L. MUELLER

University of Tübingen, Germany

THE IMAGE OF CHRIST IN DOSTOEVSKY'S NOVEL "The IDIOT"

For “Crime and Punishment” by F. M. Dostoevsky, the image of Christ had great importance. But, in general, he was given relatively little space in the novel. Only one character is filled with the spirit of Christ and therefore is involved in his healing, saving and life-creating acts, awakening from death to “living life” - Sonya. The situation is different in the next novel, “The Idiot,” written in a relatively short period of time, from December 1866 to January 1869, when Dostoevsky was in an extremely difficult financial situation, experiencing an acute shortage of money and constrained by the arduous deadlines for writing the novel.

In this work, the hero of the title, the young Prince Myshkin, whom many consider an “idiot,” is closely associated with the image of Christ. Dostoevsky himself repeatedly emphasized this closeness. In a letter dated January 1, 1868, in the midst of work on the first part of the novel, he writes: “The idea of ​​the novel is my old and favorite one, but so difficult that I did not dare take on it for a long time, and if I have taken it up now, it is decisively because that he was in an almost desperate situation. The main idea of ​​the novel is to portray positively wonderful person. There is nothing more difficult in the world than this, especially now.<...>The beautiful is an ideal, and the ideal... is still far from being developed."1

What does Dostoevsky mean when he says that the ideal of beauty has not yet been developed? He probably means the following: there are as yet no clearly formulated, justified and generally accepted “tables of values.” People still argue about what is good and what is evil - humility or pride, love for one's neighbor or "reasonable selfishness", self-sacrifice or self-affirmation. But one value criterion exists for Dostoevsky: the image of Christ. He is the embodiment of "positive" for the writer.

© Muller L., 1998

1 Dostoevsky F. M. Complete collection works: In 30 volumes. T. 28. Book. 2. L., 1973. P. 251.

or a “perfectly” wonderful person. Having conceived of embodying a “positively beautiful person,” Dostoevsky had to take Christ as a model. That's what he does.

All blessings are embodied in Prince Myshkin sermon on the mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are the meek; blessed are the merciful; blessed are the pure in heart; blessed are the peacemakers.” And as if the words of the Apostle Paul about love were spoken about him: “Love is long-suffering, is kind, love does not envy, love does not boast, is not proud, does not act rudely, does not seek its own, is not irritated, does not think evil, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:4-7).

Another feature that unites Prince Myshkin in close ties with Jesus is his love for children. Myshkin could also have said: “...allow the children to come to Me, and do not hinder them; for to such is the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14).

All this brings him so close to Christ that many were imbued with the conviction: Dostoevsky really wanted to recreate the image of Christ, Christ in the 19th century,

in the era of capitalism, in modern big city, and wanted to show that this new Christ just as doomed to failure in the self-called Christian society of the 19th century as the first one, 1800 years ago, in the state of the Roman emperor and the Jewish high priests. Those who understand the novel in this way can refer to Dostoevsky's entry in the outline for The Idiot, which is repeated three times: “The Prince is Christ.” But this does not mean at all that Dostoevsky equated Myshkin with Christ. After all, he himself said in the letter quoted above: “There is only one positive thing in the world. beautiful face- Christ.. "2

Prince Myshkin is a follower of Christ, he radiates his spirit, he reveres, he loves Christ, he believes in him, but this is not a new, not newly revealed Christ. He differs from the Christ of the gospels, as well as from the image of him developed by Dostoevsky, in character, preaching and mode of action. “There can be nothing more courageous and more perfect” except Christ, Dostoevsky wrote to Mrs. Fonvizina after his release from hard labor. One can name anything except these two qualities as positive traits of Prince Myshkin. The prince lacks courage not only in the sexual sense: he has no will to self-affirmation, determination

2 Ibid. 376

where it is necessary (namely: which of the two women he loves and who love him does he want to marry); because of this inability to make a choice, he incurs grave guilt towards these women, grave guilt for their death. His end in idiocy is not selfless innocence, but the consequence of irresponsible interference in events and intrigues that he simply cannot resolve. One of his interlocutors was right when he noticed to the prince that he did not act like Christ. Christ forgave the woman taken in adultery, but he did not at all admit that she was right and, naturally, did not offer her his hand and heart. Christ does not have this unfortunate substitution and confusion of condescending, compassionate, all-forgiving love with carnal attraction, which leads to the death of Myshkin and both of the women he loved. Myshkin is in many respects a like-minded person, a disciple, a follower of Christ, but in his human weakness, in its inability to protect itself from the snares of guilt and sin, its ending in an incurable mental illness, of which he himself is guilty, he is infinitely far from the ideal of the “positively beautiful person” embodied in Christ.

Jesus and the "great sinner"

If in “Crime and Punishment” Raskolnikov finds his way to Christ through Sonya, then in “The Idiot” this happens with almost all the characters in the novel whom Prince Myshkin meets in the course of the action, and above all with the main character, Nastasya Filippovna, suffering heavily under the burden of her past. Seduced in her youth by a rich, enterprising, unscrupulous landowner, for many years in the position of a kept woman, and then abandoned to the mercy of fate by a satiated seducer, she feels like a sinful creature, rejected, despicable and unworthy of any respect. Saving love comes from the prince, he proposes to her and says: “...I will consider that you, and not I, will honor me. I am nothing, and you suffered and came out of such hell clean, and that’s a lot.”3 Nastasya Filippovna does not accept the prince’s proposal, but in parting she addresses him with the following words: “Farewell, prince, I saw a man for the first time!” (148).

3 Dostoevsky F. M. Idiot // Complete. collection cit.: In 30 vols. T. 8. L., 1973. P. 138. The following text is quoted from this edition with pages indicated in brackets.

Since Prince Myshkin, following Christ, carries within himself the image of someone who was a man in the full sense of the word, then the prince, an exceptionally human being, is the first whom Nastasya Filippovna met in her long-suffering life. It is obvious that not without his participation she acquires a strong spiritual connection with the image of Christ. In one of her passionate letters to her beloved and hated “rival” Aglaya, also beloved by Myshkin, she describes a certain vision of Christ who appeared to her and imagines how she would depict Him in a painting:

Painters paint Christ all according to the Gospel legends; I would have written differently: I would have depicted him alone, but sometimes his students left him alone. I would leave only one small child with him. The child was playing next to him; maybe I told him something in my children's language, Christ listened to him, but now became thoughtful; his hand involuntarily, forgetfully remained on the child’s bright head. He looks into the distance, into the horizon; a thought as great as the whole world rests in his gaze; sad face. The child fell silent, leaned his elbows on his knees and, resting his cheek with his hand, raised his head and looked at him thoughtfully, as children sometimes think. The sun is setting. (379-380).

Why does Nastasya Filippovna tell in her letter to Aglaya about this image of Christ that she saw? How does she see Him? She is touched by the love of Christ for children and children for Christ and, undoubtedly, thinks about the prince, who has a special inner connection with children. But perhaps she sees in the child sitting at the feet of Christ the image of a prince, who, as is constantly emphasized, himself remained a child in both a positive and negative sense, in the sense of the failed formation of an adult, the formation of a true man . For despite all the closeness of the prince to Christ, differences remain between them, entailing fatal, catastrophic consequences for Nastasya Filippovna. The healing, saving love of Jesus saved Mary Magdalene (Luke 8:2; John 19:25; 20:1-18), but the prince’s love, which fluctuates between deep compassion and powerless eroticism, destroys Nastasya Filippovna (at least her earthly existence).

What distances does Christ peer into in Nastasya Filippovna’s vision and what is His thought, “great as the whole world”? Dostoevsky probably means what he at the end of his life, in Pushkin’s speech on June 8, 1880, called the universal destiny of Christ: “... the final word of great, general harmony, fraternal final agreement of all

tribes according to Christ’s gospel law!”4 And Christ’s gaze is sad, because he knows that to fulfill this task he needs to go through suffering and death.

In addition to Nastasya Filippovna, two more characters in the novel are closely connected in their lives and thinking with the image of Christ: Rogozhin and Ippolit.

Rogozhin emerges as something of a rival to the prince. He loves Nastasya Filippovna not with compassionate love to the point of self-sacrifice, like the prince, but with sensual love, where, as he himself says, there is no place for any compassion at all, but only carnal lust and thirst for possession; and therefore, having finally taken possession of her, he kills her so that it does not fall to another. Out of jealousy, he is ready to kill his brother-in-law, Myshkin, just so as not to lose his beloved.

A completely different figure is Hippolytus. His role in the novel's action, full of high drama, is small, but in terms of the ideological content of the novel it is very significant. “Ippolit was a very young man, about seventeen, maybe eighteen, with an intelligent, but constantly irritated expression on his face, on which illness had left terrible marks” (215). He “had consumption in a very severe degree, it seemed that he had no more than two or three weeks to live” (215). Ippolit represents the radical enlightenment that dominated the spiritual life of Russia in the 60s of the last century. Due to a fatal illness, which at the end of the novel destroys him, he finds himself in a life situation where worldview problems become extremely acute for him.

A painting that kills faith

For both Rogozhin and Ippolit, the attitude towards Christ is largely determined by Hans Holbein the Younger’s painting “The Dead Christ”. Dostoevsky saw this picture shortly before starting work on The Idiot, in August 1867 in Basel. Dostoevsky's wife, Anna Grigorievna, describes in her memoirs the stunning impression that this picture made on Dostoevsky5. For a long time he could not tear himself away from her; he stood by the painting as if chained. Anna Grigorievna at that moment was very afraid that her husband would have an epileptic seizure. But, having come to his senses, before leaving the museum, Dostoevsky returned again

4 Dostoevsky F. M. Complete. collection cit.: In 30 volumes. T. 26. L., 1973. P. 148.

5 Dostoevskaya A.G. Memoirs. M., 1981. S. 174-175.

to Holbein's canvas. In the novel, Prince Myshkin, when he sees a copy of this painting in Rogozhin’s house, says that it could also cause someone else to lose their faith, to which Rogozhin replies: “Even that will be lost.” (182).

From further action it becomes clear that Rogozhin actually lost faith, apparently under direct impact this picture. The same thing happens with Hippolytus. He visits Rogozhin, who shows him a painting by Holbein. Hippolytus stands in front of her for almost five minutes. The picture produces in him “some strange uneasiness.”

In the lengthy “Explanation” that Hippolytus writes shortly before his death (mainly to “explain” why he feels that he has the right to end his suffering by suicide), he describes the stunning impression of this picture and reflects on its meaning:

This painting depicts Christ, just taken down from the cross.<...>.this is the complete corpse of a man who endured endless torment even before the cross, wounds, torture, beating from the guards, beating from the people when he carried the cross and fell under the cross, and, finally, the torment of the cross for six hours. True, this is the face of a man who has just been taken down from the cross, that is, it has retained a lot of living, warm things; nothing has yet had time to ossify, so that suffering is even visible on the face of the deceased, as if he is still feeling it. but the face is not spared at all; there is one nature here, and truly this is what a human corpse should be, no matter who he is, after such torment. (338 -339).

It is here that the most extensive theological discussion of the novel is presented. It is characteristic that Dostoevsky puts it into the mouth of an unbelieving intellectual, just as he later had the atheists Kirillov in “The Possessed” and Ivan Karamazov in “The Brothers Karamazov” more passionately than anyone else indulge in thoughts on theological topics. Just like these two heroes of later novels, so the unfortunate Hippolytus from The Idiot recognizes the highest flowering in Jesus Christ

humanity. Hippolytus even believes in the New Testament stories of miracles, believes that Jesus “conquered nature during his lifetime,” he especially emphasizes the resurrection of the dead, and quotes the words (as Ivan later did in “The Grand Inquisitor”) “Talifah kumi,” spoken by Jesus over his dead daughter Jairus, and the words quoted in Crime and Punishment: “Lazarus, come out.” Hippolytus is convinced that Christ was “a great and priceless being - a being who alone was worth

of all nature and all its laws, of the whole earth, which was created, perhaps, solely for the appearance of this being!" (339).

The purpose of cosmogonic and historical development peace and humanity is the realization of the highest religious and ethical values ​​that we contemplate and experience in the image of Christ. But the fact that this manifestation of the Divine on earth was then mercilessly trampled by nature is a sign and symbol of the fact that the realization of values ​​is not precisely the goal of creation, that creation is devoid of moral meaning, and this means that it is not a “creation” at all ", and damned chaos. The Crucifixion of Christ is not an expression of the Lord’s love for Hippolytus, but only confirms the absurdity of the world. If the so-called creation is only such a “damned chaos,” then doing good, which a person faces as a categorical imperative, which seems to a person as the fulfillment of the meaning of his life, is completely meaningless, and the threads connecting a person with the earth are cut off, and there is no reasonable argument (except perhaps the instinctive, irrational will to live) cannot prevent Hippolytus from putting an end to his suffering by suicide.

But is Hippolytus truly a completely unbelieving person, or does his consistent atheism place him on the threshold of faith? After all, before Holbein’s painting, the question remains open: did Holbein want to say with his painting exactly what Hippolytus saw in it, and if he wanted to say this, then is he right: is what “nature” did to Christ the last word about it, or is there still something left called “resurrection”? It is precisely the resurrection, or at least the belief in the resurrection of the disciples of Jesus that Hippolytus alludes to in his “Explanation”: “how could they believe, looking at such a corpse, that this martyr would rise again?” (339). But we know, and Hippolytus knows, of course, too, that after Easter the apostles believed in the resurrection. Hippolytus knows about the faith of the Christian world: what “nature” did to Christ was not the last word about him.

Dog as a symbol of Christ

One strange dream of Hippolytus, which he himself cannot really understand, shows that in his subconscious lives, if not confidence, not faith, then, in any case, a need,

a desire, a hope, that a power greater than the terrible power of “nature” is possible.

Nature appears to him in a dream in the form of a terrible animal, some kind of monster:

It looked like a scorpion, but not a scorpion, but nastier and much more terrible, and, it seems,

precisely because there are no such animals in nature, and that it appeared to me on purpose, and that

in this very thing there seems to be some kind of secret (323).

The beast rushes around Hippolytus's bedroom, trying to prick him with its poisonous sting. Mother Hippolyta enters, she wants to grab the reptile, but in vain. She calls

dog. Norma - “a huge thorn, black and shaggy” - bursts into the room, but stands rooted to the spot in front of the reptile. Hippolytus writes:

Animals cannot feel mystical fear. but at that moment it seemed to me that in Norma’s fear there was something very unusual, as if it was also almost mystical, and that she, therefore, also had a presentiment, like me, that there was something fatal in the beast and what something secret (324).

The animals stand against each other, ready for mortal combat. Norma trembles all over, then rushes at the monster; its scaly body crunches against her teeth.

Suddenly Norma squealed pitifully: the reptile had managed to sting her tongue; with a squeal and howl, she opened her mouth in pain, and I saw that the chewed reptile was still moving across her mouth, releasing a lot of white juice from its half-crushed body onto her tongue. (324).

And at this moment Hippolytus awakens. It remains unclear to him whether the dog died from the bites or not. Having read the story about this dream in his “Explanation”, he was almost ashamed, believing that it was unnecessary - “a stupid episode.” But it is absolutely clear that Dostoevsky himself did not at all consider this dream a “stupid episode.” Like all dreams in Dostoevsky's novels, it is fulfilled deep meaning. Hippolytus, who in reality sees Christ defeated by death, feels in his subconscious, which manifests itself in a dream, that Christ has conquered death. Because the disgusting reptile that threatened him in his sleep is probably still the dark power of death; Turneuf Norma, who, despite the “mystical fear” inspired in her by a terrible animal, enters into a life-and-death struggle, kills the reptile, but from him, before he dies, receives a mortal wound, can be understood as a symbol of that who in a mortal duel “trampled death with death”,

as it says in the Easter hymn Orthodox Church. In Hippolytus’s dream there is a hint of the words with which God addresses the serpent: “it (i.e., the seed of the woman - L.M.) will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel” (Gen. 3) . Luther's verses are in the same spirit (based on the Latin sequence of the 11th century):

It was a strange war

when life fought with death;

there death is defeated by life,

life swallowed death there.

The Scriptures have declared this,

how one death swallowed another.

Did Norma die from the last reptile bite? Did Christ emerge victorious in his duel with death? Hippolytus's dream ends before the answer to these questions could follow, for Hippolytus, even in his subconscious, does not know this. He only knows that Christ was such a being, “who alone was worth all nature and all its laws” and that he “conquered nature during his life.” (339). That He conquered nature and its laws also in death - this is what Hippolytus can only hope for, or, in best case scenario, guess about it.

Dostoevsky seems to attribute another premonition to him, introducing into the “Explanation” the words that when the disciples dispersed “in the most terrible fear” on the day of Jesus’ death, they still carried away “each of them with an enormous thought that could never be plucked from them." Ippolit and Dostoevsky do not say what this idea is. Were these thoughts about secret sense this death, say, the conviction that Jesus had to suffer death not as a punishment for his own guilt, which would be consistent with the theological doctrine in force at that time in Judaism? But if not for your own, then for someone else’s fault? Or is this a premonition, also indicated in Nastasya Filippovna’s vision: that

To fulfill his earthly mission, Christ had to go through suffering and death.

What matters for the interpretation of Holbein's dead Christ in The Idiot is the fact that Holbein is a Western painter. The 16th century - the era of the Renaissance, humanism, Reformation - was for Dostoevsky the beginning of the New Time, the birth of the Enlightenment. In the West, by the time of Holbein, the belief had already formed, according to Dostoevsky,

that Christ died. And just as a copy of Holbein’s painting ended up in Rogozhin’s house, so a copy of Western atheism came to Russia along with European Enlightenment XVIII and XIX centuries. But even before the onset of the 16th century, the face of Christ was distorted and darkened by medieval Catholicism, when it set out to satisfy the spiritual hunger of humanity in a different way than Christ wanted - not by calling into the kingdom of freedom, born of love, but by violence and building fires, taking possession of the sword of Caesar, dominion over the world.

In The Idiot, Prince Myshkin expresses thoughts that ten years later Dostoevsky would develop in detail in The Brothers Karamazov in the confession of the Grand Inquisitor. And just as in Pushkin’s speech, delivered a few months before his death, here too he contrasts “the Russian God and the Russian Christ” with the rationalistic West.

What did Dostoevsky want to say with these words that hurt us so much? Are “Russian God and Russian Christ” new national deities that belong exclusively to the Russian people and form their basis? national identity? No, just the opposite! This is the universal God and the only Christ, who embraces all humanity with his love, in whom and through whom there will be “the renewal of all humanity and its resurrection” (453). This Christ can be called “Russian” only in the sense that his face was preserved by the Russian people (according to Dostoevsky) in its original purity. Prince Myshkin expresses this opinion, often repeated by Dostoevsky on his own behalf, in a conversation with Rogozhin. He tells how one day a simple Russian woman, delighted at the first smile of her child, turned to him with the following words:

“But,” he says, “just as there is a mother’s joy when she notices the first smile from her baby, the same exact joy happens to God every time he sees from heaven that a sinner is before him with all his heart in prayer.” becomes." The woman told me this, almost in these same words, and such a deep, such a subtle and truly religious thought, such a thought in which the whole essence of Christianity was expressed at once, that is, the whole concept of God as ours. my own father and about the joy of God on man, as a father on his own child, - main idea Christ's! Simple woman! True, mother. (183-184).

Myshkin adds that the true religious feeling that gives rise to such a state of soul “is clearest and most likely to

Russian heart. you will notice" (184). But that at the same time there is a lot of darkness hidden in the Russian heart and a lot of sickness in the body of the Russian people, Dostoevsky knew too well. With pain and convincingly, he revealed this in his works, but most impressively in the one that followed “The Idiot.” novel "Demons".

“Après moi le déluge!”

1.3. The revolt of Hippolytus.

Ippolit Terentyev's rebellion, which found expression in his confession and intention to kill himself, is polemically directed against the ideas of Prince Myshkin and Dostoevsky himself. According to Myshkin, compassion, which is the main and perhaps the only “law of existence” of all humanity and “single goodness” can lead to the moral revival of people and, in the future, to social harmony.

Hippolytus has his own view on this: “individual good” and even the organization of “public alms” do not solve the issue of personal freedom.

Let us consider the motives that led Hippolytus to the “rebellion,” the highest manifestation of which was supposed to be suicide. In our opinion, there are four of them.

The first motive, it is only outlined in “The Idiot”, and will continue in “Demons”, is rebellion for the sake of happiness. Hippolytus says that he would like to live for the happiness of all people and for the “proclamation of the truth”, that only a quarter of an hour would be enough for him to speak and convince everyone. He does not deny “individual good,” but if for Myshkin it is a means of organizing, changing and reviving society, then for Ippolit this measure does not solve the main issue - about the freedom and well-being of mankind. He blames people for their poverty: if they put up with this situation, then they themselves are to blame, they were defeated by “blind nature.” He is firmly convinced that not everyone is capable of rebellion. This is only for strong people.

This gives rise to the second motive for rebellion and suicide as its manifestation - to declare one’s will to protest. Only a select few are capable of such an expression of will. strong personalities. Having come to the idea that it is he, Ippolit Terentyev, who can do this, he “forgets” the original goal (the happiness of people and his own) and sees the acquisition of personal freedom in the very expression of will. Will and self-will become both a means and a goal. “Oh, rest assured that Columbus was happy not when he discovered America, but when he discovered it... The point is in life, in one life - in its discovery, continuous and eternal, and not in the discovery at all!” (VIII; 327). For Hippolyte, the results that his actions can lead to are no longer important; the process of action and protest itself is important to him; it is important to prove that he can, that he has the will to do it.

Since the means (expression of will) also becomes the goal, it no longer matters what to do or in what to show will. But Hippolytus is limited in time (the doctors “gave” him a few weeks) and he decides that: “suicide is the only thing that I can still manage to start and finish according to my own will” (VIII; 344).

The third motive for rebellion is disgust at the very idea of ​​gaining freedom through expression of will, which takes on ugly forms. In a nightmare, life and all the surrounding nature appear to Hippolytus in the form of a disgusting insect, from which it is difficult to hide. Everything around is pure “mutual devouring.” Hippolyte concludes: if life is so disgusting, then life is not worth living. This is not only a rebellion, but also a surrender to life. These beliefs of Hippolyte become even more solid after he saw Hans Holbein’s painting “Christ in the Tomb” in Rogozhin’s house. “When you look at this corpse of an exhausted man, one special and curious question arises: if such a corpse (and it certainly should have been exactly like that) was seen by all his disciples, his main future apostles, saw the women who walked behind him and stood at the cross, everyone who believed in him and adored him, then how could they believe, looking at such a corpse, that this martyr would rise again?.. When looking at this picture, nature seems to be in the form of some huge, inexorable, dumb beast... ”, which swallowed “dumbly and insensitively a great and priceless creature, which alone was worth all of nature and all its laws” (VIII, 339).

This means that there are laws of nature that are stronger than God, who allows such mockery of his best creatures - people.

Hippolytus asks the question: how to become stronger than these laws, how to overcome the fear of them and of their highest manifestation - death? And he comes to the idea that suicide is the very means that can overcome the fear of death and thereby get out of the power of blind nature and circumstances. The idea of ​​suicide, according to Dostoevsky, is a logical consequence of atheism - the denial of God and immortality. The Bible repeatedly says that “the beginning of wisdom, morality and obedience to the law is the fear of God. We are talking here not about the simple emotion of fear, but about the incommensurability of two such quantities as God and man, and also about the fact that the latter is obliged to recognize the unconditional authority of God and His right to undivided power over himself.” AND we're talking about not at all about the fear of afterlife, hellish torment.

Hippolytus does not take into account the most important and fundamental idea of ​​Christianity - the body is only a vessel for the immortal soul, the basis and purpose of human existence on earth - love and faith. “The covenant that Christ left to people is a covenant of selfless love. There is neither painful humiliation nor exaltation in it: “A new commandment I give to you, love one another, as I have loved you” (John XIII, 34).” But in Hippolyte’s heart there is no faith, no love, and the only hope is in the revolver. That is why he suffers and suffers. But suffering and torment should lead a person to repentance and humility. In the case of Hippolytus, his confession-self-execution is not repentance because Hippolytus still remains closed in his own pride (arrogance). He is not able to ask for forgiveness, and, therefore, cannot forgive others, cannot sincerely repent.

Hippolyte's rebellion and his capitulation to life are interpreted by him as something even more necessary, when the very idea of ​​gaining freedom through a declaration of will in practice takes on ugly forms in Rogozhin's actions.

“One of the functions of the image of Rogozhin in the novel is precisely to be a “double” of Ippolit in bringing his idea of ​​expression of will to its logical conclusion. When Ippolit begins reading his confession, Rogozhin is the only one who understands him from the very beginning main idea“There’s a lot to talk about,” said Rogozhin, who had been silent all the time. Ippolit looked at him, and when their eyes met, Rogozhin grinned bitterly and biliously and slowly said: “This is not how this object should be handled, guy, not like that...” (VIII; 320).

Rogozhin and Ippolit are brought together by the power of protest, manifested in the desire to express their will.” The difference between them is, in our opinion, that one declares it in the act of suicide, and the other - murder. Rogozhin for Ippolit is also a product of an ugly and terrible reality, this is precisely why he is unpleasant to him, which aggravates the thought of suicide. “This special incident, which I described in such detail,” says Ippolit about Rogozhin’s visit to him during delirium, “was the reason that I completely “decided”... It is impossible to remain in a life that takes such strange forms that offend me. This ghost humiliated me” (VIII; 341). However, this motive of suicide as an act of “rebellion” is not the main one.

The fourth motive is associated with the idea of ​​fighting against God and this is what, in our opinion, becomes the main one. It is closely related to the above motives, prepared by them and follows from thoughts about the existence of God and immortality. It was here that Dostoevsky’s thoughts about logical suicide had an impact. If there is no God and immortality, then the path to suicide (and murder, and other crimes) is open, this is the writer’s position. The thought of God is needed as moral ideal. He is gone - and we are witnessing the triumph of the principle “after me, even a flood,” taken by Hippolytus as an epigraph for his confession.

According to Dostoevsky, this principle can only be opposed by faith - a moral ideal, and faith without evidence, without reasoning. But the rebel Hippolytus opposes this, he does not want to believe blindly, he wants to understand everything logically.

Hippolytus rebels against the need to humble himself before the circumstances of life only because it is all in the hands of God and everything will pay off in the next world. “Is it really impossible to simply eat me, without demanding from me praise for what ate me?”, “Why was my humility needed?” - the hero is indignant (VIII; 343-344). Moreover, the main thing that deprives a person of freedom, according to Hippolytus, and makes him a toy in the hands of blind nature, is death, which will come sooner or later, but it is unknown when it will be. A person must obediently wait for her, not freely managing the duration of his life. For Hippolytus, this is unbearable: “... who, in the name of what right, in the name of what motivation would want to challenge me now for my right to these two or three weeks of my term?” (VIII; 342). Hippolytus wants to decide for himself how long to live and when to die.

Dostoevsky believes that these claims of Ippolit logically follow from his disbelief in the immortality of the soul. The young man asks the question: how to become stronger than the laws of nature, how to overcome the fear of them and of their highest manifestation - death? And Hippolyte comes to the idea that suicide is the very means that can overcome the fear of death and thereby get out of the power of blind nature and circumstances. The idea of ​​suicide, according to Dostoevsky, is a logical consequence of atheism - the denial of immortality, illness of the soul.

It is very important to note the place in Hippolytus’s confession where he deliberately draws attention to the fact that his idea of ​​suicide, his “main” conviction, does not depend on his illness. “Let anyone who gets into the hands of my “Explanation” and who has the patience to read it, consider me a madman or even a high school student, or, most likely, sentenced to death... I declare that my reader will be mistaken and that my conviction is complete regardless of my death sentence" (VIII; 327). As you can see, one should not exaggerate the fact of Hippolyte’s illness, as A.P. Skaftymov did, for example: “Hippolyte’s consumption plays the role of a reagent that should serve as a manifestation of the given properties of his spirit... a tragedy of moral deficiency was needed... resentment.”

Thus, in Hippolytus's rebellion, his denial of life is indisputably consistent and compelling.

CHAPTER 2. Transformation of the image of a “funny man”: from a logical suicide to a preacher.

2.1. “The Dream of a Funny Man” and its place in the “Diary”

writer."

The fantastic story “The Dream of a Funny Man” was first published in the “Diary of a Writer” in April 1877 (the early draft dates back to approximately the first half of April, the second to the end of April). It is interesting to note that the hero of this story - a “funny man”, as he characterizes himself already in the first line of the story - had his dream in “last November,” namely November 3, and last November, that is, in November 1876, Another fantastic story was published in the “Diary of a Writer” - “The Meek” (about the untimely death of a young life). Random coincidence? But, be that as it may, “The Dream of a Funny Man” develops philosophical theme and solves the ideological problem of the story “The Meek One”. These two stories include one more - “Bobok” - and the original cycle comes to our attention fantasy stories, published on the pages of the "Writer's Diary".

Note that in 1876, on the pages of the “Diary of a Writer,” a confession of a suicide “out of boredom” entitled “The Verdict” also appeared.

“The Verdict” gives the confession of a suicidal atheist who suffers from the lack of higher meaning in his life. He is ready to give up the happiness of temporary existence, because he is sure that tomorrow “all humanity will turn into nothing, into the former chaos” (XXIII, 146). Life becomes meaningless and unnecessary if it is temporary and everything ends with the disintegration of matter: “... our planet is not eternal and humanity’s time is the same moment as mine” (XXIII, 146). Possible future harmony will not save us from corrosive cosmic pessimism. The “logical suicide” thinks: “And no matter how rationally, joyfully, righteously and holy humanity has settled on earth, destruction is still inevitable,” “all this will also be equal to the same zero tomorrow” (XXIII; 147). For a person who is aware of a spiritually free eternal principle within himself, life that arose according to some omnipotent, dead laws of nature is offensive...

This suicide - a consistent materialist - proceeds from the fact that it is not consciousness that creates the world, but nature that created it and its consciousness. And this is what he cannot forgive nature; what right did she have to create him “conscious”, therefore “suffering”? And in general, wasn’t man created as some kind of blatant test to see if such a creature could live on earth?

And the “suicide out of boredom,” citing quite convincing logical arguments, decides: since he cannot destroy the nature that produced him, he destroys himself alone “solely out of boredom, enduring a tyranny for which there is no one to blame” (XXIII; 148). According to E. Hartmann, “the desire for individual negation of will is just as absurd and aimless, even more absurd than suicide.” He considered the end of the world process necessary and inevitable due to the internal logic of its development, and religious grounds do not play a role here. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, on the contrary, argued that a person is not able to live if he does not have faith in God and in the immortality of the soul.

This was Dostoevsky’s thought at the end of 1876, and six months after the “Verdict” he published the fantastic story “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” and in it he recognized the possibility of a “golden age of humanity” on earth.

As for the genre, Dostoevsky “filled the story with deep philosophical meaning, gave it psychological expressiveness and serious ideological significance. He proved that the story is capable of solving such problems of high genres (poem, tragedy, novel, story) as the problem of moral choice, conscience, truth, the meaning of life, place and destiny of a person.” Anything could be a story - any life situation or incident - from love story before the hero's sleep.

What others see (all others, not some), and, relying on the sum of everything, they see everything that others do not see." Both Pascal and Dostoevsky can be called strategic thinkers who considered the fundamental projects for the development of the world "with God" and "without God", in the combination of the main signs of greatness and poverty in the dramatic mystery of human existence. Moreover, the very methodology of their thinking, ...

At the Well in Victor Hugo's Miserables; it pierces the heart once, and then the wound remains forever” (13; 382). A very special role in Dostoevsky’s work was played by Hugo’s novel “The Last Day of a Man Condemned to Death” (1828) - one of the first examples of a psychological novel in European literature, the content of which was not external events, but the movement of thought of someone isolated from people, locked in...

Life and gives life “for a single glance.” Akhmatova’s woman acts as the guardian of that lofty and eternal, tragic and painful feeling, whose name is love. Akhmatovsky Petersburg (materials for essay) Petersburg in the literature of the last century existed in two traditions. The first is Pushkin’s city, “beauty and wonder of midnight lands,” proud and beautiful, the city is the fate of Russia, “a window into...

Herbart translated the “statics and dynamics of ideas” into a language accessible to empirical analysis. The transition from speculative constructions, which included the concept of the unconscious psyche (in particular, the philosophy of Schopenhauer), to use in experimental science began in the middle of the 19th century, when the study of the functions of the sense organs and higher nerve centers prompted natural scientists to turn to...

Hippolyte is a young man who will soon leave this world; he suffers from consumption and has completely cut himself off from the world. A young man of only 17 years old thinks like a sophisticated philosopher. He looked a lot at the dirty wall of the opposite house and in this looking reflected on various essential details of existence.

Of course, for Ippolit, as well as for Dostoevsky, the main question is the question of the meaning of existence and the inevitability of human death. The young man does not have a religious consciousness; he questions religion, but does not become despondent. In a strange way, he not only does not lose faith like Rogozhin, who looks at Goldbein’s painting, but even strengthens his own faith.

Young Terentyev does not believe in the Resurrection, he believes in universal reason, in the philosophical Lord, whose goal is general harmony and the creation of the world. Therefore, Hippolytus does not lose faith, because his personal fate, sad and tragic, in fact, does not matter for world harmony. Even, perhaps, his personal suffering is necessary to maintain this harmony, to enable the world mind to continue to comprehend itself.

Ippolit and Rogozhin are two extremes that are incredibly close. Rogozhin destroys another person, Ippolit destroys himself. However, the young man could have destroyed many other people; moreover, he rather defiantly calls his final confession “Aprs moi le deluge” and quite clearly hints at a rather deep understanding of his own situation.

So, Rogozhin appears in this combination of opposites as an example of maximum vitality and activity. Hippolyte, in turn, is a kind of lifelessness, he is as if outside of this world, looking at Meyer’s wall. At the same time, the characters are quite similar and are in almost identical positions.

In fact, there is nothing special about the rapid death of Hippolytus from consumption. Indeed, through this hero the author expresses a simple thought - if the Resurrection has not happened, then everyone is condemned, regardless of the presence or absence of illness, and if everyone is sentenced in this way, then only a ruthless creator rules the whole world and man cannot escape the nature that dominates him. .

Several interesting essays

When my mother was in school, there were 17 people in their class. 8 boys and 9 girls. Mom studied at a rural school. There weren't many classes. The school was a one-story, old building.

• Characters of the play Nedorosl (comedy by Fonvizin)

  The work of D. I. Fonvizin “Minor” was shown positive features character that every conscientious citizen of the state must have.

• The Battle of Shengraben in the novel War and Peace by Tolstoy

  One of the striking episodes in Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” was the depiction of the military clash of enemy troops at Shengraben.

• Analysis of the story Sign of Trouble by Bykov

  In the center of the events we see an elderly couple who live near the village, where the German occupiers come and occupy their house. At first, Petrok obeys them and does everything they order.

• Analysis of the story Wormhole by Sholokhov

  Sholokhov wrote a lot different stories. And his achievement is the description of the open soul of a simple Cossack. This is where true humanity, beauty, and the tradition of classical literature are revealed.