Russian Don Quixote

Nothing could be more colorless and vague than the general expressions: obscurantist, progressive, liberal, conservative, Slavophile, Westerner; these expressions in no way characterize the person to whom they are applied; they put an unsolicited uniform on his mental personality and, instead of a living person who thinks and feels in his own way, they show us a motionless signboard of a vicious circle of beliefs. The more gifted and remarkable the person in question, the more vulgar the general epithets applied to her by critics who do not want or do not know how to think about her personal characteristics, trace her individual development and, thus, give a lively description instead of a bare term. If we were to approach the works of I.V. Kireevsky the way the Sovremennik critic approached them, it would have been very easy to resolve things with him. It is not at all surprising to classify him among the darkest and most harmful obscurantists; It won't be a matter of quotes; from his works one can write out dozens of pages that will offend the most undemanding reader; Well, therefore, there is nothing to interpret; cited half a dozen of the most odorous excerpts, mocked each individually and all of them together, argued with the author for show, letting him feel all the superiority of his logic and his views, ended the review with a general progressive conclusion, and the matter is ready - the article goes to the printing house. Soon the fairy tale is told, but not soon the deed is done. It’s not difficult to attack Kireyevsky, but there’s little point in it. There is no need to fight him, because his activity already belongs to the past; if we dwell on it as an accomplished fact, then we must either explain it to the best of our ability, or admit that we do not know how to explain; and it’s worth working on explaining Kireevsky’s personality as an interesting psychological fact. Friends and like-minded people of Kireevsky will say, of course, that he should be studied as a thinker, that he should be respected as the engine of Russian self-awareness, that the benefits he brought will be appreciated by subsequent generations. It is impossible to agree with such opinions: Kireevsky was a bad thinker - he was afraid of thought; Kireevsky did not move Russian self-awareness anywhere, he did not even touch it; his articles never made an impression; they were read little, and now they have been completely forgotten, despite the fact that the last of them was written only seven years ago; Kireyevsky did not bring any benefit, and if subsequent generations remember his name by some miracle, then they will only regret the sad delusions of this gifted man. If Kireevsky had managed to create a wide circle of readers for himself and gain importance in literature, then the influence of his ideas would constitute the most striking antagonism with Belinsky’s propaganda. Any honest literary figure would have to fight him with all the strength of his pen; All people who value thought at all would rise up against him; Only very narrow-minded or very unscrupulous people would support him. And Kireevsky himself was a very intelligent man and extremely conscientious - why did he want to stop reason on the path of its development? Why did he try to turn him back to his infancy? It is in these points that lies the psychological interest of those questions that the reading of Kireevsky’s works and the materials attached to them for his biography suggest. I.V. Kireyevsky was born in 1806 and grew up in his parents' village. His father died when he was six years old, and his mother, five years after the death of her husband, married Elagin. Young Kireyevsky became attached to his stepfather and grew up under his influence. His good agreement with his family continued throughout his life; he did not have to be critical of the personalities of his relatives, and therefore he did not experience that severe disappointment that almost all people who begin to think experience. Probably, Kireyevsky’s childhood left the brightest memory in his soul; to the end of his life he treasured those persons who controlled his initial upbringing; he was completely satisfied with their pedagogical techniques, their views on life, their attitude to various practical and theoretical issues; approving their concepts, Kireyevsky himself calmed down on them and did not feel the need to strive for something more reasonable; a calmly and pleasantly spent childhood, together with indelible memories, left in his mind such a thick sediment of antediluvian ideas that neither everyday worries nor theoretical reflections could budge. Kireyevsky's curiosity was very great - he read a lot, seriously thought about what he read, but as soon as the ideas he read began to destroy the images that inhabited his childhood, he pushed them away, sincerely calling them delusions and not even considering it necessary to dwell on the question of whether they were really delusions. Kireyevsky loved the concepts with which he became accustomed in childhood; and when a person loves an idea, then it can be very difficult to convince him of its inconsistency; in order to overturn this favorite idea in his head, a strong push, a sharp revolution, or the constant influence of another person standing above him in development and looking at things with unprejudiced eyes is needed. Kireevsky had to experience neither one nor the other. “We,” he writes to Mr. Koshelev, dreaming of life, “will return the rights of true religion, we will gracefully agree with morality, arousing the love of truth, we will replace stupid liberalism with respect for the laws and we will elevate the purity of life above the purity of style.” At the beginning of 1830, Kireyevsky, inspired by these lofty aspirations, went abroad; at this time he had to endure deep grief; he proposed to the woman he loved and was refused; This event shocked his health, and doctors prescribed him travel as the best way to get better and have fun. He was not attracted into the distance by the desire for a broad life of thought; he felt comfortable in the Moscow circle of relatives and friends, and the calm enjoyment of smooth relations with the people around him was more valuable to him than the vigorous activity and various excitements of mental life. “I will return, I will return soon,” he wrote a few days after his departure from Moscow, “I feel this after parting with you.” The kind-hearted Moscow youth spent only 10 months abroad, and the foreign atmosphere did not have time to produce any beneficial change in him. He measured Western thought by the tiny yardstick of his Moscow convictions, which seemed infallible to him and which all the wretched old women of Belokamennaya shared with him. He listened to the lectures of the most famous professors, absorbed factual information, wrote witty notes about the method and manner of their teaching in letters to relatives and friends, and yet he himself remained an undeveloped, naive child, unable to rise even for a minute above the views of his father and mother. Listening to the lectures of Schleiermacher, a professor of theology, Kireyevsky found that Schleiermacher reasoned too much and that a modern thinker should refrain from analyzing details. I relieve myself of the obligation to write out the place in which Kireevsky pronounces his judgment on Schleiermacher, and I ask my readers who want to get acquainted with this judgment to skim the 42nd page of materials in Volume I. In Berlin, Kireyevsky met Hegel, and he was greatly influenced by the enchanting thought that he was surrounded by first-class minds in Europe; he expressed this thought in letters to his homeland; with first-class minds he spoke “about politics, about philosophy, about religion, about poetry”; How the judgments of first-class minds about these lofty subjects affected him, he does not write. Whether he himself developed his naive and childish concepts in front of them and whether they liked his untouched simplicity, he also does not say. Kireyevsky's relations with Hegel and his acquaintances lasted very briefly and therefore did not have time to make a lasting impression. Kireevsky curiously examined the opinions of first-class minds, as one examines the curiosities of some museum, and left these opinions untouched, probably because they sharply diverged from his aspirations and seemed to him unsuitable for life. At the end of 1830, Kireyevsky returned to Russia. The impressions of his life abroad sank deeply into his receptive mind and were expressed in sincere sympathy for Western enlightenment, in a strong desire to introduce the beginnings of a better civilization into Russian life. During 1831, he collected materials for the publication of the magazine, formed a circle of employees, and in 1832 published the first two books of the magazine “European”. Kireyevsky's sympathy for Western enlightenment was revealed in his article “The Nineteenth Century,” which opened his journal and expressed in general terms the program that the publisher intended to follow. This article discusses the need for constant mental communication between Europe and Russia. “For enlightenment is lonely,” says Kireyevsky, “separated from the Chinese, and must also be limited from the Chinese: there is no life in it, no good, because there is no progression, no success that is achieved only by the combined efforts of mankind.” In this article, you can notice only one significantly important drawback - extreme unfoundedness and lack of evidence. Kireyevsky does not cite a single fact to support his ideas. The entire article revolves around abstract speculation; Kireyevsky composes for himself some kind of chemical formula of European education and then, turning away from the actual facts, looks only at this formula, moves and shuffles its ingredients and draws up such results that are as similar to reality as the list of signs indicated on the vacation ticket is similar to the living owner of this paper. All Kireevsky's sympathy for European civilization disappears in general places and phrases; if it is not expressed in interjections and exclamations, then this is solely because Kireyevsky tries everywhere to maintain the tone of a serious and thorough thinker. In fact, in his article, apart from the external tone, there is nothing solid and thorough; he takes from Guizot (without indicating the source) his opinion that European civilization was formed from three elements: from the remnants of the classical world, from Christianity and from German barbarism, and on this theme he begins to play out variations that are very monotonous, tedious and useless. No real aspect of European life is touched upon in this characterization of the nineteenth century. We do not even see in general terms how people live in Europe, how different classes look at each other, what individuals and entire parties strive for, what needs of life are reflected in literature. It is clear that Kireyevsky’s reverence for the first-class minds of Europe still continues; he does not care what the French blouse eats, 3 does not care what the English artisan says at his meeting, does not care about how the rich bourgeoisie exploits the proletarians and how the bourgeois, the master in his home and in his family, crushes the individual development of his sons and daughters; everyday issues that arise in European life and constitute its vital and universal interest pass by his enlightened mind, occupied with unattainably high interests and aristocratic ideal aspirations. Continuing to admire the first-class minds of Europe, Kireyevsky obviously thinks that these first-class minds, i.e. two dozen German professors of philosophy, personify in their persons the most characteristic moments of European civilization. It seems to Kireevsky that Schelling’s thought about the essence of true knowledge has global significance and that, having expressed this thought in a scientific form, Schelling made a truly great discovery, he simply completely discredited all of humanity. Attaching such colossal importance to German speculative philosophy, Kireevsky, of course, forgets that hardly one hundredth of the entire population of Western Europe is interested in the dialectical constructions of German professors and that even this hundredth does not take away anything significant for themselves from these dialectical constructions. If by the name of civilization we mean those forms into which the life of an individual and a people fits, then speculative philosophy will receive the right to participate in the picture of civilization to the extent that it contributes to the development and change of everyday forms and life relations. In this case, it passes through thousands of working heads with electric current; when this speculative philosophy is limited to the construction of formulas, then it is left to the lot of idle people who have not been crushed by the iron hand of everyday care and who enjoy running around in abstract spaces, instead of looking at the grief of the people around them and helping them with deeds and advice. Speculative philosophy is a waste of mental energy, an aimless luxury that will always remain incomprehensible to the crowd in need of their daily bread. Neither Hegel nor Schelling understood this; of course, Kireyevsky did not understand this either. Instead of looking at speculative philosophy as a chronic fad, as a painful growth that developed as a result of the fact that living forces striving for practical activity were forcibly suppressed and delayed, Kireyevsky bows to philosophers as the leaders of European thought, admires them as the color and hope of European civilization. It is remarkable that the mass of readers usually sympathize with the thinker only in one, often very narrow, often extremely broad application of his idea. The mass takes only a practical conclusion and usually makes this conclusion so boldly and so sharply that the thinker himself gets scared and backs away. The Anabaptists and the peasant wars were the practical conclusion of the ideas of Luther and Melanchthon, and Luther, along with Melanchthon, became afraid and cursed their own cause. In the same way, Hegel, Schelling and all the other leaders of “German wisdom” would curse those unexpected conclusions that Kireevsky draws on the basis of their ideas and their activities. These “first-class” minds of Europe would have to blush with shame and annoyance if they learned that they were being patted on the head in Russia for showing the unsatisfactory nature of pure reason, forming a reaction against the encyclopedists of the 18th century, and thus pushing the European West onto a return path. Kireyevsky, as a soft-hearted Moscow youth, fused with the ideas of his native city, saw and understood in German philosophers only that which was similar to his aspirations. To reconcile his respect for the first-class minds of Europe with his blind attachment to what his mother and nanny had taught him since childhood, Kireyevsky used a rather clever maneuver: Kireyevsky says that Hegel is great and useful because, having taken rationalism to its extreme limits, he showed the insufficiency of pure reason and convinced people of the need to look for other sources of knowledge, “cleared the way to the church of living wisdom.” Now, Kireevsky thinks, the West has seen that you can’t get far with your philosophers; so he will grieve, grieve, and turn to us for advice, and we, of course, will give him advice in the Moscow spirit; The West will listen, see that this is “good,” and say, like Prince Vladimir, that having tasted the sweet, you no longer want the bitter, and the West and I will live in perfect harmony, as we lived with him more than a thousand years ago. These are the colors in which Kireyevsky paints the future relations between the civilizations of Russia and Europe. These colors in his article “The Nineteenth Century” are laid out so lightly that they go unnoticed by the inattentive reader; Kireyevsky in this article emphasizes most of all that we must draw closer to Europe and borrow education from it, but behind these words one can hear a secret hope: there will be a holiday on our street; Europe will come to us asking for wisdom, and we will generously share our spiritual benefits with it. The article “The Nineteenth Century” thus expressed two main moments in Kireyevsky’s mental life: this article was marked by Kireyevsky’s childhood and his travels abroad; the first was reflected in the warmth of feeling and timidity of thought, the second - in sincere, but unfounded and unexplained sympathy for European civilization. We don’t see what Kireevsky sympathizes with. We don’t understand why he needs Europe. In a word, the entire article intertwines Moscow sentimentalism with some kind of heartfelt attraction to the European West. At the same time, it should be noted that this vague, heartfelt attraction has nothing to do with the conscious respect of a mature person for an evaluated and tested idea. If Kireyevsky, while managing the magazine, had continued to clarify to himself and the public his aspirations and sympathies, then he would probably have agreed to some tangible results; he would have seen the contradiction between Europeanism and Moscow sentimentality and would have leaned in a certain way to one side or the other. While the impression of the trip abroad was still fresh and strong, one could hope that the Western element would prevail over childhood memories; but here, unfortunately, unforeseen circumstances forcibly interrupted Kireevsky’s activities. “The European” stopped with the first two books. People with strong character get irritated by failures; their energy doubles when dealing with obstacles; their convictions become stricter and more consistent, expressed more clearly, sharply and inexorably. But this could not happen to Kireyevsky; he lost heart, stopped writing, began to carefully reconsider his beliefs and in many ways changed their basic character. He, of course, did not artificially instill in himself such ideas that would be in harmony with the circumstances; he would not have forced himself, he would not have deliberately gone with the flow, but, as a highly impressionable person, he experienced the most severe shock from this failure; alarmed and distressed, he doubted himself; It occurred to him that perhaps it was Providence itself that was giving him a saving lesson, that perhaps he was mistaken and was showing his fellow citizens a path of development that did not meet their needs. When this heavy reflection began in Kireevsky’s mind, when he thus had the opportunity, under the influence of everyday adversity, to forge for himself the convictions of a mature person, then the memories of childhood presented themselves in full brightness and clarity to his alarmed imagination. The surrounding impressions of Moscow and Dolbino (the Kireevsky family estate) took precedence over the European tendencies that awoke during a trip abroad and were expressed in the interrupted activities of the young journalist. These tendencies, in which there was so much that was unclear, but at the same time so much sincere, these tendencies, from which, under other conditions, a lot of good and reasonable things could have developed, receded into the background, withered and withered, giving way to other views, gloomy, sterile and lifeless. If it is possible to bring a literary type closer to the personality of a really existing person, then I will allow myself to compare the fate of Kireevsky with the fate of Liza from Turgenev’s “The Noble Nest”. Both Kireyevsky and Liza carried within them from childhood the germs of that decay, which over time destroyed and perverted their rich mental powers; both of them, Kireevsky and Liza, were capable of living a reasonable life; if happiness had favored them, then Liza would not have gone to the monastery, and Kireyevsky would have remained faithful to purely European trends; but when misfortune befell them, then all their mystical instincts rose up in them, and both ended very badly. Having stopped publishing The European, Kireevsky concentrated and, for twelve years, wrote only two small articles; when he again began to speak out in print, then the direction of his thoughts had already changed significantly. The compiler of materials for the biography of Kireyevsky finds, of course, that this change was an important step forward; I will say for my part that this change was a deep and final fall. One can simply say about many people who followed the path that Kireevsky followed: that’s where they belong! But one cannot help but regret Kireevsky, just as one cannot, for example, not regret Gogol. Although his mind never reached the point of self-emancipation, it is impossible to deny him a great deal of giftedness. He does not take any idea to its extreme limits, but in the dialectical development of this idea he always reveals flexibility of mind and logical resourcefulness. Kireyevsky's logic is constrained by biases and prejudices, but, defending these biases and prejudices, he uses a wide variety of dialectical techniques and influences the reader not through the power of consistency, but through the variety and clarity of his arguments. He is not a thinker; he is simply a person who feels passionately and tries to convince the reader of the normality and legitimacy of his sympathies. People gifted by nature with the invincible logic of common sense will, of course, see where Kireyevsky’s efforts are heading and will not succumb to either his arguments or the warmth of feeling spilled in his articles. As for people who are weak, sensitive and capable of getting carried away, they can be highly influenced by Kireevsky’s tendencies, covered by a decent literary form, externally agreed with the interests of humane development and tinted with scientific terms and the names of the latest philosophers. When Kireyevsky talks about general historical issues, about the needs of the people and humanity, then he finds himself completely out of place. He does not have the breadth of vision and strength of mind to grasp such questions in all their greatness and so that, while discussing them, he does not hide in some slum from which there is no exit to fresh air. He judges Europe and Russia at random, not knowing the facts, not understanding them and trying to prove to the entire reading world that philosophy, history, and politics need to be revived precisely those concepts that were instilled in him. The same Kireevsky, dealing with a private issue, with a small phenomenon that does not exceed the understanding of an ordinary person, turns out to be a very subtle connoisseur, a very witty critic and an impartial judge. Scattered throughout his small articles are many apt remarks about our everyday life, about the ugly and funny phenomena encountered at every step in our disordered society. Here, for example, is what Kireevsky says in his article “Woe from Wit” at the Moscow Theater”: Famusov’s philosophy still turns our heads; We, even now, just as in his time, fuss and fuss over nothing, bow and humiliate ourselves disinterestedly, only for the pleasure of bowing; we lead a life without purpose, without meaning; we converge with people without participation, we separate without regret; We are looking for momentary pleasures and do not know how to enjoy. And now, just like under Famusov, our houses are equally open to everyone: to the invited and the uninvited, to the honest and to the scoundrels. Our connections are not formed by similarity of opinions, not by conformity of characters, not by the same goal in life, and not even by similarity of moral rules; We are completely indifferent to all this. Chance brings us together, chance separates us and brings us together again without any consequences, without any meaning. These words, in my opinion, express a true and merciless view of the empty life of our society, the lack of common interests in it, the narrow limitations of the sphere in which we live and try to act. It is clear that Kireyevsky, expressing such thoughts, did not put up with the imperfections of our reality and considered it necessary to correct these shortcomings. He sees the reason for the shortcomings in the fact that “from under the European tailcoat the remnant of the Russian caftan peeks out and that, having shaved our beard, we have not yet washed our faces.” The means of healing, in his opinion, lie in rapprochement with Europe, in the assimilation of universal human ideas, in the destruction of singularity and immobility. All these ideas are sound and true; in their positive part, i.e. where Kireyevsky points out what should be done, one can notice the same abstract unfoundedness that we already saw in the article “The Nineteenth Century”. As for the negative part, i.e. Before listing the shortcomings, we must admit that there is a lot of fairness and even originality in it. Kireyevsky deeply felt the disorder of Russian life, and this feeling was expressed in his works in very diverse forms; sometimes he is an exposer of everyday absurdities, sometimes he expresses his sympathy for those better few who suffer in a stuffy atmosphere, sometimes he himself sadly strives away from reality into the world of dreams or into the realm of abstract speculation. In his short article “On Russian Women Writers” you can find several passionately felt pages. Kireyevsky understands that a woman who feels the need to speak out before her fellow citizens is forced to struggle in Russia with many both positive and negative obstacles; he understands that the work of a woman has not yet received the right of citizenship among us, that a woman, left to her own strengths, forced to overcome the prejudice of some, the indifference of others, the misunderstanding of others, risks dying of hunger, despite neither her talent, nor her education, nor her sincere desire for honest and generally useful work. If this is no longer the case now, if in our time a gifted writer enjoys universal respect, then it was different in the thirties, when Kireyevsky wrote; then, in general, the circle of the reading public was much closer, and, in addition, prejudice against the literary work of women had its significance in society and in the family. Here, for example, is Kireyevsky’s short story about one remarkable fact of the literature and life of that time: Recently,” he says, “the Russian Academy published poems by a Russian writer, whose works will take one of the first places among the works of our lady poets and who until now has remained completely unknown. Fate, it seems, separated her from people by some terrible abyss, so that, living among them, in the middle of the capital, neither she knew them, nor they knew her. They left her, I don’t know why; she left them for her Greece - for Greece, which, it seems, alone filled all her dreams and feelings; at least every verse out of several tens of thousands written by her speaks about her alone. It’s strange: seventeen years old, in Russia, a poor girl, poor with all her learning! Know eight languages, combine the talent of painting, music, dancing with the talent of poetry, study the most diverse sciences, study incessantly, work throughout childhood, work throughout early youth, work starting the day, work while resting; write three large volumes of poetry in Russian, perhaps as many in other languages; in my free time, translate tragedies, Russian tragedies - and all in order to die at seventeen in poverty, in extreme conditions, in the unknown! In this living story about unknown labors, about this dull struggle with need, about this young life burned to ashes in fruitless efforts, one can hear the voice of a man capable of feeling and understanding someone else’s grief. In this story we hear a terrible reproach to our lives. Why is it that a talented girl, working with all her might, possessing significant information, wastes time on useless poems about Greece, does not find materials for her activities in Russian life, and dies helpless, unrecognized, useless to anyone, warmed by no one and nothing? Kireevsky deeply sympathizes with the constant grief that the impressionable soul of a woman experiences every minute during various encounters with the ugly phenomena of our life. He understands that a woman, gifted with a living aesthetic sense, can and should strive for some more graceful and harmonious environment. Italy, it seems, has become her second fatherland,” he says about one of our writers, “and, by the way, who knows? Perhaps the necessity of Italy is the common, inevitable fate of all who have had a fate similar to it? Who from the first impressions recognized the best world on earth, the world of beauty; whose soul, from its first awakening into life, was, so to speak, nurtured in the flowers of the arts and education, in the warm Italian atmosphere of the graceful; maybe for him there is no longer life without Italy, and the blue Italian sky, and the Italian air, full of sun and music, and the Italian language, imbued with all the charm of bliss and grace, and the Italian land, dotted with great memories, covered, enchanted by the creations of brilliant creativity - perhaps all this is no longer becoming a whim of the mind, but a heartfelt necessity, the only, non-suffocating air for a soul spoiled the luxury of art and education. Admiring an elegant work, Kireevsky involuntarily compares the harmony of this work with the discordance of the surrounding life; he feels the discord that exists between the world of dreams and the world of gray reality, and the most aesthetic pleasure turns into a quiet feeling of sadness. “Everything that is too ideal,” he says, “even with a bright appearance, gives rise to sadness in the soul, shaded by some kind of magnetic sympathy; such is the lonely, pure song, heard through the discordant noise that drowns it out; such is the life of a girl with a fiery, dreamy soul, for whom out of the world of events there are other inner ones.” Please, Messrs. Readers, do not stop at the external sentimentality that this place is guilty of; look closely at the main idea, delve into the mood that was expressed in these quiet outpourings of sadness, put yourself in Kireevsky’s place, transport yourself to his time, and you will see that the reasons for this sadness were very real. Kireyevsky has many wonderful thoughts scattered throughout his articles; his purely literary criticism is distinguished by the fidelity of his aesthetic sense. More remarkable than his other works is a short article about Yazykov’s poems. I will give several extracts from this article expressing the author’s general attitude towards general issues of life. “We often,” says Kireevsky, “consider as moral people those who do not violate decency, even if in other respects their life was the most insignificant, even if their soul was devoid of any desire for goodness and beauty. If you happen to meet a person warmed by sublime feelings, but gifted with strong passions, then remember and count how many people there were who understood the beauty of his soul in him, and how many who noticed only errors. It is strange, but true, that for a good reputation among us it is better not to act at all than to sometimes make mistakes, while, in fact, tell me, is there anything in the world more immoral than indifference. Here is Kireevsky’s wonderful thought about the relationship between life and art: But when an original poet appears, opening up a new area in the world of beauty and thus adding a new element to the poetic life of his people, then the duty of criticism changes. The question of artistic dignity becomes a secondary issue; even the question of talent is not the main thing; but the thought that animated the poet receives original, philosophical interest; and his face becomes an idea, and his creations become transparent, so that we do not so much look at them as through them, as through an open window we try to look at the very inside of a new church and in it the deity who sanctifies it. That is why, entering the studio of an ordinary painter, we can be amazed at his art; but in front of a painting by a creative artist we forget art, trying to understand the thought expressed in it, to comprehend the feeling that gave rise to this thought, and to live in our imagination the state of the soul in which it was fulfilled. However, even this last sympathy with the artist is characteristic of only Zhe artists; but in general people sympathize with him only in what is purely human in him: with his love, with his melancholy, with his delights, with his comforting dream, in a word, with what happens inside his heart, without caring about the events of his workshop. Thus, at a certain degree of perfection, art destroys itself, turning into thought, turning into soul. Here is Kireevsky’s judgment about the features of Yazykov’s poetry: If we delve into the impression that his poetry makes on us, we will see that it acts on the soul like wine, which he glorifies, like some kind of magic wine, from which life doubles in our eyes: one life appears to us cramped, shallow, everyday; the other is festive, poetic, spacious. The first oppresses the soul, the second frees it, elevates it and fills it with delight. And between these two existences lies a clear, bottomless abyss; but across this abyss fate has thrown several living bridges along which the soul passes from one life to another: this is love, this is glory, friendship, wine, the thought of the fatherland, the thought of poetry and, finally, those moments of unaccountable, riotous fun when the heart’s own sounds drown out the voice of the surrounding world - sounds that the heart owes to its own youth more than to the random object that aroused them. I may have tired the reader with extracts, but I wanted to give as complete an idea as possible about the bright side of Kireevsky’s literary activity. This bright side reflected the ability to sympathize with all human sensations and understand with feeling all human weaknesses and suffering. Kireyevsky was born an artist and, for some unknown reason, imagined himself as a thinker. He is impressionable, receptive, responsive, capable of submitting to other people's influence, being carried away by other people's ideas; he has no mental identity; he constantly reflects in himself the ideas and sympathies of the environment in which he lives and which he loves. As a youth, he lived by what was taught to him in childhood; Having gone abroad, he became fascinated by the “first-class minds” of Europe and began to strive for Western enlightenment, which he knew somehow by hearsay and from the philosophical treatises of Hegel and Schelling. Returning to his homeland and hearing the roar of Moscow bells, he firmly rooted himself to that native soil about which the magazine “Time” is dying, and imagined himself as a representative of Slavic wisdom, necessary for the salvation of the decaying West. But, no matter how deep Kireyevsky’s delusion was, it organically flowed from the basic properties of his character, from those very properties that were expressed in several brilliant thoughts and in several passionately felt pages. Now, you see, there are people who cannot look with a cool, critical eye at everything that surrounds them; they need to love passionately, to surrender passionately to something, to serve with complete selflessness some principle or even some person. When these people manage to condemn themselves to serving some great, true idea, then they accomplish great feats, become benefactors of their people and deserve the gratitude of their contemporaries and descendants. When they make a mistake in choosing their idol, then they become dissolute people, join the ranks of extinguishers and become all the more dangerous the more zealously and sincerely they are carried away by their attachment to a wrong idea. Kireevsky felt that many of the needs of the enlightened mind did not find satisfaction, that many everyday phenomena offended human feelings. What could he do in this situation? It remained to fight against those aspects of life that could be changed, and to put up with what was beyond the power of an individual. By putting up with the phenomena of life in a purely external way, it was necessary to protect oneself from the corrupting influence of this life. It was necessary, while abandoning the actual struggle, to remain on guard and preserve one’s mental independence amid the chaos of ignorance, violence and prejudice. But to live in this way, without an active struggle and without passionate attachments, meant living in pure denial, not believing in oneself, not in others, not in the idea, realizing the bleakness of the present and doubting the possibility of a better future. Very few people are capable of settling on such a sad view of life; In order to live with pure doubt in the field of science and life, one must have significant sobriety of mind and remarkable strength of character. But Kireyevsky had neither one nor the other; suffering from the peculiarities of life, he could neither get used to these peculiarities, nor suffer complete indifference to this life. Ugly phenomena prevented him from acting, but they did not prevent him from dreaming, and he completely disappeared into the world of dreams, taking with him his dialectical dexterity, which helped him prove to himself and others that his dream was not a dream, but a living reality. If Kireevsky had been a thinker, if he had cared not about the convenience of this or that worldview, but only about the degree of its actual fidelity, then he would not have consoled himself with arbitrary fantasies; if he were a pure poet, then he would simply surround himself with the creations of his own imagination, without trying to connect these creations with the phenomena of real life. But, unfortunately, in Kireyevsky these two rarely compatible elements were combined; He is by nature an artist, and by development a student of German philosophers. He constantly dreams, but the objects he glorifies, unfortunately, do not at all fit in with poetry; Instead of depicting his own feelings, the mood of his soul, finally, this or that, small or large event, he takes the most abstract themes and writes a prose poem about European civilization, about relations between the West and Russia, about new principles in philosophy. This kind of writing turns out to be bad poems and bad reasoning. The author's personal mood cannot be expressed in a free lyrical outpouring, because it is constrained by logic, dialectics and the physiognomy of actual facts. As for the author’s logic, it, of course, stands below any criticism, because its job is to prove what Kireevsky likes to believe. “The logical conclusion,” says the collector of materials, thinking of praising his hero, “for Kireevsky was always the completion and justification of his inner belief and never formed the basis of his conviction.” In Kireevsky's works, only those passages in which he is a pure poet are good, those passages in which he unconsciously expresses the fullness of his feelings. Kireevsky's stories (of which only one was completed - "Opal") are very bad because the head element predominates in them; they get lost in allegories or reasoning on a given topic. Kireyevsky would not have had enough creative power to think through and create an artistically harmonious whole; in him, dreaminess is expressed in the general direction of thought, and strong inspiration appears only in glimpses and does not last long; I wrote out almost all those places in which Kireevsky, carried away by a lyrical impulse, makes a strong and completely harmonious impression on the reader. There are very few such places in the two volumes, and these places are drowned in hundreds of didactic, tediously boring and deeply useless pages. The direction that Kireyevsky took after his twelve years of inactivity is called Orthodox-Slavic. The makings of this direction lie in the main provisions of his article “The Nineteenth Century,” but these provisions were fully developed and bore abundant fruit later, in his response to Khomyakov, in a letter to Count Komarovsky, in critical articles published in “Moskvityanin”, and in his last philosophical article, which graced the pages of the late “Russian Conversation.” All these articles are mostly devoted to comparing European civilization with Russian. The existence of an original Russian civilization, which flourished “in the time of it” and was crushed by Peter’s reform, in the eyes of Kireyevsky is an irrefutable fact that does not require any proof. This Russian civilization is praised with all possible exclamations and lamentations; comparing it with the Western one, Kireevsky finds that it is much better; he dwells on this comparison with special love and with touching patriotic complacency; the main advantage that he finds in Russian civilization is that Russian civilization is not imbued with rationalism and is not subject to the dominance of reason. To prove that Kireyevsky considers this property a real and important advantage and that the activity of the mind seems to him extremely dangerous, I will quote the following quote from his letter to Count Komarovsky. It is very long and boring, but the reader will learn from it Kireyevsky’s intricate worldview and will be convinced that Russian civilization stands immeasurably higher than Western civilization: But let’s stop here and put together everything we have said about the difference between Western European and Old Russian enlightenment; for, it seems, the features we have already noticed are sufficient in order to, bringing them together into one result, derive a clear definition of the nature of this and that education. Christianity penetrated the minds of Western peoples through the teachings of one Roman church - in Russia it was lit on the lamps of the entire Orthodox Church; theology in the West took on the character of rational abstraction, but in the Orthodox world it retained the internal integrity of the spirit; there is a bifurcation of the forces of the mind, here there is a desire for their living totality; there is the movement of the mind towards truth through the logical coupling of concepts, here there is the desire for it through the internal elevation of self-awareness to the heart’s integrity and the focus of the mind; there is a search for external, dead unity, here there is a desire for internal, living unity; there the church mixed with the state, combining spiritual power with secular power and merging church and worldly meaning into one structure of a mixed nature - in Russia it remained unmixed with worldly goals and structure; there are scholastic and legal universities, in ancient times. Russia - prayer monasteries that concentrated the highest knowledge; there is a rational and school study of the highest truths, here is the desire for their living and integral knowledge; there is the mutual germination of pagan and Christian education, here there is a constant desire for the purification of truth; there, statehood came from the violence of conquest, here from the natural development of national life, imbued with the unity of the basic conviction; there is a hostile demarcation of classes, in ancient Russia - their unanimous combination with a natural variety; there the artificial connection of knightly castles with their accessories constitutes separate states, here the aggregate consent of the entire earth spiritually expresses an indivisible unity; there land ownership is the first basis of civil relations, here property is only an accidental expression of personal relations; there the legality is formally logical, here it comes out of everyday life; there the inclination of law towards external justice, here the preference for internal; there jurisprudence strives for a logical code; here, instead of external coherence, form with form, it seeks the internal connection of lawful conviction with the convictions of faith and everyday life; there the laws come artificially from the prevailing opinion, here they were born naturally from everyday life; there improvements were always made by violent changes, here by harmonious natural growth; there is the excitement of the spirit of the parties, here the inviolability of the fundamental conviction; there is the whim of fashion, here the hardness of everyday life; there is the precariousness of personal self-legitimacy, here the strength of family and social ties; there is the foppishness of luxury and the artificiality of life, here the simplicity of life’s needs and the vigor of moral courage; there is the delicacy of dreaminess, here the healthy integrity of rational forces; there is an internal anxiety of the spirit with rational confidence in one’s moral perfection, while for a Russian there is deep silence and calmness of inner self-awareness with constant distrust of oneself and with unlimited demands for moral improvement; one spruce, there is a split of spirit, a split of thoughts, a split of sciences, a split of the state, a split of classes, a split of society, a split of family rights and responsibilities, a split of the moral and heartfelt state, a split of the entire totality and all individual types of human existence, public and private; in Russia, on the contrary, there is a predominant desire for the integrity of being, internal and external, public and private, speculative and everyday, artificial and moral. Therefore, if what we said before is true, then division and integrity, rationality and reasonableness will be the last expression of Western European and Old Russian education. The reader must remember that all the great virtues that Kireevsky speaks of belong only to ancient Russian civilization. We, modern Russian people, should only sigh about what is not for us. we had to enjoy these blessings and that we, due to our extreme depravity, have even lost the ability to love and respect this dear antiquity. A researcher of ancient Russian life could, perhaps, object to Kireyevsky that life was bad in ancient Rus', that they beat them with batogs not on the stomach, but to death, that the court never did without torture, that slavery or servitude existed on the most extensive scale, that husbands whipped their wives with silk and belt whips, and the guardians of morality, like Sylvester, persuaded them not to hit in vain, in the ear or in the vision. The researcher could have raised many similar objections, but Kireevsky would not have paid any attention to them; he would say that all these are small, external, random phenomena that do not concern the internal idea, that the essence of our civilization remains inviolable, that its principle is great and infallible, despite all the tricks that were done under the cover of this principle. The researcher, of course, would not find an answer to such convincing arguments. Like this would-be explorer, we bow before the incomprehensible wisdom of the thinker-poet and listen with awe of living hope to his promises that open to us the prospect of a better, enlightened life. From his next words we learn that we have not yet completely perished, that there is a possibility of salvation for us too: But the root of Russia's education still lives in its people, and, most importantly, it lives in its holy, Orthodox Church. Therefore, on this basis alone, and on no other, a strong edifice of enlightenment in Russia must be erected... The construction of this edifice can be accomplished when that class of our people, which is not exclusively occupied with obtaining the material means of life and which, therefore, in the social composition is primarily given the task of mentally developing social self-consciousness - when this class, I say, still imbued with Western concepts, is finally more fully convinced of the one-sidedness of European enlightenment; when he more vividly feels the need for new mental principles; when, with a reasonable thirst for complete truth, he turns to the pure sources of the ancient Orthodox faith of his people and with a sensitive heart listens to the still clear echoes of this holy faith of the fatherland in the former, dear life of Russia. Then, having escaped from the oppression of the rational systems of European wisdom, the Russian educated person, in the depths of the special, inaccessible to Western concepts, living, integral speculation of the holy fathers of the church, will find the most complete answers to precisely those questions of the mind and heart that most disturb the soul, deceived by the latest results of Western self-consciousness. And in the former life of his fatherland he will find the opportunity to understand the development of another education. I have nothing to add to these words. They speak for themselves. In conclusion, I will say a few words about the critical article published in Sovremennik under the title “Moscow Slovenia.” This article, with its lack of evidence and unfoundedness, can compete with the philosophical poems of Kireyevsky himself. All representatives of the Orthodox-Slavic direction - Khomyakov, K. Aksakov, Kireevsky - are shaded into one color; everyone has a label on their forehead with the inscription “Slavophile”, and they are all completely devoid of their individual physiognomy; Slavophilism is taken to be some kind of mental fad that fell on Moscow out of the blue and infected a whole circle of people, very honest and very intelligent. The external signs of Slavophilism are described in general terms, but from this description the reader cannot form an idea of ​​how this school of thought arose and why exactly it appealed to Kireevsky, Khomyakov and company. If inveterate obscurantists look at innovations as a devilish charm released into the world to seduce and destroy Orthodox Christians, then we must admit that some desperate and overly passionate progressives look at phenomena like Slavophilism as some kind of monstrous and inexplicable product of the spirit of darkness and evil. Obscurantists and progressives are not at all similar to each other in their way of thinking, but both of them, fighting against phenomena hostile to them, are carried away beyond the limits of all prudence, lose the ability to analyze coolly and, falling into declamation, strike false notes that harm the cause they defend. Instead of tracing the development of Kireyevsky, Khomyakov and other Slavophiles, instead of considering those properties of these people that gave rise to distrust in the activity of reason, in a word, instead of explaining Slavophilism as a psychological fact, the critic of Sovremennik goes into a completely fruitless polemic with the provisions of Slavophil theories. Arguing with Slavophiles is, truly, strange; a prudent person will neither refute fragmentary exclamations nor laugh at incoherent speech. He will observe and study developments and causes and communicate the results of his research to other people who are able and willing to listen to him. Slavophilism is not a fad coming from nowhere, it is a psychological phenomenon that arises as a result of unsatisfied needs. Kireevsky wanted to live a reasonable life, he wanted to enjoy everything that the soul of a living person asks for, he wanted to love, he wanted to believe... In reality, there were no materials; and yet he fell in love with her, idealized her, painted her in his own way and became a knight of a sad image, like the unforgettable Don Quixote, the lover of the incomparable Dulcinea of ​​Toboz. Slavophilism is Russian quixoticism; where there are windmills, there Slavophiles see armed heroes; This is where their eternally phrased, eternally unclear ravings about nationality, about Russian civilization, about the future influence of Russia on the intellectual life of Europe come from. All this is quixoticism, always sincere, often touching, and mostly unfounded.