Reviews about "Russian man on rendez-vous". N.G

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Introduction

1. Article by N.G. Chernyshevsky "Russian man on rendez-vous"

2. The story "Asya"

3. "Hamlet of Shchigrovsky district"

5. "Noble Nest"

6. "Fathers and sons"

7. "Spring waters"

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

By chance, in Moscow, I got to the play "Russian Man on Rendez-Vous" based on the novel by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev "Spring Waters", which was a huge success for the entire 2011 season on the old stage of the Petr Fomenko Theater. New performance Evgeny Kamenkovich - first of all, a gift to the faithful Fomenkov public, those who for years stood in line for tickets, by hook or by crook made their way into the small theater hall, caught every appearance of their favorite troupe on the stage of other theaters. However, even "casual" spectators who, for a change, decided to pass the evening "under the shadow of fomens" (such as myself), could not doubt that they would not be able to get off with one meeting with this theater now.

In part, the story played out by the actors echoes the personal experiences of the writer. As we all know from the school curriculum, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev loved the singer Pauline Viardot all his life and followed her around the world. Kamenkovich turned out a drama about how a noble, fearless, charming, educated Russian nobleman turns out to be unable to obtain happiness either for himself personally or for others. This performance about the lack of will and impotence of a Russian man is saturated with subtle irony and sincere regret. However, two things save us from painful conclusions and murderous topicality. First: Turgenev himself in "Spring Waters" portrayed Dmitry Sanin as not such a hopeless loser. At the end of the performance, the hero notices that he has multiplied his fortune and has not even allowed serfs into the world. Second: the famous Fomenkov lightness, playfulness, etude. Not a word, not a gesture in vain, everything is in place, with subtext. It seems as if someone from above with a generous hand showered everyone with talents.

The name of the performance of the P. Fomenko theater "Russian Man on rendez-vous" was given by an article by N. G. Chernyshevsky devoted to several stories and novels by Turgenev, primarily "Ase" ("Spring Waters" was not included in the analysis, since they were written many years later ).

1. Article by N.G. Chernyshevsky "Russian man on rendez-vous"

The article "Russian man on rendez-vous" (Reflections after reading Mr. Turgenev's story "Asya") was published in the May issue of the Moscow magazine "Atenei". Incidentally, after the final transition to the magazine N.A. He was not published in Sovremennik, but he could not publish an article in his journal, since a peer-reviewed story was published here.

Arguing with the author of "Asia" and his like-minded people, Chernyshevsky subjected to critical analysis the types of noble "superfluous people" who at a critical moment turn out to be cowards. Instead of being ready to fight, they show weakness and humility. The hero of the story "becomes shy, he powerlessly retreats from everything that requires broad determination and a noble risk." The reviewer transfers these character traits to the whole society; "the vulgarity that he did would have been done by very many other, so-called decent people in our society; therefore, this is nothing but a symptom of an epidemic disease that has taken root in our society." Demchenko, A.A. N.G. Chernyshesky. - M.: Enlightenment, 1989. -S. 9.

Behind the criticism of Turgenev's hero stands the criticism of the liberals, people who are very educated, extremely humane, imbued with the noblest way of thinking, but who collapsed at the decisive moment. They do not belong to those forces in society that will put up a barrier harmful influence "bad people"; they will not form a strong and effective opposition to the feudal lords.

In the article, Chernyshevsky gives a broad picture associated with contemporary Russian society, namely, with the image " goodie" stories and novels, which in a number of situations shows unexpected negative character traits (indecision, cowardice). First of all, these traits are manifested in love and personal relationships.

The title of the article is directly related to the reason for writing it. The ambiguous situation in the story "Asya" served as food for thought, when the girl showed determination and herself made an appointment with the hero ("rendez-vous").

In the very first lines - impressions of the meeting scene in the story "Asya", when main character(perceived by the reader of the story as "positive" and even "ideal") says to the girl who came on a date with him: "You are to blame for me, you have confused me in trouble and I must stop my relationship with you." "What is this?" Chernyshevsky exclaims. "What is she to blame for? Is it that she considered him a decent person? Compromised his reputation by going on a date with him? This man is worse than a notorious scoundrel."

Further, the critic analyzes the love line of a number of Turgenev's works ("Faust", "Rudin") in order to understand whether the author made a mistake in his hero or not (the story "Asya"), and comes to the conclusion that in Turgenev's works main character, personifying the "ideal side", in love affairs behaves like a "pathetic scoundrel". “In Faust, the hero tries to encourage himself by the fact that neither he nor Vera have a serious feeling for each other. He behaves in such a way that Vera herself must tell him that she loves him. […] In Rudin, the matter ends by the fact that the offended girl turns away from him (Rudin), almost ashamed of her love for a coward. Turgenev without gloss. - St. Petersburg: Amphora, 2009. -MS. 268.

Chernyshevsky asks the question: "Perhaps this pathetic trait in the character of the heroes is a peculiarity of Mr. Turgenev's stories?" - And he himself answers: "But remember any good, true to life story of any of our current poets. If there is an ideal side in the story, be sure that the representative of this ideal side acts in exactly the same way as Mr. Turgenev's faces." In order to argue his point of view, the author, for example, analyzes the behavior of the protagonist of Nekrasov's poem "Sasha": "I told Sasha that" one should not weaken in soul, "because" the sun of truth will rise above the earth "and that one must act to realize one's aspirations, and then, when Sasha gets down to business, he says that all this is in vain and will not lead to anything, that he “talked empty”. He likewise prefers retreat to any decisive step." Returning to the analysis of the story "Asya", Chernyshevsky concludes: "These are our best people." Chernyshevsky N.G., Collected Works in 5 volumes. V. 3. Literary criticism . - M .: Pravda, 1974. - S. 398

Then the critic unexpectedly declares that the hero should not be condemned, and begins to talk about himself and his worldview: “I became pleased with everything that I see around me, I’m not angry at anything, I’m not upset by anything (except for failures in business, personally beneficial to me), I condemn nothing and no one in the world (except people who violate my personal interests), I desire nothing (except for my own benefit), - in a word, I will tell you how I became from a bilious melancholic a person before that practical and well-intentioned that I would not even be surprised if I received a reward for my good intentions.

Further, Chernyshevsky resorts to a detailed opposition of “trouble” and “guilt”: “The robber stabbed a man to rob him, and finds it useful for himself - this is guilt. It's not a fault, it's just a misfortune."

What happens to the hero of the story "Asya" is a disaster. He does not benefit and enjoy the situation when a girl in love with him seeks to be with him, and he backs down: "The poor young man does not understand at all the work in which he takes part. The point is clear, but he is obsessed with such stupidity, who is unable to reason with the most obvious facts. Further, the author gives a number of examples from the text, when Asya allegorically, but very clearly, let "our Romeo" understand what she was really experiencing - but he did not understand. "Why do we analyze our hero so severely? Why is he worse than others? Why is he worse than all of us?"

Chernyshevsky reflects on happiness and the ability not to miss the opportunity to be happy (which the hero of the story "Asya" fails to do): "Happiness in ancient mythology it was presented as a woman with a long scythe, blown in front of her by the wind carrying this woman; it is easy to catch her while she flies up to you, but miss one moment - she will fly by, and you would have rushed to catch her in vain: you cannot grab her, left behind. A happy moment is irretrievable. Do not miss a favorable moment - this is the highest condition of worldly prudence. Happy circumstances exist for each of us, but not everyone knows how to use them. " At the end of the article, Chernyshevsky gives a detailed allegory, when, in a situation of a long and exhausting litigation, the hearing is postponed for a day. "What should I do now, let each of you say: would it be wise for me to rush to my opponent to conclude a peace? Or will it be smart to lie on my couch the only day left for me? Or would it be smart to pounce with rude curses on the judge who was favorable to me, whose friendly forewarning gave me the opportunity to end my litigation with honor and profit for myself?" Demchenko, A.A. N.G. Chernyshesky. - M .: Education, 1989. - S. 12.

Chernyshevsky ends the article with a significant warning. The last paragraph of the article was a gospel verse in which the critic replaced the word "servant" with "executor of sentences." The article ends with a quotation from the gospel: "Try to reconcile with your opponent until you have reached the court with him, otherwise your opponent will give you to the judge, and the judge will give you to the executor of sentences, and you will be thrown into prison and will not come out of it until you you will pay for everything to the last detail" (Mat., chapter V, verses 25 and 26).

But I remember that the critic wrote: "The story has a purely poetic, ideal direction, not touching on any of the so-called black sides of life. Here, I thought, the soul will rest and refresh." Chernyshevsky N.G., Collected works in 5 volumes. T. 3. Literary criticism. - M.: Pravda, 1974. - S. 400

But it turned out that Chernyshevsky was not at all going to rest his soul and enjoy Turgenev's style. The article was devoted to exposing the protagonist of the story - Mr. N. For me, he was, first of all, not very experienced in life, a dreamy young man who, more than anything in the world, was afraid of committing an ignoble, unworthy act. In other words, I regarded him as a real intellectual. His happiness with Asya did not take place, because he was afraid, could not afford to abuse her trust, to respond with evil to her brother's friendly attitude.

In addition, both the girl and the narrator became victims of social prejudices of the century before last. Asya's brother, Gagin, was sure that Mr. N. would not marry her, because she was illegitimate. He wrote: "There are prejudices that I respect..." The protagonist of the story did not even immediately understand what was being said. "What superstitions?" I cried, as if he could hear me. "What nonsense!" Turgenev bitterly wrote that people do not understand each other, misinterpret other people's words and deeds, and thereby destroy their own happiness.

But Chernyshevsky saw something completely different in the story. For him, Mr. N. is almost a villain, at least a hopelessly bad person. The most surprising thing is that the critic considers these qualities not personal, but public. He argues that the narrator is a public portrait of the Russian intelligentsia, and they are disfigured by the lack of civil liberties. "... The scene made by our Romeo Asa ... is only a symptom of an illness that spoils all our affairs in exactly the same vulgar way, and we only need to look closely at why our Romeo got into trouble, we will see what we all like him should expect from himself and expect for himself in all other matters... Without acquiring the habit of participating in original civil affairs, without acquiring the feeling of a citizen, a male child, growing up, becomes a male being of middle age, and then of old age, but he does not become a man... It is better not to develop man than to develop without the influence of the thought of social affairs, without the influence of the feelings awakened by participation in them.

Chernyshevsky is very harsh on the hero of Turgenev, accusing him of insensitivity, selfishness, indifference to the experiences of a young girl. Asya dreams of growing wings and flying into the sky, and the hero tells her about the feelings "that lift us from the earth." The critic is outraged by the hero's ingenuity: Asya tells him that her wings have grown, and the hero does not understand what is happening in Asya's heart and in his own. Do not understand or do not want to understand? According to Chernyshevsky, the hero is infantile, incapable of making independent decisions. The critic believes that there are two reasons for this: in the petty and soulless life of N.N. "I'm not used to understanding anything great and living," and besides, he "becomes shy and powerlessly retreats from everything that requires broad determination and noble risk." The hero is afraid of responsibility, is incapable of action, feels only his own doubts, hesitations, experiences, but does not understand the experiences of someone else's soul. Sympathizing with Asya, the critic is happy for her that she did not connect her fate with this man. Egorov, O.G. Novels by I.S. Turgenev: problems of culture. - M.: Prometheus, 2001. - S. 177

The hero is severely punished for his momentary weakness, and, perhaps, N.G. Chernyshevsky is too harsh on this honest and kind man, who was unable to overcome his indecision at the right moment.

It turns out that Mr. N. rejected and offended Asya because he had no experience in public affairs? To me this sounds absurd. But on the other hand, I understood much better what the "method real criticism". Using it, you can piece of art connect with social, political issues.

I imagined Chernyshevsky himself much more clearly. In 1858, when Turgenev's story was published and the article "A Russian Man on Rendez-Vous" appeared, the revolutionary democrats were gaining strength. They were looking for practical meaning and benefit in everything and were sure that writing about love, about nature, about beauty is a completely unnecessary exercise. On the eve of the great social reforms, it was important for Chernyshevsky to convince readers that one must be active citizens, fight for one's rights and one's happiness. This, of course, is a worthy goal for a publicist. But I still feel sorry for Turgenev's story "Asya". I don't think it has anything to do with civil liberties. Her heroine is remembered for the fact that she sees the world in her own way. "You drove into the moon pillar, you broke it," Asya shouted to me. Such images do not become obsolete, unlike Chernyshevsky's political allusions. And, in my opinion, today, almost one hundred and sixty years later, it is better to read this story as one reads beautiful poetry.

The critic-publicist in the article "A Russian Man on Rendez-Vous" addresses the liberal intelligentsia of the nobility with a serious warning: whoever does not take into account the demands of the peasantry, does not go towards revolutionary democracy, which upholds the vital rights of the working people, will eventually be swept away by the course of history. This is stated in an allegorical form, but quite definitely. The reader was led to this conclusion by the most subtle analysis contained in Chernyshevsky's article of the behavior of "our Romeo," who was frightened by the girl's self-sacrificing love and abandoned it. Examining the main character of the story exactly under a strong microscope, the critic discovers in him a commonality with other literary heroes of Russian literature, with the so-called "superfluous people". Demchenko, A.A. N.G. Chernyshesky. - M.: Enlightenment, 1989. -S. 17.

2. The story "Asya"

The story "Asya" has a romantic prehistory. While in Germany, the writer, admiring the ancient ruins along the banks of the Rhine, saw a two-story house. An old woman was looking out of a lower-floor window, and a pretty girl's head was poking out of an upper-floor window. He began to invent who this girl is, what she is, what her relationship with the old woman is. Immediately, the plot of the story was formed, about which Nekrasov speaks as follows: "... She (the story) is so beautiful. She breathes with spiritual youth, she is all pure gold of poetry. Without stretch, this beautiful setting came to the poetic plot, and something came out unparalleled in beauty and purity."

Since this story was fictional, the characters of the characters are somewhat schematic. Asya is a pretty girl whose life circumstances played a role in shaping her personality. She is very impulsive, exalted, with often changing moods - "roles". Her Romeo is Mr. N.N. - an honest young man, his heart is open to all high feelings, but this feeling breaks out in the process of thought, the thought paralyzes the feeling. Nedzvetsky, V.A. Female characters in the work of I.S. Turgenev // Literature at school. - 2007. - № 6. - P. 3 He is not to blame, he is in trouble. To understand this, one must go directly to the plot of the story.

When 18-year-old Asya first saw N.N., she laughed and ran away. She truly made N.N. fall in love with her, although she did nothing to achieve this. N.N. was now in an experience, now in reflection, now in agitation. N.N. constantly suspected Gagin of lying. But then he realized that everything was true. Asya asked N.N. several times to teach her how to behave, how to talk. Asya realizes that she is in love with N.N. She tells Gagin about it. Gagin thinks, comes to N.N. and tells him about it. And the day before, Asya sends N.N. a note asking for a meeting. About this N.N. decides to tell Gagin and respond with revelation to revelation. N.N. at the meeting begins to reproach Asya. I consider it unworthy - to insult a small fluffy chicken - Asya - a defenseless and tender creature. After the meeting, Asya disappears. She is found an hour after the start of the search. N.N. already wants to propose to her, but Gagin does not allow it. The next morning, Gagin and Asya leave for Cologne and then London, and N.N. will never see Asya or Gagin again.

So, the story is read. In the work - love and longing, everything is combined in inexplicable colors, the story seems to be shouting to us: "Do not miss your chance while you are young! Time flies, no one will wait." Turgenev recalled: "... I wrote her (Asya) passionately, almost with tears ...". For me, Turgenev's work is lyrical and sublime. What depth of feeling!

The story is told from the perspective of the protagonist, a young man who has arrived in a small German town. There he meets with one Russian family - brother and sister Gagin.

Asya's real name is Anna. But throughout the story, she is addressed only by the name Asya. Why is this happening? The answer can be found if you find out the meanings of these two names: Anna is grace and good looks, and Asya is born again. We understand that Turgenev does not choose a name for the heroine by chance. Anna is a girl of noble origin, by nature she is a true aristocrat, but in life she has a hard time, she is in danger and she has to lead a "double life", pretending to be a completely different person. Therefore, the author calls her "born again" - she acquires new life. Akimova, N.N. "Irresistible as a thunderstorm"...: the story "Asya" in the creative evolution of I.S. Turgenev // Literature at school. - 2007. - No. 6. - P. 6

In the story, neither the narrator nor Gagin have names. I think the author did it on purpose, used it as a kind of artistic device to further emphasize the fact that Asya is the main character of the story.

Narrator - N.N. - appears before us in a not very clear way. There is no specific description of his appearance anywhere. We only know that at the time when the events described in the story took place, he was twenty-five years old. In fact, this is where the story begins. He himself is a kind and open person. He is more interested in people, characters and deeds than monuments, museums, nature. In a crowd of people, he felt much freer than in nature alone. This, in my opinion, speaks of his sociability and desire to know people. I think this is its key feature. It should be noted that the narrator is much older, he simply recalls his youth and the love story that happened to him.

The young man finished his education and went on a trip abroad, just like that, without the goal - "to look at the world of God." About himself, he says that he was "healthy, young, cheerful", "he did not transfer money, worries had not yet had time to start." The love experiences of the hero due to the fact that he was rejected by a beautiful young widow did not occupy him for long - he met the Gagins, brother and sister. Brother - a young nobleman, fond of painting. Asya is his sister.

Gagin is a handsome young man. This is how the narrator describes him: "Gagin had just such a face, sweet, affectionate, with big soft eyes and soft curly hair." According to his (narrator's) words, it is immediately clear that he is more than welcome to Gagin. Gagin is an open, sympathetic, truthful, loving person.

Asya is a very pretty girl. "There was something of its own, special, in the warehouse of her swarthy round face, with a small thin nose ...". "She was gracefully built." In general, the character of Asya is quite difficult to capture. It is always different, as if every meeting with the narrator plays a role. "Chameleon Girl" - this is how N.N. This is the main characteristic of Asya. It was noticeable that she was well educated, but "she received a strange upbringing", not typical for Russian young ladies. This is a proud, independent nature, open and sincere. Having fallen in love with the hero, she did not hide it from him, but she herself writes to him, makes an appointment, confesses her feelings, like her favorite heroine - Pushkin's Tatyana. Tankova, N.S. Turgenev girl // Literature at school. - 1996. - No. 5. - S. 132.

At N.N. and Gagin immediately established very warm friendly relations. I think it happened because they both love Asya. At first, N.N. simply liked Gagin, as he was a gentle and cheerful person. The narrator greatly appreciated these qualities. Later, when they got to know each other better, Asya became a thread that firmly connected friendly ties.

Gagin decided to reveal to him family secret. It turned out that Asya is Gagin's half-sister. Her mother is the former maid of Gagin's deceased mother. Asya lived with her father for nine years and did not know Gagin, but after his death Gagin took her to him and they became very close, although at first Asya was shy of Gagin. I think Gagin told this story to N.N. because I realized how indifferent Asya is to the young man.

At N.N. and Asya immediately there is mutual sympathy. Later, sympathy grew into something more. In Asa, N.N. was attracted by her soul, her state of mind, her incomprehensible actions and mood swings.

Like Pushkin's Tatyana, Asya makes the appointment herself. Like Tatyana, she is the first to confess her love to her chosen one. In my opinion, Asya is the personification of a typically Russian female character. For Asya, Mr. N.N. is the hero of a lofty dream, an unusual, exceptional person. Asya is a girl with a pure and sincere heart, "she does not have a single feeling in half." According to Gagin, Asya's feelings for Mr. N.N. "unexpected and as irresistible as a thunderstorm." Her feeling is free, it is difficult to contain it: "If we were birds, how we would soar, how we would fly ..."

Let's turn to the scene of a date (gap). Asya on a date is "like a dead bird." Why, because she hopes for love? This key image birds helps to understand the writer's thought: no luck! This detail is valid throughout the story, these two people are not meant for each other. Asya before the hero understands everything. N.N. acts according to the rules, and love is not a rule, not laws. Love is a violation of all rules, a sea of ​​stars, a storm of feelings, moonlight and a moon pillar ... which the hero breaks. Broke - and Asya is gone!

Date N.N. and Asya takes place in a small, rather dark room, in the house of the burgomaster's widow, Frau Louise. In this scene, N.N.'s psychological incompatibility is most clearly seen. and Asi. The laconic remarks of the heroine speak of her timidity, modesty and resignation to fate. Her words are barely audible in the darkness of the room.

Mr. N.N., on the contrary, showing initiative in dialogue, is verbose, he hides his unpreparedness for a reciprocal feeling, his inability to surrender to love behind reproaches and loud exclamations.

The reciprocal feeling, either by chance or by a fatal predetermination of fate, ignites in the hero later, but nothing can be changed. N.N. he himself admits this: "When I met her in that fatal room, I still did not have a clear consciousness of my love ... it flared up with irresistible force only a few moments later, when, frightened by the possibility of misfortune, I began to look for and call her ...but then it was too late."

The date scene we're in last time meet with main character story, finally shows how contradictory Asya's character is. In the short time of the meeting, she experiences a whole range of feelings - timidity, a flash of happiness, complete self-giving (“Yours ... - she whispered in a barely audible voice”), shame and despair. We understand how strong she is in character, that she herself could stop the painful scene and, having overcome her weakness, "with the speed of lightning" disappeared, leaving Mr. N. in complete confusion. We see how weak, compared to Asya, Mr. N.N. turns out to be, we see his moral inferiority.

Turgenev punishes his hero for not recognizing love, for doubting it. One cannot doubt love (Bazarov paid for this with his life), love cannot be put off until tomorrow. The author condemns his hero. Yes, and Mr. N.N. sarcastically speaks about his decision to be happy "tomorrow": "Happiness has no tomorrow..." Zeitlin, A.G. The skill of Turgenev as a novelist. - M.: Sov. writer, 1956. -S. 204.

But Asya thought that N.N. despises her, and therefore told Gagin that, apart from him, she does not love anyone. But later she still could not stand it and confessed everything to her brother, after which she asked to leave the city immediately. After much thought, N.N. he got confused and drove himself into a dead end. Asya, apparently, is also completely confused. In the end, be that as it may, it all ended very sadly. Asya and Gagin left the city. No matter how hard N.N. tried, he could not attack their trail. And yet, not a single woman could replace the narrator Asya. This tells us once again that true love never dies...

When I turned the last page of I. S. Turgenev’s story “Asya”, I had the feeling that I had just read a poem or heard a gentle melody. Everything was so beautiful: stone walls ancient city, the silver night Rhine ... Actually, it makes no sense to retell Turgenev's landscapes in your own words. For me, “Asia” is “a subtle smell of resin in the forests, the scream and knock of woodpeckers, the incessant chatter of bright streams with motley trout on the sandy bottom, not too bold outlines of mountains, gloomy rocks, clean little villages with venerable old churches and trees, storks in the meadows, cozy mills with nimble wheels...” Turgenev, I.S. Favorites. - L .: Lenizdat, 1980. - S. 148. This is a feeling of a calm world in which a person can be happy, unless he himself destroys the harmony that has arisen.

3. "Hamlet of Shchigrovsky district"

I wanted to know how love relationships develop in other works of I.S. Turgenev, how the heroes manifest themselves. And the first work that interested me, where the hero is shown not in the best way in relation to women, was the essay "Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky district." In the center of the story - Vasily Vasilyevich - a self-revealing Russian Hamlet, who does not find a place for himself in life. Turgenev subjected him to a sharp satirical exposure, pointing to social causes and the conditions of education that gave rise to reflection in Russian intellectuals and made them incapable of practical activity. Pustovoit, P.G. Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev. - M.: Publishing House of Moscow. University, 1957. -S. 14.

The self-disclosure of the hero in his story about the history of his marriage achieves special strength. Spreading at length about women and about love, developing various ingenious theories of marriage, Vasily Vasilyevich gives in when meeting women, behaves extremely cowardly and is pathetic to the point of comicality. Once in the house of a Berlin professor, Vasily Vasilyevich falls in love with his daughter Linchen. It is rather not love, but some kind of appearance of love, a strange speculative illusion. For six months it seems to him that he is in love. The state of this six-month love self-deception was expressed in the fact that he read aloud various touching works to the blue-eyed Linchen, furtively shaking hands with her. When this sentimental and extremely monotonous paradise had already become excessively painful, Vasily Vasilyevich confessed: “in the most, as they say, moments of inexplicable bliss, for some reason everything in my stomach sucked and a dreary, cold shiver ran through my stomach. could not stand such happiness and ran away. Thus, the first tour of Hamlet's love in Shchigrovsky district ended with a shameful capitulation at the rendez-vous.

The hero returns to Russia, to the village. There began the second round of his love. The heroine of the new novel was the colonel's consumptive daughter Sophia. In all likelihood, she did not have a beautiful appearance, for the hero categorically declares: "I liked Sophia most of all when I sat with my back to her, or even, perhaps, when I thought or more dreamed about her, especially in the evening, on the terrace." Intoxicated with his dream, the moon and the evening landscape, Hamlet asked the old woman for the hand of her daughter. But here he sums up what happened: "It seemed to me that I loved her, and now, by God, I don't know if I loved Sophia." Such is the love of this person - "empty, insignificant and unnecessary, unoriginal", whose whole life is a continuous imitation of someone, philosophizing from someone else's voice. Pustovoit, P.G. Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev. - M.: Publishing House of Moscow. University, 1957. -S. 15.

4. "Rudin"

Those vital factors and social conditions that crippled and shattered the impressionable, weak and nervous nature of Hamlet of the Shchigry district were presented by Turgenev in their true light, without a satirical accent in the novel Rudin.

The novel was remade several times by the author under the influence of his friends, all these revisions could not but give rise to a number of contradictions in the character of the protagonist and in the attitude of other characters towards him. Rudin is smart, talented, the fire of love for truth has not died out in him, he knows how to light this fire in other people (Natalya, Basistov), ​​he speaks with enthusiasm about the high vocation of a person, but Rudin is not ready for practical work. And this is the main contradiction in his character, and in his relationship with Natalia.

In the novel, Turgenev created a poetic image of a Russian girl - Natalia Lasunskaya. A significant role in its creation was played by the personal experiences of the writer, his relationship with T. A. Bakunina. In his letters to Bakunina, Turgenev speaks of the highest, ideal love, bordering on self-sacrifice. The embodiment of such love is the image of Natalia. The charm of Turgenev's heroines, despite the difference in their psychological types, lies in the fact that their characters are revealed in moments of intense poetic feeling. Nedzvetsky, V.A. Female characters in the work of I.S. Turgenev // Literature at school. - 2007. - No. 6. - P. 4

Natalya is truly touching and charming in her love for Rudin. Receptive to poetry and art, deeply feeling joy and grief, seventeen-year-old Natalya in spiritual development rises above the world of the Pigasovs and Pandalevskys. Meek and domineering at the same time, she managed to resist greenhouse upbringing, bypassing the usual prohibitions and tedious teachings of her educators, thoughtfully treated everything that was happening around. Along with natural tenderness, she brought up the strength and determination of character. This is evident from the fact that she was ready to go anywhere for a loved one, even against the will of her mother, in spite of any obstacles, ready for self-sacrifice. But is Rudin ready to accept such a sacrifice? Lebedev, Yu.V. Life of Turgenev. - M.: Tsentrpoligraf, 2006. -S. 390. turgenev love hero asya

Rudin, like all Turgenev's heroes, goes through the test of love. This feeling in Turgenev is sometimes bright, sometimes tragic and destructive, but it is always a force that exposes the soul, the true nature of a person. Although Rudin's speeches are full of enthusiasm, years of abstract philosophical work withered his heart and soul. It is here that the "head", far-fetched nature of Rudin's hobby is revealed, his lack of naturalness and freshness of feelings. The predominance of the rational principle in the hero is felt by us in the scene of a love confession. Rudin does not know himself or Natalya, mistaking her at first for a girl.

The appearance of Natalia is covered with light and tender poetry. At the same time, in the novel, we see not only a sublimely airy, but also a strong, adamant girl who managed to renounce the light poetry of natural feeling. It should also be emphasized that, revealing the inner world of a man, Turgenev seeks to capture those character traits that would explain him as a social type, and creating the image of a woman, he mainly proceeded from the "norm", "sample" human personality. Lebedev, Yu.V. Life of Turgenev. - M.: Tsentrpoligraf, 2006. -S.392.

As very often with Turgenev, the heroine is placed above the hero in love - with the integrity of nature, immediacy of feeling, recklessness in decisions. Natalya, at seventeen years old, without any life experience, is ready to leave the house and join her fate with Rudin. Natalya loves Rudin so much that she does not even see his weaknesses, she believes in his strength and ability to do great things.

In response to the question: "What do you think we should do?" - she hears from Rudin: "Of course, to submit." Natalya Rudina throws many bitter words: she reproaches him for cowardice, cowardice, for the fact that his lofty words are far from deeds.

In the climactic scene at Avdyukhin Pond, Turgenev strives primarily for a realistic understanding of dependence state of mind person from the social environment. The behavior of Turgenev's hero in the face of his girlfriend reveals in the novel not only his personal qualities, but also Rudin's ability to serve society and the people. A date in the garden leads to a decisive explanation. The significance of this scene is extremely great. Natalya says to Rudin: "I will be yours", Rudin himself convinces himself with a smile that he is happy. This scene in the garden is the beginning of the external and internal action of the novel: it was now that the conflict between Natalya's determination, the reflection of the "chicken" Rudin, and the inevitable resistance that Lasunskaya would put up for both was determined. “What is it?” thought Rudin after an explanation with Natalya, who mercilessly exposed him. “... how pitiful and worthless I was in front of her!”

The hero is debunked, he does not stand the test of love, revealing his human inferiority. However, Rudin cannot part with Natalya without writing her a frank confession letter full of critical introspection. The sadly lyrical tone of the letter, Rudin's departure enhance the dramatic denouement of the intimate and personal relationships of the characters in the novel. Zeitlin, A.G. The skill of Turgenev as a novelist. - M.: Sov. writer, 1956. - S. 123.

5. "Noble Nest"

The next in time of writing is the novel "The Noble Nest", I began to consider it from the point of view of the love relationships of the characters.

Turgenev in "The Noble Nest" devotes a lot of space to the theme of love, because this feeling helps to highlight everything best qualities heroes, to see the main thing in their characters, to understand their soul. Love is depicted by Turgenev as the most beautiful, bright and pure feeling that brings out the best in people. In this novel, as in no other novel by Turgenev, the most touching, romantic, sublime pages are devoted to the love of heroes. Along with deep and topical ideological disputes, the ethical problem of personal happiness and duty was highlighted in the novel. This problem is revealed through the relationship between Lavretsky and Lisa, which is the core of the novel. The image of Lisa Kalitina is a huge poetic achievement of Turgenev the artist. A girl with a natural mind, subtle feeling, integrity of character and moral responsibility for all her actions, Liza is full of great moral purity, goodwill towards people; she is demanding of herself difficult moments life is capable of self-sacrifice. Raised from childhood in religious traditions, Lisa is deeply religious. However, it is not religious dogma that attracts her, but the preaching of justice, love for people, readiness to suffer for others, accept the guilt of others, make sacrifices if necessary. Lebedev, Yu.V. Life of Turgenev. - M.: Tsentrpoligraf, 2006. -S. 352.

Religiosity does not turn Lisa into a hypocrite. The girl retains her naturally lively mind, cordiality, love for beauty, concern for ordinary people. This healthy, natural and invigorating principle, combined with other positive qualities of Lisa, was already felt by Lavretsky at the first meeting with her.

Lavretsky returned from abroad after a break with his wife, having lost faith in the purity of human relations, in women's love, in the possibility of personal happiness. However, communication with Lisa gradually returns him to his former faith in everything pure and beautiful.

Turgenev does not trace in detail the emergence of spiritual closeness between Liza and Lavretsky. But he finds other means of conveying this rapidly growing and strengthening feeling. The history of the relationship between Liza and Lavretsky is revealed both directly in the dialogues of the main characters of the novel, and with the help of subtle psychological observations and conclusions of the author. An important role in the poeticization of these relationships is played by the music of Lemma. To the accompaniment of the passionate melodies of Lemm's inspirational music, the best movements of Lavretsky's soul are revealed; against the background of this music, the most poetic explanations of the heroes of the novel take place. Zeitlin, A.G. The skill of Turgenev as a novelist. - M.: Sov. writer, 1956. - 24

But the hope that flashed for Lavretsky was illusory: the news of his wife's death turned out to be false. The unexpected arrival of his wife put the hero in front of a dilemma: personal happiness with Lisa or duty towards his wife and child. And the hero was forced to submit to sad, but inexorable circumstances. Continuing to consider personal happiness as the highest good in human life, the hero of the novel bows to duty.

In the light of Chernyshevsky's article about "Ace", the finale of "The Noble Nest" should also be considered. Lavretsky expresses sad thoughts at the end of the novel, primarily because he is experiencing great personal grief: "Burn down, useless life!" Lavretsky felt the impossibility of returning love, purity, the impossibility for him of personal happiness.

Turgenev leads his heroes along the road of trials. Lavretsky's transitions from hopelessness to an extraordinary upsurge, born of the hope of happiness, and again to hopelessness create an internal drama of the novel. Everything around is a reproach to lovers. This is retribution for the sins of fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers. Lisa also experienced the same vicissitudes, for a moment she surrendered herself to the dream of happiness and then felt all the more guilty. For what? For unconscious joy at the news of a person's death, for criminal hopes, because "happiness on earth does not depend on us." Following the story of Lisa's past, which makes the reader wish her happiness with all her heart and rejoice in it, Lisa suddenly suffers a terrible blow - Lavretsky's wife arrives, and Liza recalls that she has no right to happiness, which nevertheless "was ... so close". Liza's charm is not in the outer, but in inner beauty: it is full of moral purity and spirituality. And in this she is higher than Lavretsky, according to Turgenev's plan, like all his heroines. Zeitlin, A.G. The skill of Turgenev as a novelist. - M.: Sov. writer, 1956. -S. 315.

Liza Kalitina combines all the qualities of the "Turgenev girls": modesty, spiritual beauty, the ability to deeply feel and experience, and most importantly, the ability to love, love selflessly and limitlessly, without fear of self-sacrifice. She "leaves" Lavretsky after learning that his lawful wife is alive. She does not allow herself to say a word to him in the church where he has come to see her. And even eight years later, when meeting in the monastery, she passes by: “Moving from choir to choir, she walked close by him, walked with the even, hastily humble gait of a nun - and did not look at him; only the eyelashes of the eye turned to him slightly trembled, only she tilted her emaciated face even lower - and the fingers of her clenched hands, intertwined with a rosary, pressed even closer to each other.

Not a word, not a look. And why? You can’t return the past, but there is no future, so why disturb old wounds?

The epilogue of the novel is an elegy, life has flown away like sand! And after reading the novel, you ask yourself: "Was such a sacrifice necessary, is it worth giving up love, happiness for the sake of some kind of prejudice"? After all, such an act of the hero did not make anyone happy: neither Lisa, nor the hero himself, and even more so his wife and child.

6. "Fathers and sons"

The hero of Turgenev's novel "Fathers and Sons" Yevgeny Bazarov also passes the test of love, also finds himself on "rendez-vous".

At the beginning of the novel, the author presents us with his hero as a nihilist, a man "who does not bow to any authorities, who does not take a single principle on faith," for whom romanticism is nonsense and a whim: "Bazarov recognizes only that which can be felt hands, see with the eyes, put on the tongue, in a word, only that which can be witnessed by one of the five senses. Therefore, he considers mental suffering unworthy of a real man, high aspirations - far-fetched and ridiculous. Thus, "aversion to everything that is detached from life and vanishes in sounds is the fundamental property" of Bazarov. Turgenev without gloss. - St. Petersburg: Amphora, 2009. -S. 336.

Turgenev is fighting "nihilism" with the help of such a means as a love affair. It is so compact in the novel that it fits in just five chapters (XIV-XVIII). Of all the previous collisions, in which Bazarov is typical, he emerges victorious; in love he fails. This changes the fate of Bazarov.

Bazarov, a proud and self-confident commoner who laughed at love as an unworthy man and fighter of romanticism, experiences inner excitement and embarrassment in front of a self-confident beauty, is embarrassed and, finally, passionately falls in love with the aristocrat Odintsova. Listen to the words of his forced confession: "I love you foolishly, madly." There is only feeling, romanticism, excitement.

Bazarov immediately saw in Odintsova an outstanding person, felt an involuntary respect for her and distinguished her from the circle of provincial ladies: "She doesn't look like other women." But this is still a nihilistic view. The aristocracy of Odintsova is not coldness, aloofness, it is the national ideal of female beauty, which requires respect. She is in many ways worthy of Bazarov, but is he worthy of her? The background on which the explanation of Bazarov and Odintsova takes place is a poetic picture of a summer evening. The romantic feeling of high love illuminates with a new light the world. In the scene of explaining to Odintsova’s question whether he could surrender completely to the feeling of love, he honestly answers: “I don’t know, I don’t want to brag.” And yet we see that he is capable of great feeling. But from his words, Odintsova could conclude that this man, no matter how much he loved, would not sacrifice his convictions in the name of love. Some critics who wrote about the novel argued that in the story of Bazarov's love for Odintsova, Turgenev debunked his hero. Lebedev, Yu.V. Life of Turgenev. - M.: Tsentrpoligraf, 2006. -S. 433.

“He is rather pitiable to whom this thing happens” or “it is better to beat stones on the pavement than to let a woman take possession of at least the tip of her finger,” - this is how Bazarov speaks of love.

Bazarov is a nihilist, for him any warm attitude towards a woman is "romanticism, nonsense", therefore the sudden love for Odintsova split his soul into two halves: "a staunch opponent of romantic feelings" and "passionately loving person". Perhaps this is the beginning of a tragic retribution for his arrogance. Naturally, this internal conflict of Bazarov is reflected in his behavior. When he was introduced to Anna Sergeevna, Bazarov surprised even his friend Arkady, as he was visibly embarrassed ("... his friend blushed"). True, Yevgeny himself was annoyed: "Here you are, you got scared of the women!" He covered up his awkwardness with exaggerated swagger. Bazarov made an impression on Anna Sergeevna, although his "breaking in the first minutes of the visit had an unpleasant effect on her."

In the life of the nihilist Bazarov, love played a tragic role. And yet the strength and depth of Bazarov's feelings do not disappear without a trace. At the end of the novel, Turgenev draws the grave of the hero and "two already decrepit old men", Bazarov's parents, who come to her. But this is also love!" Isn't love, holy, devoted love, omnipotent?"

Heroines are opposed to the images of heroes in Turgenev's novels. They always come from a noble environment, surpassing it in their cultural, and to a certain extent, political level. Turgenev does not create a single female character: if Natalya and especially Elena (the novel "On the Eve") are "consciously heroic natures" incapable of compromise and revealing a rare strength of character, then Odintsova and Liza, on the contrary, are frightened by the dangers of life's struggle. Pustovoit, P.G. Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev. - M.: Publishing House of Moscow. University, 1957. - S. 54.

7. "Spring waters"

And finally, "Spring Waters" is a story that attracted my attention not only because of the performance I watched, but also because the hero is another interesting addition to Turgenev's gallery of weak-willed people.

The plot of the story is sad. The hero, sorting through some old papers, suddenly stumbles upon a pomegranate cross and recalls a long history. A few decades ago, not afraid of a duel and death, he, Dmitri Pavlovich Sanin, betrayed love, and even somehow stupidly, senselessly betrayed, if only betrayal can be imagined as reasonable and having a deep meaning.

The main narrative is conducted as a memoir of the 52-year-old nobleman and landowner Sanin about the events of 30 years ago that happened in his life when he traveled around Germany.

Once, while passing through Frankfurt, Sanin went into a pastry shop, where he helped the young daughter of the hostess, Gemma, with her younger brother who had fainted. The family was imbued with sympathy for Sanin, and unexpectedly for himself, he spent several days with them. When he was out for a walk with Gemma and her fiancé, one of the young German officers sitting at the next table in the tavern allowed himself a rude trick, and Sanin challenged him to a duel.

The duel ended happily for both participants. However, this incident greatly shook the measured life of the girl. She refused the groom, who could not protect her. Sanin suddenly realized that he fell in love with her. The love that engulfed them led Sanin to the idea of ​​marriage. Even Gemma's mother, who was horrified at first because of Gemma's break with her fiancé, gradually calmed down and began to make plans for their future life.

To sell his estate and get money for life together, Sanin went to Wiesbaden to the rich wife of his boarding comrade Polozov, whom he accidentally meets in Frankfurt. However, a wealthy young Russian beauty, Marya Nikolaevna, lured Sanin on a whim and made him one of her lovers. Unable to resist the strong nature of Marya Nikolaevna, Sanin follows her to Paris, but soon turns out to be unnecessary and returns in shame to Russia, where his life passes listlessly in the bustle of society.

Only 30 years later, he accidentally finds a miraculously preserved pomegranate cross, presented to him by Gemma. He rushes to Frankfurt, where he finds out that Gemma, two years after those events, got married and lives happily in New York with her husband and five children. Her daughter in the photograph looks like that young Italian girl, her mother, to whom Sanin once offered his hand and heart.

How Sanin's heart flared up at the sight of Gemma Roselli! And before he had time to look back, in two days the groom was already ready to sell his only estate and live forever next to the confectionery in Frankfurt. And just as quickly, in two days, he falls victim to skillful coquetry - and not only parted with his adored bride, but all his life throws at the feet of a woman with an amazing body, ardent character and melodious Moscow speech. Why?

Are there any overkill here? I don’t know… But the story of a 22-year-old Tula landowner who passionately fell in love with the Italian Gemma in Frankfurt, who was ready to fight a duel because of her, who was ready to sell his estate and stand behind the counter of a confectionery, the story great love, which absurdly collapsed a week later, when Sanin was seduced by the millionaire mistress Marya Nikolaevna, who was bored on the waters, who did not know how to restrain herself, a love story that Sanin could not forget all his life - leads to the idea that "rendez-vous" again did not take place.

True, at the end of his life, but it is quite clear that these 52 years of his are already the end, he has neither strength nor feelings, he, “already taught by experience, after so many years, was still unable to understand how he could leave Gemma, so tenderly and passionately loved by him, for a woman whom he did not love at all? .. "The main thing is that the hero still asks himself this question.

Behindkey

So, a love affair, in which the main features of the heroes of the Russian novel are most clearly revealed, forms the basis of most works of Russian classical literature. Love stories of heroes attracted many writers, and they were of particular importance in the work of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev.

The writer, apparently, believed that a love affair reveals both the personal qualities and social views of the characters. It is based on a system of "triangles" that provide a situation of choice: Rudin - Natalia - Volintsev; Lavretsky - Lisa - Panshin; Insarov - Elena - Bersenev, Shubin, Kurnatovsky; Nezhdanov - Marianna - Kallomiytsev (Solomin). In the course of the development of a love affair, the solvency or insolvency of the hero, his right to happiness, is tested. The center of the "triangle" is a woman (Turgenev's girl).

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"Stories in a businesslike, incriminating manner leave a very heavy impression on the reader; therefore, recognizing their usefulness and nobility, I am not entirely satisfied that our literature has taken such an exclusively gloomy direction."

Quite a few of the people, apparently not stupid, say so, or, to put it better, they spoke until the peasant question became the sole subject of all thoughts, of all conversations. Whether their words are fair or unfair, I do not know; but I happened to be under the influence of such thoughts when I began to read almost the only good new story, from which, from the first pages, one could already expect a completely different content, a different pathos than from business stories. There is no chicanery with violence and bribery, no dirty rogues, no official villains explaining in elegant language that they are the benefactors of society, no philistines, peasants and little officials tormented by all these terrible and nasty people. The action is abroad, away from all the bad atmosphere of our home life. All the characters in the story are among the best among us, very educated, extremely humane, imbued with the noblest way of thinking. The story has a purely poetic, ideal direction, not touching on any of the so-called black sides of life. Here, I thought, the soul will rest and refresh. And indeed, she was refreshed by these poetic ideals, while the story reached the decisive moment. But the last pages of the story are not like the first ones, and after reading the story, the impression left from it is even more bleak than from the stories about nasty bribe-takers with their cynical robbery. They do bad things, but they are recognized by each of us as bad people; we do not expect them to improve our lives. There are, we think, forces in society that will put up a barrier to their harmful influence, that will change the character of our life with their nobility. This illusion is rejected in the most bitter way in the story, which awakens the brightest expectations with its first half.

Here is a man whose heart is open to all lofty feelings, whose honesty is unshakable, whose thought has taken into itself everything for which our age is called the age of noble aspirations. And what does this person do? He makes a scene that the last bribe-taker would be ashamed of. He feels the strongest and purest sympathy for the girl who loves him; he cannot live an hour without seeing this girl; his thought all day, all night draws her beautiful image to him, it has come for him, you think, that time of love, when the heart is drowning in bliss. We see Romeo, we see Juliet, whose happiness is not hindered by anything, and the minute is approaching when their fate will be decided forever - for this, Romeo has only to say: "I love you, do you love me?" - and Juliet whispers: "Yes ..." And what does our Romeo do (as we will call the hero of the story, whose last name is not given to us by the author of the story), appearing on a date with Juliet? With a thrill of love, Juliet awaits her Romeo; she must learn from him that he loves her - this word was not uttered between them, it will now be uttered by him, they will unite forever; bliss awaits them, such a high and pure bliss, the enthusiasm of which makes the solemn moment of decision hardly bearable for the earthly organism. People died of less joy. She sits like a frightened bird, hiding her face from the radiance of the sun of love that appears before her; she breathes quickly, she trembles all over; she lowers her eyes even more tremulously when he enters, calls her name; she wants to look at him and cannot; he takes her hand, - this hand is cold, lies as if dead in his hand; she wants to smile; but her pale lips cannot smile. She wants to speak to him, and her voice breaks. Both of them are silent for a long time - and, as he himself says, his heart melted, and now Romeo speaks to his Juliet ... and what does he say to her? “You are to blame for me,” he says to her, “you have entangled me in trouble, I am dissatisfied with you, you are compromising me, and I must stop my relationship with you; it is very unpleasant for me to part with you, but if you please, go away from here” . What it is? What is her fault? Is it that she considered him a decent person? Compromised his reputation by going on a date with him? It's amazing! Every line in her pale face says that she is waiting for the decision of her fate from his word, that she has irrevocably given her whole soul to him and now only expects him to say that he accepts her soul, her life, and he reprimands her for that she compromises him! What kind of ridiculous cruelty is this? What is this low rudeness? And this man, acting so vilely, has been shown to be noble up to now! He deceived us, deceived the author. Yes, the poet made a very gross mistake in imagining that he was telling us about a decent man. This man is worse than a notorious scoundrel.

Such was the impression made upon many by the quite unexpected turn of the relations between our Romeo and his Juliet. We heard from many that the whole story is spoiled by this outrageous scene, that the character of the main person is not consistent, that if this person is what he appears in the first half of the story, then he could not act with such vulgar rudeness, and if he could do so, then from the very beginning he must have appeared to us as a completely wretched man.

It would be very comforting to think that the author really made a mistake, but the sad merit of his story lies in the fact that the character of the hero is true to our society. Perhaps if this character were what people would like to see him, dissatisfied with his rudeness on a date, if he were not afraid to give himself to the love that had taken possession of him, the story would have won in an ideally poetic sense. The enthusiasm of the first meeting scene would be followed by several other highly poetic minutes, the quiet charm of the first half of the story would rise to pathetic charm in the second half, and instead of the first act from Romeo and Juliet with an ending in the style of Pechorin, we would have something really like Romeo and Juliet, or at least one of George Sand's novels. Whoever is looking for a poetically integral impression in the story should really condemn the author, who, having lured him with sublimely sweet expectations, suddenly showed him some vulgarly absurd vanity of petty-timid egoism in a man who began like Max Piccolomini and ended like some Zakhar Sidorych, playing a penny preference.

But is the author definitely mistaken in his hero? If he made a mistake, then this is not the first time he makes this mistake. No matter how many stories he had that led to a similar situation, each time his heroes got out of these situations only by being completely embarrassed in front of us. In Faust, the hero tries to encourage himself by the fact that neither he nor Vera have a serious feeling for each other; sitting with her, dreaming about her is his business, but in terms of determination, even in words, he behaves in such a way that Vera herself must tell him that she loves him; For several minutes the conversation had already gone on in such a way that he should certainly have said this, but, you see, he did not guess and did not dare to tell her this; and when a woman, who must accept an explanation, is finally forced to make an explanation herself, he, you see, "froze", but felt that "bliss like a wave runs through his heart", only, however, "at times", but actually speaking, he “completely lost his head” - it’s only a pity that he didn’t faint, and even that would have been if it hadn’t happened by the way a tree to which he could lean. As soon as the man has recovered, the woman whom he loves, who has expressed her love to him, comes up to him, and asks what he intends to do now? He... he was "embarrassed." It is not surprising that after such a behavior of a loved one (otherwise, the image of the actions of this gentleman cannot be called “behavior”) the poor woman became nervous fever; it is even more natural that he then began to weep at his own fate. It's in Faust; almost the same in Rudin. Rudin at first behaves somewhat more decently for a man than the former heroes: he is so determined that he himself tells Natalya about his love (although he does not speak out of good will, but because he is forced to this conversation); he himself asks her a date. But when Natalya tells him on this date that she will marry him, with the consent and without the consent of her mother, it doesn’t matter, if only he only loves her, when he says the words: “Know, I will be yours,” Rudin only finds an exclamation in response : "Oh my God!" - the exclamation is more embarrassing than enthusiastic, - and then he acts so well, that is, to such an extent cowardly and lethargic that Natalya herself is forced to invite him on a date to decide what to do. Having received the note, "he saw that the denouement was approaching, and was secretly embarrassed in spirit." Natalya says that her mother announced to her that she would rather agree to see her daughter dead than Rudin's wife, and again asks Rudin what he intends to do now. Rudin answers as before: "My God, my God" - and adds even more naively: "So soon!

What do I intend to do? My head is spinning, I can't think of anything." But then he realizes that he should "submit." him, replies that he did not expect such decisiveness.The case ends with the offended girl turning away from him, almost ashamed of her love for a coward.

But perhaps this pitiful trait in the character of the heroes is a peculiarity of Mr. Perhaps it is the nature of his talent that inclines him to depict such faces? Not at all; the nature of talent, it seems to us, means nothing here. Think of any good, true-to-life story by any of our contemporary poets, if there is an ideal side to the story, you can be sure that the representative of this ideal side acts in exactly the same way as the faces of Mr. Turgenev. For example, Mr. Nekrasov's character is not at all the same as Mr. Turgenev's; You can find any flaws in him, but no one will say that Mr. Nekrasov's talent lacked energy and firmness. What does the hero do in his poem "Sasha"? He told Sasha that, he says, "one should not weaken in soul," because "the sun of truth will rise over the earth" and that one must act in order to fulfill one's aspirations, and then, when Sasha gets down to business, he says that all this is in vain and it will not lead to anything that he "talked empty." Let us recall how Beltov acts: he likewise prefers retreat to every decisive step. There could be many such examples. Everywhere, whatever the character of the poet, whatever his personal ideas about the actions of his hero, the hero acts in the same way with all other decent people, like him derived from other poets: while there is no talk of business, but you just need to take up idle time, to fill an idle head or an idle heart with conversations and dreams, the hero is very lively; when things come to expressing their feelings and desires directly and accurately, most of the characters begin to hesitate and feel slowness in their language. A few, the bravest, somehow still manage to gather all their strength and inarticulately express something that gives a vague idea of ​​their thoughts; but should anyone think of seizing on their desires, saying: "You want this and that; we are very glad; start acting, and we will support you," - with such a remark, one half of the bravest heroes faints, others they begin to reproach you very rudely for putting them in an awkward position, they begin to say that they did not expect such proposals from you, that they completely lose their heads, cannot figure anything out, because "how is it possible so soon", and " besides, they are honest people, "and not only honest, but very meek, and do not want to put you in trouble, and that in general, how can you really bother about everything that is said to have nothing to do, and which is best for nothing not be accepted, because everything is connected with troubles and inconveniences, and nothing good can happen yet, because, as already said, they "did not wait and did not expect at all," and so on.

Such are our "best people" - they all look like our Romeo. How much trouble for Asya is that Mr. N did not know what to do with her, and was decisively angry when courageous determination was required of him; how much trouble this is for Asya, we do not know. The first thought comes that she has very little trouble from this; on the contrary, and thank God that the lousy impotence of character in our Romeo pushed the girl away from him even when it was not too late. Asya will be sad for several weeks, several months and forget everything and can surrender to a new feeling, the subject of which will be more worthy of her. So, but that's the trouble, that she will hardly meet a more worthy person; this is the sad comic of our Romeo's relationship with Asa, that our Romeo is really one of the best people in our society, that there are almost no people better than him. Only then will Asya be satisfied with her relationship with people, when, like others, she begins to confine herself to excellent reasoning, until there is an opportunity to start performing speeches, and as soon as an opportunity presents herself, she bites her tongue and folds her hands, as everyone does. Only then will they be satisfied with it; and now, at first, of course, everyone will say that this girl is very sweet, with a noble soul, with amazing strength of character, in general, a girl who cannot help but love, before whom it is impossible not to revere; but all this will be said only as long as the character of Asya is shown in words alone, as long as it is only assumed that she is capable of a noble and decisive act; and as soon as she takes a step that in any way justifies the expectations inspired by her character, hundreds of voices will immediately cry out: nothing can come of it, absolutely nothing, except that she will lose her reputation. Can one risk oneself so madly?" “Risking herself? That would be nothing,” others add. “Let her do with herself what she wants, but why put others in trouble? In what position did she put this poor young man? so far away? What should he do now with her recklessness? If he goes after her, he will ruin himself; if he refuses, he will be called a coward and he will despise himself. I do not know whether it is noble to put people who have not submitted in such unpleasant situations there seems to be no particular reason for such incongruous acts. No, it's not exactly noble. And the poor brother? What is its role? What bitter pill had his sister given him? For the rest of his life he could not digest this pill. Nothing to say, dear sister borrowed! I do not argue, all this is very good in words - noble aspirations, and self-sacrifice, and God knows what wonderful things, but I will say one thing: I would not want to be Asya's brother. I will say more: if I were in her brother's place, I would lock her up for half a year in her room. For her own good, she should be locked up. She, you see, deigns to be carried away by high feelings; but what is it like to disentangle others what she deigned to boil? No, I will not call her deed, I will not call her character noble, because I do not call noble those who frivolously and impudently harm others. "Thus the common cry will be explained by the reasoning of sensible people. We are partly ashamed to admit: but still we have to admit, that these arguments seem to us sound.In fact, Asya harms not only herself, but also all those who had the misfortune of kinship or the occasion of being close to her; and those who, for their own pleasure, harm all their loved ones, we cannot but condemn .

By condemning Asya, we justify our Romeo. Indeed, what is his fault? Had he given her a reason to act recklessly? Did he incite her to an act that cannot be approved? Didn't he have the right to tell her that she shouldn't have entangled him into an unpleasant relationship? You resent the fact that his words are harsh, call them rude. But the truth is always harsh, and who will condemn me if even a rude word escapes me, when I, who am not guilty of anything, are entangled in an unpleasant business, and they pester me, so that I rejoice in the misfortune into which I have been drawn?

I know why you so unfairly admired Asya's ignoble act and condemned our Romeo. I know this because I myself for a moment succumbed to an unfounded impression that was preserved in you. You have read a lot about how people in other countries acted and are acting. But consider that it is other countries. You never know what is being done in the world in other places, but it is not always and everywhere possible that which is very convenient in a certain situation. In England, for example, the word "you" does not exist in the colloquial language: a manufacturer to his worker, a landowner to a digger hired by him, a master to his lackey will certainly say "you" and, where it happens, insert sir in a conversation with them, that is, it is all the same that French monsieur, but in Russian there is no such word, but courtesy comes out in the same way as if the master were saying to his peasant: “You, Sidor Karpych, do me a favor, come to me for a cup of tea, and then straighten the paths in my garden ". Will you condemn me if I speak to Sidor without such subtleties? After all, I would be ridiculous if I adopted the language of an Englishman. In general, as soon as you begin to condemn what you don’t like, you become an ideologue, that is, the funniest and, to put it in your ear, the most dangerous person in the world, you lose the solid support of practical reality from under your feet. Beware of this, try to become a practical person in your opinions, and for the first time try to reconcile yourself even with our Romeo, by the way, we are already talking about him. I am ready to tell you the way in which I reached this result, not only in relation to the scene with Asya, but also in relation to everything in the world, that is, I became pleased with everything that I see around me, I am not angry at anything, I am not upset by anything (except for failures in matters that are personally beneficial to me), I do not condemn anything and anyone in the world (except for people who violate my personal interests), I do not want anything (except for my own benefit), in a word, I will tell you how I became a bilious melancholic person before so practical and well-intentioned that I would not even be surprised if I received an award for my good intentions.

I began with the remark that one should not blame people for anything and for nothing, because, as far as I have seen, the most intelligent person has his share of limitations, sufficient so that in his way of thinking he could not go far from the society in which he was brought up and lives, and in the most energetic person there is his own dose of apathy, sufficient so that in his actions he does not deviate much from the routine and, as they say, floats with the flow of the river, where the water carries. In the middle circle, it is customary to paint eggs for Easter, there are pancakes on Maslenitsa - and everyone does this, although some do not eat painted eggs at all, and almost everyone complains about the heaviness of pancakes. So not in some trifles, and in everything so. It is accepted, for example, that boys should be kept freer than girls, and every father, every mother, no matter how convinced they are of the unreasonableness of such a distinction, brings up children according to this rule. It is accepted that wealth is a good thing, and everyone is satisfied if, instead of ten thousand rubles a year, he begins to receive twenty thousand thanks to a happy turn of affairs, although, rationally speaking, every smart person knows that those things that, being inaccessible at the first income , become available at the second, cannot bring any significant pleasure. For example, if with ten thousand income you can make a ball of 500 rubles, then with twenty you can make a ball of 1000 rubles: the latter will be several better than the first, but still there will be no special splendor in it, it will be called nothing more than a fairly decent ball, and the first one will be a decent ball. Thus even the feeling of vanity at 20,000 income is satisfied with very little more than at 10,000; as for pleasures, which can be called positive, the difference is not at all noticeable in them. For himself personally, a man with 10,000 income has exactly the same table, exactly the same wine, and an armchair in the same row at the opera as a man with twenty thousand. The first is called a rather rich person, and the second is not considered extremely rich in the same way - there is no significant difference in their position; and yet each, according to the routine of society, will rejoice at the increase in his income from 10 to 20 thousand, although in fact he will notice almost no increase in his pleasures. People are generally terrible routinists: one has only to look deeper into their thoughts to discover this. For the first time, some gentleman will extremely puzzle you with the independence of his way of thinking from the society to which he belongs, he will seem to you, for example, a cosmopolitan, a person without class prejudices, etc. and he himself, like his acquaintances, imagines himself to be pure soul . But watch a cosmopolitan more precisely, and he will turn out to be a Frenchman or a Russian with all the peculiarities of concepts and habits belonging to the nation to which he is assigned according to his passport, he will turn out to be a landowner or an official, a merchant or a professor with all the shades of the way of thinking that belong to his estate. I am sure that the large number of people who have the habit of being angry with each other, blaming each other, depends solely on the fact that too few are engaged in observations of this kind; but just try to start peering at people in order to check whether this or that person, who at first seems different from others, really differs in something important from other people of the same position with him, just try to engage in such observations, and this analysis will entice you so much , will so interest your mind, will constantly deliver such soothing impressions to your spirit that you will never leave it behind and will very soon come to the conclusion: "every person is like all people, in everyone - exactly the same as in others" . And the further, the more firmly you will become convinced of this axiom. Differences seem important only because they lie on the surface and are striking, and under the visible, apparent difference lies a perfect identity. And why, in fact, would man be a contradiction to all the laws of nature? Indeed, in nature, cedar and hyssop feed and bloom, elephant and mouse move and eat, rejoice and get angry according to the same laws; under the external difference of forms lies the internal identity of the organism of a monkey and a whale, an eagle and a chicken; one has only to delve into the matter even more carefully, and we will see that not only different beings of the same class, but also different classes of beings are arranged and live according to the same principles, that the organisms of a mammal, a bird and a fish are the same, that the worm breathes like a mammal, although it has no nostrils, no windpipe, no lungs. Not only would the analogy with other beings be violated by the non-recognition of the sameness of the basic rules and springs in the moral life of each person, the analogy with his physical life would also be violated. Of two healthy people of the same age in the same frame of mind, one pulse beats, of course, somewhat stronger and more often than the other, but is this difference great? It is so insignificant that science does not even pay attention to it. It’s another matter when you compare people of different years or in different circumstances: a child’s pulse beats twice as fast as an old man’s, a sick person much more often or less often than a healthy one, someone who drank a glass of champagne more often than someone who who drank a glass of water. But even here it is clear to everyone that the difference is not in the structure of the organism, but in the circumstances under which the organism is observed. And the old man, when he was a child, had the same pulse as the child you compare him to; and in a healthy person the pulse would weaken, as in a sick person if he fell ill with the same disease; and if Peter drank a glass of champagne, his pulse would increase in the same way as Ivan's.

You have almost reached the limits of human wisdom when you have established yourself in this simple truth that every person is a person like everyone else. Not to mention the gratifying consequences of this conviction for your worldly happiness; you will cease to be angry and upset, you will cease to be indignant and accusing, you will meekly look at what you were previously ready to scold and fight for; in fact, how would you become angry or complain about a person for such an act, which everyone would do in his place? An unperturbed meek silence settles in your soul, sweeter than which can only be the Brahmin's contemplation of the tip of the nose, with a quiet incessant repetition of the words "om-mani-pad-me-hum". I'm not talking about this inestimable spiritual and practical benefit, I'm not even talking about how many monetary benefits a wise indulgence towards people will bring you: you will absolutely cordially meet a scoundrel whom you would drive away from you before; this scoundrel, perhaps, is a person with weight in society, and good relations with him like your own affairs. I am not saying that you yourself will then be less embarrassed by false doubts about conscientiousness in using the benefits that will be turned up at your fingertips, why will you be embarrassed by excessive delicacy if you are convinced that everyone would have acted in your place exactly the same way. the same as you? I do not expose all these benefits, aiming only to indicate the purely scientific, theoretical importance of the belief in the sameness of human nature in all people. If all people are essentially the same, then where does the difference in their actions come from? In striving to reach the main truth, we have already found, in passing, the conclusion from it that serves as an answer to this question. It is now clear to us that everything depends on social habits and circumstances, that is, in the final result, everything depends exclusively on circumstances, because social habits, in their turn, also originated from circumstances. You blame a person - look first, whether he is to blame for this, for what you blame him, or the circumstances and habits of society are to blame, look carefully, perhaps it is not his fault at all, but only his misfortune. Speaking about others, we are too inclined to consider every misfortune to be fault - this is the true misfortune for practical life because guilt and misfortune are completely different things and require one to be treated differently from the other. Guilt causes censure or even punishment against the person. The trouble requires help to the person through the elimination of circumstances stronger than his will. I knew a tailor who poked his apprentices in the teeth with a red-hot iron. He, perhaps, can be called guilty, and you can punish him; but on the other hand, not every tailor sticks a hot iron in the teeth, examples of such frenzy are very rare. But almost every craftsman happens, having drunk on a holiday, to fight - this is no longer a fault, but simply a disaster. What is needed here is not the punishment of an individual, but a change in the conditions of life for an entire class. The sadder is the harmful confusion of guilt and misfortune, because it is very easy to distinguish between these two things; we have already seen one sign of difference: guilt is a rarity, it is an exception to the rule; trouble is an epidemic. Deliberate arson is the fault; but out of millions of people there is one who decides on this matter. There is another sign needed to complement the first. Trouble falls on the very person who fulfills the condition leading to trouble; guilt falls on others, bringing benefits to the guilty. This last sign is extremely accurate. The robber stabbed a man to rob him, and finds it useful for himself - this is guilt. A careless hunter accidentally wounded a man, and the first one himself is tormented by the misfortune that he did - this is no longer a fault, but simply a misfortune.

The sign is true, but if we accept it with some insight, with a careful analysis of the facts, it turns out that guilt almost never exists in the world, but only misfortune. Now we have mentioned the robber. Is life good for him? If it were not for the special, very difficult circumstances for him, would he have taken up his craft? Where will you find a man who would be more pleasant in cold and bad weather to hide in lairs and stagger in the deserts, often endure hunger and constantly tremble behind his back, waiting for the whip - who would be more pleasant than smoking a cigar comfortably in quiet armchairs or play jumble at the English Club like decent people do?

It would also be much more pleasant for our Romeo to enjoy the mutual pleasures of happy love than to remain in the cold and cruelly scold himself for his vulgar rudeness with Asya. From the fact that the cruel trouble that Asya undergoes brings him not benefit or pleasure, but shame in front of himself, that is, the most painful of all moral sorrows, we see that he did not fall into guilt, but into trouble. The vulgarity he did would have been done by very many other so-called decent people, or the best people in our society; therefore, it is nothing but a symptom of an epidemic disease that has taken root in our society.

The symptom of a disease is not the disease itself. And if the matter consisted only in the fact that some, or rather, almost all the "best" people offend a girl when she has more nobility or less experience than they do, this matter, we confess, would be of little interest to us. God bless them, with erotic questions - the reader of our time, busy with questions about administrative and judicial improvements, about financial transformations, about the emancipation of the peasants, is not up to them. But the scene made by our Romeo Asa, as we noticed, is only a symptom of an illness that spoils all our affairs in exactly the same vulgar way, and we only need to look closely at why our Romeo got into trouble, we will see what we all, like him, to expect from oneself and to expect for oneself and in all other matters.

To begin with, the poor young man does not understand at all the business in which he takes part. The point is clear, but he is possessed by such stupidity that the most obvious facts are unable to reason with. To what to liken such blind stupidity, we absolutely do not know. The girl, incapable of any pretense, ignorant of any trick, says to him: “I don’t know what is happening to me. Sometimes I feel like crying, but I laugh. You should not judge me ... but by what I do Oh, by the way, what is this tale about Lorelei? Is it her rock that you can see? They say she was the first to drown everyone, but when she fell in love, she threw herself into the water. I like this tale. " It seems clear what feeling awakened in her. Two minutes later, with excitement, reflected even by the pallor on her face, she asks if he liked that lady, whom, somehow jokingly, was mentioned in a conversation many days ago; then he asks what he likes in a woman; when he notices how good the shining sky is, she says: “Yes, good! If we were birds, how we would soar, how we would fly! .. We would drown in this blue ... but we are not birds ". “But we can grow wings,” I objected. - "How so?" - "Live - you will know. There are feelings that lift us from the ground. Do not worry, you will have wings." - "And you were?" - "How can I tell you? .. It seems that so far I have not yet flown." The next day, when he came in, Asya blushed; wanted to run out of the room; was sad, and finally, remembering yesterday's conversation, she said to him: "Remember, you talked about wings yesterday? My wings have grown."

These words were so clear that even the slow-witted Romeo, returning home, could not help but reach the thought: does she really love me? With this thought, I fell asleep and, waking up the next morning, asked myself: "Does she really love me?"

Indeed, it was difficult not to understand this, and yet he did not understand. Did he at least understand what was going on in his own heart? And here the signs were no less clear. After the first two meetings with Asya, he feels jealousy at the sight of her gentle treatment of her brother and from jealousy does not want to believe that Gagin is really her brother. The jealousy in him is so strong that he cannot see Asya, but he could not resist seeing her, because he, like an 18-year-old boy, runs away from the village in which she lives, wanders around the surrounding fields for several days . Finally convinced that Asya is really only Gagin's sister, he is happy as a child, and, returning from them, he even feels that "tears are boiling in his eyes with delight," he feels at the same time that this delight is all concentrated on thoughts about Asa, and, finally, it comes to the point that he cannot think of anything but her. It seems that a person who has loved several times should understand what feeling is expressed in him by these signs. It seems that a person who knew women well could understand what was going on in Asya's heart. But when she writes to him that she loves him, this note completely astonishes him: he, you see, did not foresee this at all. Wonderful; but be that as it may, whether he foresaw or did not foresee that Asya loves him, it makes no difference: now he knows positively: Asya loves him, he now sees it; Well, what does he feel for Asa? He definitely does not know how to answer this question. Poor thing! At the age of thirtieth, he should have had an uncle who would tell him when he should wipe his nose, when he should go to bed, and how many cups of tea he should eat. At the sight of such a ridiculous inability to understand things, it may seem to you that you are either a child or an idiot. Neither one nor the other. Our Romeo is a very intelligent man, who, as we have noticed, is under thirty years old, has experienced a lot in life, and is rich in observations of himself and others. Where does his incredible ingenuity come from? Two circumstances are to blame for it, from which, however, one follows from the other, so that everything comes down to one thing. He was not accustomed to understanding anything great and living, because his life was too shallow and soulless, all the relationships and affairs to which he was accustomed were shallow and soulless. This is the first. Secondly, he becomes timid, he powerlessly retreats from everything that requires broad determination and noble risk, again because life has accustomed him only to pale pettiness in everything. He looks like a man who all his life played jumble for half a penny in silver; put this skillful player in a game in which the gain or loss is not a hryvnia, but thousands of rubles, and you will see that he will be completely embarrassed, that all his experience will be lost, all his art will be confused; he will make the most absurd moves, perhaps he will not even be able to hold cards in his hands. He looks like a sailor who all his life made voyages from Kronstadt to Petersburg and was very cleverly able to guide his little steamer by pointing milestones between countless shoals in semi-fresh water; what if suddenly this experienced swimmer but a glass of water sees himself in the ocean?

My God! Why do we analyze our hero so severely? Why is he worse than others? Why is he worse than all of us? When we enter society, we see people around us in uniform and informal frock coats or tailcoats; these people are five and a half or six, and some more than a foot tall; they grow or shave the hair on their cheeks, upper lip and beard; and we imagine that we see men before us. This is a complete delusion, an optical illusion, a hallucination - nothing more. Without acquiring the habit of original participation in civil affairs, without acquiring the feelings of a citizen, a male child, growing up, becomes a male being of middle and then old age, but he does not become a man, or at least does not become a man of noble character. It is better for a person not to develop than to develop without the influence of thought about social affairs, without the influence of feelings generated by participation in them. If from the circle of my observations, from the sphere of action in which I move, ideas and motives that have an object of general utility are excluded, that is, civic motives are excluded, what remains for me to observe? What is left for me to participate in? There will remain a troublesome turmoil of individuals with personal narrow concerns about their pocket, about their belly, or about their amusements. If I begin to observe people in the form in which they appear to me when I distance myself from participation in civic activities, what concept of people and life is formed in me? Hoffmann was once loved among us, and his story was once translated about how strange occasion the eyes of Mr. Perigrinus Thiss received the power of a microscope, and what were the results of this quality of his eyes for his understanding of people. Beauty, nobility, virtue, love, friendship, everything beautiful and great disappeared from the world for him. Whoever he looks at, every man seems to him a vile coward or an insidious intriguer, every woman a coquette, all people are liars and selfish, petty and low to the last degree. This terrible story could only be created in the head of a person who has seen enough of what is called in Germany Kleinstadterei (Provinciality (German)), who has seen enough of the life of people deprived of any participation in public affairs, limited to a closely measured circle of their private interests, who have lost all thought about something of higher penny preference (which, however, was not yet known in the time of Hoffmann). Remember what conversation becomes in any society, how soon it ceases to talk about public affairs? No matter how smart and noble the interlocutors are, if they do not talk about matters of public interest, they begin to gossip or empty talk, malicious vulgarity or dissolute vulgarity, in both cases senseless vulgarity - this is the character inevitably assumed by a conversation moving away from public interests. By the nature of the conversation, you can judge the people who are talking. If even people who are higher in the development of their concepts fall into empty and dirty vulgarity when their thought deviates from public interests, then it is easy to imagine what a society must be like living in complete alienation from these interests. Imagine a person who has been brought up by life in such a society: what will be the conclusions from his experiments? What are the results of his observations on people? He understands everything vulgar and petty perfectly, but, apart from this, he does not understand anything, because he has not seen or experienced anything. He could read God knows what beautiful things in books, he could find pleasure in thinking about these beautiful things, perhaps he even believes that they exist or should exist on earth, and not in books alone. But how do you want him to understand and guess them when they suddenly meet his unprepared gaze, experienced only in classifying nonsense and vulgarity? How do you want me, who, under the name of champagne, was served wine that had never seen the vineyards of Champagne, but, however, very good sparkling wine, how do you want me, when they suddenly serve me really champagne wine, to be able to say for sure: yes, is it really fake anymore? If I say this, I will be fat. My taste senses only that this wine is good, but have I ever drunk a good counterfeit wine? How do I know that this time, too, it was not a counterfeit wine that was brought to me? No, no, I am a connoisseur of fakes, I can distinguish good from bad; but I cannot appreciate genuine wine.

We would be happy, we would be noble, if only the unpreparedness of the look, the inexperience of thought prevented us from guessing and appreciating the lofty and great when it comes across to us in life. But no, and our will participates in this gross misunderstanding. Not only concepts have narrowed in me from the vulgar narrow-mindedness in which I live, this character has also passed into my will: what is the breadth of the view, such is the breadth of decisions; and besides, it is impossible not to get used, finally, to act as everyone else does. The contagiousness of laughter, the contagiousness of yawns are not exceptional cases in social physiology—the same contagiousness belongs to all phenomena that are found among the masses. There is someone's fable about how some healthy person got into the realm of the lame and crooked. The fable says that everyone attacked him, why did he have both eyes and both legs intact; the fable lied, because it did not finish everything: the stranger was attacked only at first, and when he settled down in a new place, he screwed up one eye himself and began to limp; it already seemed to him that it was more convenient, or at least more decent, to look and walk, and soon he even forgot that, in fact, he was neither lame nor crooked. If you are a fan of melancholy effects, you can add that when our visitor finally needed to take a firm step and look sharply with both eyes, he could no longer do this: it turned out that the closed eye no longer opened, the twisted leg no longer straightened; the nerves and muscles of the poor deformed joints had lost the power to act in the right way from long coercion.

He who touches the resin will turn black - as a punishment to himself, if he touched it voluntarily, to his own misfortune, if not voluntarily. It is impossible for someone who lives in a tavern not to be saturated with a drunken smell, even if he himself has not drunk a single glass; one cannot but be imbued with the pettiness of the will to one who lives in a society that has no aspirations other than petty worldly calculations. Involuntarily, timidity creeps into my heart at the thought that, perhaps, I will have to make a high decision, boldly take a brave step not along the beaten path of daily exercise. That is why you try to assure yourself that no, the need has not yet come for anything so unusual, until the last fateful minute you deliberately convince yourself that everything that seems to emerge from habitual pettiness is nothing more than seduction. A child who is afraid of beeches closes his eyes and shouts as loudly as possible that there is no beech, that beech is nonsense - you see, he encourages himself with this. We are so smart that we try to convince ourselves that everything we are cowardly is cowardly only because we have no strength for anything lofty - we try to assure ourselves that all this is nonsense, that they only frighten us with this, like a child with a beech but in reality there is nothing like it and never will be.

And if it does? Well, then the same thing will happen to us as in the story of Mr. Turgenev with our Romeo. He, too, did not foresee anything and did not want to foresee; he also screwed up his eyes and backed away, and time passed - he had to bite his elbows, but he wouldn’t get it.

And how short was the time in which both his fate and the fate of Asya were decided - only a few minutes, and everything depended on them. whole life , and, having skipped them, nothing could have corrected the error. As soon as he entered the room, he barely had time to utter a few thoughtless, almost unconscious, reckless words, and everything was already decided: a break forever, and there is no return. We do not regret Asa in the least, it was hard for her to hear the harsh words of refusal, but it was probably for the best for her that a reckless person brought her to a break. If she had remained connected with him, for him, of course, it would have been a great happiness; but we do not think that it would be good for her to live in close relations with such a gentleman. Whoever sympathizes with Asya should rejoice at the difficult, outrageous scene. Sympathizing with Asya, he is absolutely right: he has chosen the subject of his sympathies as a dependent being, a being offended. But although with shame, we must confess that we take part in the fate of our hero. We have no honor to be his relatives; there was even dislike between our families, because his family despised all those close to us. But we still cannot tear ourselves away from the prejudices that have piled into our heads from false books and lessons by which our youth was brought up and ruined, we cannot tear ourselves away from the petty concepts inspired by the surrounding society; it always seems to us (an empty dream, but still an irresistible dream for us) as if he had rendered some services to our society, as if he were the representative of our enlightenment, as if he were the best among us, as if without him it would be worse for us. The thought develops more and more strongly in us that this opinion about him is an empty dream, we feel that we will not be under its influence for long; that there are people better than him, precisely those whom he offends; that without him it would be better for us to live, but at the present moment we are still not sufficiently accustomed to this idea, we have not completely broken away from the dream on which we were brought up; therefore we still wish well to our hero and his brethren. Finding that in reality the decisive moment is approaching for them, which will determine their fate forever, we still do not want to say to ourselves: at the present time they are not able to understand their position; they are not able to act prudently and magnanimously at the same time - only their children and grandchildren, brought up in other concepts and habits, will be able to act as honest and prudent citizens, and they themselves are now not suitable for the role that is given to them; we don’t want to apply the words of the prophet to them yet: “They will see and not see, they will hear and not hear, because the sense in these people has become coarsened, and their ears have become deaf, and they closed their eyes so as not to see,” no , we still want to consider them capable of understanding what is happening around them and above them, we want to think that they are able to follow the wise admonition of a voice that wanted to save them, and therefore we want to give them instructions on how to get rid of the troubles that are inevitable for people, who do not know how to figure out their situation in time and take advantage of the benefits that a fleeting hour represents. Against our will, our hope for the insight and energy of people is weakening every day, whom we exhort to understand the importance of the present circumstances and act in accordance with common sense, but at least let them not say that they did not hear prudent advice, which was not explained to them by them. position.

Between you, gentlemen (we will address these honorable people with a speech), there are quite a lot of literate people; they know how happiness was depicted in ancient mythology: it was presented as a woman with a long plait, blown in front of her by the wind carrying this woman; it is easy to catch her while she flies up to you, but miss one moment - she will fly by, and you would have rushed to catch her in vain: you cannot grab her, left behind. A happy moment is irretrievable. You will not wait until a favorable combination of circumstances repeats, just as that conjunction of the heavenly bodies, which coincides with the present hour, will not be repeated. Do not miss a favorable moment - this is the highest condition of worldly prudence. Happy circumstances exist for each of us, but not everyone knows how to use them, and in this art there is almost the only difference between people whose lives are arranged well or badly. And for you, although perhaps you were not worthy of it, the circumstances turned out happily, so happily that your fate at the decisive moment depends solely on your will. Will you understand the demand of the time, will you be able to take advantage of the position in which you are now placed - that is the question for you of happiness or unhappiness forever.

What are the ways and rules in order not to miss the happiness offered by circumstances? How in what? Is it really difficult to say what prudence requires in any given case? Suppose, for example, that I have a lawsuit in which I am guilty all around. Suppose also that my adversary, who is completely right, is so accustomed to the injustices of fate that he already hardly believes in the possibility of waiting for the decision of our litigation; it has dragged on for several decades; many times he asked in court when the report would be, and many times he was answered "tomorrow or the day after tomorrow", and each time months and months, years and years passed, and the case was still not resolved. Why it dragged on so long, I do not know, I only know that for some reason the chairman of the court favored me (he seemed to think that I was devoted to him with all my heart). But now he received an order to solve the matter without delay. Out of his friendship, he called me to me and said: “I can’t delay the decision of your process; it cannot end in your favor by judicial procedure, the laws are too clear; you will lose everything; the case will not end for you with the loss of property; by the verdict of our civil court circumstances will come to light for which you will be liable under the criminal laws, and you know how strict they are; what the decision of the criminal chamber will be, I do not know, but I think that you will get rid of it too easily if you are sentenced only to deprivation of the rights of the state "Be it said between us, you can expect much worse still. Today is Saturday; on Monday your lawsuit will be reported and decided; I have no power to postpone it further with all my disposition towards you. Do you know what I would advise you? Take advantage of day remaining with you: offer peace to your adversary; he still does not know how urgent the need is, in which I am placed by the order I received; he heard that the lawsuit was decided on Monday, but he heard about its close solution so many times that he lost faith in his hopes ; now he will still agree to an amicable deal, which will be very beneficial for you in terms of money, not to mention the fact that you will get rid of the criminal process with it, acquire the name of a condescending, generous person who, as if he himself felt the voice of conscience and humanity . Try to end the litigation with an amicable deal. I ask you this as your friend."

What am I to do now, let each of you say: will it be wise for me to rush to my opponent to conclude a peace? Or will it be smart to lie on my couch the only day left for me? Or would it be wise to lash out with rude abuse at the judge favoring me, whose friendly forewarning gave me the opportunity to end my litigation with honor and profit?

From this example the reader will see how easy it is in this case to decide what prudence requires.

"Try to reconcile with your adversary until you have reached the court with him, otherwise your adversary will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the executor of sentences, and you will be thrown into prison and will not come out of it until you pay for everything to the last detail. "(Matt., chapter V, verse 25 and 26).

Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky (1828-1889) economist, prose writer, publicist, literary critic.

"Russian man on rendez-vous" refers to journalism and has the subtitle "Reflections after reading Mr. Turgenev's story" Asya "". At the same time, in the article, Chernyshevsky gives a broader picture associated with contemporary Russian society, namely, with the image of the “positive hero” of stories and novels, which in a number of situations shows unexpected negative character traits (indecision, cowardice). First of all, these traits are manifested in love and personal relationships.

The title of the article is directly related to the reason for writing it. The ambiguous situation in the story "Asya" served as food for thought, when the girl showed determination and herself made an appointment with the hero ("rendez-vous").

In the very first lines - the impressions of the date scene in the story "Asya", when the main character (perceived by the reader of the story as "positive" and even "ideal") says to the girl who came on a date with him: "You are to blame for me, you confused me in trouble and I must end my relationship with you." "What it is?" Chernyshevsky exclaims. “What is her fault? Is it that she considered him a decent person? Compromised his reputation by going on a date with him? This man is worse than a notorious scoundrel.

Further, the author analyzes the love line of a number of Turgenev's works ("Faust", "Rudin") in order to understand whether the author made a mistake in his hero or not (the story "Asya"), and comes to the conclusion that in Turgenev's works the main character, personifying the "ideal side", in love affairs behaves like a "pathetic scoundrel." “In Faust, the hero tries to encourage himself by the fact that neither he nor Vera have a serious feeling for each other. He behaves in such a way that Vera herself must tell him that she loves him. In Rudin, the matter ends with the offended girl turning away from him (Rudin), almost ashamed of her love for a coward.

Chernyshevsky asks the question: “Maybe this pathetic trait in the character of the heroes is a feature of Mr. Turgenev’s stories?” - And he himself answers: “But remember any good, true to life story of any of our current poets. If there is an ideal side in the story, be sure that the representative of this ideal side acts in exactly the same way as the faces of Mr. Turgenev. In order to argue his point of view, the author, for example, analyzes the behavior of the protagonist of Nekrasov's poem "Sasha": "I told Sasha that "we should not weaken in soul", because "the sun of truth will rise above the earth" and that we must act to fulfill our aspirations, and then, when Sasha gets down to business, he says that all this is in vain and will not lead to anything, that he “talked empty”. He likewise prefers retreat to every decisive step. Returning to the analysis of the story "Asya", Chernyshevsky concludes: "These are our best people."

Then the author unexpectedly declares that the hero should not be condemned, and begins to talk about himself and his worldview: “I became pleased with everything that I see around me, I’m not angry at anything, I’m not upset by anything (except for failures in business, personally beneficial to me), I condemn nothing and no one in the world (except for people who violate my personal interests), I do not want anything (except for my own benefit), - in a word, I will tell you how I became a bilious melancholic person before that practical and well-intentioned that I wouldn’t even be surprised if I received a reward for my good intentions.” Further, Chernyshevsky resorts to a detailed opposition of “trouble” and “guilt”: “The robber stabbed a man to rob him, and finds benefit in that - this is guilt. A careless hunter accidentally wounded a man and the first one himself is tormented by the misfortune that he did - this is no longer a fault, but simply a misfortune. What happens to the hero of the story "Asya" is a disaster. He does not benefit and enjoy the situation when a girl in love with him seeks to be with him, and he backs down: “The poor young man does not understand at all the business in which he takes part. The point is clear, but he is possessed by such stupidity that the most obvious facts are unable to reason with. Further, the author gives a number of examples from the text, when Asya allegorically, but very clearly, let “our Romeo” understand what she was really experiencing - but he did not understand. “Why do we analyze our hero so severely? Why is he worse than others? Why is he worse than all of us?

Chernyshevsky reflects on happiness and the ability not to miss the opportunity to be happy (which the hero of the story “Asya” fails): “Happiness in ancient mythology was presented as a woman with a long braid, blown in front of her by the wind carrying this woman; it is easy to catch her while she flies up to you, but miss one moment - she will fly by, and you would have rushed to catch her in vain: you cannot grab her, left behind. A happy moment is irretrievable. Do not miss a favorable moment - this is the highest condition of worldly prudence. Happy circumstances exist for each of us, but not everyone knows how to use them.

At the end of the article, Chernyshevsky gives a detailed allegory, when, in a situation of a long and exhausting litigation, the hearing is postponed for a day. “What should I do now, let each of you say: will it be wise for me to rush to my opponent to conclude a peace? Or will it be smart to lie on my couch the only day left for me? Or would it be wise to lash out with rude abuse at the judge favoring me, whose friendly advance notice gave me the opportunity to end my litigation with honor and profit?

The article ends with a quotation from the gospel: “Try to reconcile with your opponent until you reach the court with him, otherwise your opponent will give you to the judge, and the judge will give you to the executor of sentences, and you will be thrown into prison and will not come out of it until you you will pay for everything to the last detail” (Matt., chapter V, verses 25 and 26).

Read in 6 minutes

"Russian man on rendez-vous" refers to journalism and has the subtitle "Reflections after reading Mr. Turgenev's story" Asya "". At the same time, in the article, Chernyshevsky gives a broader picture associated with contemporary Russian society, namely, with the image of the “positive hero” of stories and novels, which in a number of situations shows unexpected negative character traits (indecision, cowardice). First of all, these traits are manifested in love and personal relationships.

The title of the article is directly related to the reason for writing it. The ambiguous situation in the story "Asya" served as food for thought, when the girl showed determination and herself made an appointment with the hero ("rendez-vous").

In the very first lines - the impressions of the date scene in the story "Asya", when the main character (perceived by the reader of the story as "positive" and even "ideal") says to the girl who came on a date with him: "You are to blame for me, you confused me in trouble and I must end my relationship with you." "What it is?" Chernyshevsky exclaims. “What is her fault? Is it that she considered him a decent person? Compromised his reputation by going on a date with him? This man is worse than a notorious scoundrel.

Further, the author analyzes the love line of a number of Turgenev's works ("Faust", "Rudin") in order to understand whether the author made a mistake in his hero or not (the story "Asya"), and comes to the conclusion that in Turgenev's works the main character, personifying the "ideal side", in love affairs behaves like a "pathetic scoundrel." “In Faust, the hero tries to encourage himself by the fact that neither he nor Vera have a serious feeling for each other. He behaves in such a way that Vera herself must tell him that she loves him. In Rudin, the matter ends with the offended girl turning away from him (Rudin), almost ashamed of her love for a coward.

Chernyshevsky asks the question: “Maybe this pathetic trait in the character of the heroes is a feature of Mr. Turgenev’s stories?” - And he himself answers: “But remember any good, true to life story of any of our current poets. If there is an ideal side in the story, be sure that the representative of this ideal side acts in exactly the same way as the faces of Mr. Turgenev. In order to argue his point of view, the author, for example, analyzes the behavior of the protagonist of Nekrasov's poem "Sasha": "I told Sasha that "we should not weaken in soul", because "the sun of truth will rise above the earth" and that we must act to fulfill our aspirations, and then, when Sasha gets down to business, he says that all this is in vain and will not lead to anything, that he “talked empty”. He likewise prefers retreat to every decisive step. Returning to the analysis of the story "Asya", Chernyshevsky concludes: "These are our best people."

Then the author unexpectedly declares that the hero should not be condemned, and begins to talk about himself and his worldview: “I became pleased with everything that I see around me, I’m not angry at anything, I’m not upset by anything (except for failures in business, personally beneficial to me), I condemn nothing and no one in the world (except for people who violate my personal interests), I do not want anything (except for my own benefit), - in a word, I will tell you how I became a bilious melancholic person before that practical and well-intentioned that I wouldn’t even be surprised if I received a reward for my good intentions.” Further, Chernyshevsky resorts to a detailed opposition of “trouble” and “guilt”: “The robber stabbed a man to rob him, and finds benefit in that - this is guilt. A careless hunter accidentally wounded a man and the first one himself is tormented by the misfortune that he did - this is no longer a fault, but simply a misfortune. What happens to the hero of the story "Asya" is a disaster. He does not benefit and enjoy the situation when a girl in love with him seeks to be with him, and he backs down: “The poor young man does not understand at all the business in which he takes part. The point is clear, but he is possessed by such stupidity that the most obvious facts are unable to reason with. Further, the author gives a number of examples from the text, when Asya allegorically, but very clearly, let “our Romeo” understand what she was really experiencing - but he did not understand. “Why do we analyze our hero so severely? Why is he worse than others? Why is he worse than all of us?

Chernyshevsky reflects on happiness and the ability not to miss the opportunity to be happy (which the hero of the story “Asya” fails): “Happiness in ancient mythology was presented as a woman with a long braid, blown in front of her by the wind carrying this woman; it is easy to catch her while she flies up to you, but miss one moment - she will fly by, and you would have rushed to catch her in vain: you cannot grab her, left behind. A happy moment is irretrievable. Do not miss a favorable moment - this is the highest condition of worldly prudence. Happy circumstances exist for each of us, but not everyone knows how to use them.

At the end of the article, Chernyshevsky gives a detailed allegory, when, in a situation of a long and exhausting litigation, the hearing is postponed for a day. “What should I do now, let each of you say: will it be wise for me to rush to my opponent to conclude a peace? Or will it be smart to lie on my couch the only day left for me? Or would it be wise to lash out with rude abuse at the judge favoring me, whose friendly advance notice gave me the opportunity to end my litigation with honor and profit?

The article ends with a quotation from the gospel: “Try to reconcile with your opponent until you reach the court with him, otherwise your opponent will give you to the judge, and the judge will give you to the executor of sentences, and you will be thrown into prison and will not come out of it until you you will pay for everything to the last detail” (Matt., chapter V, verses 25 and 26).

Source: Chernyshevsky N. G. Russian man on rendez-vous // Chernyshevsky N. G. Complete works: In 15 vol. pp. 156–174.

RUSSIAN MAN ON RENDEZ-VOUS

Reflections on reading the story of Mr. Turgenev "Asya" 1

“Stories in a businesslike, revealing manner leave a very heavy impression on the reader; therefore, recognizing their usefulness and nobility, I am not entirely satisfied that our literature has taken such an exclusively gloomy direction.

Quite a few of the people, apparently not stupid, say so, or, to put it better, they spoke until the peasant question became the sole subject of all thoughts, of all conversations. Whether their words are fair or unfair, I do not know; but I happened to be under the influence of such thoughts when I began to read almost the only good new story, from which, from the first pages, one could already expect a completely different content, a different pathos than from business stories. There is no chicanery with violence and bribery, no dirty rogues, no official villains explaining in elegant language that they are the benefactors of society, no philistines, peasants and little officials tormented by all these terrible and nasty people. The action is abroad, away from all the bad atmosphere of our domestic life. All the characters in the story are among the best among us, very educated, extremely humane, imbued with the noblest way of thinking. The story has a purely poetic, ideal direction, not touching on any of the so-called black sides of life. Here, I thought, the soul will rest and refresh. And indeed, she was refreshed by these poetic ideals, while the story reached the decisive moment. But the last pages of the story are not like the first, and after reading the story, the impression left from it is even more bleak than from the stories about nasty bribe-takers with their cynical robbery 2 . They do bad things, but they are recognized by each of us as bad people; we do not expect them to improve our lives. There are, we think, forces in society that will put a barrier to their harmful influence,

who will change the character of our life with their nobility. This illusion is rejected in the most bitter way in the story, which awakens the brightest expectations with its first half.

Here is a man whose heart is open to all lofty feelings, whose honesty is unshakable, whose thought has taken into itself everything for which our age is called the age of noble aspirations. And what does this person do? He makes a scene that the last bribe-taker would be ashamed of. He feels the strongest and purest sympathy for the girl who loves him; he cannot live an hour without seeing this girl; his thought all day, all night draws her beautiful image to him, it has come for him, you think, that time of love, when the heart is drowning in bliss. We see Romeo, we see Juliet, whose happiness is not hindered by anything, and the moment is approaching when their fate will be forever decided - for this, Romeo has only to say: “I love you, do you love me?” and Juliet will whisper: "Yes ..." And what does our Romeo (that's how we will call the hero of the story, whose last name is not given to us by the author of the story) do, appearing on a date with Juliet? With a thrill of love, Juliet awaits her Romeo; she must learn from him that he loves her - this word was not uttered between them, it will now be uttered by him, they will be united forever; bliss awaits them, such a high and pure bliss, the enthusiasm of which makes the solemn moment of decision hardly bearable for the earthly organism. People died of less joy. She sits like a frightened bird, hiding her face from the radiance of the sun of love that appears before her; she breathes quickly, she trembles all over; she lowers her eyes even more tremulously when he enters, calls her name; she wants to look at him and cannot; he takes her hand - this hand is cold, lies as if dead in his hand; she wants to smile; but her pale lips cannot smile. She wants to speak to him, and her voice breaks. Both of them are silent for a long time - and, as he himself says, his heart melted, and now Romeo speaks to his Juliet ... and what does he say to her? “You are guilty before me,” he says to her; - you have entangled me in trouble, I am dissatisfied with you, you are compromising me, and I must stop my relationship with you; it is very unpleasant for me to part with you, but if you please, go away from here. What it is? What is her fault? Is it that she considered him a decent person? Compromised his reputation by going on a date with him? It's amazing! Every line in her pale face says that she is waiting for the decision of her fate from his word, that she has irrevocably given her whole soul to him and now only expects him to say that he accepts her soul, her life, and he reprimands her for that she compromises him! What kind of ridiculous cruelty is this? What is this low rudeness? And this person

the century that acts so vilely has been shown to be noble up to now! He deceived us, deceived the author. Yes, the poet made a very gross mistake in imagining that he was telling us about a decent man. This man is worse than a notorious scoundrel.

Such was the impression made upon many by the quite unexpected turn of the relations between our Romeo and his Juliet. We heard from many that the whole story is spoiled by this outrageous scene, that the character of the main person is not consistent, that if this person is what he appears in the first half of the story, then he could not act with such vulgar rudeness, and if he could do so, then from the very beginning he should have presented himself to us as a completely trashy person.

It would be very comforting to think that the author really made a mistake, but the sad merit of his story lies in the fact that the character of the hero is true to our society. Perhaps if this character were what people would like to see him, dissatisfied with his rudeness on a date, if he were not afraid to give himself to the love that had taken possession of him, the story would have won in an ideally poetic sense. The enthusiasm of the first meeting scene would be followed by several other highly poetic minutes, the quiet charm of the first half of the story would rise to pathetic charm in the second half, and instead of the first act from Romeo and Juliet with an ending in the style of Pechorin, we would have something really like Romeo and Juliet, or at least one of George Sand's novels. Anyone who is looking for a poetically integral impression in the story should really condemn the author, who, having lured him with sublimely sweet expectations, suddenly showed him some kind of vulgarly absurd vanity of petty-timid egoism in a man who began like Max Piccolomini and ended like some Zakhar Sidorych, playing a penny preference.

But is the author definitely mistaken in his hero? If he made a mistake, then this is not the first time he makes this mistake. No matter how many stories he had that led to a similar situation, each time his heroes got out of these situations only by being completely embarrassed in front of us. In Faust, the hero tries to encourage himself by the fact that neither he nor Vera have a serious feeling for each other; sitting with her, dreaming about her is his business, but in terms of determination, even in words, he behaves in such a way that Vera herself must tell him that she loves him; For several minutes the conversation had already gone on in such a way that he should certainly have said this, but, you see, he did not guess and did not dare to tell her this; and when a woman, who must accept an explanation, is finally forced to make an explanation herself, he, you see, "froze", but felt that "bliss like a wave runs through his heart", only, however, "at times", but actually speaking, he “completely lost his head” - it’s only a pity that he didn’t faint, and even that would have been,

if it hadn't come across a tree to lean against. As soon as the man has recovered, the woman whom he loves, who has expressed her love to him, comes up to him, and asks what he intends to do now? He... he was "embarrassed." It is not surprising that after such a behavior of a loved one (otherwise, as "behavior", one cannot call the image of the actions of this gentleman), the poor woman became nervous fever; it is even more natural that he then began to weep at his own fate. It's in Faust; almost the same in Rudin. Rudin at first behaves somewhat more decently for a man than the former heroes: he is so determined that he himself tells Natalya about his love (although he does not speak out of good will, but because he is forced to this conversation); he himself asks her a date. But when Natalya tells him on this date that she will marry him, with the consent and without the consent of her mother, it doesn’t matter, if only he only loves her, when he says the words: “Know, I will be yours,” Rudin only finds an exclamation in response : "Oh my God!" - the exclamation is more embarrassing than enthusiastic, - and then he acts so well, that is, he is so cowardly and lethargic that Natalya herself is forced to invite him on a date to decide what to do. Having received the note, "he saw that the denouement was approaching, and was secretly embarrassed in spirit." Natalya says that her mother announced to her that she would rather agree to see her daughter dead than Rudin's wife, and again interrogates Rudin what he now intends to do. Rudin answers as before, "My God, my God," and adds even more naively: "So soon! what do i intend to do? My head is spinning, I can't think of anything." But then he realizes that he should "submit." Called a coward, he begins to reproach Natalya, then lectures her about his honesty, and to the remark that this is not what she should hear from him now, he replies that he did not expect such decisiveness. The case ends with the offended girl turning away from him, almost ashamed of her love for a coward.

But perhaps this pitiful trait in the character of the heroes is a feature of Mr. Turgenev's stories? Perhaps it is the nature of his talent that inclines him to depict such faces? Not at all; the nature of talent, it seems to us, means nothing here. Think of any good, true-to-life story by any of our contemporary poets, and if there is an ideal side to the story, be sure that the representative of this ideal side acts exactly the same as Mr. Turgenev's faces. For example, the nature of Mr. Nekrasov's talent is not at all the same as Mr. Turgenev's; You can find any flaws in him, but no one will say that Mr. Nekrasov's talent lacked energy and firmness. What does the hero do in his poem "Sasha"? He told Sasha that, he says, “one should not weaken in soul”, because “the sun of truth will rise over the earth” and that it is necessary to act

to fulfill his aspirations, and then, when Sasha gets down to business, he says that all this is in vain and will not lead to anything, that he "talked empty". Let us recall how Beltov acts: he likewise prefers retreat to every decisive step. There could be many such examples. Everywhere, whatever the character of the poet, whatever his personal ideas about the actions of his hero, the hero acts in the same way with all other decent people, like him, derived from other poets: while there is no talk of business, but you just need to take up idle time , to fill an idle head or an idle heart with conversations and dreams, the hero is very lively; when things come to expressing their feelings and desires directly and accurately, most of the characters begin to hesitate and feel slowness in their language. A few, the bravest, somehow still manage to gather all their strength and inarticulately express something that gives a vague idea of ​​their thoughts; but think of someone seizing on their desires, showing: “You want this and that; we are very happy; start acting, and we will support you, ”with such a remark, one half of the bravest heroes faints, others begin to very rudely reproach you for putting them in an awkward position, they begin to say that they did not expect such proposals from you that they are completely losing their heads, they cannot figure anything out, because “how is it possible so soon”, and “moreover, they are honest people”, and not only honest, but very meek and do not want to put you in trouble, and that in general is it really possible to bother about everything that is said to be done, and what is best is not to take on anything, because everything is connected with troubles and inconveniences, and nothing good can happen yet, because, as already said , they "did not wait and did not expect at all" and so on.

These are our "best people" - they all look like our Romeo. How much trouble for Asya is that Mr. N. did not know what to do with her, and was decidedly angry when courageous determination was required of him; whether this is a lot of trouble for Asya, we do not know. The first thought comes that she has very little trouble from this; on the contrary, and thank God that the rotten impotence of character in our Romeo pushed the girl away from him even when it was not too late. Asya will be sad for several weeks, several months and forget everything and can surrender to a new feeling, the subject of which will be more worthy of her. So, but that's the trouble, that she will hardly meet a more worthy person; that is the melancholy comic of our Romeo's relationship with Asa, that our Romeo is really one of the best people in our society, that there are almost no people better than him. Only then will Asya be satisfied with her relations with people, when, like others, she begins to confine herself to beautiful reasoning, until

there is no opportunity to take up the performance of speeches, but as soon as an opportunity presents itself, he bites his tongue and folds his hands, as everyone does. Only then will they be satisfied with it; and now, at first, of course, everyone will say that this girl is very sweet, with a noble soul, with amazing strength of character, in general, a girl whom one cannot help but love, before whom one cannot but revere; but all this will be said only as long as the character of Asya is shown in words alone, as long as it is only assumed that she is capable of a noble and decisive act; and as soon as she takes a step that somehow justifies the expectations inspired by her character, hundreds of voices will immediately cry out: “Have mercy, how can this be, because this is madness! Assign rendez-vous to a young man! After all, she is ruining herself, ruining it completely uselessly! For nothing can come of it, absolutely nothing, except that she will lose her reputation. Is it possible to risk yourself so insanely? "Risk yourself? that would be nothing, add others. “Let her do what she wants with herself, but why put others in trouble? In what position did she put this poor young man? Did he think she would want to take him this far? What should he do now with her recklessness? If he goes after her, he will ruin himself; if he refuses, he will be called a coward and will despise himself. I do not know whether it is noble to put people in such unpleasant situations who seem to have given no special reason for such incongruous acts. No, it's not exactly noble. And the poor brother? What is its role? What bitter pill had his sister given him? For the rest of his life he could not digest this pill. Nothing to say, dear sister borrowed! I do not argue, all this is very good in words - both noble aspirations, and self-sacrifice, and God knows what wonderful things, but I will say one thing: I would not want to be Asya's brother. I will say more: if I were in her brother's place, I would lock her up for half a year in her room. For her own good, she should be locked up. She, you see, deigns to be carried away by high feelings; but what is it like to disentangle others what she deigned to boil? No, I will not call her deed, I will not call her character noble, because I do not call noble those who frivolously and boldly harm others. Thus the general cry will be lazy with the reasoning of reasonable people. We are somewhat ashamed to admit it, but nevertheless we have to admit that these arguments seem to us to be sound. In fact, Asya harms not only herself, but also everyone who had the misfortune of kinship or the occasion of being close to her; and those who, for their own pleasure, harm all their loved ones, we cannot but condemn.

By condemning Asya, we justify our Romeo. Indeed, what is his fault? did he give her a reason to act recklessly? did he incite her to an act that cannot be

11 N. G. Chernyshevsky, vol.

approve? didn't he have the right to tell her that she shouldn't have entangled him into an unpleasant relationship? You resent the fact that his words are harsh, call them rude. But the truth is always harsh, and who will condemn me if even a rude word escapes me, when I, who am not guilty of anything, are entangled in an unpleasant business, and they pester me, so that I rejoice in the misfortune into which I have been drawn?

I know why you so unfairly admired Asya's ignoble act and condemned our Romeo. I know this because I myself for a moment succumbed to an unfounded impression that was preserved in you. You have read a lot about how people in other countries acted and are acting. But consider that it is other countries. You never know what is being done in the world in other places, but it is not always and everywhere possible that which is very convenient in a certain situation. In England, for example, the word “you” does not exist in the spoken language: the manufacturer to his worker, the landowner to the digger hired by him, the master to his lackey will certainly say “you” and, where it happens, they insert sir in a conversation with them, that is, it’s all the same that French monsieur, but in Russian there is no such word, but courtesy comes out in the same way as if the master were saying to his peasant: “You, Sidor Karpych, do me a favor, come to me for a cup of tea, and then straighten the paths in my garden ". Will you condemn me if I speak to Sidor without such subtleties? After all, I would be ridiculous if I adopted the language of an Englishman. In general, as soon as you begin to condemn what you don’t like, you become an ideologue, that is, the funniest and, to put it in your ear, the most dangerous person in the world, you lose the solid support of practical reality from under your feet. Beware of this, try to become a practical person in your opinions, and for the first time try to reconcile yourself even with our Romeo, by the way, we are already talking about him. I am ready to tell you the way in which I reached this result, not only in relation to the scene with Asya, but also in relation to everything in the world, that is, I became pleased with everything that I see around me, I am not angry at anything, I am not upset by anything (except for failures in matters that are personally beneficial to me), I condemn nothing and no one in the world (except for people who violate my personal interests), I do not want anything (except for my own benefit), - in a word, I will tell you how I became a man from a bilious melancholic so practical and well-intentioned that I would not even be surprised if I received an award for my good intentions.

I began with the remark that one should not blame people for anything and for nothing, because, as far as I have seen, the most intelligent person has his share of limitations, sufficient so that in his way of thinking he could not go far from society,

Sir. — Ed.

in which he was brought up and lives, and in the most energetic person there is his own dose of apathy, sufficient so that in his actions he does not deviate much from the routine and, as they say, floats with the flow of the river, where the water carries. In the middle circle, it is customary to paint eggs for Easter, there are pancakes at Shrovetide, and everyone does it, although some do not eat painted eggs at all, and almost everyone complains about the heaviness of pancakes. So not in some trifles, and in everything so. It is accepted, for example, that boys should be kept freer than girls, and every father, every mother, no matter how convinced they are of the unreasonableness of such a distinction, brings up children according to this rule. It is accepted that wealth is a good thing, and everyone is satisfied if, instead of ten thousand rubles a year, he begins to receive twenty thousand thanks to a happy turn of affairs, although, rationally speaking, every smart person knows that those things that, being inaccessible at the first income , become available at the second, cannot bring any significant pleasure. For example, if with ten thousand income you can make a ball of 500 rubles, then with twenty you can make a ball of 1,000 rubles: the latter will be somewhat better than the first, but still there will be no special splendor in it, it will be called nothing more than a fairly decent ball , and the first one will be a decent ball. Thus even the feeling of vanity at 20,000 income is satisfied with very little more than at 10,000; as for pleasures, which can be called positive, the difference is quite imperceptible in them. For himself personally, a man with 10,000 income has exactly the same table, exactly the same wine, and an armchair in the same row at the opera as a man with twenty thousand. The first is called a fairly rich person, and the second is not considered extremely rich in the same way - there is no significant difference in their position; and yet each, according to the routine of society, will rejoice at the increase in his income from 10 to 20 thousand, although in fact he will notice almost no increase in his pleasures. People are generally terrible routines: one has only to look deeper into their thoughts to discover this. For the first time, some gentleman will extremely puzzle you with the independence of his way of thinking from the society to which he belongs, he will seem to you, for example, a cosmopolitan, a person without class prejudices, etc., and he himself, like his acquaintances, imagines himself to be so from a pure soul. But observe the cosmopolitan more precisely, and he will turn out to be a Frenchman or a Russian with all the peculiarities of concepts and habits belonging to the nation to which he is assigned according to his passport, he will turn out to be a landowner or an official, a merchant or a professor with all the shades of the way of thinking that belong to his estate. I am sure that the multitude of people who have the habit of being angry with each other, blaming each other, depends solely on the fact that

too few make observations of this kind; but just try to start peering at people in order to check whether this or that person, who at first seems different from others, really differs in something important from other people of the same position with him, just try to engage in such observations, and this analysis will entice you so much , will so interest your mind, will constantly deliver such soothing impressions to your spirit that you will never leave it behind and will very soon come to the conclusion: “Every person is like all people, in everyone is exactly the same as in others” . And the further, the more firmly you will become convinced of this axiom. Differences seem important only because they lie on the surface and are striking, and under the visible, apparent difference lies a perfect identity. And why, in fact, would man be a contradiction to all the laws of nature? Indeed, in nature, cedar and hyssop feed and bloom, elephant and mouse move and eat, rejoice and get angry according to the same laws; under the external difference of forms lies the internal identity of the organism of a monkey and a whale, an eagle and a chicken; one has only to delve into the matter even more carefully, and we will see that not only different beings of the same class, but also different classes of beings are arranged and live according to the same principles, that the organisms of a mammal, a bird and a fish are the same, that the worm breathes like a mammal, although it has no nostrils, no windpipe, no lungs. Not only would the analogy with other beings be violated by the non-recognition of the sameness of the basic rules and springs in the moral life of each person, the analogy with his physical life would also be violated. Of two healthy people of the same age in the same frame of mind, the pulse of one beats, of course, somewhat stronger and more often than that of the other; but is this difference great? It is so insignificant that science does not even pay attention to it. It’s another matter when you compare people of different years or in different circumstances: a child’s pulse beats twice as fast as an old man’s, a sick person much more often or less often than a healthy one, someone who drank a glass of champagne more often than someone who who drank a glass of water. But even here it is clear to everyone that the difference is not in the structure of the organism, but in the circumstances under which the organism is observed. And the old man, when he was a child, had the same pulse as the child you compare him to; and in a healthy person the pulse would weaken, as in a sick person if he fell ill with the same disease; and if Peter drank a glass of champagne, his pulse would increase in the same way as Ivan's.

You have almost reached the limits of human wisdom when you have established yourself in this simple truth that every person is a person like everyone else. Not to mention the gratifying consequences of this conviction for your worldly happiness; you re-

you will become angry and upset, you will cease to be indignant and accusing, you will meekly look at what you were previously ready to scold and fight for; in fact, how would you become angry or complain about a person for such an act, which everyone would do in his place? An imperturbable meek silence settles in your soul, sweeter than which can only be a Brahmin's contemplation of the tip of the nose, with a quiet incessant repetition of the words “om-mani-pad-me-hum” 4 . I'm not talking about this inestimable spiritual and practical benefit, I'm not even talking about how many monetary benefits a wise indulgence towards people will bring you: you will absolutely cordially meet a scoundrel whom you would drive away from you before; and this scoundrel, perhaps, is a person of importance in society, and your own affairs will improve by good relations with him. Not to mention that you yourself will then be less embarrassed by false doubts about conscientiousness in using the benefits that will be turned up at your fingertips: why will you be embarrassed by excessive delicacy if you are convinced that everyone would have acted in your place in exactly the same way , just like you? I do not expose all these benefits, aiming only to indicate the purely scientific, theoretical importance of the belief in the sameness of human nature in all people. If all people are essentially the same, then where does the difference in their actions come from? In striving to reach the main truth, we have already found, in passing, the conclusion from it that serves as an answer to this question. It is now clear to us that everything depends on social habits and circumstances, that is, in the final result, everything depends exclusively on circumstances, because social habits, in their turn, also originated from circumstances. You blame a person—look first to see if he is to blame for what you blame him for, or whether the circumstances and habits of society are to blame, look carefully, perhaps it is not his fault at all, but only his misfortune. When discussing others, we are too inclined to regard every misfortune as guilt—this is the true misfortune for practical life, because guilt and misfortune are completely different things and require one to be treated differently from the other. Guilt causes censure or even punishment against the person. The trouble requires help to the person through the elimination of circumstances stronger than his will. I knew a tailor who poked his apprentices in the teeth with a red-hot iron. He, perhaps, can be called guilty, and you can punish him; but on the other hand, not every tailor sticks a hot iron in the teeth, examples of such frenzy are very rare. But almost every craftsman happens, having drunk on a holiday, to fight - this is no longer a fault, but simply a misfortune. What is needed here is not the punishment of an individual, but a change in the conditions of life for an entire class. The sadder is the harmful mixing of guilt and misfortune, that to distinguish between these two things

very easy; We have already seen one sign of difference: guilt is a rarity, it is an exception to the rule; trouble is an epidemic. Deliberate arson is guilt; but out of millions of people there is one who decides on this matter. There is another sign needed to complement the first. Trouble falls on the very person who fulfills the condition leading to trouble; guilt falls on others, bringing benefits to the guilty. This last sign is extremely accurate. The robber stabbed a man to rob him, and finds it useful for himself - this is guilt. A careless hunter accidentally wounded a man, and the first one himself is tormented by the misfortune that he did - this is no longer a fault, but simply a misfortune.

The sign is true, but if we accept it with some insight, with a careful analysis of the facts, it turns out that guilt almost never exists in the world, but only misfortune. Now we have mentioned the robber. Is life good for him? If it were not for the special, very difficult circumstances for him, would he have taken up his craft? Where will you find a man who would rather hide in lairs in cold and bad weather and wander through the deserts, often endure hunger and constantly tremble behind his back, waiting for the whip - who would be more pleasant than smoking a cigar comfortably in quiet armchairs or play jumble at the English Club like decent people do?

It would also be much more pleasant for our Romeo to enjoy the mutual pleasures of happy love than to remain in the cold and cruelly scold himself for his vulgar rudeness with Asya. From the fact that the cruel trouble that Asya undergoes brings him not benefit or pleasure, but shame in front of himself, that is, the most painful of all moral sorrows, we see that he did not fall into guilt, but into trouble. The vulgarity he did would have been done by very many others, the so-called decent people, or the best people in our society; therefore, it is nothing but a symptom of an epidemic disease that has taken root in our society.

The symptom of a disease is not the disease itself. And if the matter consisted only in the fact that some or, it would be better to say, almost all the “best” people offend a girl when she has more nobility or less experience than they do, this matter, we confess, would be of little interest to us. God bless them, with erotic questions - the reader of our time, busy with questions about administrative and judicial improvements, about financial reforms, about the emancipation of the peasants, is not up to them. But the scene made by our Romeo Asa, as we have noticed, is only a symptom of an illness that spoils all our affairs in exactly the same vulgar way, and we only need to look closely at why our Romeo got into trouble, we will see what we all, like him, to expect from oneself and to expect for oneself and in all other matters.

To begin with, the poor young man does not understand at all the business in which he takes part. The point is clear, but he is possessed by such stupidity that the most obvious facts are unable to reason with. To what to liken such blind stupidity, we absolutely do not know. The girl, incapable of any pretense, unaware of any trick, says to him: “I myself don’t know what is happening to me. Sometimes I want to cry, but I laugh. You shouldn't judge me... by what I do. Oh, by the way, what is this story about Lorelei? Is it her rock that you can see? They say that she was the first to drown everyone, and when she fell in love, she herself threw herself into the water. I love this story." It seems clear what feeling awakened in her. Two minutes later, with excitement, reflected even by pallor on her face, she asks if he liked that lady, whom, somehow jokingly, was mentioned in a conversation many days ago; then he asks what he likes in a woman; when he notices how good the shining sky is, she says, “Yes, good! If you and I were birds, how we would soar, how we would fly! .. We would have drowned in this blue ... but we are not birds. “But we can grow wings,” I objected. - "How so?" “Live and you will know. There are feelings that lift us off the ground. Don't worry, you will have wings." - "Did you have any?" - "How can I tell you? .. it seems that until now I have not yet flown." The next day, when he came in, Asya blushed; wanted to run out of the room; was sad, and finally, remembering yesterday's conversation, said to him: “Remember, you talked about wings yesterday? My wings have grown."

These words were so clear that even the slow-witted Romeo, returning home, could not help but reach the thought: does she really love me? With this thought, I fell asleep and, waking up the next morning, asked myself: “does she really love me?”

Indeed, it was difficult not to understand this, and yet he did not understand. Did he at least understand what was going on in his own heart? And here the signs were no less clear. After the first two meetings with Asya, he feels jealousy at the sight of her gentle treatment of her brother and out of jealousy does not want to believe that Gagin is really her brother. The jealousy in him is so strong that he cannot see Asya, but he could not resist seeing her, because he, like an 18-year-old boy, runs away from the village in which she lives, wanders around the surrounding fields for several days . Finally convinced that Asya is really only Gagin's sister, he is happy as a child, and, returning from them, he even feels that "tears boil in his eyes with delight," he feels at the same time that this delight is all concentrated on thoughts about Asa, and, finally, it comes to the point that he cannot think of anything but her. It seems that a person who has loved several times should have understood what feeling

identity is expressed in itself by these signs. It seems that a person who knew women well could understand what was going on in Asya's heart. But when she writes to him that she loves him, this note completely astonishes him: he, you see, did not foresee this at all. Wonderful; but be that as it may, whether he foresaw or did not foresee that Asya loves him, it makes no difference: now he knows positively: Asya loves him, he now sees it; Well, what does he feel for Asa? He definitely does not know how to answer this question. Poor thing! in his thirtieth year, in his youth, he should have had an uncle who would tell him when to wipe his nose, when to go to bed and how many cups of tea he should eat. At the sight of such a ridiculous inability to understand things, it may seem to you that you are either a child or an idiot. Neither one nor the other. Our Romeo is a very intelligent man, who, as we have noticed, is under thirty years old, has experienced a lot in life, and is rich in observations of himself and others. Where does his incredible ingenuity come from? Two circumstances are to blame for it, from which, however, one follows from the other, so that everything comes down to one thing. He was not accustomed to understanding anything great and living, because his life was too shallow and soulless, all the relationships and affairs to which he was accustomed were shallow and soulless. This is the first. Secondly, he becomes timid, he powerlessly retreats from everything that requires broad determination and noble risk, again because life has accustomed him only to pale pettiness in everything. He looks like a man who all his life played jumble for half a penny in silver; put this skillful player in a game in which the gain or loss is not a hryvnia, but thousands of rubles, and you will see that he will be completely embarrassed, that all his experience will be lost, all his art will be confused; he will make the most absurd moves, perhaps he will not even be able to hold cards in his hands. He looks like a sailor who all his life made voyages from Kronstadt to St. Petersburg and very cleverly knew how to guide his little steamer by pointing milestones between countless shoals in semi-fresh water; what if suddenly this experienced swimmer in a glass of water sees himself in the ocean?

My God! Why do we analyze our hero so severely? Why is he worse than others? Why is he worse than all of us? When we enter society, we see people around us in uniform and informal frock coats or tailcoats; these people are five and a half or six, and some more than a foot tall; they grow or shave the hair on their cheeks, upper lip and beard; and we imagine that we see men before us. It is a complete delusion, an optical illusion, a hallucination, nothing more. Without acquiring the habit of original participation in civil affairs, without acquiring the feelings of a citizen, a male child

sex, growing up, becomes a male being of middle, and then older years, but he does not become a man, or at least does not become a man of a noble character. It is better for a person not to develop than to develop without the influence of thoughts about social affairs, without the influence of feelings awakened by participation in them. If from the circle of my observations, from the sphere of action in which I move, ideas and motives that have an object of general utility are excluded, that is, civic motives are excluded, what remains for me to observe? What is left for me to participate in? What remains is the troublesome turmoil of individual personalities with narrow personal concerns about their pocket, their belly, or their amusements. If I begin to observe people in the form in which they appear to me when I distance myself from participation in civic activities, what concept of people and life is formed in me? Hoffmann was once loved among us, and his story was once translated about how, by a terrible accident, the eyes of Mr. Peregrinus Thiss 6 received the power of a microscope, and about what were the results of this quality of his eyes for his concepts of people. Beauty, nobility, virtue, love, friendship, everything beautiful and great disappeared from the world for him. Whoever he looks at, every man seems to him a vile coward or an insidious intriguer, every woman a coquette, all people are liars and selfish, petty and low to the last degree. This terrible story could only be created in the head of a person who has seen enough of what is called in Germany Kleinstädterei, who has seen enough of the life of people who are deprived of any participation in public affairs, limited to a closely measured circle of their private interests, who have lost all thought of anything of the highest penny preference. (which, however, was not yet known at the time of Hoffmann). Remember what conversation becomes in any society, how soon it ceases to talk about public affairs? No matter how clever and noble the interlocutors, if they do not talk about matters of public interest, they begin to gossip or idle talk; slanderous vulgarity or dissolute vulgarity, in both cases senseless vulgarity—this is the character inevitably assumed by conversation that moves away from public interests. By the nature of the conversation, you can judge the people who are talking. If even the highest in the development of their concepts people fall into empty and dirty vulgarity when their thought deviates from public interests, then it is easy to figure out what a society must be like living in complete alienation from these interests. Imagine a person who has been brought up by life in such a society: what will be the conclusions from his experiments? what are the results of his observations on people? He understands everything vulgar and petty perfectly well, but, apart from this, he does not understand anything, because

did not see or experience anything. He could read God knows what beautiful things in books, he could find pleasure in thinking about these beautiful things; perhaps he even believes that they exist or should exist on earth, and not in books alone. But how do you want him to understand and guess them when they suddenly meet his unprepared gaze, experienced only in classifying nonsense and vulgarity? How do you want me to be served under the name of champagne a wine that has never seen the vineyards of Champagne, but, incidentally, a very good fizzy wine, how do you want me, when I am suddenly served really champagne wine, to be able to say for sure: yes is it really fake anymore? If I say this, I will be fat. My taste senses only that this wine is good, but have I ever drunk a good counterfeit wine? Why do I know that this time, too, they brought me, not fake wine? No, no, I am a connoisseur of fakes, I can distinguish good from bad; but I cannot appreciate genuine wine.

We would be happy, we would be noble, if only the unpreparedness of the look, the inexperience of thought prevented us from guessing and appreciating the lofty and great when it comes across to us in life. But no, and our will participates in this gross misunderstanding. Not only concepts have narrowed in me from the vulgar narrow-mindedness in which I live; this character passed into my will: what is the breadth of the view, such is the breadth of decisions; and besides, it is impossible not to get used, finally, to act as everyone else does. The contagiousness of laughter, the contagiousness of yawns are not exceptional cases in social physiology—the same contagiousness belongs to all phenomena that are found among the masses. There is someone's fable about how some healthy person got into the realm of the lame and crooked. The fable says that everyone attacked him, why did he have both eyes and both legs intact; the fable lied, because it did not finish everything: the stranger was attacked only at first, and when he settled down in a new place, he screwed up one eye himself and began to limp; it already seemed to him that it was more convenient, or at least more decent, to look and walk, and soon he even forgot that, in fact, he was neither lame nor crooked. If you are a fan of melancholy effects, you can add that when our visitor finally needed to take a firm step and look sharply with both eyes, he could no longer do this: it turned out that the closed eye no longer opened, the twisted leg no longer straightened; the nerves and muscles of the poor deformed joints had lost the power to act in the right way from long coercion.

Whoever touches the resin will turn black - as a punishment to himself, if he touched it voluntarily, to his own misfortune, if not voluntarily. It is impossible not to be saturated with the drunken smell of someone who lives in a tavern, even if he himself has not drunk a single glass; it is impossible not to

one who lives in a society that does not have any aspirations, except for petty everyday calculations, should be indulged in the pettiness of the will. Involuntarily, timidity creeps into my heart at the thought that, perhaps, I will have to make a high decision, boldly take a brave step not along the beaten path of daily exercise. That is why you try to assure yourself that no, the need has not yet come for anything so unusual, until the last fateful minute, you purposely convince yourself that everything that seems to emerge from habitual pettiness is nothing more than seduction. A child who is afraid of beeches closes his eyes and shouts as loudly as possible that there is no beech, that beech is nonsense - by this, you see, he encourages himself. We are so clever that we try to convince ourselves that everything we are cowardly is cowardly only from the fact that we have no strength for anything lofty - we try to assure ourselves that all this is nonsense, that they only frighten us with this, like a child with a beech. but in reality there is nothing like it and never will be.

And if it does? Well, then the same thing will happen to us as in the story of Mr. Turgenev with our Romeo. He, too, did not foresee anything and did not want to foresee; he also screwed up his eyes and backed away, but time passed - he had to bite his elbows, but you couldn’t get it.

And how short was the time in which both his fate and Asya's fate were decided - only a few minutes, and a whole life depended on them, and, having missed them, nothing could have corrected the mistake. As soon as he entered the room, he barely had time to utter a few thoughtless, almost unconscious, reckless words, and everything was already decided: a break forever, and there is no return. We do not regret Asa in the least; it was hard for her to hear the harsh words of refusal, but it was probably for the best for her that a reckless person brought her to a break. If she had remained connected with him, for him, of course, it would have been a great happiness; but we do not think that it would be good for her to live in close relations with such a gentleman. Whoever sympathizes with Asya should rejoice at the difficult, outrageous scene. Sympathizing with Asya, he is absolutely right: he has chosen the subject of his sympathies as a dependent being, a being offended. But although with shame, we must confess that we take part in the fate of our hero. We have no honor to be his relatives; there was even dislike between our families, because his family despised all those close to us. But we still cannot tear ourselves away from the prejudices that have piled into our heads from false books and lessons by which our youth was brought up and ruined, we cannot tear ourselves away from the petty concepts inspired by the surrounding society; it seems to us all the time (an empty dream, but still an irresistible dream for us) as if he had rendered some service to our society, as if he were the representative of our enlightenment, as if he were the best among us, as if

We would be worse off without him. The thought develops more and more strongly in us that this opinion about him is an empty dream, we feel that we will not be under its influence for long; that there are people better than him, precisely those whom he offends; that without him it would be better for us to live, but at the present moment we are still not sufficiently accustomed to this idea, we have not completely broken away from the dream on which we were brought up; therefore, we still wish well to our hero and his colleague. Finding that in reality the decisive moment is approaching for them, which will determine their fate forever, we still do not want to say to ourselves: at the present time they are not able to understand their situation; they are not able to act prudently and generously at the same time - only their children and grandchildren, brought up in other concepts and habits, will be able to act as honest and prudent citizens, and they themselves are now not suitable for the role that is given to them; we still do not want to apply the words of the prophet to them: “They will see and not see, they will hear and not hear, because the sense in these people has become coarsened, and their ears have become deaf, and they closed their eyes so as not to see,” no , we still want to consider them capable of understanding what is happening around them and above them, we want to think that they are able to follow the wise admonition of a voice that wanted to save them, and therefore we want to give them instructions on how to get rid of the troubles that are inevitable for people, those who do not know how to figure out their position in time and take advantage of the benefits that a fleeting hour represents. Against our will, hope is weakening in us every day in the insight and energy of people whom we exhort to understand the importance of the present circumstances and act in accordance with common sense, but at least let them not say that they did not hear prudent advice, which was not explained to them by them. position.

Between you, gentlemen (we will address these honorable people with a speech), there are quite a lot of literate people; they know how happiness was depicted in ancient mythology: it was presented as a woman with a long plait, blown in front of her by the wind carrying this woman; it is easy to catch her while she flies up to you, but miss one moment - she will fly by, and you would have rushed to catch her in vain: you cannot catch her, left behind. A happy moment is irretrievable. You will not wait until a favorable combination of circumstances repeats, just as that conjunction of the heavenly bodies, which coincides with the present hour, will not be repeated. Do not miss a favorable moment - this is the highest condition of worldly prudence. Happy circumstances exist for each of us, but not everyone knows how to use them, and in this art almost the only difference consists between people whose lives are arranged well or badly, And for you, although perhaps you were not worthy

Moreover, circumstances have developed happily, so happily that your fate at the decisive moment depends solely on your will. Will you understand the demand of the time, will you be able to take advantage of the position in which you are now placed - that is the question for you of happiness or unhappiness forever.

What are the ways and rules in order not to miss the happiness offered by circumstances? How in what? Is it difficult to say what prudence requires in any given case? Suppose, for example, that I have a lawsuit in which I am guilty all around. Suppose also that my adversary, who is completely right, is so accustomed to the injustices of fate that he already hardly believes in the possibility of waiting for the decision of our lawsuit: it has dragged on for several decades; he asked many times in court when the report would be made, and many times he was answered “tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,” and each time months and months, years and years passed, and the case was still not resolved. Why it dragged on so long, I do not know, I only know that for some reason the chairman of the court favored me (he seemed to think that I was devoted to him with all my heart). But now he received an order to solve the matter without delay. Out of his friendship, he called me to me and said: “I cannot delay the decision of your process; it cannot end in your favor by judicial procedure—the laws are too clear; you will lose everything; the loss of property will not end for you; the verdict of our civil court will reveal circumstances for which you will be liable under criminal laws, and you know how severe they are; what will be the decision of the criminal chamber, I do not know, but I think that you will get rid of her too easily if you are sentenced only to the deprivation of the rights of the state - between us, be it said, you can expect much worse. Today is Saturday; on Monday your lawsuit will be reported and decided; I do not have the strength to postpone it further, with all my disposition towards you. Do you know what I would advise you? Take advantage of the day you have left: offer peace to your opponent; he does not yet know how urgent is the necessity in which I am placed by the order I have received; he had heard that the case was settled on Monday, but he had heard so many times that it was close to being decided that he lost faith in his hopes; now he will still agree to an amicable deal, which will be very beneficial for you in terms of money, not to mention the fact that you will get rid of it from the criminal process, you will acquire the name of a condescending, generous person who, as if he himself felt the voice of conscience and humanity . Try to end the litigation with an amicable deal. I ask you this as your friend."

What am I to do now, let each of you say: will it be wise for me to rush to my opponent to conclude a peace? Or will it be smart to lie on your sofa the only one

what day is left for me? Or would it be wise to lash out with rude abuse at the judge favoring me, whose friendly forewarning gave me the opportunity to end my litigation with honor and profit?

From this example the reader will see how easy it is in this case to decide what prudence requires.

“Try to reconcile with your opponent until you have reached the court with him, otherwise the opponent will give you to the judge, and the judge will give you to the executor of sentences, and you will be thrown into prison and will not come out of it until you pay for everything to the last detail ”(Matt., chapter V, verses 25 and 26).