Great bad writer. Everyone scolded Dostoevsky: from Leo Tolstoy to Nabok

Literary scholars are strange people. It would seem: crackers will dig into their books... But it happens otherwise - when concentration on literature gives an amazing inner light and humor, and wisdom.

And the case of Lyudmila Saraskina is a very special one: her book Solzhenitsyn escaped from the multi-volume mass grave of literary research, once receiving the country's most prestigious award, the Big Book.

And her life is by no means enclosed within the four walls of institutes and libraries. Behind the scenes, Lyudmila Ivanovna tells me about herself, about her husband, about her son and granddaughters. (“We must always share their interests! Therefore, I studied Harry Potter for my granddaughters, and Freddie Mercury for my son ...”) And in the frame - of course, her “Dostoevsky”, a new book in the ZhZL series. How will this book turn out?

- Lyudmila Ivanovna, this is the second large-scale biography you have written. Does it sell well? What do you think are the chances of some major award?

“I can't even think about it. I'm afraid to see the person who buys my book, so I don't go to bookstores. I would like the story with Dostoevsky to remain private. But Dostoevsky is my constant. It is happiness to finally write what you have been thinking about for many years. The profession of a literary historian is such that you lay down your only life at the feet of another person. My life is no less interesting to me, but ... it is given to Fyodor Mikhailovich.

How not to go crazy with Dostoevsky?

But Dostoevsky is such a nerve. What kind of person with a slightly feeling soul can even read it without shaking hands? And to study him methodically, to delve into his life and work ... You are a living person, how have you not gone crazy?

“It was both painful and hard! There was no question of any cold calculation. You seeI don't smoke, I can't stand any alcohol, I don't even drink coffee, I'm a vegetarian ; I don't have the usual ways to invigorate and relax. But I tried not to work after two in the morning. Otherwise, do not sleep. You have to force yourself to turn off the computer, put your nerves in order. It doesn't come easy. Sometimes I felt like I was getting sick. But happiness that there is a night cinema! He saved me. However, you can not choose a movie in advance! You need a surprise: you turn on the TV - and you are captured.

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

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

Tolstoy vs Dostoevsky?

- There is an opinion: Dostoevsky is irrelevant today. Not his time: no one needs this anguish today. Whether it's Tolstoy's business! Family thought, military thought...

— I do not agree. They were contemporaries (Dostoevsky was 7 years older than Tolstoy and died 30 years earlier than him) and were compatible in Russian life in the 19th century. Similarly, they are compatible and in demand today. Each of them in its own way reflects the various extremes of Russian life. But in vain do you think that Tolstoy is now at court. Against! The state is afraid of Tolstoy. So write against the institution of the state! In the treatise The Way of Life, Tolstoy wrote, for example, that a Christian should not take part in the affairs of the state, that the church faith is slavery. Such speeches against the church, as in Tolstoy, were only in Voltaire. And although there was no formal excommunication of Tolstoy, it hung over him like a gloomy shadow. Look at the diaries of John of Kronstadt, who is recognized as a saint among us: he prayed that death would take Tolstoy away. He called the great writer Satan, fiery hell... I keep thinking: is it Christianity to pray for the death of another?

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

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

- Those who believe that he is only a psychologist, it seems to me, are deeply wrong. Some of our ideologists and politicians are greatly harmed by Dostoevsky. Anatoly Chubais, who "re-read" Dostoevsky a few years ago, immediately wanted to tear him into small pieces. Agreebecause of psychology alone, it is not necessary to tear someone into small pieces. And virtually: after all, you will no longer reach either his grave or his world fame.And want! Why? Dostoevsky exposed all this impudent hapok of our oligarchs. Here is the novel "Teenager", where Arkady Dolgorukov wants to be rich, like Rothschild. Dream 20 year old a boy who did not see an extra piece of bread in his childhood. Dostoevsky's contemporaries were amazed: where did he see such youth, what crazy nonsense - to want to be as rich as Rothschild and rule the world. Today it is a common place.

- Why is there Rothschild, is it money ...

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

- More Chichikov.

Yes, but with an adventurous twist. We are not accustomed to seeing honest people in businessmen: well, crooks, and crooks without brakes and conscience. Today it is becoming the norm of life - what rich man can you reproach for stealing? Stealing is normal, asking is indecent. Dostoevsky showed this whole mechanism in detail. Therefore, our oligarchs want to tear it to pieces.

So that both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, each for their part, turn out to be a mirror of our life today!When you take binoculars called "Dostoevsky" - priests-lights, here they are, demons. Here is Verkhovensky, who says: there is no need for education, we will put out every genius in infancy, enough science. Isn't that what we hear today? We will let unheard-of debauchery...It is necessary that a person turn into a vile, cowardly, cruel, selfish scum! Don't we see it on TV screens?

Sympathy for the "sheep"

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

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

- Yes. But the series passed - and as it was not.

- Worse. A terrible story happened to Dostoevsky this year. I mean the film by V. Khotinenko. The authors did not believe that Dostoevsky's biography could be attractive if one followed the truth, and saturated it with malicious fiction. They were afraid that the truth would be faded, would not give a rating. And they made the writer almost a pedophile, savoring debauchery. It's a cultural crime, in my opinion. There are teachers who praise the film, they write: let it be, but the students will be interested. Attract by any means? If you want to show a pedophile, take a real one, they are shown on TV every day, they talk about the lobby of pedophiles in the State Duma ... No, they take Dostoevsky. Stavrogin's crime is bravely addressed to him. A writer is a dangerous profession: by deducing a negative character, with bad deeds, he runs the risk that sooner or later all this will be attributed to him.

- According to a poll by MK, 27% of readers "do not like Dostoevsky, the writer is too difficult."

- Well, what can I say? For me, this is a brilliant writer. In his works, the light is himself. If readers are looking for a happy ending, yes, you will not find this in Dostoevsky. There is no happy ending in The Brothers Karamazov. And there is a lesson: just as the family broke up and perished with the complete insensitivity of the brothers to their father and to each other, so the country will perish. After all, in order to have a brotherhood, brothers are needed! And a brotherly attitude. At least - in the family, as a maximum - in humanity.

- You quote from the drafts of the novel: "God gave us relatives to learn from them love."

- Yes, this is from the commandments of Zosima, he longed for this! Therefore, he calls on Alyosha to leave the monastery, to be near both brothers, next to his father. And if he had been inseparably with them, would have fulfilled his duty, there would have been no murder! But he was too preoccupied with himself... Selfishness governs man at different levels. Dostoevsky tells us: we must do our duty, and then we can theologize, and then you will find God... And uniform Orthodoxy without work is zero... Dostoevsky is not a writer of happy endings, but a writer of predictions and warnings.

“Educated, humanized and happy”?

- If Dostoevsky is a bright writer, then it was all the more strange for me: you did not write a word about White Nights. But the story is lighter - except perhaps Kuprin's "Garnet Bracelet" ...

You see, at the very beginning, Dostoevsky was expected to be a second or new Gogol. And he did not want to be second, none of us wants to be second. There is no writer without ambition, without ambition. Dostoevsky always had colossal ambitions, a desire to have his say in literature. Therefore, all the young years, until the arrest in 1849,he was looking for his way. The sentimental story "White Nights" is a search for yourself. The White Nights line did not become dominant. She then grew up in the "Humiliated and Insulted". Had Dostoevsky remained at the level of White Nights, he would never have become Dostoevsky. "White Nights" - the search for a type. There is still no realization that life in general is tragic, if only because a person dies. But at the same time - what a light! He says: I want to believe that someday all my compatriots - look at the words - will be "educated, humanized and happy." It's his civic creed. Such a triad. "Educated" - in the first place! But this has not been achieved so far! With education, we are getting worse and worse, with humanity - worse and worse, and only about happiness ...

- F.M. been happy? Such a complex person...

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

- Who does not know, thinks that, on the contrary, he was beaten.

- Never! This is despite all the poverty (after all, they lived in a state-owned apartment, if the father of the family leaves the service - that's it, there is no apartment). In Darovoe there is their "lordly" house - but now the rich do not even build such sheds. Tiny one story house. Poverty! And he was very happy as a child. He loved his mother, older brother Misha, younger sisters ... The father, with all his poverty, sent his sons to the best educational institution. He thought - we are poor, so we will take education.

- You tell in the book what total corruption turned out to be in this “best educational institution”.

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

Overdose of "Nastasya Filippovna" in the blood

Did he have any suicide attempts?

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

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

- You're right. Here is Nastasya Filippovna. I think there is a certain substance, a certain substance called "Nastasya Filippovna." In a small amount, it is in any woman. It all depends on concentration.

- What is the substance? What does it include?

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

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

Is Dostoevsky relevant today? How long is it still to look at his books and see in them a portrait of modernity? Pravmir invites readers to discussion and discussion. We are waiting for your opinions, letters and thoughts. The discussion is opened by reflections on Dostoevsky in our time by the famous literary critic Lyudmila Saraskina.

Lyudmila Saraskina is a specialist in the field of creativity of F. M. Dostoevsky and A. I. Solzhenitsyn, Russian literature of the 19th-21st centuries. author of biographies F.M. Dostoevsky, A.I. Solzhenitsyn in the series "The Life of Remarkable People", the biography of S. Fudel (in collaboration with Archpriest Nikolai Balashov) in his video blog - about what an unexpected side of Dostoevsky's relevance has been revealed today.

As long as Russia is alive, Dostoevsky will be relevant. That is, it will always be relevant.

The first thing to remember, in connection with its relevance, is his execution.

One hundred and sixty-three years ago, in 1849, he was put on trial. He was tried and sentenced to death. Then - spared, leaving 4 years of hard labor and indefinite soldiery. The next sovereign, Alexander II, pardoned him and released him.

So I wonder why Dostoevsky was shot? Today it sounds amazingly relevant. He was shot for blasphemy. What was it? In a public reading among the comrades of the Petrashevsky circle, Belinsky's letter to Gogol, written in 1847.

What was in this letter? In it, Belinsky said that the Orthodox Church had gone very far from Christ, that she was a champion of serfdom, a servant of autocracy, a whip of power, that some Voltaire, who, by the power of his mockery, stopped fanaticism in Europe, put out the fires of European inquisitions, “more the son of Christ , flesh of flesh and bone of His bones, than all the priests, bishops, metropolitans and patriarchs, eastern and western.

This letter, which Dostoevsky read with deep emotion, was imputed to him, and this was called blasphemy. In addition, under Nicholas I there was Article 144 of the Code of Military Decrees stating that a person who did not inform on a blasphemer, one who did not tell about some episode that he saw, shares the blame with the blasphemer himself.

“The retired lieutenant engineer Dostoevsky, for failure to report on the distribution of a criminal letter about religion and government by the writer Belinsky and the malicious essay of Lieutenant Grigoriev, to deprive the ranks, all the rights of the state and subject him to the death penalty by shooting”

Dostoevsky heard from his fellow Petrashevists controversial words about Christ, that Christ was a simple man, that He was only the author of the teaching, that Holy Scripture is unreliable, and so on and so forth. But he didn't denounce anyone. And it was also a fault, according to the then rules.

And so I ask myself: what will happen to Belinsky's letter now? Today it is studied at the philological faculties of universities. And philologists know it. Unfortunately, students don't know him anymore. They do not know all this heated controversy between Belinsky and Gogol, which determined the path of intellectual and ideological and social development of Russia for a hundred years ahead. Which way should Russia go? By preaching and prayer, by ascetic obedience to fate, or by enlightenment, humanity, human dignity, by abolishing serfdom?

Then these two concepts irreconcilably clashed. So, maybe Belinsky's letter will again be banned? Will it look like sedition today?

On trial again?

Will not the behavior of Dostoevsky himself, who did not inform on his comrades-Petrashevites, also look like sedition? During the trial, he defended them in every possible way. Although he suffered deeply when Christ was scolded in his presence, the same Belinsky, the same Petrashevsky, when on Good Friday the Petrashevites put Easter cake and colored eggs on the table, that is, they showed their disrespect for the Orthodox holiday. Will not Dostoevsky be blamed today for not denouncing them? Will Dostoevsky be judged a second time?

Only last year, the year before last, the trials of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy were held - in Rostov-on-Don, in Taganrog, in Yekaterinburg - article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation was “soldered” for extremism, for recidivism. How is it possible to judge the greatest writer of Russia a century later?!

In our society, these facts have received neither legal nor moral evaluation.

It seems to me that if such a tendency prevails in our country, the hand of today's justice will reach Dostoevsky as well.

He will be reminded, for example, that in The Brothers Karamazov, the greatest novel of world literature, both different Christianity and different ecclesiasticism are shown.

There is a “Ferapontian” ecclesiasticism, dark, about which Sergei Iosifovich Fudel will later write and call Ferapont “the dark twin of the Church.” And there is a radiant, ideal Christianity that Dostoevsky longed for. It was his dream of an ideal Christian, the elder Zosima.

What does Ferapont do? He swears, rages, demands punishment, calls for the persecution of all unfaithful and unclean. Elder Zosima - wants to have mercy, pity, wishes for peace between forces that are not able to reconcile. He says, "Do not hate the atheists, the mischief-makers and the materialists."

What are we hearing today? And this is also the relevance of Dostoevsky. Today, for some reason, we need aggression, a thirst for reprisals, a thirst for repression.

I read a lot of journalistic texts on the Orthodox theme, and I feel how this evil grows in them, aggression grows. For some reason, they have a thirst to face those who disagree, with those who think differently than they do, feel differently than they do.

"Zosimov" Orthodoxy, "Zosimov" ecclesiasticism is becoming less and less. It is very sad…

blood paste

I have been writing about Dostoevsky for many years, each of my new books about him, each new turn in the development of our society raises the question: why is Dostoevsky relevant today? In connection with the novel "Demons", I remember that we spoke in the nineties about the demons of the revolution, the demons of rebellion, the demons of rebellion. That we finally got rid of it, finally overcame this bacillus. We realized that "Demons" is a story about a political paste, which they want to anoint the revolutionaries so that they are sealed with one blood. So that they make up a party cell, which then grows into a party on blood. All radical parties will grow on blood.

But it would never have crossed my mind that a time would come when Dostoevsky's relevance would be found in spheres of blasphemy.

Quite funny information has appeared that a trial is being started on the fairy tale about Pinocchio. I immediately felt that this was some kind of set-up, as it turned out later. But what a trend! Some ironic site launched information that a trial is underway in Taganrog over the fairy tale "The Adventures of Pinocchio", which does not sink in water, but, therefore, looks like Christ and is a parody of Him. That is, some information is being launched, as they say now - a fake. But people buy into it. This means that such is the tendency: to judge and repress literature.

And so I think it's blasphemy... Let's say early Dostoevsky was a rebel and went against the government, into a freedom-loving circle, into a "colloquial society." But remember the novel "Teenager". It's already 1876. One of the main characters, Andrey Petrovich Versilov, falls into a riot and smashes an old icon on the corner of the table. And what do they do with it? Are they reporting to him? No, they pity him like he's crazy, like he's unhappy, like he's pathetic. They want to bring him to mind and to feeling. That is, a completely different attitude is offered to the violator who has violated the rules.

I really would not want in our country the theology of love, which in Dostoevsky personifies the elder Zosima, a character I adore, I know many of his sermons by heart, to give way to the theology of hatred, which is embodied by the elder Ferapont.

I am very sorry if these two strands of Russian Orthodoxy will never be able to find a common language.

in the name of Dostoevsky

Today, many publicists, both ecclesiastical and non-ecclesiastical, swear by the name of Dostoevsky at every step. Dostoevsky is like a tablet. If you say: “Dostoevsky is our everything,” and it seems that you have already declared yourself as a person wholly devoted to Orthodox culture, its correct direction.

But we forget that The Brothers Karamazov, the pinnacle novel of world and Russian literature, was not enthusiastically received by the then clergy. Elder Zosima was found somehow “not like that”, the Optina elders laughed at him, and the remarkable Russian philosopher, the smartest person Konstantin Leontiev, who then positioned himself as, as they say now, an Orthodox activist, condemned Dostoevsky. He found in him a "pink" Orthodoxy, wrong, wrong. Leontiev called the ingenious "Pushkin speech" a "cosmopolitan trick", a heresy.

Let's get back to this, today's Feraponts, let's initiate a lawsuit?

If we treat the territory of art, the territory of literature, in this way, we will lose half, if not more, of our great classics. M. Gorky will completely leave us, Alexander Blok will leave, of course, all atheistic Soviet literature, and much, much more.

Pushkin's Tale of the Priest and His Worker Balda is already being replaced by Zhukovsky's version of the dumb merchant.

We must stop, we must understand where is the territory of faith and where is the territory of culture.

Don't hurt your feelings!

Now there is a lot of talk about insulting the feelings of believers. My feeling, as an Orthodox person, and at the same time a literary-centric one, deeply offends the approach to art with an ax, with an ax and with a fist. And as an Orthodox person, I am offended by a drunken priest in a Mercedes who refuses to take a blood alcohol test. And then, for some reason, the video materials about this disappear, they are devoured by some kind of virus. I know the name of this virus, it has nothing to do with Orthodoxy.

For some reason, our society today is divided into Orthodox believers and, so to speak, the rest. There is no doubt about Dostoevsky's Orthodoxy. But he was a great citizen, he had a colossal civic sense of justice. He attended trials, stood up for the unjustly convicted.

Why do our Orthodox people, whose feelings are offended by encroachment on sacred symbols (such an encroachment, of course, ugly), do not have civic feelings? Why do they forget that they are also citizens of Russia, who, like others, like, say, unbelievers, like people of other faiths, should be outraged by social injustice, civil injustice, unjust courts.

The Internet has already appeared heading "news of injustice." People are indignant: “Well, how is it that a rapist who raped a girl is given only a year or a month in prison ...”

Dostoevsky somehow knew how to combine both Orthodox feelings and civil feelings. And one did not interfere with the other at all, harmonized, organically combined in the writer.

Why do we have it somehow divided? Why are some people among us Orthodox activists, while others are civic activists?

My dream, my heartfelt hope is that these two directions of activism will converge in the single heart of man. And so that the Orthodox feeling and the civic feeling in him were equally alive. So that he understands unjust things. And he understood that it was his duty as an Orthodox person to be civilly active as well. Just like Dostoevsky was.

You see, all of a sudden this year Dostoevsky's topicality has surfaced in our country, I would even say, shot out, in a way that was impossible to even imagine before. Because it seemed that everything was a thing of the past, smoothed out. And Belinsky's letter to Gogol is a great letter, just like Gogol's answer, just like "Selected passages from correspondence with friends" to which Belinsky reacted - a great dispute, a civilizational dispute - already forever in the history of literature, Russian thought.

And the fact that the young, twenty-seven-year-old Dostoevsky, who wrote the novel Poor People, read Belinsky's Letter with excitement, with burning eyes. In his denunciations, the spy Antonelli wrote to the police, to the Third Section, that Dostoevsky had read this Letter and his eyes were on fire.

Thinking about it, I see those burning eyes, and I am proud of Dostoevsky that both Orthodox and civil were combined in his heart. This is what I would like for myself, and for my fellow citizens, and for the readers of Dostoevsky, and in general for our world.

National code

Dostoevsky, as I have said many times, guessed the national code of Russia, its cultural password. So, as long as Russia is alive, I repeat, it will not be archived. We do not know what we will have next year, in five years, and what other sharp angle Dostoevsky will come up with. And we will say again: “He wrote everything about it!”

He wrote about "Ferapontov's Orthodoxy", about the elder Zosima, the ideal Christian.

Dostoevsky was very concerned about the face, the image of the priesthood. He wrote about it not in general, but very specifically. For example, in the letters - about the wonderful father John Yanyshev, who saved him more than once, helped him. But he also wrote about the Genevan priest, who denounced everyone who seemed unreliable to him.

Wonderful words of Dostoevsky, which, in my opinion, our today's clergy need to learn by heart: “Examples are needed. What are the words of Christ without an example? One cannot rely only on the status of a priest, on the fact that he is in a cassock, on the fact that he serves in the Church. He should be an example for his parishioner. If he does not show this example, then faith will dry up.

People are brought up by examples.

This “examples are needed” runs from the beginning of creativity and ends in The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky writes about it with such passion, with such pain.

Today, when I see examples that are not entirely good, or not at all good, I remember every time: read Dostoevsky! Do not say that any priest - whatever he is - is sinful, drunken, criminal, he does not matter a priest. No, it doesn't matter. People look at their own kind.

My neighbor once said to me: “Lyudmila, look, the priest of our parish is driving out in a Lexus, cutting puddles and splashing us. How should we treat him now? I did my best to explain how. How to educate yourself, adjust, calm down. It is very difficult.

I repeat, we need examples. As examples of teachers are needed, and there are such examples. But the more there are, the better.

Dostoevsky writes that if something bad is done by an official, or a policeman, or a priest, or a teacher, or anyone else, one cannot “cover over” them, use such a trump card as the honor of a uniform, one cannot cover oneself with this uniform.

This is what we need to talk about today to those publicists, ecclesiastical and non-ecclesiastical, who swear by the name of Dostoevsky at every step. Not knowing or forgetting these words of his. Please take a look at Volumes 14-15 of Dostoevsky's Complete Works, The Brothers Karamazov. Take a look at the journalism of the "Diary of a Writer" ... His concern, his pain for the Russian clergy was so high, so disturbing. He was afraid that faith would fall, dry up. “People will get tired of believing. It’s scary,” says the elder Zosima.

And for 150 years we have been reaping many, many of his warnings, his forebodings.

Monologues of Verkhovensky in modern politicians

Dostoevsky's novels have a mysterious fate. They are cyclical. Ten years pass, and suddenly you look: again demons, again this is demonism, and people don’t feel anything, they don’t understand anything. When I sometimes listen to Duma politicians, I am horrified: they, without knowing it, reproduce the monologues of Petrusha Verkhovensky or Shigalev. But they themselves do not realize this, because only the word "Dostoevsky" is known. And they say, they utter demonic monologues, which Dostoevsky ridiculed, pulled to the surface and, it would seem, denounced.

Then time passes and again - "Crime and Punishment". Some young man, a madman, is sitting in the corner, and is hatching a Napoleonic idea, again he is ready to go to conquer the world, and pour everything with blood, and step over everything.

I recently saw a very funny picture on the Internet. Four kittens are sitting. Three of them say: "I want milk, I want fish, I want sour cream." The fourth one, small, black, turned away from them and said: “I want to rule the world!”.

This “I want to rule the world” has not gone away, the Napoleonic idea is alive, it is eternal.

Where to get brothers?

So, I repeat, it is difficult for us to predict how Dostoevsky's words will respond in the next five years. God grant that it will respond with "Zosimov" Orthodoxy. Affectionate, kind, merciful. But not with fists.

In our country today they say that Orthodoxy is like goodness, which should be with fists. There was aggression, Ferapontovism. And, according to Dostoevsky, only Zosimov's Orthodoxy is able to arrange peace on earth.

Dostoevsky, even in his youth, said what the Orthodox brotherhood, the Christian brotherhood, is. Back in the early sixties, only after returning from exile, after hard labor, he wrote: "For there to be a brotherhood, brothers are needed." If we are able to treat another as a brother, then this is Orthodoxy. And we are not capable. In "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man": "I saw the truth, I know that it is enough for people to agree, to love their neighbor as themselves." But how many centuries pass, and - they do not agree.

Look, the latest novel is The Brothers Karamazov. How do brothers treat each other? This is total, dueling hatred. Rivalry, envy, quarrels.

Alyosha is Dostoevsky's most painful question, at least for me. Look, a twenty-year-old boy, charming, beautiful, kind, sweet, "an early philanthropist," as Dostoevsky says about him. And at the most dangerous moment, fatal for his family, he did not fulfill the order of the elder Zosima, who told him that he had to go from the monastery to his family, to be near both brothers at once. If Alyosha had fulfilled the order, his father would have been alive, Mitya would not have gone to hard labor, Ivan would not have gone crazy.

Dostoevsky shouts to us from the pages of the novel: “Look what is being done! You miss the most important moments of your life! You have a point of pain - go there, be there ... "

And the wise elder Zosima, he embodies not only the theology of love, but also the theology of the greatest wisdom. He saw what could happen, guessed the family that had gathered in the monastery. And found the right solution. Easy, actually. To fulfill this decision, you just had to forget about your selfishness. You should. This sense of duty is both Orthodox, it is civil, it is filial, it is also fraternal.

But here's how Ivan says about it all: "I'm not a watchman to my brother Dmitry." These are the words of Cain, spoken by Cain after the murder of his brother Abel.

We were born and live with the given that the first children of mankind had a brother who killed a brother. And the seal of Cain lies on all of us. This means that the task of overcoming it in oneself is real, and not virtual, not according to books. To be a man who knows his duty.

The seal of Cain lies both on Ivan, who left instead of staying with his father, and on Alyosha, who, due to his youth, out of boyish delight, forgot about his duty. And what happened to the family: the father was killed, the killer is the fourth son. Dostoevsky shows how they all despise this fourth brother, how they hate it, how they treat it. Not a single kind word was found for him. There are no brothers in The Brothers Karamazov. The writer, like an alarm bell, warns us that everything will crumble like this.

This is how a family falls apart, this is how a country falls apart, this is how the world falls apart. Because everyone is full of selfishness, they don’t want to do their duty, they don’t know where their place is now, not in general, but right now. Go this minute to your sick mother, go this minute to where you are needed. In our country people are ready all their lives to talk in general about Christ and the truth, to be theologians-theorists. And what is going on in each of his sore corner, we do not know. And only then it suddenly becomes clear. It was The Brothers Karamazov that showed us what is happening there - disintegration, catastrophe.

Prepared by Oksana Golovko

On the pages of his novels, it seems, he reflected the whole psychopathology of human life. It is unlikely that the writer would have succeeded in revealing human vices so plausibly if he himself had not possessed them.

Crossed out pages

The central character of the novel "Demons" is the "demonic handsome man" Nikolai Stavrogin. His image becomes even more repulsive if you know that in the handwritten version of the work, Stavrogin's confession appears in the rape of a nine-year-old girl, who then committed suicide. There were similar pages in the manuscript of The Brothers Karamazov. In the original version, Dostoevsky explains the motives for the murder of Fyodor Karamazov by his son Dmitry by the fact that the latter could not look indifferently at how his father raped his younger brother Ivan.

As you know, in "Crime and Punishment" Dostoevsky resorted to describing the real topography of St. Petersburg. According to Fyodor Mikhailovich, the place where the hero of the novel Raskolnikov hid the things he stole from the murdered old pawnbroker was the courtyard where the writer wandered to relieve himself during one of his walks around the city.

In the novel “Demons” there is a scene in which Dostoevsky creates the image of a revolutionary, surprisingly reminiscent of the appearance and behavior of the future leader of the world proletariat Vladimir Ulyanov: “He was small in stature, about forty years old in appearance, bald and bald, with a grayish beard, dressed decently. But the most interesting thing was that with each turn he raised his right fist up, waved it in the air above his head and suddenly lowered it down, as if crushing some opponent to dust. It is curious that Lenin himself did not like Dostoevsky's work, for example, calling "Crime and Punishment" "moralizing vomit." After the beginning of the reading, he threw the "Demons" aside, and from the scene in the monastery from "The Brothers Karamazov" he was completely sick. “I don’t need such literature, what can it give me? .. I don’t have free time for this rubbish,” the leader of the revolution concluded.

didn't get along

Contemporaries noted that as soon as the young Dostoevsky received universal recognition, he immediately imagined himself a genius. Colleagues, in response, began to playfully poke fun at his increased pride, often openly making fun of the writer. A special master of such injections was Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, who, taking advantage of Dostoevsky's nervousness and temper, deliberately dragged him into an argument and brought him to the highest degree of irritation. In 1846, in collaboration with Nikolai Nekrasov, Turgenev wrote an evil and caustic epigram - "Belinsky's Message to Dostoevsky", which begins with the following stanza: "Knight of a sorrowful figure, Dostoevsky, dear pimple, you blush on the nose of literature like a new pimple." This event marked the beginning of a feud between the two writers that will never end.

Dostoevsky had a lot of vices, one of which was gambling. This pernicious passion took possession of him during a trip to Europe in the 1860s and did not let go for a long 10 years. The writer would be especially obsessed with roulette. He kept trying to invent an ideal system that would always allow him to win, but every time the method he invented failed. However, Dostoevsky was sure that the system was flawless, he just lacked composure. Sometimes the writer was lucky, and he won impressive sums, but instead of paying off his debts, he immediately lost them. In the casino of Wiesbaden, Fedor Mikhailovich lost so much that the owner of the hotel, to whom he seriously owed money, kept him on bread and water until he paid off.

Russian de Sade There were legends about Fyodor Mikhailovich's excessive sexuality. They say that, unable to cope with the pressure of hormones, he often resorted to the services of prostitutes, one of whom was not enthusiastic about his love of love and painful sexual addictions. Turgenev even dubbed his colleague "the Russian Marquis de Sade." Only true love could pull Dostoevsky out of the pool of debauchery, which he found in the person of his second wife, Anna Snitkina. He was 45, she was 20. But Dostoevsky allowed liberties in intimate relations with his young wife, but she tried not to notice the oddities of her husband's sexual behavior. “I am ready to spend the rest of my life kneeling before him,” Anna once said.

Recipe for jealousy

Fyodor Mikhailovich was pathologically jealous. An attack of jealousy for his wife could be born almost out of the blue, and no matter who was nearby - whether it was a deep old man or a nondescript youth. So, having declared home late at night, the writer could start a total search of the apartment in order to finally convict his wife of treason. Dostoevsky was especially jealous when his wife allowed herself to inadvertently stare at someone, or smile at someone. To protect himself from reasons for jealousy, the writer introduced a number of rules for his second wife: do not wear tight dresses, do not paint lips, do not let your eyes down, do not smile at men, and even more so do not laugh with them. From now on, the complaisant Anna will behave with the males, especially with strangers, with extreme restraint.

Dostoevsky, perhaps, was the first writer in the country who managed to extract considerable dividends from his craft. An annual income of 9-10 thousand rubles allowed him to lead the life of a well-to-do and respectable person. One trouble - the writer did not know how to manage the money he earned. One of his comrades recalled how, even during his studies, Dostoevsky received a thousand rubles from home, on which another student could live for a whole year, but Fyodor was forced to borrow money the very next day. Being in debt and hiding from creditors is a normal state for Dostoevsky. Only in the 1870s, the second wife of Fyodor Mikhailovich, Anna, managed to deal with her husband's debt hole, taking over all his financial affairs.

In what family was he born, where was he baptized, what kind of environment surrounded the future writer, what books did he read and who was his hero?

Dostoevsky at 26, drawing by K. Trutovsky, Italian pencil on paper, (1847), (GLM). The earliest portrait of Dostoevsky

1. Dostoevsky was born and raised in Moscow

Dostoevsky is a Muscovite in behavior, in tastes, in language. The ideology of "pochvennichestvo", developed by him together with his brother Mikhail in the 1860s, is rooted in the Moscow world, filled with centuries-old traditions and rules, integral, labor, dynamic. Dostoevsky loved Moscow, knew the city and its history very well. Dostoevsky's main novels - "" (the novel was partially written in Moscow), "", "Demons" and "" were published in the Moscow magazine "Russian Messenger".

2. Dostoevsky - comes from a priestly family

The writer's grandfather, great-grandfather and a number of other representatives of the Dostoevsky family were clergymen. He studied at the seminary and his father, Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky. And although he did not complete the course of study at the seminary, the whole structure of his personality was deeply religious.

In accordance with this, the entire life of the Dostoevsky family was organized. Daily routine, as in all Orthodox families, was accompanied by prayer. Posts were kept regularly. “Every Sunday and a big holiday,” recalled Dostoevsky’s younger brother Andrei, “we always went to church for Mass, and the day before, to Vespers.” Orthodoxy was imbibed in the soul of Dostoevsky from early childhood in his father's house and remained unshakable in all subsequent years of his life, despite the trials and temptations that he had to face.

3. Dostoevsky saw suffering people from early childhood

Dostoevsky's childhood apartment was located in an outbuilding of the Moscow Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, where the writer's father served as a doctor. The hospital was founded by the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna in 1803 and became not only one of the first free medical institutions in Russia, but also a visible embodiment of the ideas of Christian compassion, mercy, selfless help to one's neighbor, as well as the ideas of humanism and respect for human dignity adopted from the European Enlightenment. . In the hospital, representatives of all classes (except serfs) could receive free medical care, regardless of their property status.

Parents did not allow children to communicate directly with visitors to the hospital, but it was impossible to hide from a sensitive and observant child, like Fyodor Dostoevsky, the world that daily, for fifteen years, opened from the windows of the apartment overlooking the hospital courtyard, which, no doubt, arose in the conversations of parents and households, neighbors. It was a world of suffering people, seeking help and support, hopeful and doomed. One can only imagine how many faces and destinies Dostoevsky saw in his childhood. The world of the Moscow Mariinsky hospital for the poor became for him a real life university. “Everything clogged with fate, the unfortunate, the sick and the poor, found in him a special participation. His outstanding kindness is known to all who knew him closely, ”his friend A.E. Wrangel wrote about Dostoevsky. Genuine democracy of Dostoevsky and his sincere responsiveness to people were brought up here. And it is no coincidence that the first word that the Russian reader heard from Dostoevsky was the word "poor" (in the title of the novel "Poor People") - a word from the name of the Mariinsky Hospital.

4. Dostoevsky was taught from childhood to help others

Dostoevsky received his first lessons in charity as a child. So, during daily summer walks with his parents, A. M. Dostoevsky recalls, “passing by a sentry who, for unknown reasons, stood with a gun and in full soldier’s uniform at the gates of the Alexander Institute, it was accepted as an indispensable duty to give this sentry a penny or a penny."

Wooden house (wing), which under the Dostoevskys consisted of the master's
parts and human hut. An archaeological excavation site is marked nearby
the alleged "hut", the first dwelling of the Dostoevskys in 1832. .

And when a fire broke out in the Dostoevsky estate, the nanny Alena Frolovna, who lived in their house, recalled Fyodor Mikhailovich in 1876, seeing how desperate his parents were, offered his mother Maria Fedorovna: “If you need money, then take mine, and I don’t need anything, ”(referring to the funds accumulated over the years of service and set aside for old age - almost 500 rubles). Kumanina's relatives also helped then. In turn, Maria Fedorovna gave 50 rubles to each fire-fighted peasant for the restoration of the economy. Later, in 1839, the same Kumanins showed concern for the younger children of Dostoevsky, who remained orphans.

5. Dostoevsky was baptized in a hospital church

At the Moscow Mariinsky hospital for the poor there was a house church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, consecrated in 1806. In 1821 a writer was baptized there. Together with his parents, he attended the temple every Sunday. The dome of the church is clearly visible from the porch of Dostoevsky's apartment. Subsequently, each time he chose an apartment, Dostoevsky looked for one so that the church could be seen from its windows.

The Dostoevsky House Museum in Moscow is located in the left wing of the former Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. Photo Lesio, Wikipedia

6. The first book Dostoevsky read on his own - a retelling of the Bible for children

According to the memoirs of A. M. Dostoevsky, children in the Dostoevsky family were taught to read and write according to the book “One Hundred and Four Sacred Stories Selected from the Old and New Testaments in favor of youth by John Gibner” (translated from German): “With her there were several rather bad lithographs depicting , Stays of Adam and Eve in , and other main sacred facts. I remember how recently, namely in the 1870s, when I was talking with my brother Fyodor Mikhailovich about our childhood, I mentioned this book; and with what delight he announced to me that he managed to find the same copy of the book (that is, our children's) and that he protects it as a shrine. The biblical and evangelical world was for Dostoevsky eternally alive and relevant, its reflection lies on all his work.

7. The closest person to Dostoevsky was his older brother Mikhail

Mikhail (1820-1864) and Fyodor Dostoevsky were the weather. But not only age brought them together. Both of them were passionate readers and both dreamed of becoming writers. Ultimately, both of them came to literature. Mikhail Mikhailovich wrote novels, stories, dramas, poems, translated from German and French. His works were published in the capital's magazines and were praised by critics, the play was successfully staged in the theaters of St. Petersburg and Moscow, translations of Goethe's poem "Rainicke-Lis" and Schiller's tragedies were repeatedly reprinted.

Together with his brother, M. M. Dostoevsky published the magazines Vremya (1861–1863) and Epoch (1864). It was in a letter to his brother Mikhail in 1839 that the sixteen-year-old youth Dostoevsky formulated his life and writing credo: “Man is a mystery. It must be unraveled, and if you will unravel it all your life, then do not say that you have wasted time; I am engaged in this secret, because I want to be a man.

8. Dostoevsky wanted to wear mourning for Pushkin

The literary model for the Dostoevsky brothers was Alexander Sergeevich. “Brother Fedya read more historical, serious works, as well as novels that came across,” recalled A. M. Dostoevsky. - Brother Mikhail loved poetry and wrote poetry himself, being in the senior class of the boarding school (which brother Fyodor did not do). But at Pushkin they reconciled, and both, it seems, even then knew almost everything by heart, of course, only what came into their hands, since there was no complete collection of Pushkin's works then. It must be remembered that Pushkin was then still a contemporary. About him, as a modern poet, little was said from the pulpit; his works had not yet been memorized at the request of teachers. The authority of Pushkin as a poet was then less than that of Zhukovsky, even among teachers of literature; she was less in the opinion of our parents, which caused repeated heated protests from both brothers.

The Dostoevsky brothers did not have to meet Pushkin - they ended up in St. Petersburg just a few months after the death of the poet. There is no doubt that if circumstances had turned out differently, young writers would have brought their first experiments to Pushkin for evaluation, as many beginning writers did at that time.

Then, in 1837, the death of the poet was a shock to them. “The brothers,” recalls A. M. Dostoevsky, “almost went crazy when they heard about this death and all its details.” To appreciate the extent of their grief, one must remember the fact that the news of Pushkin's death came to the Dostoevskys' house, when the family was going through one of the most tragic moments - just, at the age of 37, Maria Fedorovna, beloved mother and soul, died after consumption Houses. Mikhail Andreevich and the children were overwhelmed with grief, and yet “Fyodor, in conversations with his older brother, repeated several times that if we didn’t have family mourning, he would ask his father’s permission to mourn for Pushkin.” And later, in June 1837, on the way to St. Petersburg, instead of thinking about the entrance exams, the brothers dreamed of “immediately going to the place of the duel and sneaking into Pushkin’s former apartment to see the room in which he breathed his last.” ".

Pushkin throughout his life remained a living interlocutor of Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky turned to his heritage, his personality and biography at all times. There is not a single work of Dostoevsky in which Pushkin would not be present in one way or another - in a quotation, image, mention of a name or publication. Already in "Poor People" Dostoevsky's characters read Pushkin. The commentary of Varenka Dobroselova when sending Belkin's Tales to Makar Devushkin is remarkable; it is undeniably autobiographical in nature and refers us to Dostoevsky's childhood years: "Two years ago we read these stories with my mother, and now I was so sad to re-read them."

9. Every year the Dostoevsky family visited the Trinity-Sergius Lavra

Trips to took place usually at the beginning of summer and often fell on the celebration of the Trinity. “These travels were, of course, important incidents for us,” says A. M. Dostoevsky, “and, so to speak, epochs in life. They usually traveled long distances and stopped for whole hours at almost the same places where railway trains now stop for two or three minutes. They spent two days at the Trinity, attended all church services and, having bought toys, returned home in the same order, using five or six days for the whole trip.

My father did not participate in these trips on official business, and we traveled only with my mother and with someone we knew. After the purchase of the Darovoye estate in 1831, the trips stopped, but in 1837, before leaving for St. Petersburg, the brothers made another pilgrimage together with their aunt Alexandra Fedorovna Kumanina. The bright image of the festive Trinity Lavra, with its special prayerful mood, with solemn services, with enlightened faces of the Russian people who came to bow to St. don't get angry. It is no coincidence that in 1859, having received permission to live again in central Russia, Dostoevsky, on the way from Semipalatinsk to Tver, made a special detour and stopped by Trinity for a day - to pray and receive spiritual support from him for a new life. The personality and feat of St. Sergius will give Dostoevsky material for creating a series of images of “positively beautiful” Russian people in his work - Abbot Tikhon (in Possessed), Makar Dolgorukov (in A Teenager), Elder Zosima and his brother Markel (in Brothers Karamazov).

The well-known classic of Russian literature, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, in many respects continues to remain unknown. We know no more about Dostoevsky's life than we know. And the reason for this is Fedor Mikhailovich himself.
Dostoevsky was a complex, contradictory person, in some ways even vicious. He carefully concealed the unsightly pages of his biography. And his life in many ways continues to remain a mystery.
The recent television series "Dostoevsky", a kind of "cinema glamour", only added "gloss" and gave rise to even more questions.
Dostoevsky generally left us with more questions than answers. And we have been looking for answers to his "damned questions" for a hundred and fifty years.

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

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

In general, I personally liked the film. Very good operator work. Although some "gloss" prevented him from seeing the entire tragic depth of Dostoevsky's personality.
Dostoevsky at Khotinenko turned out to be “kind”, “good”, whole. And the real Fyodor Mikhailovich was by no means “good”, and very controversial.
The film does not show those great doubts, through the crucible of which, in the words of Dostoevsky himself, "his hosanna" passed.
The tragic question near the coffin of the first wife - "Will I see Masha?" Also not in the movie. But this question tormented Dostoevsky all his life. And it is clear why - after all, he actually betrayed his wife, leaving for his mistress in Paris. His wife was dying of consumption, and he traveled with Apollinaria Suslova in Europe.

I believe that in a biopic, no "gag" is allowed. But screenwriter Eduard Volodarsky changed the story of the execution on the Semyonovsky parade ground, apparently to glorify Dostoevsky. He placed Dostoevsky against a pole, put a bag on him, which is completely inconsistent with the true story and the testimony of eyewitnesses.

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

Dostoevsky recalled "ten terrible, immensely terrible minutes of waiting for death." On December 22, 1849, they were brought from the Peter and Paul Fortress (where they spent 8 months in solitary confinement) to Semyonovsky Square. The confirmation of the death warrant was read to them; a priest in a black robe approached with a cross in his hand, they broke a sword over the head of the nobles; all but Palm were put on death shirts. Petrashevsky, Mombelli and Grigoriev were blindfolded and tied to a post. The officer ordered the soldiers to take aim ... Dostoevsky was eighth in line, so he had to go to the pillars in the third place.

A well-known scholar of dostoev (and my good friend), Doctor of Philology Lyudmila Saraskina, assessed the Khotinenko series in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta (dated May 27, 2011): “Unfortunately, this film does not correspond much to the real biography of Dostoevsky. Actually, there is no biography at all, but there are a number of dotted lines that are poorly interconnected ... And the execution scene itself is shown with gross distortions - as if there weren’t hundreds of living witnesses, there were no memories of the participants in the execution, including letters from Dostoevsky himself. It seems that the authors of the film did not care about the problem of authenticity at all - there are so many ridiculous violations of the truth, overexposure, unacceptable and inexplicable self-will in this picture.

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

I, perhaps, agree with the well-known literary critic Natalia Ivanova (we met at the scientific conference “Petersburg Text Today”, held at the Writers’ House in St. Petersburg), who published a review in Ogonyok of the series: “I want volume, primarily for figures of genius. Natalya Ivanova writes: “How did Dostoevsky clear up in Dostoevsky? Through what “crucible of doubts” did his “hosanna” come?”
I hope this is a typo, since Dostoevsky literally wrote the following: “So, not as a boy, I believe in Christ and confess him, but my hosanna passed through a great crucible of doubts.”

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

With all the skill of Yevgeny Mironov, his Dostoevsky clearly lacks the tragic depth, inconsistency and eternal confrontation between faith and doubt. And although Yevgeny Mironov diligently distorted his voice beyond recognition, but still, Mironov's Dostoevsky turned out to be cinematic, and therefore worldly and understandable.
But Dostoevsky still remains incomprehensible - and this is the secret of his genius!

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

Andrei Tarkovsky wanted to make a film about Dostoevsky. He certainly wouldn't do a biopic.
In the series Khotinenko, I liked the moment of losing at the casino. I kept waiting for the scene to be played when Anna Grigoryevna, disguised as a beggar, would beg from the loser Dostoevsky, and he would not even recognize her. Unfortunately, this important moment is missing in the film, as well as other "deep spots" of Dostoevsky's life.

I liked Chulpan Khamatova in the role of Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, but there is no Apollinaria Suslova in the film. It is not clear how Dostoevsky could fall in love with such a "nihilist". But it was a passion, a painful passion, to the point of wanting to kill ...

Today in the West, interest in Dostoevsky is not the same as before. Despite the abundance of books about Dostoevsky, we do not know many dark aspects of his life, about which he himself preferred to remain silent. Until now, his personal life remains a secret, especially since the recognition of the first novel "Poor People" and until the execution on the Semyonovsky parade ground. Where he spent huge fees for those times, how he disposed of the borrowed amounts is still not known.
It is only known how he lowered the entire dowry of his second wife, Anna Grigorievna, into the casino.

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

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

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

The strength of Dostoevsky is that he was not afraid to talk about human (his) vices, honestly investigated them, did not idealize the complex human nature. “My name is a psychologist,” wrote Fyodor Mikhailovich, “not true, I am only a realist in the highest sense, that is, I depict all the depths of the human soul.”

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

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

For example, Prince Myshkin recalls the treasury, which exactly matches the description of the execution of Dostoevsky on the Semenovsky parade ground. The novel "The Gambler" was written on the basis of the loss personally experienced by Dostoevsky in Baden-Baden and the novel with Apollinaria Suslova. "Notes from the Underground" is Dostoevsky's own reflections. And the revelations of the prince in the novel "The Humiliated and Insulted" are not the thoughts of Fyodor Mikhailovich?

It is known that a characteristic mistake is to identify heroes with their author. But in the case of Dostoevsky, this is almost a complete coincidence.
I am a supporter of the "biographical method" in literary criticism, and therefore I believe that "a book should be looked over the shoulder of the author."

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

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

Here is what Nikolai Strakhov, who knew Dostoevsky closely, writes in a letter to Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy on November 28, 1883:
“I cannot consider Dostoevsky either a good or a happy person (which, in essence, coincides). He was angry, envious, depraved, he spent his whole life in such unrest that made him miserable and would have made him ridiculous if he had not been so angry and so smart at the same time. He himself, like Rousseau, considered himself the best of people, and the happiest.
In Switzerland, in my presence, he pushed around the servant so much that the servant was offended and reprimanded him: "After all, I am also a man." I remember how astonishing I was at the time that this was said to a preacher of humanity and that free Switzerland's concepts of human morals echoed here.
... and the worst thing is that he enjoyed it, that he never completely repented of all his dirty tricks.
He was drawn to dirty tricks and he boasted of them. ... Note at the same time that with animal voluptuousness, he had no taste, no sense of feminine beauty and charm. This can be seen in his novels. The faces most similar to him are the hero of Notes from the Underground, Svidrigailov to Prest. and Nak. and Stavrogin in Demons; one scene from Stavrogin (corruption, etc.) Katkov did not want to publish, but D. read it to many here ...
With such a nature, he was very disposed to sweet sentimentality, to lofty and humane dreams, and these dreams are his direction, his literary muse and road. In essence, however, all his novels constitute self-justification, they prove that all sorts of abominations can get along with nobility in a person.
But one erection of oneself into a beautiful person, one head and literary humanity - God, how disgusting!
He was a truly unhappy and bad man who imagined himself a lucky man, a hero, and tenderly loved himself alone.

I do not have the goal of discrediting the "great classic of Russian literature", but I am not a supporter of turning Dostoevsky into an "Orthodox saint."
I don't want to idealize Dostoevsky, because I want to understand him as far as possible, because "an alien soul is darkness", especially the soul of Dostoevsky.
I believe that the idea of ​​"the life of a great sinner" also came from the depths of the writer's own soul. All the features of Karamazovism were in Dostoevsky himself. And Fyodor Pavlovich, and Dmitry Karamazov, Ivan, Alexei, and even Smerdyakov - all these are facets of the soul of Dostoevsky himself.

They also do not like to talk about the cause of Dostoevsky's death - there is still a lot of mystery in it. But there is evidence that the day before Dostoevsky's death, his relatives visited him about the opened inheritance. Although Dostoevsky was not a poor man at that time, he did not give up his share of the inheritance, as he did in his youth. There was a conflict. A day later, Fyodor Mikhailovich died.

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

In recent years, a whole new direction has appeared in the science of Dostoevsky, which studies his legacy from the point of view of evangelical ethics and aesthetics (a series of publications of the Petrozavodsk University "The Gospel Text in Russian Literature"). New categories of Dostoevsky's poetics are substantiated, such as "Christian realism" (V.N. Zakharov), "category of catholicity in Russian literature" (I.A. Yesaulov), "theophanic principle of poetics" (V.V. Ivanov) and others.

Leo Tolstoy was very critical of Dostoevsky's work. On October 12, 1910, Tolstoy writes in his diary: “After dinner I read Dostoevsky. Descriptions are good, although some jokes, wordy and not funny, get in the way. Conversations are impossible, completely unnatural…” On October 18, when asked by his doctor how he likes the Karamazovs, he will respond: “Disgusting. Unartistic, far-fetched, unrestrained... Beautiful thoughts, religious content... It's strange how he enjoys such fame.

Today, Dostoevsky is a brand, and this brand is actively defended by the great-grandson of Fyodor Mikhailovich, even challenging the right to call the hotel and the snack bar after Dostoevsky.

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

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

Dostoevsky is a mysterious genius. He believed in Christ and doubted all his life. Perhaps that is why he so loved the painting by Hans Holbein "Dead Christ in the tomb."

And although many supported the proposal to canonize Fyodor Dostoevsky, but in order to canonize a person, evidence of a miracle created by him is necessary. And such a miracle was found. The now living great-grandson of the writer Dmitry Andreevich Dostoevsky said that the life of his father Andrei Fyodorovich Dostoevsky during the war years was saved by a small bronze bust of the writer, with which he never parted. Already at the end of the war, a bullet ricocheted on this piece of metal and slightly wounded the writer's grandson at a tangent. It was the only wound in all the years of the war.

The well-known dostoevologist Igor Volgin believes that we still do not know all the secrets of Dostoevsky's life, and the reason for this is himself.
Some researchers are trying to expose Dostoevsky, to put his vices on public display.
“A man loves the fall of the righteous and his shame,” wrote Fyodor Mikhailovich.
“It’s terrible that you can’t say anything, and they use you like a doll. During life they curse, and after death they erect monuments. Hypocrites! The dead is closer and dearer to them than the living. They assert themselves, satisfy their vanity, joining the authority of the great. They cannot create anything on their own. Studying me, researching me, trying to put me in their schemes! They just don't understand!
Chained in their definitions, swaddled in wording. I am no longer me, but their invention. If I come to them, they'll kick me out. Why do they need the truth? - they each have their own truth! They need to show their importance by standing next to me. They are not me, they exalt themselves!
To say everything that I think about them, to look at their faces! But how do you say? After all, they won't listen. They will say: “Why did you come to disturb us? We know you better than you know yourself. We have researched, we are studying, we will explain to you what you did not think. For every word of yours, there are five of us, for every volume of your writings, there are ten of us. You are inexhaustible! More than one generation will feed on your legacy. And what you don’t have, we’ll figure it out, so to speak, enrich it! If only they were funded!
They love me because they get paid for it, and if they didn't, they wouldn't love me and wouldn't study. It’s not me that needs to be studied - they still won’t understand, I don’t fully understand myself! - you need to study yourself, improve yourself; not me, but love people.
They would love me so much alive! And it doesn't take much to love the dead. They don't love me, they love themselves! Although they don't seem to like themselves or me. Because if they loved, then they would not be engaged in the study of creativity, but in the execution of what I left them. And then it’s easier to explore than to love!”

"I do not want and cannot believe that evil is the normal state of people."
"But you can't sit idly by, otherwise you will finally come to self-justification, to the consciousness of your own impotence before the power of circumstances: what do I have to do with the era, the time is, they say, what! - Nerono! .."
“Or is it really the highest meaning in this senselessness: spiritual passions, pangs of conscience, flight of thought, impulses of creative inspiration, unshakable faith are nothing more than a monstrous smirk at poor humanity, an empty play of the imagination, in order to forget at least for a brief moment, to distract from the terrible inevitability this last truth, from this universal, spidery, insatiable god - the womb?
I can't, I don't want to believe it! How, then, to live, if in fact the body takes over the soul? Or the main law of life - survive?
“It’s better to bend than to break; if you bend and straighten up, you will be straighter.”
- I can not look indifferently at human pain, how people wish themselves to die. Everything around seems absurd, devoid of any meaning.
- "Think about it - grief, think about it - the will of the Lord."
Wherever you look, power reigns everywhere. And all calls for love and kindness do not stop evil people, love does not conquer hatred, goodness does not destroy evil.
"Beauty will save the world."
- But how?! I am ready to sacrifice my life, just to understand the meaning of what is happening, that there is a person.
- "Man is a mystery. It must be unraveled, and if you will unravel it all your life, then do not say that you have wasted time; I am engaged in this mystery, because I want to be a man."
LOVE CREATE NEED!
(from my true-life novel "The Wanderer" (mystery) on the site New Russian Literature

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

What do you think: IS IT NECESSARY TO CANONIZE FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY?

© Nikolai Kofirin – New Russian Literature –