Orthodox romanticism of Gogol. Religious and moral worldview of Gogol according to "selected passages from correspondence with friends"
1. INTRODUCTION
2. Gogol's legacy
3. Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809-1852)
3.1 Childhood and youth
3.2 Early work
3.3 Second half of life and work
3.4 "Reflections on Divine Liturgy»
3.5 Last years of life
4. Conclusion. Gogol and Orthodoxy
1. INTRODUCTION
The church, the state, the education system should help our people return to Orthodoxy. The secular nature of the school has been officially proclaimed, but the school must reveal to the children what trace Orthodoxy has left in the culture and history of our people. There is equality of religions before the law, but in no case is there equality of religions before culture, before the history of mankind, especially before the culture and history of Kievan Rus. The state, the school should be interested in the fact that children are not foreigners in their country. We must examine the history of Christian painting and church architecture in an Orthodox way.
Turning to our spiritual roots will help us find ground under our feet today, restore the spiritual core of our people, help us return to our path on the paths of history.
2. Gogol's legacy
In this context, the spiritual heritage of N.V. Gogol is extremely important for us. “Gogol,” according to Archpriest V. Zenkovsky, “is the first prophet of a return to a holistic religious culture, a prophet of Orthodox culture, ... he feels as the main untruth of modernity its departure from the Church, and he sees the main path in returning to the Church and perestroika all life in her spirit.
The spiritual state of modern Western society is the fulfillment of the prophetic words of N.V. Gogol to the Western Church: "Now that humanity has begun to achieve the fullest development in all its strengths ... The Western Church only pushes it away from Christ: the more it fusses about reconciliation, the more it brings discord." Indeed, the conciliatory procession of the Western Church towards the world ultimately led to the emasculation of the Spirit in the Western Church, to a spiritual crisis in Western society.
N.V. Gogol in his public opinion was neither Western nor Slavophile. He loved his people and saw that they "heard God's hand more than others."
The trouble with Gogol's contemporary society he sees is that "the Church, created for life, we still have not introduced into our life." (These words, alas, are relevant today). "The Church alone is able to resolve all knots, perplexities and our questions; there is a mediator of everything within the earth itself, which is not yet visible to everyone - our Church." This concern of Gogol about the fate of a society that is far from the Church moves him to work on a book that reveals the inner, hidden meaning of the Divine Liturgy and has as its goal to bring society closer to the Church.
NV Gogol is one of the most ascetic figures in our literature. His whole life testifies to the ascent to the heights of the spirit; but only the clergy closest to him and some of his friends knew about this side of his personality. In the minds of most of his contemporaries, Gogol was a classic type of satirist writer, debunker of social and human vices.
Another Gogol, a follower of the patristic tradition in Russian literature, an Orthodox religious thinker and publicist, the author of prayers, was never recognized by his contemporaries. With the exception of Selected passages from correspondence with friends, his spiritual prose remained unpublished during his lifetime.
True, subsequent generations were already able to get to know her, and by the beginning of the 20th century, Gogol's spiritual image was restored to some extent. But here another extreme arose: "neo-Christian" criticism of the turn of the century (and most of all D. Merezhkovsky's book "Gogol. Creativity, life and religion") built spiritual path Gogol by his own standards, portraying him as a sickly fanatic, a mystic with a medieval consciousness, a lone fighter against evil spirits, and most importantly - completely cut off from the Orthodox Church and even opposed to it - which is why the image of the writer appeared in a bright, but distorted form.
Mystic and the poet of Russian statehood, Gogol was not only a realist, a satirist, but also a religious prophet, all literary images whose deep symbols
“That terrible crest was right”
(V.V. Rozanov "The Apocalypse of Our Time").
"Great ignorance of Russia in the middle of Russia"
(N.V. Gogol "Selected places from correspondence with friends").
April 1 \ March 18, 2006 marked the 197th anniversary of the birth of, perhaps, the most prominent Russian writer, political, religious and social thinker N.V. Gogol (1809-1852).
Why are we interested in Gogol today, do we understand him correctly, or do we still consider him a satirist-critic state power and orders, and not vice versa?
In fact, the work and life of Gogol is still incomprehensible to many literary critics, philosophers and historians of Russian thought. With the exception of a few researchers, Gogol's work and views are incomprehensible, and meanwhile, without a religious consideration of his views, it is difficult to see the true essence of the writer's ideas.
N.V. Gogol was unfairly credited with revolutionary, Bolshevik, liberal Westernist thought, expressing the essence of the ideas of the progressive intelligentsia, primarily V.G. Belinsky, the founders of realism, the natural school, a satirist, a critic of autocracy and statehood. Meanwhile, the true meaning of many of his works (including fiction, where satirical notes are present in many respects), unfortunately, remained incomprehensible to such figures. The Russian writer and philosopher was not only a realist, a satirist, but a mystic and a religious prophet, all of whose literary images are deep symbols.
And only today, thanks to the works of V. Voropaev, I. Vinogradov, I. Zolotussky, as well as articles by M.O. Menshikov, we see a different Gogol: a religious prophet, the level of bl. Augustine, B. Pascal, D. Swift, S. Kierkegaard, forerunner of F.M. Dostoevsky, statesman and monarchist.
3. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1809-1852)
3.1 Childhood and youth
The life of Nikolai Gogol from the first moment was directed towards God. His mother, Maria Ivanovna, made a vow before the Dikan miraculous image of St. Nicholas, if she had a son, to call him Nicholas, and asked the priest to pray until they announced the birth of the child and asked to serve a thanksgiving service. The baby was baptized in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior in Sorochintsy. His mother was a pious, zealous pilgrim.
N.V. was born Gogol on March 20 \ April 1, 1809 in the town of Velikie Sorochintsy, Mirgorodsky district, Poltava province. He came from middle-class landowners. She belonged to the old Cossack families. The family was quite pious and patriarchal. Among Gogol's ancestors were people of clergy: paternal great-grandfather was a priest; grandfather graduated from the Kyiv Theological Academy, and his father - the Poltava Theological Seminary.
He spent his childhood years in the estate of his parents Vasilievka. The region itself was covered with legends, beliefs, historical traditions that excited the imagination. Next to Vasileka was Dikanka (to which Gogol dated the origin of his first stories).
According to the memoirs of one of Gogol's classmates, religiosity and a penchant for monastic life were noticeable in Gogol "from childhood", when he was brought up in his native farm in the Mirgorod district and was surrounded by people "God-fearing and completely religious." When later the writer was ready to "replace his secular life with a monastery," he only returned to his original mood.
The concept of God sunk into Gogol's soul from early childhood. In a letter to his mother in 1833, he recalled: "I asked you to tell me about the Last Judgment, and you told me, a child, so well, so clearly, so touchingly about the blessings that await people for a virtuous life, and so strikingly, so terribly described the eternal torments of sinners that it shocked and aroused sensitivity in me. This planted and subsequently produced in me the highest thoughts.
The first strong test in the life of young Nikolai was the death of his father. He writes a letter to his mother, in which despair is humbled by deep submission to the will of God: “I suffered this blow with the firmness of a true Christian ... I bless you, sacred faith! In you alone I find a source of comfort and satisfaction for my sorrow! I resorted to the Almighty."
The future writer received his initial education at home, "from a hired seminarian."
In 1818-19. the future writer studied with his brother at the Poltava district school, in the summer
1820 was preparing to enter the Poltava gymnasium.
In 1821 he was admitted to the newly opened Gymnasium of Higher Sciences in Nizhyn (Lyceum). Education here, in accordance with the task set by Emperor Alexander I of combating European freethinking, included an extensive program of religious education. House church, common confessor, common morning and evening prayers, prayers before and after the end of the lessons, the law of God twice a week, every day for half an hour before classes, reading the New Testament by the priest, daily memorization of 2-3 verses from Scripture, as well as strict discipline, this was determined by the Charter of the gymnasium almost “monastic "the life of her students, many of the features of which Gogol later used when describing the everyday life of the students in Taras Bulba and Viya."
3.2 Early work
After moving to the capital, Gogol plunges into literary life. But despite his busyness, there is a constant dissatisfaction with the vanity, a desire for a different, collected and sober life. In this sense, reflections on fasting in the "Petersburg Notes of 1836" are very revealing: "Calm and formidable Great Lent. A voice seems to be heard: "Stop, Christian; look back at your life." The streets are empty. There are no cards. In the face of a passer-by, reflection is visible. I love you, time for thought and prayer. My thoughts will flow more freely, more deliberately... Why is our irreplaceable time flying so fast? Who is calling him? Great Lent, what a calm, what a solitary fragment of it!
If we take the moralistic side of Gogol's early work, then there is one characteristic: he wants to raise people to God by correcting THEIR shortcomings and social vices - that is, by external means.
In December 1828 Gogol came to St. Petersburg with broad (and vague) plans for noble labor for the good of the Fatherland. Restricted in material means, he tries his hand as an official, actor, artist, earns his living by lessons. Gogol made his debut in print twice. First as a poet: first he wrote the poem "Italy" (without a signature), and then the poem "Hanz Kühelgarten". The latter received negative reviews in magazines, after which Gogol tried to burn all available copies of the circulation.
The second debut was in prose and immediately put Gogol among the first writers of Russia. In 1831-32. The cycle of stories "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka" was published. Thanks to this success, Gogol meets V.A. Zhukovsky, P.A. Pletnev, Baron A.A. Delvig, A.S. Pushkin. He became famous at court with his stories. Thanks to Pletnev, the former educator of the Heir, in March 1831 Gogol took up the post of junior teacher of history at the Patriotic Institute, which was under the jurisdiction of Emperor Alexander Feodorovna. In Moscow, Gogol meets M.P. Pogodin, the Aksakov family, I.I. Dmitriev, M.N. Zagoskin, M.S. Shchepkin, brothers Kireevsky, O.M. Bodyansky, M.A. Maksimovich.
His stay in the capital served as an impetus for him to painful reflections on the fundamental differences between the original (“old-world”) culture of Russia and the newest European “enlightenment” of “civilized” Petersburg, the criticism of which was deployed by him in the cycle of the so-called “Petersburg” stories. These reflections also formed later, later, after several years of his stay abroad, and the basis for the opposition of "idylistic", "outdated", but culturally valuable Rome and spiritually empty, vain Paris in the story "Rome" (1842).
In 1834, Gogol, together with close friends Pletnev, Zhukovsky, Pogodin, Maksimovich, and also S.P. Shevyrev and K.M. Basili becomes one of the first employees of the Minister of Public Education S.S. Uvarov, who proclaimed in his activity following the primordial principles of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality. The result of this cooperation was the publication by Gogol in the "Journal of the Ministry of Public Education" founded by Uvarov, 4 articles closely related to the story "Taras Bulba" written later, as well as the admission of an adjunct professor to the department world history at S. Petersburg University. At the same time, this fruitful cooperation with Uvarov soon ended due to the conflict between A.S. Pushkin and S.S. Uvarov.
In April 1836, the premiere of The Inspector General took place on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, which was attended by Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich, who highly appreciated Gogol's critical play and allowed the play to be staged and printed. For a copy of The Government Inspector presented to the emperor, Gogol received a diamond ring.
Gogol's early work, if you look at it from a spiritual point of view, opens from an unexpected side for ordinary perception: it is not only a collection of funny stories in the folk spirit, but also an extensive religious teaching in which there is a struggle between good and evil, and good always wins. and sinners are punished (the stories "The Night Before Christmas", "Viy", "Sorochinsky Fair", etc.). The same struggle, but in a more subtle form, sometimes with invisible evil, is also manifested in Petersburg stories; it appears as a direct defense of Orthodoxy in Taras Bulba.
In addition, Gogol speaks in "Taras Bulba" against the betrayal of Andriy, the financial strength of the Jew Yankel, the Poles. Here he advocates the accession of Ukraine to Russia, believing that only in Russia, she will be happy.
3.3 Second half of life and work
Conventionally, the life and work of Gogol can be divided into two periods - the year 1840 will be the boundary.
second half of life and the writer's work is marked by his orientation towards the eradication of shortcomings in himself - and thus, he follows the inner path. “It is impossible to speak and write about the highest feelings and movements of a person by imagination, you need to contain at least a small grain of this in yourself - in a word, you need to become the best” (N.V. Gogol, “Author's Confession”).
In the summer of 1840, Gogol abroad experienced severe bouts of "nervous breakdown", "painful melancholy" and not hoping for recovery, he even wrote a spiritual testament. But then a "miraculous cure" followed. A new path opened up for him. Gogol's constant striving to improve himself as a spiritual person and the predominance of the religious direction begin. In The History of My Acquaintance with Gogol, Aksakov testifies: “Let them not think that Gogol changed his convictions, on the contrary, from his youth he remained faithful to them. But Gogol was constantly moving forward, his Christianity became purer, stricter; clearer and the judgment on oneself more severe.
Gogol gradually develops ascetic aspirations. In April 1840, he wrote: "Now I am more fit for a monastery than for secular life."
In early June 1842, immediately after the publication of the first volume of Dead Souls, Gogol goes abroad and there an ascetic mood begins to prevail in his life.
G. P. Galagan, who lived with him in Rome, recalled: “Gogol seemed to me already then very pious. At the end of the service, I went out into the porch and there, in the semi-darkness, I noticed Gogol standing in the corner ... on his knees with his head bowed. famous prayers he bowed."
Gogol is taken to reading books of spiritual content, mainly patristic literature. Gogol's letters of this period contain requests to send books on theology, Church history, and Russian antiquities.
Friends send him the works of the Holy Fathers, the works of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, St. Demetrius of Rostov, Bishop Innokenty (Borisov), magazines "Christian Reading". The "Philokalia" sent by Yazykov became one of Gogol's reference books.
In "Author's Confession" Gogol wrote the following about this era of his life: “I left everything modern for a while, I paid attention to the recognition of those eternal laws by which man and mankind in general move. The books of legislators, psychics and observers of human nature have become my reading. Everything that only expressed the knowledge of people and the human soul, from the confession of a secular person to the confession of an anochorite and a hermit, occupied me, and on this road, insensibly, almost without knowing how, I came to Christ, seeing that in Him is the key to the soul person."
In the winter of 1843-44. in Nice, Gogol compiled an extensive collection of extracts from the works of the holy fathers. At the same time, he needs to enter deeper into the prayerful experience of the Church. The result of this spiritual thirst was a thick notebook of church songs and canons copied by him from the service Mena. Gogol made these extracts not only for spiritual self-education, but also for the intended purposes of writing.
In January 1845, Gogol lives in Paris with Count A.P. Tolstoy. About this period he wrote: "I lived internally, as in a monastery, and in addition to that, I did not miss almost a single mass in our church." He studies the rites of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great in Greek.
The most famous play by Gogol, The Inspector General, has a deep moral and didactic meaning, revealed by the author in The Denouement of The Inspector General (1846): “Whatever you say, the auditor who is waiting for us at the door of the coffin is terrible. As if you don't know who this auditor is? What to pretend? The auditor is our awakened conscience, which will make us suddenly and at once look with all eyes at ourselves. The main work of Nikolai Vasilyevich, the poem "Dead Souls", has the same deep subtext. On the surface, it is a series of satirical characters and situations, while in its final form the book was supposed to show the way to the rebirth of the soul of fallen man.
3.4 "Reflections on the Divine Liturgy"
At the beginning of 1845 in Paris, Gogol began to work on the book Meditations on the Divine Liturgy, which remained unfinished and was published after his death. This work organically combines theological and artistic sides.
The purpose of this spiritual and educational work, as Gogol himself defined it, is “to show in what fullness and inner deep connection our Liturgy is performed, to young men and people who are still beginners, still little acquainted with its meaning.” This is one of the best examples of spiritual prose of the XIX century.
In working on the book, Gogol used works on liturgy by ancient and modern authors, but all of them served him only as manuals. The book embodies and personal experience Gogol, his desire to comprehend the liturgical word. “For anyone who only wants to move forward and become better,” he wrote in his Conclusion, “it is necessary to attend the Divine Liturgy as often as possible and listen attentively: it insensibly builds and creates a person. And if society has not yet completely disintegrated, if people do not breathe complete, irreconcilable hatred among themselves, then the hidden reason for this is the Divine Liturgy, which reminds a person of holy, heavenly love for a brother.
By the time the writer traveled to the Holy Land in February 1848, the first edition of the book had already been completed. Then Gogol repeatedly returned to the manuscript, revised it, but did not have time to publish it. Unlike the second volume of "Dead Souls", which everyone was waiting for, few people knew about "Reflections" - Gogol wanted to release this book without his name, in a small format, put it on sale at a low price - to make this work really popular, accessible for learning and the benefit of all classes.
In parallel with the new compositions, Gogol is intensively working on the 2nd volume of Dead Souls. Scripture progressed slowly. He now does not think of a continuation of the poem without the preliminary education of his soul. In the summer of 1845, a crisis broke out in Gogol, which later turned his entire worldview upside down. He writes a spiritual testament, later included in the book Selected passages from correspondence with friends, and burns the manuscript of the second volume.
We actually have no other information about the burning itself, except for what Nikolai Vasilyevich himself reported in the last of the “Four Letters to Different Persons About Dead Souls”, published in the same book. “It was not easy to burn five years of work, produced with such painful tension, where every line was shocked, where there was a lot of what made up my best thoughts and occupied my soul.” In the same letter, Gogol explains the reason for the burning of his work: "The appearance of the second volume in the form in which it was, did more harm than good."
For the first time, "Reflections on the Divine Liturgy" were published in St. Petersburg in 1857 in a small format, as Gogol wanted, but with all this, his second desire was not fulfilled - to publish it without the name of the author.
Since 1920, for seven decades, this book has not been republished, only narrow specialists and biographers of the writer knew about it. His spiritual writings "The Rule of Living in the World", "Bright Sunday", "A Christian Goes Forward", "A Few Words about Our Church and Clergy" are still little known today. These works of Gogol are a real storehouse of spiritual Orthodox wisdom, still hidden under a bushel.
3.5 Last years of life
The last decade of Gogol's life passes under the sign of an ever-increasing craving for monasticism. Without giving monastic vows of chastity, non-possession and obedience, he embodied them in his way of life. He himself did not have his own house and lived with friends, today with one, tomorrow with another. He refused his share of the estate in favor of his mother and remained a beggar, while helping poor students. His personal property remaining after Gogol's death consisted of several tens of silver rubles, books and old things, and meanwhile the fund he created "to help poor young people involved in science and art" amounted to more than 2.5 thousand rubles.
Near-death illness, burning of manuscripts and Christian death of N.V. Gogol contains a lot of mystery. The events of the last days of Gogol's life came as a complete surprise to many of his contemporaries. He lived in the house of A.P. Tolstoy on Nikitsky Boulevard. He occupied the front part of the lower floor: two rooms facing the street (the count's chambers were located upstairs).
Gogol's physical condition in the last days of his life deteriorated sharply: eyewitnesses noticed in him fatigue, lethargy and even exhaustion, partly an exacerbation of the disease, partly the effect of fasting. According to Gr. Tolstoy, it is known that Gogol took food twice a day: in the morning bread or prosphora, which he washed down with linden tea, in the evening gruel, sago or prunes. But very little of everything. The most famous Moscow doctors were invited to him, however, he flatly refused treatment. Gogol took unction and took communion of the Holy Mysteries.
February 21 \ March 4, 1852 at about 8 o'clock in the morning, N.V. Gogol introduced himself about the Lord. His last words were "How sweet it is to die!".
4. Conclusion. Gogol and Orthodoxy
Indeed, "in the moral field, Gogol was brilliantly gifted; he was destined to abruptly turn all Russian literature from aesthetics to religion, to shift it from the path of Pushkin to the path of Dostoevsky. All the features that characterize the "great Russian literature" that has become world-wide were outlined by Gogol: its religious and moral structure, its citizenship and publicity, its militant and practical character, its prophetic pathos and messianism. From Gogol begins a wide road, world expanses."
Love for Russia, its monarch and monarchical statehood, Gogol expressed both in his artistic writings and in spiritual prose, and in particular in Selected passages from correspondence with friends. In his works, Gogol continued to develop the idea of the Third Rome, urging his compatriots to return to the ideals of Holy Russia. Unfortunately, until recently, the monarchical and patriotic position of Nikolai Vasilyevich remained misunderstood, and in the minds of most people Gogol is presented as a satirist, a critic of serfdom and the founder of a natural school. Even such an outstanding Russian and philosopher as V.V. Rozanov, did not fully understand the essence of the main provisions and ideas of Nikolai Vasilyevich. At the same time, at the end of his life, having become a witness of the destroyed Russian kingdom, he notes the following in the Apocalypse of Our Time: “This terrible crest was right.” Perhaps this can be explained by the fact that Rozanov in this "apocalypse" saw the exact prophecy and the correctness of Gogol. In a sense, Gogol can be considered a writer of the era of the apocalypse. And maybe only today, we can really get closer to true understanding Nikolai Vasilievich.
Gogol's main thought was criticism of the Westernizing period of Russian history, expressed in criticism of St. Petersburg as "a city of" dead souls ", officials who do not know and do not understand their own country, robots and dolls, living without soil and soul, where there is actually no spiritual personality.
The question of patriotic service to Russia, the honest, conscientious performance by every Russian of his official duties, worried Gogol all his life. “The idea of service,” Gogol admitted in his confession, “had never disappeared from me.” In another place, he writes the following: “I didn’t know even then that there was a lot of love for her, which would have swallowed up all other feelings, you need to have a lot of love for a person in general and become a true Christian, in the whole sense of the word. And therefore, it is not surprising that without having this in myself, I could not serve as I wanted, despite the fact that I really burned with the desire to serve honestly.
In Selected Places from Correspondence with Friends, Gogol acts as a supporter of the original principles of Holy Russia and calls on his compatriots to realize their unique and national essence, the historical vocation of Russia, the uniqueness of its culture and literature. Just like the Slavophiles, Nikolai Vasilievich was convinced of the special mission of Russia, which, according to him, feels God's hand on everything that comes true in it, and senses the approach of another kingdom. This special mission of Russia was associated with Orthodoxy as the most true, undistorted (unlike Catholicism or Protestantism) Christianity.
Reflecting on the foundations of Russian civilization, Gogol pays special attention to the role of the Orthodox Church in the life of Russia, arguing that the Church should not exist separately from the state, without a monarch its full existence is impossible. He agreed with A.S. Pushkin that “a state without a full-fledged monarch is an automaton: a lot, a lot, if it reaches the point that it’s not worth a damn. A state without a full-fledged monarch is the same as an orchestra without a bandmaster.
Gogol himself, in Correspondence with Friends, calls on his compatriots, who have become cosmopolitan intellectuals, to realize themselves, their national soul, their Russian essence and their Orthodox world outlook, having done what he had been working so hard for all his life. “All the disorder of Russian life is quite justified,” Gogol believes, “It comes from the fact that the Russian educated class, after the reforms of Peter I, ceased to appreciate that great, spiritual treasure that the Russian people have always valued Orthodoxy.” The intelligentsia, in order for it to understand its country, he urged "to travel around Russia", because this layer, living in the country, "does not know it." “Great ignorance of Russia in the middle of Russia”, such is the disappointing verdict of the Russian writer and patriot, which is completely relevant and topical today.
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March 16, 2009, 13:10Gogol - the most ecclesiastical writer in Russian literature
Hieromonk Simeon (Tomachinsky) - director of the publishing house of the Sretensky Monastery, candidate of philological sciences, author of a dissertation on Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. On the eve of the writer's 200th birthday, Interfax-Religion correspondent Olga Kurova talked with Father Simeon about the Christian legacy of Gogol's work.
- Your reverend, why is Gogol close to you, why did he become the topic of your dissertation?
Gogol is very close to me. Firstly, my mother used to read it to me at a very early age, and subsequently I often turned to Gogol's works. Secondly, Russian and Ukrainian blood is also mixed in me. And just as Gogol could not say which soul he had more - "Khokhlatskaya or Russian", as he put it, so I cannot say which one is more. And, of course, with his ascetic mood, he influenced my decision to go to the monastery. It is known that Gogol lived like a monk, wanted to become a monk, often came to Optina Hermitage, but Elder Macarius said that his work was more needed in the literary field. And in general, Gogol is the most ecclesiastical writer among the classics of Russian literature, the closest to the Church not only in ideas and worldview, but also in his life. Gogol not only took an active part in the services, went to confession, took communion, but also deeply studied church services. This is evidenced by his works, huge notebooks of his extracts from patristic works, from the Menaia, from the Pilot's book, and, finally, his work Meditations on the Divine Liturgy, for the sake of which he specially studied the Greek language.
- And they were published in our time?
- "Reflections on the Divine Liturgy" were published. AT Soviet time, however, this book was silent about, in the academic so-called "Complete Works" there was no this work, although many researchers noted that it was marked by special lyricism, the reflection of Gogol's personality lies on this book. But in our time it was published, I re-read it with pleasure, it helps to understand what happens during the liturgy, what is the meaning of the sacred rites, chants, those prayers that the priest reads in the altar - everything is very detailed.
- That is, it can be a book of catechism for a modern person?
Undoubtedly. For those who want to understand the meaning of the Divine Liturgy, and not just contemplate what is happening in the temple, this is a great helper. The Optina elders also recommended reading it.
- And what would you say about the evolution of Gogol's views? What is the difference between the early Gogol and the late one?
There was a "concept of two Gogols", which was put forward by Belinsky. According to her, the "early" Gogol is a wonderful artist who showed great promise, and then betrayed his vocation, lost his mind, the churchmen ruined him. This concept was generally accepted in Soviet times. But according to numerous studies that have appeared in the last two decades, primarily by scientists such as Vladimir Andreevich Voropaev and others, this is an incorrect theory. Gogol's letters themselves, his attitude to his works, show that there was no sharp break in his worldview. He has always been an Orthodox, church man, but, of course, youth is characterized by hobbies, he was in a creative search, he had a creative evolution. From cheerful Little Russian stories, "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka", Gogol moved on to more serious works. This is completely normal, natural for a genius, a great artist. In the mid-forties, he really had spiritual crisis, which made him reconsider his attitude to creativity, but the same "Taras Bulba", the first edition, was written when Gogol was in his early twenties. Subsequently, he created a second edition, but all Christian ideas were already present in the first. And, say, "The Government Inspector", which many perceived simply as a satirical work that denounces morals? Gogol repeatedly tried to explain that he put a deeper meaning into this work, that everyone should look at his own soul, that all these officials personify the passions that prevail in a person, and the real auditor is true conscience, in contrast to "windy conscience" , which is personified by Khlestakov.
That spiritual meaning, those ideas that were not so clearly expressed in early works later became more vivid in other genres in which Gogol began to work. To speak of some kind of contradiction between "early" and "late" Gogol is unjustified, and Gogol himself does not speak of this. Yes, he admits that some of his early works do not deserve such great attention that "Selected places from correspondence with friends" is much more important to him, but nowhere does he renounce his past.
- And how is Gogol's Orthodoxy combined with all the demonism that he composed, including in his youth?
This is a difficult question. As I said, in adulthood Gogol looked at his early work with different eyes. He writes that it becomes terrible from those fruits that we ourselves, without thinking, have grown, from those monsters that rise from our creations, which we did not even imagine. Gogol was worried about much of what he wrote, although in his early works there was no any kind of theomachism or paganism. Perhaps Gogol's perception of Christian ideas in his youth was more superficial, as is often the case. Therefore, the actions of the devilish forces were more of a laughing stock for him, and he believed that it was possible to joke with things that were not really worth joking with. It was for this that he later repented.
What would you say about Gogol as an imperial writer? He believed that all of Holy Russia should have one language, the language of Pushkin. How real is the celebration of his anniversary in the former Soviet republics What will happen to Gogol's legacy in Ukraine?
I am sure that Gogol is read and loved in Ukraine. At the end of March we are going to the Gogol conference in Kyiv. And there won't be just one such conference, there will be many. Another thing is that in Ukraine in our time Gogol is taught in the course foreign literature- simply because he wrote in Russian. For the modern Ukrainian authorities, Gogol, as he is, is inconvenient. Nikolai Vasilyevich believed that Russians and Ukrainians should be together, that these two nations complement each other, and their mutual unity is great power. Here is what he said in a private letter of 1844: “I would never give an advantage to either a Little Russian over a Russian, or a Russian over a Little Russian. - a clear sign that they must complete one another. For this, the very stories of their past life are given to them unlike one another, so that the various forces of their character are brought up separately, so that later, merging together, they constitute something most perfect in humanity.
Pro Ukrainian language Gogol said that he was remarkably suitable for Little Russian songs, pointed out his melodiousness and lyricism. But at the same time, he said, in particular, to his countryman, the famous Slavist Bodiansky, that "we, Osip Maksimovich, must write in Russian, we must strive to support and strengthen one, sovereign language for all our native tribes." The Russian language absorbs numerous adverbs, it can absorb and enrich itself with a variety of opposites, Gogol argued. For him there was no question what language the Slavs should have - of course, the language of Pushkin.
Unfortunately, now in Gogol's homeland it is published in the Ukrainian language, where everything is mercilessly altered. Where the writer says "Russian land", they write "Ukrainian land", where the classic speaks of the strength of the Russian people, they write "Ukrainian people" and so on. His works are subjected to severe censorship, forcibly making Gogol some kind of frenzied nationalist. This does not inspire respect, this is an outrage on the memory of the writer.
I hope that this anniversary will open people's eyes to the fact that the great son of the Ukrainian people, Gogol, who infinitely loved his Motherland, wished her only good and prosperity, while saying that Ukraine should go hand in hand with Russia, that these are complementary nations, one cannot live without the other: "Russian and Little Russian are the souls of twins, replenishing one another, native and equally strong."
Will the cross be restored on Gogol's grave? They wrote that an initiative group advocated for its restoration ...
Yes, the decision has already been made. In Russia, there is an organizing committee for holding celebrations, it was decided that a cross would be erected on Gogol's grave in the Novodevichy Convent. It is known that Gogol was first buried in the Danilov Monastery - a memorial plaque will be installed there.
And, of course, a lot of other events are timed to coincide with the anniversary. The film by Bortko "Taras Bulba" is about to be released, which was filmed in Ukraine, where in leading role Ukrainian Bohdan Stupka. It seems that Ukraine is ready to demonstrate it at the box office. Namely, in "Taras Bulba" - the quintessence Ukrainian history. The strength of the Ukrainian spirit is in the defense of one's faith, in the defense of Orthodox civilization and one's identity. And the choice of the Cossacks, who are fighting against the Poles, against Latinism, is clearly in favor of the Orthodox faith.
Gogol seriously studied the history of Ukraine, he had a huge project "History of Little Russia". He did not finish it, but there was a mass interesting materials on this topic. Gogol did not write all this from scratch, he did not invent it out of his head. He studied the history of the Ukrainian people, who in the battles forged their national idea, consisting, I repeat, in the defense of their faith and Orthodox civilization. And Russia, according to Gogol, after the fall of Constantinople, after the Arab-Muslim conquests, is the last and main stronghold of Orthodoxy, and only in alliance with it can Ukraine defend the Orthodox faith.
- Isn't he going to Sretensky Monastery something to publish for the anniversary of the writer?
We have just published a volume of selected works by Gogol with a print run of 5,000 copies. It included the stories "Taras Bulba", "Portrait", "Reflections on the Divine Liturgy", religious and moral treatises, prayers, suicide notes. In the near future, selected Gogol's letters will be published in the Letters on Spiritual Life series. Gogol now needs to be published more, more promoted, in terms of missionary work, his work has great potential.
The religious problems of culture in these years are felt with particular acuteness by Gogol, and it is difficult to distinguish between them. creative way from his personal destiny...
Among his Russian peers, older and younger, Gogol (1809-1852) occupies a very peculiar place. He was at once an advanced writer and a backward one...
From Gogol there are new paths, and not only in literature. There is something prophetic in his work... But he himself somehow lags behind in the past century...
In this spiritual backwardness, in this spiritual archaism, Gogol is one of the knots of his tragic fate... Philosophical trends of Gogol's era did not touch, except through art...
The “disputes” of his contemporaries, all these “disputes about our European and Slavic origins,” between the “Old Believers” and the “New Believers,” or Slavs and Europeanists, seemed to him a complete misunderstanding - “they all talk about different aspects of the same subject , without realizing that they do not argue at all and do not contradict each other "...
Gogol moves more often among the Slavophiles, but he himself was not a Slavophile. It is more correct to consider him a Westerner ...
He did not love the same West as the then Russian Westernizers, and not with the same love. But about his worldview and mentality, he was all Western, with early years was and remained under Western influence. In fact, he knew only the West - he dreamed more about Russia. And he knew better what Russia should become and be, what he would like to see her, than real Russia ...
In his early years, Gogol goes through the experience of German romanticism, and he himself creates congenially in this romantic spirit. It was not an imitation, and it was not only a literary manner. Gogol masters the most creative problems of romanticism, intimately gets used to this romantic experience. And for him personally it was an important shift or turn in his inner life...
With creative seriousness, Gogol experienced and felt all the demonological motives of romance, and reincarnated them in full-fledged images. And one can feel in this the power of personal conviction, the sharpness of personal experience - the world is in the power of evil forces, in a dark obsession, and lies in evil ...
This corresponds to an early awakening feeling of religious fear - and that was precisely fright, not so much awe or reverence .... Young Gogol lives religiously in some kind of magical world, in a world of enchantment and disappointment. He had strange insights into the secrets of dark passions. Subsequently, the “dead insensitivity of life” will be revealed to him. He depicts as if stopped, frozen, motionless faces - almost not faces, but masks (Rozanov noted that Gogol's portrait is always static) ...
And it was rightly noted about Gogol that he sees the world under the sign of death, sub specie mortis...
From romanticism in Gogol and his first utopian temptation, the temptation of the creative power of art. And then the first disappointment - art itself turns out to be ambiguous, and therefore helpless. "Magical idealism" seductively doubles...
“See, my son, at the terrible power of the demon. He tries to penetrate everything: into our deeds, into our thoughts, and even into the very inspiration of the artist. Countless will be the victims of this hellish spirit, living invisibly, without an image on earth. This is that black spirit that breaks into us even in moments of the purest and most holy thoughts.
This fear remains with Gogol for the rest of his life, until his deathbed prayer. "Bind Satan again with the mysterious power of the inscrutable Cross"... Romantic experience is always made up of antitheses and tensions. Immediacy and reflection, "catholicity" and self-will, reconciliation and protest, peace and anxiety - in such a dialectical game, all romanticism. The motives of reconciliation in Russian romanticism are more pronounced, "organic" motives prevailed here over "critical". This must be said first of all about Slavophilism, insofar as it was romantic. Only a few voices of alarm sounded, only a few were given the apocalyptic ear to hear. Such was Lermontov, whose work is all the more mysterious because it is not finished. And this apocalyptic rumor was especially strong in Gogol...
But in itself, romanticism is religiously hopeless, from romanticism one must return to the Church, that is the path of "religious renunciation." Within romanticism, however, there are only imaginary and false paths...
The religious outlook of the young Gogol was very vague. It was a very indefinite religious humanism, romantic excitement, sensitivity, tenderness. At that time Gogol did not feel the reality of the Church, perhaps aesthetically...
“I came to Christ in a Protestant rather than a Catholic way,” Gogol later wrote to Shevyrev. “The analysis of the soul of a person in a way that other people do not produce was the reason that I met Christ, marveling in him first of human wisdom and hitherto unheard-of knowledge of the soul, and then worshiping His Divinity” ...
And the same thing again in the "Author's Confession"... "Since then, man and the soul of man have become more than ever the subject of observation... I drew attention to the recognition of those eternal laws by which man and mankind in general move. The books of legislators, psychics and observers of human nature have become my reading. Everything where knowledge of people and the human soul was expressed, from the confession of a secular person to the confession of an anchorite and a hermit, occupied me - and on this road, insensibly, almost without knowing how, I came to Christ, seeing that in him the key to the soul of man, and that none of the knowers of souls has yet come to that height of knowledge of the soul, on which He stood "...
This recognition is very characteristic... That was the path of pietic humanism that Gogol followed. And in this he still belongs to the Alexander Age... It is difficult to say exactly which books of "psychologists" and "psychologists" Gogol read. Anyway, he read the Bible. And I got used to reading it as a prophetic and even apocalyptic book. Biblical solemnity begins to penetrate into the style of Gogol himself...
"Open the book Old Testament: you will find there each of the current events, you will see clearer than day what it has transgressed against God, and the terrible judgment of God that has taken place over it is so clearly depicted that the present will tremble "...
Gogol speaks of this in connection with the lyrical vocation of Russian poetry. And he notes something prophetic in Russian poetry. "And the sounds become biblical in our poets" - for Russia is already approaching "another kingdom"...
In Gogol's spiritual development, Roman impressions were decisive. “Everything that I needed, I took away and concluded in the depths of my soul. There Rome, as a shrine, as a witness of the miraculous phenomena that have taken place over me, remains forever.
And it's not the point, of course, that Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya and the Polish brothers "Voskresensk" were able or not able to persuade Gogol in the direction of Catholicism. “To change the rites of his religion,” indeed, Gogol did not even think. And simply because at that time I did not notice any difference between confessions. “Because both our religion and the Catholic one are absolutely one and the same, and therefore there is absolutely no need to change one for the other. Both are true; both recognize the same Savior, the same Divine Wisdom, who once visited our earth, endured the last humiliation on it, in order to elevate our soul higher and direct it to heaven "...
But from his Roman interlocutors Gogol heard not only about the dogmas of Roman Catholicism. They also talked about "Slavic affairs." Gogol also met Mickiewicz. One must think that the Polish brothers told Gogol about their work, about their society or the Order of the Resurrection, about Polish messianism. And that was a kind of excited "apostle of truth", a program of religious action. For Gogol, this was the first introduction into the circle of the then social Christianity ...
Gogol's religious experience during these years was not limited to aesthetic experiences. Social motives are also quite sharply outlined in his mind, and this is quite understandable against the historical background of that time. In this respect Gogol's "Rome" is very characteristic. “A terrible realm of words instead of deeds”... And this general devastation is from unbelief... “The icons were taken out of the temple, and the temple is no longer a temple: bats and evil spirits live in it”... From the opposite, the ideal of the religious is suggested return...
Gogol's closest friends, the Vielgorskys, Smirnova, and others, were connected with Catholic circles in Paris. Smirnova was fond of the sermons of Lacordaire, Ravignan, visited Svechina's circle (in the late 30s). It was a new source of contact with social Catholicism...
It is very likely that Gogol read Silvio Pellico's book in Rome, On the Duties of a Man (Dei doveri degli Uommi), - it was sympathetically noted in Russian journals (published in 1836) ... For Gogol, this was already enough. With his ingenious impressionability, he grasped hints on the fly, and created a sweet legend from them, for he was a poet ...
It should be remembered that in the last destroyed edition of "Dead Souls" a priest was depicted, and in this image the personal features of Father Matthew were strangely intertwined "with Catholic shades." This speaks of the power of Gogol's "Catholic" impressions... In the Roman years, the main book in Gogol's spiritual life was the famous book on Imitation (cf. its influence on Ivanov). He sent this book from abroad to his Moscow friends for daily reading and meditation. “After reading, indulge in reflection on what you have read. Turn what you have read on all sides in order to finally get to it and see exactly how it can be applied to you "...
So, obviously, did Gogol himself. “Choose for this spiritual occupation an hour free and unburdened, which would serve as the beginning of your day. It’s best immediately after tea or coffee, so that the very appetite does not distract you ... He reads and advises Smirnova to read something from Bossuet’s Oeuvres philosophiques ... He asks Smirnova: “look for Thomas Aquintus“ Somma teologica “if it is only translated into French”...
At the same time, Gogol also reads the holy fathers, in Russian translations, in " Christian Reading” and in the Moscow “Appendices” (books were sent to him from Russia, but the Parisian archpriest, Fr. D. Vershinsky, from the masters of the St. Petersburg Academy, gave him something). But what is curious is that while working on his “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy” in 1842 and 1843 in Paris, Gogol, along with the Slavonic text, also had Latin at hand, obviously, instead of Greek, from Goar. The interpretation was based on the well-known book of Dmitrevsky. Gogol asked that the Areopagitics be sent to him... All these details are very indicative. Gogol's style is developing Western... And when he read the holy fathers, his spiritual skills were already established and the paternal graves were woven into the already finished fabric...
Gogol then read Chrysostom, and Ephraim the Syrian, and St. Maxim "about love", and all "Philokalia" (Paisievo), and Tikhon of Zadonsk (cf. his extracts from the holy fathers). It is not clear why he asked to send him Stefan Yavorsky (sermons), Lazar Baranovich (“Trumpets of Words” and “Spiritual Sword”), “Search” by Dimitri Rostovsky, and it is not clear whether he received these books. Of contemporary Russian authors, he read the words of Innokenty, even the sermons of Jacob Vecherkov, anonymous articles in Christian Reading ...
From an early age, Gogol had a firm belief in his chosen one, in his vocation and destiny - to signify his existence in some way, to accomplish something great or special. This feeling of well-being is typical for the whole generation and even for this whole sentimental-romantic era. And it was a very difficult alloy ...
With Gogol, this well-being of the called one reaches at times the degree of an obsession, charming pride, “Someone invisible writes before me with a mighty rod” ... He is convinced that he is called to testify and teach. “From now on, my word is invested with higher authority,” “and woe to anyone who does not listen to my word” ... He was convinced of the special significance of his personal experience and example, and justified himself against reproaches, “why he put up his inner cell”, reminding “that after all I am not a monk yet, but a writer”. And he continues. “I didn't find it tempting for anyone to reveal publicly that I'm trying to be better than I am. I do not find it tempting to languish and burn openly, in the sight of everyone, with the desire for perfection...
Gogol had a very dangerous theory of prayer. “How to know the will of God? To do this, you need to look at yourself with reasonable eyes and examine yourself: what abilities given to us from birth are higher and nobler than others. With those faculties we must work chiefly, and in this work is the will of God; otherwise they would not have been given to us. So, asking for their awakening, we will ask for that which is in accordance with His will; therefore, our prayer will be directly heard. But it is necessary that this prayer be from all the strength of our soul. If such a constant tension is observed even for two minutes a day in the course of one or two weeks, then you will certainly see its effects. By the end of this time, there will be additions in the prayer... And the questions will immediately be followed by answers that will be directly from God. The beauty of these answers will be such that the whole composition will turn into delight by itself ...
Obviously, Gogol practiced such a prayer. And it is not surprising then if he attached an almost infallible significance to his creations, saw in them the highest revelation ...
Gogol's teaching persistence, his direct obsession greatly annoyed his closest friends. And there is a strange excess in the turns and words that Gogol chooses when he talks about himself and about his work. “Compatriots, I loved you, I loved you with that love that they don’t express, which God gave me” ...
Gogol's religious path was difficult, in its twists and turns it is not explained and can hardly be explained... These convulsive twitchings of religious fright often break through - terrible visions suddenly stand before his eyes, and he internally dies. “The devil has already stepped out into the world without a mask,” here is his terrible insight! “The whole dying composition is groaning, smelling the gigantic growths and the fruits of which we have sown the seeds in life, not seeing and not hearing what horrors will rise from them” ...
In Gogol's experience there are undoubted elements of an ascetic strain, a painful overstrain of repentant reflection... But Gogol's originality lies precisely in the fact that with this sharp asceticism he combines a very persistent will for social action... This is the whole point of Gogol's fateful book, "Selected Places from correspondence with friends "... As Gogol himself insists in The Author's Confession, in Correspondence he wanted to "talk ahead about something that was supposed to prove to me in the person of the deduced heroes of the narrative work" (i.e. . in the second volume of "Dead Souls"). This expression is very typical here - "to prove". Gogol consciously turns his artistic images into evidence...
In "Dead Souls", in the second part, Gogol wanted to show a "reborn" or awakened Russia. In Gogol's understanding, this is not an everyday story, but a "poem" and a "spiritual poem." And "Correspondence" is an ideological preface to this "poem"...
It was only by extreme misunderstanding that a message of personal improvement and salvation could be found in this book. In reality it was the program of social Christianity...
This was first recalled, it seems, only by Gershenzon. “Perhaps there is no other work in Russian so selflessly, so holistically, to the smallest shades of thought and word, imbued with the spirit of the public ...” And Gershenzon correctly noted Gogol’s unexpected combination of moral pathos with the most extreme and petty utilitarianism. "The aimless joy of being does not exist for Gogol... His thinking is practical and utilitarian through and through, and precisely in the social sense"...
Gogol's main category is service, not even service... “No, for you, just as for me, the doors of the desired monastery are locked. Your monastery is Russia. Clothe yourself mentally with the cassock of a black man, and, having mortified yourself entirely for yourself, but not for her, go to labor in her. She now calls her sons even more strongly than ever before. Already her soul hurts, and the cry of her mental illness is heard ... Gogol was least satisfied with the present, least satisfied with the existing order and situation. He was all in the pathos of renewal, and there was in him some kind of apocalyptic impatience, a thirst for direct action. And the earth was already on fire with an incomprehensible melancholy...
It's because he's so worried current situation Russia, he insists: "who is not even in the service, he must now enter the service and grab onto his position, like a drowning man grabs a plank, without which no one can be saved" ... Gogol's entire book was written, from the beginning to the the end, about the public good... And it was a utopia of the sacred realm...
“On the ship of his position, service, each of us must now be carried out of the pool, looking at the Heavenly Feeder ... Now each of us must serve not as he would have served in former Russia, but in another heavenly state, the head of which Christ Himself...
This turn of phrase is already characteristic here: “the old Russia” ... Gogol already sees himself in the “other world”, in the new theocratic plane ... And shouldn’t Gogol’s well-being be compared with the spirit of the “Holy Union”, with the ideology of Alexander's times and the "pure ministry"... The image of the governor-general in the second part of "Dead Souls" is entirely sustained in this style. “From tomorrow, I will deliver to all departments of the presence a copy of the Bible, a copy of Russian chronicles and three or four classics, the first world poets, faithful chroniclers of their lives” ...
And connected with this Alexander's spirit is the fact that in Gogol's religious and social utopia the state overshadows the Church and the creative initiative is given to the laity, in the order of their "service", and not to the hierarchy and not to the clergy. “The power of a sovereign is a senseless phenomenon if he does not feel that he must be the image of God on earth” ... And the whole Bible turns out to be a book for kings - you just need to imitate God himself, as He reigned among the chosen people ... The calling of the king - "to be the image of him on earth, who himself is love"...
In the world around, everything becomes so frightening, there is so much suffering everywhere, “that an insensible heart will burst from pity, and the power of hitherto unprecedented compassion will call forth the power of another, hitherto unprecedented love” ...
Gogol prophesies some kind of unprecedented inflaming of hearts... “A person will burn with love for all mankind, such as has never been kindled before... Of us, private people, no one will be able to have such love in all its strength; it will remain in ideas and thoughts, and not in deeds; only those who have already been decreed by an indispensable law to love everyone as one person can be fully imbued with it. Having loved everything in your state, down to a single person of every class and rank, and turning everything that is in it, as if into your own body, being sick in spirit for everyone, grieving, sobbing, praying day and night for your suffering people, the sovereign will acquire that almighty voice of love, which alone can be accessible to ill mankind ... This utopian image of the theocratic king is repeated with very similar features in Al. Ivanov (starting from 1826)...
Even more curious is the later reflection of the same ideal in Vlad. Solovyov in his discussions about the theocratic obligations of the Russian tsar: to forgive and heal with love... There is a certain single stream of thoughts and moods here, and its origins can be traced back to the time of the Holy Union...
Gogol speaks of great religious-historical advantages Eastern Church; “our Church will reconcile and unravel everything”... This is the Church of the future: “in it is the road and the way, how to direct everything in man into one harmonious hymn to the supreme Being”... The Western Church is no longer prepared for new historical tasks. She could still somehow “reconcile with Christ” in the former world in the name of the one-sided and incomplete development of mankind. Now the tasks are immensely more difficult ...
And yet Gogol again defines this historical vocation of our Church from the point of view of the state. “It can produce an unheard-of miracle in the sight of all Europe, forcing any estate, rank and position in our country to enter their legal boundaries and limits and, without changing anything in the state, give strength to Russia, amaze the whole world with the harmonious harmony of the same organism with which she hitherto frightened"... Until now, this Church has somehow hid, "like a chaste virgin," but it was created for life...
And how characteristic are Gogol's instructions to the "governors" and the "Russian landowner" to take over the leadership of the priests. “Announce to them more often those terrible truths from which their soul willy-nilly shudder”... “Take a priest with you wherever you go at work, so that at first he will be with you as an assistant... Take Chrysostom and read it along with your priest, and, moreover, with a pencil in his hands "... All this again is quite in the spirit of a "pure ministry" ...
It is not surprising that only people of this Alexander's spirit and style liked Gogol's book - Smirnova, ("my soul brightened for you"), Sturdze ("our conversations in Rome were later reflected as in a mirror" in this book, said Sturdza) ... And she categorically did not like either about. Matvey, neither Ignatius Brianchaninov, nor Grigory Postnikov, nor Innokenty. By the “pride” with which they reproached Gogol, they meant precisely this spirit of utopian activism... The Aksakovs, not without reason, saw in this book Western influence and Western evil...
It was also correctly noted that the book contains more morality and moralism than actual faith and churchness... The Examiner's Denouement was written in the same style (with its moralistic allegories: "our spiritual city", "execution of our own soul" etc.)...
Gogol remains all the time in the circle of a rather indefinite pietism. His book on the liturgy is no exception. The dogmatic content and symbolism in it are borrowed (from Dmitrevsky, partly from the New Tablet), and Gogol himself owns here only this style of touching and sincere sensibility. “The Divine Liturgy is an eternal repetition of the great feat of love that has been accomplished for us ... A gentle kiss of a brother was heard ...”
It is characteristic that in the era of "Correspondence" Gogol everywhere and always emphasizes precisely the psychological significance of the image of Christ, "Who, one of all that has hitherto been on earth, showed in himself the complete knowledge of the human soul"...
But there is another stream in Correspondence, the stream of genuine “social Christianity” - it breaks through most strongly in the well-known passage: “Bright Sunday” ... “Christian! They drove Christ out onto the street, to infirmaries and hospitals, instead of calling Him to their homes, under their own roof - and they think that they are Christians! (in the first edition it was omitted by the censors). And how characteristic is this emphasis on the impoverishment of brotherhood in the nineteenth century. “The poor man of the nineteenth century forgot that on this day there are neither vile nor contemptible people, but all people are brothers of the same family, and every man’s name is brother, and not any other” ...
This reminds not so much of the Slavophiles (although Gogol notes, “that there is the beginning of the brotherhood of Christ in our very Slavic nature,” etc.) ... Rather, it resembles Western models, and are not echoes of Lamennais and his “Words believer?"
Very characteristic of Gogol is this whole characterization of the needs and needs of the "nineteenth century." “When to embrace all mankind as brothers has become a young man's favorite dream; when many are only dreaming about how to transform the whole of humanity... when almost half have already solemnly acknowledged that Christianity alone is able to accomplish this!... when they even began to talk about how everything should be common - and at home, and land"... In such a wide circle, Gogol speaks of "brotherhood", and is upset that it is precisely the living brotherly feeling that is lacking ...
Meanwhile, it is only through love for one's neighbor that one can love God. “It is difficult to love the One whom no one has seen. Christ alone brought and proclaimed to us the mystery that in love for brothers we receive love for God... Go into the world and first acquire love for your brothers.... accent...
In Gogol's book, very diverse threads intersect and intertwine, and there is no complete unity in it. However, this social orientation and aspiration of the will always remain unchanged... There is a fatal discrepancy in the very idea of the book. Gogol tries to reduce everything to a "spiritual matter". “My cause is the soul and the lasting cause of life” ... But that was the plot of his creative drama, that he was least of all a psychologist, it was the psychological justification that he could not succeed in. Instead of psychological analysis it turns out reasoning and dry moralism. Ap. Grigoriev correctly emphasized that Gogol is all a man made ...
Gogol explained in the "Author's Confession" that his book ("Selected Places") is "the confession of a man who spent several years inside himself." But it was precisely this inner experience of Gogol that was confusing, it was his main weakness... The "religious crisis" of his last years was connected with this. The outcome for Gogol could only be in the renunciation of social utopia and in a genuine ascetic entry into oneself, - "to turn into the inner life" and advised him about. Matvey... Inwardly, Gogol has been changing in recent years, and this is hard for him. Creatively, he could not change. In the latest edition of Dead Souls, he remains within the same deadly pietism as before. This was his last crash...
Gogol had no direct influence in the history of Russian religious development. He somehow remained on the sidelines, he removed himself from the topics and interests of his generation, from the then philosophical disputes. And the religious teacher in him was recognized only half a century later. Only in the era of Russian neo-romanticism did Gogol's religious-romantic motifs come to life again...
At one time, Gogol was separated from the Slavophiles by his anxiety, his forebodings. social thunderstorm and confusion. He lived too long in the West and in the most "social" years, in the years of utopias and forebodings, on the eve of the explosion. And how characteristic is the combination of apocalyptic awe with the "calculations" of his utopian projects. This was precisely what was characteristic of "pietism" (compare also with Zhukovsky)...
In Gogol's work, the problem of Christian culture was shown from its utopian side, in its dangers and inconsistencies, as a kind of temptation ... This was partly an internal opposition to that patriarchal complacency, which was too strong among individual Slavophiles ...
From the book "Ways of Russian Theology"
Xavier de Ravignan, famous French preacher of the 19th century.
SVECHINA (Sofya Petrovna, 1782-1859) - writer, daughter of the secretary of state of Empress Catherine II, P. A. Soimonov; At the age of 17 she married, at the insistence of her father, General Svechin, who was 24 years older than her. Not finding happiness in marriage, Svechina turned to mysticism. The way of thinking of Svechina, who was already prepared for Catholic sympathies by her upbringing in the French way and by reading, was greatly influenced by her acquaintance with famous writer Count Joseph de Maistre, Sardinian envoy in Petersburg. Moving to Paris in 1817, she converted to Catholicism and surrounded herself with ultramontanes and Jesuits. Salon Svechina in Paris stood out for its clerical direction. Fallout and Montalembert stood out among his visitors.
PELLICO (Pellico) Silvio (1789-1854), Italian writer, Carbonari. 15 years was imprisoned in the fortress.
BOSSUET, (Bossuet) Jacques-Benin - famous French theologian, preacher and spiritual writer; born in Dijon in 1627 and died in 1704. In 1669 he was appointed Bishop of Condom, and in 1681 Bishop of Maux. Left a lot of writings; were especially famous oratory his sermons and eulogy. He was a zealous defender of the Gallican liberties, moderate religious tolerance, acted as a defender of absolutism. His practical point of view was rejected by the enlighteners of the 18th century.
Lamennais Felicite Robert de (June 19, 1782, Saint-Malo - February 27, 1854, Paris), French publicist and philosopher, abbot, one of the founders of Christian socialism. Having quickly overcome his fascination with the ideas of J. J. Rousseau, L. already in his youth became a staunch monarchist and devout Catholic. In his early works (1810-20s) he criticized the ideas of the Great French Revolution and the materialistic philosophy of the 18th century. The political ideal of L. at that time was the Christian monarchy. However, since the late 1920s L. goes over to the positions of liberalism; During the Revolution of 1830, L., in collaboration with Abbé Lacordaire and Count Montalembert, founded the journal Avenir (L'avenir), with a program of separation of church and state, universal suffrage, and a number of other liberal reforms. In 1834, L. published The Words of a Believer (Russian translation, 1906), a work that scourged capitalism from the standpoint of feudal socialism. These speeches L. were condemned in papal encyclicals. L.'s utopian ideas about the possibility of preventing social revolutions and improving the social system through Christian love and moral self-improvement had a great influence on the development of Christian socialism, and in particular the social doctrine of Catholic modernism; in the 1950s and 60s L. ideas have become very popular among the Catholic left. Towards the end of his life, L. came up with his own philosophical system (Sketch of Philosophy, vols. 1-4, 1840-46). In it, departing on a number of issues from orthodox Catholic teachings, L. tried to combine religion and philosophy, relying on the ideas of Neoplatonism and G. Leibniz.
The greatest writer Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, being a mystic and poet of Russian life, a realist and a satirist, was endowed with the gift of a religious prophet.
“Gogol,” according to Archpriest V. Zenkovsky, “is the first prophet of a return to a holistic religious culture, a prophet of Orthodox culture, ... he feels the departure from the Church as the main untruth of modernity, and he sees the main path in returning to the Church and restructuring the entire life in her spirit.
N.V. Gogol loved his people and saw that they "heard God's hand more than others." He personally sees the disorder of contemporary Gogol's society in the fact that "We still have not introduced the Church, created for life, into our life." According to the memoirs of colleagues, religiosity and a penchant for monastic life were noticeable in Gogol "from childhood." When later the writer was ready to "replace his secular life with a monastery," he only returned to his original mood and state.
The concept of God sunk into Gogol's soul from an early age. In a letter to his mother in 1833, he recalled:
“I asked you to tell me about the Last Judgment, and you told me, a child, so well, so clearly, so touchingly about the blessings that await people for a virtuous life, and so strikingly, so terribly described the eternal torment of sinners that it shocked and awakened my sensitivity. This planted and subsequently produced in me the highest thoughts.
The first strong test in the life of young Nikolai was the death of his father. He writes a letter to his mother, in which despair is humbled by deep submission to the will of God:
“I endured this blow with the firmness of a true Christian ... I bless you, sacred faith! In you alone I find a source of consolation and satisfaction of my grief!.. Resort as I resorted to the Almighty.
Reflections on fasting in "Petersburg Notes, 1836" are very indicative:
“Calm and formidable Great Lent. A voice seems to be heard: “Stop, Christian; look back at your life." The streets are empty. There are no cards. In the face of a passer-by, reflection is visible. I love you, time for thought and prayer. My thoughts will flow more freely, more deliberately... Why is our irreplaceable time flying so fast? Who is calling him? Great Lent, what a calm, what a solitary fragment of it!
Gogol's early work
Gogol's early work, if you look at it from a spiritual point of view, opens from a side unexpected for ordinary perception. It is not only a collection of funny stories in the folk spirit, but also an extensive religious teaching, in which there is a struggle between good and evil, and good invariably wins, and sinners are punished (the stories "The Night Before Christmas", "Viy", "Sorochinsky Fair", etc. ). The same struggle, but in a more subtle form, sometimes with invisible evil, is also presented in St. Petersburg stories; it appears as a direct defense of Orthodoxy in Taras Bulba.
According to the stories of Nezhin fellow students, Gogol is still in school years he could never pass by a beggar without giving him something, and if there was nothing to give, he always said: “I'm sorry.” Once he even happened to be indebted to a beggar woman. To her words: “Give me for Christ’s sake,” he replied: “Reckon me.” And the next time she turned to him with the same request, he gave her twice, adding: "Here is my duty."
There is a characteristic feature in Gogol's early work. He wants to raise people to God by correcting their shortcomings and social vices - that is, by the external way.
second half of life
The second half of the life and work of the writer is characterized by his orientation towards the eradication of shortcomings in himself.
“It is impossible to speak and write about the highest feelings and movements of a person by imagination;
It was the Gospel that Gogol tested all his spiritual movements. In his papers, an entry was preserved on a separate sheet:
“If someone called us a hypocrite, we would be deeply offended, because everyone abhors this low vice; however, reading in the first verses of the 7th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, does not the conscience of each of us reproach us that we are precisely the hypocrite to whom the Savior calls: Hypocrite, take the first log from your eye. What a rush to condemnation…”
Gogol gradually develops ascetic aspirations. In April 1840, he wrote: "Now I am more fit for a monastery than for secular life." G. P. Galagan, who lived with Nikolai Vasilyevich in Rome, recalled: “Gogol seemed to me already then very devout. Once all the Russians gathered in the Russian church for the vigil. I saw that Gogol also entered, but then I lost sight of him. Before the end of the service, I went out into the porch and there, in the twilight, I noticed Gogol standing in the corner ... on his knees with his head bowed. With well-known prayers, he bowed.
Gogol read a lot of books of spiritual content, mainly patristic literature: the works of the holy fathers, the works of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, St. Demetrius of Rostov, Bishop Innokenty (Borisov), "Philokalia". He studied the rites of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great in Greek.
The result of this spiritual work was a manuscript of church songs and canons copied by him from the service Menaia. Gogol made these extracts not only for spiritual self-education, but also for the intended purposes of writing. Gogol wrote: “He lived inwardly, as in a monastery, and in addition to that, he did not miss almost a single mass in our church.”
creations
In the Author's Confession, Gogol wrote the following about this period of his life: “I left everything modern for a while, I paid attention to the recognition of those eternal laws by which man and mankind in general move. The books of legislators, psychics and observers of human nature have become my reading. Everything that only expressed the knowledge of people and the human soul, from the confession of a secular person to the confession of an anochorite and a hermit, occupied me, and on this road, insensibly, almost without knowing how, I came to Christ, seeing that in Him is the key to the soul person." “The Church alone is able to resolve all knots, perplexities and our questions; there is a reconciler of everything within the earth itself, which is not yet visible to everyone - our Church.
The Epistles of the Holy Apostle Paul not only influenced Gogol's Christian worldview, but were also most directly reflected in his work. In Gogol's Bible, the most more notes and notes refers to the apostolic epistles of Paul. The concept of "inner man" becomes central to Gogol's work in the 1840s. This expression goes back to the words of the holy Apostle Paul: "... but if our outer man also smolders, both the inner one is renewed all the days" (2 Cor. 4, 16). In his Bible, Gogol wrote against this verse: “Our outer man smoldering, but the inner one is renewed"
Gogol's concern about the fate of a society remote from the Church pushes him to work on a book that reveals the inner, hidden meaning of the Divine Liturgy and aims to bring closer secular society to the Church.
"Reflections on the Divine Liturgy"
At the beginning of 1845, in Paris, Gogol began to work on the book Meditations on the Divine Liturgy, which remained unfinished and was published after his death. The purpose of this spiritual and educational work, as Gogol himself defined it, is “to show in what fullness and inner deep connection our Liturgy is celebrated, to young men and people who are still beginners, who are still little acquainted with its meaning.”
In working on the book, Gogol used works on liturgy by ancient and modern authors, but all of them served him only as manuals. The book also embodies Gogol's personal experience, his desire to comprehend the liturgical word.
“For anyone who only wants to move forward and become better,” he wrote in his Conclusion, “it is necessary to attend the Divine Liturgy as often as possible and listen attentively: it insensibly builds and creates a person. And if society has not yet completely disintegrated, if people do not breathe complete, irreconcilable hatred among themselves, then the hidden reason for this is the Divine Liturgy, which reminds a person of holy, heavenly love for a brother.
For the first time, "Reflections on the Divine Liturgy" were published in St. Petersburg in 1857 in a small format, as Gogol wanted, but his second desire was not fulfilled - to publish it without the name of the author.
Gogol expressed his inner spiritual feelings in his reflections: “The rule of living in the world”, “Bright Sunday”, “A Christian goes forward”, “A few words about our Church and clergy”.
In the last decade of his life, he had little appreciation for his previous writings, revising them through the eyes of a Christian. In the preface to "Selected places from correspondence with friends" Gogol says that with his new book he wanted to atone for the uselessness of everything he had written so far. These words caused a lot of criticism and prompted many to think that Gogol was repudiating his previous works. Meanwhile, it is quite obvious that he speaks of the uselessness of his writings in a religious, spiritual sense, for, as Gogol writes further, in his letters, according to those to whom they were written, there is more necessary for a person than in his writings.
Nikolai Vasilievich was convinced of the special mission of Russia, which, according to him, feels God's hand on everything that comes true in it, and senses the approach of another kingdom. This special mission of Russia was associated with Orthodoxy as the most true, undistorted Christianity.
In his dying note, literally addressed to all of us, Nikolai Vasilyevich bequeathed: “Be not dead, but living souls. There is no other door than that indicated by Jesus Christ, and everyone, climbing otherwise, is a thief (thief, swindler) and a robber.
Alexander A. Sokolovsky
Indeed, "in the moral field, Gogol was brilliantly gifted; he was destined to abruptly turn all Russian literature from aesthetics to religion, to shift it from the path of Pushkin to the path of Dostoevsky. All the features that characterize the "great Russian literature" that has become world-wide were outlined by Gogol: its religious and moral structure, its citizenship and publicity, its militant and practical character, its prophetic pathos and messianism. From Gogol begins a wide road, world expanses."
Love for Russia, its monarch and monarchical statehood, Gogol expressed both in his artistic writings and in spiritual prose, and in particular in Selected passages from correspondence with friends. In his works, Gogol continued to develop the idea of the Third Rome, urging his compatriots to return to the ideals of Holy Russia. Unfortunately, until recently, the monarchical and patriotic position of Nikolai Vasilyevich remained misunderstood, and in the minds of most people Gogol is presented as a satirist, a critic of serfdom and the founder of a natural school. Even such an outstanding Russian and philosopher as V.V. Rozanov, did not fully understand the essence of the main provisions and ideas of Nikolai Vasilyevich. However, at the end of his life, having become a witness of the destroyed Russian kingdom, he notes the following in the Apocalypse of Our Time: “This terrible crest was right.” Perhaps this can be explained by the fact that Rozanov in this "apocalypse" saw the exact prophecy and the correctness of Gogol. In a sense, Gogol can be considered a writer of the era of the apocalypse. And maybe only today, we can really get closer to the true understanding of Nikolai Vasilyevich.
Gogol's main thought was criticism of the Westernizing period of Russian history, expressed in criticism of St. Petersburg as "a city of" dead souls ", officials who do not know and do not understand their own country, robots and dolls, living without soil and soul, where there is actually no spiritual personality.
The question of patriotic service to Russia, the honest, conscientious performance by every Russian of his official duties, worried Gogol all his life. “The idea of service,” Gogol admitted in his confession, “had never disappeared from me.” In another place, he writes the following: “I didn’t know even then that there was a lot of love for her, which would have swallowed up all other feelings, you need to have a lot of love for a person in general and become a true Christian, in the whole sense of the word. And therefore, it is not surprising that without having this in myself, I could not serve as I wanted, despite the fact that I really burned with the desire to serve honestly.
In Selected Places from Correspondence with Friends, Gogol acts as a supporter of the original beginnings of Holy Russia and calls on his compatriots to realize their unique and national essence, the historical vocation of Russia, the uniqueness of its culture and literature. Just like the Slavophiles, Nikolai Vasilievich was convinced of the special mission of Russia, which, according to him, feels God's hand on everything that comes true in it, and senses the approach of another kingdom. This special mission of Russia was associated with Orthodoxy as the most true, undistorted (unlike Catholicism or Protestantism) Christianity.
Reflecting on the foundations of Russian civilization, Gogol pays special attention to the role of the Orthodox Church in the life of Russia, arguing that the Church should not exist separately from the state, without a monarch its full existence is impossible. He agreed with A.S. Pushkin that “a state without a full-fledged monarch is an automaton: a lot, a lot, if it reaches the point that it’s not worth a damn. A state without a full-fledged monarch is the same as an orchestra without a bandmaster.
Gogol himself, in Correspondence with Friends, calls on his compatriots, who have become cosmopolitan intellectuals, to realize themselves, their national soul, their Russian essence and their Orthodox world outlook, having done what he had been working so hard for all his life. “All the disorder of Russian life is quite justified,” Gogol believes, “It comes from the fact that the Russian educated class, after the reforms of Peter I, ceased to appreciate that great, spiritual treasure that the Russian people have always valued Orthodoxy.” The intelligentsia, in order for it to understand its country, he urged "to travel around Russia", because this layer, living in the country, "does not know it." “Great ignorance of Russia in the middle of Russia”, such is the disappointing verdict of the Russian writer and patriot, which is completely relevant and topical today.