Writer Gogol biography. Unusual in life

Mikhail Yurjevich Lermontov

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I want to tell you the story of a woman whom you all saw and whom none of you knew. You met her every day at the ball, at the theater, at a walk, in her office. Now she's already left the stage big world; she is 30 years old and buried herself in the village; but when she was only twenty, all of Petersburg was noisily busy with her throughout the whole winter. This was completely forgotten, and thank God! because otherwise I would not be able to publish my story. There were many disagreements about her in society at that time. Old women said about her that she was cunning and deceitful, friends - that she was stupid, rivals - that she was kind, young women - that she was a coquette, and the inflated old men smiled significantly at her name and said nothing. I'll also add some strangeness. Some regretted that such correct and fresh beauty lacked a physiognomy, while others argued that although she was not at all good-looking, the inexplicable charm of the expression in her face replaced all other shortcomings. Moreover, her husband, a fifty-year-old man, had the title of count and a dubiously enormous fortune. All this, it seems, is enough to give the young woman that seductive, fleeting fame for which they all so greedily chase and for which some of them pay so dearly.

The details of my story will not seem very moral, but I guarantee you that it will contain a deep, moral meaning, which will not escape anyone, except 18-year-old young ladies - but they won’t be given my book; and if they come across it by chance, then I beg them, after these lines, to close it and not put it under the pillow at night, because this causes bad dreams. Young ladies, having read these truthful pages, will probably do justice to my descriptions and comments, remembering something similar in their lives; but they, of course, will not tell this to anyone, while many young dandies will claim that such adventures happened to them the other day, whereas with for the most part nothing like that can even happen from them. Almost everyone complains about the monotony social life, but they forget that they need to run after adventures so that they meet; and in order to chase them, you have to be excited strong passion or have one of those restlessly curious characters who are ready to sacrifice their lives a hundred times just to get the key to the most apparently simple riddle; but at the bottom of one there is probably another, because everything in the world is a mystery to us, and the one who thinks to guess someone else’s heart or know all the details of his life best friend, is sadly mistaken. In every heart, in every life, a feeling ran through, an event flashed by, which no one will reveal to anyone, but they are the most important, they usually give a secret direction to feelings and actions.

In our indifferent age there are few curious and passionate people; but about 10 years ago one such eccentric happened in St. Petersburg, and fate, as if on purpose, put him in front of an incomprehensible woman, to whom I want to tell you the story.

Alexander Sergeevich Arbenin was thirty years old - the age of strength and maturity for a man, if only his youth was not too stormy and not too calm. It is known that in nature, opposite causes often produce the same effects: a horse falls on its feet equally from stagnation and from excessive riding.

This is what Arbenin’s youth was like!

Start over.

He was born in Moscow. Soon after he was born, his mother separated from his father for unknown reasons. Having understood all the city rumors, it was possible to draw only one correct conclusion, namely, that Sergei Vasilyevich had separated from his wife.

Sasha remained in his father's arms. When he was a year old, he was put into a carriage with his nurse and nanny and taken to the Simbirsk village. Sergei Vasilyevich soon arrived there himself and settled down for a living. This village was located on the banks of the Volga. From the manor's house along the slope of the mountain to the river itself stretched Orchard. From the balcony one could see the smoking villages of the meadow side, blue steppes and yellow fields. In the spring, during the flood, the river turned into a sea dotted with wooded islands; The white sails of the barges flashed along it, and in the evening the songs of the barge haulers were heard. The manor's house was similar to all manor's houses: wooden, with a mezzanine, painted yellow, and the courtyard was furnished with one-story, long outbuildings, sheds, stables and surrounded by a shaft on which liquid willows swayed and dried; there was a swing in the middle of the yard; on Sundays the servants crowded around them, and sometimes two maids would sit on a half-rotten board hanging between two dubious ropes, and two of the most amiable footmen, each holding one end of a thick rope, would throw the modest couple under the clouds; the boys clapped their hands when the timid maidens began to squeal - and everyone had a lot of fun. It should be noted that a swing in the middle of the manor’s courtyard is a sign of a fatherly good government, and yet this is how well foreigners judge us: in the travel notes of a Frenchman, I recently read that we usually have a gallows sticking out in front of the manor’s house. The Frenchman remarked wittily that this must be an abuse, for the death penalty destroyed in Russia. Poor swing!..

The men of Arbenin were mostly engaged in fishing. During a storm, the wives and daughters of fishermen ran to the shore crying; in hot weather summer days crowds of peasant girls bathed in the icy streams of the Volga; their brown braids flashed above the foamy moisture; their loud laughter could be heard far away. In winter, the girl maids came to sew and knit in the nursery, firstly, because Sasha’s nanny was entrusted with the women’s household, and secondly, to amuse the little baron. Sasha had a lot of fun with them. They caressed and kissed him vied with each other, told him tales about the Volga robbers, and his imagination was filled with miracles of wild courage and gloomy pictures and antisocial concepts. He stopped loving toys and began to dream. For six years now, he had been looking at the sunset, dotted with ruddy clouds, and an incomprehensibly sweet feeling was already stirring his soul when the full moon shone through the window onto his crib. He wanted someone to caress him, kiss him, caress him, but the old nanny’s hands were so hard! My father didn’t take care of it at all, he managed it and went hunting. Sasha was a very spoiled, self-willed child. At seven years old, he already knew how to shout at a disobedient footman. Taking on a proud look, he knew how to smile with contempt at the low flattery of the fat housekeeper. Meanwhile, the natural tendency to destruction developed in him unusually. In the garden he continually broke bushes and plucked the best<цветы>, strewing the paths with them. He crushed the unfortunate fly with true pleasure and rejoiced when the stone he threw knocked the poor chicken off her feet. God knows what direction his character would have taken if measles, a disease dangerous at his age, had not come to his aid. He was saved from death, but a serious illness left him completely weakened: he could not walk, he could not lift a spoon. For three whole years he remained in the most miserable position; and if he had not received an iron physique from nature, then he would surely have gone to the other world. This illness had important consequences and a strange influence on Sasha’s mind and character: he learned to think. Deprived of the opportunity to have fun with the ordinary amusements of children, he began to look for them in himself. Imagination became for him new toy. It’s not for nothing that children are taught that they shouldn’t play with fire. But alas! no one suspected this hidden fire in Sasha, and yet it enveloped the poor child’s entire being. As he continued his painful insomnia, suffocating between hot pillows, he became accustomed to overcoming the suffering of his body, carried away by the dreams of his soul. He imagined himself as a Volga robber among the blue and icy waves, in the shadow dense forests, in the noise of battles, in night raids, at the sound of songs, under the whistle of the Volga storm. It is likely that early development mental abilities greatly hindered his recovery.

Notes

Published from the literary collection “Yesterday and Today” (Book I, 1845, pp. 87–91), where it appeared for the first time along with another passage: “Count V... had musical evening" (cm.<Штосс>), under the general title “From the papers of the deceased. Two excerpts from the stories I started.”

The text contains typographical errors that have been corrected in this edition. Corrections are given in parentheses:

bushes (<цветы>)

trains (collision)

Autograph unknown.