Ivan Ilyin about reading and criticism. “Friends” and “strangers” in the book by I.A.

The last century of the second millennium is an ambiguous synthesis of various historical events and moods. Wars, industrialization, crisis of religious consciousness, technical revolutions shook Russia and aggravated the political situation in the country. The process of substituting concepts and abandoning the truth begins to take on terrifying proportions. People are finally losing the ability to think critically and resist evil.

During this difficult time for Russia, the great Russian philosopher, lawyer and literary critic Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin lived and worked. For many decades his works were hidden from the Russian public. The work of Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin rose and burst into light in the life of Russia only at the end of the twentieth century, and naturally fell into the soul of a person of Russian culture. His ideas are now experiencing a renaissance. The top officials of the state quote the philosopher and lay flowers at his grave. A philosopher's statements about philosophy are always interesting. For Ilyin, philosophy was equal to creativity; it was not an external skill or activity, but “the creative life of the soul.” And his criticism has a large philosophical, even ideological, component.

Vasily Belov said at the 9th Congress of Russian Writers that if he had previously been familiar with the works of Ivan Ilyin, he would have lived and written differently. Indeed, every citizen who sincerely loves his Motherland cannot help but respond to Ilyin’s precise and deep, strict and elegant, fiery word.

Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin was born in Moscow on March 28 (old style) 1883. His pedigree came from noble families and served his Fatherland faithfully.

His paternal grandfather was quite close to the royal family; the godfathers of his son, the future father of the philosopher, were Alexander II. Ivan Alexandrovich's parents gave their son a good upbringing and education. For the philosopher, the family has always been a great value in life; later in his works he will write: “The family is the first, natural and at the same time sacred union, into which a person enters out of necessity. He is called to build this union on love, on faith, and in freedom - to learn from it with the first conscientious movement of the heart and - to rise from it to further forms of human spiritual unity - the homeland and the state."

In 1901, Ivan Ilyin graduated from the 1st Moscow Classical Gymnasium with a gold medal. While studying at the First Moscow Gymnasium, Ivan Alexandrovich met P.N. Miliukov, N.S. Tikhopravov, Vladimir Solovyov. According to the recollections of a classmate, Ilyin was “light blond, almost red, lean and long-legged; he was an excellent student... but, apart from a loud voice and wide, relaxed gestures, at that time he seemed to be nothing remarkable. Even his comrades did not imagine that he Philosophy may have become a specialty."

In 1901 - 1906 he was a student at the Faculty of Law of the Moscow Imperial University. Dreaming of enrolling in the Faculty of Philology, he applied for admission to the Faculty of Law. He studied law under the guidance of the legal philosopher P.I. Novgorodtsev, who managed to awaken young Ilyin’s interest in philosophy.

In August 1906, he married Natalia Nikolaevna Vokach (1882 - 1962). She studied philosophy, art history, and history. Natalya Nikolaevna, Ilyin’s eternal companion, had a wise calmness, and always supported and helped her husband. The young couple lived on the pennies they earned by transferring money. Neither he nor she wanted to sacrifice time, which they devoted entirely to philosophy.

Sharp turns of fate, extensive life experience of a difficult existence directly affected the creativity and worldview of Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin. Over time, his abilities and talent were supplemented by a feeling of love for the Motherland, love for the Russian people, love for life.

Ilyin’s range of creative interests focuses on the work of Hegel. Since 1914-1917. six large articles on Hegel’s philosophy were published one after another, which were later included in the two-volume study “Hegel’s Philosophy as a Teaching about the Concreteness of God and Man” (1918)

From the memoirs of G.A. Leman-Abrikosov about Ivan Ilyin: “His work is a work of extraordinary depth, complexity and is accessible to few people in its abstractness. But he immediately placed Ilyin highly in the opinion of Russian society, which gave him the nickname “Hegelian,” which, however, should not be understood as a supporter of the teachings of Hegel, namely only as the author of a work on Hegel."

At this time, many showed interest in the personality of Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin. Who has not ranked Ilyin among various organizations and parties: starting with the Cadets, the Black Hundreds and ending with Freemasonry. Ilyin himself, in one of the articles for the supposed tenth issue of the Russian Bell magazine, spoke as follows: “I take this opportunity to declare once and for all: I have never been a Freemason, either in Russia or abroad; I have never been a member of any "To those who claim the opposite about me (it makes no difference whether they are Russians or foreigners), I publicly propose to classify themselves (your choice) as irresponsible talkers or dishonest people."

While on scientific trips to Germany, Italy and France, Ivan Aleksandrovich followed the events in Russia with emotional trepidation. If he perceived the February Revolution as a “temporary disorder,” then October 1917 as a catastrophe.

G.A. Leman-Abrikosov spoke about this time like this: “The October Revolution found Russian society in a strong religious upsurge. And the first years of the revolution were marked by filled churches, participation in religious processions by professors and academicians, reports on religious topics, thoughtful concepts of the events taking place in the religious aspect, etc. .p. This is also typical for Ilyin. But it should be noted that in this regard he stood completely alone, and in the sense that he did not belong to a single “circle”, movement, just as, as far as I know, he did not belong to those who can be called "churchmen".

In the late autumn of 1922, the steamship "Ober-Burgomaster Hakon" took away from Russia the "flower of the nation", outstanding people: scientists, philosophers and writers who turned out to be of no use to the new Russia. Among them, Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin and his wife Natalya Nikolaevna left their homeland forever.

Having received an excellent legal education at Moscow University, having interned at the best universities of Heidelberg, Freiburg, Berlin and Paris, Ivan Aleksandrovich, being at that time the chairman of the Moscow Psychological Society, like many other great minds of that time, was doomed to exile from Russia.

This exile was a substitute for the death penalty to which Ilyin was sentenced after numerous arrests for his harsh criticism of Bolshevism in lectures he gave to student audiences, as well as at public appearances in various scientific societies.

While living in Berlin, Ivan Aleksandrovich continued to work a lot, is one of the founders of the Russian Scientific Institute, was the dean of the Faculty of Law, a corresponding member of the Slavic Institute at Londov University, actively publishes in newspapers, gives lectures and reports.

At this time, he wrote a number of books on issues of philosophy, politics, religion and culture: “The Religious Meaning of Philosophy”, “On Resistance to Evil by Force” (1925), “The Path of Spiritual Renewal” (1935), “Fundamentals of Art. About Perfection in art" (1937), etc.

During these years, he also actively participated in the political life of the Russian emigration and became one of the ideologists of the white movement.

In his numerous works, Ivan Aleksandrovich impressively reveals the beneficial social significance of Christian values and the harmfulness of the anti-Christianity of the Bolsheviks. Working in this direction, Ivan Ilyin indirectly exposed the anti-Christian policies of Nazi Germany. Ilyin’s views led to Gestapo bans on public lectures and the arrest of the philosopher’s printed works. And he, dismissed from the Russian scientific institute and receiving a ban on any public activity, was forced to emigrate from Germany to Switzerland in 1938.

Twice Ilyin lost all means of life and started all over again. He was given strength by his faith and service to his homeland, and the support of like-minded people.

The best spiritual people were drawn to Ilyin and shared his views: writer Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev, music creators Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninov and Nikolai Karlovich Medtner, theater genius Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky, Bishop John Pommer, artists Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov and Evgeniy Evgenievich Klimov, military men Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel and Alexey Alexandrovich von Lampe.

Largely thanks to Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninov and many of his other friends, he settled with his wife near Zurich. Fearing a reaction from Germany, the Swiss authorities limited the activities of the Russian philosopher, but gradually his position strengthened and he was already able to actively engage in creative activities. In addition to a large number of articles and essays published in various publications, in particular, which later formed the collection “Our Tasks,” Ivan Aleksandrovich also published in German three books of philosophical and artistic prose, united by a common concept, “The Singing Heart. The Book of Quiet Contemplations,” as well as fundamental research on the “Axioms of Religious Experience” and preparations were made for the publication of the book “The Path of Evidence” (1957).

All this suggests that Ilyin’s range of interests was very wide: he was interested in both religious and legal, socio-political, philosophical, as well as ethical, aesthetic, anthropological, literary and poetic problems and areas of knowledge.

At the end of his days, Ivan Aleksandrovich wrote: “I am 65 years old, I am summing up the results and writing book after book. I have already published some of them in German, but in order to implement what was written in Russian. Nowadays I write only in Russian. I write and I put it aside - one book after another and give them to my friends and like-minded people to read... And my only consolation is this: if Russia needs my books, then the Lord will save them from destruction, and if neither God nor Russia needs them, then they are not I also need it myself. For I live only for Russia."

Ilyin went down in the history of Russian culture not only as an Orthodox thinker, lawyer, orator, but also as a major literary critic, whose works are distinguished by philosophical depth, keen observation and independence from outdated cliches and false myths. The originality of his critical manner lies in the fact that he combines aesthetic analysis of a work of art or the work of a writer as a whole with spiritual, philosophical and religious analysis.

True culture, according to Ilyin, is always imbued with the light of spirituality and hope, love and striving for perfection, when the artist’s heart is turned to the God-created world, full of mysterious and inexplicable miracles, when he understands and feels with all his soul that the great and brilliant created by humanity, comes from the bright spaces of God’s world, from the contemplating and singing human heart.

True culture, according to Ilyin, embodies the very spirituality that is often identified with ideology, intellectuality, and education. Ilyin’s merit is that he showed and revealed in his works the ambiguity and complexity of the concept of “spirituality,” which includes not only faith in God, an alien world and the immortality of the soul, but also love for “patriotic graves, native ashes”; love for native nature, the Motherland, as well as responsibility for their fate. Spirituality also presupposes striving for the ideal of perfection, i.e. to the fulfillment of the gospel covenant “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect”

In the lecture “Alexander Pushkin” as a guiding star of Russian culture (1943), Ilyin calls Pushkin a Renaissance figure, a harmoniously singing classic, the founder of beautiful artistic forms, destroying chaos with his light. For Ilyin, Pushkin represents a wonderful example of a national genius, a brilliant prophet who showed that the Motherland is not an ordinary word, but a deeply spiritual concept. And the one who does not live by the Spirit has no homeland. It will remain a dark mystery and strange uselessness for him.

Ilyin sees the originality of Russian poetry in the fact that it has “fused, dissolved with Russian nature: Russian poetry has learned from its nature - contemplation, sophistication, sincerity, passion, rhythm; it has learned to see in nature not only chaos and space, but a living presence and "the living power of the Divine. That is why there is a close connection, an indissoluble affinity between Russian nature and the bright Orthodox worldview of the Russian soul, yearning for love, mercy and blessing all life on earth, from the last blade of grass in the field to every star in the night sky."

Ilyin sees the peculiarity of Russian poetry in its naturalness: “It is neither a product of the mind, nor a product of rhetoric. It is the generation and outpouring of the Russian heart - in all its contemplation, passionate sincerity, in all its love of freedom and boldness; in all its God-seeking, in all its immediate depth." Ivan Alexandrovich says that the Russian poet does not describe his objects, but reincarnates in them.

However, Russian poets also saw the history of Russia, its paths and destinies, its dangers and temptations. For centuries, Russian poetry has been the exponent of “Russian religiosity, Russian national philosophy and the Russian prophetic gift. It expressed in its inspired language what other peoples have long become the property of journalism.”

At the same time, Russian poetry has always perceived Russia as a living being, as a living brotherhood of peoples, even “without insisting on the seniority of the Russian tribe and the Slavic trunk, but simply realizing this seniority by itself, by poetic inspiration, by this manifestation of spiritual maturity, spiritual soaring and leadership.” Russian poetry has never glorified the enslavement of peoples and the oppression of small nations. And it is no coincidence that Russian poetry counts in its ranks the Baltic German Delvig, the Russified half-German May, the Jews Nadson and M. Voloshin, the son of an Englishman and a Polish woman, Dixon, and many others.

And finally, according to Ilyin, the most significant feature of Russian poetry is that for it there were no small and insignificant things. She had the greatest ability to poeticize everyday life, when “a trifle begins to play and sparkle in its rays; and prose beams with laughter and fun, and everyday life turns out to be poeticized and glorified.” This world, according to Ilyin, becomes clairvoyant and transparent, and from it Holy Rus' itself begins to shine and radiate.

Along with this, Ilyin notes other trends both in Russian poetry and in life, trends that arose not without the influence of French enlighteners - Voltaire’s irony, his “rational prosaism” and “secret, all-corroding nihilism,” on the one hand, and on the other - Byron's gloomy and despondent “world sorrow”. These two influences. Dominant in Europe in the 1st half of the 19th century, in the 2nd they reached Russia, only to be “refreshed and renewed by the influence of Nietzsche and Marx.”

The Russian intelligentsia, writes Ilyin, not without sarcasm, “learned from Voltaire a nihilistic smile, and from Byron a god-fighting pose. She adopted from Byron the manner of affectively idealizing the black corner of her soul.”

It is no coincidence that in Russian poetry of that time, interest in the theme of an evil spirit, condemned and rejected, but not giving up or submitting, arose and grew.

From the crossing of demonic irony and rational semi-science, Ilyin continues, there arises that “mental structure that first had the appearance of secular disappointed snobbery, then positivist nihilism, then nihilistic revolutionism and finally militant atheism, Bolshevism and Satanism.”

A special place in Ilyin’s creative heritage is occupied by the article “When will the great Russian poetry be revived?”, in which the critic connects the revival of Russian poetry with the upcoming spiritual and religious revival of Russia, with the process of “a hidden, secret return to faith and prayer.” All the great Russian poetry of the past was, in his words, “the product of a feeling of delight, animation, inspiration, set and fire - precisely from what we call the heart and why the human soul begins to sing...”

With the obsolescence of the “great contemplation of the heart,” the refinement of the content of poetry and its sentimentalism begins. Pointless and vague fantasizing begins, erotic “Tradyakovism”. Poetry turns into versification, either talented or mediocre, into a shameless laboratory of verbal tricks. Refusal of spiritual contemplation, the confidence that everything is permitted in art, and the readiness to bow to the demonic turn the poet into an “irresponsible talker,” a “coquettish braggart,” expressing in poetic form his personal “sensual eroticism” with “ever increasing shamelessness.”

Therefore, the first task of a real poet is to deepen and enliven his heart, the second is to grow, purify and ennoble his spiritual experience. In this Ilyin sees the true path to great poetry, which always and in everything seeks the sublime, the Divine, and sings from it. It was the feeling of this beginning that gave birth to Pushkin’s poetic fire, Yazykov’s delight, Lermontov’s worldly sorrow, Tyutchev’s sense of the abyss, A.K.’s love for the Fatherland. Tolstoy.

The future Russian poets, Ilyin concludes, will be able to illuminate the history of the collapse of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century and at the same time will be able to show the originality and greatness of the Russian spirit and the depth of the Orthodox faith.

In his book “On Resistance to Evil by Force” (Berlin, 1925), Ilyin, polemicizing with Tolstoy’s teachings, argued: “Wars, as the bearer of the sword and peace-accepting compromise, need a monk, as a confessor, and a source of living strength, religious wisdom, moral pleroma ": here he partakes of grace in the sacrament and receives strength for achievement; here he strengthens his conscience, checks the purpose of his service and purifies his soul. Such is Dmitry Donskoy at St. Sergius before the Battle of Kulikovo"

Ilyin's book "On Resistance to Evil by Force" was highly appreciated by his contemporaries. P.B. Struve wrote in his article “The Diary of a Politician” that Ilyin managed to “raise and, in a certain Christian sense, resolve the problem of resisting evil by force.” BUT. Lossky called Ilyin’s book a “valuable work” directed against Tolstoy’s doctrine of non-resistance, and agreed with its author that there are cases in life when “the use of force in relation to evil is certainly correct and salutary.” In turn, V.V. Zenkovsky argued that Ilyin’s book “breathes with authenticity and depth, there is a special stern honesty in it,” it is “extremely modern, full of what our time lives and worries about.”

Such a high assessment of Ilyin’s book is not accidental, because its author was not one of the first to start a polemic with Tolstoy on a deep philosophical level. He began his criticism of Tolstoy's theory of non-resistance with a clear, philosophically precise definition of the essence of evil, emphasizing that violence as such is evil that must be fought against, and every person who has been subjected to violence deserves sympathy and help. Characterizing the signs of evil, Ilyin notes its external aggressiveness, cunning, unity and diversity.

If evil did not have a tendency towards aggressiveness and violence and did not manifest itself in external actions, resisting it through physical intersection would be unnecessary and impossible. Only a naive person, explains Ilyin, can not notice the cunning of evil and believe that he is characterized by innocence, straightforwardness and chivalrous correctness, then one can negotiate with him, expecting fidelity, loyalty and a sense of duty from him.

The whole history of mankind, according to Ilyin, consisted in the fact that in different eras and in different communities the best people died, raped by the worst, and this always continued until the best decided to give the worst a “planned and organized rebuff.”

“The one who will be right,” writes Ilyin, “will be the one who pushes the unwary traveler away from the abyss; who snatches the bottle of poison from the embittered suicide; who hits the aiming revolutionary’s hand in time; who knocks down the arsonist at the last minute; who drives the blasphemous shameless people out of the temple; who will rush with weapons at a crowd of soldiers raping a girl; who will bind the insane and tame the possessed villain."

Ilyin recalls that in Rus' resistance to evil was always thought of and created as active, organized service to the cause of God on earth. Ilyin connects this idea of love and the sword with the ancient Russian Orthodox images of Michael the Archangel and St. George the Victorious, citing the words of St. Theodosius of Pechersk: “Live peacefully not only with friends, but also with enemies, but only with your enemies, and not with the enemies of God.”

A special place in Ilyin’s literary-critical heritage is occupied by the work “On Darkness and Enlightenment. A Book of Artistic Criticism,” in which Ivan Aleksandrovich analyzes the works of Bunin, Remizov and Shmelev from the point of view of the spiritual values of Orthodoxy.

The German philosopher W. Offermans called Ilyin a highly gifted, spiritually strong personality and prophet, who in 1979 published a book entitled “The Life Work of the Russian Religious Philosopher Ivan Ilyin - the Renewal of the Spiritual Foundations of Humanity.” In it, he notes that Ilyin’s thoughts on artistic creativity are based on his deep knowledge of masterpieces in all areas of world art: “He was a subtle and demanding connoisseur of art, for whom the most important thing was always the spiritual depth, the quality and internal content of the work, and to create artistically means to serve God and bring joy to people."

Indeed, the importance of Ivan Ilyin for the Russian public, despite various assessments, is very great. Many of Ilyin’s articles and books were written as if for us living at the beginning of the 21st century. In them you can find answers to a number of questions that concern our society today. Therefore, it is not accidental, but rather natural, that the work of the most famous thinker of his time, a brilliant publicist, a deeply religious man, I.A. Ilyin, has become the property of our contemporaries precisely since the beginning of the 90s, when a period of change began again in Russia.

Please formulate the basics. the problem addressed by the author of the text. Write it down. Write down the sentence that most accurately expresses the author's thoughts. Do you agree with the author? Be sure to justify your point of view. For justification, refer to fiction.
(1) People usually think that reading is accessible to anyone who is literate. (2) But, unfortunately, this is not at all true. (3)Why?
(4) Because a real reader gives the book his free attention, all his spiritual abilities and his ability to evoke in himself that correct spiritual attitude that is necessary for understanding this book. (5) Real reading does not come down to the flight of printed words through consciousness; it requires concentrated attention and a strong desire to truly hear the author's voice. (6) Reason and empty imagination alone are not enough for reading. (7) One must feel with the heart and contemplate from the heart.
(8) True reading is a kind of artistic clairvoyance, which is called upon and is capable of faithfully and completely reproducing the spiritual visions of another person, living in them, enjoying them and being enriched by them. (9) The art of reading conquers loneliness, separation, distance and era. (10) This is the power of the spirit - to revive letters, reveal the perspective of images and meaning behind words, fill the internal “spaces” of the soul, contemplate the intangible, identify with unknown or even dead people and, together with the author, artistically and mentally comprehend the essence of the world.
(11) To read means to search and find, for the reader, as it were, is looking for a spiritual treasure hidden by the writer, wanting to find it in its entirety and appropriate it for himself. (12) This is a creative process, for to reproduce means to create. (13) This is a struggle for a spiritual meeting; this is free unity with the one who first acquired and buried the sought-after treasure. (14) And to those who have never achieved this or experienced this, it will always seem that the “impossible” is being demanded of him.
(15) The art of reading must be acquired and developed in oneself. (16) Reading must be in-depth; it must become creative and contemplative. (17) And only then will its spiritual value and its soul-forming power be revealed to all of us. (18) Then we will understand what should be read and what should not be read, for there is reading that deepens a person’s soul and builds his character, and there is reading that corrupts and weakens.
(19) By reading you can recognize and identify a person. (20) For each of us is what he reads; and every man is how he reads; and we all become imperceptibly what we read from what we read - like a bouquet of flowers we collected in reading.
(According to I. Ilyin*)

* Ilyin Ivan Aleksandrovich (1883-1954) - Russian Christian philosopher, national thinker, lawyer, writer, literary critic and publicist, by conviction a Slavophile and monarchist. In 1922, together with other philosophers, economists and historians - opponents of the new government - he was expelled by ship from Russia.
He has written more than 50 books and more than a thousand articles. Among them - “The Path of Spiritual Renewal”; “Singing heart. The Book of Quiet Contemplations"; “The essence and originality of Russian culture”; “I look into life. Book of Thoughts"; “On resistance to evil by force”; “Axioms of religious experience” and others.

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“Ours” and “strangers” in the bookAND. A. Ilyina« ABOUTdarkness and enlightenment"

Introduction

Ilyin critic writer character

Russian literary criticism goes back to the 18th century. Russia at this time was entering the Age of Enlightenment. Criticism in a broad sense - as “consciousness of reality” (V.G. Belinsky) - becomes an urgent need. Critical analysis is established as a method of knowledge, a rule for the social movement of thought, a condition for progress. At the same time, the substantive emphasis is increasingly shifting towards materialism, rationalism, towards the “earthly”, concrete historical. Culture is stratified into “religious” and “non-religious”.

In Europe, a similar process of “bifurcation” of cultures began, according to V.V. Zenkovsky (1881-1962), from Thomas Aquinas, who assumed the relative independence of natural reason. “Starting from the 13th century,” writes V.V. Zenkovsky, - in the West, a separation from the church, from its spiritual orientation, of various spheres of culture began - this first manifested itself in the field of law, where the ideas of pagan Rome were simply received, and then in the 14-15 centuries. This movement began to spread with extreme speed to all spheres of culture, to anthropology, philosophy, and science. Over the course of two or three centuries, a profound change took place in the psychology of cultural creativity, which gave triumph to the free, but already non-church style of culture.”

The German philosopher Walter Schubart (1897-1942) characterizes this process as a transition into the Promethean era, "marked by the law of the heroic archetype", and dates its beginning to the 16th century, to the Reformation, a direct line between Thomas Aquinas and Voltaire (1694-1778) or Max He does not conduct Stirner (1806-1856).

The goal of scholasticism was to bring Christian theology into harmony with ancient philosophy. “The complete and considered final sum of knowledge of medieval man had to find its unity in a gigantic, carefully structured structure - like a cathedral. Gothic man, even when he was thought rationally, wanted to reflect only nature, but not to subjugate or rob it. He wanted to come through her to clarity, not to dominance. Behind such rationalism is a completely different worldview than that characteristic of Descartes, Hume or Kant. The scholastics were just as guided by humility before the will of the Lord as their mystic contemporaries.”

D.S. also connects the origins of “exclusively scientific, critical, decomposing thought” with the Renaissance and the Reformation. Merezhkovsky. I.A. Ilyin, who will be discussed in our study, outlines closer landmarks - the Age of Enlightenment, Voltaire.

Be that as it may, a new type of thinking took hold and prevailed. According to N.A. Berdyaev, culture moved from the “organic” stage to the “critical” stage, essentially degenerating into civilization. V.V. Zenkovsky is no less categorical, but in his own way. He believes that next to the system of secular ideology, “the need for Christian construction of culture has always manifested itself and is manifesting itself - and this tendency stands in decisive antagonism with the ever-increasing cultural creativity precisely on the basis of secularism. The Christian world actually lives in this way not with one, but with two cultures.”

Russian religious philosophers, including I.A. Ilyin, no matter how different and sometimes contradictory they were in substantiating their views, did not reject either science, knowledge, or nature in general. Here they are quite materialistic. But materialism is not the head of knowledge for them. Like all scientists, they rely on experience. However, not every experience is a sensory experience. Moreover, it is the internal, spiritual experience, as stated by I.A. Ilyin, is the true source and true area of faith, religion and all spiritual culture in general.

It goes without saying,” clarifies I.A. Ilyin, that a spiritually believing person sees everything that an unbeliever can observe; but along with this and beyond this, he sees in the world and human history a certain higher meaning, other, highest and most powerful laws that rule the world; the laws of Providence, the Spirit and divine purposes, as well as the laws of human freedom, achievement, righteousness and sin. In general, it is a special world, mysteriously hidden in the visible universe; a world into which a spiritually living person peers all his life, as if through a veil, and to which he listens, as if from afar. From this attention, from this sight and hearing, everything great created by people in their history arose.”

I.A. Ilyin (1883-1954) is not just spiritual: his spirit is rooted in Orthodoxy, which determines his place in the context of the original Russian cultural tradition. Moreover, Ilyin’s religious feeling is public - this is the specificity of his work. I. Ilyin professes the reunification of faith and knowledge, recognizing the future in thought, in the culture of heartfelt contemplation and conscientious will. I.A. Ilyin is especially acutely aware of the “spiritual separation” of 20th century man from the Divine foundation of the world. In the editorial that opens the first issue of the Russian Bell magazine, he writes: “In reality, everything is as before. As before, everything is saturated with sacred significance. As before, we are given more than we know how to take, and more is forgiven than we are worth. But with each generation there are more and more people who do not live in the mountain plane, do not see it, do not know about it and do not even know that it exists. The world they see is material and random; the thoughts they accumulate about him are flat and deadening; the feelings with which they address him are petty and lustful; the goals they set for themselves are short and selfish. And their whole life is thankless, without ideas and without wings. And they themselves remain the playground of their own passions and other people's influences. They lack a backbone, but are not without greedy drive. And if they are still held back by fear, then the idea has long ceased to guide them.”

I.A. Ilyin was one of the first in the philosophy of the 20th century to grasp the anthropological trend as such, “he understood early,” notes A.A. Samokhin, “that the main topic of philosophizing is (or should be) the problem of human existence, and more specifically, the problem of the meaning of human existence.”

I.A. Ilyin does not call to return to the past, to reconstruct the old - he understands that this is impossible: “The old Russia will not exist. There will be a new Russia. Still Russia; but not the old one that collapsed; but a new, updated one, for which dangers will not be dangerous, and disasters will not be terrible. And this is what we must strive for; and we must prepare it, - forge in ourselves, in all of us, a new Russian spirit, still Russian, but not the old Russian (that is, sick, not rooted, weak, absent-minded). And that’s the main thing.”

I.A. Ilyin speaks of the revival of spirituality, which for him is not a sum of values, but a necessary condition of human existence: “As a result of this, we by no means imagine things as if the coming generations of people can and should “create a Christian culture.” Not to create, but to re-enter the path of this creation, return to it and resume this interrupted process. In other words: to revive the Christian spirit and act within oneself and bring it into a vital and creative movement” in the hope that a genuine “strong and living faith will work through and comprehend and ennoble new forms of consciousness, life and economy.”

The problematics of Ilyin’s creativity, the spirituality for which he fights (including through literary criticism), determine the relevance of this work.

Creativity I.A. Ilyin has recently attracted keen interest; They talk and write about him a lot, his name already lives in our minds. However, today it is mainly the philosophical and political views of I.A. that are in demand. Ilyin, his literary critical activity is still poorly studied.

The beginning of a systematic study of the literary-critical heritage of I.A. Ilyin put N.P. Poltoratsky (1921-1990).

The main goal of N.P. Poltoratsky was the popularization of the legacy of I.A. Ilyin, since he was little known, especially in Russia (the first volume of the collected works of I.A. Ilyin was published in Moscow in 1993, some works were translated specifically for this publication for the first time).

No one has done so much in honor of I.A. Ilyina as N.P. Poltoratsky,” notes V. Belov. In the preface to the collection “The Lonely Artist,” he writes about Poltoratsky himself: “A teacher at the University of Pittsburgh, Nikolai Petrovich Poltoratsky, identified a range of relevant sources, described them, clarified the history and time of creation, prepared for publication (in particular, compiled a collection of articles by I.A. Ilyin “Russian Writers, Literature and Art,” established Ilyin’s initial aesthetic and literary critical positions.”

In the preface to the book, Vasily Belov also sharply criticizes the commercial interests of publishers who are chasing gloss, brilliance and spiritual emptiness. The writer, like I.A. Ilyin, who wholeheartedly advocated for the preservation of true spiritual values, gives a fiery speech, saying that in the conditions of so-called pluralism, or rather at its current level, our student youth, and the entire intellectual community, will not know the answer to many spiritual questions for a long time. questions, will not know the causes and background of many historical events.

Belov says that we are “as if given a penny each from the grandiose Russian philosophical treasury that has been accumulating for centuries,” recalling that back in 1949, Yesenin and Blok were expelled from the Komsomol for reading, and with what difficulty Dahl’s dictionary was republished. “The reader is still on a philosophical starvation diet. So far they have only given him spiritual surrogates, though in a wide range: from Kashpirovsky to Roerich. But nothing will come of this deliberate restriction... Young people will sooner or later learn about the Russian philosopher, publicist and critic Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin! He will learn and read his amazing works!”

This is how V. Belov ends his preface to the collection and his words of hope echo the thoughts of I.A. Ilyin about the future of Russia:

“Oh, a terrible and instructive sight! The Russian people lost everything at once, in the hour of temptation and darkness - closeness to God, power over passions, the strength of national resistance, and organic like-mindedness with nature... And just as everything was lost at once, together, so it will be restored together... »

Except N.P. Poltoratsky and V.I. Belov, individual aspects of Ilyin’s literary critical activity were considered by I.P. Karpov, V. Molodyakov, P. Palamarchuk, Yu. Sokhryakov and some others.

The object of research is the fundamental work of I.A. Ilyin “About Darkness and Enlightenment. Book of art criticism. Bunin - Remizov - Shmelev."

The subject of the research is the literary, critical, aesthetic views of I.A. Ilyin, his creative act as their manifestation.

The final qualifying work is aimed at studying the literary and critical heritage of I.A. Ilyin, his aesthetic, literary-critical concept in general.

This goal determined the following research objectives:

1) Systematize the views of I.A. Ilyin on art and literary criticism.

2) Identify the traditional and unique in Ilyin’s creative personality, determine his place in the context of Russian culture of the 20th century.

3) Consider the methods of studying literature used by Ilyin in critical work.

4) Build, following Ilyin, a hierarchy of writer-characters “from darkness to light.”

The methodological and theoretical basis of the final qualifying work is the philosophical works of I.A. himself. Ilyin, as well as the works of V.V. Zenkovsky, K.N. Leontyeva, A.F. Losev, philological and literary critical studies by M.M. Bakhtin, N.P. Poltoratsky, O.E. Osovsky and many others.

The work combines elements of biographical, cultural and historical methods. Associated with the general orientation towards historicism is an appeal to the method of literary hermeneutics, which involves the interpretation of the material in the light of definitions adequate to the outlook of the author and the era.

The direction of the research, its purpose and objectives determined the structure of the work. It consists of an introduction, two chapters and a conclusion; A list of references is attached.

1. Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin as a literary critic

1 . 1 Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin -philosopher

Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin was born in Moscow on March 28 (old style) 1883. His pedigree came from noble families and served his Fatherland faithfully.

His paternal grandfather was quite close to the royal family; the godfathers of his son, the future father of the philosopher, were Alexander II. Ivan Alexandrovich's parents gave their son a good upbringing and education. For the philosopher, the family has always been a great value in life; later in his works he will write: “The family is the first, natural and at the same time sacred union into which a person enters out of necessity. He is called to build this union on love, on faith, and on freedom - to learn from it with the first conscientious movement of the heart and - to rise from it to further forms of human spiritual unity - the homeland and the state.”

In 1901, Ivan Ilyin graduated from the 1st Moscow Classical Gymnasium with a gold medal. While studying at the First Moscow Gymnasium, Ivan Alexandrovich met P.N. Miliukov, N.S. Tikhopravov, Vladimir Solovyov. According to the recollections of a classmate, Ilyin was “light blond, almost red, lean and long-legged; he was an excellent student... but, apart from his loud voice and wide, relaxed gestures, at that time he seemed to be nothing remarkable. Even his comrades did not imagine that his specialty could and would become philosophy.”

In 1901-1906 he was a student at the Faculty of Law of the Moscow Imperial University. Dreaming of enrolling in the Faculty of Philology, he applied for admission to the Faculty of Law. He studied law under the guidance of the legal philosopher P.I. Novgorodtsev, who managed to awaken young Ilyin’s interest in philosophy.

In August 1906, he married Natalia Nikolaevna Vokach (1882-1962). She studied philosophy, art history, and history. Natalya Nikolaevna, Ilyin’s eternal companion, had a wise calmness, and always supported and helped her husband. The young couple lived on the pennies they earned by transferring money. Neither he nor she wanted to sacrifice time, which they devoted entirely to philosophy.

Ilyin sees the root of the problems of art, culture and literature in the fact that people have not only lost faith in God, but have also taken up arms against the very idea of God. And, consequently, all other types of crisis, such as economic, cultural, environmental, are, according to Ilyin, the result of spiritual and religious impoverishment, which began to develop intensively as a result of the widespread dissemination in the world of atheistic and materialistic doctrines and various occult theories.

From the memoirs of G.A. Leman-Abrikosov about Ivan Ilyin: “His work is a work of extraordinary depth, complexity and is accessible to few people due to its abstractness. But he immediately placed Ilyin highly in the opinion of Russian society, which gave him the nickname “Hegelian,” which, however, should not be understood as a supporter of Hegel’s teachings, but only as the author of a work on Hegel.”

At this time, many showed interest in the personality of Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin. Who has not ranked Ilyin among various organizations and parties: starting with the Cadets, the Black Hundreds and ending with Freemasonry. Ilyin himself, in one of the articles for the supposed tenth issue of the Russian Bell magazine, spoke as follows: “I take this opportunity to declare once and for all: I have never been a Freemason, either in Russia or abroad; I have never been a member of any political party. To those who claim the opposite about me (it makes no difference whether they are Russians or foreigners), I publicly propose to classify themselves (your choice) as unresponsive talkers or dishonest people.”

G.A. Leman-Abrikosov spoke about this time like this: “The October Revolution found Russian society in a strong religious upsurge. And the first years of the revolution were marked by filled churches, participation in religious processions by professors and academicians, reports on religious topics, thoughtful concepts of the events taking place in a religious aspect, etc. This is also typical for Ilyin. But it should be noted that in this regard he stood completely alone, and in the sense that he did not belong to a single “circle” or movement, just as, as far as I know, he did not belong to those who can be called “church members.”

During these years, he also actively participated in the political life of the Russian emigration and became one of the ideologists of the white movement.

Twice Ilyin lost all means of life and started all over again. He was given strength by his faith and service to his homeland, and the support of like-minded people.

Largely thanks to Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninov and many of his other friends, he settled with his wife near Zurich. Fearing a reaction from Germany, the Swiss authorities limited the activities of the Russian philosopher, but gradually his position strengthened and he was already able to actively engage in creative activities. In addition to a large number of articles and essays published in various publications, in particular, which later formed the collection “Our Tasks,” Ivan Aleksandrovich also published three books of philosophical and artistic prose in German, united by the common concept “The Singing Heart. The Book of Quiet Contemplations”, as well as a fundamental study of the “Axioms of Religious Experience”, and preparations were made for the publication of the book “The Path of Evidence” (1957).

At the end of his days, Ivan Aleksandrovich wrote: “I am 65 years old, I am summing up the results and writing book after book. I already printed some of them in German, but in order to translate what was written in Russian. Nowadays I write only in Russian. I write and put it aside - one book after another and give them to my friends and like-minded people to read... And my only consolation is this: if Russia needs my books, then the Lord will save them from destruction, and if neither God nor Russia needs them, then they I don’t need it myself either. For I live only for Russia.”

Ilyin sees the originality of Russian poetry in the fact that it “has grown together, dissolved with Russian nature: Russian poetry has learned from its nature - contemplation, sophistication, sincerity, passion, rhythm; she learned to see in nature not only chaos and space, but the living presence and living power of the Divine. This is why there is a close connection, an indissoluble affinity between Russian nature and the bright Orthodox worldview of the Russian soul, yearning for love, mercy and blessing all life on earth, from the last blade of grass in the field to every star in the night sky.”

Ilyin sees the peculiarity of Russian poetry in its naturalness: “It is neither a product of the mind, nor a product of rhetoric. It is the generation and outpouring of the Russian heart - in all its contemplation, passionate sincerity, in all its love of freedom and boldness; in all his God-seeking, in all his immediate depth.” Ivan Alexandrovich says that the Russian poet does not describe his objects, but reincarnates in them.

However, Russian poets also saw the history of Russia, its paths and destinies, its dangers and temptations. For centuries, Russian poetry has been an exponent of “Russian religiosity, Russian national philosophy and the Russian prophetic gift. She expressed in her inspired language what other peoples had long ago become the property of journalism.”

And finally, according to Ilyin, the most significant feature of Russian poetry is that for it there were no small and insignificant things. She had the greatest ability to poetize everyday life, when “a trifle begins to play and sparkle in its rays; and the prose radiates with laughter and fun, and everyday life turns out to be poeticized and glorified.” This world, according to Ilyin, becomes clairvoyant and transparent, and from it Holy Rus' itself begins to shine and radiate.

The Russian intelligentsia, writes Ilyin, not without sarcasm, “learned from Voltaire a nihilistic smile, and from Byron an atheistic pose. She adopted Byron’s manner of affectively idealizing the black corner of her soul.”

It is no coincidence that in Russian poetry of that time, interest in the theme of an evil spirit, condemned and rejected, but not giving up or submitting, arose and grew.

With the obsolescence of the “great heartfelt contemplation”, the refinement of the content of poetry and its sentimentalism begins. Pointless and vague fantasy begins, erotic “Tradyakovism”. Poetry turns into versification, either talented or mediocre, into a shameless laboratory of verbal tricks. Refusal of spiritual contemplation, the confidence that everything is permitted in art, and the readiness to bow to the demonic turn the poet into an “irresponsible talker,” a “coquettish braggart,” expressing in poetic form his personal “sensual eroticism” with “ever increasing shamelessness.”

In his book “On Resistance to Evil by Force” (Berlin, 1925), Ilyin, polemicizing with Tolstoy’s teachings, argued: “Wars, as the bearer of the sword and peace-accepting compromise, need a monk, as a confessor, and a source of living strength, religious wisdom, moral pleroma : here he partakes of grace in the sacrament and receives strength for achievement; here he strengthens his conscience, tests the purpose of his ministry and purifies his soul. This is Dmitry Donskoy at St. Sergius before the Battle of Kulikovo"

Ilyin’s book “On Resistance to Evil by Force” was highly appreciated by his contemporaries. P.B. Struve wrote in his article “The Diary of a Politician” that Ilyin managed to “raise and, in a certain Christian sense, solve the problem of resisting evil by force.” BUT. Lossky called Ilyin’s book a “valuable work” directed against Tolstoy’s doctrine of non-resistance, and agreed with its author that there are cases in life when “the use of force in relation to evil is certainly correct and salutary.” In turn, V.V. Zenkovsky argued that Ilyin’s book “breathes with authenticity and depth, it has a special stern honesty”, it is “extremely modern, saturated with what lives and worries our time.”

“He will be right,” writes Ilyin, “who will push the unwary traveler away from the abyss; who will snatch a bottle of poison from a embittered suicide; who will hit the aiming revolutionary's hand in time; who will knock down the arsonist at the last minute; who will drive out the blasphemous shameless people from the temple; who will rush with weapons at a crowd of soldiers raping a girl; who will bind the insane and tame the possessed villain.”

A special place in Ilyin’s literary-critical heritage is occupied by the work “On Darkness and Enlightenment. A Book of Art Criticism”, in which Ivan Aleksandrovich analyzes the works of Bunin, Remizov and Shmelev from the point of view of the spiritual values of Orthodoxy.

Indeed, the importance of Ivan Ilyin for the Russian public, despite various assessments, is very great. Many of Ilyin’s articles and books were written as if for us living at the beginning of the 21st century. In them you can find answers to a number of questions that concern our society today. Therefore, it is not accidental, but rather natural, that the work of the most famous thinker of his time, a brilliant publicist, a deeply religious person, I.A. Ilyina has become the property of our contemporaries precisely since the early 90s, when a period of change again began in Russia.

1. 2 Bookart criticism “On darkness and enlightenment. Bunin - Remizov-Shmelev"

Interest in the legacy of Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin - a professional philosopher, active political and religious ideologist of the anti-Bolshevik movement for the restoration of Orthodox Russia - continues to this day. His legacy has not faded into the past. It is especially authoritative for the intensively developing direction of religious philology (M. Dunaev, I. Esaulov, T. Kasatkina, V. Zakharov, A. Lyubomudrov, V. Nepomnyashchiy, E. Iv. Volkova, etc.), and not only for him. Ilyin’s religious, ethical and aesthetic concept is close to a number of representatives of the artistic intelligentsia (V. Rasputin, V. Belov, etc.) and many readers.

In the variety of Ilyin’s energetic activities, literary criticism occupied a special place. It is no coincidence that the peaks of his active critical activity coincide with fateful periods in the life of his homeland - the beginning of the 30s (strengthening the Soviet system in the metropolis) and the beginning of the 40s (patriotic war). In 1927-34. the critic paid the greatest attention to his contemporaries (as well as Russian poetry and folklore), in 1942-1944. - classics of prose.

Conceptually, Ilyin's criticism is related to his program for the liberation of Russia. It cannot be understood without its organic connection both with this program and with Ilyin’s aesthetics.

In the 30s, as is known, his negative attitude towards Western civilization as formal and rational, towards Catholicism, as well as towards entertaining and farcical mass culture in favor of domestic traditions sharply intensified. He understood the Russian idea as the calling of the people to create a spiritual culture based on the thousand-year-old foundations of Orthodoxy and capable of overcoming the deep crisis experienced by godless humanity. Art plays a special role in this process: serving God’s work, it participates in its own way in the spiritual transformation of the world. Literary criticism should help him in this.

Ilyin’s criticism reflected his desire to avoid the dead end of European culture, to which it was supposedly moving, starting from the Renaissance, isolating itself from Christianity. Recognizing the legitimacy and autonomy of creativity, proposing to check it by the criteria of the “spirit of art,” Ilyin in fact always gave preference to the first - namely, the correspondence of the meaning of the work with the foundations of Orthodoxy. This stemmed from the ideological position of the critic. Ilyin substantiated the leading role of Orthodoxy in the creation of Christian culture by the historical experience of Russia.

The work of Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin in its entirety bears the following title: “On darkness and enlightenment. Book of art criticism: Bunin - Shmelev - Remizov." It was first printed in Munich in the printing house of St. Job Pochaevsky in 1959, when neither the author nor the characters indicated in the title were no longer in this world. The book grew out of the lecture course “New Russian Literature”, which Ilyin read at the Russian Scientific Institute in Berlin in 1934. Eight lectures were devoted to the work of I.S. Shmeleva, I.A. Bunina, D.S. Merezhkovsky and A.M. Remizova. At the last stage of work on the book in the late 30s and early 40s, Ilyin consulted with one of its heroes - I.S., who was ideologically and aesthetically close to him. Shmelev, and Ivan Sergeevich’s opinion was taken into account by the author when preparing the final text. This is evidenced by Shmelev’s letter to O.A. Bredius-Subbotina dated January 15, 1942: “I.A. wrote about modern writers, chose 4: Bunin, Remizov, Merezhkovsky, me. He let me read it. He lifted me up very high. Bunin - analyzed intelligently, noting “generic sexuality.” Remizov - y-so, tickled. Merezhkovsky - literally... crushed! - into nothing. I told him: why? He will kill you with a “brick” - his volumes are heavy... I.A. decided to release Merezhkovsky, i.e. throw it out of the book." Ilyin, therefore, chose not to aggravate the situation and not to enter into conflict with the old and sick Merezhkovsky, since in the chapter about him, indeed, there were many rude and not very fair assessments. The critic accused the writer of plagiarism from historical sources, historical irresponsibility and lies, weakness of artistic imagination, indifference to the inner world of heroes and indifference to “disgusting details” and “suffocating details,” sadism, masochism and many other vices. (The part of the book dedicated to Merezhkovsky was published by Ilyin’s biographer N.P. Poltoratsky).

In his articles about Bunin and Remizov, Ivan Aleksandrovich proceeds from the criteria of Orthodox culture, from the idea of a destined path for man from darkness through torment and sorrow to enlightenment. Bunin's heroes, from the point of view of the critic, are primitive, their religious ideas are vague, darkness and chaos reign in them. The writer does not touch upon the Divine in man and tragic issues, the critic believes. In his letters, Ilyin caustically ridicules the Nobel laureate (as well as N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, G. Adamovich, V. Khodasevich). In Remizov’s works, according to Ilyin, darkness reigns. His world of “undead” is hostile to Orthodoxy, because it is associated with the irrational element, with the “underground of national consciousness.”

And only the creativity of I.S. Ilyin evaluates Shmeleva as “an event in the movement of national consciousness” of the people. At the tragic time of his history, the writer told the great truth about Russia, showed her face, her living substance - a simple Russian man, overcoming suffering and everyday vulgarity with his tearful repentance, thirst for righteousness and religious contemplation. In “The Summer of the Lord” and “Phygomatism,” the critic claims, Orthodox Rus' is recreated with all the “corners” of its spiritual and everyday life. Shmelev’s epic, soaked in “tears of tender memory,” instills “confidence in the inflexibility of Orthodox Kitezh.” This is the “Icon of Holy Rus'”. The symbolic name “Bogomolye” denotes the idea of the historical path of Russia. Ilyin argues that, like Dostoevsky, Shmelev poses a philosophical problem about the meaning of life, filled with torment and enlightening suffering, about the struggle in man of the primitive darkness of naive spirituality.

Thus, developed by I.A. Ilyin’s system of critical analysis of works of verbal artistic creativity, which he called “art criticism,” allowed him to put forward an original concept of the work of the largest Russian writers of the 20th century - representatives of the “first wave” of emigration - I.A. Bunina, A.M. Remizov and I.S. Shmeleva. The system of artistic and aesthetic principles for evaluating a work of art, developed by Ilyin, as well as his judgments about the work of I.A. Bunina, A.M. Remizov and I.S. Shmelev, were distinguished by their unusual approach, deep originality and captured into their orbit not only ideological and aesthetic analysis, but also consideration of the religious and philosophical aspects of their work.

1. 3 Literature study methods usedI.A. Ilyinin krititechnical work

Methods used by I.A. Ilyin, considering the creativity of writers, proceeds from a systematic approach to the study of literature. The systems approach is close to the ideas of G.V.F. Hegel (1770-1831), German philosopher, one of the creators of German classical philosophy and the philosophy of romanticism, whose philosophy was of great interest to the critic.

Hegel said that art “breaks down into a work that has the character of an external, everyday existence, into a subject that produces it, and into a subject that contemplates it and bows before it...” Thus, G.V.F. Hegel included the writer, the work and the reader in one chain; If even one element of this chain is excluded, the system is doomed to collapse.

A systematic approach to the study of literature was formed in the second half of the 20th century under the influence of the general theories of systems by L. von Bertalanffy (1901-1972), who used a systematic approach, Prigogine (1917), who became a Nobel Prize laureate (1977). Among the literary scholars D.S. Likhachev, P.O. Yakobson, N.I. Conrad, I.G. Neupokoeva.

The systematic approach was developed in the field of exact sciences, but is increasingly used among the humanities.

The systematic approach embodies the principles of studying a work of art or the entire creative heritage of the author as an organic whole in the synthesis of structural, functional and genetic ideas about the object. The relationships “author-work”, “tradition-work”, “reality-work” are connected through the work, which occupies a central place in the system and acquires the status of artistry thanks to direct and feedback from the reader.

In philosophy, a systems approach means a direction in the methodology of specifically scientific knowledge and social practice, which is based on the study of objects as systems.

At the same time, the systems approach, as follows from its definition, is not a method, but a set of methods. They are united into a single methodology by their adequacy to common principles.

Let us therefore consider the main methods of studying literature:

1) The biographical method is one of the first scientific ways of studying literature, developed in the era of romanticism by the French critic, poet and writer Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve. His activity as a literary critic is connected with the development of romanticism in France, in particular, with the editorship of the Globe newspaper, published since 1824. In the biographical method, the biography and personality of the writer are considered as defining moments of creativity. In the “literature” system, they are focused on the “author-work” relationship, in which the “author” is, first of all, a living, concrete person. “Literature, literary creation,” admits Sainte-Beuve, “are inseparable for me from everything else in a person, from his nature; I can enjoy this or that work, but it is difficult for me to judge it apart from my knowledge of the person himself; I would say: “Like the tree, so are the fruit.” That’s why the study of literature quite naturally leads me to the study of psychology.”

2) The cultural-historical method is a method of studying literature developed in the second half of the 19th century by the French philosopher, historian and literary critic I.-A. Tenom.

Without denying the connection between the writer’s personality and the created creation, Ten is primarily interested in more general historical and national patterns. He is interested not only in a private biography, but in the search for “a general idea of human behavior,” for in human feelings and ideas “there is a certain system, and the main driving force of this system is the well-known common features that distinguish people of the same race, the same century and the same locality.” In a literary work, Ten is looking not only for “the psychology of the soul of its creator,” but for the psychology of the people and the age.

3) The comparative historical method developed in literary schools of Russian universities in the last third of the 19th century. Its founder was academician Alexander Nikolaevich Veselovsky. He emphasizes the connection that exists between “major phenomena” and “everyday little things.” He was one of the first to include in the context of literature the everyday background with its linguistic and psychological components, which provide rich “material for comparisons.” Recognizing the principle of historicism as the basis of the method, he notes that the cultural-historical school ignores the repeatability of phenomena, thereby excluding consideration of further series of culture. If we consider only the closest rows of culture, then repetition can be variable, contain a shift, a difference in adjacent members.

4) Comparative studies.

The term itself - “comparative literature” (Komparatistik, Litterature Comparee, Comparative Literature) - indicates “comparison” as the basis of the method. The basis of any “comparison” and “contrast” are the mechanisms of “identity” and “distinction” between one’s own and someone else’s.

In the “literature” system, the principles of comparative studies are used to analyze any part of the communication chain. A special area of comparative literature is the comparative study of phenomena belonging to different literatures. It is clear that comparative analysis techniques are widely used to study eras, authors and works within the same national literature (“A. Bely and A.S. Pushkin”; “A.S. Pushkin and Old Russian Literature”, etc. ). For the history of literature as a science, comparative literature has general methodological significance. Researchers believe that the subject of comparative studies is the entire development of world literature.

5) The sociological method is associated with the understanding of literature as one of the forms of social consciousness. In “mutual correlation” with other approaches, and not as the only and universal one, it acquires meaning and significance. This method primarily emphasizes the connections between literature and social phenomena of certain eras. To illustrate the main features of this method, it is necessary to refer to its formation. Sociological thinking, like any other, is especially interesting when it appears not as a ready-made recipe, but in an “unready”, dynamic state. Thus, in the 40-60s of the 19th century, the sociological method as such was just taking shape in Russia. Like his teachers V.G. Belinsky and N.G. Chernyshevsky, N.A. Dobrolyubov was far from simplifying vulgar sociologism. Designating his criticism as “real,” he correlated the picture presented by one or another author with reality. Investigating, for example, the question of whether “... it is possible” for this or that person, the author of the article “A Ray of Light in a Dark Kingdom” (1860) moves on to “his own thoughts about the reasons” that gave rise to this or that character. Consequently, the obvious postulate of “real” criticism is the idea that the reasons for the existence of any character lie in life itself, in extra-textual reality. ON THE. Dobrolyubov strives “...to determine his own standard for these works, to collect their essential characteristic features...” that reflect reality.

6) The psychological direction in literary criticism meets the need to unravel the mystery of a work of art, relying primarily on the psychology of the creator and reader perception. Despite all the differences between schools and methods, the commonality in the psychological approach is seen in the orientation toward studying the psychology of the author as a creator and the study of the reader’s perception of a work of art. In the “literature” system, supporters of the psychological approach are primarily interested in the “author-work” and “work-reader” connections, the subjective side of the author’s creation, comprehended by the reader depending on his own mental makeup and life experience. The study of the psychology of artistic thinking, the creative process in its dynamics helps to understand the laws of creation and the secret of the impact of a work of art on the reader.

7) Literary hermeneutics - the science of interpretation of texts, the doctrine of the principles of their interpretation. In relation to the “literature” system, this process occurs within the framework of the subsystem - “work-reader-tradition”. Hermeneutics sees the unity of the art of understanding, the art of interpretation and the art of application. Thus, the prerequisites arose for the construction in the 19th century of the theory of universal hermeneutics, the foundation of which was to serve as a universal theory of understanding.

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Family I.S. Shmeleva. Meeting of Konstantin Balmont and Ivan Shmelev on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean near Hossegor. Spiritual friendship of the great Ivans: Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin and I.S. Shmeleva. A literary museum telling the story of an original Russian writer.

Does every writer worry about how he will be read? Will they see what he wanted to show? Will they feel what his heart loved? And who will be his reader? So much depends on this... And above all, will he have a spiritual meeting with those distant but close ones for whom he secretly wrote his book?

The fact is that not all readers master the art of reading: the eyes run over the letters, “some word always comes out of the letters” (Gogol) and every word “means” something; words and their meanings are connected with each other, and the reader imagines something - “second-hand”, vague, sometimes incomprehensible, sometimes pleasantly fleeting, which is quickly carried away into the forgotten past... And this is called “reading”.

A mechanism without a spirit. Irresponsible fun. "Innocent" fun. But in reality - a culture of superficiality and a stream of vulgarity.

No writer desires such “reading” for himself. We all fear such “readers.” For real reading happens completely differently and has a completely different meaning...

How did what you wrote come into being, how did it mature?

Someone lived, loved, suffered and enjoyed; I observed, thought, wished, hoped and despaired. And he wanted to tell us about something that is important for all of us, that we need to spiritually see, feel, think through and assimilate. It means something significant about something important and precious. And so he began to look for the right images, clear, deep thoughts and precise words. It was not easy, it was not always possible and not immediately. A responsible writer nurtures his book for a long time: for years, sometimes for his whole life; does not part with her either day or night; gives her his best strength, his inspired hours; “sick” with its theme and “healed” by writing. He searches at once for truth, and beauty, and “precision” (in Pushkin’s words), and the right style, and the right rhythm, and all in order to tell, without distorting, the vision of his heart... And finally the work is ready. Last viewing with a stern, watchful eye; the last corrections - and the book breaks away and goes to the reader, unknown, distant, perhaps lightly capricious, perhaps hostilely captious... It leaves - without him, without the author. He turns himself off and leaves the reader “alone” with his book.

And so we, the readers, take on this book. Before us is an accumulation of feelings, comprehensions, ideas, images, volitional discharges, instructions, calls, evidence, a whole building of the spirit, which is given to us in secret, as if using a code. It is hidden behind these black dead hooks, behind these well-known, faded words, behind these publicly available images, behind these abstract concepts. Life, brightness, strength, meaning, spirit - the reader himself must extract from them. He must recreate in himself what the author created; and if he doesn’t know how, doesn’t want and won’t do it, then no one will do it for him: his “reading” will be in vain, and the book will pass him by. People usually think that reading is accessible to anyone who is literate... But, unfortunately, this is not the case at all. Why?

Because a real reader gives the book his free attention, all his spiritual abilities and his ability to evoke in himself that correct spiritual attitude that is necessary for understanding this book. Real reading is not a matter of running printed words through the mind; it requires concentrated attention and a strong desire to truly hear the author's voice. Reason alone and empty imagination are not enough for reading. One must feel with the heart and contemplate from the heart. One must experience passion—with a passionate feeling; one must experience drama and tragedy with a living will; in a tender lyrical poem one must listen to all the sighs, tremble with one’s tenderness, look into all the depths and distances; and a great idea can require no more and no less than the whole man.

This means that the reader is called upon to faithfully reproduce within himself the emotional and spiritual act of the writer, to live by this act and trustingly surrender to it. Only under this condition will the desired meeting between both take place, and the reader will discover what is important and significant about what the writer was worried about and what he worked on. True reading is a kind of artistic clairvoyance, which is called upon and is capable of faithfully and fully reproducing the spiritual visions of another person, living in them, enjoying them and being enriched by them. The art of reading conquers loneliness, separation, distance and era. This is the power of the spirit - to revive letters, reveal the perspective of images and meaning behind words, fill the internal “spaces” of the soul, contemplate the intangible, identify with unknown or even dead people and, together with the author, artistically and mentally comprehend the essence of the God-created world.

To read means to search and find: for the reader, as it were, is looking for a spiritual treasure hidden by the writer, wanting to find it in its entirety and appropriate it for himself. This is a creative process, because to reproduce means to create. This is a struggle for a spiritual meeting; this is a free unity with the one who first acquired and buried the sought-after treasure. And to those who have never achieved this or experienced this, it will always seem that the “impossible” is being demanded of him.

The art of reading must be acquired and developed in oneself. Reading must be in-depth; it must become creative and contemplative. And only then will its spiritual value and its soul-forming power be revealed to all of us. Then we will understand what should be read and what should not be read; for there is reading that deepens a person’s soul and builds his character, and there is reading that corrupts and weakens.

By reading you can recognize and identify a person. For each of us is what he reads; and every man is how he reads; and we all become imperceptibly what we read from what we read - like a bouquet of flowers we collected in reading...

Preface to the book “The Singing Heart”

1 When an artist creates his work, he secretly dreams of a “meeting.” No matter how closed, lonely or even proud he is, he always hopes that his creation will be accepted, that there will be people who will truly see or hear his “word” and carry it within themselves. And perhaps even the most lonely and reserved masters think with special tenderness, with special trepidation about this desired, upcoming “meeting” of complete “understanding” and “approval”; and therefore, perhaps, they withdraw into themselves because they long for this “meeting”; and therefore, perhaps, they accustom themselves in advance to the idea of “inevitable” loneliness and do not hope for its possibility... When dreaming of an artistic meeting, the artist is right. For art is like a prayer call that must be heard; and love that requires reciprocity; and conversation, which is not possible without attention and response. It is enough for the one who prays if the Lord listens to him. But the artist also addresses people. Art wants to be heard, it demands loving attention, it needs an encounter; and not “it doesn’t matter what” meeting; not “some kind,” but artistic, that is, one in which the very flowers that bloomed in the artist’s soul will bloom in the soul of the listener and reader, and the same fire that burned and shone for the author will blaze and shine; so that the artist, if he managed to look into the soul of his listener and reader, would say in joy: “Yes, that’s exactly what I saw! Yes, that’s exactly what I sang!” And I would be happy from the artistic meeting that took place. This is the case in all arts: in music, and in singing, and in painting, and in sculpture, and in architecture, and in dance. And of course, in literature. In a long, difficult and often painful creative process, the writer endured, saw, chose, connected, merged into a single whole external (sensual, pictorial) and internal (non-sensory, emotional) images, found the only true words for them, wrote them down and broke away from them , releasing them to the free world in printed form. He unfolded the thoughts of his heart into a whole figurative narrative, put these images into living, describing and sighing words and agreed that these words should be hidden behind silent, dead letters and that the hosts of these black, silent icons printed on paper would be artistically entrusted to the readers. Readers are unknown to him; he will never see the vast majority of them in his life. He gave them everything he could: a whole world of his thoughts and images, encrypted in words and letters... Will they be able and how will they be able to artistically decipher it? He is not able to induce them to this, unless he reads his work out loud himself, turning his readers into listeners and helping them to correctly approach the perception of his work: by performing it, that is, giving the written words the appropriate sound and picturesque, and heart-felt, and volitional, and ultimately-deep filling, like a composer playing his sonata from the same depth of soul and spirit from which the work itself was originally born - from the same contemplation, from the same pain, from the same joy . Reading his work aloud, the writer himself, as it were, sings the song that he has already found and created; as if he gives birth to it a second time for his listeners... But how many lucky people are there who manage to listen to such a performance? And now, since such a performance is not available, the reader himself must decipher the work entrusted to him in printed form: a poem, a story, a novel, a drama. He is called to fulfill, recreate, see and comprehend them himself; and thus, as it were, accept the hand of the author extended to him, justify his trust and go towards him that part of the artistic path that no one can go for him or in his place. It is impossible to do without this recreation of an artistic creation. Each reader must realize this secondary birth of the word, image and deep intention in his soul independently and alone. Will he want this? Will he be able to do this? Little does he know that it's not that easy at all. Does he understand that reading is an artistic creation that requires from the reader artistic concentration, attention and the faithful participation of the entire soul-spiritual, multi-stringed “instrument”?.. It is not at all the case that the artistic process occurs once in the soul of the writer, and the reader - “just reads,” that is, he runs his eyes over the lines and pages and at the same time imagines “something like that,” and then declares whether he enjoyed it (“liked it”) or not (“didn’t like it” )! ...The reader is an accomplice in the creative process, a co-artist. He is entrusted with a poem, as if frozen on paper: he must bring it to life and realize it in full in his inner, closed, lonely world. It depends on him whether the “meeting” will take place at all; he could ruin this meeting. One should not think that all responsibility falls on the writer, for the reader has his own share of responsibility. Music is beginning to understand this. In literature, this was still under-appreciated before. If the soul of a modern person does not hear Sophocles or Shakespeare, this does not mean that Sophocles and Shakespeare are bad artists, but it means that the soul of a modern person has become shallow in spirit and weak in will and does not know how to read Sophocles with the heart and contemplate with the will along with Shakespeare. Reading about titans and heroes does not mean passing by them verbally, but means recreating them in oneself; and for this it is necessary to find in one’s own soul that material of feeling, will, vision and thought from which a titanic and heroic nature is composed. This does not mean that the reader is called upon to rush around in the voids of his soul while reading at the whim of his imagination and at the arbitrariness of his feelings, inventing “his own” about what the author gives. There are temperamental dreamers who “read” this way; but that is precisely why, strictly speaking, they do not know how to read at all - they essentially do not care about either the author or his creation; they are unable to listen; they are busy with themselves, with their spiritual material, with their internal charges and discharges; and they “like” the writer the more, the less he prevents them from fantasizing and worrying in their own way... In fact, to read means to listen, that is, to “have”, to take inside what was created and proposed by the author. The writer creates for the first time, initially; and the reader only recreates what has already been created, for the second time. The writer leads and shows; and the reader is called upon to follow him and truly see exactly what the writer is trying to show him. And the desired meeting will take place only if he succeeds. In order for this to succeed, the reader must trustingly reveal and provide the author with his entire soul, like some kind of sculptural clay, capable of perceiving, reproducing and holding everything that the artist needs. It's not easy, but it's necessary. This can be especially difficult if the reader’s mental life itself is cramped and unfree, and, moreover, does not know how to rearrange itself. So, for example, if the reader does not live with his heart and despises the life of feeling, then it will be very difficult or even impossible for him to read Dickens, Dostoevsky, Shmelev, Knut Hamsun. Or if the reader’s imagination is attached to everyday life and does not live, does not soar, does not rejoice outside of it, then he may be able to read the writers of everyday life in a familiar environment - L. N. Tolstoy, Turgenev, Bunin, but the tales of “A Thousand and One Nights” ", the chimerical visions of E.T.A. Hoffmann, the whirling undead of Remizov will not be easy for him to read. Or again: a passionate-willed nature can revel in Walter Scott, Shakespeare, Schiller, Ibsen and languish while reading Goethe’s novels or the stories of Chekhov and Anatole France. A reader who is not able to evoke in himself the sophistication of sensory sensations characteristic of Huysmans, or the insatiable photographic interest in the details of the situation, characteristic of Emile Zola, or the taste for the exotic decorative “panels” so generously arranged in Merezhkovsky, will not overcome their works or begin to read they are, as they say, “from fifth to tenth.” Each writer-artist has his own special creative way; your own way of conceiving a work, incubating it and putting it into images (imagine your idea); one’s own way of seeing, feeling, desiring and depicting what was seen, felt, desired; like your own artistic glasses. And so, the reader needs to get these artistic glasses if he wants to see and experience correctly, that is, to really read the works of a given writer and subtract from them the spiritual content, perhaps a whole wealth. Reading does not mean skimming over words and scenes that are somehow captured from them. A real reader lives with his author, following him, populating his spiritual spaces with his images and thoughts and staying in them. He succeeds in reproducing them only insofar as he faithfully reproduces the creative act of the artist himself. Following his artistic instinct, he rebuilds his soul from the very first chapters, from the very first pages of the book he reads; and rebuilds his soul exactly as the artist wants it. He must be capable and agree to this. Otherwise, the work he is reading will not be revealed to him and the artistic meeting will not take place. In order to correctly perceive a religiously blind writer, for whom everything is limited to the dimension of earthly everyday life and neither things nor people have any Divine meaning, one must temporarily agree to this spiritual impoverishment in order to artistically peer and feel into his flat world. On the contrary, in order to correctly perceive an artist filled with religious feeling and flight, one must live in religious contemplation and spread the wings of one’s spirit. One writer completely moves away from external things and natural phenomena into the inner world of human passions and thoughts; in order to follow him and go into his world, you need to extinguish your sensual imagination and plunge into his waters. On the contrary, another writer shows the life of the human soul only through its bodily manifestations or through its reflection in nature; in order to perceive its artistic fabric, one must awaken, perhaps ignite, the sensual imagination in oneself and orientate oneself by visual and olfactory indications, by body movements, by lines and masses. In a word, the reader must see with the author’s eye, listen with his ear, feel with his heart, think with his thoughts; and only this will give him the opportunity to truly reincarnate into his heroes, to recreate in himself all his visions and images and to penetrate into their final depth. This last depth is the main thing that the artist wanted to express in his work. For the sake of this main “thought” he created his poem, story or drama. This “thought” visited and sanctified his soul, like some mysterious ray; the very ray of evidence fades and disappears, and the perceived thought goes into the depths of the soul and remains in it; and remaining, it turns into an artistic charge, demanding creative attention to itself and looking for images and words. Obeying this requirement, the artist creates his work, as if growing it, carefully and responsibly, from this initial “thought” or “charge,” which we agree to call an “artistic object.” So, the “artistic object” is the Main thing from which the entire poem, story or drama has grown and serves. It is the task of the reader and art critic to penetrate to it. To perceive it correctly means to have an artistic meeting with the author. This initial “thought” or artistic “charge” should not be imagined as a conscious thought, or even more so as an abstract idea that visited the artist. On the contrary, usually the poet can neither think nor pronounce his artistic subject; if he “thinks” it, then not with his mind, but with a special complex act of aesthetic sense; if he “sees” it, it is only as in a vague dream; he can experience it with the imagination of love, or with volitional tension, or as a certain stone lying on the heart, or as a joyfully calling distance... The poet can express it only if he clothes it in images, imagines it and finds for these exact and necessary images, exact and necessary words. He is looking for these images and words; these searches constitute the process of his creativity. If a writer-artist manages to endure a mature “thought”, find precise and necessary images for it and describe them in precise and necessary words, then the work of art “succeeds”, it turns out to be artistic or even artistically perfect. Then everything in it is necessary - images, style of speech, and words, for everything is required from the depths of the subject itself, everything is justified by it; then everything in it is artistic, “precise” and aesthetically “convincing.” This can be expressed this way: the artistic object is hidden behind the images and words of the story like a kind of “sun”, which is entirely present in them with its rays; in every word and in every image there is its ray, which shines from it and leads to it; everything is saturated with it, everything speaks about it, everything serves it. There are no artistically “dead” words and “dead” images, devoid of rays, unnecessary to the subject, superfluous. And there are no objective rays that would remain undisclosed in images and unspoken in words; there are no failures, gaps, oversights, inconsistencies, or omissions in the story. The verbal fabric has become the faithful “chasuble” of artistic images; and artistic images form, as it were, the true “body” of an artistic object. If the author completely succeeded, then he wrote an artistically perfect work; and the reader who masters the art of reading will recognize this by the spiritual awe that will seize him as if he were standing before a great mystery or a miracle of God; and such a work is in fact the great mystery and miracle of God revealed in the human creation. This is how the paths of the artist and the reader converge. The artist moves from his subject to image and word, from internal to external, from depth to surface; but in such a way that the object flows into the images and saturates the words; and so that the inner enters into the outer and the depth radiates to the surface. And the reader goes from printed words to the images that are described in them, and thereby to the object from which they were born, that is, through the external to the internal, from the surface to the depth that saturates it. And if this meeting took place, then art celebrates its holiday. In order for this holiday to take place, the author needs the art of “writing”, and the reader needs the art of “reading”. To read means: to correctly and sensitively perceive the fabric of words (aesthetic matter), to easily and obediently assimilate the creative vision of the artist (his aesthetic act), to accurately and sculptively perceive the pictures of the external and internal world described by him (aesthetic images) and to penetrate with spiritual vigilance to that the main thought from which the entire work is born (up to the aesthetic object). This is what writers and artists expect and demand from us. This is how we must meet their creations halfway. This is what real reading of fiction will give us. 2 It is precisely such reading and only such that can give the reader a certain right to artistic criticism. The task of an art critic is not to publish what he “liked” and what he “didn’t like” - this is a personal, private, so to speak, biographical matter. Writers are not at all called upon and are not obliged to “please” readers or critics, to give them “pleasure” or “enjoyment.” The artist has the right to give the reader joy, grief, pleasure, torment, consolation, and horror. He is obliged to show what he sees, even if it goes against all the demands and tastes of “modernity,” even if it is hateful to the crowd and “unacceptable” for gentlemen critics. He is called upon to obey his own religious and artistic conscience, inwardly appealing to that unknown Wise Critic, to whom the subject he has comprehended, his creative act, and the very law of artistic perfection, which he may never meet, are accessible. And such a Critic will never allow himself to replace the question of “perfection-imperfection” with the question of what he personally “liked or disliked.” A non-artistic creation can also be “liked”: sometimes by its elaborate style, sometimes by its publicly accessible, philistine-trivial act, sometimes by its “intriguing plot,” sometimes by scenes from a “familiar, dear life,” sometimes by its “bright,” “funny” “types.” , then a “successful ending”. And vice versa, an artistically perfect work may not be “liked”: either by its intense, rich style, or by its subtle, difficult to reproduce aesthetic act, or by its complex, confusing plot, which the reader is “too lazy” or “has no time” to understand. , or scenes from an alien, exotic life, or the absence of a “comic”, or a tragic denouement. One person “likes” something that another does not “like”; This is a question of the subject and it is decided subjectively. The question of artistic perfection is not interpreted by the reader’s mood, but by the work itself; it concerns a given “object” and is resolved by its perception and investigation. However, the task of a literary critic is not to measure works of art by non-artistic standards that are alien to art, for example, party, revolutionary, social, socialist, liberal, republican, monarchical, professional, confessional or any other. All this is incorrect and pointless; all this is alien and harmful to art; and most often this covers up the artistic and aesthetic inconsistency of the most critical reviewer. Over the past 50-75 years, Russian literary criticism has sinned endlessly, and in the person of radical and revolutionary epigones, it still sins with this decline, this vulgarity. Any deliberate tendency - both “progressive” and “reactionary”, and simply rationally invented - is unartistic. It is aesthetically false both in the work of art and in art criticism. Art has its own dimension: the dimension of spiritual depth and artistic structure. It is this dimension that is mandatory for every art critic. It is with this yardstick that I approach in my book the works and authors of modern Russian elegant prose. An art critic must be at his best, first of all, as a reader: he must seek an artistic “meeting” with the writer, recreating the figurative body of the work through a given verbal fabric and penetrating through his words and images to his aesthetic subject. This is the first stage of his journey: deeper, to the idea, to the artistic sun that secretly owns this work. However, the critic cannot limit himself to this. He is more than just a reader: he is an artistic and analytical reader. He must go from the word through the image to the object and back - from the object through the image to the word - not only intuitively, feeling, imagination and will, but also with conscious thought; he must reduce everything to the main thing and again expand everything from the main thing, following the instructions of the author; as if to absorb the entire work into its own artistic sun, and then see whether it penetrates with its rays all its images and all its verbal fabric. The critic must trace all this reliably and convincingly and, on the basis of this, make an informed judgment about the artistic perfection or imperfection of a given work. This is his second task. In this study the critic can sometimes obtain precious clarifications and confirmations from the author himself. It's possible; for, it would seem, who better to know his plan, his act, his symbolism, his verbal fabric, if not the author himself? However, this possibility is not always justified; for it is not always possible for author-artists to be aware of their creativity, its origins, its plans and its completed manifestations. Artistic creativity is often incomparably wiser than its medium; and the artist himself rarely has such a keen and deep consciousness that would penetrate into the depth and subtlety of his own creative process. This explains the fact that the poet often has a poor understanding of “himself” - the strengths and weaknesses of his creative act, its structure, its limits and its dangers. And it is even more difficult for poets to realize their aesthetic subject - so much so that they are inclined either to completely deny its existence, its significance and its meaning, or to speak incorrect, inappropriate words about it. K. S. Alekseev-Stanislavsky told me that such an intelligent and subtle writer as Chekhov initially considered his drama “Three Sisters” a cheerful comedy and was amazed and alarmed when the directors and troupe of the Moscow Art Theater, in his absence, began to interpret it as subtle psychological drama; Chekhov calmed down and agreed with the artists only when, upon his arrival in Moscow, he saw his drama on stage. Here, artistically gifted readers (artists) helped the poet understand “himself” and his work. This illustrative example can be considered a classic in the history of literature. He shows that a critic cannot and should not be embarrassed if the artist being criticized perceives himself and interprets his works (or, moreover, evaluates them) differently. An artist often knows less about his work than his work “shows” about himself. But the critic deals precisely with the finished work, which speaks for itself and for itself. It is impossible to prevent the author from loving and valuing above all his weakest works, like parents who often concentrate their tenderness precisely on unsuccessful children. One cannot demand from all writers that amazing vigilance, maturity and freedom of judgment about oneself that Pushkin possessed. This is why it is sometimes very useful for a critic not to treat the author he is writing about. For, in essence, he writes not about a person, but about his works of art. This distinction forms a whole line that must always be remembered. This is important, firstly, in the sense that the poet’s biography should not overshadow and crowd out his art. Neither the history of literature, nor, especially, art criticism has as its subject the life of the author himself. They are allowed to be interested in his life only insofar as this is necessary for understanding his art. Only the moral tact and research instinct of a scientist can draw and maintain the correct boundary here. In the absence of both, art criticism will inevitably degenerate into shameful alcove gossip or into a psychoanalytic exposure of the soul of a crucified poet. Such a “critic” should often remember that he himself is also a writer and that his own writings will also give someone a reason for alcove gossip and psychoanalytic exposure. However, our time is not distinguished by gentlemanliness and has an uncontrollable tendency to feed on the products of decomposition. The line separating a person from his art must be observed, secondly, in the sense of not confusing the living soul of the writer with his artistic act. An art critic has no need to dwell on the living soul of a writer; it is not given to him and is unknown. Usually it is more complex and richer than her artistic act, which can both be renewed and reborn from her own depths. Thus, almost before our eyes, Count L.N. Tolstoy reborn his creative act; and it would be naive to think that the assimilation of his artistic act is tantamount to the comprehension of his soul. The act is examined by the critic not according to data from intimate life, but according to works of art. This act is carried out by the poet himself; he is objectified by him in his creations; he gives himself over to public perception; Moreover, the artist assumes and demands that his artistic act be reproduced by his readers and critics. But this act, subject to reproduction, analysis and criticism, does not determine either the soul of the poet or his inner and outer life. Thus, a poet can be religious and create from a non-religious attitude; he can be a chaste ascetic in life, but write obscene short stories; he may have a tender, lyrically thoughtful soul, while his writings will be rationally cold; without having committed a single volitional act in his life, he can write dramas and tragedies of great volitional tension; he can be a man of refined culture and aristocratic nobility, but create from a villainously primitive, savagely predatory attitude of the soul; he can be a sober and reasonable person, but create his art from an act of foolishness. In a word, there is a line here - both of an objective nature (for the soul and the act are two different objects), and of methodological significance (for the soul and the act are studied in different ways). This difference, unfortunately, is easily erased and forgotten due to many circumstances and, among other things, due to the fact that both objects are equally designated by the name of the same author. Dostoevsky as a living and deep, brilliant spirit and Dostoevsky as the literary and creative act he accomplished are not at all the same thing; and yet both of these circumstances are equally designated by the name “Dostoevsky.” Meanwhile, the critic, revealing the strength and weakness, vigilance and blindness, balance and imbalance of his artistic act, has in mind precisely this act, and not its living mental substance. It is impermissible to infer from the properties of an artistic act to the general state of mind or to the life of a given author and vice versa. And even when the author himself speaks, writes and publishes about “himself” (for example, Bunin in “Cicadas” or Remizov - “Kukha”, “Whirlwind Rus'”, “On the Cornices”), the critic should not attribute this to the individual the artist, but to his creative act, about which each artist is able to speak only to the extent to which he has realized it. 3 That is why, in critical analyzes of my book, when I designate works by the names of their authors, I will not mean the authors themselves, not their personal souls or spiritual substances, but only the artistic acts they performed. This applies especially to the study of which of them is an artist of external experience and which is an artist of internal experience. Each of us has access to both external and internal experience. External experience cleaves us to sensory perceptions and states. We address the world with vision, hearing, smell and touch, perceive it with muscular sensations, spatial contemplation, feelings of cold, warmth, pain, heaviness, hunger, etc. We live with our body, listen to it and perceive the world through it. It is precisely to the extent that the world appears above the world of material things, the world of light, color, paint, lines, planes, masses, movements, sounds, smells..., to the extent that people appear to us as living bodies, accessible to us only from the side of their corporeality; insofar as cold, hunger, bodily pain and the passions they evoke seem to us to be the “most important” states of man; and love itself is perceived by us as sensual love and sexual passion. An artist who perceives and draws the world from such an artistic act is an artist of external experience. On the contrary, internal experience takes us away from sensory perceptions and states and reveals to us another world, a world perceived insensibly. Connected with the body from birth to death, the soul can turn away from the body, not trust it, not consider it essential, not indulge in its calls and temptations, not remain in it with its attention and interest - go not to it, but or through it, or past it, to non-sensory circumstances and states of the world. Then everything material, material, corporeal ceases to be the main or self-sufficient reality for a person, but becomes only a symbol of other, most important, substantial circumstances, on which all or almost all attention is concentrated. Such circumstances include, first of all, the world of the human soul in all its interests, feelings, desires, thoughts, fantasies and passions that are not subordinate to the body. Such circumstances include, further, the whole world of good and evil, sin and moral perfection, the world of Divine revelation, the mysterious destinies of the universe, the religious meaning of life, the highest purpose of man. This is a world in which people are living and free spiritual individuals, accessible to us in their inner life; a world in which love cleaves to the insensible appearance of a person and the very passions, being spiritualized, take on the meaning of a kind of sacred awe. An artist who perceives and paints the world from such an artistic act must be designated as an artist of inner experience. No matter how much a person cleaves to external experience, no matter how much he gravitates towards the sensual, material, bodily, it is impossible for him to do without internal experience; and vice versa: while a person lives on earth, he cannot completely tear himself away from the elements of space, things and sensual passion. Therefore, it is not given to artists to do without any external or internal experience. But they are given the opportunity to create primarily from external or primarily from internal experience, or to possess both of these sources, at times combining them in their act. Thus, L. N. Tolstoy’s act lives primarily from external experience** This was noted for the first time in the literary-critical experience of D. S. Merezhkovsky “Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.”; Dostoevsky's act - mainly by internal experience; Pushkin’s genius mastered both sources, and not only jointly, but also separately. It is clear that much is available to the externally experienced, sensory act that is inaccessible to the internal act; and conversely, the artist of internal experience is called upon to perceive and reveal such aspects of the world and man that are not given to the master of external contemplation. The artist of sensory experience is first and foremost a painter and sculptor; he is given the ability to see nature, its colors, sounds and smells; its perspective, its beauty, its panorama, its details. He keenly sees the human body, knows its beautiful forms, its expressiveness; he will accurately describe his sensations, and with great skill he will penetrate into the inner content of these sensations. He can become an expert in human instinct in its sensory manifestations; he will faithfully and vividly depict the elementary experiences of elementary natures, the instinctive movements of the masses in everyday life, in war and in peace; he will be able to give a stunning picture of sensual love and physiological animal passion, both in its natural impulses and in its unnatural spasm... But here he comes to the limits of his artistic act. Since the world of soul and spirit is elusive through sensory experience, he will not comprehend it and will not be able to see it or show it. On the contrary, the artist of inner experience is a clairvoyant of the mental and spiritual life of man and the world. He is not a painter, but a psychologist; and, moreover, a psychologist of the self-sufficient depths of the soul. He is a sculptor not of the body, but of character. He is the architect not of material or instinctive masses, but of spiritual masses. He is an expert in spiritual duality, the struggle between spirit and body, the struggle between conscience and instinct, between the devil and God. He walks in circles of human spiritual problems and dialectics, like the Mother of God through torment1. His act is most often a suffering act; his thought comes from the bottom of the spirit: all the hidden Divine rays living in human depths are accessible to him. And he uses images of external experience only insofar as he sees in them mysterious signs of the Supreme, symbols of deep internal states. From here the limits of his artistic act are visible. Because he neglects sensory experience, he will not achieve the greatest skill in depicting and revealing it. This determines many other things that distinguish these artists from each other. Thus, in figurative terms, the danger of an externally experienced artist is that his “painting” will be reduced to an endless description of external details (like Emile Zola) or will turn into an artistically pointless colorful film, as if into a cinematograph film shot from a carriage window - without meaning, purpose, form and artistic objectivity. In terms of subject matter, such an artist will turn out to be a poet and a clairvoyant of instinct; and one can always expect that the dark abyss of this mysterious force will appear in his description stronger or even more intoxicating than all spiritual forces. The danger of an internally experienced artist in the figurative plane is that his “walk through torment” will be reduced to a description of the unraveling tangles of a sick soul, its sick problematics, its crazy, spiritually contagious chaos (like E.T.A. Hoffmann) or will turn into into an artistically pointless decomposition of insignificant, vulgar, and perhaps even putrid and blasphemous deposits of the soul. But if such an artist overcomes these dangers and finds that ray of God, which alone can heal the restless abyss of the human soul, then he will turn out to be a poet and clairvoyant of the spiritual, angelic nature in man and will be able to show that the bright abyss of the spirit is stronger and more intoxicating than all deviations and temptations of the dark instinct... After these explanations, it is not difficult to understand that, essentially speaking, not a single writer is chained to any one, specific act. There are writers with a monotonous act who achieve great mastery in it, but do not change at all or hardly change its structure throughout their lives (Chekhov); there are writers who develop for themselves a certain artistic act in order to later survive a spiritual crisis and get away from it, maybe even condemn it, create a new one and again return to the previous act, carrying it out without the former strength and former splendor (“Resurrection "L.N. Tolstoy); finally, there are writers who possess only such artistic flexibility and creative power that they create each or almost every work of theirs from a new act, clearly obeying that fundamental law of artistry, according to which it is not the poet who imposes his talent on the aesthetic Subject, but the Subject dictates to the talent the artistic one it needs act: now sober, now fantastic, now senseless, now mental, now volitional, now relaxed-willless, now cold, now fiery, now sensually-external, now insensibly-internal. .. And the more submissive the artist is to the call of the aesthetic subject, the wider in scope, the more penetrating and full of power his art will become... 4 So, what kind of work should be recognized as artistically perfect? A literary work has, first of all, a verbal composition (aesthetic matter). The verbal fabric has its own specific laws: phonetic, grammatical, syntactic, rhythmic, stylistic. These laws must be respected. Trampling on them harms artistry. However, the correct verbal fabric is not self-sufficient; she serves the highest; she is his submissive and expressive instrument, the instrument of the aesthetic image and aesthetic object. Language must be imbued with them, born from them, selected by them, justified by them. It must be precise and economical; it must be their faithful and transparent environment. And in the face of these artistically highest demands - the rules of phonetics, grammar, syntax, rhythm and style must reveal the greatest flexibility and pliability, bending to the limits of the possible, but without breaking... A literary work has, secondly, a figurative composition (the plane of aesthetic image). This is, as it were, the fantastic body of the work, the “sensual” body (imaginary things, bodies, nature) and the “non-sensory” (imaginary souls, characters, spiritual events). The figurative composition has its own specific laws: objective authenticity, individualization, completeness, the fidelity of each image to itself and its reflections, dynamics, belonging, etc. These laws are similar to those to which real things and living people are subject, but do not coincide with them** Their formulation and justification requires special aesthetic research; srv. a brief listing of them in my book “Fundamentals of Art. About perfection in art." Ch. 8. Page 111-1132.. Trampling on them harms the verisimilitude of the story, makes the images “incredible” and makes the entire work uncomfortable to perceive. However, the figurative composition of a literary work is not self-sufficient; he also serves the highest - the aesthetic object; he is his faithful, necessary instrument. Both sensual and insensible image must be born from an aesthetic object, unfolding and revealing its content, its rhythm, its will; the image must be accurate and economical; it must be a true and transparent medium behind which the object is hidden and through which the object shines. And in the face of this artistically supreme law, all the specific requirements of material and mental images must display the greatest flexibility and compliance, bending to the limits of the possible, but not breaking. .. A literary work has, thirdly, a spiritual-objective composition (the plane of an aesthetic subject). This is the main thought that forced the poet to create, that is, to look for the right images and exact words for him. This thought of the poet is by no means his invention; it corresponds to a certain objective situation - in God, in man or in nature; sometimes - only in God (for example, “perfection”, “omniscience”, “grace”), sometimes in both God and man (“love”, “forgiveness”), sometimes only in man (“prayer”, “ conscience”, “sin”), sometimes in God, and in man, and in nature (“peace”, “suffering”). These objective circumstances should not be perceived as “abstract concepts” or as simple “moods of the poet” - lyrical or tragic. No, these are realities; living, classical ways of life; or, if you like, world states, modifications of existence, accessible to every person. The poet must join them, truly enter into them in order to sing and speak from them and about them. Without this he will not become an artist and poet. But staying in them does not constitute his privilege or monopoly. Everyone can join them. And an art critic is capable and called upon to experience and know them in independent, personal experience, before he becomes a faithful and sensitive reader of a given poet. This is what gives him the opportunity to “read” the poet in all three planes at once, to read his words, to see his images and to contemplate his unspeakable and yet imagined and expressed Subject. Each work of art seems to say to a person: “Take me, live with me; let me fill your soul, take possession of it, delight, illuminate, deepen, torment, purify, make you wise!”... Or simpler and shorter: “Take me, I’ll give you a grain of wisdom and happiness!”... Or again: “Here is a new spiritual meditation, live it!”... Meditation is a concentrated and holistic immersion of the soul in some life content. Man meditates in prayer, in philosophy, in art, in knowledge, in nature; he can meditate on a mathematical theorem, on a chess game, on a legal norm; in politics and in trade... And so, according to the basic law of the spirit, the human soul becomes similar to those objects on which it often meditates for a long time. Hence the meaning of monastic thought of God. Hence the dangers of demonology and Satanism. Hence the calling and responsibility of art. Every work of art is a meditation offered to people; the reader, while reading, meditates on that holiness and wisdom or sinfulness and abomination, which were artistically realized and unfolded in the work being read. The aesthetic subject is what poets and writers offer people for meditation - in the garb of descriptive words and under the cover of described images. The more spiritually significant the object and the more artistic its figurative and verbal cassock, the greater the artist, the deeper his art, the higher his place in the national and world pantheon. The great artist seems to be saying to the reader: “This is a spiritually significant state - of nature, of man. God - live with them, and you will see their path and greatness; you will bear the burden of the universe and enter the great lists of destinies and sufferings of mankind. he melts souls and forges them; he gives them uplifting, inspiring, cleansing and strengthening meditations in artistic form. He seems to bless them with his insights and sufferings; he teaches them to enter the temple of world wisdom and pray in it with new words to the one and only God of all. This is the calling of true art, from which the art critic must start and by which he is called to measure and evaluate all art not as a “two-dimensional” phenomenon (an image hidden in matter), but as a “three-dimensional” creation (an object clothed in an image and revealed through matter ). This understanding of art, according to which it is a source of insight and wisdom, was from the very beginning fundamental and guiding in the history of Russian art, both ancient folk and later, mature cultural. It constitutes a tradition in Russia, an essential and rooted tradition of Russian national art; and anyone who would want to historically trace the emergence of this tradition would have to reveal its religious roots, that is, the determining influence of the Greek-Eastern Orthodoxy we received from Byzantium. It began, of course, with painting, which at that time was icon painting and was supposed to create images of Divine illumination and wisdom. This spirit also reigned in music, which at that time was singing and was supposed to lift a person to God and shed Divine light and purity into the soul. This spirit could not help but be transmitted into the architecture that came from the temple and monastery, and into literature, which at that time was the word of the church, monastic and spiritual - glorifying or teaching. This was how it was later with the theater, which displayed biblical and soul-saving images in its first comedic performances. Art in Russia was born as a prayerful act; it was an ecclesiastical, spiritual act; creativity from the main thing; not fun, but responsible doing; wise singing or singing wisdom itself. Whoever manages to feel and look closely will find the same tradition in the songs about Igor’s campaign, and in the singing of the Kalikas of passers-by, and in epics, and in Russian folk tales. Russian art, first of all, makes you wise; it is a kind of “Dove Book”3, containing the wisdom of the “universe”; it gives either wisdom of life, as in the epic and fairy tale, or wisdom of God, as in the akathist, hagiography and legend. Anyone who does not notice or underestimate this Russian national tradition will understand a little about the history of Russian art. For the Russian artist, who has not weathered this Russian, classical tradition, but has kept it alive, what is essential in art is not pleasure, not entertainment, and not even just the decoration of life, but comprehension of the essence, penetration into wisdom and guiding service on the paths of meditation. A service that does not directly have anyone in mind, but is addressed to its people simply by virtue of the fact that it is created by the spiritual and artistic act of the Russian national structure... It is self-evident that Russian art, moving along this path, is in danger of becoming art tendentious: degenerate into moral, political or social preaching, lose your spiritual independence, your artistic self-legitimacy and self-power (“autonomy” and “autarky”), distort your creative act and turn your creations into an instrument of goals alien to art, extraneous to it; or, even worse, into a tool of “fashionable trends” or satanic slander. And so, we see that Russian literature of the 19th century really failed to protect itself from all these dangers, now falling into abstract moralization (Count L.N. Tolstoy), now indulging in political or economic-political trends (populists), now subordinating everything revolutionary denunciation or communist propaganda (Bolshevism and “social task”). It is remarkable, however, that from this perversion of the spirit of pure artistry, not a single remarkable work has yet emerged, or even less an artistically significant movement in Russian fine literature. No matter how much the radical journalism of the seventies, nine hundred and nine hundred-twenties and thirties insisted that “real” literature should moralize, populism, republicanism, worship revolution, democracy and communism, no matter how much it hissed and slandered representatives of real art , from this, not great paths of art arose among us, but only alleys, nooks and dead ends of bad literature. No matter how much people raise Taras Shevchenko, Chernyshevsky, Pisarev, Maxim Gorky and all those who accepted or are accepting the “populist” or “revolutionary” task, the greatness of Russian fiction was created on other trends and from a different act; and Zlatovratsky, Gleb Uspensky, Korolenko and Leo Tolstoy himself were artists not when they tendentiously “taught”, but when they comprehended without teaching, and gave wisdom without wondering about anything. The following rule will always remain the standard here; do not strive to “teach”, impose ready-made theories and prove or illustrate them; do not encroach on the sermon; seek to deeply comprehend and faithfully portray, and not to confirm preconceived doctrine; depict, do not impose, and most importantly, do not reason outside of images; do not accept any extraneous tasks from anyone, or even from yourself; guard the mystery, freedom and inviolability of your artistic contemplation; write unintentionally, not deliberately (desinvolto), for nothing other than art. And always nurture your artistic subject in the final depths of your contemplating heart. Show wisdom, but do not prove fiction. And you will be faithful to the classical tradition of Russian art. This classical tradition of Russian art must find recognition and implementation in artistic criticism. The book presented should serve this purpose to the best of its ability. August 15, 1935. Koknese