“In order to live honestly, one must be torn, confused, fought, made mistakes ...” (Based on Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace”). Serenity - mental meanness
Witness what historical events was the writer? (A.S. Pushkin, 1837; M.Yu. Lermontov, 1841; N.V. Gogol, 1852; N.G. Chernyshevsky, 1854 employee of Sovremennik; Crimean War,; death of Nicholas I, 1855; “Peasant reform ", 1861; attempt on the life of Alexander II; Paris Commune; the emergence of the society "Land and Freedom", 1876; Russian- Turkish war, death of Alexander II, 1881; assassination attempt on Alexander III, 1887: Russo-Japanese War, ; Bloody Sunday, 1905 prominent people Tolstoy spoke? (N.A. Nekrasov, I.S. Turgenev, A.I. Herzen, A.N. Ostrovsky, A.P. Chekhov, F.M. Tyutchev, T.G. Shevchenko and others)
Tolstoy's Rules and Program What is assigned to be fulfilled by all means, then do it, no matter what What you do, do it well Never cope in a book if you forgot something, but try to remember it yourself Make your mind constantly act with all its possible strength Read and think always loud Don't be ashamed to tell people who bother you that they're bothering you
The moral-philosophical doctrine, as it developed, was expounded by Tolstoy in works of a philosophical and journalistic nature (“Confession”, “On Life”, “So what should we do?”, “The Kingdom of God is within you”, “What is my faith?” , “What is religion and what is its essence?”, “Religion and morality”, “The law of violence and the law of love”, etc.), in pedagogical essays (“On education”, “On science”, “Conversations with children on moral issues”), in books of aphorisms (“Circle of Reading”, “The Path of Life”, “Thoughts wise people") and etc.
Love? What is love? Love prevents death. Love is life. Everything, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists only because I love. Everything is connected by her. Love is God… LN Tolstoy Love? What is love? Love prevents death. Love is life. Everything, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists only because I love. Everything is connected by her. Love is God… L.N. Tolstoy
Class hour progress
Teacher: What is success?
IN explanatory dictionary Russian language Sergei Ivanovich Ozhegov recorded the following meanings of the word "success":
1) good luck in achieving something;
2) public recognition;
3) good results at work, study.
Guys, do you know the name Lewis Carroll? Yes of course it's famous English writer, and also a mathematician, logician, philosopher and photographer. And perhaps his most popular work- this is ... ("Alice in Wonderland"). Listen to what conversation took place one day between main character and the Cat, and answer the question: what did Alice not have?
“Will you tell me which way I should go from here?
It depends a lot on where you want to go, said the Cat.
I, in general, do not care ... - said Alice.
Then it doesn't matter which way to go, - said the Cat.
Oh, there you will surely come, - said the Cat, - if you only walk long enough.
What didn't Alice have?
(Children's answers.)
Yes, you are right, Alice had no purpose. But you and I don't care where we're going, right? It is very important to set the right goal. If a bright target beacon burns in front of a person, then exact coordinates appear on the map of life, where to follow him. And most importantly - do not go astray.
Imagine yourself as a captain who steers his ship across the ocean of life, goes around dangerous rocks, steadfastly bears the blow of hurricane winds, calmly endures the calm.
If your ship hits underwater rocks and you get hit, what should the captain do? Do not count the holes, do not look at what has died, but ask yourself: “Do I see my lighthouse, my dream, my goal? Where should I sail?"
A famous philosopher said: “When a person does not know which pier he is on his way to, not a single wind will be favorable for him.”
It often seems to us that there are insurmountable obstacles on the way to our success in life, that the path to success is difficult and thorny. Let's try to draw an "obstacle course" (drawing on the board: little man - barrier - success). What arises on a person's path to success, prevents him from moving easily and freely, makes him return to the starting point again and again?
And now I want to tell you a legend.
“One wise man in his declining years decided to find a replacement for himself - a student, in order to pass on his experience to him. The sage thought, called all his disciples to him and said: “I am interested to know if any of you can open a huge, heavy door in that wall over there?” Some students immediately gave up, considering the problem unsolvable. Other students nevertheless decided to study the door, they carefully examined it, talked about what improvised means can be used here, and in the end they came to the conclusion that this problem could not be solved. And only one single student came up to the door and studied it with special attention. In fact, the door was slightly closed, while everyone else thought it was tightly locked. The student pushed the door lightly and it opened easily. The elder found his successor. He turned to the rest of the students and told them…”
Guys, what do you think the sage said exactly?
(Children's answers.)
Here are the old man's words:
“What accompanies success in life, my dear students?
First, life itself.
Second, don't rush.
Third, be prepared to make decisions.
Fourth, do not dare to retreat, since the decision has already been made.
Fifth, spare no effort and energy.
And just don't be afraid to make mistakes in this life.
Which of these tips would you take as a rule? Why? What advice do you find the most difficult? Why?
(Children's answers.)
And what qualities, traits of character are necessary for a successful person?
(Children's answers.)
And confidence, a positive attitude and innovative thinking are always important.
One day I was watching a program called The Guinness World Records Show and saw a Chinese genius who brought a completely crazy idea to life. Since childhood, he loved to blow soap bubbles. And as an adult, he did not give up this occupation, but brought it to perfection. Today he blows balloons just magical - different colors and sizes. He can put a person in his ball. The spectacle is incredible! That is, this person brought his hobby to a professional level, began to participate in different shows, teach others this art, founded the science of blowing balloons, and also set up the production of balloon blowing machines! This is how a person became successful. Made a business out of a soap ball! And all because I thought outside the box.
I think you can also give similar examples from life.
(Children give examples.)
Who, in your opinion, is a successful person?
(Children's answers.)
Agree, every person should have wings of success that carry him through life and help him overcome obstacles. What are these wings made of? Treasures are in my hands - scatterings of other people's thoughts, thoughts about gaining inner strength capable of leading a person to success in life. Read the statements of various people about happiness, luck, success and choose 2-3 nouns, 2-3 adjectives, 2-3 verbs from them - words that touched you in some way - and build your aphorism from these words. Write it on the wings of a butterfly - the wings of success. (The teacher distributes paper butterflies.)
It's time to stop waiting for unexpected gifts from life, and make life yourself. (L.N. Tolstoy)
Look inside yourself more often. (Cicero)
Nothing can replace perseverance: neither talent - there is nothing more common than talented failures, nor genius - the genius-loser has already become a proverb, nor education - the world is full of educated outcasts. Omnipotent only perseverance and perseverance. The motto "push up/don't give up" has solved and will always solve the problems of mankind. (Calvin Coolidge)
People who decide to act are usually lucky; on the contrary, they seldom occur in people who are only concerned with weighing and procrastinating. (Herodotus)
Many years ago I bought a wonderful dictionary. The first thing I did was find the page with the word "impossible" and carefully cut it out of the book. (Napoleon Hill, bestselling author of Think and Grow Rich)
Nothing is impossible for people. (Horace)
Set yourself achievable goals. (Horace)
He who achieves much, lacks much. (Horace)
In order to live honestly, one must tear, get confused, fight, make mistakes, start and quit, and start again and quit again, for peace is a meanness of the soul. (L.N. Tolstoy)
Those who do not give themselves entirely to the cause will not have brilliant success. (Xun Tzu)
Have a purpose in life, a purpose for famous era your life, the goal for a certain time, the goal for the year, for the month, for the week, for the day and for the hour and for the minute ... (L.N. Tolstoy)
For success in life, the ability to deal with people is much more important than having talent. (D.Lebbock)
Success is a path, not a destination. (Ben Sweetland)
At the end of our conversation, I want to give each of you a letter from the past, it can be useful to you both now and in the future. This letter Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy "Believe yourself". (Each student is given an envelope.) Read the letter at home and ask yourself again the question “How to become successful?”. (The text of the letter is attached.)
And I believe that you are smart and happy people, the real captains of their destiny! Favorable wind and seven feet under the keel!
Vera BUSHKOVA, teacher in English, participant of the All-Russian final of the competition "Teacher of the Year of Russia-2009", Irina CHERNYKH, class teacher of Lyceum No. 9 of the city of Slobodskoy, Kirov Region
Application
Lev Tolstoy
Believe yourself
Appeal to youth
Believe yourself, young men and women emerging from childhood, when for the first time questions arise in our souls: who am I, why do I live and why do all the people around me live? And the main, most exciting question, do all the people around me live like this? Believe in yourself even when the answers that will be presented to you to these questions will not agree with those that were instilled in us in childhood, will not agree with the life in which you find yourself living together with all the people around you . Don't be afraid of this disagreement; on the contrary, know that in this disagreement between you and everything around you, the best that is in us is expressed - that divine origin, the manifestation of which in life is not only the main, but the only meaning of our existence. Believe then not yourself famous person, - Vanya, Petya, Lisa, Masha, son; the daughter of a king, minister or worker, merchant or peasant, but to herself, to that eternal, reasonable and good principle that lives in each of us and which for the first time awakened in you and asked you these most important questions in the world and seeks and demands their resolution . Then do not believe people who will tell you with a condescending smile that they once looked for answers to these questions, but did not find them, because it is impossible to find any other than those that are accepted by everyone ...
I remember how, when I was 15 years old, I experienced this time, when suddenly I woke up from the childish obedience to other people's views, in which I had lived until then, and for the first time I realized that I had to live on my own, choose the path myself, answer myself for my life before the beginning that gave it to me...
I did not believe myself then, and only after many decades spent on achieving worldly goals, which I either did not achieve or which I achieved and saw their futility, futility, and often their harm, I realized that the very thing that I knew 60 years ago and did not believe then, and can and should be the only reasonable goal of the efforts of any person.
Yes, dear young men, ... do not believe people who will tell you that aspirations are only unfulfillable dreams of youth, that they also dreamed and aspired, but that life soon showed them that it has its own requirements and that one should not fantasize about what our life could be, but to try the best way to harmonize one's actions with the life of the existing society and try only to be a useful member of this society.
Nor do you believe that dangerous temptation, which has become particularly strong in our time, that the highest purpose of man is to contribute to the reorganization of the existing world. famous place and in known time society... Don't believe it. Do not believe that the realization of good and truth is impossible in your soul...
Yes, believe yourself, when it is not the desire to surpass people, to be different from others, to be powerful, famous, glorified, to be the savior of people, to deliver them from the harmful arrangement of life for yourself, when the main desire of your soul will be to be yourself better...
September 9 marks 188 years since the birth of a native Tula region, a great writer, educator and religious thinker, author of War and Peace, Anna Karenina and Resurrection.
September 9, 1828 in Yasnaya Polyana was born Leo Tolstoy, one of the the greatest writers world, a participant in the defense of Sevastopol, the creator of the religious movement - Tolstoyanism, an educator and teacher. Based on his works, films are made and plays are staged all over the world.
On the occasion of the 188th anniversary of the great writer TULA.AIF.RU picked up 10 bright sayings of Leo Tolstoy different years- original advice that is relevant to this day.
1. "Each person is a diamond that can purify and not purify himself, to the extent that he is purified, eternal light shines through him, therefore, the business of a person is not to try to shine, but to try to purify himself."
2. “It is true that where there is gold, there is also much sand; but this cannot in any way be a reason to say a lot of nonsense in order to say something smart.
"What is art?"
3. “The work of life, the purpose of her joy. Rejoice in heaven, in the sun. On stars, on grass, on trees, on animals, on people. This joy is being destroyed. You made a mistake somewhere - look for this mistake and correct it. This joy is most often violated by self-interest, ambition ... Be like children - always rejoice.
Museum Estate Yasnaya Polyana Photo: www.globallookpress.com
4. “For me, the madness, the criminality of war, especially in Lately when I wrote and therefore thought a lot about the war, are so clear that apart from this madness and criminality I can see nothing in it.
5. “People are like rivers: the water is the same in all and the same everywhere, but each river is sometimes narrow, sometimes fast, sometimes wide, sometimes quiet. So are people. Each person carries in himself the rudiments of all human properties and sometimes manifests one, sometimes another, and is often completely unlike himself, remaining one and himself.
"Resurrection". 1889-1899
6. “...upbringing seems to be a complex and difficult matter only as long as we want, without educating ourselves, to educate our children or anyone else. If we understand that we can educate others only through ourselves, by educating ourselves, then the question of education is abolished and one question of life remains: how should one live oneself? I don't know of a single act of raising children that doesn't include educating yourself."
7. “A scientist is one who knows a lot from books; educated - one who has mastered all the most common knowledge and techniques of his time; the enlightened one who understands the meaning of his life.
"Reading Circle"
8. “In order to live honestly, one must be torn, confused, fought, abandoned, and forever struggled and deprived. And peace is spiritual meanness.
Letter to A.A. Tolstoy. October 1857
Frame from the film Anna Karenina, Mosfilm studio, 1967 Photo: www.globallookpress.com
9. “Happy periods of my life were only those when I devoted my whole life to serving people. These were: schools, mediation, starvation and religious assistance.”
10. "My whole idea is that if vicious people are interconnected and constitute a force, then honest people need to do only the same thing."
"War and Peace". Epilogue. 1863-1868
Diaries Letters 90-volume collected worksLETTER TO A. A. TOLSTOY. 1857
Returning from abroad to Yasnaya Polyana On October 20, Tolstoy writes to his aunt a very important letter, now known to many:
“Eternal anxiety, work, struggle, deprivation - these are necessary conditions from which not a single person should dare to think of getting out even for a second. Only honest anxiety, struggle and labor based on love is what is called happiness. Yes, happiness stupid word; not happiness, but good; and dishonest anxiety based on self-love is unhappiness. Here you have in the most concise form the change in outlook on life that has taken place in me lately.
It’s funny for me to remember how I thought and how you seem to think that you can arrange for yourself a happy and honest little world in which you can live calmly, without mistakes, without repentance, without confusion, and do everything slowly, carefully, only good. Funny! You can’t ... To live honestly, you have to tear, get confused, fight, make mistakes, start and quit, and start again, and quit again, and always fight and lose. And peace is spiritual meanness. From this, the bad side of our soul desires peace, not foreseeing that achieving it is associated with the loss of everything that is beautiful in us.
Rereading his correspondence with Alexandra Andreevna, prepared for publication, in his last year, 1910, Tolstoy spoke of this letter in his Diary as follows: said another.
PSS, vol. 58, p. 23.
* L. N. Tolstoy and A. A. Tolstaya. Correspondence (1857–1903). - M., 1911; 2nd ed. – 2011.
V. PETROV, psychologist.
If we are interested in the problem of man and we want to understand what is truly human, eternal in people, and science can do little to help in this, then our path, undoubtedly, first of all to F. M. Dostoevsky. It was him that S. Zweig called "a psychologist from psychologists", and N. A. Berdyaev - "a great anthropologist". "I know only one psychologist - this is Dostoevsky", - contrary to his tradition of overthrowing all earthly and heavenly authorities, wrote F. Nietzsche, who, by the way, had his own and far from superficial view of man. Another genius, N.V. Gogol, showed the world people with an extinct spark of God, people with a dead soul.
Science and life // Illustrations
Science and life // Illustrations
Science and life // Illustrations
Science and life // Illustrations
Science and life // Illustrations
Science and life // Illustrations
Science and life // Illustrations
Science and life // Illustrations
Science and life // Illustrations
Science and life // Illustrations
Science and life // Illustrations
Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy, Stendhal, Proust provide much more for understanding human nature than academic philosophers and scientists - psychologists and sociologists ...
N. A. Berdyaev
EVERY PERSON HAS "UNDERGROUND"
Dostoevsky is difficult for readers. Many of them, especially those who are accustomed to seeing everything clear and easily explained, do not accept the writer at all - he deprives them of the feeling of comfort in life. It's hard to believe that life path can be exactly like this: in continuous throwing between extremes, when a person drives himself into a corner at every step, and then, as if in a state of drug withdrawal known to our time, turning inside out, gets out of the impasse, commits acts and then, repenting of them, suffers under the torture of self-deprecation. Who among us admits that he can "love pain and fear", be in "rapture from the painful state of meanness", live, feeling "a terrible disorder in everything"? Even dispassionate science puts this out of the brackets of the so-called norm.
By the end of the 20th century, psychologists suddenly began to say that they were finally approaching the understanding of the intimate mechanisms of a person's mental life, as Dostoevsky saw and showed them in his heroes. However, a science built on logical foundations (and there can be no other science) cannot understand Dostoevsky, because his ideas about man cannot be bound by a formula, a rule. Here we need a super-scientific psychological laboratory. It was given to a brilliant writer, was acquired by him not in university classrooms, but in the boundless torments of his own life.
The entire 20th century was awaited for the "death" of Dostoevsky's heroes and himself as a classic, a genius: they say that everything he wrote is outdated, left in the 19th century, in old petty-bourgeois Russia. The loss of interest in Dostoevsky was predicted after the fall of the autocracy in Russia, then in the middle of the 20th century, when the intellectualization of the population began to boom, and finally, after the collapse of Soviet Union and the victory of the "brain civilization" of the West. But what is it really? His heroes are illogical, bifurcated, tormented, constantly fighting with themselves, unwilling to live according to the same formula with everyone, guided only by the principle of "satiety" - and in early XXI centuries remain "more alive than all the living." There is only one explanation for this - they are true.
The writer managed to show a person not in some standard, civilized and familiar way. public opinion version, but in complete nudity, without masks and camouflage suits. And it is not Dostoevsky's fault that this view turned out to be, to put it mildly, not quite salon-like and that it is unpleasant for us to read the truth about ourselves. After all, as another genius wrote, we love "the deception that elevates us" more.
Dostoevsky saw the beauty and dignity of human nature not in concrete manifestations of life, but in those heights from which it originates. Its local distortion is inevitable. But beauty is preserved if a person has not come to terms with the vanity and dirt, and therefore rushes about, tears, tries, again and again covered with impurities, to cleanse himself, to preserve the freedom of his soul.
Forty years before Freud, Dostoevsky declares: a person has an "underground", where another "underground" and independent person lives and actively acts (more precisely, counteracts). But this is a completely different understanding of the human underside than in classical psychoanalysis. Dostoevsky's "underground" is also a boiling cauldron, but not of imperative, unidirectional attractions, but of continuous confrontations and transitions. Not a single benefit can be a permanent goal, each aspiration (immediately after its realization) is replaced by another, and any stable system of relations becomes a burden.
And yet there is one strategic goal, a "special advantage" in this "terrible mess" of the human "underground". Inner Man each of his actions does not allow his real-life opponent to finally and irrevocably "catch" on something earthly, to be captured by one unchanging belief, to become a "pet" or a mechanical robot living strictly according to instincts or someone's program. This is the highest meaning of the existence of the looking-glass double, he is on guard of the freedom of man and the possibility of a special relationship with God granted to him from above through this freedom.
And that is why Dostoevsky's heroes constantly conduct an internal dialogue, argue with themselves, repeatedly changing their own position in this dispute, alternately defending polar points of view, as if the main thing for them is not to be forever captured by one conviction, one life goal. This feature of Dostoevsky's understanding of man was noted by the literary critic M. M. Bakhtin: "Where one quality was seen, he revealed the presence of another in him, opposite quality. Everything that seemed simple in his world became complex and multi-component. In every voice he could hear two arguing voices, in every gesture he caught confidence and uncertainty at the same time ... "
All the main characters of Dostoevsky - Raskolnikov ("Crime and Punishment"), Dolgoruky and Versilov ("Teenager"), Stavrogin ("Demons"), Karamazovs ("The Brothers Karamazov") and, finally, the hero of "Notes from the Underground" - are infinitely contradictory . They are in constant motion between good and evil, generosity and vindictiveness, humility and pride, the ability to confess the highest ideal in the soul and almost simultaneously (or after a moment) commit the greatest meanness. Their destiny is to despise man and dream of the happiness of mankind; having committed acquisitive murder disinterestedly give away the loot; always be in a "fever of hesitation, decisions taken forever and a minute later repentance comes again."
Inconstancy, the inability to unequivocally determine one's intentions leads to a tragic ending, the heroine of the novel "The Idiot" Nastasya Filippovna. On her birthday, she declares herself the bride of Prince Myshkin, but immediately leaves with Rogozhin. In the morning next day runs away from Rogozhin to meet with Myshkin. After a while, preparations begin for the wedding with Rogozhin, but future bride disappears again with Myshkin. Six times the pendulum of mood throws Nastasya Filippovna from one intention to another, from one man to another. The unfortunate woman, as it were, rushes between the two sides of her own "I" and cannot choose from them the only, unshakable one, until Rogozhin stops this throwing with a knife blow.
Stavrogin, in a letter to Darya Pavlovna, is perplexed about his behavior: he exhausted all his strength in debauchery, but did not want it; I want to be decent, but I do meanness; Everything in Russia is alien to me, but I can't live anywhere else. In conclusion, he adds: "I will never, never be able to kill myself ..." And shortly after that, he commits suicide. “If Stavrogin believes, then he does not believe that he believes. If he does not believe, then he does not believe that he does not believe,” Dostoevsky writes about his character.
"PEACE - MENTAL meanness"
The struggle of multidirectional thoughts and motives, constant self-punishment - all this is torment for a person. Perhaps this state is not his natural feature? Maybe it's only for a certain human type or national character, for example, Russian, as many critics of Dostoevsky like to assert (in particular, Sigmund Freud), or there is a reflection of a certain situation that has developed in society at some point in its history - for example, in Russia the second half of XIX century?
The "psychologist of psychologists" rejects such simplifications, he is convinced that this is "the most common trait in people ... a trait inherent in human nature in general." Or, as his hero from "The Teenager", Dolgoruky, says, the constant clash of various thoughts and intentions is "the most normal state, and by no means a disease or damage."
At the same time, it must be admitted that Dostoevsky's literary genius was born and demanded by a certain era. The second half of the 19th century is the time of transition from patriarchal existence, which still retained the real tangibility of the concepts of "soulfulness", "cordiality", "honor", to a rationally organized and devoid of former sentimentality of life in the conditions of all-conquering technization. On human soul another, already frontal offensive is being prepared, and the nascent System, with even greater impatience than in former times, is determined to see it "dead". And, as if anticipating the impending slaughter, the soul begins to rush about with particular desperation. It was given to feel and show Dostoevsky. After his era, mental turmoil did not cease to be a normal state of a person, however, in turn, the 20th century has already succeeded a lot in rationalizing our inner world.
"Normal state of mind" felt not only Dostoevsky. As you know, Lev Nikolaevich and Fedor Mikhailovich did not really honor each other in life. But each of them was given (like no experimental psychology) to see the deep in a person. And in this vision, the two geniuses were one.
Alexandra Andreevna Tolstaya, a cousin and soulmate of Lev Nikolaevich, complains to him in a letter dated October 18, 1857: "We are always waiting for peace to settle in, peace of mind to come in our souls. We feel bad without him." This is just a diabolical calculation, a very young writer writes in response, the evil in the depths of our soul desires stagnation, the establishment of peace and tranquility. And then he continues: “In order to live honestly, one must tear, get confused, fight, make mistakes, start and quit, and start again and quit again, and always fight and lose ... And peace is spiritual meanness. From this, the bad side of our soul and desires peace, not having a presentiment that achieving it is associated with the loss of everything that is beautiful in us, not human, but from there.
In March 1910, rereading his old letters, Lev Nikolaevich singled out this phrase: "And now I would not say anything else." The genius maintained his conviction all his life: the peace of mind that we are looking for is destructive, first of all, for our soul. It was sad for me to part with the dream of peaceful happiness, he notes in one of his letters, but this is a "necessary law of life", the destiny of man.
According to Dostoevsky, man is a transitional being. Transitivity is the main, essential thing in it. But this transitivity does not have the same meaning as that of Nietzsche and many other philosophers, who see in the transitional state something transient, temporary, unfinished, not brought to the norm, therefore subject to completion. Dostoevsky has a different understanding of transitivity, which only towards the end of the 20th century begins to gradually break through to the forefront of science, but is still in "Through the Looking Glass" practical life of people. He shows on his heroes that there are no permanent states in the mental activity of a person at all, there are only transitional ones, and only they make our soul (and a person) healthy and viable.
The victory of one side - even, for example, absolutely moral behavior- is possible, according to Dostoevsky, only as a result of the rejection of something natural in oneself, which cannot be reconciled with any life finality. There is no unambiguous place "where the living thing lives"; there is no specific state that can be called the only desirable one - even if you "drown yourself in happiness completely with your head." There is no feature that determines everything in a person, except for the need for transitions with obligatory suffering and rare moments of joy. For duality and the inevitable accompanying fluctuations, transitions are the path to something Higher and True, with which "the outcome of the soul is connected, and this is the main thing." Only outwardly it seems that people are chaotically and aimlessly rushing from one to another. In fact, they are in an unconscious inner search. According to Andrei Platonov, they do not wander, they seek. And it is not the fault of a person that most often on either side of the amplitude of the search, he stumbles upon a blank wall, gets into a dead end, again and again finds himself in captivity of the untrue. Such is his fate in this world. Hesitation allows him at least not to become a complete prisoner of the untrue.
The typical hero of Dostoevsky is far from the ideal according to which we today build a family and school education to which our reality is oriented. But he, undoubtedly, can count on the love of the Son of God, who also in his earthly life was tormented more than once by doubts and, at least for a while, felt like a helpless child. Of the heroes of the New Testament, "Dostoevsky's man" looks more like a publican who doubts and executes himself, whom Jesus called to be an apostle, than like the Pharisees and scribes that we understand well.
"And verily, I love you because you do not know how to live today, O higher people!"
Friedrich Nietzsche
The higher comes, Dostoevsky believed, only to those whom something earthly has not completely and irrevocably taken possession of, who is capable of purifying his soul through suffering. That is the only reason why Prince Myshkin has a pronounced childishness and inability to real life turn into spiritual insight, the ability to foresee events. Even the ability of Smerdyakov (from The Brothers Karamazov) to wake up at the end of all his impure deeds for a deep human experience and remorse makes it possible to revive the "face of God", which had previously been deeply walled up, to life. Smerdyakov passes away, refusing to take advantage of the fruits of his crime. Another character of Dostoevsky - Raskolnikov, having committed a mercenary murder, after painful experiences, gives all the money to the family of the deceased Marmeladov. Having performed this act of healing for the soul, he suddenly feels himself, after long, already, it seemed, eternal suffering, in the power of "one, new, immense sensation of suddenly surging full and powerful life."
Dostoevsky rejects the rationalistic idea of human happiness in the "Crystal Palace", where everything will be "calculated according to the tablet." A person is not a "damask in an organ shaft." In order not to go out, to remain alive, the soul must continuously flicker, break the darkness of what has been established once and for all, what can already be defined as "twice two is four." Therefore, it insists, requires a person to be new every day and moment, continuously, in agony, to look for another solution, as soon as the situation becomes a dead scheme, to continuously die and be born.
This is the condition of health and harmonious life souls, therefore, and the main benefit of man, "the most profitable benefit, which is dearest to him."
GOGOL'S BITTER SHARE
Dostoevsky showed the world a tossing, painfully looking for more and more new solutions and therefore always a living person, whose “spark of God” flickers continuously, tearing the veil of everyday stratification over and over again.
As if supplementing the picture of the world, another genius shortly before that saw and showed the world people with an extinguished spark of God, with a dead soul. Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" at first was not even passed by the censors. There is only one reason - in the name. For an Orthodox country, it was considered unacceptable to say that souls could be dead. But Gogol did not back down. Apparently, in such a name there was a special meaning for him, not fully understood by many, even people spiritually close to him. Later, the writer was repeatedly criticized for this title by Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Rozanov, Berdyaev. The general motive of their objections is as follows: there cannot be "dead souls" - in every, even the most insignificant person, there is a light, which, as it is said in the Gospel, "shines in the darkness."
However, the name of the poem was justified by its heroes - Sobakevich, Plyushkin, Korobochka, Nozdrev, Manilov, Chichikov. Other heroes of Gogol's works are similar to them - Khlestakov, the mayor, Akaki Akakievich, Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich ... These are ominous and lifeless "wax figures" personifying human insignificance, "eternal Gogol's dead", from the sight of which "a person can only despise a person" (Rozanov). Gogol portrayed "creatures completely empty, insignificant and, moreover, morally ugly and disgusting" (Belinsky), showed "animalized faces" (Herzen). Gogol does not human images, but there are only "muzzles and faces" (Berdyaev).
Gogol himself was no less horrified by his own offspring. These, in his words, "pig snouts", frozen human grimaces, some soulless things: either "slaves of uselessness" (like Plyushkin), or having lost their individual features and becoming a kind of serial production items (like Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky), or having turned themselves into devices for copying papers (like Akaky Akakievich). It is known that Gogol suffered deeply from the fact that he produced such "images" and not positive edifying heroes. In fact, he drove himself to madness by this suffering. But he couldn't help himself.
Gogol always admired Homer's Odyssey, the majestic beauty of the actions of its heroes, wrote with extraordinary warmth about Pushkin, his ability to show everything great in a person. And the harder he felt in the vicious circle of his insignificant, covered with laughter from above, but inside deadly gloomy images.
Gogol tried to find and show something positive, bright in people. They say in the second volume" dead souls"He somewhat transformed the characters known to us, but was forced to burn the manuscript - he was unable to revive his heroes. An interesting phenomenon: he suffered, passionately wanted to change, improve, but, with all his talent, he could not do it.
Equally painful is the personal fate of Dostoevsky and Gogol - the fate of a genius. But if the first, having gone through the deepest suffering, managed to see the essence of man in the soul actively resisting the pressure of the world, then the second discovered only a soulless, but purposefully acting "image". It is often said that Gogol's characters are from a demon. But, perhaps, the Creator, through the genius of the writer, decided to show what a person will be like who has lost the spark of God, who has become the finished product of the demonization (read - rationalization) of the world? Providence was pleased on the threshold of an era of scientific and technological progress to warn mankind about the deep consequences of future actions.
It is impossible to depict a sincere person in the form of an unambiguous, dead scheme, to imagine his life always cloudless and happy. In our world, he is forced to worry, doubt, search for solutions in torment, blame himself for what is happening, worry about other people, err, make mistakes ... and inevitably suffer. And only with the "death" of the soul does a person acquire a certain stability - he always becomes prudent, cunning, ready to lie and act, to break all obstacles on the way to a goal or to satisfy passion. This gentleman no longer knows empathy, he never feels guilty, he is ready to see in those around him the same hypocrites as he is. With a grimace of superiority, he looks at all the doubters - from Don Quixote and Prince Myshkin to his contemporaries. He does not understand the use of doubt.
Dostoevsky was convinced that man is inherently good. Evil in him is secondary - life makes him evil. He showed a person split in two from this and, as a result, an immeasurably suffering person. Gogol was left with "secondary" people - finished products of a steadily formalizing life. As a result, he gave characters that were more focused not on his time, but on the coming century. Therefore, the "Gogol dead" are tenacious. It doesn't take much to make them look completely normal. modern people. Gogol also remarked: "My heroes are not villains at all; if I added only one good trait to any of them, the reader would make peace with them all."
WHAT BECAME THE IDEAL OF THE 20TH CENTURY?
Dostoevsky, for all his interest in living people, also has one hero completely "without a soul." He is like a scout from another time, from the approaching new age. This is the socialist Pyotr Verkhovensky in Possessed. The writer, through this hero, also gives a forecast for the coming century, predicts an era of struggle with mental activity and the heyday of "devilry".
A social reformer, a "benefactor" of humanity, striving to bring everyone to happiness by force, Verkhovensky sees the future well-being of people in dividing them into two unequal parts: one tenth will dominate nine tenths, who, through a series of rebirths, will lose their desire for freedom and spirituality. dignity. "We will kill desire," proclaims Verkhovensky, "we will put out every genius in infancy. All to the same denominator, complete equality." He considers such a project the only possible one in the matter of building an "earthly paradise." For Dostoevsky, this hero is one of those whom civilization has made "nastier and more bloodthirsty." However, it is precisely this kind of firmness and consistency in achieving the goal at any cost that will become the ideal of the 20th century.
As N. A. Berdyaev writes in the article "Gogol in the Russian Revolution", there was a belief that "a revolutionary thunderstorm will cleanse us of all filth." But it turned out that the revolution only laid bare, made everyday what Gogol, tormented for his heroes, bashfully covered up with a touch of laughter and irony. According to Berdyaev, "scenes from Gogol are played out at every turn in revolutionary Russia." There is no autocracy, and the country is full" dead souls". "Everywhere masks and doubles, grimaces and shreds of a person, nowhere can you see a clear human face. Everything is based on lies. And it is no longer possible to understand what is true in a person, what is false, false. It's all fake."
And this is not only Russia's problem. In the West, Picasso artistically depicts the same non-humans that Gogol saw. They are similar to the "folding monsters of cubism." IN public life"Khlestakovism" flourishes in all civilized countries - especially in the activities of political leaders of any level and persuasion. Homo Sovetikus and Homo Ekonomikus are no less ugly in their unambiguity, "one-dimensionality" than Gogol's "images". It is safe to say that they are not from Dostoevsky. Modern " dead Souls“They only became more educated, learned to be cunning, smile, talk smart about business. But they are soulless.
Therefore, it no longer seems an exaggeration that the well-known American publicist E. Shostrom described in the book "Anti-Carnegie ..." the briefing conducted by an experienced Mexican among his fellow countrymen traveling to the United States for the first time: "Americans - the most beautiful people, but there is one point that touches them. You should not tell them that they are corpses. "According to E. Shostrom, here - the maximum precise definition"diseases" modern man. He is dead, he is a doll. His behavior is indeed very similar to the "behavior" of a zombie. He has serious difficulties with emotions, a change of experiences, the ability to live and react to what is happening according to the "here and now" principle, change decisions and suddenly, unexpectedly even for himself, without any calculation, put his "want" above all.
"The true essence of the 20th century is slavery."
Albert Camus
N.V. Gogol showed the life of a "man in a case" long before the thinkers of the 20th century suddenly discovered that peace of mind more and more of their contemporaries find themselves, as it were, locked in a "cage" of unequivocal convictions, entangled in networks of imposed attitudes.
