolovsky