Painting, church architecture.
Turning to our spiritual roots will help us find ground under our feet today, restore the spiritual core of our people, and help us return to our path along the paths of history.

2.Gogol's legacy
In this context, the spiritual heritage of N.V. Gogol is extremely important for us. “Gogol,” according to Archpriest V. Zenkovsky, “is the first prophet of a return to an integral religious culture, a prophet of Orthodox culture, ... he feels that the main untruth of modern times is its departure from the Church, and he sees the main path in a return to the Church and perestroika all life in her spirit."
The spiritual state of our contemporary Western society is the fulfillment of the prophetic words of N.V. Gogol to the Western Church: “Now that humanity has begun to reach its fullest development in all its strengths... The Western Church only pushes it away from Christ: the more it bothers about reconciliation, the more it brings discord.” Indeed, the conciliatory march of the Western Church towards the world ultimately led to the emasculation of the Spirit in the Western Church, to the spiritual crisis of Western society.
N.V. Gogol in his social views was neither a Westerner nor a Slavophile. He loved his people and saw that they “hear God’s hand more than others.”
The trouble with Gogol’s contemporary society is that “we have still not introduced the Church, created for life, into our lives.” (These words, alas, are still relevant today). “The Church alone has the power to resolve all our knots, perplexities and questions; there is a reconciliator of everything within the earth itself, which is not yet visible to everyone - our Church.” This concern of Gogol about the fate of a society removed from the Church prompts him to work on a book that reveals the inner, hidden meaning Divine Liturgy and whose goal is to bring society closer to the Church.
N.V. Gogol is one of the most ascetic figures in our literature. His whole life testifies to his ascent to the heights of the spirit; but only the clergy closest to him and some of his friends knew about this side of his personality. In the minds of most contemporaries, Gogol was a classic type of satirist writer, an exposer of social and human vices.
Contemporaries never recognized another Gogol, a follower of the patristic tradition in Russian literature, an Orthodox religious thinker and publicist, and author of prayers. With the exception of “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” spiritual prose remained unpublished during his lifetime.
True, subsequent generations were already able to get acquainted with it, and by the beginning of the 20th century, Gogol’s spiritual image was restored to some extent. But here another extreme arose: “neo-Christian” criticism of the turn of the century (and most of all D. Merezhkovsky’s book “Gogol. Creativity, Life and Religion”) built Gogol’s spiritual path according to its own standards, portraying him as a sick fanatic, a mystic with a medieval consciousness, a lonely fighter with evil spirits, and most importantly - completely divorced from the Orthodox Church and even opposed to it - which is why the image of the writer appeared in a bright, but distorted form.
A mystic and poet of Russian statehood, Gogol was not only a realist and satirist, but also a religious prophet, all of whose literary images are deep symbols
“That terrible little Russian was right”
(V.V. Rozanov “Apocalypse of our time”).
“Great ignorance of Russia in the midst of Russia”
(N.V. Gogol “Selected passages from correspondence with friends”).
April 1 \ March 18, 2006 marked the 197th anniversary of the birth of perhaps the most outstanding Russian writer, political, religious and social thinker N.V. Gogol (1809-1852).
Why is Gogol interesting to us today? Do we understand him correctly, or do we still consider him a satirist-critic of state power and order, and not vice versa?
In fact, the work and life of Gogol is still incomprehensible to many literary scholars, philosophers and historians of Russian thought. With the exception of a few researchers, Gogol's work and views are not understood, and yet without a religious consideration of his views it is difficult to see the true essence of the writer's ideas.
N.V. Gogol was unfairly credited with revolutionary, Bolshevik, liberal-Western thought, expressing the essence of the ideas of the advanced intelligentsia, primarily V.G. Belinsky, the founder of realism, the natural school, satirist, critic of autocracy and statehood. Meanwhile, the true meaning of many of his works (including fiction, which largely contain satirical notes), unfortunately, remained unclear to such figures. The Russian writer and philosopher was not only a realist and satirist, but also a mystic and religious prophet, all of whose literary images are deep symbols.
And only today, thanks to the works of V. Voropaev, I. Vinogradov, I. Zolotussky, as well as articles by M.O. Menshikov we see a different Gogol: a religious prophet, the level of bl. Augustine, B. Pascal, D. Swift, S. Kierkegaard, the forerunner of F.M. Dostoevsky, statist and monarchist.

3.Gogol Nikolai Vasilievich (1809-1852)
3.1 Childhood and adolescence
Nikolai Gogol's life from his first moment was directed towards God. His mother, Maria Ivanovna, made a vow before the Dikansky miraculous image of St. Nicholas, if she had a son, to name him Nicholas, and asked the priest to pray until they announced the birth of the child and asked to serve a thanksgiving prayer service. The baby was baptized in the Transfiguration Church in Sorochintsy. His mother was a pious woman, a zealous pilgrim.
N.V. was born. Gogol March 20 \ April 1, 1809 in the town of Velikie Sorochintsy, Mirgorod district, Poltava province. He came from middle-income landowners. She belonged to the old Cossack families. The family was quite pious and patriarchal. Among Gogol's ancestors there were people of clergy: his paternal great-grandfather was a priest; my grandfather graduated from the Kyiv Theological Academy, and my father graduated from the Poltava Theological Seminary.
He spent his childhood years on his parents' estate Vasilyevka. The region itself was covered in legends, beliefs, and historical stories that excited the imagination. Next to Vasilyeka was Dikanka (to which Gogol dated the origin of his first stories).
According to the recollections of one of Gogol’s classmates, religiosity and a penchant for monastic life were noticeable in Gogol “from childhood,” when he was brought up in his native farmstead in Mirgorod district and was surrounded by people “God-fearing and completely religious.” When the writer was subsequently ready to “replace his social life monastery,” he only returned to his original mood.
The concept of God sank into Gogol’s soul from early childhood. In a letter to his mother in 1833, he recalled: “I asked you to tell me about Last Judgment, and you told me, a child, so well, so clearly, so touchingly about the benefits that await people for a virtuous life, and so strikingly, so horribly described the eternal torment of sinners, that it shocked and awakened sensitivity in me. This sown and subsequently produced in me the highest thoughts.”
The first strong test in life young Nicholas was the death of my father. He writes a letter to his mother in which despair is humbled by deep submission to the will of God: “I endured this blow with the firmness of a true Christian... I bless you, sacred faith! In you only I find a source of consolation and quenching my grief!.. Take refuge as I have resorted to the Almighty."
The future writer received his initial education at home, “from a hired seminarian.”
In 1818-19 the future writer studied with his brother at the Poltava district school, in the summer
In 1820 he was preparing to enter the Poltava gymnasium.
In 1821, he was admitted to the newly opened Gymnasium of Higher Sciences in Nizhyn (lyceum). Education here, in accordance with the task set by Emperor Alexander I of combating European freethinking, included an extensive program of religious education. House church, common confessor, common morning and evening prayers, prayers before and after the end of classes, the law of God twice a week, every day for half an hour before class classes, reading by the priest of the New Testament, daily memorization of 2-3 verses from Scripture, as well as strict discipline, such was the almost “monastic” style defined by the Rules of the gymnasium "the life of its students, many features of which Gogol later used when describing Bursat everyday life in Taras Bulba and Viya.

3.2 Early work
After moving to the capital, Gogol plunges into literary life. But despite being busy, there is a constant dissatisfaction with the bustle, a desire for a different, collected and sober life. In this sense, the reflections on fasting in the “Petersburg Notes of 1836” are very indicative: “Great Lent is calm and formidable. It seems that a voice can be heard: “Stop, Christian; Look back at your life." The streets are empty. There are no carriages. Contemplation is visible in the face of the passerby. I love you, time of thought and prayer. My thoughts will flow more freely, more thoughtfully... - Why is our irreplaceable time flying so quickly? Who is it? calls to himself? Great Lent, how calm, how solitary is its passage!"
If we take the moralizing side of Gogol's early work, then it has one characteristic feature: he wants to raise people to God by correcting THEIR shortcomings and social vices - that is, by external means.
In December 1828, Gogol arrived in St. Petersburg with broad (and vague) plans for noble work for the benefit of the Fatherland. Strapped for financial resources, he tries his hand as an official, actor, artist, and earns his living by giving lessons. Gogol made his debut in print twice. First as a poet: first he wrote the poem “Italy” (without signature), and then the poem “Hanz Küchelgarten”. The latter received negative reviews in magazines, after which Gogol tried to burn all available copies.
His second debut was in prose and immediately placed Gogol among the first writers in Russia. In 1831-32. The cycle of stories “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka” was published. Thanks to this success, Gogol meets V.A. Zhukovsky, P.A. Pletnev, Baron A.A. Delvig, A.S. Pushkin. He became famous at court for his stories. Thanks to Pletnev, the former tutor of the Heir, in March 1831 Gogol took up the position of junior history teacher at the Patriotic Institute, which was under the jurisdiction of Emperor Alexander Feodorovna. In Moscow, Gogol meets M.P. Pogodin, the Aksakov family, I.I. Dmitriev, M.N. Zagoskin, M.S. Shchepkin, the Kireevsky brothers, O.M. Bodyansky, M.A. Maksimovich.
His stay in the capital city gave him the impetus for painful reflections on the fundamental differences between the original (“old world”) culture of Russia and the latest European “enlightenment” of “civilized” St. Petersburg, criticism of which was developed by him in a cycle of so-called “Petersburg” stories. These reflections also formed the basis for the contrast between “idylistic,” “non-modern,” but culturally valuable Rome and spiritually empty, vain Paris in the story “Rome” (1842), later, after several years of his stay abroad.
In 1834, Gogol, together with close friends Pletnev, Zhukovsky, Pogodin, Maksimovich, as well as S.P. Shevyrev and K.M. Basili becomes one of the first employees of the Minister of Public Education S.S. Uvarov, who proclaimed in his activities adherence to the primordial principles of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality. The result of this collaboration was the publication by Gogol in the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education, founded by Uvarov, of 4 articles closely related to the story “Taras Bulba” written later, as well as the admission of an adjunct professor to the Department of General History at St. Petersburg University. However, this fruitful collaboration with Uvarov soon ended due to a conflict between A.S. Pushkin and S.S. Uvarov.
In April 1836, the premiere of “The Inspector General” took place on the stage of the Alexandria Theater in St. Petersburg, which was attended by Tsar Nikolai Pavlovich, who highly appreciated Gogol’s critical play and allowed the play to be staged and published. For a copy of The Inspector General, presented to the emperor, Gogol received a diamond ring.
Gogol's early work, if you look at it from a spiritual point of view, opens up from a side unexpected for ordinary perception: it is not only a collection of funny stories in the folk spirit, but also an extensive religious teaching in which there is a struggle between good and evil, and good invariably wins, and sinners are punished (the stories “The Night Before Christmas”, “Viy”, “Sorochinskaya Fair”, etc.). The same struggle, but in a more refined form, sometimes with invisible evil, is also revealed in St. Petersburg stories; it appears as a direct defense of Orthodoxy in Taras Bulba.
In addition, Gogol speaks out in “Taras Bulba” against the betrayal of Andriy, the financial power of the Jew Yankel, and the Poles. Here he advocates the annexation of Ukraine to Russia, believing that only in Russia will she be happy.
3.3 Second half of life and creativity
Conventionally, Gogol's life and work can be divided into two periods - the year 1840 will be the boundary.
The second half of the writer’s life and work is marked by his focus on eradicating shortcomings in himself - and thus, he follows the inner path. “It is impossible to talk and write about the highest feelings and movements of a person from the imagination; you need to contain at least a small grain of this within yourself - in a word, you need to become the best” (N.V. Gogol, “Author’s Confession”).
In the summer of 1840, Gogol experienced severe attacks of “nervous disorder” and “painful melancholy” abroad, and with no hope of recovery, he even wrote a spiritual will. But then a “miraculous healing” followed. A new path opened up for him. Gogol’s constant desire to improve himself as a spiritual person and the predominance of the religious direction begins. In “The History of My Acquaintance with Gogol,” Aksakov testifies: “Let them not think that Gogol changed his beliefs; on the contrary, from his youth he remained faithful to them. But Gogol constantly moved forward, his Christianity became purer, stricter; the high value of the writer’s goals clearer and the judgment on oneself more severe.”
Gogol gradually developed ascetic aspirations. In April 1840, he wrote: “I am now more suited for a monastery than for a secular life.”
At the beginning of June 1842, immediately after the publication of the first volume of Dead Souls, Gogol went abroad and there an ascetic mood began to dominate his life.
G. P. Galagan, who lived with him in Rome, recalled: “Gogol seemed to me very pious even then. Once all the Russians were gathering in the Russian church for an all-night vigil. I saw that Gogol also entered, but then I lost sight of him. "At the end of the service, I went out into the vestibule and there, in the twilight, I noticed Gogol standing in the corner... on his knees with his head bowed. During famous prayers, he bowed."
Gogol begins to read books of spiritual content, mainly patristic literature. Gogol's letters from this period contain requests for books on theology, Church history, and Russian antiquities.
Friends send him the works of the holy fathers, the works of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, St. Demetrius of Rostov, Bishop Innocent (Borisov), Christian Reading magazines. The Philokalia sent by Yazykov became one of Gogol’s reference books.
In “The Author's Confession,” Gogol wrote the following about this era of his life: “I left everything modern for a while, I turned my attention to learning those eternal laws by which man and humanity in general move. Books by legislators, soul experts and observers of human nature became my reading. Everything that expressed knowledge of people and the human soul, from the confession of a secular person to the confession of an anchorite and a hermit, occupied me, and on this road, insensitively, almost without knowing how, I came to Christ, seeing that in Him the key to the soul person."
In the winter of 1843-44. In Nice, Gogol compiled an extensive collection of extracts from the works of the holy fathers. Then he has a need to enter deeper into the prayer experience of the Church. The result of this spiritual thirst was a thick notebook of church songs and canons he copied from the service Menyas. Gogol made these extracts not only for spiritual self-education, but also for his intended literary purposes.
In January 1845, Gogol lived in Paris with Count A.P. Tolstoy. About this period he wrote: “I lived internally, as in a monastery, and in addition to that, I did not miss almost a single mass in our church.” He studies the rites of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great in Greek.
Gogol’s most famous play “The Inspector General” has a deep moral and didactic meaning, revealed by the author in “The Denouement of “The Inspector General”” (1846): “Whatever you say, the inspector who is waiting for us at the door of the coffin is terrible. As if you don’t know who this auditor is? Why pretend? The auditor is our awakened conscience, which will force us to suddenly and at once look at ourselves with all our eyes.” Nikolai Vasilyevich’s main work, the poem “Dead Souls,” has the same deep subtext. On the external level, it represents a series of satirical characters and situations, while in its final form the book was supposed to show the path to the revival of the soul of fallen man.
3.4 “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy”
At the beginning of 1845, in Paris, Gogol began working on the book “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy,” which remained unfinished and was published after his death. This work organically combines the theological and artistic sides.
The purpose of this spiritual and educational work, as Gogol himself defined it, is “to show in what completeness and inner deep connection our Liturgy is performed, to young men and people who are still beginning, who are still little familiar with its meaning.” This is one of the best examples of spiritual prose of the 19th century century.
In working on the book, Gogol used works on liturgics by ancient and modern authors, but all of them served him only as aids. The book also embodies Gogol’s personal experience, his desire to comprehend the liturgical word. “For anyone who just wants to move forward and become better,” he wrote in the “Conclusion,” “it is necessary to attend the Divine Liturgy as often as possible and listen attentively: it insensitively builds and creates a person. And if society has not yet completely disintegrated, if people do not breathe complete, irreconcilable hatred among themselves, then the hidden reason for this is the Divine Liturgy, reminding a person of holy, heavenly love for his brother.”
By the time the writer traveled to the Holy Land in February 1848, the first edition of the book had already been completed. Then Gogol repeatedly returned to the manuscript, revised it, but never managed to publish it. Unlike the second volume" Dead souls", which everyone was waiting for, few people knew about "Reflections" - Gogol wanted to release this book without his name, in a small format, put it on sale at a low price - to make this work truly popular, accessible for the teaching and benefit of all classes.
In parallel with his new works, Gogol is working intensively on the 2nd volume of Dead Souls. The writing progressed slowly. He now cannot imagine continuing the poem without first educating his soul. In the summer of 1845, a crisis broke out in Gogol, which later turned his entire worldview upside down. He writes a spiritual testament, later included in the book “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” and burns the manuscript of the second volume.
We actually have no other information about the burning itself, except for that reported by Nikolai Vasilyevich himself in the last of the “Four Letters to to different persons regarding “Dead Souls”, published in the same book. “It was not easy to burn away five years of work, produced with such painful stress, where every line was a shock, where there was a lot of what constituted my best thoughts and occupied my soul.” In the same letter, Gogol explains the reason for the burning of his work: “The appearance of the second volume in the form in which it was, did more harm than good.”
“Reflections on the Divine Liturgy” was first published in St. Petersburg in 1857 in a small format, as Gogol wanted, but his second wish was not fulfilled - to publish it without the name of the author.
Since 1920, for seven decades, this book has not been republished; only narrow specialists and the writer’s biographers knew about it. Little known even today are his spiritual works “The Rule of Living in the World,” “Bright Sunday,” “The Christian Moves Forward,” and “A Few Words about Our Church and the Clergy.” These works of Gogol are a real storehouse of spiritual Orthodox wisdom, still hidden under a bushel.
3.5 Last years of life
The last decade of Gogol’s life passed under the sign of an ever-increasing craving for monasticism. Without giving monastic vows of chastity, non-covetousness and obedience, he embodied them in his lifestyle. He himself did not have his own home and lived with friends, today with one, tomorrow with another. He refused his share of the estate in favor of his mother and remained poor, while helping poor students. His personal property remaining after Gogol’s death consisted of several tens of silver rubles, books and old things, while the fund he created “to help poor young people engaged in science and art” amounted to more than 2.5 thousand rubles.
Near-death illness, burning of manuscripts and Christian death of N.V. Gogol contains a lot of mysterious things. The events of the last days of Gogol’s life came as a complete surprise to many of his contemporaries. He lived in the house of gr. A.P. Tolstoy on Nikitsky Boulevard. It occupied the front part of the lower floor: two rooms with windows facing the street (the count's chambers were located upstairs).
Gogol's physical condition in the last days of his life deteriorated sharply: eyewitnesses noticed fatigue, lethargy and even exhaustion in him, partly an exacerbation of the disease, partly the effect of fasting. According to gr. Tolstoy knows that Gogol ate food twice a day: in the morning bread or prosphora, washed down with linden tea, in the evening gruel, sago or prunes. But a little bit of everything. The most famous Moscow doctors were invited to see him, but he flatly refused treatment. Gogol received unction and received the Holy Mysteries.
February 21\March 4, 1852 at about 8 a.m., N.V. Gogol introduced himself about the Lord. His last words were “How sweet it is to die!”

4. Conclusion. Gogol and Orthodoxy
Indeed, “in the moral field, Gogol was brilliantly gifted; he was destined to abruptly turn all Russian literature from aesthetics to religion, to move it from the path of Pushkin to the path of Dostoevsky. All the features that characterize the “great Russian literature” that has become world literature were outlined by Gogol: "its religious and moral system, its citizenship and public spirit, its combative and practical character, its prophetic pathos and messianism. The broad road, the vastness of the world, begins with Gogol."
Gogol expressed his love for Russia, its monarch and monarchical statehood both in his artistic works and in spiritual prose, and in particular in “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends.” In his works, Gogol continued to develop the idea of ​​a Third Rome and called on his compatriots to return to the ideals of Holy Rus'. Unfortunately, until recently, the monarchical and patriotic position of Nikolai Vasilyevich remained unclear, and in the minds of most people Gogol is presented as a satirist, a critic of serfdom and the founder of the natural school. Even such an outstanding Russian and philosopher as V.V. Rozanov, did not fully understand the essence of the main provisions and ideas of Nikolai Vasilyevich. However, at the end of his life, having witnessed the destruction of the Russian kingdom, he notes the following in “Apocalypse of Our Time”: “This terrible little crest was right.” This can probably be explained by the fact that Rozanov saw in this “apocalypse” an accurate prophecy and Gogol’s correctness. In a sense, Gogol can be considered a writer of the apocalyptic era. And maybe only today can we truly get closer to a true understanding of Nikolai Vasilyevich.
Gogol’s main idea was a critique of the Westernizing period of Russian history, expressed in criticism of St. Petersburg as a “city of “dead souls,” officials who do not know or understand their own country, robots and dolls living without soil and soul, where there is virtually no spiritual personality.
The question of patriotic service to Russia, the honest, conscientious performance by every Russian of his official duties worried Gogol all his life. “The thought of service,” Gogol admitted in the Author’s Confession, “never disappeared from me.” In another place he writes the following: “I did not know even then that a lot of love for her, which would swallow up all other feelings, you need to have a lot of love for a person in general and become a true Christian, in the entire sense of the word. And therefore, it is no wonder that, not having this in myself, I was not able to serve as I wanted, despite the fact that I really burned with the desire to serve honestly.”
In “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” Gogol acts as a supporter of the original principles of Holy Rus' and calls on his compatriots to realize their unique and national essence, the historical vocation of Russia, the uniqueness of its culture and literature. Just like the Slavophiles, Nikolai Vasilyevich was convinced of the special mission of Russia, which, according to him, feels God’s hand on everything that comes true in it, and senses the approach of another kingdom. This special mission of Russia was associated with Orthodoxy as the most true, undistorted (unlike Catholicism or Protestantism) Christianity.
Reflecting on the foundations of Russian civilization, Gogol pays special attention to the role of the Orthodox Church in the life of Russia, arguing that the Church should not exist separately from the state; without a monarch, its full existence is impossible. He agreed with A.S. Pushkin is that “a state without a full-fledged monarch is an automatic machine: many, many, if it achieves something that is not worth a damn. A state without a full-fledged monarch is the same as an orchestra without a conductor.”
Gogol himself in “Correspondence with Friends” calls on his compatriots, who have become cosmopolitan intellectuals, to realize themselves, their national soul, their Russian essence and their Orthodox worldview, by doing what he worked so hard to achieve all his life. “The whole disorder of Russian life, quite justifiably,” Gogol believes, “comes from the fact that the Russian educated class, after the reforms of Peter I, ceased to appreciate that great, spiritual treasure that the Russian people have always valued, Orthodoxy.” He urged the intelligentsia, so that they understood their country, to “travel around Russia,” because this layer, living in the country, “does not know it.” “Great ignorance of Russia in the midst of Russia,” such is the disappointing verdict of the Russian writer and patriot, which is completely relevant and topical today.

Bibliography
1) Russian philosophy. Dictionary . M: 1995.
2) Russian patriotism. Dictionary. M.: 2002.
3) Russian worldview. Dictionary. M.: 2003.
4) Russian literature. Dictionary. M.: 2004. 15) V.V. Rozanov. ABOUT
Orthodoxy in Verkhoturye
Orthodoxy and modernism
Orthodoxy and culture
Christianity / Orthodoxy

“What can you tell us about Gogol’s fatal delusions?...

Gogol's mystical moods, inspired by the church fathers with their gloomy and backward philosophy, led and could not help but lead to the spiritual collapse of the great Russian writer. As a result of this collapse, he burns the second volume of “Dead Souls”, which, however, was weaker than the first volume, because it turned out to be saturated with the corrupt spirit of churchmen hiding in the catacombs and dark corners of the Optina Hermitage and other dens of militant obscurantists...

So-so. You, of course, have read the second volume and that’s why you deny it so confidently?

No. The literature teacher told us all this back in the village.” (3, p. 5).

This episode from “The Sad Detective” by V. Astafiev is a sad evidence of how our school “went through” “Selected passages from correspondence with friends” for many years by N.V. Gogol. And this is in best case scenario, at worst, Gogol remained only the author of the first volume of “Dead Souls,” and everything that followed the poem, including “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” seemed to not even exist.

In Soviet literary criticism, Gogol’s work and life, and the entire inner appearance of Gogol, were covered with bias. You don’t have to go far to explain the reasons - everything was dictated by an ideology of an anti-church nature.

Only today does the study of Gogol begin from the only correct position of the Orthodox worldview, because this is the worldview of Gogol himself. It’s good that today we have the opportunity to discover Gogol as an Orthodox writer and educator, to look at his works from new positions, without keeping silent about difficult path Gogol to true faith, evaluate “Selected Places...” not only from the “only correct” position of V.G. Belinsky.

The purpose of this work is to try to identify the religious and moral guidelines stated by Nikolai Vasilyevich in the epistolary genre, which was somewhat unexpected for him, and to give, with the help of the works of K.V. recently opened to a wide range of readers. Mochulsky, M.M. Dunaeva, S.L. Franka, Fr. Zenkovsky, Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, assessment of Gogol’s literary work.

The scope of this work does not allow us to dwell in detail on the analysis of Gogol’s works, and this does not correspond to the purpose of this work. The spiritual quest of the writer is primarily included in the range of problems under consideration.

1. Basics of Gogol’s worldview

1.1. Gogol's worldview in the 30s.

“God, how sad our Russia is,” Pushkin exclaimed when Gogol read him excerpts from Dead Souls. This assessment of the great Russian poet served as a yardstick for judging Gogol’s artistic creations until the end of the 19th century. Gogol was perceived and hailed as a great realist and satirist; if in the Slavophile circles close to Gogol, the nationalities of his types rejoiced, then radical Westerners honored in him a social critic who, in his own words, noticed “through the laughter visible to the world, unknown tears invisible to the world” and - so they thought, denounced the poverty of Russian life, injustice and the corruption of the existing order.

But this was not the whole truth about Gogol. Only the generation of the late 19th century, according to S.L. Frank, in a completely new situation, more favorable for the knowledge of spiritual reality, managed to gain deep insight into the life of Gogol’s soul and artistic creativity. Rozanov, Merezhkovsky, Bryusov drew attention to many remarkable features of the rare religious-metaphysical feeling of life already in the writer’s works. In the generally recognized denouncer of morals, from the very beginning, a mystically gifted spirit was revealed, which in its images of life expressed not external reality, but its own internal anxiety; satirical images turned out to be the product of his painfully painful fantasy. His personal essence was distinguished by a keen innate sense of the presence of the demonic in world existence - equally terrible, as well as vulgar and evil. It seems that this attitude was innate to him.

One of the best researchers of the writer K.V. Mochulsky believes that this is apparently explained primarily by the enormous influence of his beloved mother, Maria Ivanovna, a pious, superstitious, and odd woman. She lived her entire life in inexplicable, painful anxieties. Her sincere and genuine religiosity is colored by the fear of impending disasters and death. Gogol looks like his mother: sometimes cheerful and cheerful, sometimes “lifeless,” as if he had been intimidated since childhood and was afraid for the rest of his life. The most terrible memory of childhood will be the mother’s story about the Last Judgment, about the eternal torment of sinners. He will never forget about this shock: “... it shocked and awakened sensitivity in me, it seeded and subsequently produced in me the highest thoughts” (19, p. 8). From this episode it is clear that Gogol's religious consciousness will grow out of the harsh image of Retribution.

An important feature of Gogol’s artistic creativity is already evident in “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”: there are a lot of unclean things in the figurative system, and demons are often mentioned not only by the characters, but also by the author himself. Merezhkovsky and Rozanov give this extreme assessment. One is ready to see in almost every Gogol character one of the incarnations of the demon, the other identifies the author himself with him. But let’s not forget the opinion of the author himself: “For a long time now, all I’ve been trying to do is so that after my work people laugh to their heart’s content at the devil” (quoted from: 13, p. 136). Gogol was not lying when he said this, but not all demons under his pen become funny. Evidence of this is his further work.

MM. Dunaev writes: “We dare to assume that Gogol was given a special gift: a heightened vision and sense of world evil, which is rarely given to anyone in the world. This is both a gift and a test of the soul, a call from above to internal struggle with the horror revealed to man” (13, p. 137).

The primary experiences in his soul truly become experiences of cosmic horror. These experiences would become the main mystical experiences in all of his early works. We meet this unexpected confession in the middle of a touching, lovingly written story about the peaceful life of an old married couple (“Old World Landowners” in the collection “Mirgorod”), where he describes with extraordinary power his mystical experience of his childhood.

“You, no doubt, have ever heard a voice calling you by name, which common people explain by saying that the soul yearns for a person and calls him, and after which death immediately follows. I confess that I was always afraid of this mysterious call. I remember that in childhood I often heard it: sometimes suddenly behind me someone clearly pronounced my name... I usually ran with greatest fear and engaged in breathing from the garden, and then only calmed down when I came across some person, the sight of whom drove away this terrible desert of the heart” (12, p.88).

In the article “Iconostasis” P. Florensky writes about the peculiarities of mystical consciousness: “...And the same thing is in mysticism. The general law is the same everywhere: the soul is delighted from the invisible and, having lost sight of it, is delighted into the region of the invisible... And, having soared into the invisible, it descends again to the visible, and then symbolic images of the invisible world appear before it - the faces of things, ideas ... There is a temptation to take for the spiritual, for spiritual images, instead of ideas - those dreams that surround, confuse and seduce the soul when the path to another world opens before it... Bordering on the other world, they, although of a local nature, are likened to creatures and realities spiritual world; When approaching the limit of this world, we enter into conditions of existence, although continuously new, but very different from the usual conditions of everyday life. And this is the greatest spiritual danger of approaching the limit of the world... The danger lies in the deceptions and self-deceptions that surround the traveler on the edge of the world... But it is worthwhile only when faith in God is not strong, when a person is entangled in his passions and addictions - one has only to look back at these ghosts, like them, having received an influx of reality from the soul of someone who looks back, become strong” (22, p. 28).

Sometimes it seems that Gogol comes very close to this line. The gloomy, boring picture of the world in many of his works grows out of Gogol’s internal attitude, this is obvious, he himself always spoke about this. But on the other hand, it is completely wrong, says S.L. Frank, take Gogol’s gloomy picture of the world as a purely subjective image of Gogol’s sick spirit and on this basis declare it to have no objective significance. This idea is confirmed by Dostoevsky, saying that a completely unfounded prejudice is the idea that only healthy people can know the truth, while mentally ill people deal with subjective images of fantasy; it is precisely patients who may have particularly acute abilities to perceive the world that are absent in healthy people: in fact, thanks to the painful inclination of his spirit, Gogol succeeds in both the most important universal religious knowledge, and, in particular, an insightful look at the true essence of his environment and his broken age.

Let us turn once again to the idea of ​​a special ability to comprehend the depth of religious knowledge. The same S.L. Frank notes in the article “Gogol’s Religious Consciousness” that the writer has the merit of feeling and depicting the demonism of the non-Christian and anti-Christian world. This intuition alone, in his opinion, speaks of the depth and religious significance of this rare spirit. Religious and historical views Gogol stood, as we now understand, in close connection with the peculiarities of his artistic intuition. With a heightened sense of evil and vulgarity in the human life, demonic power in the world; His artistic work combines a deeply hidden, barely noticeable at first glance, passionate desire for salvation. (Maybe that’s why in his early works God is still stronger than Satan). Sometimes it breaks out, as in “Notes of a Madman,” when a small official, ill with delusions of grandeur, after an indescribably funny outpouring of thoughts, suddenly fills the world with a soul-grabbing cry: “Mama, save me! Don’t you see how your child is suffering?” (cited from: 23, p. 311). Later, in the “Author's Confession,” Gogol himself will talk about how, in his quest for true artistic comprehension of various human types, he gradually came to search for the essence of the human soul and from here to Christ, as the only true connoisseur of the human soul.

These were Gogol’s religious and moral convictions in the 30s.

Gogol calls the thirty-sixth year “a great turning point, a great era of my life,” developing this idea in “The Author's Confession.” In it he divides his life into his youth, when “ smart person stupid things come to mind"; during these years he “composed, not at all caring about why it was, what it was for and who would benefit from it.” The second half is maturity; He entered it with the help of Pushkin. Gogol began to think about the benefits that his “fables” could bring. The idea of ​​the self-oppressive power of humor, that the poet himself is his own highest court, began to seem narrow to him. Researcher of Gogol’s work I. Zolotussky writes: “Pushkin did not notice this. He did not notice how from the territory allotted to Gogol by criticism and by him, Pushkin, he moved to the field where the image was made to serve the idea, behind which stood the new, religious worldview of the author. Gogol became Gogol, that is, who he was ultimately destined to be: a creator for whom literature is not a profession, but a service to God, who invested in him a special talent” (17, p. 31).

According to the same I. Zolotussky, it is difficult to imagine that Pushkin could publish a book similar to the book of Gogol’s letters. Pushkin was the keeper of “decency” in literature, which meant for him:

• non-intervention too personal in the poet's works;
• the reader's non-interference in this too personal.

Gogol, from the first lines of “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” will challenge this rule. In the “Testament” that opens the book, he declared: “Away with empty decency!” And in the “Author's Confession”, which appeared as a response to criticism of “Selected Places”, he will say about his book: “...Here all conditions and decency fell away and everything that was hidden inside a person came out; with the only difference that it screamed more loudly and loudly, as in a writer, in whom everything that is in his soul asks to be brought to light...” (12, p.665).

Let us pay attention and later return to this idea that he confesses to more than one person, his confessor is a street, a square, Russia from St. Petersburg to Kamchatka. The publicity of his confessions is shocking, but also shocking with the purity of his purpose. Gogol, out of moral conviction, violates Pushkin’s covenant and, as I. Zolotussky believes, “opens the way for Russian literature to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy” (17, p. 33).

Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov notes another property of Gogol’s talent, which already exists in his works, but has not yet fully manifested itself: “Most of the talents sought to depict human passions in luxury. Evil is depicted by singers, depicted by painters, and depicted by music in all possible variety. Human talent, in all its strength and unfortunate beauty, developed in the depiction of evil; in depicting goodness, he is generally weak, pale, strained...When the talent has acquired the gospel character - and this is associated with labor and internal struggle - then the artist is illuminated with inspiration from above, only then can he speak holy, sing holy, paint holy" (qtd. from: 7, p. 219).

So, in the year thirty-six, Gogol really experienced “ great turning point", "realizing himself as a national Russian writer" (19, p. 22).

1.2. Gogol's worldview in the 40s.

The forties pass in Gogol's life under the sign of a foreign land. If the first period abroad (1836-1839) was full of cheerfulness, carelessness, and creative enthusiasm, then life abroad in the period from 1842 to 1847. full of trials, illnesses and spiritual quests.

Accusations against Gogol of being passionate about Catholicism date back to this period. But according to the testimony of the writer V. Veresaev (5, p. 476) and from the letters of the writer himself, one can judge the frivolity of such an assessment.

Moreover, it was in the forties that the tone of his letters to friends changed, according to S.T. Aksakov, he changes even outwardly: “This year (1841) a new, big change followed in Gogol, not in relation to his appearance, but in relation to his character and properties. However, in appearance he became thin, pale, and quiet submission to the will of God was heard in his every word” (quoted from: 19, p. 26).

Spiritual path Gogol’s work begins with a desire, incomprehensible to many, to expose oneself to public denunciation and shame. The publication of Dead Souls seems like a favorable opportunity for him; he asks friends, writers and ordinary readers to criticize his work as strictly as possible. In front of all of Russia, he is ready to listen to the denunciation of his sins (this word replaced the word “shortcomings” in his speech) and bring repentance. Some saw foolishness in this desire to bare one’s soul, others saw shamelessness. Some regarded this as humiliation, others considered it a feat. Gogol's friends took this for eccentricity, for an absurd whim. Both Mochulsky and Frank note that Gogol clearly mixed three different plans: for him, his shortcomings as a writer, human vices and the sins of a Christian were of equal importance. Gogol’s friends, and perhaps no one in Russia, were ready for such an identification of the artist with a Christian. Let us note that spiritual changes occurred with Gogol far from Russia; his loved ones often saw the result of these changes, and often this result frightened them. For example, neither S.T. Aksakov, Neither Zhukovsky, nor Pletnev, nor Shevyrev can accept his teaching, which permeates his letters to Russia. “But listen: now you must listen to my word,” he writes to Danilevsky in 1841, “for my word has doubly power over you and woe to anyone who does not listen to my word. Oh believe my words! vested with supreme power from now on it's my word"(19, P.26).

This is the basis for future misunderstanding and rejection of Selected Places. The public, ready to accept Gogol, a satirist and humorist, is not ready to accept and understand Gogol, a spiritual teacher and preacher. When Gogol stopped making people laugh and started talking about God, no one believed that a comic writer could be a teacher. Many people see such teaching not as humility, but as pride. This is confirmed by an excerpt from S. Shevyrev’s letter to Gogol, cited in Veresaev’s book: “You were spoiled by all of Russia: by bringing you glory, it fed your pride. In your book it is expressed colossally, sometimes monstrously. Self-love is never as monstrous as when combined with faith. In faith it is a monstrosity” (5, p. 483).

Frank also denies Gogol the high gift of teaching: “...Gogol did not have the calling of a shepherd and preacher; there is something artificial about this” (23, p. 303).

Meanwhile, in the forties, the writer did a tremendous amount of spiritual work: he reads church books, ordering them from Moscow; they gradually supplant secular literature; gets acquainted with the experience of old age, makes friends first in absentia, and then personally with Father Matthew, the spiritual father of the writer. Not everyone immediately noticed and understood that Gogol’s new worldview was complete and deeply spiritual. The gloomy mysticism of the first period of creativity went away, Gogol discovered the truth about the religious meaning of human life and believed in it passionately and completely. The unusualness of his behavior, which so amazed his contemporaries, was, according to researchers of his work, that he began to put his program into practice. Seeing in the vocation of an artist the path to the salvation of the soul, Gogol took upon himself the burden of this responsibility. His new convictions will sound in the second volume of “Dead Souls”, in “Theatrical Tour after the Presentation of a New Comedy”, in “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy”, conceived in 1845.

After a serious and mysterious illness in 1845, Gogol’s main attention was finally directed to the inner path - spiritual self-education.

V.A. Voropaev notes: “If we take the moralizing side of Gogol’s early work, then there is one characteristic: he wants to lead people to God through correction their shortcomings and social vices - that is, through external means. The second half of Gogol’s life and work is marked by his focus on eradicating shortcomings in yourself– and thus, he follows the inner path” (6, p.7). External life according to Gogol is life outside of God, and internal life is in God.

From now on he believes:

• to create beauty, you need to be beautiful yourself;
• the artist must be whole and moral personality;
• his life must be as perfect as his art.
• Serving beauty is a moral matter and a religious feat.
• To fulfill his duty to humanity, the writer must enlighten and purify his soul,
• that is, the writer must be a righteous man.
• Double meaning The words “feat” and “field” begin to sound: the ascetic path and creativity are a single staircase leading to God.
• A person unprepared for internal rebirth needs an “invisible step to Christianity,” and art can become this.

For him, this is the only justification for art. And the higher his view of art becomes, the more demanding he becomes of himself as a writer.

The awareness of the artist’s responsibility for the word and for everything he wrote came to Gogol very early. Even in the “Portrait” of the 1835 edition, the old monk shares his religious experience with his son: “Marvel, my son, at the terrible power of the demon. He tries to penetrate everything: into our affairs, into our thoughts, and even into the artist’s very inspiration.” Gogol understood the enormous gift of verbal artistic creativity as a gift from above, on the one hand, as an evangelical talent requiring multiplication and growth, and on the other, as exceptional wealth that impedes the achievement of the Kingdom of Heaven. Gogol sought to manage his wealth, that is, talent, in an evangelical manner. “The ability to create is a great ability,” he wrote to Smirnova on February 22, 1847, “if only it is revived by the blessing of the highest God. I also have part of this ability, and I know that I will not be saved if I do not use it properly in action” (quoted from: 7, p. 217).

And in a letter to V.A. Zhukovsky on January 10, 1848, as it were, continues this idea about the responsibility of the artist: “...How to depict people if you have not first learned what the human soul is? Writer, if only he is gifted with the creative power to create his own images, first educate himself as a man and a citizen of his land, and then start writing! Otherwise, everything will be out of place. What is the use of striking down the shameful and vicious, exposing him to everyone, if the ideal of his opposite is not clear in you? wonderful person? How can one expose human shortcomings and unworthiness if one has not asked oneself the question: what is the dignity of a person? ...This will mean destroying the old house before you have the opportunity to build a new one in its place. But art is not destruction. Art contains the seeds of creation, not destruction...” (20, p. 65).

In “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” he will once again turn to his inner, painful thoughts about creativity. He will talk about this in the Divine Liturgy. The conclusion that the writer will come to at the end of his life will be connected with the religious understanding of art: the path to great art, Gogol believed, lies through the artist’s personal feat. You need to die for the world in order to be recreated internally, and then return to creativity.

However, a deeply spiritual understanding of his writing mission will become for Gogol himself another step towards tragedy. In the aesthetic and romantic atmosphere of the era, this religious teaching was unexpected and strange, and Gogol’s words simply did not reach.

It was under these conditions that “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” was published in 1847.

2. “Selected passages from correspondence with friends” and their role in the development of Gogol as a spiritual writer

2.1. Religious views on power and the state

“Selected Places” was published on the eve of European revolutions, and Gogol saw one of them – the unrest in Naples in January 1848 – before leaving for his homeland. For him in 1847, the question of choosing a path (both for himself and for Russia) was a fundamental question, a question of questions. With the radicals (Herzen, Petrashevites, and in Europe socialists and communists) or with Pushkin?

Gogol wrote his book when the split in Russian educated society became obvious. If under Pushkin it was relatively intact and only the events of December 14 revealed the contradictions in it, then in 1847 the noble intelligentsia began to diverge into poles. Parties have emerged professing views incompatible with each other. An ideological war began in society. If the radicals began to create secret societies and prepare a conspiracy against the tsar, then their historical opponents, who did not hope to instantly “melt the eternal pole” (Tyutchev’s words from a poem dedicated to the Decembrists), chose peaceful service to the fatherland. Gogol also dreams of bringing his consoling – and reconciling – voice into the Russian strife. He does not adhere to any of the parties - neither the “Western” party, nor the “Eastern” party, for the truth cannot be usurped by any one trend. In the chapter “Disputes” he says that “Old Believers” and “New Believers” see the same subject from different sides. And in order to get a complete picture of the subject, everyone’s judgments should be taken into account. Gogol, like Pushkin, is a supporter of the reasonable middle ground, although his sympathies lean towards the “Eastern”. “Easterns” are close to him due to their respect for tradition. Behind them is not only knowledge of Russia, but also knowledge of Russian history. They revere native language and, despite all the excesses in the praise of Russia, they are on their way to the pinnacle of love for one’s neighbor - to Christianity.

Softening power, limiting its arbitrariness - this is, according to Gogol (and according to Pushkin), the task of the poet in this hard time. In discussions on the topic “poet and power,” he is both on the side of the poet and on the side of power.

“How cleverly Pushkin defined,” Gogol writes in the chapter “On the Lyricism of Our Poets,” “the meaning of a full-powered monarch and how clever he was in general in everything he said in Lately own life. “Why is it necessary,” he said, “for one of us to become above everyone else and even above the law itself? Because the law is a tree; in the law a person hears something harsh and unbrotherly... a higher mercy is needed, softening the law, which can appear to people only in one powerful authority. A state without a full-powered monarch is an automaton: many, many, if it achieves what the United States has achieved. What is the United States? Carrion; the person in them has eroded to the point that he’s not worth a damn... Everything that is noble, selfless, everything that elevates the human soul - suppressed by inexorable egoism and passion for contentment (comfort)” (11, p. 210).

But all these discussions about the role of power in the life of society are an attempt to externally influence human souls and social existence. Arguing about them, Gogol is only once again convinced of the incorrectness of this path, chooses the path of internal purification of the soul and makes his hard-earned book sound like a great teaching about collecting heavenly treasures.

Very few people understood the meaning of this book. The main part of Russian society, people “of this world,” loved this world immensely and such teachings were not in honor with them.

These thoughts of Gogol turned out to be alien to his friend S.T. Aksakov, but close to P.A. Pletnev, who writes to Gogol: “Yesterday a great thing was accomplished: the book of your letters was published... it, in my opinion, is the beginning of Russian literature proper. Everything that has happened so far seems to me like a student’s experience on topics chosen from a textbook. You were the first to scoop up thoughts from the bottom and fearlessly bring them to the light... Be adamant and consistent. No matter what others say, go your own way” (quoted from: 12, p. 669). And the moderate Turgenev described the book as “a nasty mixture of pride and searching, hypocrisy and vanity, a prophetic and lascivious tone, the like of which we do not know in all literature” (quoted from: 23, p. 303).

Not everyone accepted the book among the clergy, whose assessment was especially important to Gogol. For example, Father Matthew did not accept Gogol’s creations. The priest’s opinion about the book with which his acquaintance with Gogol began was negative, judging by Gogol’s surviving letters, for the reason already stated: Father Matthew did not accept teaching and, apparently, reproached Gogol for being interested in secular topics (in particular, he attacked article “On the theater, on the one-sided view of the theater and on one-sidedness in general” as leading society away from the Church). We can judge this from Gogol’s letter dated January 12, 1848: “I took everything you say about teaching very seriously and as a result, of course, looked more closely at myself and at teaching” (6, p. 33) .

Stepan Shevyrev, analyzing “Selected Places,” also notes that the most weak side it contains the personality of the author - the desire to teach others, to give advice in what the teacher himself is hardly smart about, and, finally, sometimes to expose the shortcomings of his neighbor. But he continues further: “Deprecating Gogol’s teachings, no one noticed the unusualness of the very phenomenon that happened in our eyes. An artist, covered with universal fame in his fatherland, an artist, whose every book magically scattered to all corners of Russia, abandons his art, leaves the tripod of inspiration and runs to become a teacher, wants to be a preacher in order to tell a person the right word to take care of his soul and the lasting work of life. Let us suppose that his preaching is baby babble; Let us assume that she will not achieve her goal, but how can we fail to notice the importance of the event? How can you allow yourself to just laugh at him, or get angry at him, or accuse him of contradictions? ...People who understand the significance of the artist and his attitude to life cannot and should not remain indifferent to such an event and, perhaps exposing the shortcomings of his teachings, are still obliged to recognize the importance of the matter itself” (24, p. 442).

Saints Philaret (Drozdov) and Innokenty (Borisov) responded favorably to the book. Archimandrite Theodore (Bukharev) unconditionally supported Gogol. The most significant, undoubtedly, should be the judgment of the saint (at that time archimandrite) Ignatius (Brianchaninov). It was he who gave, perhaps, the most accurate review of Gogol’s book: “It emits both light and darkness” (21, p. 437). The saint believes that Gogol is guided primarily by his inspiration, “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34), and therefore the purity of the writer’s thoughts alone is not enough: “for a lantern to shine, it is not enough to wash the glass cleanly; there was a candle” (21, p. 436). Gogol's religious concepts are not defined; they move in the direction of heartfelt inspiration, unclear, indistinct, spiritual, not spiritual.

Gogol’s darkness in “Selected Places” is not in the errors of his worldview, notes Dunaev, but in the tone itself, which the writer was never able to get rid of and which is capable of distorting the most correct content, even alienating it from Orthodoxy. Gogol's enthusiastic tone comes from his claim to the spiritual teaching of the entire people, to whom he deliberately strives to show the means to salvation. Many of the clergy, and even secular admirers, perceived Gogol’s teaching as a product of greed. The feeling of his own chosenness possessed Gogol before, and at moments of spiritual turning point it only intensified in him. This has already been discussed above.

“But still the light of “Selected Places” overcomes the darkness,” writes Dunaev (13, p. 160). Gogol created a book that Russian literature can be proud of, the civic sound of which is best tradition since the times of Lomonosov and Derzhavin. In an attempt to solve the most pressing issues of Russian existence, we continue this tradition. The intensity of his moral consciousness borders on clairvoyance and fiery inspiration. biblical prophets. He has a special perception of evil in the world, believes K. Mochulsky (19, p. 37). In the most intense form, Gogol experiences his responsibility for evil, believes that the writer cannot remain silent, since he is called upon to serve his Fatherland, to bring real and immediate benefit people, be a good citizen and a hard worker. Art, literature, aesthetics are justified only by the benefits they bring to humanity, says Gogol. He does not want individual salvation of the soul; salvation can only be achieved by the whole world, he believes. “There is no higher rank than monastic... But without the call of God this cannot be done... Your monastery is Russia. Clothe yourself mentally with the cassock of a black man and, having killed yourself entirely for yourself, not for her, go to asceticism in it... or you don’t know what Russia is for a Russian” (19, p. 39).

Gogol's asceticism is for serving Russia. The love that sounds in his book is not abstract - for humanity, but living - for neighbors. Gogol's religion is conciliar. People are brothers, living for each other, bound by a common guilt before the Lord, mutual responsibility and responsibility. This idea of ​​conciliarity and “service,” stated in Selected Passages, reveals the deepest truth of Eastern Orthodoxy.

As if continuing the thought stated in the letter “On the lyricism of our poets”, where Gogol touches on the relationship between power and the poet, he then continues: do not tear up any tradition, for all institutions, laws, positions and regulations are perfect: God himself built invisibly with his hands sovereigns. Social evil does not lie in laws and institutions, but in their perversion by sinful people. When positions and classes enter legal boundaries, Russia will return to its original patriarchal system. Its basis is a hierarchy based on love.

The governor is a true father to all his subordinates; all officials are his children; the union of love connects the highest social levels with the lowest. The governor explains to the nobles their duty towards the peasants, “so that they take care of them (the peasants) truly, as their blood and relatives, and not as strangers, and look at them like fathers look at their children” (11 , p.287). In the letter “Russian Landowner,” Gogol sets out a unique economy: the landowner, the owner, the father of his peasants, must build his farm on Holy Scripture, explaining to the peasants that God Himself commanded them to work, to praise exemplary peasants, and to scold “scoundrels”: “Ah you unwashed snout! In the same letter there is a Christian justification for wealth: “Into which the village has only been visited by Christian life, there are men rowing silver with shovels”; and defense of ignorance: “Our people are not stupid to run away from any written paper as if from the devil” (11, p.290). In a word, the ideal of Christianity is a rich master, like those whom he showed in Volume II of Dead Souls. Subsistence farming, based on forced peasant labor, is headed by the main owner - the king, who must report to the Heavenly Master. Gogol thought of both the state and society only in economic terms. Its construction can be called, according to Mochulsky’s definition, economic utopianism.

The social pyramid reaches its tip into the sky; The king is a mediator between heaven and earth. “The power of the Sovereign,” writes Gogol, “is a meaningless phenomenon if he does not feel that he must be an example of God on earth... Having loved everything in his state, down to a single person of every class and rank, and having converted everything that is in it as If only in his own body, sick in spirit for everyone, grieving, crying, praying day and night for his suffering people, the Sovereign would acquire that almighty voice of love, which alone can be accessible to sick humanity” (quoted from: 19, p. 42). From all steps of the social ladder, waves of love rush to one point - to the throne; and an equally strong stream of royal love rushes towards them. According to Gogol, the meaning of monarchy lies in this meeting of two love currents, in the concentration and unification of the entire people in love.

Of course, this is a purely romantic utopia. It seems that Gogol saw before him not Nicholas’ Russia, but a mystical kingdom, a certain holy city of Kitezh; the tsar appeared to him not in the form of a powerful and formidable ruler, but in the form of a sufferer and man of prayer. He is the embodiment of heavenly love, the image of the suffering Christ.

2.2. Religious views on people and culture

From the religious concept of power, Gogol moves on to the thought of the Russian people, of their high purpose. He praises the people not for what they are, but for those principles that are inherent in them, for what they could be if they were aware of these principles in themselves and brought them into action in various branches of human life. In many places in the “Correspondence...” he expresses his deep respect for the Russian people, and especially for that part of it that other writers deeply despise as ignorant, or disgrace with slander, or imitate for their own amusement and others. In the letter “Russian Landowner,” perhaps more important than the advice that Gogol gave to the landowners, is the high opinion that the writer reveals about the Russian peasant. The advice he offers in dealing with the Russian peasant is deeply religious: “In all the reproaches and reprimands that you will make to someone caught in theft, laziness or drunkenness, put him in front of God, and not in front of your own face, show him what he is sinning against God, and not against you” (11, p. 288). When one is to blame, the reproaches should fall not on him alone, but also on his wife, on his relatives, on his neighbors, on the whole world that allowed a person to destroy himself.

Who thinks about the people that they are capable of admitting their guilt sincerely only before God, and not before some person; that he has a sense of responsibility not only for his own morality, but also for the morality of his neighbor; that he and the right never recognize himself as right before God - he, of course, has the highest thoughts about the religion and moral principles of such a people. In the article “On the Odyssey translated by Zhukovsky,” Gogol expresses an opinion about the critical abilities of the Russian people, whom he, as an artist, imagined reading the Odyssey and reasoning about it. Among literate people, Gogol recognizes the existence not only of Petrushkas, who, reading whatever comes to hand, are engaged in the same process of reading, but also recognizes such people who are able to understand the deep moral meaning of Homer’s highest content work. “Teaching a peasant to read and write in order to give him the opportunity to read empty little books... is really nonsense... if the desire to read and write has truly arisen in someone... in order to read those books in which God’s law is written for man, then it’s a different matter” (11, C .290).

Nowhere was Gogol’s reverence for the natural properties and talents of the Russian people expressed with such completeness as in his characterization of our poets. Everything that he says about them in three articles: “On reading Russian poets before the public,” “On the lyricism of our poets,” and “What, finally, is the essence of Russian poetry and what is its peculiarity?” - belongs after articles about the Russian Church and about light Christ's Resurrection to the best pages of "Correspondence". “Our poets,” he says, “are still almost unknown to the public. The magazines talked a lot about them, analyzed them, but they expressed themselves more than the poets they analyzed. The magazines have only achieved that they have confused and confused our public’s concepts of poets, so that in its eyes the personality of each poet is now double, and no one can imagine definitively what each of them is in his essence” (11, p. 224) . Gogol said a lot of bright and new things about Russian poets, and gave some freshness and news to what was said before him. But he explained all the brilliant properties of our poets not from individual individuals, but from the properties of that great unit in which they are all fractions, from the unit of the Russian people.” All these properties,” he says, “discovered by our poets, are our folk properties, only more clearly developed in them; poets do not come from somewhere overseas, but come from their own people. These are the lights that flew out of him, the foremost messengers of his powers” ​​(24, p. 457). But although Russian poets discovered the various properties of their people, none of them, according to Gogol, drew from that native spring that beat in the chests of the people even then, when the very name of poetry was not yet on anyone’s lips. This key comes from three sources: folk songs, in which there is little attachment to life and its objects, but a lot of attachment to some kind of boundless revelry, to the desire to be carried away somewhere along with the sounds; the second source is proverbs, in which the extraordinary completeness of the people’s mind is visible; the third is the word of church shepherds, a simple word, not eloquent, but remarkable in its desire to rise to the height of that holy dispassion to which a Christian is destined to ascend, in its desire to direct a person not to passions of the heart, but to the highest intellectual spiritual sobriety.

Gogol has such a high opinion of our treasures. folk word that lurk in the depths of the very folk life. He places hope for the future in Russian poetry in them.

Gogol sees the main danger of art in idle words: “It is dangerous for a writer to joke with words. Let no rotten word come out of your mouth!” (cited from: 13, p. 162). It should be noted that the topic of a writer’s responsibility for the word coming from his mouth appears in literature for the first time. Gogol sees art as serving Christ; he abandoned the idea of ​​the prophetic transformation of the world. Art must become an invisible step towards Christianity, otherwise it cannot avoid idle thinking and idle talk (he discusses this in his letter “On the theater, on the one-sided view of the theater and on one-sidedness in general”).

Another aspect of this issue is touched upon by Gogol in his letter “On the Odyssey, translated by Zhukovsky”: how to fulfill your purpose, in what language to communicate the Heavenly truths to people - the language of direct preaching or through an aesthetic figurative system, that is, while remaining a pure artist? Is wisdom not of this world subject to the language of worldly art? Gogol was destined to sharply turn all Russian literature from aesthetics to religion. The same thought can be heard in his letters of recent years: “You need to treat your word honestly. It is the highest gift of God to man. The trouble is for a writer to pronounce it... when his own soul has not yet come into harmony: a word will come out of him that will disgust everyone. And then with the purest desire for good you can produce evil” (7, p.218).

In understanding the truly Christian image of the people, Gogol had predecessors in the circle of his Slavophile friends. But the big difference between him and the Slavophiles was that the latter, idealizing the folk traditions of Russian life, optimistically saw in them a completely adequate expression of Russian religious faith, while Gogol, on the contrary, noted with irritated harshness the contradiction between the actual way of life and the Christian faith and therefore he called for religious renewal. Gogol put forward an ideal that, after the Russian catastrophe of 1917, begins to have an effect in religiously minded Russian souls: this is the ideal of “churching life.”

2.3. Religious views on the role of the Church

The religious concept of power and the people, the assessment of the possibilities of Russian poetry lead Gogol to the main and final idea of ​​his book: to the construction of a unified Christian culture, to the religious justification of the state and economy, to the complete ecclesiasticalization of the world. And if during the construction of the Christian kingdom Gogol was hindered by his complete ignorance of Russian reality, then here in the teaching about the Church there was no such obstacle: he knew the church. He deeply felt and understood the spirit of Orthodoxy. This part of the “Correspondence” is the most significant. “Never before in Russian literature has a voice of such filial love, sorrow and reverence for the Orthodox Church been heard,” writes Mochulsky (19, p. 43). In an appeal to church life Gogol shook hands with Khomyakov, Ivan Kireyevsky and other Slavophiles and posed the problem of religious justification of culture to Russian literature.

“We generally don’t know our church well,” writes Gogol. “We own a treasure that has no price, and not only do we not care to feel it, but we don’t even know where we put it. The Church... alone is able to resolve all the knots of bewilderment and our questions, can produce an unheard-of miracle in the sight of all of Europe - and this Church is unknown to us. And we still have not introduced this Church, created for life, into our lives... With our lives we must defend our Church, which is all life” (quoted from: 19, p. 43).

Gogol dreams of the leading, enlightening role of the Church; He contrasts European civilization, based on natural sciences and technology, with genuine, spiritual enlightenment. “To enlighten,” writes Gogol, “does not mean to teach or instruct, or educate, or even illuminate, but to completely illuminate a person in all his strength, and not in the mind alone, to carry his entire nature through some kind of purifying fire. This word is taken from our Church... The Bishop, in his solemn service, raising in both hands both the three-armed tree, signifying the Trinity of God, and the two-armed tree, signifying His Word descending to earth in His dual nature, both Divine and human, illuminates everyone with them, saying: “The light of Christ enlightens everyone.”

The author is aware that his book will not be understood and will be condemned, that neither his teaching nor his prophetic ministry will be recognized. And he justifies his boldness, as all the prophets have justified it at all times - by a calling from above. “They blame me,” says Gogol, “for talking about God... What should you do if you talk about God? What to do if a time comes when one involuntarily talks about God? How can you remain silent when the stones are ready to scream about God?” (19, p. 43).

One feels that the consciousness of an unusually great historical and religious task has awakened in Gogol; we are talking about the internal renewal of the entire modern secular way of life and education, which arose outside Christian life and in contrast to it. It is clear that this task cannot be accomplished by one person alone. But it was he who was given the awareness of the deep abyss gaping between reality and ideal. It is Gogol who makes an eerie prediction: “In Europe, such turmoil is now brewing everywhere that no human remedy will help, of which our current feeling of fear is only a quiet premonition... One feels that the world is on the road, and not at the pier, not at an overnight stay, not at a temporary station or rest. Everyone is looking for something, everyone is striving forward somewhere” (quoted from: 24, p. 309). Behind all the political and social aspirations that have unsettled the world, Gogol sees a spiritual quest, an inexplicable melancholy. In his letter “Bright Sunday,” considering the Russian custom of greeting everyone he knows with a brotherly kiss on Easter, Gogol notes that one might think that this day is closest to the heart of our century with its generous and philanthropic dreams of universal happiness, of fraternal reconciliation of all people and internal human dignity. But the expression of Christian brotherhood on Easter Day has remained an empty form, the writer believes, which indisputably demonstrates how empty and insincere the supposed Christian aspiration of our age is. Modern man ready to embrace all of humanity, but not his neighbor. “There is a terrible obstacle, an insurmountable obstacle to the truly Christian celebration of this day, and its name is pride” (11, p. 374). In our time, pride has consciously emerged as a force for the first time. Gogol sees the most striking expression of this spiritual power in what he calls the pride of reason. Modern man doubts everything, but not his own mind. It is not sensual passions, but passions of reason, as they are expressed in party hatred, that dominate the world. The greatest turmoil comes not from stupid people, but, on the contrary, from smart people who rely too much on their strength and intelligence. Reason becomes fashionable and, like fashion, it then dominates reason itself. No one is afraid to daily transgress the first and sacred commandments of Christ, but trembles before fashion. God's messengers stand silently aside, fashion creators dominate the world. The world sees dark force, but, as if enchanted, he does not rebel against her. This triumph of demonism lies a terrible mockery of humanity, which dreams of progress. That is why “the earth is already on fire with an incomprehensible melancholy: life is becoming stale and stale; everything gets smaller and smaller. Everything is dull... God, it becomes empty and gloomy in Your world” (19, p. 46).

Gogol was given the opportunity to achieve a truly deep understanding of the tragedy and mental turmoil of the coming century. He felt with all his heart that the age, which had turned its back on God and wanted to rely only on human pride, was heading towards disaster.

And yet, asks Gogol, why is Bright Sunday celebrated so joyfully and solemnly in Russia alone? We are no better than other peoples and no closer in life to Christ than others. But we believe that in Slavic nature there is “the beginning of the brotherhood of Christ”, there is the courage of repentance and love, there is our disorder, which gives us the flexibility of “molten metal”, there is the unity of all classes. “Not a grain of what is truly Russian and what is sanctified by Christ Himself will die from our antiquity. It will be carried by the sonorous strings of poets, announced by the fragrant lips of saints, what has faded will flare up - and the holiday of the Bright Resurrection will be celebrated as it should be before us, rather than among other peoples” (11, p. 379).

Revealing Russian life from top to bottom in his book, destroying its institutions, Gogol then tries to reassemble it through the effort of his poetic dream and, perhaps, save it from the impending catastrophe. There was no cell of Russian life that he would not touch. Everything - from the management of the state to the management of the relationship between husband and wife - became the object of his revision, his partial interest, his overt intervention. “His dreams took the form of advice, instructions, reproaches, and teachings. This... betrayed the scope of Gogol’s book: it seemed to summarize everything that Russian thought had expressed before it on these issues” (16, p. 385).

Gogol himself believed that in the book, despite its shortcomings, the desire for good came out too clearly. Despite many vague and dark passages, the main thing is clearly visible in it, and after reading it you come to the same conclusion that the supreme authority of everything is the Church and the resolution of life’s issues lies in it. Therefore, after his, Gogol’s, book, someone can turn to the Church, and in the Church he will also meet teachers of the Church, who will indicate what he should take from his book for himself, and maybe they will give him other, more significant books instead of his. , more useful and for whom he will leave his book, like a student abandons warehouses when he learns to write on top.

Later, on May 9, 1847, Fr. He will write to Matthew: “It seems to me that if anyone even thinks about becoming better, he will certainly later meet Christ, having seen clearly as day that without Christ it is impossible to become better, and, having abandoned my book, will take the gospel in his hands” (quoted from: 7, 217).

3. Belinsky and Gogol

So, Gogol argued that the meaning of Russia’s national existence is religious; that it is a messianic country, called to spread the Light of Christ's Enlightenment throughout the world. Belinsky responded to Gogol’s thesis on behalf of the Russian intelligentsia - he put forward the opposite thesis. “Russia,” writes Belinsky, “sees its salvation not in mysticism, not in asceticism, not in pietism, but in the successes of civilization, enlightenment and humanity. She does not need sermons (she has heard enough of them), but the awakening of a sense of human dignity among the people...

In your opinion, the Russian people are the most religious in the world: a lie... Take a closer look and you will see that they are a deeply atheistic people by nature” (quoted from: 19, p.44).

It is surprising that almost no one at that time had a simple question: could a person, rigidly programmed by the European Enlightenment, which he endlessly extolled, know the Russian people enough to make such statements on behalf of a certain part of Russian society? Leskov’s poisonous remark that such people judge the people by their conversations with St. Petersburg cab drivers is justified.

The dispute was brought to the attention of the whole society. Belinsky was the first to clearly and clearly formulate an understanding of the goals and objectives of art from the point of view of the ideas of the liberation movement. With his light hand, this understanding was firmly established in the ideology of the revolutionaries. His main ideas boiled down to the following: “The public sees in Russian writers their only leaders, defenders and saviors from the Russian autocracy, Orthodoxy and nationality” (quoted from: 13, p. 164).

He contrasted the system of treasures on earth with spiritual treasures obtained through preaching and prayer. He contrasted the wisdom of this world, common sense, with divine revelation. He easily shared prayer and the awakening of a sense of human dignity. But it is precisely in the desire to spiritually unite with God - through faith, through prayer - that a person can only realize his true dignity as the image and likeness of God.

But the greatest madness is committed by the frantic Vissarion when he excommunicates the Church from Christ (or Christ from the Church - it makes no difference to him). “For Vissarion (the spiritual commissar of the 19th century!),” writes Voropaev, “Christ is nothing more than an ideologist of social teaching, and not a Savior. He sees in Him only earthly meaning. And it turns out, in essence, that if for N. Gogol Christ is the Truth, then for V. Belinsky it is a lie” (6, p. 6).

Belinsky is especially zealous in attacks on the Orthodox Church and the paternal clergy. In his hatred of “priests, bishops, metropolitans, patriarchs,” he is ready to reconcile even with the Catholic clergy, which, in his conviction, “once was something,” while the Orthodox “never was anything except a servant and slave of secular power."

Vissarion Belinsky did not notice that the answer to him was contained in “Selected Places...”, where Gogol bitterly points out the usual misfortune of many educated people who undertake to judge Russian life: “There is great ignorance of Russia in the midst of Russia” (quoted from: 13, p. 165).

“The litigation between Gogol and Belinsky was decided in favor of the latter. Gogol's call turned out to be a voice in the desert. Only a handful of Slavophiles heard him; The vast majority followed Belinsky. Russia was entering the era of the 50-60s, the era of the elimination of idealism, renunciation of spirit and immersion in matter; a decline in the ideological level began, a twilight of culture. But Dostoevsky responded to Gogol’s voice,” writes Mochulsky (19, p. 44).

On behalf of our contemporaries, V.P. summed up the outcome of the dispute. Astafiev. In one of his articles, he writes: “The great man knew the worthlessness of vain thoughts, the sinfulness of destructive words, the futility of discord and the price of wounded pride. He is great because he is above flattery and blasphemy, and great mercy is characteristic of him. Taking pity on the noisy, persistent, but terminally ill author of a message as ardent as it was offensive, showing mercy to the sick man, he (Gogol) tore the paper, after the publication of which little would remain of the frenzied demagoguery of the unsuccessful novelist and “ruler of thoughts.” Gogol believed in God, Belinsky believed in democracy. Gogol saw the depth of the abyss that separated them and could measure his strength. The champion of “advanced thought” strove to jump over the abyss in the air, irresponsibly ignoring the danger and torment tormenting the thinker from the awareness of the gigantic contradictions tearing apart the world and the human soul. Gogol was always with the reader and remained with him, the champion of true democracy also sprouted in time, and his calls were visually embodied, so much so that the world shuddered! Some riot, speak, denounce, edify, even ………. in the eyes, others are silent or, licking their lips, repeat: “God's dew! God's dew...

“Furious Vissarion” accuses Gogol of all mortal sins, including ignorance of the village. Oh, how useful this testament will be to progressive leaders and thinkers! Subsequent generations of reformers of Russia will rush to correct the Russian people, to build a new village and a new society without any “prayers” there, and will so earnestly begin to teach to plow and sow, to build, to raise the backward village to unprecedented heights, that the earth will stop giving birth, the Russian village will be empty , the people from it will scatter throughout the cities and villages, where only “advanced thinkers” and demagogy can be born. Nothing else can be born in stones and bricks... But Gogol cannot be overshadowed, not compromised, not killed. He is unique. And not only by his creations, but also by his way of life, a painful death, the meaning of which by modern verbiage, found in the field of wretched atheistic propaganda, which has long and fruitlessly confused the modern reader, is relegated to the death of a village fool or an operatic holy fool who fell under the influence of church maniacs. The spiritual state of a genius, his way of thinking and his way of life is the life of a titan, and his torment is titanic. ...

In order to comprehend Gogol, I repeat, one must either be born Gogol, or, improving spiritually, overcome reader stereotypes and mental inertia, learn to read and think anew. We are too self-confident and, because of our self-confidence, we are superficial readers. Gogol requires a mature reader who would create and be created with him. From the last century, it has sprouted into our reality with all its roots...

I believe that, developing together with genius and with the help of genius, people - readers of the future will move further and higher towards spiritual improvement, for the genius of humanity is eternally alive, eternally on an exhausting journey towards light and reason" (quoted from: 12, pp. 621-622).

Leaving outside the scope of the work the story about the terrible suffering of the writer after the forced defection from his creation, let us turn to one more fact of Gogol’s life. He wanted to write a book so that from it the path to Christ would be clear to everyone: “... there are times when one should not even talk about the lofty and beautiful without immediately showing, as clear as day, the paths and roads to it for everyone” ( 7, p.218). The goals set by Gogol went far beyond the boundaries of literary creativity. Even with his life, Gogol served his idea: after his death, all the writer’s personal property consisted of several tens of silver rubles, books and old things - and yet the fund he created “to help poor young people engaged in science and art” amounted to more than two half a thousand rubles. Truly, “...blessed is he who has all his wealth with him - he is not afraid of fire or thieves...” (quoted from 7, p. 220).

Among Gogol’s papers after his death, an appeal to friends, sketches of a spiritual testament, and prayers were found: “I pray for my friends. Hear, Lord, their desires and prayers. Save them, God. Forgive them, O God, as well as me, a sinner, for every sin against You.” “Be not dead souls, but living souls. There is no other door except that indicated by Jesus Christ...” (quoted from 7, p. 220).

So did Gogol succeed as an Orthodox writer? His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II answered this question in one of his speeches: “The true face of Gogol as a great spiritual writer of Russia is being revealed to our contemporaries.” (9, P.219).

“Precisely today, in this time of spiritual confusion of the Russian intelligentsia and demonic revelry, the figure of N. Gogol acquires enduring significance for Russian literature, education and culture, showing us the path of the saving movement” (6, pp. 7-8).

Conclusion

The last years of the life of the writer N.V. Gogol remain beyond the scope of this work. He lived them in ascetic poverty and homelessness, but his spirit, despite his developing illness, was bright and his state of mind joyful. These are the years of his acquaintance and spiritual rapprochement with the Optina elders, finding a spiritual mentor in the person of Father Matthew, becoming acquainted with the handwritten book of the “insightful monk” (15, p. 105) Isaac the Syrian, which became a revelation for him, and reconsidering his own positions. In the margin of Chapter 11 of “Dead Souls” (a copy of the first edition donated to the library of Optina Pustyn), against the place where it talks about “innate passions,” Gogol makes a note: “I wrote this in delight, this is nonsense - innate passions - evil , and all the efforts of the rational will of man must be directed to eradicate them...” (15, pp. 104-105).

But this is also the most tragic moment of his life: the entire edifice of teaching, public service, and public benefit that he erected collapses immediately; a return to artistic creativity is impossible. Gogol is experiencing the last and most severe crisis - a religious one. A spiritual crisis will not disrupt the inner integrity of his personality. In the “Author's Confession” he will report on his coming to Christ as the only true expert on the human soul.

In literature, with the appearance of “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” “the Pushkin era ended: Gogol was destined to abruptly turn all Russian literature from aesthetics to religion, to shift it from the path of Pushkin to the path of Dostoevsky. All the features that characterize the great Russian literature, which has become world literature, were outlined by Gogol: its religious and moral system, its citizenship and public spirit, its militant and practical character, its prophetic pathos and messianism” (19, p. 51).

Much has been said about the significance of Gogol for the history of Russian literature. But discarding the religious aspect, or interpreting it incorrectly, it is impossible to understand either N. Gogol’s work or his actions. Meanwhile, this writer was the first in the history of Russian literature to critically realize, think through and understand the true role and purpose of art and sacrificed his subtle and vulnerable soul to this understanding, giving himself up to be mercilessly torn to pieces in the name of Christ by criticism and the entire secular society, which were not I am able, due to my irreligious consciousness, to comprehend and appreciate the significance of the life and work of Nikolai Vasilyevich, who has done a tremendous amount of work on himself.

“Gogol’s idea about the need to harmonize the entire structure of our life with the demands of the Gospel, so persistently expressed by him in our literature for the first time, was that good seed that grew into the lush fruit of later Russian literature in its best and dominant ethical direction. The call to society to renew the principles of Christianity preserved in the Orthodox Church was and remains Gogol’s great merit to the fatherland...” 7, p. 220).

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Introduction

Gogol's legacy

Gogol Nikolai Vasilievich (1809-1852)

1. Childhood and youth

   Early creativity

   The second half of life and creativity

   "Reflections on the Divine Liturgy"

   last years of life

Conclusion.Gogol and Orthodoxy

Bibliography

1. Introduction

The church, state, and education system must help our people return to Orthodoxy. The secular nature of the school has been officially proclaimed, but the school must reveal to children what trace Orthodoxy has left in the culture and history of our people. There is equality of religions before the law, but in no case is there equality of religions before culture, before the history of mankind, especially before the culture and history of Kievan Rus. The state and school should be interested in ensuring that children are not foreigners in their own country. We must consider the history of Christian painting and church architecture in an Orthodox manner.

Turning to our spiritual roots will help us find ground under our feet today, restore the spiritual core of our people, and help us return to our path along the paths of history.

2.Gogol's legacy

In this context, the spiritual heritage of N.V. Gogol is extremely important for us. “Gogol,” according to Archpriest V. Zenkovsky, “is the first prophet of a return to an integral religious culture, a prophet Orthodox culture, ... he feels that the main untruth of modern times is its departure from the Church, and he sees the main path in a return to the Church and the restructuring of all life in its spirit."

The spiritual state of our contemporary Western society is the fulfillment of the prophetic words of N.V. Gogol to the Western Church: “Now that humanity has begun to reach its fullest development in all its strengths... The Western Church only pushes it away from Christ: the more it bothers about reconciliation, the more it brings discord.” Indeed, the conciliatory march of the Western Church towards the world ultimately led to the emasculation of the Spirit in the Western Church, to the spiritual crisis of Western society.

N.V. Gogol in his social views was neither a Westerner nor a Slavophile. He loved his people and saw that they “hear God’s hand more than others.”

The trouble with Gogol’s contemporary society is that “we have still not introduced the Church, created for life, into our lives.” (These words, alas, are still relevant today). “The Church alone has the power to resolve all our knots, perplexities and questions; there is a reconciliator of everything within the earth itself, which is not yet visible to everyone - our Church.” This concern of Gogol about the fate of society, distant from the Church, prompts him to work on a book that reveals the inner, hidden meaning of the Divine Liturgy and has as its goal to bring society closer to the Church.

N.V. Gogol is one of the most ascetic figures in our literature. His whole life testifies to his ascent to the heights of the spirit; but only the clergy closest to him and some of his friends knew about this side of his personality. In the minds of most contemporaries, Gogol was a classic type of satirist writer, an exposer of social and human vices.

Contemporaries never recognized another Gogol, a follower of the patristic tradition in Russian literature, an Orthodox religious thinker and publicist, and author of prayers. With the exception of “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” spiritual prose remained unpublished during his lifetime.

True, subsequent generations were already able to get acquainted with it, and by the beginning of the 20th century, Gogol’s spiritual image was restored to some extent. But here another extreme arose: “neo-Christian” criticism of the turn of the century (and most of all D. Merezhkovsky’s book “Gogol. Creativity, Life and Religion”) built Gogol’s spiritual path according to its own standards, portraying him as a sick fanatic, a mystic with a medieval consciousness, a lonely fighter with evil spirits, and most importantly - completely divorced from the Orthodox Church and even opposed to it - why the image the writer appeared in a bright, but distorted form.

A mystic and poet of Russian statehood, Gogol was not only a realist and satirist, but also a religious prophet, all of whose literary images are deep symbols

“That terrible little Russian was right”

(V.V. Rozanov “Apocalypse of our time”).

“Great ignorance of Russia in the midst of Russia”

(N.V. Gogol “Selected passages from correspondence with friends”).

April 1 \ March 18, 2006 marked the 197th anniversary of the birth of perhaps the most outstanding Russian writer, political, religious and social thinker N.V. Gogol (1809-1852).

Why is Gogol interesting to us today? Do we understand him correctly, or do we still consider him a satirist-critic of state power and order, and not vice versa?

In fact, the work and life of Gogol is still incomprehensible to many literary scholars, philosophers and historians of Russian thought. With the exception of a few researchers, Gogol's work and views are not understood, and yet without a religious consideration of his views it is difficult to see the true essence of the writer's ideas.

N.V. Gogol was unfairly credited with revolutionary, Bolshevik, liberal-Western thought, expressing the essence of the ideas of the advanced intelligentsia, primarily V.G. Belinsky, the founder of realism, the natural school, satirist, critic of autocracy and statehood. Meanwhile, the true meaning of many of his works (including fiction, which largely contain satirical notes), unfortunately, remained unclear to such figures. The Russian writer and philosopher was not only a realist and satirist, but also a mystic and religious prophet, all of whose literary images are deep symbols.

And only today, thanks to the works of V. Voropaev, I. Vinogradov, I. Zolotussky, as well as articles by M.O. Menshikov we see a different Gogol: a religious prophet, the level of bl. Augustine, B. Pascal, D. Swift, S. Kierkegaard, the forerunner of F.M. Dostoevsky, statesman and monarchist.

3.Gogol Nikolai Vasilievich (1809-1852)

3.1 Childhood and adolescence

Nikolai Gogol's life from his first moment was directed towards God. His mother, Maria Ivanovna, made a vow before the Dikansky miraculous image of St. Nicholas, if she had a son, to name him Nicholas - and asked the priest to pray until they announced the birth of the child and asked to serve a thanksgiving prayer service. The baby was baptized in the Transfiguration Church in Sorochintsy. His mother was a pious woman, a zealous pilgrim.

N.V. was born. Gogol March 20 \ April 1, 1809 in the town of Velikie Sorochintsy, Mirgorod district, Poltava province. He came from middle-income landowners. She belonged to the old Cossack families. The family was quite pious and patriarchal. Among Gogol's ancestors there were people of clergy: his paternal great-grandfather was a priest; my grandfather graduated from the Kyiv Theological Academy, and my father graduated from the Poltava Theological Seminary.

He spent his childhood years on his parents' estate Vasilyevka. The region itself was covered in legends, beliefs, and historical stories that excited the imagination. Next to Vasilyeka was Dikanka (to which Gogol dated the origin of his first stories).

According to the recollections of one of Gogol’s classmates, religiosity and a penchant for monastic life were noticeable in Gogol “from childhood,” when he was brought up in his native farmstead in Mirgorod district and was surrounded by people “God-fearing and completely religious.” When the writer was subsequently ready to “replace his secular life with a monastery,” he only returned to his original mood.

The concept of God sank into Gogol’s soul from early childhood. In a letter to his mother in 1833, he recalled: “I asked you to tell me about the Last Judgment, and you told me, a child, so well, so clearly, so touchingly about the benefits that await people for a virtuous life, and so strikingly, so "They described the eternal torment of sinners terribly, so that it shocked and awakened sensitivity in me. It seeded and subsequently produced in me the highest thoughts."

The first strong test in the life of young Nikolai was the death of his father. He writes a letter to his mother, in which despair is humbled by deep submission to the will of God: “I endured this blow with the firmness of a true Christian... I bless you, sacred faith! In you only I find a source of consolation and quenching my grief!.. Take refuge as I have resorted to the Almighty."

The future writer received his initial education at home, “from a hired seminarian.”

In 1818-19 the future writer studied with his brother at the Poltava district school, in the summer

In 1820 he was preparing to enter the Poltava gymnasium.

In 1821, he was admitted to the newly opened Gymnasium of Higher Sciences in Nizhyn (lyceum). Education here, in accordance with the task set by Emperor Alexander I of combating European freethinking, included an extensive program of religious education. House church, common confessor, common morning and evening prayers, prayers before and after classes, the law of God twice a week, every day for half an hour before class lessons the priest reads the New Testament, daily memorization of 2-3 verses from Scripture, as well as strict discipline, such was the almost “monastic” life of its students, defined by the Charter of the gymnasium, many features of which Gogol later used when describing the Bursak way of life in “Taras Bulba” and “Viya”.

3.2 Early work

After moving to the capital, Gogol plunges into literary life. But despite being busy, there is a constant dissatisfaction with the bustle, a desire for a different, collected and sober life. In this sense, the reflections on fasting in the “Petersburg Notes of 1836” are very indicative: “Great Lent is calm and formidable. It seems that a voice can be heard: “Stop, Christian; Look back at your life." The streets are empty. There are no carriages. Contemplation is visible in the face of the passerby. I love you, time of thought and prayer. My thoughts will flow more freely, more thoughtfully... - Why is our irreplaceable time flying so quickly? Who is it? calls to himself? Great Lent, how calm, how solitary is its passage!"

If we take the moralizing side of Gogol's early work, then it has one characteristic feature: he wants to raise people to God by correcting THEIR shortcomings and social vices - that is, by external means.

In December 1828, Gogol arrived in St. Petersburg with broad (and vague) plans for noble work for the benefit of the Fatherland. Strapped for financial resources, he tries his hand as an official, actor, artist, and earns his living by giving lessons. Gogol made his debut in print twice. First as a poet: first he wrote the poem “Italy” (without signature), and then the poem “Hanz Küchelgarten”. The latter received negative reviews in magazines, after which Gogol tried to burn all available copies.

His second debut was in prose and immediately placed Gogol among the first writers in Russia. In 1831-32. The cycle of stories “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka” was published. Thanks to this success, Gogol meets V.A. Zhukovsky, P.A. Pletnev, Baron A.A. Delvig, A.S. Pushkin. He became famous at court for his stories. Thanks to Pletnev, the Heir's former teacher, in March 1831 Gogol took up the position of junior history teacher at the Patriotic Institute, which was under the jurisdiction of Emperor Alexander Feodorovna. In Moscow, Gogol meets M.P. Pogodin, the Aksakov family, I.I. Dmitriev, M.N. Zagoskin, M.S. Shchepkin, the Kireevsky brothers, O.M. Bodyansky, M.A. Maksimovich.

(Transcribed with minimal editing of spoken language)

Dear friends, today Father Mikhail and I will continue to talk about Russian literature, and our current topic is: “Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol and Orthodoxy.” Let's explain to our TV viewers why we decided to talk about Gogol today.

Since our program is broadcast on a church channel, I would like to first of all say that Nikolai Vasilyevich is probably the only one of all our classics (and within the framework of our program we are considering them) who has set himself such a high goal - literary service as a conscious service specifically to Orthodoxy . And we will try to prove this thesis during the program.

One of the researchers of Nikolai Vasilyevich’s work wrote about him (“Gogol’s Spiritual Path”): “In the moral field, Gogol was brilliantly gifted; he was destined to abruptly turn all Russian literature from aesthetics to religion, to move it along the path of Dostoevsky. All the features that characterize “great Russian literature”, which has become world literature, were outlined by Gogol: its religious and moral system, its citizenship and public spirit, its militant and practical character, prophetic pathos and messianism. With Gogol, a wide road begins, the open spaces of the world.”

In 2009, the entirety of literary consciousness celebrated a great anniversary - the 200th anniversary of the birth of our unforgettable classic. For the first time in history, a complete collection of all works and, most importantly, letters of Gogol was published. These are 17 huge volumes. And it should be noted that this publication was made possible thanks to the Church. Not a single secular publishing house took on this work. Publishing house of the Moscow Patriarchate with our blessing His Holiness Patriarch Kirill and the already remembered Metropolitan Vladimir publishes this work.

What does it mean to publish 17 volumes of Gogol? This is to stop all current projects, be sure to set aside time for this amazing work. Two people: Vladimir Alekseevich Voropaev, a professor at Moscow State University, Doctor of Philology, who heads the Gogol Commission at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Igor Alekseevich Vinogradov, who is also involved in Gogol’s work, gave us a real holiday. Why?

The fact is that you and I know Gogol from the school curriculum, maybe even from the institute curriculum, as a brilliant satirist. He is an amazingly funny writer, and his laughter is intellectual, quite subtle, and even, as a rule, it is laughter through tears. And it never occurred to anyone that entire volumes had accumulated in which Gogol made extracts from the holy fathers. Names such as Athanasius the Great, Cyril of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, John of Damascus, and so on, and so on, were close to Nikolai Vasilyevich, and he advised everyone: “Read the holy fathers; and read with notes.” The Bible of Nikolai Vasilyevich is known, also with notes, especially many of them on the letters of the Apostle Paul, which he loved very much. By the way, John Chrysostom was very fond of the letters of the Apostle Paul and interpreted them in many ways.

Nikolai Vasilyevich also wrote two amazing works that were not even included in many collected works published in Soviet times - these are “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” his author’s confession, and the work “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy,” which, although drafts, but has not lost its relevance to this day.

We know, and sometimes this cliché is still repeated, that Nikolai Vasilyevich is a very mysterious figure, around whom there are many unsolved mysteries: it seems that he starved himself to death and seemed to have gone crazy; and they almost buried him alive, and so on. But thanks to the work of respected professors, today we can objectively look at this amazing personality.

Why was this publication published both in Russia and Ukraine? Firstly, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol himself is a living example of the unity of two Slavic peoples. This publication is intended, first of all, not to separate these two peoples, but to unite them: this is our common beginning. There is evidence that Nikolai Vasilyevich himself said that both the Little Russian and the Great Russian... Two twins, that is, they are one people. He never divided them according to nationality. Moreover, we speak the same language - the language of prayer, Church Slavonic. In addition, in the middle of the 19th century there were very few translations of the Holy Fathers (which I have listed) into Russian, and Gogol read them in Church Slavonic translation.

Of course, when you begin to discover these things for yourself, then the so familiar “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” sound completely different. And we can read “The Inspector General” metaphysically, that is, look not only from the comic side - as a funny denunciation of the order, but also from the spiritual side. The same goes for “Dead Souls.” And, of course, touch on the amazing problem that Gogol great artist suffered at the end of his life: is what he writes worthy of being published? He made very high demands on himself.

Boris Zaitsev, in exile, expressed the following thought: “All great artists, all great writers have the characteristic that they begin with artistic works and end with spiritual ones.” This is in music: how Mozart’s works are in major keys, and suddenly at the end of his life they are in minor – “Requiem”. Or, for example, we know Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, who at the end of their creative path turned to spiritual themes, wrote music for all-night vigil, Divine Liturgy.

The same thing happened to Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. And the misunderstanding happened precisely because they simply did not understand. Apart from himself, these spiritual quests were not needed by the majority of the society to which he addressed. Hence the madness. We know the words of the Apostle Paul: “That which is of the Holy Spirit, soulful person doesn’t accept it because it seems crazy to him.” Of course, if we don’t understand something, it’s very easy to say: this is crazy. Although, of course, Nikolai Vasilyevich was absolutely healthy.

In general, this pattern has still not been eliminated in our lives: as soon as a person turns his face to religion, his circle of acquaintances immediately thinks that something is wrong with this person’s head. Although if you remember the famous Kyiv psychiatrist Sikorsky, who wrote a fairly large number of works before the revolution, he directly says that religious feeling is a sign of human normality. A believer is a mentally healthy person.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was always on the path to religion. He had a very pious family. Yes, at the end of his life he experienced a crisis, but this was not a sign of his madness, but of the fact that Nikolai Vasilyevich was becoming one step higher. Perhaps this is the key to unraveling his mystery.

If we start with Gogol’s first collection, “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka,” we will see that here he very skillfully, with his characteristic sparkling laughter, shows quite serious things. Firstly, he says that for him not only this world is real, but also the spiritual world. After all, when he entered literature with this collection, he was only 22 years old, which is an absolutely young age. When he writes about this, many of his peers began to doubt the existence spiritual world. The idea of ​​enlightenment, rationality... They tried to explain everything logically, and what kind of spiritual worlds there are - all these are relics of the past. No. Nikolai Vasilyevich directly says that these two worlds exist in parallel and even interact with each other. And starting with “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”, our great classic will further make this theme a general one - a direct path throughout his entire work.

The ritual and folklore side also attracts attention. How amazingly Gogol knows traditions folk culture, which, by the way, is very much lacking in our lives. We know many trends and trends in culture, art, and popular music and, as a rule, we do not know our root, folk songs, fairy tales and sayings, although this is far from a useless thing.

Another point that will later also be present in the work of Nikolai Vasilyevich is sparkling laughter as a principle in the fight against evil. You and I know that we are afraid of laughter. As Gogol himself wrote, even those who are not afraid of anything are afraid of being funny. Seeing the evil of this world and understanding it perfectly - and he had absolute hearing for evil, it was his gift, his torment and, one might even say, his cross - through laughter he defeated this evil. He transformed himself from the inside and wanted to transform his compatriots. Of course, my compatriots did not always understand this principle; sometimes they simply laughed without working on themselves.

And for the second collection “Mirgorod” the theme is apostasy, apostasy, which is characteristic of our time no less than for the second half of the 19th century century, also becomes such a dominant. What does Nikolai Vasilyevich want to say here? Firstly, he doesn’t just want to show that evil exists in this world, but for the first time he tries to show ways out of these dead-end situations. In the last program we looked at his “Old World Landowners”. Some might even say that this is kind of primitive. But with this simplicity there is amazing depth and amazing talent.

And this theme continues with his other world-class masterpiece - “Taras Bulba”. Many Christians pose the same question: does a Christian have the right to take up arms, does he have the right to kill. And the holy fathers have different opinions on this matter. Some say they have no right. For example, in Cyril of Alexandria we find that military action is not just a worthy task, but a task worthy of praise. But in what case? If a Christian defends his homeland, his family. If he defends his faith. The religious war that Nikolai Vasilyevich shows is, of course, a right-wing war. And here we can say that the truth is precisely on the side of the Cossacks, who are fighting with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth both for their homeland and for their faith: they have stepped on too many things painfully.

For example, we know the amazingly funny story “How Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich quarreled” and we know how it ends: “How boring it is to live in this world, gentlemen!” Where does this boredom come from if it’s so funny? For Gogol, fear is synonymous with boredom. And the fear of God as a religious category, and in general the fear of evil. He even writes in one of his works: “Terrible! Compatriots! The devil already walks around in this world without a mask!” We know that the devil takes on various kinds of guises: he is a flatterer, a very cunning creature, which, if he acts directly, is quite easy to recognize. He tries to enter our lives under different masks. And Gogol writes that in the middle of the 19th century he no longer needed any masks. Now he is already acting directly in this world. Gogol sees this, but those around him do not. Gogol hears this perfectly well, but those around him do not. That's why he sounds the alarm - he talks about these things, but they don't understand him.

And here we can say that when such masterpieces of his as “The Inspector General” and “Dead Souls” appear, they become that turning point, which will then lead him to a spiritual crisis. If “The Inspector General” in a metaphysical, spiritual sense is like a city of the soul, then “Dead Souls” is already a country of the soul.

Of course, over 150 years, a lot has been written about “The Inspector General,” and this is probably one of best works on theater stage. Gogol gives a lot of material to actors and directors. And even if the actor does not perform this work with great talent, it will be wonderful. If the actor is talented, like Mikhail Shchepkin, for example, then it will be both funny and doubly interesting. But what’s surprising is that Gogol is unhappy. The laughter that he caused from the audience is not the reaction that Gogol would have wanted to evoke. Many, of course, and at the suggestion of Belinsky, a famous trendsetter in literature, understand this simply as a parody of modernity and the public. By the way, Nicholas I himself watched this play and, when he came out, said: “What a play! Everyone got it, and I got it more than anyone else!” Of course, Nikolai Vasilyevich does all this on purpose. Both in order to laugh and in order to expose.

But ten years later a work will appear called “The Denouement of the Inspector General,” where Gogol will let us understand how to understand The Inspector General. There he will write: “Look at the city that is depicted in The Government Inspector.” Where will you find such a city? It's simply not on the map. This is the city of our soul. And those officials? After all, these are complete freaks. We don't have such officials. One, two, but there will be good, honest, fair ones, but here there are none.” That is, it actually has little to do with life. Then why? This has to do with our soul. Officials who rob the treasury are passions that rob the rich treasury of our soul. Gogol says that the “auditor” who awaits us behind the grave is terrible.

One interesting episode. IN late XIX centuries, “The Inspector General” was shown somewhere in the south, and there was an unusual spectator: the brethren of one monastery were sitting. When the actors came on stage and began to brilliantly play this comedy, there was no laughter in the audience. The father abbot, the steward, the cellarer, and the brethren of the monastery were sitting. Then the actor recalls that when he came to the monastery to venerate the relics, the monk who was on duty at the relics said to him on the way out: “Remember, my son, in your heart the midnight inspector and improve your spiritual city, for no one knows the day , not an hour before he comes to repay what he has done. He will not hesitate to come at an hour when we are not expecting him, and will check all our earthly affairs, and will judge everything.” Marvelous! The brethren of the monastery understood the play, without even having probably read “The Inspector General”, exactly as Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol intended it. Unfortunately, this side was hidden from our compatriots for a very long time. And today we, of course, have the right to look at this work from precisely this point of view.

It’s the same with the poem “Dead Souls”: after all, it is not conceived as a one-volume work. Moreover, all the fuss flared up around the second volume with its burning, but it turns out that according to the plan there were three volumes. In the first volume, Gogol really shows and exposes things that are not entirely unpleasant for each of us, in the second he looks for the way, and in the third volume he finds this way. That is, the author does not just give a negative, he gives a positive.

Question from a TV viewer from the Krasnodar region: “I have a question about Gogol’s thoughts on the liturgy. I didn’t read it myself, but my wife read it and really liked it. But I heard the opinion of our beloved professor about this work, who assessed it as “solid Catholicism.” How is this, in your opinion?

You're a little ahead of us: we wanted to talk about this at the end. But since the question came, we will answer.

The respected professor, of course, has the right to such a point of view. But we said that “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy” are drafts, an unfinished work. Gogol had a fairly close relationship with Catholicism: he lived abroad for quite some time, and also visited the salon of Princess Volkonskaya, who treated Catholicism with great reverence and, being an Orthodox Christian, converted to it. There is even a letter from Gogol to his mother, where he writes: “Well, Orthodox, Catholics, in principle, we have nothing to divide: we have the same faith, the same dogmas” - rather dubious things for an Orthodox person. But later Gogol himself will refuse this.

I don’t know on what grounds the respected professor made a conclusion about Catholicism specifically in “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy,” because this is the work of the already mature Gogol. And he doesn’t even address churchgoers, but those who are just finding their way to church, their path to God, and explains many things. By the way, there is a similar work by the famous spiritual writer Muravyov, actually a contemporary of Gogol, who also writes about Orthodox worship.

Therefore, I probably would not agree, but I do not pretend to absolute truth. Reflections on the Divine Liturgy is good enough to watch as a beginner. So that, perhaps, we can begin with them our understanding of the most important sacrament and the most important service of our Orthodox Church.

- Thank you, Father Mikhail, we can return to “Dead Souls.”

It turns out that the pathos of “Dead Souls” was also not clear. Gogol was applauded for The Inspector General, but he was dissatisfied because it seemed to challenge him to a spiritual struggle. After all, an amazing epigraph was taken: “There is no point in blaming the mirror if your face is crooked.” After all, the “mirror” is how Gogol reflected Russian reality. Everyone sees that this reality is gloomy, it is even funny, we need to laugh at it and correct it - and everything will be fine. This is how Belinsky and many… I won’t say thinkers understood: the thought is too weak, but more doers.

We have already seen how Gogol himself understood this. The mirror itself has spiritual meaning. For example, in Tikhon of Zadonsk we find: “What a mirror is for the children of this age, so is the Gospel for a Christian.” You and I look in the mirror several times a day: we’ll fix it here, we’ll fix it here, and only then will we go out in public. The same Gospel for a Christian: we must look there and measure our thoughts, desires, actions and actions with what Christ left us. And therefore it turns out that in many moments the face is really crooked, the mirror has nothing to do with it, the Church has nothing to do with it, there is no need to scold the clergy. And Gogol is trying to get through to this.

In “Dead Souls,” as we have already said, it shows not just a soulful city, but an entire soulful country. Nikolai Vasilyevich himself admits in the “Author's Confession” that when he portrayed these Manilovs, Sobakeviches, Korobochek and other landowners, he took on some specific passion. Of course, he resorted to hyperbole and showed it all in an exaggerated way. And he noticed this, most importantly, in himself and his friends, showing it in such a light.

Of course, Gogol draws attention to Russian reality, but first of all his general line is to turn your gaze inward, Christian. Society is made up of units; one must be healthy in order for you to be healthy. Therefore, his technique - laughter at passions and vices - also has a spiritual meaning. We must not only laugh at vices, we must defeat them, and we must start with ourselves - a thought worthy of attention.

I just remembered the work of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol “Portrait”, because this is the first work of his that I understood as not just satirical. There were moments in it that made me, as a schoolboy, notice for the first time: what about me? What changes happen to the artist, how his own vanity begins to eat him up - one can trace such a parallel.

After all, then the hero becomes a monk and gives instructions to his son that the artistic field is quite subtle and the devil is quite subtle: he tries to get into it latently, and sometimes directly. In general, the gift of speech for Gogol is the highest gift; he feels his responsibility in connection with the words of the Savior Himself: “By your words you will be condemned, by your words you will be justified.” For every idle word a person will give an answer in court.

Therefore, Gogol understood: “The Inspector General” is a huge success. Like, for example, there are such eccentric Olympic champions: he won a gold medal, but comes back dissatisfied. Why? Because I wanted to jump not seventy-five meters, but eighty meters. They gave him a medal, he is an Olympic champion, but he didn’t jump eighty meters. So it is with Gogol: he reached this height, but he was no longer worried about artistic creativity, but was worried about the spiritual side, but they did not understand it and even, one might say, moved away from it.

There was even such an episode. Nikolai Vasilyevich comes to visit his friend, sees his works on his shelf, including “The Inspector General” and “Dead Souls,” and says: “How? Are you reading them?!” He even later regretted having written them.

And this amazing struggle within Gogol, when he wants to move from artistic creativity to the path of a spiritual writer, led to the fact that he burned the second volume of Dead Souls. By the way, many researchers say that the entire second volume was not written, only part of it was written. Seeing that the first volume was already going in the wrong direction, there was no point in finishing the second.

- Question from a TV viewer: “How Orthodox point from the perspective of assessing the murder of his son by Taras Bulba?”

There can be no clear-cut questions. Gogol, like a real writer, asks these questions. What is good about real literature? Much ends up in such halftones. And we are like co-authors - and reading piece of art, we are co-authors - we must be at least at the same height as the author in order to at least understand him.

Here Gogol offers a kind of choice of what happened to the son of Taras Bulba. Unfortunately, he takes the direct path of betrayal. There is a film adaptation of “Taras Bulba”, a wonderful one, but, unfortunately, also not a completely spiritual reading. There is a moment where love arises between Andreika and the lady and even a child is born, and the child is already God’s permission, because God gives children. That is, there is a completely different meaning, which takes a little away from the essence. And according to Gogol, this is passion and direct betrayal. This is a betrayal of father, mother, family, betrayal of faith.

It was not in vain that we talked about religious war. Having deliberately taken the side of the enemy, Andrei also turns out to be an enemy for Taras. Moreover, Taras Bulba understands perfectly well that this is his son. And this tragedy of murder fell on the conscience of Taras himself for a reason, but he just takes a firm position - this is a war to the end.

- Let's continue our conversation about the works of Nikolai Vasilyevich.

This is Gogol’s spiritual torment when he realizes that, despite all his artistic heights, the spiritual meaning of his works is not entirely clear... He is working on a work that he calls “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends.”

Moreover, the publication of the book in the 19th century was a global event, it’s the same as building a nuclear power plant on the ocean today. This is a great author's creative resource. Gogol was a living classic, the leader of Russian literature in his time. At that time, such writers as Turgenev and Dostoevsky were just beginning to enter literature. They all looked up to Gogol. And suddenly it became known: the author of popular works was writing a new book. Of course, there was enormous interest.

This book is coming out. This book is being read. And this book is criticized. Moreover, not only people who were Gogol’s enemies scold him, but even his friends, essentially his comrades-in-arms, scold him. This is an epistolary genre - letters. But in his letters he reveals himself very deeply. The addressees of these letters are specific. For example, the addressee of the letter to the governor's wife is a real historical person - Smirnova-Rosset, the wife of the Kaluga governor.

Or in the chapter “About our clergy” Gogol says that, of course, there was enough “chernukha”, but he shows a positive example of our shepherds. And why should he remain silent about it?

Then there was already a call to change the constitutional system, the monarchy itself - these ideas have been fermenting since the Decembrists. For Gogol, all these changes, not blessed by the Church, not illuminated by the light of Christ, have no basis.

In this book he has an article “We must love Russia.” How can you love Russia? Only knowing its culture, history, its people. And many people who called upward then - but a lot of things went wrong - did not know either culture or history and did not want to know.

For Gogol, it was tormenting to realize that formally Orthodox Russia, that is, the reading public, Russian society does not know Orthodoxy as such. This was painful for him, which is why he writes “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy.” Why here, in Selected Places, gives these articles. By the way, the book ends with the article “Bright Sunday.”

Gogol, with all the despondency that often attacked him, with all the terrible pictures, believes not in the letter of the law, but in the grace of salvation. And we can correlate this with the “Sermon on Law and Grace” by Metropolitan Hilarion - the work with which both Russian literature and Russian theology begin.

The clergy themselves also reacted ambiguously to this book. For example, Archimandrite Fedor from the Trinity-Sergius Lavra spoke positively about this book. Saint Innocent (Borisov) is also positive. But this book was most accurately described by Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov), who was then still in the rank of archimandrite. He writes that in this book light is mixed with darkness. Gogol himself believed that for St. Ignatius, as a monk, some worldly things were incomprehensible. But here Nikolai Vasilyevich, perhaps, was really mistaken, because before becoming a monk, Saint Ignatius was present in the world, knew it very well, and was himself gifted.

Here the saint is referring to the preaching of Gogol, who in this book not only confessed certain things, but taught and instructed. But preaching is still not the job of a secular person. And Gogol instructed from above. This was, of course, not his height, but the height of the Gospel and Patrism. But this was incomprehensible to his contemporaries. Of course, you and I understand how we perceive it when someone tries to teach us: “You can teach anyone, but not me. I know everything perfectly well, I’m good,” and so on. Today this book must be read, it should be a reference book for any believer and patriot of Russia. That sharp confrontation today has become much softer, and even Gogol’s tone, which then seemed arrogant, seems to have lost a little of that sharpness.

What is bright in this book? The fact that Gogol bases his judgments on the holy fathers: this is his favorite reading. Folk writers of the XIX centuries we consider Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol. But literary historians say the opposite. People's writers There were Saints Tikhon of Zadonsk and Demetrius of Rostov. All literate Russia read them. And in quantitative terms, there was more spiritual literature than secular literature. Therefore, Gogol reads not only those ancient fathers that we mentioned at the very beginning of the program, but he also knows the works of Philaret of Moscow and Innokenty Borisov, the same Tikhon of Zadonsk, whom he loved immensely and read very often. And this is precisely the spiritual beauty of this book. Gogol comprehends both the social and everyday life of Russia from the heights of the Orthodox faith.

Unfortunately, he has a bitter phrase that has not lost its relevance today - this phrase about the Church. Gogol says that we have not introduced the Church as a source of life, as created for life, into our life today. How relevant are these words! Gogol sounds the alarm, in fact. Then Dostoevsky will do it after him. Tolstoy will try to do it, but will go in a completely different direction. The same voices were heard from the Church itself. Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov) also speaks. Feofan (Govorov) directly says that one or two more generations and there will be trouble in Russia. And indeed, we know: in 1917 there was a revolution in Russia. John of Kronstadt said: “Russia, be what Christ needs you to be.” And this sounded on the eve of his death, that is, at the beginning of the 20th century.

Therefore, this is an incomprehensible work, and perhaps still incomprehensible. It has been published and you should definitely watch it. You can discuss it, it’s not scary, but you need to know.

As for Nikolai Vasilyevich’s spiritual quest, of course, it led not only to torment, but also gave consolation. This is the only one of our writers who probably lived like a monk, without taking monastic vows of chastity, non-covetousness and obedience. The first vow is chastity. We have no evidence of any love affair between Nikolai Vasilyevich. No, we won't find it. The vow of non-covetousness is visible from his life: according to the word of the Gospel, he did not have anywhere to lay his head. He died in the apartment of his friend Count Tolstoy. We see obedience, namely obedience to the Mother of the Church. And here the attempts with Catholicism go far, far away, this is already a true Christian.

Gogol had spiritual mentors. By the way, they were also slandered. For example, Father Matthew Konstantinovsky, Rzhev archpriest. Count Tolstoy, in whose house Nikolai Vasilyevich reposed in the Lord, was a fairly pious and religious man. Once upon a time he was even the governor of Tver, where they met Gogol. Archpriest Matthew gave Gogol a lot of spiritual care, especially at the end of his life. Gogol was personally acquainted with Elder Macarius, who did not take him to the monastery when he wanted to stay in Optina Hermitage. Nevertheless, the correspondence with the elder is known. Therefore, this is not arbitrariness or some kind of free reading, but the deep roots in the Christianity of Nikolai Vasilyevich himself.

Hence, of course, his call, which he repeats after Pushkin. What should art be? What should real literature be? What kind of ministry is this? This is a prophetic ministry. How the prophets proclaimed God's truth, but they were not always listened to either. The greatest prophet Isaiah, as we say, the Old Testament evangelist (so miraculously he could transform the coming of the Messiah), they were not just reproached for something, like Gogol, but they were killed, sawed down with a wooden saw. Of course, criticism, even constructive criticism, is sometimes not accepted by society. Therefore, Nikolai Vasilyevich also suffered.

Today, the severity of this problem has been largely smoothed over, and we simply have to re-read the classics and, perhaps, from this point of view, look: how wrong was Nikolai Vasilyevich?

By the way, “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” served as both a stumbling block and a kind of “repulsion stone” for Russian literature and Russian national thought. Because Belinsky wrote his famous “Letter to Gogol” on this work. At first he writes in Russia, but there is censorship here: you can’t write much. Then he leaves for Germany, and at this time Gogol is also abroad. Imagine, two Russian writers are arguing about something abroad - who will read it? Of course, no one. And there Belinsky, of course, attacks Gogol. There is direct abuse: the critic says that Gogol’s talent has dried up, that he is not the same writer at all, he is going in the wrong direction, and in general literature must fight Orthodoxy, but here he is calling for it. Literature must fight autocracy and nationality, that is, the code of Russian civilization, and Gogol, on the contrary, defends this.

And Nikolai Vasilyevich responded to Belinsky’s letter quite harshly, but tore it up. Why is it famous? Today it was glued together, and it is possible to read it. In Soviet schools they studied Belinsky's letter to Gogol, but did not read Gogol's response. You definitely need to know this answer. Today there is such an opportunity. Nikolai Vasilyevich simply puts everything into order. But why doesn't he send this tough response? Belinsky is abroad for a reason, he is receiving treatment. Gogol acts like a real Christian. For Belinsky, who suffers from consumption, any moral overexcitement is fraught with death. Of course, such a letter from Gogol would have aroused the “furious Vissarion”. And Nikolai Vasilyevich does not send this letter, but sends a soft, conciliatory one: “You are right, and I am right. And somewhere I’m wrong, and you have some sides...” That is, we see that even in everyday life that high standard was achieved by Nikolai Vasilyevich.

I think TV viewers will agree that it is very important to talk about this and consider Gogol’s literary works from this angle.

We can say a few words about another key school curriculum work. Unfortunately, not everyone can handle reading “Taras Bulba,” but “The Overcoat,” at least as I remember, everyone can handle “The Overcoat.” It’s probably worth paying at least a little attention to this.

- “The Overcoat” is part of the “Petersburg Tales” cycle. This name was not given by Gogol himself (like “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”, “Mirgorod”), but is used to combine works into a cycle. What is very important here is what we constantly talk about in our programs: “Do not look for treasures on earth, where moth and rust and thieves break in. Look for your treasures in heaven, where there is neither thief nor rust. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” This is the leitmotif of this work.

With the light hand of Belinsky, then Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, this work is still studied in school as history “ little man» Bashmachkina, victims of the Nikolaev regime. But Akakiy Akakievich is first and foremost a victim of his own worthlessness. And it will be like this under any regime. The regime has nothing to do with it. It is very important to see in this work that for Bashmachkin himself there is no spiritual sky, all his treasures are here, it is not in vain that he devotes so much time to the overcoat. There is a wonderful phrase from Gogol: “The eternal idea of ​​the future overcoat.” Not “eternal life”, not “future life”, but “the eternal idea of ​​a future overcoat”. Each of us has such an “eternal idea”: for some it’s a car, for others it’s a house, or some other passion.

When Akaki Akakievich went to be with the Lord, a rumor spread throughout St. Petersburg about a ghost similar to Akaki Akakievich, who was tearing off the greatcoats of passers-by. This “eternal idea of ​​a future overcoat” haunts him in his future life. And where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And even there, in the spiritual sky, he directs his gaze here - this is hell.

Another important postulate is that Gogol for the first time draws attention to the “little man” and makes us even love such worthlessness. Can you really love such worthlessness? “It’s possible,” says Gogol. He directly writes that you can love your Motherland only by having compassion for it. And this private misfortune of Akaki Akakievich is one of the painful points of our Motherland. And by having compassion for her, you will love your neighbor, and by loving your brother, you will love God. This is a direct commandment of Christ Himself. As the Apostle John the Theologian writes in his epistle: “We have a commandment from Him - to love God through our neighbor.”

Most likely, Dostoevsky said famous phrase: “We all came out of Gogol’s “The Overcoat”.” And he definitely came out of “The Overcoat” because he has compassion for his heroes and loves them. Even our First Hierarch, Bishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky), during his pastoral theology lessons, advised students of theological schools to read Dostoevsky’s works as works of love. Therefore, it seems to me useful to know about this today.

- In the remaining time, there is an opportunity to say a wish to our viewers within the framework of today’s topic.

I would like to wish all of us, dear TV viewers, moral fortitude, because without distinguishing good from evil, without the spiritual foundations of our lives, there will be no transformation of Russia for which we so strive today. They didn’t hear Gogol’s call, just as they didn’t listen to Ilyin, Aksakov, Kireevsky, but they listened to the call of completely different people, which led to turmoil, blood, and revolution. And I would like that after 150 years, the call of Nikolai Vasilyevich, like many other classics, would still be heard.

What is this call? This is a call to love our Motherland, to selflessly serve our Fatherland. To love our faith, to serve the Mother Church and, of course, to improve the city of our own soul in order to be a healthy unit of this society.

Presenter Mikhail Prokhodtsev
Recorded by Ksenia Sosnovskaya

The greatest writer Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, being a mystic and poet of Russian life, a realist and satirist, was endowed with the gift of a religious prophet.

“Gogol,” according to Archpriest V. Zenkovsky, “is the first prophet of a return to an integral religious culture, a prophet of Orthodox culture... he feels that the main untruth of modern times is its departure from the Church, and he sees the main path in a return to the Church and the restructuring of the entire life in her spirit."

N.V. Gogol loved his people and saw that they “hear God’s hand stronger than others.” He personally sees the disorder of Gogol’s contemporary society in the fact that “We still have not introduced the Church, created for life, into our lives.” According to the recollections of colleagues, religiosity and a penchant for monastic life were noticeable in Gogol “from childhood.” When the writer was subsequently ready to “replace his secular life with a monastery,” he only returned to his original mood and state.

The concept of God sank into Gogol’s soul already from early years. In a letter to his mother in 1833, he recalled:

“I asked you to tell me about the Last Judgment, and you, a child, told me so well, so clearly, so touchingly about the benefits that await people for a virtuous life, and so strikingly, so fearfully described the eternal torment of sinners that it shocked me and awakened sensitivity in me. This sown and subsequently produced in me the highest thoughts.”

The first strong test in the life of young Nikolai was the death of his father. He writes a letter to his mother in which despair is humbled by deep submission to the will of God:

“I endured this blow with the firmness of a true Christian... I bless you, sacred faith! In you only I find a source of consolation and quenching of my sorrow!.. Take refuge, as I have resorted, to the Almighty.”

The reflections on fasting in “Petersburg Notes, 1836” are very revealing:

“The Great Lent is calm and formidable. A voice seems to be heard: “Stop, Christian; look back at your life.” The streets are empty. There are no carriages. The passerby's face shows reflection. I love you, time for thoughts and prayers. My thoughts will flow more freely, more thoughtfully... - Why is our irreplaceable time flying so quickly? Who is calling him? Great Lent, what a calm, solitary passage it is!”

Gogol's early work

Gogol's early work, if you look at it from a spiritual point of view, opens up from a side unexpected for ordinary perception. It is not only a collection of funny stories in the folk spirit, but also an extensive religious teaching, in which there is a struggle between good and evil, and good invariably wins, and sinners are punished (the stories “The Night Before Christmas”, “Viy”, “Sorochinskaya Fair”, etc. ). The same struggle, but in a more refined form, sometimes with invisible evil, is also presented in St. Petersburg stories; it appears as a direct defense of Orthodoxy in Taras Bulba.

According to the stories of Nezhin’s fellow students, Gogol was still in school years I could never pass by a beggar without giving him something, and if I had nothing to give, I always said: “Sorry.” Once he even happened to be in debt to a beggar woman. To her words: “Give it for Christ’s sake,” he replied: “Count after me.” And the next time, when she turned to him with the same request, he gave her double, adding: “Here is my duty.”

A characteristic feature is observed in Gogol's early work. He wants to lead people to God by correcting their shortcomings and social vices - that is, by external means.

Second half of life

The second half of the writer’s life and work is characterized by his focus on eradicating shortcomings in himself.

“It is impossible to talk and write about the highest feelings and movements of a person from the imagination; you need to contain at least a small grain of this within yourself - in a word, you need to become the best” (N.V. Gogol, “Author’s Confession”)

It was with the Gospel that Gogol tested all his emotional movements. In his papers there was a note on a separate sheet:

“When someone called us a hypocrite, we would be deeply offended, because everyone abhors this low vice; However, reading in the first verses of the 7th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, does not the conscience reproach each of us that we are exactly the hypocrite to whom the Savior calls: O hypocrite, first remove the logs from your mind. What a rush to condemnation...”

Gogol gradually developed ascetic aspirations. In April 1840, he wrote: “I am now more suited for a monastery than for a secular life.” G. P. Galagan, who lived with Nikolai Vasilyevich in Rome, recalled:

“Gogol seemed to me very pious even then. Once all the Russians gathered in the Russian church for an all-night vigil. I saw that Gogol entered, but then I lost sight of him. Before the end of the service, I went out into the vestibule and there, in the twilight, I noticed Gogol standing in the corner... on his knees with his head bowed. During certain prayers he bowed.”

Gogol read a lot of books of spiritual content, mainly patristic literature: the works of the holy fathers, the works of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, St. Demetrius of Rostov, Bishop Innocent (Borisov), “Philokalia”. He studied the rites of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great in Greek.

The result of this spiritual work was a manuscript of church songs and canons he copied from the service Menyas. Gogol made these extracts not only for spiritual self-education, but also for his intended literary purposes. Gogol wrote: “He lived internally, as if in a monastery, and in addition to that, he did not miss almost a single mass in our church.”

Creations

In “The Author's Confession,” Gogol wrote the following about this period of his life: “I left everything modern for a while, I turned my attention to learning those eternal laws by which man and humanity in general move. Books by legislators, spiritualists and observers of human nature became my reading. Everything that expressed knowledge of people and the human soul, from the confession of a secular person to the confession of an anchorite and a hermit, occupied me, and on this road, insensitively, almost without knowing how, I came to Christ, seeing that in Him the key to the soul person." “The Church alone is able to resolve all our knots, perplexities and questions; there is a reconciler of everything within the earth itself, which is not yet visible to everyone - our Church.”

The messages of the Holy Apostle Paul not only influenced Gogol’s Christian worldview, but were also directly reflected in his work. In the Bible that belonged to Gogol, the largest number of notes and entries refer to the apostolic epistles of Paul. The concept of “inner man” becomes central in Gogol’s work of the 1840s. This expression goes back to the words of the holy Apostle Paul: “... but even if our outer man decays, yet our inner man is renewed all the days” (2 Cor. 4:16). In his Bible, Gogol wrote against this verse: “Our outer man smolders, but the inner one is renewed"

Gogol's concern about the fate of society, removed from the Church, pushes him to work on a book that reveals the inner, hidden meaning of the Divine Liturgy and has as its goal to bring secular society closer to the Church.

"Reflections on the Divine Liturgy"

At the beginning of 1845, in Paris, Gogol began working on the book “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy,” which remained unfinished and was published after his death. The purpose of this spiritual and educational work, as Gogol himself defined it, is “to show in what completeness and inner deep connection our Liturgy is performed, to young men and people who are still beginning, who are still little familiar with its meaning.”

In working on the book, Gogol used works on liturgics by ancient and modern authors, but all of them served him only as aids. The book also embodies Gogol’s personal experience, his desire to comprehend the liturgical word.

“For anyone who just wants to move forward and become better,” he wrote in the “Conclusion,” “it is necessary to attend the Divine Liturgy as often as possible and listen attentively: it insensitively builds and creates a person. And if society has not yet completely disintegrated, if people do not breathe complete, irreconcilable hatred among themselves, then the hidden reason for this is the Divine Liturgy, reminding a person of holy, heavenly love for his brother.”

“Reflections on the Divine Liturgy” was first published in St. Petersburg in 1857 in a small format, as Gogol wanted, but his second wish was not fulfilled - to publish it without the name of the author.

Gogol expressed his inner spiritual feelings in reflections: “The Rule of Living in the World,” “Bright Sunday,” “The Christian Moves Forward,” “A Few Words about Our Church and the Clergy.”

In the last decade of his life, he little appreciated his previous works, revising them through the eyes of a Christian. In the preface to “Selected places from correspondence with friends” Gogol says that with his new book he wanted to atone for the uselessness of everything he had written so far. These words caused a lot of criticism and prompted many to think that Gogol was renouncing his previous works. Meanwhile, it is quite obvious that he speaks about the uselessness of his writings in a religious, spiritual sense, for, as Gogol further writes, in his letters, according to the recognition of those to whom they were written, there is more necessary for a person than in his writings.

Nikolai Vasilyevich was convinced of the special mission of Russia, which, according to him, feels God’s hand on everything that comes true in it, and senses the approach of another kingdom. This special mission of Russia was associated with Orthodoxy as the most true, undistorted Christianity.

In his suicide note, literally addressed to all of us, Nikolai Vasilyevich bequeathed:

“Be not dead souls, but living souls. There is no other door except that indicated by Jesus Christ, and everyone who approaches otherwise is a thief (thief, swindler) and a robber.”

Alexander A. Sokolovsky