Ermashov D.V.

Born October 18 (30), 1806 in Saratov. He graduated from the Noble boarding school at the Moscow University (1822). Since 1823, he was in the service of the Moscow archive of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs, entering the circle of the so-called. "archival youths", who later formed the backbone of the "Society of Philosophy" and studied the philosophical ideas of German romanticism, Schelling, and others. Pushkin. In 1829, as a teacher of the son of Prince. PER. Volkonsky went abroad. He spent three years in Italy, devoting all his free time to studying European languages, classical philology and art history. Returning to Russia, at the suggestion of S.S. Uvarov took the place of an adjunct in literature at Moscow University. In order to acquire the proper status, in 1834 he presented the essay "Dante and His Age", two years later - his doctoral dissertation "The Theory of Poetry in its Historical Development among Ancient and New Nations" and the study "History of Poetry", which deserved positive feedback from Pushkin. For 34 years he taught a number of courses on the history of Russian literature, the general history of poetry, the theory of literature and pedagogy. Professor at Moscow University (1837–1857), head of the department of the history of Russian literature (since 1847), academician (since 1852). All these years he was actively engaged in journalistic activity. In 1827–1831 Shevyrev - an employee of the "Moscow Bulletin", in 1835-1839 - the leading critic of the "Moscow Observer", from 1841 to 1856 - the closest associate of M.P. Pogodin according to the edition of "Moskvityanin". Some time after his dismissal from the post of professor, he left Europe in 1860, lectured on the history of Russian literature in Florence (1861) and Paris (1862).

Shevyrev was characterized by the desire to build his worldview on the foundation of Russian national identity, which, from his point of view, has deep historical roots. Considering literature as a reflection of the spiritual experience of the people, he tried to find in it the origins of Russian identity and the foundations of national education. This topic is a key one in Shevyrev's scientific and journalistic activities. He is credited with the "discoverer" of ancient Russian literature as a whole, he was one of the first to prove to the Russian reader the fact of its existence since the time of Kievan Rus, introduced into scientific circulation many now known monuments of pre-Petrine Russian literature, attracted many novice scientists to the comparative study of domestic and foreign literature, etc. In a similar spirit, Shevyrev's political views developed, the main motives of his journalism were to affirm Russian originality and criticize Westernism, which rejected it. From this point of view, Shevyrev was one of the largest ideologists of the so-called. theory of "official nationality" and at the same time one of its brightest popularizers. During the period of cooperation in "Moskvityanin", which brought him a reputation as an ardent supporter of the official ideology, Shevyrev applied his main efforts to the development of one problem - proof of the detrimental effect of European influence on Russia. A significant place among the thinker's works on this topic is occupied by his article "A Russian's View of the Modern Education of Europe", in which he postulated the theses that later became widely known about the "decay of the West", its spiritual incurable disease; about the need to counteract the "magic charm" that the West still fascinates the Russian people, and realize their originality, putting an end to disbelief in their own strength; about the calling of Russia to save and preserve in a higher synthesis all the spiritual healthy values ​​of Europe, etc., etc.

Compositions:

A Russian's view of the modern education of Europe // Moskvityanin. 1941. No. 1.

Anthology of world political thought. T. 3. M., 1997. S. 717–724.

The history of Russian literature, mostly ancient. M., 1846–1860.

About native literature. M., 2004.

Letters to M.P. Pogodina, S.P. Shevyreva and M.A. Maksimovich to Prince P.A. Vyazemsky. SPb., 1846.

Bibliography

Peskov A.M. At the origins of philosophizing in Russia: The Russian idea of ​​S.P. Shevyreva // New Literary Review. 1994. No. 7. S. 123–139.

Texts

A Russian's view of contemporary education in Europe (1)

There are moments in history when all mankind is expressed by one all-consuming name! These are the names of Cyrus (2), Alexander (3), Caesar (4), Charlemagne (5), Gregory VII (6), Charles V (7). Napoleon was ready to put his name on contemporary humanity, but he met Russia.

There are epochs in history when all the forces acting in it are resolved in two main ones, which, having absorbed everything extraneous, come face to face, measure each other with their eyes and come out for a decisive debate, like Achilles and Hector at the conclusion of the Iliad (8 ). - Here are the famous martial arts of world history: Asia and Greece, Greece and Rome, Rome and the German world.

In the ancient world, these martial arts were decided by material force: then the force ruled the universe. In the Christian world world conquests have become impossible: we are called to single combat of thought.

The drama of modern history is expressed by two names, one of which sounds sweet to our heart! The West and Russia, Russia and the West - this is the result that follows from everything that has gone before; here is the last word of history; here are two data for the future!

Napoleon (we started with him not for nothing); contributed a lot towards scheduling both words of this result. In the person of his gigantic genius, the instinct of the entire West concentrated - and moved to Russia when he could. Let's repeat the words of the Poet:

Praise! He to the Russian people

high lot indicated.(9)

Yes, a great and decisive moment. West and Russia stand in front of each other, face to face! - Will he carry us away in his worldwide aspiration? Will he get it? Shall we go in addition to his education? Shall we make some superfluous additions to his story? - Or will we stand in our originality? Shall we form a special world, according to our principles, and not the same European ones? Let's take a sixth part of the world out of Europe... the seed for the future development of mankind?

Here is a question - a great question, which is not only heard in our country, but is also answered in the West. Solving it - for the good of Russia and mankind - is the business of generations to us modern and future. Everyone who has just been called to any significant service in our Fatherland must begin by resolving this issue if he wants to connect his actions with the present moment of life. That's the reason why we start with it.

The question is not new: the millennium of Russian life, which our generation may celebrate in twenty-two years, offers a complete answer to it. But the meaning of the history of every nation is a mystery hidden under the outward clarity of events: each solves it in his own way. The question is not new; but in our time its importance has revived and become palpable to all.

Let us take a general look at the state of modern Europe and the attitude in which our Fatherland is towards it. Here we eliminate all political views and confine ourselves to only one picture of education, embracing religion, science, art and literature, the latter as the most complete expression of the whole human life of the peoples. We will touch, of course, only the main countries that are active in the field of European peace.

Let us begin with those two whose influence reaches us least of all, and which form the two extreme opposites of Europe. We mean Italy and England. The first took to its share all the treasures of the ideal world of fantasy; almost completely alien to all the lures of modern luxury industry, she, in the miserable rags of poverty, sparkles with her fiery eyes, enchants with sounds, shines with ageless beauty and is proud of her past. The second selfishly appropriated all the essential benefits of the worldly world; drowning herself in the richness of life, she wants to entangle the whole world with the bonds of her trade and industry. […]

France and Germany are the two parties under whose influence we have been and are now. In them, one might say, the whole of Europe is concentrated for us. There is neither a separating sea nor an obscuring Alps. Every book, every thought of France and Germany resonates with us rather than in any other country of the West. Previously, French influence prevailed: in new generations it is mastering German. All educated Russia can rightly be divided into two halves: French and German, according to the influence of one or another education.

That is why it is especially important for us to delve into the current situation of these two countries and the attitude in which we are towards them. Here we boldly and sincerely state our opinion, knowing in advance that it will arouse many contradictions, offend many vanities, stir up the prejudices of education and teachings, violate the traditions hitherto accepted. But in the question we are solving, the first condition is sincerity of conviction.

France and Germany were the scenes of two of the greatest events to which the whole history of the new West is summed up, or rather, two critical illnesses corresponding to each other. These diseases were - the reformation in Germany (10), the revolution in France (11): the disease is the same, only in two different forms. Both were the inevitable consequence of Western development, which has incorporated a duality of principles and established this discord as the normal law of life. We think that these illnesses have already ceased; that both countries, having experienced the turning point of the disease, entered again into healthy and organic development. No, we are wrong. Diseases have generated harmful juices, which now continue to operate and which, in turn, have already produced organic damage in both countries, a sign of future self-destruction. Yes, in our sincere, friendly, close relations with the West, we do not notice that we are dealing, as it were, with a person who carries within himself an evil, contagious disease, surrounded by an atmosphere of dangerous breath. We kiss him, embrace him, share a meal of thought, drink a cup of feeling... and we don't notice the hidden poison in our careless communion, we don't smell the future corpse in the fun of the feast, which he already smells of.

Ermashov D.V.

Born October 18 (30), 1806 in Saratov. He graduated from the Noble boarding school at the Moscow University (1822). Since 1823, he was in the service of the Moscow archive of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs, entering the circle of the so-called. "archival youths", who later formed the backbone of the "Society of Philosophy" and studied the philosophical ideas of German romanticism, Schelling, and others. Pushkin. In 1829, as a teacher of the son of Prince. PER. Volkonsky went abroad. He spent three years in Italy, devoting all his free time to studying European languages, classical philology and art history. Returning to Russia, at the suggestion of S.S. Uvarov took the place of an adjunct in literature at Moscow University. In order to acquire the proper status, in 1834 he presented the essay "Dante and His Age", two years later - his doctoral dissertation "The Theory of Poetry in its Historical Development among Ancient and New Nations" and the study "History of Poetry", which deserved positive feedback from Pushkin. For 34 years he taught a number of courses on the history of Russian literature, the general history of poetry, the theory of literature and pedagogy. Professor at Moscow University (1837–1857), head of the department of the history of Russian literature (since 1847), academician (since 1852). All these years he was actively engaged in journalistic activity. In 1827–1831 Shevyrev - an employee of the "Moscow Bulletin", in 1835-1839 - the leading critic of the "Moscow Observer", from 1841 to 1856 - the closest associate of M.P. Pogodin according to the edition of "Moskvityanin". Some time after his dismissal from the post of professor, he left Europe in 1860, lectured on the history of Russian literature in Florence (1861) and Paris (1862).

Shevyrev was characterized by the desire to build his worldview on the foundation of Russian national identity, which, from his point of view, has deep historical roots. Considering literature as a reflection of the spiritual experience of the people, he tried to find in it the origins of Russian identity and the foundations of national education. This topic is a key one in Shevyrev's scientific and journalistic activities. He is credited with the "discoverer" of ancient Russian literature as a whole, he was one of the first to prove to the Russian reader the fact of its existence since the time of Kievan Rus, introduced into scientific circulation many now known monuments of pre-Petrine Russian literature, attracted many novice scientists to the comparative study of domestic and foreign literature, etc. In a similar spirit, Shevyrev's political views developed, the main motives of his journalism were to affirm Russian originality and criticize Westernism, which rejected it. From this point of view, Shevyrev was one of the largest ideologists of the so-called. theory of "official nationality" and at the same time one of its brightest popularizers. During the period of cooperation in "Moskvityanin", which brought him a reputation as an ardent supporter of the official ideology, Shevyrev applied his main efforts to the development of one problem - proof of the detrimental effect of European influence on Russia. A significant place among the thinker's works on this topic is occupied by his article "A Russian's View of the Modern Education of Europe", in which he postulated the theses that later became widely known about the "decay of the West", its spiritual incurable disease; about the need to counteract the "magic charm" that the West still fascinates the Russian people, and realize their originality, putting an end to disbelief in their own strength; about the calling of Russia to save and preserve in a higher synthesis all the spiritual healthy values ​​of Europe, etc., etc.

Compositions:

A Russian's view of the modern education of Europe // Moskvityanin. 1941. No. 1.

Anthology of world political thought. T. 3. M., 1997. S. 717–724.

The history of Russian literature, mostly ancient. M., 1846–1860.

About native literature. M., 2004.

Letters to M.P. Pogodina, S.P. Shevyreva and M.A. Maksimovich to Prince P.A. Vyazemsky. SPb., 1846.

Bibliography

Peskov A.M. At the origins of philosophizing in Russia: The Russian idea of ​​S.P. Shevyreva // New Literary Review. 1994. No. 7. S. 123–139.

Texts

A Russian's view of contemporary education in Europe (1)

There are moments in history when all mankind is expressed by one all-consuming name! These are the names of Cyrus (2), Alexander (3), Caesar (4), Charlemagne (5), Gregory VII (6), Charles V (7). Napoleon was ready to put his name on contemporary humanity, but he met Russia.

There are epochs in history when all the forces acting in it are resolved in two main ones, which, having absorbed everything extraneous, come face to face, measure each other with their eyes and come out for a decisive debate, like Achilles and Hector at the conclusion of the Iliad (8 ). - Here are the famous martial arts of world history: Asia and Greece, Greece and Rome, Rome and the German world.

In the ancient world, these martial arts were decided by material force: then the force ruled the universe. In the Christian world world conquests have become impossible: we are called to single combat of thought.

The drama of modern history is expressed by two names, one of which sounds sweet to our heart! The West and Russia, Russia and the West - this is the result that follows from everything that has gone before; here is the last word of history; here are two data for the future!

Napoleon (we started with him not for nothing); contributed a lot towards scheduling both words of this result. In the person of his gigantic genius, the instinct of the entire West concentrated - and moved to Russia when he could. Let's repeat the words of the Poet:

Praise! He to the Russian people

high lot indicated.(9)

Yes, a great and decisive moment. West and Russia stand in front of each other, face to face! - Will he carry us away in his worldwide aspiration? Will he get it? Shall we go in addition to his education? Shall we make some superfluous additions to his story? - Or will we stand in our originality? Shall we form a special world, according to our principles, and not the same European ones? Let's take a sixth part of the world out of Europe... the seed for the future development of mankind?

Here is a question - a great question, which is not only heard in our country, but is also answered in the West. Solving it - for the good of Russia and mankind - is the business of generations to us modern and future. Everyone who has just been called to any significant service in our Fatherland must begin by resolving this issue if he wants to connect his actions with the present moment of life. That's the reason why we start with it.

The question is not new: the millennium of Russian life, which our generation may celebrate in twenty-two years, offers a complete answer to it. But the meaning of the history of every nation is a mystery hidden under the outward clarity of events: each solves it in his own way. The question is not new; but in our time its importance has revived and become palpable to all.

Let us take a general look at the state of modern Europe and the attitude in which our Fatherland is towards it. Here we eliminate all political views and confine ourselves to only one picture of education, embracing religion, science, art and literature, the latter as the most complete expression of the whole human life of the peoples. We will touch, of course, only the main countries that are active in the field of European peace.

Let us begin with those two whose influence reaches us least of all, and which form the two extreme opposites of Europe. We mean Italy and England. The first took to its share all the treasures of the ideal world of fantasy; almost completely alien to all the lures of modern luxury industry, she, in the miserable rags of poverty, sparkles with her fiery eyes, enchants with sounds, shines with ageless beauty and is proud of her past. The second selfishly appropriated all the essential benefits of the worldly world; drowning herself in the richness of life, she wants to entangle the whole world with the bonds of her trade and industry. […]

France and Germany are the two parties under whose influence we have been and are now. In them, one might say, the whole of Europe is concentrated for us. There is neither a separating sea nor an obscuring Alps. Every book, every thought of France and Germany resonates with us rather than in any other country of the West. Previously, French influence prevailed: in new generations it is mastering German. All educated Russia can rightly be divided into two halves: French and German, according to the influence of one or another education.

That is why it is especially important for us to delve into the current situation of these two countries and the attitude in which we are towards them. Here we boldly and sincerely state our opinion, knowing in advance that it will arouse many contradictions, offend many vanities, stir up the prejudices of education and teachings, violate the traditions hitherto accepted. But in the question we are solving, the first condition is sincerity of conviction.

France and Germany were the scenes of two of the greatest events to which the whole history of the new West is summed up, or rather, two critical illnesses corresponding to each other. These diseases were - the reformation in Germany (10), the revolution in France (11): the disease is the same, only in two different forms. Both were the inevitable consequence of Western development, which has incorporated a duality of principles and established this discord as the normal law of life. We think that these illnesses have already ceased; that both countries, having experienced the turning point of the disease, entered again into healthy and organic development. No, we are wrong. Diseases have generated harmful juices, which now continue to operate and which, in turn, have already produced organic damage in both countries, a sign of future self-destruction. Yes, in our sincere, friendly, close relations with the West, we do not notice that we are dealing, as it were, with a person who carries within himself an evil, contagious disease, surrounded by an atmosphere of dangerous breath. We kiss him, embrace him, share a meal of thought, drink a cup of feeling... and we don't notice the hidden poison in our careless communion, we don't smell the future corpse in the fun of the feast, which he already smells of.

He captivated us with the luxury of his education; he carries us on his winged steamers, rolls us on the railroads; caters without our labor to all the whims of our sensuality, lavishes before us the wit of thought, the pleasures of art.... We are glad that we got to the feast ready for such a rich host... We are intoxicated; we have fun for nothing to taste what cost so much .... But we do not notice that in these dishes there is a juice that our fresh nature cannot bear .... We do not foresee that the satiated host, having seduced us with all the charms of a magnificent feast, will corrupt our mind and heart; that we will leave him drunk beyond our years, with a heavy impression of an orgy, incomprehensible to us ...

But let us rest in faith in Providence, whose finger is open in our history. Let us delve better into the nature of both ailments and determine for ourselves the lesson of wise protection.

There is a country in which both turning points took place even earlier than in the entire West and thereby forestalled its development. This country is an island for Europe, both geographically and historically. The secrets of her inner life have not yet been unraveled - and no one has decided why both upheavals that took place in her so early did not produce any, at least visible, organic damage.

In France, a great affliction has engendered the depravity of personal freedom, which threatens the whole state with complete disorganization. France takes pride in having acquired political freedom; but let us see how she applied it to the various branches of her social development? What did she do with this acquired tool in the field of religion, art, science and literature? We will not talk about politics and industry. Let us only add that the development of its industry is hampered year by year by the self-will of the lower classes of the people, and that the monarchical and noble character of the luxury and splendor of its products does not in the least correspond to the direction of its popular spirit.

What is the state of religion in France now? - Religion has two manifestations: personal in individual people, as a matter of conscience for everyone, and state, as the Church. Therefore, it is possible to consider the development of religion in any people only from these two points of view. The development of a state religion is evident; it is in front of everyone; but it is difficult to penetrate into the development of her personal, family, hidden in the secret of the life of the people. The latter can be seen either on the spot, or in literature, or in education.

Since 1830, as is known, France has lost the unity of the state religion. The country, originally Roman Catholic, allowed free Protestantism both into the bosom of its people and into the bosom of the reigning family. Since 1830, all the religious processions of the Church, these solemn moments in which she is the servant of God before the eyes of the people, have been destroyed in the life of the French people. The most famous rite of the Western Church, the splendid procession: the corpus Domini, performed so brilliantly in all the countries of the Roman Catholic West, is never again performed in the streets of Paris. When a dying person calls to himself the gifts of Christ before his death, the church sends them without any triumph, the priest brings them secretly, as if during the time of persecution of Christianity. Religion can perform its rites only inside temples; she alone seems to be deprived of the right to publicity, while everyone in France uses it with impunity; the temples of France are like the catacombs of the original Christians, who did not dare to bring out the manifestations of their worship of God. [...]

All these phenomena of the present life of the French people do not show a religious development in them. But how to solve the same question concerning the inner life of families in France? Literature brings us the saddest news of this, revealing the pictures of this life in its tireless stories. At the same time, I remember a word heard from the lips of a certain public teacher, who assured me that all religious morality can be concluded in the rules of Arithmetic. [...]

Literature among the people is always the result of its cumulative development in all branches of its human education. From the foregoing, the reasons for the decline of modern literature in France, whose works, unfortunately, are too well known in our Fatherland, can now be clear. A people that, through the abuse of personal freedom, has destroyed the feeling of Religion in itself, has desensitized art and made science meaningless, must, of course, bring the abuse of its freedom to the highest degree of extremeness in literature, which is not curbed either by the laws of the state or by the opinion of society. [...]

We conclude this deplorable picture of France by pointing out one common feature that is clearly visible in almost all of its contemporary writers. All of them themselves feel the painful state of their fatherland in all branches of its development; they all unanimously point to the decline of his Religion, politics, education, sciences, and Literature itself, which is their own business. In any essay dealing with contemporary life, you will surely find several pages, several lines, devoted to the condemnation of the present. Their common voice can sufficiently cover and reinforce our own in this case. But here's the weird thing! That feeling of apathy, which always accompanies such censures, which have become a kind of habit among the writers of France, have become a fashion, have become a commonplace. Every ailment among the people is terrible, but even more terrible is the cold hopelessness with which those who, the first, should have thought of means to cure it, speak of it.

Let us cross over the Rhine (13), into the country next to us, and try to delve into the secret of its intangible development. In the first place, we are struck by how striking a contrast to the land from which we have just emerged is the outward improvement of Germany in everything that concerns her state, civil and social development. What order! what slenderness! One marvels at the prudence of the German, who skillfully removes from himself all the possible temptations of his rebellious neighbors beyond the Rhine and strictly confines himself to the sphere of his own life. The Germans even harbor a kind of open hatred or lofty contempt for the abuse of personal freedom with which all sections of French society are infected. The sympathy of some German writers for French self-will found almost no echo in prudent Germany and left no harmful trace in her entire present way of life! This country in its various parts can present excellent examples of development in all branches of complex human education. Its state structure is based on the love of its Sovereigns for the good of their subjects and on the obedience and devotion of these latter to their rulers. Its civil order will rest on the laws of the purest and most frank justice, inscribed in the hearts of its rulers and in the minds of subjects called to the execution of a civil cause. Its universities flourish and pour the treasures of teaching into all the lower institutions to which the education of the people is entrusted. Art is developing in Germany in such a way that it now puts it in a worthy rival with her mentor, Italy. Industry and domestic trade are making rapid progress. Everything that serves to facilitate communication between her various dominions, everything that modern civilization can boast of in relation to the conveniences of life, such as post offices, customs, roads, etc., all this is excellent in Germany and elevates her to the rank of a country, excelling in its external accomplishment on the solid ground of Europe. What does it seem to lack for her unshakable eternal prosperity?

But above this solid, happy, well-ordered appearance of Germany, another intangible, invisible world of thought floats, completely separate from its external world. Her main ailment is there, in this abstract world, which has no contact with her political and civil system. In the Germans, miraculously, mental life is separated from external, social life. Therefore, in the same German you can very often meet two people: external and internal. The first will be the most faithful, most humble subject of his Sovereign, a truth-loving and zealous citizen of his fatherland, an excellent family man and unfailing friend, in a word, a zealous performer of all his external duties; but take the same man inside, penetrate his mental world: you can find in him the most complete corruption of thought - and in this world inaccessible to the eye, in this intangible mental sphere, the same German, humble, submissive, faithful in state, society and family - is violent, violent, raping everything, not recognizing any other power over his thought ... This is the same ancient unbridled ancestor of his, whom Tacitus (14) saw in all his native savagery coming out of the cherished forests of his , with the only difference being that the new, educated person transferred his freedom from the external world to the mental world. Yes, debauchery of thought is the invisible malady of Germany, engendered in her by the Reformation and deeply hidden in her internal development. [...]

The direction now being taken by those two countries, which have exercised and continue to exercise the strongest influence on us, is so contrary to our life principle, so inconsistent with everything that has gone by that we all, more or less, inwardly recognize the need to sever our further ties with the West in literary terms. relation. Of course, I am not talking here about those glorious examples of its great past, which we must always study: they, as the property of all mankind, belong to us, but to us, by right, the closest and direct heirs in the line of peoples entering the stage of the living and the active world. I am not talking about those modern writers who in the West, seeing themselves the trend of humanity around them, arm themselves against it and oppose it: such writers sympathize with us a lot and even impatiently await our activity. However, they are a minor exception. Of course, I do not understand those scientists who work on certain individual parts of the sciences and gloriously cultivate their field. No, I'm talking in general about the spirit of Western education, about its main thoughts and the movements of its new literature. Here we meet such phenomena that seem incomprehensible to us, which, in our opinion, do not follow from anything, which we are afraid of, and sometimes we pass them indifferently, senselessly, or with a feeling of some kind of childish curiosity that irritates our eyes.

Russia, fortunately, has not experienced those two great ailments, which harmful extremes begin to strongly act there: hence the reason why local phenomena are not clear to her and why she cannot connect them with anything of her own. Peacefully and prudently she contemplated the development of the West: taking it as a safety lesson for her life, she happily avoided discord or duality of principles, to which the West was subjected in its internal development, and retained its cherished and all-sustaining unity; she assimilated only what could be decent for her in the sense of universal humanity and rejected the extraneous ... And now, when the West, like Mephistopheles in the conclusion of Goethe's Faust, preparing to open that fiery abyss where he aspires, comes to us and thunders with his terrible: Komm ! Komm! (15) - Russia will not follow him: she did not give him any vow, she did not bind her existence with his existence by any agreement: she did not share his ailments with him; she retained her great unity, and in a fateful moment, perhaps, she was also appointed by Providence to be His great instrument for the salvation of mankind.

Let's not hide the fact that our literature, in its relations with the West, has developed some shortcomings in itself. We bring them to three. The first of these is a characteristic feature of our moment, there is indecision. It is clear from what has been said above. We cannot continue literary development together with the West, because there is no sympathy in us for its contemporary works: in ourselves, we have not yet fully discovered the source of our own people's development, although there have been some successful attempts in this. The magical charm of the West still has a strong effect on us, and we cannot suddenly give it up. This indecision, I believe, is one of the main reasons for the stagnation that has been going on for several years in our literature. We wait in vain for modern inspirations from where we formerly drew them; The West sends us what is rejected by our mind and heart. We are now left to our own forces; we must necessarily confine ourselves to the rich past of the West and seek our own in our ancient history.

The activities of the new generations, who enter our field under the habitual influence of the latest thoughts and phenomena of the modern West, are involuntarily paralyzed by the impossibility of applying what is there to ours, and any young man seething with strength, if he looks into the depths of his soul, he will see that all ardent delight and all inner his strength is fettered by a feeling of heavy and idle indecision. Yes, the whole of literary Russia is now playing the role of Hercules, standing at the crossroads: the West is treacherously beckoning her to follow him, but, of course, Providence has destined her to follow another road.

The second shortcoming in our literature, closely connected with the previous one, is distrust of one's own strengths. Until when, in any case, the last book of the West, the latest issue of a magazine, will act on us with some kind of magical power and fetter all our own thoughts? How long will we greedily swallow only ready-made results, deduced there from a way of thinking that is completely alien to us and inconsistent with our traditions? Do we really not feel so much strength in ourselves to take up the sources ourselves and discover in ourselves our new view of the entire History and Literature of the West? This is a necessity for us and a service for him, which even we owe him: no one can be impartial in his work, and peoples, like poets, creating their being, do not reach his consciousness, which is given to their heirs.

Finally, our third shortcoming, the most unpleasant one, from which we suffer the most in our Literature, is Russian apathy, a consequence of our friendly relations with the West. Plant a young, fresh plant under the shade of a hundred-year-old cedar or oak, which will cover its young being with the old shade of its wide branches, and will only feed it through them with the sun and cool it with heavenly dew, and will give its fresh roots little food from the greedy, mature in that land. their roots. You will see how a young plant will lose the colors of youthful life, will suffer from the premature old age of its decrepit neighbor; but cut down the cedar, return the sun to its young tree, and it will find a fortress in itself, rise cheerfully and freshly, and with its strong and harmless youth will even be able to gratefully cover the new shoots of its fallen neighbor.

Attach an old nurse to a lively, frisky child: you will see how the ardor of age disappears in him, and the seething life will be fettered by insensitivity. Make friends with an ardent young man, full of all the hopes of life, with a mature, disappointed husband who squandered his life, having lost both faith and hope with her: you will see how your ardent young man will change; disappointment will not stick to him; he did not deserve it with his past; but all his feelings are shrouded in the cold of inactive apathy; his fiery eyes will grow dim; he, like Freishitz, will tremble at his terrible guest; with him, he will be ashamed of his blush and his ardent feelings, blush of his delight, and like a child, put on a mask of disappointment that does not suit him.

Yes, the disappointment of the West gave rise to one cold apathy in us. Don Juan (17) produced Eugene Onegin, one of the common Russian types, aptly captured by Pushkin's brilliant thought from our modern life. This character is often repeated in our Literature: our narrators dream about him, and until recently, one of them, who brilliantly entered the field of the Poet, painted for us the same Russian apathy, even more degree, in the person of his hero, whom we, according to our national feeling, would not like to, but must be recognized as a hero of our time.

The last defect is, of course, the one with which we must most of all struggle in our modern life. This apathy is the cause in us of both the laziness that overcomes our fresh youth, and the inactivity of many writers and scientists who betray their high vocation and are distracted from it by the cramped world of the household or the large forms of all-consuming trade and industry; in this apathy is the germ of that worm-longing, which each of us more or less felt in his youth, sang in verse and bored his most supportive readers with it.

But even if we endured some inevitable shortcomings from our relations with the West, for that we kept pure in ourselves three fundamental feelings, in which the seed and guarantee of our future development.

We have preserved our ancient religious feeling. The Christian cross placed its sign on our entire primary education, on our entire Russian life. Our ancient mother Russia blessed us with this cross, and with it she set us free on the dangerous path of the West. Let's say a parable. The boy grew up in the holy house of his parents, where everything breathed the fear of God; his first memory was imprinted with the face of a gray-haired father, kneeling before a holy icon: he did not get up in the morning, did not go to sleep without a parental blessing; every day of his was sanctified by prayer, and before every feast the house of his family was a house of prayer. Early the lad left his parent's house; cold people surrounded him and darkened his soul with doubt; evil books corrupted his thought and froze his feeling; he was visiting peoples who do not pray to God and think that they are happy ... The stormy time of youth passed ... The young man matured into a husband ... The family surrounded him, and all childhood memories rose like bright angels from the bosom of the soul his... and the feeling of Religion woke up more vividly and stronger... and his whole being was sanctified again, and the proud thought was dissolved in a pure prayer of humility... and a new world of life opened up to his eyes... The parable is clear to each of us: is it necessary interpret its meaning?

The second feeling, by which Russia is strong and her future prosperity is ensured, is the feeling of her state unity, which we also learned from our entire history. Of course, there is no country in Europe that could be proud of such a harmony of its political existence as our Fatherland. Almost everywhere in the West, discord has begun to be recognized as the law of life, and the whole existence of peoples is accomplished in a hard struggle. With us, only the Tsar and the people make up one inseparable whole, which does not tolerate any barrier between them: this connection is established on the mutual feeling of love and faith and on the endless devotion of the people to their Tsar. Here is a treasure that we have carried away from our ancient life, which the West, divided in itself, looks with particular envy, seeing in it an inexhaustible source of state power. He would like everything he can to take him away from us; but now they are not able to, because the former sense of our unity, accepted by faith, carried away by us from our former life, having passed all the temptations of education, having passed all doubts, has risen in every educated Russian, who understands his history, to the degree of clear and firm consciousness, and now this conscious feeling will remain more than ever unshakable in our Fatherland.

Our third fundamental feeling is the consciousness of our nationality and the certainty that any education can only put down a firm root in our country when it is assimilated by our people's feeling and is expressed in people's thought and word. This feeling is the reason for our indecision to continue literary development with the languishing West; in this feeling is a powerful barrier to all his temptations; this feeling breaks all the private fruitless efforts of our compatriots to instill in us that which does not suit the Russian mind and Russian heart; this feeling is the measure of the enduring success of our writers in the history of literature and education, it is the touchstone of their originality. It expressed itself strongly in the best works of each of them: Lomonosov, and Derzhavin, and Karamzin, and Zhukovsky, and Krylov, and Pushkin, and all those close to them, no matter what Latin, French , German, English or other influence. This feeling now directs us to the study of our ancient Russia, in which, of course, the original pure image of our nationality is preserved. The Government itself actively urges us to do so. With this feeling, our two capitals are related and act as one, and what is planned in the north passes through Moscow, as through the heart of Russia, in order to turn into the blood and living juices of our people. Moscow is that sure furnace in which all the past from the West is burned and receives the pure stamp of the Russian people.

Our Russia is strong by three fundamental feelings and its future is sure. The man of the Tsar’s Council, to whom the generations that are being formed (18) have long been entrusted, expressed their deep thought, and they are the basis for the education of the people.

The West, by some strange instinct, does not like these feelings in us, and especially now, having forgotten our former kindness, having forgotten the sacrifices made to it from us, at any case expresses its dislike to us, even similar to some kind of hatred, offensive to every Russian visiting his lands. This feeling, undeserved by us and senselessly contradicting our previous relations, can be explained in two ways: either the West is in this case like a squeamish old man who, in the capricious impulses of powerless age, is angry with his heir, who is inevitably called upon to take possession of his treasures in due course; or another: he, knowing by instinct our direction, anticipates the gap that must inevitably follow between him and us, and himself, with a rush of his unjust hatred, hastens the fateful moment even more.

In the disastrous epochs of fractures and destruction, which the history of mankind represents, Providence sends, in the person of other peoples, a force that preserves and observes: may Russia be such a force in relation to the West! may it preserve for the benefit of all mankind the treasures of its great past and may it prudently reject everything that serves for destruction, and not for creation! may he find in himself and in his former life a source of his own people, in which everything alien, but humanly beautiful, merges with the Russian spirit, the vast, universal, Christian spirit, the spirit of all-encompassing tolerance and universal communion!

Notes

1. "The view of the Russian on the modern education of Europe" - an article specially written by S.P. Shevyrev at the end of 1840 for the magazine "Moskvityanin", published by M.P. Pogodin in 1841-1855, in the first issue of which it was published in January 1841. Here excerpts are published according to the edition: Shevyrev S.P. A Russian's view of the modern education of Europe // Moskvityanin. 1841, No. 1, pp. 219–221, 246–250, 252, 259, 267–270, 287–296.

2. Cyrus the Great (year of birth unknown - died in 530 BC), king in ancient Persia in 558-530, became famous for his conquests.

3. Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), king of Macedonia from 336, one of the outstanding commanders and statesmen of the ancient world.

4. Caesar Guy Julius (102 or 100-44 BC), ancient Roman statesman and politician, commander, writer, dictator of Rome for life from 44 BC.

5. Charlemagne (742-814), king of the Franks from 768, emperor from 800. Charlemagne's wars of conquest led to the creation for a short time in medieval Europe of the largest state comparable in size to the Roman Empire. The Carolingian dynasty is named after him.

6. Gregory VII Hildebrand (between 1015 and 1020–1085), Pope from 1073. He was an active figure in the Cluniac reform (aimed at strengthening the Catholic Church). The reforms he carried out contributed to the rise of the papacy. He developed the idea of ​​subordinating the secular authorities to the church.

7. Charles V (1500-1558) from the Habsburg family. King of Spain in 1516–1556. German king in 1519–1531. Emperor of the "Holy Roman Empire" in 1519-1556. He waged wars with the Ottoman Empires, led military operations against the Protestants. For some time, his power extended to almost all of continental Europe.

8. The heroes of the epic poem by Homer (not later than the 8th century BC) "Iliad", whose duel, which ended in the death of Hector, is one of the popular images in world culture for the metaphorical designation of an uncompromising and cruel fight.

9. Lines from a poem by A.S. Pushkin "Napoleon" (1823).

10. Religious, social and ideological movement in Western Europe in the 16th century, directed against the Catholic Church and its teachings and resulting in the formation of Protestant churches.

11. This refers to the Great French Revolution of 1789-1794, which overthrew the monarchy in France and marked the beginning of the death of the feudal-absolutist system in Europe, clearing the ground for the development of bourgeois and democratic reforms.

12. Corpus Domini - the feast of the "body of the Lord", one of the most magnificent and solemn holidays of the Catholic Church.

13. The Rhine is a river in the West of Germany, in the cultural and historical sense, personifying the symbolic border between the German and French territories.

14. Tacitus Publius Cornelius (about 58 - after 117), famous Roman historian writer.

15.Comm! Komm! - Come, come (to me) (German) –– The words of Mephistopheles, addressed to the choir of angels, in one of the final scenes of the tragedy "Faust" by the German poet and thinker Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832).

16. The main character of the opera of the same name by Carl Weber (1786–1826) Freishitz (Magic Shooter). In this case, it serves as a metaphor for timidity and excessive modesty.

17. We are talking about the protagonist of the unfinished poem of the same name by the English poet George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) Don Juan, a bored romantic traveler trying to fill the emptiness of his life with the search for adventure and new passions. Byron's image of Don Juan served as A.S. Pushkin one of the sources for creating the literary hero of the novel in verse "Eugene Onegin".

18. This refers to Sergei Semenovich Uvarov (1786–1855), Minister of Public Education (1833–1849), author of the famous triad "Orthodoxy. Autocracy. Nationality", which formed the basis not only of Uvarov's concept of education in Russia, but of all politics and ideology of autocracy in the reign of Nicholas I.

original here Stepan Petrovich Shevyrev (1806-1864) is one of the few significant critics of the 19th century whose articles were never reprinted in the 20th century. Poet, translator, philologist, he studied at the Moscow Noble Boarding School; at the age of seventeen (in 1823) he entered the service of the Moscow Archive of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs, was a member of the literary circle of S.E. Raich, attended meetings of the "Lyubomudry", Russian Schellingians. Participates in the publication of the magazine "Moscow Bulletin"; from 1829 to 1832 he lived abroad, mainly in Italy - he was working on a book about Dante, he translated a lot from Italian. Returning to Russia, he taught literature at Moscow University, published in the magazine "Moscow Observer", and since 1841 became the leading critic of the magazine "Moskvityanin", published by M.P. Pogodin. In his poetic practice (see: Poems. L., 1939) and in critical views he was a supporter of the "poetry of thought" - according to Shevyrev and his associates, it should have replaced Pushkin's "school of harmonic accuracy"; the most significant contemporary poets were for Shevyrev V.G. Benediktov, A.S. Khomyakov and N.M. languages. In the program article "A Russian's View of the Education of Europe" ("Moskvityanin", 1841, No. 1), Shevyrev wrote about two forces that came face to face in "modern history" - the West and Russia. "Will he captivate us in his universal striving? Will he assimilate us?<...>Or will we persist in our originality?" - these are the questions that the critic of the new journal wants to answer. Surveying the current state of culture in Italy, England, France and Germany, Shevyrev sees decline everywhere. Only "great memories" remain in literature - Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, in France, "talkative magazines" cater to the "corrupted imagination and taste of the people", "telling about every exquisite crime, about every process that disfigures the history of human morality, about every execution, which, with a colorful story, can only give rise in the reader to a new victim for her" In Germany, the "perversion of thought" was expressed in the fact that philosophy moved away from religion - this is the "Achilles heel" of the "moral and spiritual being" of Germany. In contrast to the West, the Russians "have kept pure in themselves three fundamental feelings, in which the seed and pledge of our future development," is "an ancient religious feeling," "a feeling of state unity," the connection between "the king and the people," and "the consciousness of our nationality." These "three feelings a" and make up the famous formula of S. Uvarov ("Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality"), which was born in 1832 and determined the state ideology for a long time. Shevyrev was friends with Gogol; he is one of the recipients of "Selected passages from correspondence with friends", the author of two articles on "Dead Souls"; after the death of the writer, Shevyrev sorted through his papers and published (in 1855) "The Works of Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Found After His Death" (including the chapters of the second volume of "Dead Souls"). Shevyrev's correspondence with Gogol is partially published in the publication: Correspondence of N.V. Gogol in two volumes. M., 1988. T. II. Gogol, in a letter dated October 31 (November 12), 1842, thanked Shevyrev for the articles on Dead Souls and agreed with his remarks. We are publishing two articles by Shevyrev about Lermontov, published during the lifetime of the poet. Articles are printed according to modern spelling and punctuation (with the preservation of some features of the author's writing). Publication, introductory article and notes by L.I. Sobolev "Hero of our time" 1 After Pushkin's death, no new name, of course, flashed so brightly in the firmament of our literature as the name of Mr. Lermontov. Talent is decisive and varied, almost equally mastering both verse and prose. It usually happens that poets begin with lyricism: their dream first rushes in this indefinite ether of poetry, from which some then emerge into the living and varied world of epic, drama and romance, while others remain in it forever. Mr. Lermontov's talent was revealed from the very beginning in both ways: he is both an animated lyricist and a wonderful storyteller. Both worlds of poetry, our internal, spiritual, and external, real, are equally accessible to him. It rarely happens that in such a young talent, life and art appear in such an inseparable and close connection. Almost every work of Mr. Lermontov is an echo of some very lived minute. At the very beginning of the career, this keen observation, this ease, this skill with which the narrator grasps integral characters and reproduces them in art is remarkable. Experience cannot yet be so strong and rich in these years; but in gifted people it is replaced by a kind of foreboding by which they comprehend in advance the mysteries of life. Fate, striking such a soul, which at its birth received the gift of predicting life, immediately opens in it the source of poetry: so lightning, accidentally falling into a rock that conceals a source of living water, opens its way out ... and a new key beats from the open bosom . A true sense of life is in harmony in the new poet with a true sense of elegance. His creative power easily conquers images taken from life and gives them a living personality. On the performance, the seal of strict taste is visible in everything: there is no cloying sophistication, and from the first time this sobriety, this fullness and brevity of expression, which are characteristic of more experienced talents, and in youth signify the power of an extraordinary gift, are especially striking. In the poet, in the poet, even more than in the narrator, we see a connection with his predecessors, we notice their influence, which is very understandable: for the new generation must begin where others left off; in poetry, for all the suddenness of its most brilliant manifestations, there must be a memory of tradition. The poet, no matter how original, but everything has its educators. But we will notice with particular pleasure that the influences to which the new poet was subjected are varied, that he does not have any favorite teacher exclusively. This already speaks in favor of its originality. But there are many works in which he himself is visible in style, his bright feature is noticeable. With special cordiality, we are ready on the first pages of our criticism to welcome fresh talent at its first appearance and willingly dedicate a detailed and sincere analysis of the "Hero of Our Time", as one of the most remarkable works of our modern literature. After the English, as a people, on their ships, inspired by vapors, embracing all the lands of the world, there is, of course, no other people who in their literary works could represent such a rich variety of terrain as the Russians. In Germany, in the meager world of reality, you will inevitably, like Jean Paul or Hoffmann, venture into the world of fantasy and with its creations replace the somewhat monotonous poverty of the essential life of nature. But is that the case with us? All climates at hand; so many peoples who speak in unknown languages ​​and keep unopened treasures of poetry; we have humanity in all forms, which it had from the times of Homeric to ours. Ride all over Russia at certain times of the year - and you will pass through winter, autumn, spring and summer. Aurora borealis, nights of the hot south, fiery ice of the seas of the north, azure sky of midday, mountains in eternal snows, contemporary to the world; flat steppes without one hillock, rivers-seas, smoothly flowing; rivers-waterfalls, nurseries of mountains; swamps with one cranberry; vineyards, fields with lean bread; fields strewn with rice, Petersburg salons with all the panache and luxury of our age; yurts of nomadic peoples who have not yet settled down; Taglioni 3 on the stage of a magnificently lit theater, with the sounds of a European orchestra; a heavy Kamchadal woman in front of the Yukaghirs 4 , with the sound of wild instruments... And we have all this at the same time, in one minute of being!.. And all of Europe is at hand... And seven days later we are now in Paris... And where we are not?.. We are everywhere - on the steamships of the Rhine, the Danube, near the coast of Italy ... We are everywhere, perhaps, except for our Russia ... Wonderful land! .. What if it were possible to fly over you, high, high, and suddenly take a look at you! Lomonosov 5 dreamed about that, but we are already forgetting the old man. All our poets of genius were aware of this magnificent diversity of the Russian countryside... After his first work, which was born in a pure realm of fantasy nurtured by Ariost, 6 Pushkin began to paint his first picture from real life from the Caucasus... 7 Then the Crimea, Odessa, Bessarabia, the interior of Russia, Ieterburg, Moscow, the Urals alternately nourished his riotous muse ... It is remarkable that our new poet also begins with the Caucasus. .. No wonder the imagination of many of our writers was carried away by this country. Here, in addition to the magnificent landscape of nature, seducing the eyes of the poet, Europe and Asia converge in eternal irreconcilable enmity. Here Russia, civilly organized, repulses these ever-torn streams of mountain peoples who do not know what a social contract is ... Here is our eternal struggle, invisible to the giant of Russia ... Here is the duel of two forces, educated and wild ... Here is life !.. How can the poet's imagination not rush here? This bright contrast of two peoples is attractive to him, of which the life of one is cut out according to European standards, is bound by the conditions of the accepted hostel, the life of the other is wild, unbridled and does not recognize anything but liberty. Here, our artificial, sought-after passions, cooled by light, converge with the stormy natural passions of a person who has not submitted to any rational bridle. Here there are extremes curious and striking for the observer-psychologist. This world of the people, completely different from ours, is already poetry in itself: we do not love what is ordinary, what always surrounds us, what we have seen and heard enough of. From this we understand why the talent of the poet we are talking about was revealed so quickly and freshly at the sight of the mountains of the Caucasus. Pictures of majestic nature have a strong effect on the receptive soul, born for poetry, and it blooms quickly, like a rose when the rays of the morning sun strike. The landscape was ready. The vivid images of the highlanders' life struck the poet; memories of metropolitan life mixed with them; secular society was instantly transferred to the gorges of the Caucasus - and all this was revived by the artist's thought. Having explained somewhat the possibility of the appearance of Caucasian stories, we will move on to details. Let us pay attention in order to the pictures of nature and locality, to the characters of the faces, to the features of secular life, and then we will merge all this into the character of the hero of the story, in which, as in the center, we will try to catch the main idea of ​​the author. Marlinsky 8 accustomed us to the brightness and variegation of colors, with which he liked to paint pictures of the Caucasus. It seemed to Marlinsky's ardent imagination that it was not enough just to obediently observe this magnificent nature and convey it with a true and apt word. He wanted to force images and language; he threw paints from his palette in a herd, no matter what, and thought: the more colorful and colorful it is, the more similar the list will be to the original. Pushkin painted differently: his brush was true to nature and at the same time perfectly beautiful. In his Prisoner of the Caucasus, the landscape of snowy mountains and auls blocked or, better, suppressed the whole event: here people are for the landscape, as in Claudius Lorrain 9 , and not a landscape for people, as in Nicholas Poussin 10 or Dominichino 11 . But "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" has been almost forgotten by readers since "Ammalat-Bek" and "Mulla-Nur" rushed into their eyes with the diversity of generously smeared colors. Therefore, with particular pleasure, we can note in praise of the new Caucasian painter that he was not carried away by the variegation and brightness of colors, but, true to the taste of the elegant, subdued his sober brush to pictures of nature and wrote them off without any exaggeration and cloying sophistication. The road through Gud-gora and Krestovaya, the Kaishauri valley are described correctly and vividly. Whoever has not been to the Caucasus, but has seen the Alps, can guess that this must be true. But, by the way, it should be noted that the author is not too fond of dwelling on the pictures of nature, which flicker in him only sporadically. He prefers people and hurries past the gorges of the Caucasus, past the turbulent streams to a living person, to his passions, to his joys and sorrows, to his life, educated and nomadic. It is better: it is a good sign in a developing talent. In addition, the pictures of the Caucasus were so often described to us that it would not be bad to repeat them in all their details. The author very skillfully placed them in the very distance - and they do not freeze events with him. More curious for us are the pictures of the life of the highlanders or the life of our society in the midst of magnificent nature. This is what the author did. In his two main stories - "Bela" and "Princess Mary" - he depicted two pictures, of which the first was taken more from the life of the Caucasian tribes, the second from the secular life of Russian society. There is a Circassian wedding, with its conventional ceremonies, dashing raids of sudden riders, terrible abreks, their and Cossack lassoes, eternal danger, livestock trade, abductions, a sense of revenge, violation of oaths. There is Asia, which people, according to Maxim Maksimovich, "are like rivers: you can't rely on anything! ..". But the story of the kidnapping of a horse, Karagez, which is included in the plot of the story, is the most lively, most striking of all... It is aptly captured from the life of the highlanders. A horse for a Circassian is everything. On it he is the king of the whole world and chuckles at fate. Kazbich had a horse Karagyoz, black as pitch, legs - strings, and eyes - no worse than those of a Circassian. Kazbich is in love with Bela, but does not want her for a horse... Azamat, Bela's brother, betrays his sister just to take the horse away from Kazbich... This whole story is taken straight from the Circassian customs. In another picture, you see Russian educated society. On these magnificent mountains, the nest of wild and free life, it brings with it its mental ailments, grafted onto it from a stranger, and bodily - the fruits of its artificial life. Here are empty, cold passions, here is the intricacy of spiritual debauchery, here is skepticism, dreams, gossip, intrigues, a ball, a game, a duel ... How shallow is this whole world at the foot of the Caucasus! People really will seem like ants when you look at these passions of theirs from the height of the mountains touching the sky. This whole world is a faithful fragment of our living and empty reality. It is the same everywhere... in Petersburg and in Moscow, on the waters of Kislovodsk and Ems. Everywhere he spreads his idle laziness, slander, petty passions. To show the author that we followed all the details of his paintings with all due attention and compared them with reality, we take the liberty of making two remarks that relate to our Moscow. The novelist, depicting faces borrowed from secular life, usually contains in them common features that belong to an entire estate. By the way, he takes Princess Ligovskaya out of Moscow and characterizes her with the words: "She loves seductive anecdotes, and sometimes she herself says indecent things when her daughter is not in the room." This feature is completely wrong and sins against the terrain. It is true that Princess Ligovskaya spent only the last half of her life in Moscow; but since she is 45 years old in the story, we think that at 22 and a half the tone of Moscow society could have weaned her off this habit, even if she had acquired it somewhere. For some time now, it has become fashionable for our journalists and narrators to attack Moscow and slander it with terrible ... Everything that supposedly cannot come true in another city is sent to Moscow ... Moscow, under the pen of our narrators, is not only some someday China - for, thanks to travelers, we also have reliable news about China - no, it is rather some kind of Atlantis, a collection of fables, where our novelists demolish everything that the whim of their wayward imagination creates ... Not even so long ago (we will be sincere before the public) one of our most curious novelists, who captivates readers with his wit and liveliness of the story, sometimes quite correctly noting the mores of our society, came up with the idea that it was as if in Moscow some kind of illiterate versifier who came from the provinces to take a student's exam and did not who withstood it, caused such turmoil in our society, such conversations, such a confluence of carriages, that it was as if the police had noticed it ... 12 Unfortunately, we have, as well as carried illiterate people are poets, unable to pass the student exam... But when did they cause such unheard-of turmoil?.. When did the provinces send us such marvelous divas? .. However, this fiction is at least good-natured... It even speaks in favor of our capital in its main idea. There were examples among us that the arrival of a poet, of course, not an illiterate, but a famous one, was an event in the life of our society ... Let us recall the first appearance of Pushkin, and we can be proud of such a memory ... We still see how in all societies, at all balls, the first attention was directed to our guest, as in the mazurka and cotillion, our ladies constantly chose the poet ... The reception from Moscow to Pushkin is one of the most remarkable pages of his biography 13 . But there are also malicious slanders against our capital in other stories. We readily think that the author of A Hero of Our Time stands above this, especially since he himself, in one of his remarkable poems, has already attacked these slanders on behalf of the public. This is what he put into the mouth of the modern reader: And if you come across Stories in a native way, Then, surely, Moscow is laughed at Or officials are scolded 14 . But in the stories of our author, we met more than one slander against our princesses in the person of Princess Ligovskaya, who, however, may be an exception. No, here is another epigram to the Moscow princesses, that they seem to look at young people with some contempt, that this is even a Moscow habit, that in Moscow they only eat forty-year-old wits ... All these remarks, it is true, put into the mouth of the doctor Werner, who, however, according to the author, is distinguished by the keen eye of an observer, but not in this case ... It is clear that he did not live in Moscow for long, during his youth, and some case that personally related to him, he accepted for a common habit ... He noticed that Moscow young ladies embark on learning - and adds: they are doing well! - and we are very willing to add the same. To be engaged in literature does not mean to indulge in learning, but let the young ladies of Moscow do it. What is better for writers and for society itself, which can only benefit from such activities of the fair sex? Isn't this better than cards, than gossip, than stories, than gossip?.. But let's return from the episode, allowed by our local relations, to the subject itself. From an outline of the two main paintings from the Caucasian and secular Russian life, let's move on to the characters. Let's start with side stories, but not with the hero of the stories, about whom we must talk in more detail, because in him is the main connection of the work with our life and the author's idea. Of the secondary persons, we must, of course, give the first place to Maxim Maksimovich. What an integral character of a native Russian good man, into whom the subtle infection of Western education has not penetrated, who, with the imaginary outward coldness of a warrior who has seen enough of the danger, retained all the ardor, all the life of the soul; who loves nature inwardly, without admiring it, loves the music of a bullet, because his heart beats faster at the same time. .. How he goes after the sick Bela, how he consoles her! With what impatience he waits for his old acquaintance Pechorin, having heard of his return! How sad for him that Bela, at her death, did not remember him! How heavy his heart was when Pechorin indifferently extended his cold hand to him! Fresh, untouched nature! A pure child's soul in an old warrior! Here is the type of this character in which our ancient Russia responds! And how lofty is his Christian humility when, denying all his qualities, he says: "What am I to be remembered before death?" For a long, long time we have not met in our literature with such a sweet and sympathetic character, which is all the more pleasant for us because it is taken from the indigenous Russian way of life. We even complained a little about the author because he did not seem to share the noble indignation with Maxim Maksimovich at the moment when Pechorin, in absent-mindedness or for some other reason, held out his hand to him when he wanted to throw himself on his neck. Grushnitsky follows Maxim Maksimovich. His personality is certainly unattractive. This is, in the full sense of the word, an empty fellow. He is vain... Having nothing to be proud of, he is proud of his gray cadet overcoat. He loves without love. He plays the role of a disappointed one - and that's why Pechorin doesn't like him; this latter does not love Grushnitsky for the same feeling that it is natural for us not to love a person who mimics us and turns into an empty mask that there is a living essentiality in us. It does not even have that feeling that distinguished our former military men - a sense of honor. This is some kind of geek from society, capable of the most vile and black deed. The author reconciles us somewhat with this creation of his shortly before his death, when Grushnitsky himself admits that he despises himself. Dr. Werner is a materialist and skeptic, like many doctors of the new generation. Pechorin must have liked him, because they both understand each other. The vivid description of his face remains especially memorable. Both Circassians in "Bel", Kazbich and Azamat, are described by common features belonging to this tribe, in which a single difference in characters cannot yet reach such a degree as in the circle of a society with a developed education. Let's pay attention to the women, especially the two heroines, both of whom were sacrificed to the hero. Bela and Princess Mary form two bright opposites between themselves, like the two societies from which each came out, and belong to the most remarkable creations of the poet, especially the first. Bela is a wild, timid child of nature, in whom the feeling of love develops simply, naturally, and, having developed once, becomes an incurable wound of the heart. The princess is not like that - a work of an artificial society, in which fantasy was revealed before the heart, who imagined the hero of the novel in advance and wants to forcibly embody him in one of her admirers. Bela very simply fell in love with that person who, although he kidnapped her from her parents' house, did it out of passion for her, as she thinks: he first devoted himself entirely to her, he showered the child with gifts, he delights all her minutes; seeing her coldness, he pretends to be desperate and ready for anything ... The princess is not like that: in her all natural feelings are suppressed by some kind of harmful dreaminess, some kind of artificial education. We love that cordial human movement in her that made her raise a glass to poor Grushnitsky when he, leaning on his crutch, tried in vain to bend over to him; we also understand that she blushed at that time; but we are annoyed at her when she looks back at the gallery, afraid that her mother will not notice her beautiful deed. We do not at all complain about the author for this: on the contrary, we give all the justice to his observation, which skillfully seized the trait of prejudice, which does not bring honor to a society that calls itself Christian. We forgive the princess also for the fact that she was carried away in Grushnitsky by his gray overcoat and took up in him an imaginary victim of the persecution of fate ... Let us note in passing that this feature is not new, taken from another princess, drawn for us by one of our best narrators 15. But in Princess Mary this hardly stemmed from a natural feeling of compassion, which, like a pearl, a Russian woman can be proud of ... No, in Princess Mary it was an outburst of sought-after feeling ... This was later proved by her love for Pechorin. She fell in love with that extraordinary thing that she was looking for, that phantom of her imagination, which she was so frivolously carried away ... Then the dream passed from mind to heart, for Princess Mary is also capable of natural feelings ... Bela, with her terrible death, dearly atoned for the frivolity of memory about her dead father. But the princess, by her fate, has just received what she deserves ... A sharp lesson to all princesses whose nature of feeling is suppressed by artificial education and whose heart is corrupted by fantasy! How sweet, how graceful is this Bela in her simplicity! How cloying is Princess Mary in the company of men, with all her calculated looks! Bela sings and dances because she wants to sing and dance and because she amuses her friend with it. Princess Mary sings in order to be listened to, and is annoyed when they do not listen. If it were possible to merge Bela and Mary into one person: that would be the ideal of a woman in whom nature would be preserved in all its charm, and secular education would be not just an external gloss, but something more essential in life. We do not consider it necessary to mention Vera, who is an intercalary person and not attractive in any way. This is one of the victims of the hero of the stories - and even more so the victim of the author's necessity to confuse the intrigue. We also do not pay attention to two small sketches - "Taman" and "Fatalist" - with two of the most significant. They only serve as an addition to developing a more character of the hero, especially the last story, where Pechorin's fatalism is visible, consistent with all his other properties. But in "Taman" we cannot ignore this smuggler, a bizarre creature, in which the airy uncertainty of the outline of Goethe's Mignon 16, hinted at by the author himself, and the graceful savagery of Esmeralda Hugo 17 have partly merged. But all these events, all the characters and details adjoin the hero of the story, Pechorin, like the threads of a web burdened with bright winged insects, adjoin a huge spider that entangled them with its web. Let us delve into the character of the hero of the story in detail - and in it we will reveal the main connection of the work with life, as well as the thought of the author. P Echorin is twenty-five years old. He looks like a boy, you would give him no more than twenty-three, but if you look more closely, you will certainly give him thirty. His face, although pale, is still fresh; after a long observation, you will notice in it traces of wrinkles crossing one another. His skin has a feminine tenderness, his fingers are pale and thin, in all movements of the body there are signs of nervous weakness. When he laughs, his eyes do not laugh ... because the soul burns in his eyes, and the soul in Pechorin has already dried up. But what kind of dead man is twenty-five years old, withered prematurely? What kind of boy is covered with wrinkles of old age? What is the reason for such a miraculous metamorphosis? Where is the inner root of the sickness that withered his soul and weakened his body? But let's listen to him. Here is what he himself says about his youth. In his first youth, from the moment he left the guardianship of his relatives, he began to enjoy wildly all the pleasures that money can get, and, of course, these pleasures disgusted him. He set off into the big world: he was tired of society; he fell in love with secular beauties, was loved, but their love irritated only his imagination and pride, and his heart remained empty ... He began to study, and he was tired of science. Then he became bored: in the Caucasus, he wanted to disperse his boredom with Chechen bullets, but he became even more bored. His soul, he says, is corrupted by the light, his imagination is restless, his heart is insatiable, everything is not enough for him, and his life becomes emptier day by day. There is a physical illness, which in the common people bears the untidy name of canine old age: it is the eternal hunger of the body, which cannot get enough of anything. This physical illness corresponds to a mental illness - boredom, the eternal hunger of a depraved soul, which seeks strong sensations and cannot get enough of them. This is the highest degree of apathy in a person, resulting from early disappointment, from a murdered or squandered youth. What is only apathy in the souls of those born without energy rises to the degree of hungry, insatiable boredom in the souls of the strong, called to action. The disease is one and the same, both in its root and character, but it differs only in the temperament that it attacks. This disease kills all human feelings, even compassion. Let us recall how Pechorin was delighted once when he noticed this feeling in himself after parting from Vera. We do not believe that the love for nature that the author ascribes to him could be preserved in this living dead. We do not believe that he could be forgotten in her paintings. In this case, the author spoils the integrity of the character - and hardly ascribes his own feeling to his hero. A person who loves music only for digestion, can he love nature? Eugene Onegin, who participated somewhat in the birth of Pechorin, suffered from the same disease; but she remained in him at the lowest degree of apathy, because Eugene Onegin was not endowed with spiritual energy, he did not suffer beyond apathy from the pride of the spirit, the thirst for power, which the new hero suffers. Pechorin was bored in Petersburg, he was bored in the Caucasus, he was going to be bored in Persia; but this boredom does not go unnoticed by those around him. Next to her, an irresistible pride of spirit was brought up in him, which knows no barriers and which sacrifices everything that comes in the way of a bored hero, if only he had fun. Pechorin wanted a boar at all costs - he would get it. He has an innate passion to contradict, like all people who suffer from the lust for power of the spirit. He is incapable of friendship, because friendship requires concessions that are offensive to his pride. He looks at all the occasions of his life as a means to find some antidote to the boredom that consumes him. His highest joy is to disappoint others! Immeasurable pleasure for him - to pick a flower, breathe it for a minute and throw it away! He himself admits that he feels in himself this insatiable greed that consumes everything that comes his way; he looks at the sufferings and joys of others only in relation to himself, as food that supports his spiritual strength. Ambition is suppressed in him by circumstances, but it manifested itself in a different form, in a thirst for power, in the pleasure of subordinating everything that surrounds him to his will ... Happiness itself, in his opinion, is only intense pride ... The first suffering gives him the concept of pleasure in torturing another ... There are moments when he understands a vampire ... Half of his soul has dried up, and another remains, living only to kill everything around ... We merged into one all the features of this terrible character - and we became scary at the sight of the inner portrait of Pechorin! Whom did he attack in the impulses of his indomitable lust for power? On whom does he feel the exorbitant pride of his soul? On poor women whom he despises. His glance at the fair sex reveals a materialist who has read French novels of the new school. He notices breed in women, as in horses; all the signs that he likes in them relate only to the properties of the body; he is occupied by a correct nose, or velvety eyes, or white teeth, or some delicate fragrance ... In his opinion, the first touch decides the whole matter of love. If a woman only makes him feel that he must marry her, forgive me, love! His heart turns to stone. One obstacle only irritates the imaginary feeling of tenderness in him... Let us remember how, given the opportunity to lose Vera, she became dearest to him... He threw himself on his horse and flew to her... The horse died on the way, and he cried like a child only that he could not achieve his goal, because his inviolable power seemed to be offended ... But he recalls this moment of weakness with annoyance and says that anyone, looking at his tears, would turn away from him with contempt. How his inviolable pride is heard in these words! This 25-year-old voluptuary came across many more women on the way, but two were especially remarkable: Bela and Princess Mary. He corrupted the first sensually and he himself was carried away by feelings. The second he corrupted spiritually, because he could not corrupt sensually; he joked without love and played with love, he sought entertainment for his boredom, he amused himself with the princess, like a well-fed cat amuses himself with a mouse ... and here he did not escape boredom, because, as a man experienced in matters of love, as a connoisseur of a woman's heart, he predicted in advance all the drama that he played out at his whim ... Having irritated the dream and the heart of the unfortunate girl, he ended everything by saying to her: I do not love you. We in no way think that the past had a strong effect on Pechorin, so that he would not forget anything, as he says in his journal. This trait does not follow from anything, and it again violates the integrity of this character. A person who, after burying Bela, could laugh that same day, and at the reminder of Maxim Maksimovich only turn slightly pale and turn away, such a person is incapable of submitting himself to the power of the past. This soul is strong, but callous, through which all impressions glide almost imperceptibly. This is a cold and calculating esprit fort (smart [ fr.]. -- L.S.), which cannot be capable either of being changed by nature, which requires feeling, or of keeping in itself traces of the past, too heavy and ticklish for its irritable self. These egoists usually take care of themselves and try to avoid unpleasant sensations. Let us recall how Pechorin closed his eyes, noticing between the crevices of the rocks the bloody corpse of Grushnitsky, whom he had killed ... He did this then only to avoid an unpleasant impression. If the author ascribes to Pechorin such a power that has passed over him, then this is hardly to justify the possibility of his journal. But we think that people like Pechorin do not and cannot keep their notes - and this is the main mistake in relation to execution. It would have been much better if the author had told all these events in his own name: he would have done so more skillfully both in relation to the possibility of fiction and in art, because by his personal participation as a narrator he could somewhat mitigate the unpleasant moral impression made by the hero of the story. Such a mistake led to another: Pechorin's story does not differ in the least from the story of the author himself - and, of course, the nature of the first should have been reflected in a special feature in the very style of his journal. And let us extract in a few words all that we have said about the character of the hero. Apathy, a consequence of corrupted youth and all the vices of education, gave rise to tedious boredom in him, while boredom, combined with the exorbitant pride of the power-hungry spirit, produced a villain in Pechorin. The main root of all evil is Western education, which is alien to any sense of faith. Pechorin, as he himself says, is convinced of only one thing, that he was born on one nasty evening, that nothing is worse than death, and that death cannot be avoided. These words are the key to all his exploits: they contain the key to his whole life. Meanwhile, this soul was a strong soul that could accomplish something lofty ... In one place of his journal, he himself recognizes this vocation in himself, saying: “Why did I live? For what purpose was I born? .. But surely she existed, and the high appointment was true to me, therefore I feel strength in my soul ... From the crucible [empty and ungrateful passions] I came out hard and cold, like iron, but I have lost forever the ardor of noble aspirations ... "When you look at strength this perished soul, it becomes pitiful for her, as one of the victims of the grave illness of the century ... Having studied in detail the character of the hero of the story, in which all events are concentrated, we come to two main questions, the resolution of which we conclude our reasoning: 1) how this character is connected with modern life? 2) is it possible in the world of fine art? But before resolving these two questions, let us turn to the author himself and ask him: what does he himself think of Pechorin? Will he not give us some hint of his thought and its connection with the life of a contemporary? On page 140 of the 1st part, the author says: "Maybe some readers will want to know my opinion about the character of Pechorin? - My answer is the title of this book. "Yes, this is an evil irony," they will say. - I don’t know ". So, according to the author, Pechorin is the hero of our time. This expresses his view of life, contemporary to us, and the main idea of ​​the work. If this is so, then our age is seriously ill - and what is its main ailment? Judging by the patient with whom our poet's fantasy debuts, this ailment of the age lies in the pride of the spirit and in the baseness of the satiated body! And indeed, if we turn to the West, we will find that the bitter irony of the author is a painful truth. The age of proud philosophy, which with the human spirit thinks to comprehend all the secrets of the world, and the age of vain industry, which vying with all the whims of a body exhausted by pleasures - such an age, by these two extremes, expresses itself the malady that overcomes it. Is not the pride of the human spirit visible in these abuses of personal freedom of will and reason, which are noticeable in France and Germany? Corruption of morals, degrading the body, is it not an evil recognized as necessary among many peoples of the West and entered into their customs? Between these two extremes, how can the soul not perish, how can the soul not wither, without nourishing love, without faith and hope, which alone can sustain its earthly existence? Poetry also told us about this terrible disease of the century. Penetrate with all the power of thought into the depths of her greatest works, in which she is always faithful to modern life and guesses all her intimate secrets. What did Goethe express in his Faust, this complete type of our century, if not the same malady? Does not Faust represent the pride of an unsatisfied spirit and voluptuousness combined together? Are not Byron's Manfred and Don Juan the essence of these two halves, merged into one in Faust, each of which appeared to Byron separately in a separate hero? Manfred is not the pride of the human spirit? Don Juan is not the personification of voluptuousness? All these three heroes are the three great ailments of our age, three great ideals in which poetry has combined everything that, in disparate features, represents the disease of modern humanity. These gigantic characters, which the imagination of the two greatest poets of our century has created, feed for the most part all the poetry of the modern West, depicting in detail what in the works of Goethe and Byron is in amazing and great integrity. But this is precisely one of the many reasons for the decline of Western poetry: what is ideally great in Faust, Manfred and Don Juan, what has in them a universal significance in relation to modern life, what is elevated to an artistic ideal. , - is reduced in a multitude of French, English and other dramas, poems and stories to some kind of vulgar and base reality! Evil, being morally ugly in itself, can be admitted into the world of grace only on the condition of a deep moral significance, by which its disgusting being in itself is somewhat softened. Evil, as the main subject of a work of art, can only be represented by large features of the ideal type. This is how it appears in Dante's Inferno, in Shakespeare's Macbeth, and, finally, in the three great works of our age. Poetry can choose the ills of this latter as the main subjects of its creations, but only on a large, significant scale; if, however, she breaks them up, delving into every detail of the decay of life, and here she draws the main inspiration for her little creatures, then she will humiliate her being - both elegant and moral - and descend below reality itself. Poetry sometimes allows evil as a hero into its world, but in the form of a Titan, not a Pygmy. That is why only brilliant poets of the first degree mastered the difficult task of portraying some kind of Macbeth or Cain. We do not consider it necessary to add that, moreover, evil can be introduced everywhere episodically, for our life is not made up of good alone. The great malady reflected in the great works of poetry of the century was in the West the result of those two maladies of which I have had occasion to speak, giving readers my view of the modern education of Europe. But from where, from what data could we develop the same disease that the West suffers from? What have we done to deserve it? If we, in our close acquaintance with him, could become infected with something, then, of course, with only one imaginary ailment, but not real. Let us use an example: sometimes, after long, short intercourse with a dangerously ill person, we sometimes imagine that we ourselves are afflicted with the same disease. Here, in our opinion, lies the key to the creation of the character that we are discussing. Pechorin, of course, has nothing titanic in him; he cannot have it; he is one of those pygmies of evil with whom the narrative and dramatic literature of the West is now so abundant. In these words, our answer to the second of the two questions proposed above, the question of aesthetics. But this is not yet its main drawback. Pechorin has nothing essential in himself in relation to purely Russian life, which from its past could not spew such a character. Pechorin is only a ghost thrown at us by the West, a shadow of his illness, flashing in the fantasies of our poets, un mirage de l "occident (Western ghost [fr.]. - L.S.) ... There he is the hero of the real world , we have only a hero of fantasy - and in this sense the hero of our time ... This is the essential shortcoming of the work ... With the same sincerity with which we first welcomed the author's brilliant talent in creating many integral characters, in descriptions, in the gift story, with the same sincerity we condemn the main idea of ​​​​creation, personified in the character of the hero Yes, and the magnificent landscape of the Caucasus, and the wonderful sketches of mountain life, and the graceful-naive Bela, and the artificial princess, and the fantastic minx Tamani, and the glorious, kind Maxim Maksimovich, and even the empty little Grushnitsky, and all the subtle features of the secular society of Russia - everything, everything is chained in the stories to the ghost of the main character, which does not expire from this life, everything is sacrificed to him, and in this the main and essential ny lack of image. Despite the fact that the work of the new poet, even in its essential shortcoming, has a deep meaning in our Russian life. Our existence is divided, so to speak, into two sharp, almost opposite halves, of which one lives in the essential world, in a purely Russian world, the other in some kind of abstract world of ghosts: we actually live our Russian life and think, dream more to live the life of the West, with which we have no contact in the history of the past. In our fundamental, in our real Russian life, we store a rich grain for future development, which, being flavored only with the useful fruits of Western education, without its harmful potions, on our fresh soil can grow into a magnificent tree; but in our dreamy life, which the West casts on us, we nervously, imaginatively suffer from its ailments and childishly try on our face with a mask of disappointment, which does not follow from anything. That is why we, in our dreams, in this terrible nightmare with which Mephistopheles is strangling us in the West, seem to ourselves to be much worse than we are in reality. Apply this to the work being analyzed and it will be perfectly clear to you. All the content of Mr. Lermontov's stories, except for Pechorin, belongs to our essential life; but Pechorin himself, with the exception of his apathy, which was only the beginning of his moral illness, belongs to the dreamy world produced in us by the false reflection of the West. This is a ghost, only in the world of our imagination having materiality. And in this respect, the work of Mr. Lermontov bears a deep truth and even moral importance. He gives us this ghost, which does not belong to him alone, but to many of the living generations, for something real - and we become frightened, and this is the useful effect of his terrible picture. Poets who have received from nature such a gift for predicting life as Mr. Lermontov can be studied in their works with great benefit, in relation to the moral state of our society. In such poets, without their knowledge, life is reflected, contemporary to them: they, like an airy harp, convey with their sounds about those secret movements of the atmosphere that our dull feeling cannot even notice. Let us put to good use the lesson offered by the poet. There are illnesses in a person that begin with imagination and then, little by little, pass into materiality. Let us warn ourselves that the phantom of illness, strongly depicted by the brush of fresh talent, does not pass for us from the world of idle dreams into the world of hard reality.

Notes

1. For the first time - "Moskvityanin". 1841.Ch. I, N 2 (as part of the analysis of several contemporary works in the "Criticism" section). We print from the first publication. Lermontov, studying at Moscow University, listened to Shevyrev's lectures and, as the poet's biographers write, treated him with respect. Shevyrev is dedicated to the 1829 poem "Romance" ("Dissatisfied with the insidious life ..."). Nevertheless, Shevyrev became one of the most likely recipients of the "Preface", published in the second edition (1841) and responding to critics of the novel. 2. Jean-Paul (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter) (1763-1825) - German writer; about it in more detail - will enter. article by Al.V. Mikhailov to the ed.: Jean-Paul. Preparatory School of Aesthetics. M., 1981. 3. It can be either Philippe Taglioni (1777-1871), choreographer, or Paul (1808-1884), son of Philip, famous dancer, or Mary, daughter of Philip (1804-1884), dancer who left the stage in 1847. 4. Kamchadals and Yukagirs are peoples inhabiting Kamchatka and Yakutia. 5. A frequent motif in Lomonosov's poetry - cf., for example: "Fly up above lightning, muse ..." ("Ode on the arrival ... of Elisaveta Petrovna from Moscow to St. Petersburg in 1742"). 6. This refers to the poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila", in which they saw the influence of the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto (1477-1533), the author of the poem "Furious Roland", where chivalrous motives are combined with fairy-tale ones. 7. We are talking about the poem "Prisoner of the Caucasus" (1821). 8. Marlinsky (a pseudonym of Alexander Alexandrovich Bestuzhev, 1797-1837) - the author of romantic Caucasian stories, in particular Ammalat-Bek (1832) and Mulla-Nur (1836) mentioned below. 9. Lorrain Claude (real surname Gellet; 1600-1682) - French painter, author of solemn landscapes (for example, the series "The Seasons"). 10. Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) - French painter, author of paintings on mythological and religious themes, as well as paintings "Landscape with Polyphemus" and a series of "Seasons". 11. Dominichino (Domenichino, real name Domenico Tsampieri; 1581-1641) - Italian painter, author of paintings with local color, ideal images, clear composition ("Diana's Hunt"). 12. This refers to the story of A.F. Veltman "A visitor from the county, or turmoil in the capital" ("Moskvityanin", 1841, part I). Newest edition: Alexander Veltman. Leads and stories. M., 1979. 13. We are talking about Pushkin's arrival in Moscow in 1826, when he was brought with a courier from Mikhailovsky to Nicholas I and, after a conversation with the tsar (September 8), returned from exile. The poet read his works (including "Boris Godunov") at S. A. Sobolevsky, D.V. Venevitinov, met M.P. Pogodin and S.P. Shevyrev; the poet was welcomed at the Bolshoi Theatre. For more details, see: Chronicle of the life and work of Alexander Pushkin: In 4 volumes. M., 1999. T.II. 14. From the poem "Journalist, reader and writer" (1840). 15. This refers to the story of V.F. Odoevsky "Princess Zizi" (1839). 16. The heroine of the novel I.V. Goethe "The Student Years of Wilhelm Meister" (1777-1796). 17. The heroine of the novel by V. Hugo "Notre Dame Cathedral" (1831).

The forties brought that significant split in the Russian Spirit, which was expressed in the struggle between the Westernizers and the Slavophiles. The groupings themselves were formed a long time ago - for already in the 18th century there were two currents in the Russian public, and in the 19th century, even before the 40s, their influence
it got stronger and stronger. However, as early as the 1930s, as mentioned above, the trend that later took shape as Slavophilism did not deviate much from the then “Westernism” - it is no coincidence, after all. that one of the leaders of Slavophilism, I. V. Kireevsky, in 1829 called his journal "European". Not separating themselves from Europe, but already more and more critical of it and more and more thinking about the "historical mission" of Russia, the future Slavophiles (Belinsky then joined them) did not yet stand out in a special group. The Moscow and St. Petersburg disputes ended, however, in the early 1940s with the declaration of a sharp war between the two camps—the Slavophils became, if you like, anti-Westernists. However, this moment in their mindset was not the main and decisive one; Slavophiles were only staunch defenders of Russian originality, and they saw the core and creative basis of this originality in Orthodoxy - and this religious moment is actually

separated them completely from the Westerners. Of course, Slavophilism is very complicated, especially if it is presented as a “system”, which it actually was not, because the so-called older Slavophiles (A. S. Khomyakov, I. V. Kireevsky, K. S. Aksakov, Yu. F. Samarin) are still very dissimilar to each other. But it is precisely the complexity of Slavophilism that does not allow us to reduce it to one anti-Westernism - a secondary and derivative moment. Actually, the Slavophils did not even have a particular "disappointment" in Europe, although there was a significant repulsion from it - and this throws its light on how the problem of Europe was posed by them. The main pathos of Slavophilism lies in the feeling of having found a foothold - in the combination of national consciousness and the truth of Orthodoxy; the creative path of the Slavophiles was in the development of this religious-national idea - and from here their scientific-literary and social and philosophical positions stemmed - from here their attitude towards the West was determined. Contrary to the current word usage, according to which anti-Westernism is identified with Slavophilism, it can just be argued that in Slavophilism, for all the sharpness and intensity of their criticism of the West, anti-Westernism was not only not strong (compared to other similar trends), but was even constantly softened by their Christian universalism. , this historical transcription of the universal spirit, the spirit of which in Orthodoxy it was they who so deeply felt and expressed. Defense of Russian originality and a sharp, often even biased fight against Westernism, against the absurd

or the deliberate transfer of Western customs, ideas, and life forms to Russian soil; finally, a keen sense of the religious unity of the West and the impossibility of ignoring the religious difference between the West and Russia—all this was not anti-Westernism at all, but was even combined with a peculiar and deep love for it. In order to feel this more clearly among the Slavophils, let us cite, for contrast, a few strokes precisely from the anti-Western attacks that were already being heard at that time.

In 1840, the journal "Lighthouse of Modern Education and Education" began to appear under the editorship of S. Burachka and P. Korsakov. Although this magazine cannot be placed higher than third-rate publications in terms of its share, it is interesting in terms of its anti-Western tendencies. Burachek, in one of his articles, looked forward to the death of the West and the time when "in the West, on the ashes of the kingdom of the pagan (!), the kingdom of this world, the East will shine." In an effort to protect Russian identity from the harmful influence of Western enlightenment, Mayak gave scope to vivid anti-Westernism. Much softer, but no less characteristic, is the famous article by Shevyrev “The Russian View on the Modern Education of Europe”, published in another journal that then arose, “Moskvityanin” (in 1841) ". Back in 1830, in a letter to A. Shevyrev wrote to V. Venevitinov: “For the time being I am devoted to the West, but without it we cannot exist.” Even Shevyrev ended his article of 1841 with the following words: “May Russia be a force that preserves and observes in relation to the West, yes she will keep

the good of all mankind the treasures of his great past". These words reflected that undeniable respect for the West, for its past, which Shevyrev had, but in relation to the present, Shevyrev was stern - although he, of course, does not rejoice at those "shouts of despair that rush from the West." “We will accept them only as a lesson for the future, as warning in contemporary relations with the languishing West. However, clear signs of extinction are already visible in Europe. “In our sincere, friendly, close relations with the West,” he writes, “we do not notice that we are dealing, as it were, with a person who carries within himself an evil, contagious disease, surrounded by an atmosphere of dangerous breath. We kiss with him, embrace, share the meal of thought, drink the cup of feelings. and we do not notice the hidden poison in our careless communication, we do not smell in the fun of the feast - the future corpse, which he already smells". This feeling of the “decay of the West” is completely different from what we had previously seen in Gogol, in Shevyrev (and not in him alone), the then popular idea of ​​the “decrepitude” of the West was combined with the idea that creative life in the West had not only ended, but that processes of decomposition are already underway; revival for Europe can only come from Russia. This last thought was especially vividly carried out in the same journal by Pogodin in his article "Peter the Great". When Pogodin was abroad (1839), he wrote in one letter: “Why do you Europeans boast about your enlightenment? What is it

worth how to look into the interior (Pogodin's italics) of France, England, Austria? There is a brilliant fruit, another, a third on this tree, and what else? Broken coffin! “Tell me,” he writes from Geneva, “why is our age called “enlightened”? In what wild and barbarous land are people subjected to greater misfortunes than within Europe? Pogodin, however, also had other moods, as can be seen from the article on Peter the Great. “Both educations, Western and Eastern, taken separately, are one-sided, incomplete, they must unite, replenish one another and produce a new complete formation, Western-Eastern, European-Russian.” Pogodin lives with a “sweet dream” that our fatherland is destined to show the world the fruits of this longed-for, universal enlightenment and sanctify Western inquisitiveness with Eastern faith. Even later (in 1852) he wrote: “Providence has given the West its task, it has given another task to the East. The West is just as necessary in higher economy as the East.

We have quoted these lines in order to soften the usual harsh judgment about the group of Shevyrev, Pogodin, of course, more thoughtful and profound than the frantic publishers of Mayak, but nevertheless there remained a deep spiritual difference between the said group and the Slavophiles. Anticipating the future emergence of a government party (for the first time represented here by M. N. Katkov) and being spiritually deeper and more independent than journalists like Grech, Bulgarin, who were distinguished by rude and often shameless servility, the group of Shevyrev and Pogodin still had a lot of narrowness, national

self-confidence and intolerance. And the Slavophils were the ideologists of national originality, but, in addition to deep culture, which freed them from any narrowness, the Slavophils sought to religiously understand the fate of Russia and Europe. The ardent patriotism of the Slavophils was illuminated from within by a deep penetration into the spirit of Orthodoxy, while we do not find this at all in Pogodin and his friends. In this respect, the almost cynical thoughts expressed by him in 1854 are extremely curious. “For people,” he wrote, “the New Testament, and for the state in politics, the Old Testament: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, otherwise it cannot exist.” How profoundly different this is from everything that the Slavophils thought and wrote!*) Here lies the dividing line between the two groups: in the different perception of the religious foundations of the worldview, that which, in practical life, assumed an impassable boundary between them. We shall see further that the Slavophils, having taken up the editing of The Moskvityanin, who had previously been the conductor of the ideas of Shevyrev, Pogodin, even found it necessary to sharply fence themselves off from them. Slavophilism was deeply and internally free - and here it was completely homogeneous with Westernism in the person of Herzen, Belinsky, Granovsky, as Herzen eloquently told about this in the well-known chapter of "The Past and Thoughts". Slavophiles, with all their fiery patriotism and ardent defense

*) Barsukov (Life and Works of Pogodin, vol. XIII, pp. 96-97) gives an interesting response to this by Prot. Gorsky, full of Christian truth.

Russian originality was completely alien to servility, servility and gagging of opponents - it is no accident that the wonderful poems praising the "free word" were written just by a Slavophile. These were great people of Russian life, in whom a deep faith in the truth of the Church and in the great forces of Russia was combined with a real defense of freedom. Khomyakov's philosophy of freedom, the Aksakovs' defense of political freedom—from within were connected with the spirit of their teaching; all Slavophiles staunchly defended their ideas and all suffered from a short-sighted government. K. Aksakov was forbidden to stage his play, I. V. Kireevsky was closed three times. Khomyakov published his theological writings in Prague, and Samarin was arrested for his letters about the Germanization of the Baltic region. This is no longer a historical accident, but a historical evidence of their fidelity to the beginning of freedom.

The spirit of freedom pervades from within the whole teaching of the Slavophiles, and from this one must proceed in order to understand their attitude towards the West. Inwardly free, they were in everything and inwardly truthful - in that spiritual structure, of which they were living carriers, the freedom of the spirit was a function of its fullness, its inner integrity. And if there is no doubt that the influence of German romanticism and philosophy (especially Schelling) played a significant role in the genesis of Slavophilism, then all the same these external influences could not by themselves create that inner world that developed in them, which was the source of their ideas in them. In themselves they found that integrity, that fullness, the idea of ​​which was also in the West;

but here their deep religiosity and connection with Orthodoxy are more important than external influences. In the Slavophiles we see not prophets, but living bearers of Orthodox culture—their lives, their personalities are marked by the same things that they revealed in an enlightened and complete form in Orthodoxy. The strength of the influence of the Slavophils lay precisely in this - as a phenomenon of Russian life, as a living manifestation of its creative forces, they are, perhaps, more valuable than their ideological constructions, in which there was much accidental and unsuccessful.

The attitude of the Slavophiles towards the West has gone through several stages, and this must be taken into account when assessing their position. In the 1930s, according to contemporaries, everyone was European *), and of course it was not by chance that I. V. Kireevsky then called his journal “European”. A. S. Khomyakov in one poem (1834) wrote:

Oh sad, sad me. Thick darkness falls

In the far West, the land of holy wonders.

All Slavophiles aspired to see the West, and their immediate impressions were by no means even as acute as those of other Russian writers, whose reviews we have quoted above. The problem of Russia occupied them even then, but together with all the thinkers of that time they were looking for the mission of Russia in human history, they strove to assimilate to Russia the task of higher synthesis and

*) “At that time, in the early 20s and 30s. - all without exception were Europeans ”(Memories of D.N. Sverbeev about A.I. Herzen).

Reconciliation of various principles that spoke in the West. This idea of ​​synthesis is very curiously expressed in one of the early letters of I. V. Kireevsky to Koshelev (in 1827): “We will return the rights of true religion, we will agree gracefully with morality, we will arouse love for truth, we will replace stupid liberalism with respect for laws and the purity of life let us exalt above the purity of the syllable." In the spiritual path of I.V. Kireevsky himself, these ideas did not lose their significance even further. Extremely important for understanding Slavophilism is the fact that when the magazine Moskvityanin (which had previously been published under the editorship of Shevyrev and Pogodin) passed into their hands (in 1845), the Slavophiles found it necessary to fence themselves off from the former editorial boards with their intolerance towards the West. Kireevsky even declared that both directions are false in their one-sidedness (he called them the “purely Russian” and “purely Western” directions): “purely Russian is false because,” he wrote, “it inevitably came to the expectation of a miracle ... for only a miracle can resurrect the dead - the Russian past, which is so bitterly mourned by people of this view. It does not see that whatever European enlightenment may be, but to destroy its influence after we once became partakers of it, is already beyond our power, yes it would be a great disaster"... "Tearing off from Europe," he remarks, "we cease to be a universal nationality." As a result, I. V. Kireevsky believes that “love for European education, as well as love for ours, both coincide in

ice point of its developmentinto one love, into one striving for living, and therefore all-human and truly Christian enlightenment. In another place, I. V. Kireevsky wrote: “All disputes about the superiority of the West or Russia, about the dignity of European or our history, and similar arguments are among the most useless, most empty disputes.” “Rejecting everything Western,” we read further, “and recognizing that side of our society that is directly opposite to the European one, is a one-sided direction.”

In the same issues of Moskvityanin, A. S. Khomyakov touched on these topics. “There is something funny and even immoral in the fanaticism of immobility,” he wrote, referring to the “purely Russian” group, “do not think that under the pretext of preserving the integrity of life and avoiding European bifurcation, you have the right to reject any mental or material improvement Europe". Still later, Khomyakov wrote: "We really put the Western world above ourselves and recognize its incomparable superiority." "There is an involuntary, almost irresistible charm in this rich and great world of Western enlightenment." And K. S. Aksakov, the most ardent and even fanatical representative of Slavophilism, who wrote that “The West is all imbued with inner lies, phrase and effect, it constantly fusses about a beautiful pose, picturesque position,” this same K. S. Aksakov in one of his later articles he wrote: “The West did not bury the talents given to it from God!

Russia recognizes this, as it has always recognized. And God save us from belittling the merits of another. This is a bad feeling... Russia is alien to this feeling and freely does justice to the West.” All these references are very essential for a correct understanding of the attitude of the Slavophiles towards the West. They knew and loved the West and gave him his due - they do not even have a taste for those biased judgments about the West that were still in use with us in the 30s - and this is precisely what must explain the significant influence that the Slavophils had on a group of Westerners - especially on Granovsky and Herzen. In Belinsky, the statement of the Slavophiles in 1845 caused only irritation, but we have already noted the reflection and even the influence of Slavophile sentiments in Belinsky above. It is curious to note right away that even in Chaadaev, despite the gloomy view of Russia that he expressed in the famous “philosophical letter” (1836), the reflection of the Slavophil faith in Russia’s special path also found its place. Already in 1833 (after writing a letter published only in 1836) Chaadaev wrote: "Russia developed differently than Europe"; in 1834 he wrote to Turgenev: "In my opinion, Russia is destined for a great spiritual future: it must resolve all the issues that Europe argues about." "I think," he wrote in The Madman's Apology, "that we have come after the others in order to make them better." As Herzen later did, Chaadaev even expressed the conviction that “we are called upon to solve most of the problems of the social system, to complete most of the ideas that

fallen into the old society, to answer the most important questions that occupy humanity. The thoughts that Chaadaev came to later were even more imbued with faith in Russia, the consciousness of her originality, the providential nature of her paths.

The older generation of Westernizers - Belinsky, Chaadaev, Herzen, Granovsky were not against the idea of ​​​​an original development of Russia and learned a lot from the Slavophiles, but this was possible only because in the Slavophils they did not feel hatred for Europe or sharp hostility towards it, one might even say that the Slavophiles were not anti-Western in the serious sense of the word. For Slavophilism, the center of gravity lay in understanding the uniqueness of Russia's paths, and from this already, from the need to understand Russia, flowed the need to critically evaluate the West. The problems of the West, its destinies are not foreign or uninteresting to them; reveal its causes in order to avoid the mistakes of the West. Only one thing was unquestionably alien and disgusting to the Slavophils - this was slavish admiration for the West, some kind of renunciation of the healthy principles of one's country, which was encountered more than once in the history of the Russian intelligentsia. In one place, Khomyakov says with extreme harshness that in spiritual slavery to the Western world, our intellectuals often “manifest some kind of passion, some kind of comic enthusiasm, denouncing and majestic.

the most mental poverty, and perfect self-satisfaction.

Slavophiles perceived the West as Christendom - hence the feeling of deep kinship with him, the homogeneity of tasks, and hence the free, and not biased, not malicious discussion of his history, his results. At the basis of all criticism of the West lies precisely the religious attitude towards the West - and here the Slavophiles were very close to Chaadaev, who also felt the West religiously with extraordinary strength, although he disagreed with them in assessing the West. Among the Slavophils, this religious perception of the West was combined with a deep sense of Russian originality, which for them was inseparable from Orthodoxy. This deep connection of national and religious self-perception among the Slavophils, which determined the whole logic of the development of Slavophilism, demanded a clear and consistent separation of itself from the Western Christian world, and the last roots of all criticism of the West among the Slavophils lie in their direct experience of Russia and in those formulations in which they expressed this direct experience of theirs... The Slavophils in their development were oriented not anti-Western, but extra-Western, and this must always be kept in mind when evaluating their views.

Turning to the very criticism of the West by the Slavophils, we must say that it is extremely difficult to separate it, for the reasons indicated, from their entire worldview. Here, of course, is not the place to

to understand their worldview, and we willy-nilly must confine ourselves to only those material that is directly related to our topic, referring the reader for a general acquaintance with the Slavophiles to the works of Khomyakov, Kireevsky - as the most characteristic and brightest representatives of this trend.

Let us first dwell on the general assessment of Western culture among the Slavophils.

“Until recently,” writes Khomyakov in one place, “the whole of Europe was in a kind of enthusiastic intoxication, seething with hopes and in awe of its own greatness.” But now “confusion” has already begun in Europe, “passionate and gloomy anxiety” is heard everywhere. “European enlightenment,” writes Kireevsky, “reached its full development in the second half of the 19th century... but the result of this fullness of development, this clarity of results was an almost universal feeling of discontent and deceived hope.” “A modern feature of Western life,” writes I. V. Kireevsky, “is in the general, more or less clear consciousness that the beginning of European education ... in our time is already unsatisfactory for the highest requirements of education.” “To be frank,” the same author remarks elsewhere, “I still love the West, but, appreciating all the benefits of rationality, I think that in final in its development, it is clearly revealed by its painful unsatisfactoriness as a one-sided beginning.

“In the West,” writes K. Aksakov, “ the soul is waning, being replaced by the improvement of state

forms, police amenities; conscience is replaced by law, internal motives by regulations, even charity turns into a mechanical affair: in the West, all concern is for state forms. “The West therefore developed legality,” wrote the same K. Aksakov, “because it felt a lack of truth in itself.” We note these thoughts of Aksakov, partly close to what we saw in Gogol, because here the positive socio-political program of the Slavophiles appears in a hidden form, in which, as you know, there was no place for a constitution and legal regulation of the relationship of power to the people. The development of external life in Europe is put in connection with the fact that the "soul is decreasing" - as if withdrawing into itself, as a result of which extreme individualism develops - and in parallel with this, culture is rationalized and divided into a number of independent spheres. I. V. Kireevsky draws with extraordinary force the results of this entire process in the West in his remarkable article “On the Character of the Enlightenment of Europe” (1852): every minute of life is like a different person. In one corner of his heart lives a religious feeling, in the other separately - the power of the mind and the efforts of worldly pursuits ... ”This fragmentation of the spirit, the lack of inner integrity undermines the strength and weakens the Western man. Violent and external nature of changes in life, whim

fashion, the development of partisanship, the development of pampered daydreaming, the inner anxiety of the spirit with rational self-confidence—all these features Kireevsky elevates to the basic fragmentation of the spirit, to the loss of inner integrity and inner unity.

But these features of the West are not in themselves important for the Slavophils in their analysis of the West, but those “beginnings”, as they like to say, which underlie all life in the West and which are now “extinct”, according to Khomyakov. “It is not the forms that have become obsolete, but the spiritual beginning,” writes one, not the conditions of society, but the faith in which societies lived and the people included in them. In the revolutionary tension that is being felt throughout Europe, Khomyakov sees precisely the "internal mortification of people", which is expressed by the "convulsive movement of social organisms." All Slavophiles hold on to the idea that in the West the internal development of the living principles that once created European culture has ended, that the West has now reached a dead end, from which there is no way out, as long as it clings to these already dead principles. Khomyakov even thinks that “to the people of the West, his present state must seem like an unsolvable riddle: only we, brought up by a different spiritual principle, can understand this riddle *) The living content of life is eroding, what Europe once lived with disappears - and as a result we see " empty soul" of European enlightenment, as Khomyakov puts it.

*) Herzen also developed this idea.

The disappearance of the living spirit in Europe, the disappearance of creative forces and inner integrity, some self-destruction found by Slavophiles in the West. “Centuries-old cold analysis,” Kireevsky writes, “destroyed all the foundations on which European enlightenment stood from the very beginning of its development, so that its own fundamental principles, from which it grew, became extraneous, alien, contradictory to its latest results, and this very analysis that destroyed its roots, this self-propelled knife of reason, this abstract syllogism (a hint at Hegel’s philosophy. - V. 3.), this autocratic reason, which does not recognize anything but itself and personal experience, turned out to be his direct property. “Europe has fully expressed itself,” we read further in Kireevsky’s second article, “in the 19th century, it completed the circle of its development that began in the 9th century.” “The modern precariousness of the spiritual world in the West,” writes Khomyakov, “is not an accidental and transient phenomenon, but a necessary consequence of the internal split in European society.” “The very course of history,” he writes much later, “denounced the lies of the Western world, for the logic of history pronounces its verdict not on the forms, but on the spiritual life of the West.”

Feeling the suspension of inner productive creativity in the European soul it is unusually strong among the Slavophils. They understand well the possibility of a purely technical progress in Europe and at the same time they feel that the creative spirit is being suffocated.

in the lifeless conditions of life in the West, they deeply feel this tragic spiritual barrenness and "emptiness". The "fading" of spiritual life in the West is not only not weakened by the grandiose development of intellectual and technical culture, but, on the contrary, it is directly proportional to its increase. And for the Slavophils, therefore, the internal fragmentation of the spirit, its splitting becomes the main fact of the spiritual
life of the West, the main source of his tragedy. The one-sided development of rationality, the isolation of reason from the living wholeness and fullness of spiritual forces is for them evidence of the fading of life in the West, no matter what illusions the force of historical inertia creates. “Not because,” I. V. Kireevsky wrote, “western enlightenment turned out to be unsatisfactory for the sciences in the West to lose their vitality... that the very triumph of the European mind revealed the one-sidedness of its fundamental aspirations, because with all the wealth, one might say, the enormity of private discoveries and successes in the sciences, the general conclusion from the entire body of knowledge presented only a negative value for the inner consciousness of man, because with all the brilliance, with all the conveniences of external improvements in life, life itself was devoid of essential meaning.

All these sad outcomes of Western culture go back not only to the “preponderance of rationality” in

a fallen soul - although it is precisely from this that the Slavophils explain the peculiarities of religious and philosophical thinking, the ways of the state and social life of the West. No less essential for understanding the fate of the West extreme development of the personal principle in him: individualism and rationalism are so closely linked in the West that it is impossible to separate them from one another.

The doctrine of personality is very important for Slavophilism, for its assessments and theoretical constructions. Being convinced and staunch defenders of freedom in the life of the individual, the Slavophils fought against that “separation” of the individual, that isolation that expanded and exaggerated his strength, strengthened his self-absorption and invariably had to end in self-confidence and pride. For the Slavophiles, who were deeply and consciously religious, humility was a condition for the flourishing and growth of personality, and from here a perspective opened up for understanding one of the deepest spiritual differences between the Christian West and East. The restoration of internal integrity for the Slavophiles is inseparable from the inclusion of oneself in the supra-individual unity of the Church, while the flourishing of the individual in the West is inevitably accompanied by the separation of the single individual from all. In a dispute between Kavelin and Samarin, which flared up already in the 70s, this topic was agreed upon, which began back in the 40s, when Kavelin (in 1847) published his remarkable work “A Look at the Legal Life of Ancient Russia”. While the Slavophiles, pro-

paving the way for later populism here, they saw in the origins of Russian life the development of a communal principle that subjugated an individual (according to K. Aksakov, “the personality in the Russian community is not suppressed, but only deprived of its violence, egoism, exclusivity ... the personality is absorbed in community only by the selfish side, but free in it, as in a choir”), Kavelin revealed in his very thorough historical work how the beginning of personality began to develop in Russia with the advent of Christianity. According to Kavelin, “degrees of development of the beginning of personality. define periods in Russian history. We will not follow the further development of this idea, nor the polemics more nasty, but we will dwell only on the material that completes the worldview of the Slavophils and their assessment of the West. After the appearance of Kavelin's work, Samarin then wrote an interesting article about it ("Moskvityanin", 1847). Idea of ​​personality, outside self-denial, Samarin thinks, is the beginning of the West, the beginning, tearing away from Christianity, because in Christianity the liberation of the individual is inextricably linked with self-denial. The one-sided development of the personality is the content of European individualism, the impotence and inconsistency of which is now recognized in the West as well*). The doctrine of personality in general is one of the most valuable aspects in philosophical work.

*) Ivanov-Razumnik (History of Russian social thought. T. I, p. 313) sees here a hint of Louis Blanc, on it "Histoire de la revolution française".

in honor of Samarin*). In essence, Samarin sought to transfer into social and historical philosophy what he found in the teachings of the Church, in the spirit of Orthodoxy, hence the sharpness of his assessments of the West in its individualistic currents, in which he saw a reaction to the wrong suppression personalities in Catholicism. “In Latinism,” Samarin wrote (Coll., vol. I), “the individual disappears in the Church, loses all his rights and becomes, as it were, a dead, integral particle of the whole ... The historical task of Latinism was to distract from the living principle Church the idea of ​​unity, understood as power ... and turn the unity of faith and love into legal recognition, and the members of the church into subjects of its head. These lines clearly show that, while fighting against the atomizing individualism that led to the revolution, to Protestantism and Romanticism, the Slavophils also fought against that absorption of the individual, which suppressed it and deprived it of freedom in Catholicism.

The loss of correct connections with the “whole” is the same in both opposing forces ruling in the West: the suppression of the individual in Catholicism is wrong, and the one-sided individualistic culture of the anti-Catholic currents of the West is also wrong. Here lies the key to understanding how the correct hierarchy of forces in Western man was violated, how the disintegration of the integrity of spiritual life and fragmentation of the spirit appeared.

*) M. O. Gershenzon tried to reproduce it, but, unfortunately, it was not prominent enough in his Historical Notes.

According to Khomyakov, "our soul is not mosaic"; all its forces are internally connected, and even science "grows only on the vital root of living human knowledge." Hence Khomyakov's persistent struggle against the philosophical one-sidedness of the West - with its separation of thought from the living integrity of the spirit, with its predominant development of rational analytical thinking. Khomyakov builds a kind social theory of knowledge: Here, for example, is an interesting quote: “All the life-giving abilities of the mind live and grow stronger only in the friendly communication of thinking beings, but the mind in its lowest branch, in analysis, does not require this, and therefore it becomes inevitable the only representative of the thinking ability in impoverished and selfish soul". Even more important is his next thought: “Private (i.e., in an individual person) thinking can be strong and fruitful only when the highest knowledge and the people expressing it are connected with the rest of the organism of society by bonds of free and reasonable love.” “The conditional develops more freely in history than the living organic; reason matures in a person much more easily than reason. Building the beginnings of "cathedral epistemology" (a remarkable addition to which was developed by Prince S. Trubetskoy in his articles "On the Nature of Human Consciousness"), Khomyakov constantly emphasized the limitations of rational knowledge, which "does not embrace reality knowable” and does not go beyond the understanding of the formal

sides of being; true knowledge is given only to the mind. “Logical reason,” Khomyakov writes in one place, “is lawless when it thinks to replace reason or even the fullness of consciousness, but he has his rightful place in the circle of reasonable forces. However, "all the deep truths of thought, all the highest truth of free aspiration are accessible only to the mind, arranged within itself in full moral harmony with the omnipresent mind." Therefore, the individual man is not the organ of knowledge.: Although Khomyakov (and even Trubetskoy) did not finish this profound doctrine of the cognizing subject, Khomyakov still expressed the basic ideas of "cathedral" epistemology with sufficient force.

Here are two more passages from Khomyakov's system that complete his idea. "Inaccessible to individual thinking, the truth available he writes, only collections of thoughts connected by love»; therefore, for Khomyakov - and here he restores the deepest constructions of Christian philosophy, expressed by St. Fathers, “the rationality of the Church is the highest possibility of human rationality.”

This is not the place to develop and explain these philosophical constructions of Khomyakov and the constructions of I. V. Kireevsky close to him, but now we understand all the internal connectedness philosophical criticism of the West among the Slavophiles with their general understanding of the West. Western rationalism is not only condemned in its origin from the religious splitting of the once integral spirit, but also revealed dialectical

The one-sidedness and limitation of the highest manifestation of philosophical creativity in the West, Kantianism, consisted, according to Khomyakov, in the fact that, being a purely rational philosophy, it considered itself a philosophy of mind, while the truth of only the possible, and not real, the law of the world, not the world. Khomyakov criticizes Hegel in an interesting and subtle, although incomplete, way, expressing in passing thoughts that were later developed by a number of Russian thinkers. Let us also note Khomyakov's attitude to science - Khomyakov once sharply spoke out against irrationalism, in which he saw an extreme, opposite to the extremes of rationalism. “Let us leave,” he wrote, “to the despair of some Westerners, frightened by the suicidal development of rationalism, a stupid and partly feigned contempt for science—we must accept, preserve, and develop it in all that mental space that it requires...only in this way can we we can elevate science itself, give it fullness and integrity, which she hasn't had yet.».

Slavophiles found in Orthodoxy an eternal image of spiritual integrity and harmony of spiritual forces. Hence, very early on, the Slavophiles' criticism of the West turns into deriving the tragedy of the West from the history of its religious life—from the peculiarities of Catholicism and Protestantism. For them, the modern tragedy of the West was the inevitable result of its religious untruth, in which, as it were, its main disease thickens and concentrates.

Everything that the Slavophils reproached the West was for them a symptom of this disease, and if the young Samarin was still tormented by the problem of how to combine Hegel's philosophy with Orthodoxy, then he very soon agreed with all the Slavophils in the conviction that Europe was incurably sick precisely because she is religiously impoverished. The characteristics and criticism of Western Christianity are developed by Khomyakov, in his truly brilliant theological works, into a whole system of Christian (in the spirit of Orthodoxy) philosophy. Rationalism, which is so essentially connected with the entire system of Western culture, is only the fruit, and not the basis, of the tragedy of the West, for it grew out of the soil of the drying up of that spirit of love, without which Christian social life dies. Since the keys of Christian power are still alive in Europe, it is still alive, it is still rushing about in anguish and in terrible anxious tension is looking for a way out of the impasse, but it has become so weak, spiritually so broken, it believes in one-sided reason instead of an integral mind that has not separated from the living connection. with all the forces of the spirit that there is no way out for her.

That is why, as a result of a long and passionate struggle with the West, the Slavophiles return to the same melancholy that sounded very early in their assessment of the West. Their words addressed to the West are often full of deep sadness, as if by clairvoyance of feeling they feel the corrosive disease of the West, as if they feel the breath of death over it. It's hard for the West

even to understand one’s illness: the decay of the former integrity of the spirit has gone so far that in the West they don’t even feel pain in the separation of spiritual forces, in the complete separation of the intellect from the ethical movements in us, from art, from faith. The West is seriously ill and suffers painfully from his illness, but he can hardly understand it himself; we, Russians, who live by other spiritual principles, can more quickly and easily understand not only the disease of the West, but also the causes of its disease.

Criticism of European culture is among the Slavophils a transitional step towards the construction of an organic worldview on the basis of Orthodoxy. The presentation of this complex, not completely completed system, where theology turns into philosophy, epistemology into ethics, psychology into sociology, is not part of my task. I will only note that the final lines of Kireevsky in his remarkable article on the nature of European enlightenment are as follows: “I only wish that those principles of life that are preserved in the teachings of the Orthodox Church fully penetrate the convictions of all degrees of our estates; so that these higher principles, ruling over European enlightenment and not displacing it, but, on the contrary, embracing it with its fullness, gave it the highest meaning and the last development. This idea synthesis European culture and Orthodoxy, being, as it were, a testament of Kireevsky, it resumes the task that young Samarin once faced.

Criticism of European culture among the Slavophiles

has a philosophical and religious character, not so much because it is directed at the results of the philosophical life and religious development of the West, but because it refers to the "principles", i.e., to the principles of European culture. The definiteness and distinctness of the formulations, the clear diagnosis of the “illness” of the West, and the deep faith in the truth of other spiritual principles that the Slavophils lived by give their thoughts a value that has not faded to this day. What Gogol felt in the West as an artist and a religious man, the Slavophils experienced as philosophers, but Gogol has in common with the Slavophils a deep sense of the religious tragedy of the West. Both Gogol and the Slavophils see the originality of the Russian path in Orthodoxy, and therefore the West is illuminated for them by the way they understand the historical paths of Christianity and the great split between East and West. Western Christianity has, in their opinion, invaluable historical merits in the creation and development of European culture, but it is also guilty of the deepest spiritual illness of Europe, in its religious tragedy. The analysis of this tragedy involuntarily turns into a denunciation of untruth in Western Christianity and just as naturally ends with the disclosure of a holistic and harmonious understanding of life on the foundations of Orthodoxy. Both Gogol and the Slavophiles are therefore forerunners, prophets of Orthodox culture. This is the whole originality of their critical and positive constructions, but this, of course, is also the reason for the low popularity of these constructions so far.

Finishing this chapter on the Slavophiles, we cannot but add to it the most brief mention of F. I. Tyutchev, also an ardent Slavophile, but in his worldview, philosophically extremely close to Schellingism, which followed its own independent path. In the writings of F. I. Tyutchev, we will find three theoretical articles on the topic that occupies us today, namely: 1) "Russia and Germany" (1844), 2) "Russia and the Revolution" (1848) and 3) "The Papacy and the Roman Question" (1850). In the first article, we will note only strong and bitter lines about the hatred for Russia that began to spread in Western Europe; this motive, as we shall see, came out with greater force and influence after the Crimean War. For us, Tyutchev's two second articles are more important, in which the feeling of an anti-Christian principle in Europe is expressed with extreme force and clarity - ever more growing, more and more taking possession of Europe. In the light of the February Revolution, which served as such a strong impetus for various directions of Russian thought, which had previously been given by the French Revolution, Tyutchev deeply felt the strength and significance of revolutionary sentiments in Europe, and most importantly, felt their historical legitimacy and derivativeness from the entire spiritual world of the West. “Over the past three centuries, the historical life of the West,” Tyutchev writes, “necessarily has been a continuous war, a constant assault directed against all Christian elements that were part of the old Western society.” “No one doubts,” writes another

place Tyutchev - that secularization is the last word of this state of affairs. At the basis of this pernicious separation of life and creativity from the Church lies the “profound distortion to which the Christian principle was subjected by the order imposed on it by Rome ... the Western Church became a political institution ... throughout the Middle Ages, the Church in the West was nothing but Roman colony established in the conquered country. “The reaction to this state of affairs was inevitable, but it, having torn the personality away from the Church, opened up “in it space for chaos, rebellion, boundless self-assertion.” “Revolution is nothing else,” writes Tyutchev, “as the apotheosis of the human self,” the word of separation of the individual from the Church, from God. The human self, left to itself, is contrary to Christianity in essence". That is why "the revolution is first of all the enemy of Christianity: the anti-Christian mood is the soul of the revolution." The final lines of the article “Russia and the Revolution” very concentratedly convey this gloomy mood of Tyutchev regarding the West: “The West disappears, everything collapses, everything perishes in this general inflammation: the Europe of Charlemagne and the Europe of the treatises of 1815, the Roman papacy and all the kingdoms, Catholicism and Protestantism , - faith, long lost, and reason, brought to meaninglessness, order, now unthinkable, freedom, now impossible - and above all these ruins, created by her, a civilization that kills itself with its own hands ... "There is only one bright and joyful hope - and it is bound

with Russia, with Orthodoxy (Tyutchev does not separate one from the other). “For a long time already in Europe,” he thinks, “there have been only two forces—the revolution and Russia. These two forces are now opposed to each other, and perhaps tomorrow they will enter into a struggle ... on the outcome of this struggle, the greatest struggle that the world has ever witnessed, the entire political and religious future of mankind depends for many centuries. In the days when this book is being written, we know that Tyutchev's prediction came true: the revolution entered into a fierce and uncompromising struggle with Christianity. Tyutchev alone did not foresee that Russia itself would be the arena of this struggle, that the revolution would take over Russia and its struggle with Christianity would not be a struggle of Western Europe with Russia, but a struggle of two principles for the possession of the Russian soul.

Thus, while keenly perceiving the religious and historical process in the West, Tyutchev still did not look hopelessly at him. With lines testifying to this, we will finish the presentation of Tyutchev's views. Here are his words: “The Orthodox Church ... never ceased to recognize that the Christian principle never disappeared in the Roman Church, it was stronger in it than error and human passion. Therefore, she harbors a deep conviction that this principle will prove stronger than all her enemies. The Church also knows that... and now - the fate of Christianity in the West is still in the hands of the Roman Church, and she firmly hopes that on the day of the great reunion, this Church will return this sacred deposit intact to her.

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Born October 18 (30), 1806 in Saratov. He graduated from the Noble boarding school at the Moscow University (1822). Since 1823, he was in the service of the Moscow archive of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs, entering the circle of the so-called. "archival youths", who later formed the backbone of the "Society of Philosophy" and studied the philosophical ideas of German romanticism, Schelling, and others. Pushkin. In 1829, as a teacher of the son of Prince. PER. Volkonsky went abroad. He spent three years in Italy, devoting all his free time to studying European languages, classical philology and art history. Returning to Russia, at the suggestion of S.S. Uvarov took the place of an adjunct in literature at Moscow University. In order to acquire the proper status, in 1834 he presented the essay "Dante and His Age", two years later - his doctoral dissertation "The Theory of Poetry in its Historical Development among Ancient and New Nations" and the study "History of Poetry", which deserved positive feedback from Pushkin. For 34 years he taught a number of courses on the history of Russian literature, the general history of poetry, the theory of literature and pedagogy. Professor at Moscow University (1837–1857), head of the department of the history of Russian literature (since 1847), academician (since 1852). All these years he was actively engaged in journalistic activity. In 1827–1831 Shevyrev - an employee of the "Moscow Bulletin", in 1835-1839 - the leading critic of the "Moscow Observer", from 1841 to 1856 - the closest associate of M.P. Pogodin according to the edition of "Moskvityanin". Some time after his dismissal from the post of professor, he left Europe in 1860, lectured on the history of Russian literature in Florence (1861) and Paris (1862).

Shevyrev was characterized by the desire to build his worldview on the foundation of Russian national identity, which, from his point of view, has deep historical roots. Considering literature as a reflection of the spiritual experience of the people, he tried to find in it the origins of Russian identity and the foundations of national education. This topic is a key one in Shevyrev's scientific and journalistic activities. He is credited with the "discoverer" of ancient Russian literature as a whole, he was one of the first to prove to the Russian reader the fact of its existence since the time of Kievan Rus, introduced into scientific circulation many now known monuments of pre-Petrine Russian literature, attracted many novice scientists to the comparative study of domestic and foreign literature, etc. In a similar spirit, Shevyrev's political views developed, the main motives of his journalism were to affirm Russian originality and criticize Westernism, which rejected it. From this point of view, Shevyrev was one of the largest ideologists of the so-called. theory of "official nationality" and at the same time one of its brightest popularizers. During the period of cooperation in "Moskvityanin", which brought him a reputation as an ardent supporter of the official ideology, Shevyrev applied his main efforts to the development of one problem - proof of the detrimental effect of European influence on Russia. A significant place among the thinker's works on this topic is occupied by his article "A Russian's View of the Modern Education of Europe", in which he postulated the theses that later became widely known about the "decay of the West", its spiritual incurable disease; about the need to counteract the "magic charm" that the West still fascinates the Russian people, and realize their originality, putting an end to disbelief in their own strength; about the calling of Russia to save and preserve in a higher synthesis all the spiritual healthy values ​​of Europe, etc., etc.

WORKS:

A Russian's view of the modern education of Europe // Moskvityanin. 1941. No. 1.

Anthology of world political thought. T. 3. M., 1997. S. 717–724.

The history of Russian literature, mostly ancient. M., 1846–1860.

About native literature. M., 2004.

Letters to M.P. Pogodina, S.P. Shevyreva and M.A. Maksimovich to Prince P.A. Vyazemsky. SPb., 1846.

LITERATURE:

Peskov A.M. At the origins of philosophizing in Russia: The Russian idea of ​​S.P. Shevyreva // New Literary Review. 1994. No. 7. S. 123–139.

TEXTS

A RUSSIAN VIEW ON MODERN EDUCATION IN EUROPE (1)

There are moments in history when all mankind is expressed by one all-consuming name! These are the names of Cyrus (2), Alexander (3), Caesar (4), Charlemagne (5), Gregory VII (6), Charles V (7). Napoleon was ready to put his name on contemporary humanity, but he met Russia.

There are epochs in history when all the forces acting in it are resolved in two main ones, which, having absorbed everything extraneous, come face to face, measure each other with their eyes and come out for a decisive debate, like Achilles and Hector at the conclusion of the Iliad (8 ). - Here are the famous martial arts of world history: Asia and Greece, Greece and Rome, Rome and the German world.

In the ancient world, these martial arts were decided by material force: then the force ruled the universe. In the Christian world world conquests have become impossible: we are called to single combat of thought.

The drama of modern history is expressed by two names, one of which sounds sweet to our heart! The West and Russia, Russia and the West - this is the result that follows from everything that has gone before; here is the last word of history; here are two data for the future!

Napoleon (we started with him not for nothing); contributed a lot towards scheduling both words of this result. In the person of his gigantic genius, the instinct of the entire West concentrated - and moved to Russia when he could. Let's repeat the words of the Poet:

Praise! He to the Russian people

high lot indicated.(9)

Yes, a great and decisive moment. West and Russia stand in front of each other, face to face! - Will he carry us away in his worldwide aspiration? Will he get it? Shall we go in addition to his education? Shall we make some superfluous additions to his story? - Or will we stand in our originality? Shall we form a special world, according to our principles, and not the same European ones? Let's take a sixth part of the world out of Europe... the seed for the future development of mankind?

Here is a question - a great question, which is not only heard in our country, but is also answered in the West. Solving it - for the good of Russia and mankind - is the business of generations to us modern and future. Everyone who has just been called to any significant service in our Fatherland must begin by resolving this issue if he wants to connect his actions with the present moment of life. That's the reason why we start with it.

The question is not new: the millennium of Russian life, which our generation may celebrate in twenty-two years, offers a complete answer to it. But the meaning of the history of every nation is a mystery hidden under the outward clarity of events: each solves it in his own way. The question is not new; but in our time its importance has revived and become palpable to all.

Let us take a general look at the state of modern Europe and the attitude in which our Fatherland is towards it. Here we eliminate all political views and confine ourselves to only one picture of education, embracing religion, science, art and literature, the latter as the most complete expression of the whole human life of the peoples. We will touch, of course, only the main countries that are active in the field of European peace.

Let us begin with those two whose influence reaches us least of all, and which form the two extreme opposites of Europe. We mean Italy and England. The first took to its share all the treasures of the ideal world of fantasy; almost completely alien to all the lures of modern luxury industry, she, in the miserable rags of poverty, sparkles with her fiery eyes, enchants with sounds, shines with ageless beauty and is proud of her past. The second selfishly appropriated all the essential benefits of the worldly world; drowning herself in the richness of life, she wants to entangle the whole world with the bonds of her trade and industry. […]

***

France and Germany are the two parties under whose influence we have been and are now. In them, one might say, the whole of Europe is concentrated for us. There is neither a separating sea nor an obscuring Alps. Every book, every thought of France and Germany resonates with us rather than in any other country of the West. Previously, French influence prevailed: in new generations it is mastering German. All educated Russia can rightly be divided into two halves: French and German, according to the influence of one or another education.

That is why it is especially important for us to delve into the current situation of these two countries and the attitude in which we are towards them. Here we boldly and sincerely state our opinion, knowing in advance that it will arouse many contradictions, offend many vanities, stir up the prejudices of education and teachings, violate the traditions hitherto accepted. But in the question we are solving, the first condition is sincerity of conviction.

France and Germany were the scenes of two of the greatest events to which the whole history of the new West is summed up, or rather, two critical illnesses corresponding to each other. These diseases were - the reformation in Germany (10), the revolution in France (11): the disease is the same, only in two different forms. Both were the inevitable consequence of Western development, which has incorporated a duality of principles and established this discord as the normal law of life. We think that these illnesses have already ceased; that both countries, having experienced the turning point of the disease, entered again into healthy and organic development. No, we are wrong. Diseases have generated harmful juices, which now continue to operate and which, in turn, have already produced organic damage in both countries, a sign of future self-destruction. Yes, in our sincere, friendly, close relations with the West, we do not notice that we are dealing, as it were, with a person who carries within himself an evil, contagious disease, surrounded by an atmosphere of dangerous breath. We kiss him, embrace him, share a meal of thought, drink a cup of feeling... and we don't notice the hidden poison in our careless communion, we don't smell the future corpse in the fun of the feast, which he already smells of.

He captivated us with the luxury of his education; he carries us on his winged steamers, rolls us on the railroads; caters without our labor to all the whims of our sensuality, lavishes before us the wit of thought, the pleasures of art.... We are glad that we got to the feast ready for such a rich host... We are intoxicated; we have fun for nothing to taste what cost so much .... But we do not notice that in these dishes there is a juice that our fresh nature cannot bear .... We do not foresee that the satiated host, having seduced us with all the charms of a magnificent feast, will corrupt our mind and heart; that we will leave him drunk beyond our years, with a heavy impression of an orgy, incomprehensible to us ...

But let us rest in faith in Providence, whose finger is open in our history. Let us delve better into the nature of both ailments and determine for ourselves the lesson of wise protection.

There is a country in which both turning points took place even earlier than in the entire West and thereby forestalled its development. This country is an island for Europe, both geographically and historically. The secrets of her inner life have not yet been unraveled - and no one has decided why both upheavals that took place in her so early did not produce any, at least visible, organic damage.

In France, a great affliction has engendered the depravity of personal freedom, which threatens the whole state with complete disorganization. France takes pride in having acquired political freedom; but let us see how she applied it to the various branches of her social development? What did she do with this acquired tool in the field of religion, art, science and literature? We will not talk about politics and industry. Let us only add that the development of its industry is hampered year by year by the self-will of the lower classes of the people, and that the monarchical and noble character of the luxury and splendor of its products does not in the least correspond to the direction of its popular spirit.

What is the state of religion in France now? - Religion has two manifestations: personal in individual people, as a matter of conscience for everyone, and state, as the Church. Therefore, it is possible to consider the development of religion in any people only from these two points of view. The development of a state religion is evident; it is in front of everyone; but it is difficult to penetrate into the development of her personal, family, hidden in the secret of the life of the people. The latter can be seen either on the spot, or in literature, or in education.

Since 1830, as is known, France has lost the unity of the state religion. The country, originally Roman Catholic, allowed free Protestantism both into the bosom of its people and into the bosom of the reigning family. Since 1830, all the religious processions of the Church, these solemn moments in which she is the servant of God before the eyes of the people, have been destroyed in the life of the French people. The most famous rite of the Western Church, the splendid procession: the corpus Domini, performed so brilliantly in all the countries of the Roman Catholic West, is never again performed in the streets of Paris. When a dying person calls to himself the gifts of Christ before his death, the church sends them without any triumph, the priest brings them secretly, as if during the time of persecution of Christianity. Religion can perform its rites only inside temples; she alone seems to be deprived of the right to publicity, while everyone in France uses it with impunity; the temples of France are like the catacombs of the original Christians, who did not dare to bring out the manifestations of their worship of God. [...]

All these phenomena of the present life of the French people do not show a religious development in them. But how to solve the same question concerning the inner life of families in France? Literature brings us the saddest news of this, revealing the pictures of this life in its tireless stories. At the same time, I remember a word heard from the lips of a certain public teacher, who assured me that all religious morality can be concluded in the rules of Arithmetic. [...]

Literature among the people is always the result of its cumulative development in all branches of its human education. From the foregoing, the reasons for the decline of modern literature in France, whose works, unfortunately, are too well known in our Fatherland, can now be clear. A people that, through the abuse of personal freedom, has destroyed the feeling of Religion in itself, has desensitized art and made science meaningless, must, of course, bring the abuse of its freedom to the highest degree of extremeness in literature, which is not curbed either by the laws of the state or by the opinion of society. [...]

We conclude this deplorable picture of France by pointing out one common feature that is clearly visible in almost all of its contemporary writers. All of them themselves feel the painful state of their fatherland in all branches of its development; they all unanimously point to the decline of his Religion, politics, education, sciences, and Literature itself, which is their own business. In any essay dealing with contemporary life, you will surely find several pages, several lines, devoted to the condemnation of the present. Their common voice can sufficiently cover and reinforce our own in this case. But here's the weird thing! That feeling of apathy, which always accompanies such censures, which have become a kind of habit among the writers of France, have become a fashion, have become a commonplace. Every ailment among the people is terrible, but even more terrible is the cold hopelessness with which those who, the first, should have thought of means to cure it, speak of it.

***

Let us cross over the Rhine (13), into the country next to us, and try to delve into the secret of its intangible development. In the first place, we are struck by how striking a contrast to the land from which we have just emerged is the outward improvement of Germany in everything that concerns her state, civil and social development. What order! what slenderness! One marvels at the prudence of the German, who skillfully removes from himself all the possible temptations of his rebellious neighbors beyond the Rhine and strictly confines himself to the sphere of his own life. The Germans even harbor a kind of open hatred or lofty contempt for the abuse of personal freedom with which all sections of French society are infected. The sympathy of some German writers for French self-will found almost no echo in prudent Germany and left no harmful trace in her entire present way of life! This country in its various parts can present excellent examples of development in all branches of complex human education. Its state structure is based on the love of its Sovereigns for the good of their subjects and on the obedience and devotion of these latter to their rulers. Its civil order will rest on the laws of the purest and most frank justice, inscribed in the hearts of its rulers and in the minds of subjects called to the execution of a civil cause. Its universities flourish and pour the treasures of teaching into all the lower institutions to which the education of the people is entrusted. Art is developing in Germany in such a way that it now puts it in a worthy rival with her mentor, Italy. Industry and domestic trade are making rapid progress. Everything that serves to facilitate communication between her various dominions, everything that modern civilization can boast of in relation to the conveniences of life, such as post offices, customs, roads, etc., all this is excellent in Germany and elevates her to the rank of a country, excelling in its external accomplishment on the solid ground of Europe. What does it seem to lack for her unshakable eternal prosperity?

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