LN Tolstoy and the Russian clergy The question of LN Tolstoy's attitude to the Russian clergy, as well as the problem of the reception by the Russian clergy of the writer's activities in scientific research has not previously been considered. This issue is connected, among other things, with those disputes,

Appendix 4 L.N. Tolstoy and V.G. Chertkov Here are three important documents, which are discussed in detail in the text of the dissertation. Letter to A.P. Sergeenko to D.P. Makovitsky. “March 5/18, 1907 Dear Dusan Petrovich, I have long wanted to write to you, but for matters that we have here at least

With each passing year, Tolstoy's desire to leave the civil service and to devote himself entirely to the service to which, as he feels, the Lord intended him, becomes stronger and stronger - literary creation. As many researchers note, the cry of the soul that escaped from the mouth of one of his most beloved heroes, John Damascene from the poem of the same name, expresses the spiritual anguish of Tolstoy himself: “Oh sir, heed: my dignity, // Greatness, splendor, power and strength, / / Everything is unbearable to me, everything is hateful. // I am attracted by a different vocation, // I cannot rule the people: // I was born simple to be a singer, // Praise God with a free verb! "

However, this desire is destined to come true not soon: for many years, Alexei Konstantinovich has not been able to retire, he will receive it only in 1861.

For a long time, his personal life does not add up either. Tolstoy's first serious feeling was for Elena Meshcherskaya. However, when Alexei asks his mother for permission to propose to the girl he liked, Anna Alekseevna does not give her blessing. Alexei remains a bachelor.

This situation has been repeated in different variations for many years: Tolstoy's heartfelt inclination to this or that girl is suppressed by the mother, who either directly expresses her disagreement with the choice of her son, then imperceptibly arranges the need for Alexei's urgent departure either abroad, or to one of his relatives. Anna Alekseevna very strictly controls Aleksey's life, tries to have him always with her (Aleksey Konstantinovich takes her to theaters and concerts, they visit her friends together), and if he leaves somewhere without her, she does not go to bed until he will not return. Such a "family" life does not seem to be very burdensome for Alexei - he was brought up in obedience and love for his mother. This idyll, however, is not destined to last forever - Tolstoy finally meets the one with whom he is not ready to sacrifice a relationship with such ease. Moreover, from the very first days of his acquaintance, he sees in her not only an attractive woman, but also the one who in Church Slavonic is called a "friend": a comrade-in-arms, a companion on the path of life. And above all - a helper on the creative path.

“I haven’t done anything yet - I’ve never been supported and always discouraged, I’m very lazy, it’s true, but I feel like I could do something good, just to make sure I find an artistic echo,” and now I've found it ... it's you. If I know that you are interested in my writing, I will work harder and better, ”he wrote to Sofya Andreyevna Miller at the very beginning of their acquaintance. Their relationship was not easy: her husband, from whom Sophie had already left, still did not give her a divorce, and Alexei's mother, as in all previous cases, was sharply opposed to the chosen one of her son. Seeing that the previous tricks did not work and that her son's intentions were serious, Anna Alekseevna decided to act openly. One evening, she told Alexei all the rumors and gossip that were associated with the name of his beloved. The fact is that the beginning of Sophia's social life was overshadowed by a love tragedy: Prince Vyazemsky courted her, as they said, seduced her - and married another. Sophia's brother stood up for his sister's honor and was killed in a duel. Light retells this story with pleasure, adding to it, apparently, many others. I.S. Turgenev once wrote to Sofia Andreevna: "They told me a lot of evil about you ...". Anna Andreevna told her son “A lot of evil” about Sophia. After listening to his mother's rebuke, Alexei Konstantinovich dropped everything and rushed to Smalkovo - the estate of Sofya Andreevna, in order to find out the truth from her own lips.

This is how the modern prose writer Ruslan Kireev describes this dramatic meeting: “Sofya Andreevna met him calmly. She gave me linden tea, sat down by the window, behind which the willows that had flown under the cold rain soaked, and - began her confession.

Slowly ... In order ... From afar ...

Mentally, along with you, I suffered the past years,

I felt everything together with you, both sadness and hopes,

I hurt a lot, I reproached you in many ways ...

Then the poet, with his usual frankness, admits that he cannot ... No, he cannot, and does not want to forget either her mistakes, or - an important clarification! - suffering. Her "tears and every word" is dear to him. It is in this poem that a comparison with a drooping tree appears for the first time (is it not those sad willows inspired by the window? - E.V.), to which he, big, strong, offers his help.

You lean against me, tree, against the green elm:

You lean against me, I stand securely and firmly! "

A frank conversation did not destroy their relationship, but, on the contrary, brought the lovers closer together, for Alexei Konstantinovich had a kind, soft heart, capable of pitying and forgiving.

A few years later, during the war, Tolstoy fell ill with typhus and Sofya Andreevna, despite the danger of getting infected, left him, literally pulling him out of the other world.

The last years of his mother's life, Alexei Konstantinovich was torn between her and Sophia. Despite all the difficulties and misunderstandings, despite the despotism of Anna Alekseevna, he and his mother were very close, he was used to sharing his joys and sorrows with her, he really sincerely loved the one who, from his birth, devoted her whole life to him, and when in 1857 Anna Alexandrovna died, Alexey was inconsolable. But her death finally allowed the lovers to unite - they began to live together. However, her husband gave Sofia a divorce only a few years later - they got married in 1863. The Lord did not give them his children, but they loved and welcomed strangers very much, for example, their nephew Andreyka, whom Tolstoy treated as his own son.

The love of Alexei Konstantinovich and Sofya Alekseevna has not weakened over the years, and Tolstoy's letters written to his wife in the last years of his life breathe the same tenderness as the lines of the first years of their communication. So, Tolstoy wrote to her in 1870: “... I cannot lie down without telling you what I have been telling you for 20 years, that I cannot live without you, that you are my only treasure on earth, and I cry over with this letter, as he cried 20 years ago.

If we approach from the strict point of view of church canons, not everything in the life of Alexei Konstantinovich corresponds to Orthodox norms. For 12 years he lived with his beloved woman unmarried, in fact, in a civil marriage. Nor did he escape the sinful infatuation that gripped almost the entire secular society in the 19th century - the "epidemic of table-turning," in other words, the practice of spiritualism. Several times he attended the "seances" of the famous spiritualist Hume, who came to Russia. Living abroad, Alexey Konstantinovich attended similar events there. Although Tolstoy's rather ironic retellings of the assertions of various spiritualists, allegedly heard by them from the "spirits", have survived, Tyutchev noted that, on the whole, Tolstoy took table-turning carefully and rather seriously: “The details that I heard from Alexei Tolstoy, who had seen Hume four times at work, surpass all likelihood: hands that are visible, tables hanging in the air and moving arbitrarily like ships in the sea, etc., in a word, material and tactile evidence that the supernatural exists. "

Both unmarried marriage and engaging in spiritualism, however, are rather a consequence of the general spiritual relaxation of society in the 19th century. In the life of Alexei Konstantinovich there was something else. For example, his pilgrimages on foot to Optina, to the elders. Or his reverent attitude to prayer, embodied not only in verses ("I pray and repent, // And I cry again, // And I renounce // From the evil deed ..."), but also in reality. Thus, there is evidence of how fervently he prayed during the typhus disease, which put him in the face of death. What is typical - he prayed not so much for himself as for dear people, mother and Sophia. Imagine his shock when, after one of these prayers, interrupted by minutes of delirium, he opened his eyes and saw the living Sophia by his bed, who had come to take care of him. Such a heavenly answer to his prayer greatly strengthened Tolstoy's faith.

This faith, craving for Heaven and longing for it permeated all the literary work of Alexei Konstantinovich: poems, ballads, plays and prose works. As Tolstoy himself wrote in one of his poems, "I look with love at the earth, // But the soul asks higher". However, A.K. Tolstoy formulated his literary credo best of all in the poem "John of Damascus", referring it to the life of his hero - the poet must, with his creativity, join the praise of God, which the whole world created by Him exalts ("Let every breath praise the Lord ..." ): "That glorifies the speech of the free // And praises in songs John, // Whom to praise in his verb // They will never stop // Not every blade of grass in the field, // Not every star in the sky."

Here is a famous fragment from the memoirs of Alexei Konstantinovich's cousin:

“- Alyosha, do you believe in God?

He was about to reply with a joke, as usual, but, probably noticing the serious expression on my face, changed his mind and answered somehow embarrassedly:

- Weak, Louise!

I could not stand it.

- How? Don't you believe? I exclaimed.

“I know that God exists,” he said, “I think that I have no doubt about it, but…”.

Often this moment is used to prove that Aleksey Konstantinovich was not a believing Orthodox person, was indifferent to religious issues, and this opinion is supported by indications of his enthusiasm for spiritualism, which is not approved by the church. In Tolstoy's dialogue with his cousin, one can also hear bad evasiveness, as in Faust's conversation with a trusting but demanding lover:

Margarita

<…>
Do you believe in God?

Faust

Oh honey, don't touch
Such questions. Which of us dares
Answer without hesitation: "I believe in God"?
And the rebuke of the scholastic and the priest
I'm so sincerely stupid about that
Which seems like a wretched mockery.

Margarita

So you don't believe, then?

Faust

Do not distort
Of my speech, about the light of my eyes!
Who, in fact,
Whose mind
Dare to say: "I believe"?
Whose creature
Arrogantly say: "I do not believe"?
Into it,
The creator of everything.
Support
Total: me, you, space
And yourself? (J.W. Goethe. Faust. Part 1. Ch. 16)

But if you seriously listen to what and how Alexey Konstantinovich says, you can feel the modesty of a true Christian who does not want to fall into the sin of pride. Who would dare to declare the strength and depth of their religiosity, if the "mustard seed" of faith should move mountains, even if the Apostle Peter in the Gospel is called of little faith (cf. Matthew 14:31)?

In one of the letters to S.A. Tolstoy (dated 05/11/1873), the writer speaks directly about his faith, as usual, in personal communication with close people, intertwining a serious topic and playful intonation: “By seven o'clock in the morning, asthma began to pass, and I began to dance around the room with happiness, and I it occurred to me that the Lord God should feel pleasure, relieving me from asthma, since I thank Him so picturesquely. In fact, I am sure that He would never have sent her if it depended on Him; but this must be a consequence of the necessary order of things in which the first "Urheber" is myself, and perhaps to relieve me of asthma it would be necessary to make people less sinful than me suffer. So, since a thing exists, it should exist, and nothing will ever make me murmur against God, in whom I believe completely and endlessly» .

The religious orientation of A.K. Tolstoy manifested itself most "purely" in two poems that occupy a special place in Russian literature of the 19th century and constitute a kind of "natural cycle": "The Sinner" (1857) and "John of Damascus" (1858).

"Sinner"

The poem "The Sinner", published in the magazine "Russian conversation", gained immense popularity among readers-contemporaries, was distributed, including in the lists, recited at literary evenings (this fact was ironically covered in the comedy by A.P. Chekhov "The Cherry Orchard") ... At first glance, the very appeal to the Gospel history seems uncharacteristic for contemporary Russian literature and Tolstoy can be interpreted as a deliberate departure from the "spite of the day" into the realm not so much of the past as of the Eternal. This is how this work was generally accepted by most critics. However, it is curious that in the middle of the 19th century, Russian poets repeatedly used this very plot: the meeting of Christ with a sinner.

Here is the text of the original source - the Gospel of John:

… In the morning he came to the temple again, and all the people went to Him. He sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman who had been taken in adultery, and placing her in the midst, they said to Him: Teacher! this woman was taken in adultery; and Moses in the law commanded us to stone such people: What do you say? They said this, tempting Him to find something to accuse Him. But Jesus, bending down low, wrote with his finger on the ground, paying no attention to them. When they continued to ask Him, He lifted himself up and said to them: He who is without sin among you, first throw a stone at her. And again, bending down low, he wrote on the ground. But they, having heard [this] and being convicted by their conscience, began to leave one after another, beginning from the elders to the last; and Jesus was left alone and the woman standing in the midst. Jesus, lifting himself up and not seeing anyone but a woman, said to her: Woman! where are your accusers? nobody condemned you? She answered: no one, Lord. Jesus said to her: and I do not condemn you; go and do not sin in the future(John 8: 2-11).

The most popular "reading" of this episode in the middle of the 19th century was associated with social issues: the famous phrase of Christ about the stone was interpreted as a denunciation of Pharisaic hypocrisy. This "external" aspect of the Gospel story turned out to be in great demand, since it seemed to provide substantiation for the theory of the "environment" ("the environment is stuck"), which has become widespread in the radical democratic press since the late 1850s. According to this theory, there are no criminals, there are unfortunate victims of a dysfunctional life, an unfair social order that needs to be changed. It turned out that a hypocritical society that condemns (and punishes) an outspoken sinner is itself much more sinful than him and therefore has no right to judge. Here the words “Do not judge, but you will not be judged,” which were understood too bluntly, turned out to be no less convenient. That is, Christ in this interpretation turned out to be one of the first socialists, a kind of “forerunner” of the radicals of the 19th century. See an episode from Dostoevsky's memoirs about Belinsky in the "Diary of a Writer" for 1873:

“Belinsky said:

- Believe, then, that your Christ, if born in our time, would be the most inconspicuous and ordinary person; so it would be obscured under the present science and under the present movers of mankind.

- Well, no-no! - picked up a friend of Belinsky. (I remember we were sitting, and he paced up and down the room). - Well, no: if Christ now appeared, he would join the movement and become the head of it ...

"Well, yes, well, yes," Belinsky suddenly agreed with surprising haste, "he would have just joined the socialists and followed them." This episode, apparently, formed the basis of the famous conversation between Kolya Krasotkin and Alyosha Karamazov in the last novel of the writer: “And, if you like, I'm not against Christ. He was a completely humane person, and if he lived in our time, he would have directly sided with the revolutionaries and, perhaps, would have played a prominent role ... This is even indispensable. "

A similar view of Christ was reflected in the poetry of A.K. Tolstoy - D.D. Minaev and V.P. Burenin, who (the first - in 1864, the second - in 1868) translated into Russian the poem by Alfred de Vigny "The Whore" ("The Sinner").

Alexey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, offering his artistic interpretation of the Gospel episode in the poem "The Sinner", radically excludes the social aspect: his Christ does not speak famous words about the stone and does not denounce the hypocritical judges. O. Miller drew attention to this feature, as a fundamental one, in his extensive article “Count A.K. Tolstoy as a lyric poet ":" ... our poet was completely imbued in her [in the poem] with a purely religious idea personal appeals to God of a living soul. He did not touch the social side of the issue in the least, and it would not be difficult to touch upon it if he had directly adhered to the beautiful Gospel story with the many-meaningful words of the Savior: "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." Even on the basis of these words, which our poet did not use at all, it would be possible to expose the sin of this woman - the sin of the whole society, a natural consequence of the established order in it - and such a setting of the case would give the story of antiquity a distant lively interest of modernity, would directly link it with the "spite of the day."

Tolstoy did not take advantage of the occasion to give the Gospel history a "lively interest of our time"

This reproach also contains a possible explanation - why Tolstoy did not take advantage of the occasion to give the Gospel history a "lively interest of our time." That is why I didn’t use it: I didn’t want the eternal plot to be read “on the topic of the day” and thereby lost its spiritual “dimension”. Christ's words about the stone can be used for purposes far from Christianity: outwardly intersecting with modern Tolstoy social theories about "environment", about crime as "protest", these words, of course, about something else - about the need to look into your own soul before to judge other people's sins. About the need to see the beam in your own eye before pointing out the twig in someone else's. And the "spite of the day" turns this eternal truth into a "party" truth: lawyers have no right to judge a criminal, because they themselves are worse than him, because society is so unfair that it is not the one who is more sinful that is to blame, but the one who is weaker, who stands lower in the social hierarchy. And this injustice needs to be corrected.

It is likely that Tolstoy felt the danger of profanation, a pragmatic interpretation of the phrase of Christ, and therefore considered it necessary to do without it. Moreover, the idea of ​​the inner transformation of a person at a meeting with Christ (and this happened with both the Sinner and the Pharisees) is shown to him in the poem consistently and convincingly from an artistic point of view. Moreover, the poet even emphasized that the sinner is not at all condemned by those around her, she is a legitimate part of this world, which Christ came to save. She is, if you will, a symbol of this world, the personification of carnal pleasure as a vital value.

By itself, the image of a harlot, a fallen woman in contemporary Tolstoy poetry often became a pretext for sharpening social issues, calling for mercy and compassion in relation to the “outcast” in general. And the gospel analogy in such cases faded into the background, was used only for contrast with the modern hard-hearted world. Or it became a lesson-reproach. What Christ did with the soul of a sinner was often thought of as a universal means of getting rid of social vices - through the refusal of condemnation in the name of "love and forgiveness." True, Christ, as we remember, tells her in the Gospel: “Go and sin no more,” that is, he calls sin - a sin and thereby pronounces his judgment on the harlot. Otherwise, a person will generally turn into an “innocent”, “fallen” “victim,” deserving only compassion, due to the lack of free will and the possibility of choice. And this is anti-Christianity.

Of course, one can hardly doubt the deeply religious nature of the feeling that inspired the great Russian writers, who turned in their work to the image of a fallen man, in whatever form he appeared - a thief, a murderer, a harlot, a drunkard, etc. Oblomov's heated monologue from Goncharov's novel of the same name accurately reflects this general “passionate” need of Russian literature to find a person in a person: “Imagine a thief, a fallen woman, an inflated fool, and don't forget the person right there. Where is humanity then? You want to write with one head! .. Do you think that a heart is not needed for thought? No, she is fertilized by love. Stretch out your hand to a fallen person to lift him, or weep bitterly over him if he dies, and do not mock. Love him, remember yourself in him and treat him as you are with yourself ... ”. Only, as we have seen, compassion can turn out to be a seductive cover for social theories, anti-Christian in nature, deliberately mixing sin and sinner, so that, under the guise of sympathy, a person can imperceptibly teach tolerance to evil. Perhaps the most radical version of this denial of the “fallen woman's” guilt is the novel by L.N. Tolstoy's "Resurrection" (1899).

For Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy in the poem "The Sinner", a different aspect of the consideration of the topic is more important. While many poets reveal the relevance of the Gospel story through sharpening its social meaning, Tolstoy seeks to emphasize its timeless significance - a religious idea does not need a "modern" masquerade to reach the heart of the reader. On the contrary, it seems to liberate the story of Christ and the sinner from too specific attributes of historical time, which gives the poem the features of an artistically developed parable.

Nowhere in "The Sinner" is the heroine named by name, this story is about a man in general, for "who of you is without sin"? In addition, in this poem, it is as if one of the most important values ​​for the creative consciousness of the writer is “being tested” is Beauty. In the description of the servant of "venal love", after listing the external attributes of "sinful life", a significant union BUT is put:

Her fancy outfit
Involuntarily attracts eyes
Her immodest attire
They talk about a sinful life;
But the fallen virgin is beautiful;
Looking at her, it is unlikely
Before the power of a dangerous charm
Husbands and elders will stand:
<…>

And, casting a shadow on the Lanita,
In all the abundance of beauty
Intertwined with a pearl thread,
Luxurious hair will fall ...

This raises several "seductive" questions: is the beautiful synonymous with the fallen? Or a consequence of it? Does this emphasize the bodily nature of beauty? Or its independence from moral categories? Or maybe the union "but" contrasts these concepts, indicates their oxymoric, unnatural combination in one person? Is the word "charm" used here in the sense of "secular", "Pushkin" - or religious?

The first clarification arises in the sinner's monologue to John, whom she mistakenly mistook for Christ Himself:

I only believe in beauty
I serve wine and kisses
You don't bother my spirit
I laugh at your purity! (1, 62)

A meaningful rhyme creates direct opposition: beauty is purity. It turns out that it is impossible to be clean and beautiful at the same time, because they do not serve two gods, a choice is needed. And the "beautiful maiden" thinks that she made this choice correctly. Only for some reason the whole boastful monologue of the Sinner is called "weak grievances." Maybe the pride that awakened in her when she told about the wonderful teacher hides something else? Internal lack of confidence in your own choice? Feeling the fragility, temporality of your "beauty"? Fear of looking into your own soul?

However, Christ appears, and the epithet "beautiful" passes to him:

Lying around his beautiful lips,
The brada is slightly bifurcated ... (1, 63)

It is curious that the "beautiful lips" of the Savior in Tolstoy's poem will not utter a word. This affected not only the artistic, but also the spiritual tact of the poet: Christ has already said everything in the Gospel. The translation of his words into modern poetic language is fraught with profanation (by the way, this may be another explanation - why Tolstoy does not remember the phrase about the stone). Even his appearance among people is compared to a "breath of silence": the loud talk falls silent, the world seems to listen to the quiet steps of the Son of Man. Therefore, the miraculous transformation of the Sinner takes place thanks to His “sad gaze” - and in silence.

And that gaze was like a ray of a horse,
And everything was revealed to him,
And in the heart of the gloomy harlot
He dispersed the darkness of the night ... (1, 64)

This gaze brings illumination: the sinner begins to realize her own darkness, for she saw the light and separated the darkness from the light.

This is akin to the creation of the world - a miracle of the spiritual birth of man, a sacrament that is impossible without repentance. “To such repentance - to the resurrection from the death of the soul - the Apostle Paul calls on:“ Rise, sleeping ... and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you ”(Eph. 5:14). The story of the converted harlot appears as a kind of analogue to the story of the resurrected Lazarus; as St. Macarius the Great, “the coffin is the heart, your mind and your thoughts are buried there and are contained in impenetrable darkness. The Lord comes to the souls crying to him in hell, that is, in the depths of the heart, and there he commands death to release the souls imprisoned ... Then, rolling away the heavy stone lying on the soul, he opens the coffin, resurrects like a mortified soul, and brings it out, imprisoned in prison , into the light. "

And now, after the heroine's inner illumination, the answer to the question about the essence of Beauty becomes obvious - it was the very gift that the maiden misused:

How many blessings, how many forces
The Lord generously gave her ... (1, 64‒65)

In a strict sense, any God's gift is not a gift in the everyday sense of the word, since a gift does not imply responsibility for it. And in the gospel context, a gift is the very talent that should not be buried in the ground or thoughtlessly squandered, as the Sinner did with her beauty, forcing her to serve lasciviousness, impurity, and evil. And in the end, she herself perverted the initial nature of this gift, outraged him, that is, over herself.

And she fell on her face, sobbing,
Before the shrine of Christ (1, 65).

Tears in this case are the purest manifestation of a soul that has not yet acquired new words, but has already been freed from old ones. And the verb “fell” is paradoxically, at first glance, correlated with the epithet “fallen”, which characterized the heroine before meeting Christ. The words with the same root become antonyms here, for falling prostrate before the shrine of Christ means overcoming the moral, spiritual fall. That is, in a figurative sense, the Sinner "got up", "rose", and the sad and compassionate gaze of the Savior carries the most important Christian appeal addressed to the soul of a sinful person: Talifa kumi(Mark 5, 41), "get up and go" (it is no coincidence that only these words are uttered by the silent Savior in the legend about the Grand Inquisitor in the novel by FM Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov").

Of course, we have a miracle before us, but it hardly completely excludes the psychological motivation of the heroine's rebirth. The future transformation seems to have been prepared by “weak grievances,” which are clothed in the boastful form of the impudent address of the harlot to John. Apparently, this boasting (even a kind of bet that the sinner makes with others) was born precisely by an inner doubt about the correctness of the chosen path. In addition, when talking about the meeting with Christ and the impact of this meeting on the sinner, it is more appropriate to speak not about evolution, but about the revolution that is taking place in the human soul.

In the work of Tolstoy, there are other situations that can be called a "graceful shock" of the sinner when he meets Christ's truth. So in the "Song of Vladimir's campaign against Korsun" the pagan miraculously changes after Epiphany:

Vladimir got up from the prince's seat,
The singing of the merrymakers was interrupted,
And a moment of silence and silence has come -
And to the prince, in the consciousness of new beginnings,
Opening up a new vision:

Like a dream, the whole past life flashed by,
Smell the truth of the Lord
And tears sprinkled for the first time from my eyes
And Vladimir thinks: for the first time he
I saw my city today (1, 652–653).

This is how the love of the lyrical hero of some of Tolstoy's poems regenerates, for example, “Me, in the darkness and in the dust ...”, “Not the wind blowing from a height ...”, freeing his soul from everyday “litter” and revealing the main thing.

The ending of the poem evokes several literary associations at once.

Firstly, this is how the resurrection of the convict Rodion Raskolnikov will be described in the epilogue of F.M. Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment": "How it happened, he himself did not know, but suddenly something caught him up and, as it were, threw him at her feet. He cried and hugged her knees. " In this sense, Tolstoy's poem, like many works of Russian literature, realizes the nationwide Easter archetype: showing the horror and darkness of the fall, mental death - leads a person to light and resurrection.

Secondly, the poem of A.S. Pushkin's "Beauty":

But when you meet her, embarrassed, you
Suddenly you stop involuntarily
Reverenting piously
Before the shrine of beauty.

The shrine of Christ is the shrine of true beauty

The last analogy, we dare to assume, points to a completely conscious (essentially polemical) reminiscence in the poem by A.K. Tolstoy and puts an end to the development of the beauty motif in The Sinner: the shrine of Christ is the shrine of true beauty. The one who will "save the world." Other shrines are false idols. This, probably, contains an explanation, at first glance, to the strange in its grammatical ambiguity the phrase "the holy of Christ" - in the strict sense, impossible in the Gospel context. On the one hand, what is sacred to Christ becomes sacred for the heroine, thereby she abandons the old hierarchy of values, accepting a new one with all her soul. On the other hand, Christ himself for the heroine becomes a shrine, an object of reverent worship - as if by the Church even before the Church.

Thus, the poem "The Sinner" is created by A.K. Tolstoy for the artistic solution of several important questions at once: about the nature and essence of beauty, about the hierarchy of the physical and spiritual, about the meaning of the Coming of Christ, and finally, about the relationship between the eternal and the actual: any person, regardless of era, can be (and should become) a sinner transformed by the meeting with the Savior.

"John of Damascus"

One of the best poetic creations of A.K. Tolstoy, "John of Damascus", did not have the same success among his contemporaries, which fell to the lot of "Sinner". This poem by most of his contemporaries (the most striking example is NS Leskov, who believed that in the main character Tolstoy "portrayed himself") was interpreted from an "autobiographical" point of view. There is a certain reason for this: the poem begins with a description of John's outwardly prosperous life at the caliph's court, but “wealth, honor, peace and affection” does not satisfy the hero's spiritual needs; rather, on the contrary, it becomes a dungeon for his spirit and his gift. That is why the plea of ​​the "successful courtier" sounds so passionate: "Oh, let me go, Caliph, / Let me breathe and sing in freedom!"

Here the deeply personal hidden discontent of A.K. himself was poetically expressed. Tolstoy's own life, which he directly dared to admit only in letters to his beloved: “ I was born an artist but all circumstances and all my life have so far opposed my becoming quite artist ... "(SA Miller from 14.10.1851). “I do not live in my own environment, I don’t follow my vocation, I don’t do what I want, there is complete discord in me…” (SA Miller, 1851. (55)). “But how to work for art when you hear the words from all sides: service, rank, uniform, bosses etc? How to be a poet when you are absolutely sure that you will never be published and as a result no one will ever know you? I cannot admire the uniform, and I am forbidden to be an artist; what can I do if I don't fall asleep? .. ”(S.A. Miller, dated July 31, 1853. (63)).

Here we touch upon another problem of Alexei Konstantinovich, which can be called a family problem: the mother and her brothers persistently "move" their beloved offspring up the career ladder, starting from Sunday games with the heir to the throne and ending with high court positions (adjutant wing, master of ceremonies), the latter of which - the jägermeister of the court - according to the table of ranks corresponds to a privy councilor, that is, is a "general". How can one fail to recall Tolstoy's humorous appeal to the ancient patron of the Muses: "Don't let me, Phoebus, be a general, / Don't let me be innocently stupid!" ("Filled with an eternal ideal ..."). The request with which the hero of Tolstoy's poem addresses the caliph, in reality, the author managed to utter only two years after writing the work; so that the beginning of "John of Damascus" to some extent can be considered both a "sublimation" of the poet's specific intentions, and a kind of rehearsal for the subsequent request for resignation: "Sovereign, service, whatever it may be, is deeply contrary to my nature; I know that everyone should, to the best of his ability, benefit the fatherland, but there are different ways to be useful. The path indicated to me for this by Providence is mine literary talent, and any other way is impossible for me ...<…>I thought ... that I would be able to overcome the nature of the artist in myself, but experience has shown that I fought in vain with it. Service and art are incompatible, one harms the other, and a choice must be made.<…>The noble heart of Your Majesty will forgive me if I beg you to dismiss me finally to resign, not in order to retire from you, but in order to follow a clearly defined path and no longer be a bird flaunting in other people's feathers "(Alexander II, August or September 1861. (139-140)).

So, certain grounds for a "personal and biographical" interpretation of the problematics of the poem "John of Damascus" are obvious. However, with one significant amendment: we are talking exclusively about the beginning of the poem, about its first chapter, that is, about the introduction. The contradiction between the appointment of the hero and his official role at the court of the caliph, the resolution of this contradiction, is only a condition for the subsequent movement of Damascene along his path, to which the poem is dedicated. The Caliph, as we remember, heeded the singer's plea without offense and conditions, therefore, John does not carry away any internal conflict from his rich palace:

“In your chest
I have no power to restrain my desire:
Singer, you are free, go
Where does your calling take you! " (1, 31)

Defining one's own vocation, inner dissatisfaction with oneself and a life that contradicts the vocation - all this is a kind of "pretext" of Tolstoy's poem, in the lyrics of which the problem of choosing a path is often posed (see, for example: "Only I will stay with myself ...", " I recognized you, holy convictions ... "," Darkness and fog obscure my path ... "), but John is shown by a man who has already realized his path by the beginning of the work.

Attracted by a different vocation,
I cannot rule the people:
I was born simple to be a singer,
Glorify God with a free verb.
There is always one in a crowd of nobles,
I am full of torment and boredom;
Among the feasts, at the head of the squads,
Some sounds I hear;
Their irresistible appeal
I am attracted to herself more and more ... (1, 29)

Only awareness is not movement. And a perfect choice does not mean that in the future the hero will not have to face the problem of choice again and again. It is worth pointing out that from the life of St. John Tolstoy does NOT choose the most famous episode for his poetic interpretation - the miraculous return of the saint's right hand, severed by an unjust sentence. Perhaps, here, as in the analogous case with The Sinner, where the poet deliberately did not use the well-known words of Christ about the stone, the motive is “against the tide”: Tolstoy is not interested in roadways, although this explanation is too universal to clarify in a particular case. Suppose that the artistic task of the author does not require recourse to the healing of John through the intervention of the Most Holy Theotokos, since the composition of the poem presupposes only one culminating episode. And he is associated with the most important, according to Tolstoy, test that awaits Damascene after his release from court life.

The hero's path is the path to Christ and at the same time to himself

The famous monologue-prayer of Damascene “I bless you, forests” is harmonious and light; the most important contradiction between life and purpose has been removed, the choice of the subject for spiritual chanting was made from the very beginning: "Smell only in the name of Christ, / My rapturous word." The hero's path is the path to Christ and at the same time to himself. However, this path cannot be easy. John faces the most difficult choice not in the royal palaces, not in the bustle of the capital of Damascus, but in the blessed monastery of Saint Sava, where the ruthless sentence of the spiritual mentor will sound:

But from now on you must postpone
Unnecessary thoughts, fruitless fermentation;
The spirit of idleness and the charm of song
Fasting, singer, you must win.
If you came as a hermit to the desert,
Be able to trample the dreams of everyday life,
And on the lips, having humbled his pride,
You seal the silence;
Fill the spirit with prayer and sorrow -
Here is my charter for you as a new boss! " (1, 37–38).

It is curious that in the original source of Tolstoy's work - the life (as presented by St. Demetrius of Rostov, which was included in the Cheti-Menaion), John takes a vow of silence with joyful humility. The hero of the poem is literally crushed by the "stone" sentence. He was ready for everything except this:

So this is where you lurked, renunciation
That I have promised more than once in my prayers!
The song was my joy
And you, Lord, chose him as a sacrifice! (1, 38–39).

Perhaps here the folklore archetype of a frivolous promise manifested itself, realized in many fairy-tale plots, when the hero agrees to a condition, not realizing that he will have to give up the most precious thing he has (for example, his own child). John at Tolstoy clearly did not intend to make just such a sacrifice. But there is a harsh logic in the decision of the monk resident: self-denial, which is necessary for drawing closer to God, and means rejection of oneself. The burden of the old man must be cast off in order to be resurrected in soul. True, this logic assumes that Damascene's poetic gift is precisely charm, that is, a sin or weakness that must be fought against. And the dearer this weakness is to John, the more severe and consistent the struggle must be.

However, is not a terrible substitution taking place here - instead of renouncing sin, is not a renunciation of the soul being performed? For whoever wants to save his soul will lose it, but whoever loses his soul for my sake will gain it.(Matthew 16:25). These words of Christ seem to confirm the unrelenting righteousness of the elder: the soul, captivated by the charm of chants, that is, seized with pride, that is, dead, must be "thrown into the fire," only in this way is resurrection possible (recall, at first glance, a similar episode in "The Sinner" when the heroine realizes how wrongly she disposed of the gift of life and beauty, and renounces herself “old”, “lovely” in order to fall in repentance “before the sanctuary of Christ”).

In any case, the motive of death begins to sound in the poem precisely after the vow of silence that John brings. In fact, he had no choice in this case - obedience is one of the key conditions of the path that Damascus initially chose. But the hero does not acquire any gracious immersion in the heartfelt contemplation of God, neither clever (unpronounceable) prayer, nor the joy of liberation from the lies of "uttered thought". On the contrary, he is still overwhelmed by an irreversible loss, and his inner overflow with images and "unpetty psalms" requires and does not find a way out, burning him from the inside. Having blocked his mouth with the seal of silence, the hero is not able to "block" the chaos from which "accords" and "vigilant thoughts" continue to call upon him. Damascene's internal conflict is also emphasized by the fact that the "statutory words" and "memorized prayers", which he repeats in the hope of finding peace as an agreement with himself, do not work, are deprived of their healing power - precisely because "statutory and memorized".

And an idle gift became my execution,
Always ready to awaken;
So only the breeze awaits
A smoldering fire beneath the ash.
Before my troubled spirit
Images are crowded together
And, in silence, over a sensitive ear,
The dimensional system trembles of consonance;
And I, not daring sacrilegiously
Call them into life from the kingdom of darkness,
In the chaos of the night I drive back
My unsung psalms.
But in vain I, in a fruitless battle,
I repeat the statutory words
And memorized prayers -
The soul takes its rights!
Alas, under this black robe,
As in those days under the crimson,
Burning alive with fire
The heart is rebellious. (1, 41-42)

A significant parallel: the heart does not accept the "condition" of monastic life, just as it did not accept the "grandeur, splendor, power, and strength" of the caliph's palace life. Has nothing essentially changed, and the hero's soul, instead of liberation, found only a new prison? It is unlikely, of course, that Damascene himself thinks so, here his direct emotional experience, mental pain, which has yet to develop into spiritual attainment, is more important. But in any case, the essence of the conflict is between the "external" and "internal" person, between obedience (silence) and the "rebellious" heart (word). The outcome of this conflict is predetermined by a meaningful line: “The soul takes its rights!”. That is, by imposing a cruel vow on John, the elder violated the "rights" of his soul? We dare to assume that the category of "law", so beloved by Tolstoy in the socio-political sense, here acquires a new semantic connotation. We are not talking about a contradiction between right and duty. The hero's rebellious soul is right. This is already clear to the reader, and soon it will become obvious to the characters in the poem.

Here, at this moment of tragic discord with his soul, Damascene is faced with a real and very difficult choice: to violate the elder's prohibition or to refuse a request to his brother, dejected by the loss of a loved one.

A black man approached the mournful man,
He fell on his knees before him and said: “Help, John!
My brother in the flesh has passed away; brother he was to my liking.
A heavy grief eats me up; I would like to cry -
Tears do not flow from the eyes, but drip in a sorrowful heart.
You can help me: write just a sweet song
A funeral song for my dear brother, to hear it,
I could weep, and my melancholy would have gotten weaker! " (1, 43)

Compassion wins, releasing the word that was languishing in Damascene's soul

Isn't the most important Christian virtue - merciful help to one's neighbor, for the sake of which one can forget both oneself and one's vow (that is, suffer oneself in order to alleviate his suffering)? But in this situation something more is tested: John's ability to live without the gift of the word. Or maybe the vow of silence itself, its spiritual meaning is being tested? Compassion wins, releasing the word that was languishing in Damascene's soul. And it is no coincidence that this word about death - as if some kind of emotional and philosophical result of this topic was summed up: the decay and desolation of the rich palaces of John, the deathly landscape of the desert, the death of the soul, the death of a brother ... The famous troparion of Damascene in Tolstoy's poem is an artistically reliable arrangement of the stichera of the saint about the frailty of earthly existence.

What a sweetness in this life
Has no earthly sorrow involved?
Whose expectation is not in vain
And where is the happy one among people?
Everything is wrong, everything is insignificant,
What we have gained with difficulty -
What glory on earth
Is it worth it, firm and immutable?
All ash, ghost, shadow and smoke,
Everything will disappear like a dusty whirlwind,
And before death we stand
And unarmed and powerless.
The hand of the mighty is weak
Tsar's decrees are insignificant -
Accept the deceased slave
Lord, to the blessed villages! (1, 46)

Substantially, this troparion sets a certain independent "vertical" for comprehending the problem of choice in the poem: between the earthly and the heavenly, between the perishable and the eternal, between the vain and the important. It remains to understand to which sides of the antithesis word and silence belong. If a word is only the vain self-expression of a sinful earthly person, his emotional impulses and sensual passions, then naturally, the ban on speaking should bring the hero closer to eternity. But then it turns out that the solemn chant of life and death is sinful from the very beginning and seems to deny itself. In this situation, a question arises that requires an immediate answer: what is the nature of the gift of speech? For the elder who caught John in violation of the vow, the answer is obvious - the soul speaks in words, the spirit speaks in silence. According to the monastery charter, severe penance is prescribed for disobedience, and Damascene accepts it meekly and even joyfully, as if recognizing the correctness of his spiritual father. In any case, the punishment removes a heavy stone from his soul, which, so to speak, was formed gradually - from the moment of the ban to its violation.

And the elder's speech reached Damascene;
Having learned the terms of penance,
The singer is in a hurry to make amends;
Hastens to honor the unheard of charter;
Joy was replaced by bitter grief.
Taking a shovel in hand without a murmur,
The singer of Christ does not think of mercy,
But humiliation endures for God's sake. (1, 52)

We can say that he could not help but be guilty, like the hero of the story of N.S. Leskov "The Man on the Clock" (1887). Postnikov could not help but save a man. But, punished for leaving the post, he perceives this punishment as just! This is religious consciousness. Yes, life is arranged in such a way that sometimes it is impossible not to sin. But this does not mean that a person has the right to say about himself: "I am not guilty." He can only hope that he will be forgiven, they will absolve him of guilt - voluntary or involuntary. And the joy of the punished is completely natural, because external punishment not only lightens the main burden - the pangs of conscience, but is also perceived as a promise of mercy and atonement.

Damascene does not seek excuses and does not try to forgive himself. The Mother of God intercedes for John and reveals the true nature of his gift:

Why did you, old man, have blocked
Mercilessly that source is strong,
Which the world would drink
Healing and abundant water!
Is there grace for life
The Lord sent to his creatures,
So that they use fruitless torture
Execute and kill yourself? (1, 54)

Life and sin are not the same concepts

The gift of the word is Divine in origin, and it depends on the person himself whether he will become "the delight of chanting" or will glorify His Giver. The gift of Damascene's word served the Lord, and therefore the vow of silence is violence not just over the soul of a person, but over the spirit that spoke through his lips. John could not disobey the elder by taking a vow. But, finding himself in a situation of choice and violating the will of the spiritual father, he, at first glance, paradoxically fulfills the will of the Heavenly Father. Therefore, the spiritual father was not the vehicle of this will. The Chernorizets understands this thanks to the appearance of the Mother of God, which opens his eyes to the most important truth: life and sin are not identical concepts. Here, in general, a common feature of the Russian religious tradition is manifested - spiritual service does not deny the world, but seeks to enlighten it, mercifully and humbly accept it. In this sense, the antithesis of John and the monk would subsequently respond to the opposition of the bright elder Zosima and the gloomy father Ferapont in The Brothers Karamazov by F.M. Dostoevsky. And the very appearance of the Mother of God, after which John receives the legal opportunity to “glorify God with a free verb,” can become one of the explanations - why A.K. Tolstoy did not refer to the episode with the severed hand of the saint, which was miraculously healed by the Intercessor. The poet caught the inner consonance of two events in the life of John with a spiritual ear - and showed only one of them. And thanks to the hidden analogy, the shown event acquires an additional "volume", flickers with new meanings. Unjust deprivation of hand and word, humble acceptance and suffering, finally, healing - the return of the gift. This is a general pattern, the spiritual composition of human life: from death to resurrection. That is, the "injustice" of this or that test is very conditional, only a short-sighted earthly look will see here some kind of violation of the right to life and health (John did not commit the crime of which he was accused and for which he was deprived of his right hand) or freedom of speech. Otherwise, then the monk becomes a censor, and the whole poem is reduced to a pamphlet, as A.N. Maikov:

Damaskin by Alexei Tolstoy - it hurts for the author!
How many colors and features inspired for free have been destroyed.
What did he bring his life to? To protest for "free speech"
Against censorship, and a pamphlet was published instead of a wonderful legend.
All because the speaker's face he did not see before him ....

Providence, the supreme necessity of the hero's privation is evident from the spiritual perspective: in order to be resurrected, one must die. And here it is not subject to the rigid scheme of "crime-punishment-correction", as the information of "accounting accounts" in the book of human destiny. The saint did not commit the fall or crime. But the sufferer Christ was absolutely innocent. And Damascene himself at the beginning of the poem laments why he is not a contemporary of the Savior and cannot share His burden. The Lord seemed to have heard these laments and fulfilled the prayer of His songwriter. Resurrection cannot be earned, you have to grow up to it ... make you feel good.

You whose best aspirations
Dying for nothing under the yoke
Believe, friends, in deliverance -
We are coming to God's light.
You, bent down in a twist,
You, discouraged by chains,
You buried with Christ,
You will be resurrected with Christ! (1, 52)

The poem ends with a light Easter chord:

Distribute, my Sunday song,
As the sun rise above the earth!
Dissolve the murderous dream of being
And, the radiant light is everywhere,
Thunder that is created by darkness! (1, 56)

It is noteworthy that the last words in the poem - "Whom to praise in their verb / They will never stop / Not every blade of grass in the field, / Not every star in the sky" - literally refers us to the beginning of the poem, to Damascene's prayer "I bless you, forests." Only now the blade of grass and the star are not the "object of blessing" of the singer, but themselves - the source of praise to the Lord. As if the "verb" has now become a property not only of man, but of the whole world: the "deaf-mute universe" sounded, and this is somehow connected with the fact that his gift returned to Damascene.

Undoubtedly, Tolstoy's poem is about the choice and the path, and more than that, about the meaning of being, about why a person comes to the earthly world. But this is the way of the man of the Word - in the high meaning of God's gift. Moreover, Damascene's gift is associated not only with the glorification of the Creator (and in this respect man is a part of the global "orchestra", the created world), but also with the struggle, opposition to "darkness", silence, evil and death. It turns out that this is where the “peculiarity” of a person, his “specific” purpose, which sets him apart from the general symphony, is reflected. One way or another, Tolstoy's poem sets the most important "coordinates" for artistic comprehension of one of the eternal themes - the theme of the word, creativity, art and its purpose.

Tolstoy considers the opposition of the "secular", "secular" and "ecclesiastical" understanding of art to be false - or, in any case, finds a "common point" at which they meet. Modern researcher Yu.K. Gerasimov cites a fragment from S.T. Aksakova: “You cannot practice two religions with impunity. It is futile to think of combining and reconciling them. Christianity now sets a task for art that it cannot fulfill, and the vessel will burst, "and then suggests taking Tolstoy's poem as an artistic refutation of Aksakov's thought (at least, as an exception to the rule):" Tolstoy is the lofty example of John Damascene, the songwriter and a zealot of faith, with the lyrical declarations of the poem and the very fact of its creation, he affirmed fundamental compatibility, the possibility of merging art and religion. Poets, he believed, are given to feel and sing the divine harmony of the world. "

And here it becomes clear why it was the Monk Damascene who became the hero of the poem - not only as the recognized author of the canonical religious stichera, but also as “a fighter for the honor of icons, the art of the fence”. This refers to his famous "words" against the iconoclasts, revealing the essence of icon painting through the ratio of the visible and invisible in the Divine image.

“For it was not the nature of the flesh that became the Divine, but just as the Word, remaining what It was, without experiencing change, became flesh, so the flesh became the Word, not losing what it is, it is better to say: being one with the Word in its hypostasis ... Therefore, I boldly depict an invisible God, not as invisible, but as made visible for our sake through participation in both flesh and blood. I do not depict the invisible Deity, but through the image I express the flesh of God, which was visible (1, IV).

How will the invisible be depicted? How will the incomparable be likened? How will it be drawn that has no quantity and value and is unlimited? How will it be endowed with qualities that have no appearance? How will the bodyless be painted with paints? So what is mysteriously shown [in these places]? It is clear that when you see the incorporeal for your sake incarnate, then make an image of His human form. When the invisible, clothed in flesh, becomes visible, then depict the likeness of the Revealed. When He who, being, due to the superiority of His nature, is devoid of body and form, and quantity, and quality, and magnitude, Who in the image of God, we will accept the form of a servant, through this he became limited in quantitative and qualitative terms and put on a bodily image, then draw on the boards and expose for contemplation what you want to appear. Draw the ineffable. His condescension, virgin birth, baptism in Jordan, transformation on Tabor, suffering, freeing us from passions, death, miracles - signs of His divine nature, performed by divine power through the activity of the flesh, saving cross, burial, resurrection, ascent to heaven; paint everything with words and colors. Do not be afraid, do not be afraid! (1, VII)<…>

The disembodied and formless God was never depicted in any way. Now that God has appeared in the flesh and better off with people, I am depicting the visible side of God. I do not worship substance, but I worship the Creator of substance, who became substance for my sake, who deigned to settle in substance and through substance. who made my salvation, and I will not stop honoring the substance through which done my salvation ”(1, XVI).

Thus, through the very choice of the hero and the mention of his protection of icons, that is, thanks to the historical and religious allusion-analogy, Tolstoy comes out on a completely topical topic associated with contemporary aesthetic (or rather, anti-aesthetic) tendencies. Later this will be reflected in the poem Against the Stream (1867), which contains an indication of the "days of Byzantium relaxed", when the "fighter icons" triumphed. Earlier than nihilism received its name as a phenomenon of the 1860s, two years before the publication of Turgenev's novel "Fathers and Sons", almost simultaneously with the articles of Pisarev and his radical associates, in the updated G.E. To the blessed magazine "Russian Word" the poet points out the serious danger that not only literature, but society as a whole is about to face. V.S. Soloviev emphasized the fidelity of this hidden analogy in Tolstoy's poem, speaking of the iconoclasts and their denial of the possibility of depicting the "incorporeal": “Here the very principle of Beauty and the true knowledge of art were undoubtedly denied, albeit unconsciously. The same point of view is shared by those who consider everything aesthetic to be the realm of fiction and idle amusement ... Tolstoy was not mistaken: what he fought against the current that dominated in his time was, in essence, the very thing for which John Damascene and his supporters stood against iconoclasm ".

True, an extremely ascetic old man (seemingly not associated with iconoclasm) can also be correlated with "nihilists" -pragmatists-utilitarians, who deny the "useless charm" of chanting. Indeed, it turns out that "bringing together ... all the persecutors of art and beauty and opposing them with his ideal of a Christian poet, the author combined the acquired inner unity of the poem's concept with the integrity of the hero's spiritual image in all his fields."

Of course, with a holistic analysis of the religious poems of A.K. Tolstoy, it is necessary to consider them in close interconnection with each other, as components of a certain cycle, a kind of "Easter dilogy", although not directly indicated by the author himself. In fact, these poems continue one another - both at the “chronological” level (- Sacred Tradition), it is no coincidence that John can only dream of being a contemporary of Christ, and at the metaphysical level: if the history of the Sinner is connected with the transformation of the soul due to the meeting with the Savior, then the story of Damascene is the path of a transformed soul through earthly trials and temptations. If we draw a distant analogy with Dostoevsky's novels, then the prostrate prostrate woman correlates with the epiphany of convict Raskolnikov, the finale of Crime and Punishment, which shows, as it were, the birth of a new person; and the “new story” of this “new man” is described in the novel The Idiot, where the sinless hero constantly faces the relativity of earthly choice. The theme of Beauty in its connection with Divine truth is also important for understanding the spiritual problematics of each of the poems: the artificiality, falsity, destructiveness of the opposition of the beautiful and the holy are overcome to the finale of the works. Finally, both poems are connected by the common Easter idea of ​​the resurrection of the soul and the image of Christ, which appears in reality in the first poem and appears before the inspired gaze of the singer for the glory of God - in the second.

The image of Christ in the works of A.K. Tolstoy appears again at about the same time, only in the lyrics: in the poem "Raphael's Madonna" (until May 1858):

Bowing to the young Christ,
Mary dawned on him,
Heavenly love eclipsed
Her earthly beauty.
And He, in deep insight,
Already entering the battle in peace,
Looks ahead - and with a clear eye
He sees Golgotha ​​before him. (1, 709-710)

Shortly before the publication of the poem, the essay by A.V. Nikitenko (by the way, the censor of the first published work of A.K. Tolstoy - the story "Ghoul", 1841) "Raphael's Sistine Madonna": "Is it not because the Infant's face is so thoughtful that he vaguely foresees his difficult earthly future, and as a being, Who has just become a man, as it were, instinctively feels the first thrill of mournful human existence? " We would venture to suggest that the remark about the thoughtfulness and visionary gift of the Infant Christ at the beginning of His mournful earthly journey could have influenced the magazine edition of Tolstoy's poem, albeit dedicated to another painting by the same artist.

Poem by A.K. Tolstoy's magazine publication had a different title - La Madonna della Seggiola - and a slightly different beginning of the second stanza: "And He, in deep thinking, / Already preparing with life for battle, / Looks into the distance ..." (1, 982). Thinking, which has become an insight, indicates an important shift in emphasis - from a rational, "philosophical" knowledge of the world - to mysterious and spiritual comprehension, intimate knowledge - including one's tragic mission in this world. Before us is not a sage, not a thinker, but the Son of God. From birth, He begins His path to which He is intended, he “has no time” for “preparation”, therefore the Infant immediately sees Golgotha ​​as the top and point of His earthly field. Thus, "insight" merges with the "clear eye" directed into the region of the Eternal, inaccessible to ordinary sight. And one more important clarification - not with life, but with the world, Christ enters into battle. I am the way and the truth and the life(John 14: 6) - He who brought victory over death cannot fight with life - in the high spiritual sense of the word. Despite the fact that in Tolstoy's lyrics “life” is repeatedly personified by “baba”, “baba-yaga”, it becomes the designation of everything petty, trashy, vain, destructive to the creative aspirations of the soul, here the writer changes this word to “peace”, before all meaning earthly existence, not enlightened by the Savior's sacrifice. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword(Matthew 10, 34) - it is also significant that the future suffering on the cross for all is inseparable from the struggle, the spiritual sword, as Love and Anger become the main Divine gifts of the lyric hero of the poem "Lord, preparing me for battle ...".

And yet, in Tolstoy's poem before us is not a tenderly prayerful contemplation of the icon, there is a lot of aesthetic admiration for the perfect embodiment of a spiritual event in colors and lines. It is no coincidence that in the third and fourth lines, the earthly beauty of Mary is mentioned, as if it "faded into the background" of the viewer's attention thanks to the masterful transfer of "heavenly love" by the brilliant painter in Her human features. Probably, this expressed not so much the previously noted desire to bring earthly art closer to religious service as a way of praising the Creator, but also the spiritual tact of Alexei Konstantinovich, who never described in lyric works what is depicted on an Orthodox icon. The icon is not created in order to admire it - you need to pray in front of it.

Poetic prayer

Alexey Konstantinovich reflects on prayer, its healing effect on the soul, its wonderful ability to unite spiritually close people regardless of the distance between them in a letter to S.A. Miller from May 10, 1852: “... of all actions, the most powerful is the action of the soul, and in no position does the soul acquire a more extensive development, as in its approach to God. Asking God in faith to remove unhappiness from a loved one is not a fruitless affair, as some philosophers assure, who recognize in prayer only a way to worship God, communicate with Him and feel His presence.

First of all, prayer has a direct and powerful effect on the soul of the person you are praying for, since the closer you get to God, the more you become independent of your body, and therefore your soul is less constrained by space and matter that separate it from the soul for which she prays.

I am almost convinced that two people who would pray at the same time with equally strong faith for each other, could communicate with each other, without any material help and in spite of distance.

This is a direct effect on thoughts, on desires, and therefore on the decisions of that kindred soul. I always wanted to make this action on you when I prayed to God ... and it seems to me that God heard me ... and that you felt this action - and my gratitude to God is infinite and eternal ...<…>May God keep you, may He make us happy, as we understand it, i.e. may He make us the best. "

And one more remarkable passage from Tolstoy's letter to his nephew, Andrei Bakhmetev: “Everything depends on you; but if you ever feel that you can go crazy, pray deeply to God, and you will see how you will become strong and how easy it will be for you to walk on an honest path ”(dated 17.08.1870 (351)).

Prayer in the writer's work is presented in a very diverse way - in almost all major works: the prayers of Ioann the Terrible (the novel The Prince of Silver, The Death of Ioann the Terrible), Fyodor Ioannovich (Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich), Ioann Damascene (the poem Ioann Damascene ) and etc.

But actually Tolstoy's lyric appeal to God is one: the poem "I dozed off, my head drooped ..." (until May 1858).

I dozed off, head downcast,
And I don’t recognize the former forces;
Die, Lord, living the storm
To my sleepy soul.

Like a voice of reproach, above me
Its inviting thunder to roll,
And burn out the rust of peace
And sweep away the ashes of inaction.

May I rise up, lifted by You,
And, heeding the punishing words,
Like a stone from the blow of a mlat
Fire lurking out! (1, 362)

It consists of three quatrains and is compositionally organized logically and strictly: in the first quatrain - the reason for the request and the request itself ( dozed off, I don't recognize - die); in the second quatrain - a clarification of what the lyrical hero is asking for ( roll, burn, sweep); in the third - the desired result of the influence on his soul of Divine help ( I will rise, publish).

Attention is drawn to the abundance of Old Church Slavonic vocabulary in this poem: "chapter", "voice", "dust", "flare up", "raised", "mlata". On the one hand, this actualizes the legacy of the 18th century, when the church genre itself in the classicist "coordinate system" was transformed into a spiritual ode. Let us recall, for example, "Morning Meditation on the Majesty of God ..." M.V. Lomonosov, some lines from which Tolstoy seems to be quoting:

Creator! covered with darkness for me
Stretch out the rays of wisdom ...

On the other hand, Church Slavonic vocabulary in Tolstoy's poem does not create the pathos of special solemnity, significance of the conversation with the Almighty (as one would expect, bearing in mind the development of classicist traditions in the lyrics of the 19th century); on the contrary, oddly enough, the intonation of this conversation is sincere and "intimate", communication with the Lord occurs as if "face to face", without outside "listeners" or witnesses. It can be assumed that the Slavicisms here simply signal the extreme seriousness of the topic and situation. Why is there a need for Divine help? The poet talks about this in the first two lines:

I dozed off, head downcast,
And I don’t recognize my former strength ...

In this way, a special state of the soul is conveyed in a poetic and laconic manner, which has been repeatedly interpreted in patristic literature, because sleep has been considered one of the synonyms or images of death since ancient times, and in the Christian understanding of the living and the dead, sleep acquires a distinctly spiritual semantic content: Rise, sleeping, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you(Ephesians 5:14). The “drowsy” state of mind mentioned in Tolstoy's poem evokes associations with “petrified insensibility” - a common phrase in the writings of the Church Fathers: “Lord, deliver me from all ignorance and forgetfulness, and cowardice, and petrified insensibility” (John Chrysostom); “Sometimes there is such a petrified insensibility in the soul that you cannot see or feel your sins; You are not afraid of death, of the Judge, or of a terrible judgment, everything spiritual happens, as they say, tryn-grass. About crafty, about proud, about evil flesh! " (John of Kronstadt).

Of course, the feeling (humble admission) of one's own insufficiency, sinfulness, weakness, "winglessness" is a necessary condition for the meeting of the Pushkin prophet with Seraphim ("We languish with spiritual thirst, / I dragged myself into the gloomy desert"), and for the ascension of flame and words into the Fatherland the hero of an earlier Tolstoyan poem ("Me, in the darkness and in the dust / Dosel, who dragged out the shackles ...").

However, here we have an emphatically "earthly", concrete "self-portrait" sketch - almost at the level of a gesture. But this gesture is deeply symbolic: the head is lowered, that is, the consciousness is immersed in contemplation of the mundane, everyday, vain. Before us is a hero on the verge of mental death, and he cannot overcome this danger on his own, for he does not recognize the "former forces". Of course, we are talking about spiritual powers - the very ones that he received in an earlier poem "Lord, preparing me for battle ...":

Enlivened with a mighty word,
He breathed a lot of strength into my heart ... (1, 286)

And the appeal to God in prayer begins with the word "Die". Creation needs not only creation, but also support, constant help from its Creator. The sleepy soul must be awakened by the "living storm". Most often, even in the poetic dictionary, a storm denotes a threat of destruction. And here it seems to be the other way around - it is defined almost by an oxymoron: “living”. That is, a storm is a kind of grace-filled shock that will revive a dead soul. And then the metaphor of the storm develops, combining with the traditional idea of ​​the punishment of the Lord in the form of a thunderstorm:

As a voice of reproach over me
Its inviting thunder to roll ...

It is surprising that the poet here, as it were, reverses the elements of comparison: not the voice of reproach is compared with thunder, but on the contrary, since it is a person who “translates” into a language he understands majestic natural phenomena that are inaccessible to his power. Including through them, he perceives the Lord.

Even at the phonetic level, the line “Your inviting thunder to roll” seems to convey the rolling sound of heavenly anger; thanks to this line, the key role of the sound P in the whole poem is revealed: only two lines out of twelve are devoid of words with this sound. Thus, alliteration becomes the most important phonetic "instrumentation" of the semantic motives of Tolstoy's poetic prayer: SLAM, DOWN, STORM, REPRESENTATION, THUNDER, STORM, ROLL, RUST, DROP, RETRACT, PUNISHING, BLOW- these words constitute the "concept sphere" of the poem and convey the movement of lyric thought and the development of lyric experience, creating a certain mood in the person reading or pronouncing this poem.

And the heavenly fire, not named in the poem, is recognized through another metaphorical action: "burn out the rust of peace." Peace in general in various works of Tolstoy appears and is evaluated ambiguously, cf. for example, in Vasily Shibanov:

The tsar in meek clothes rings.
Does he call back the old peace
Or does conscience bury it forever? (1, 250)

In this context, peace is agreement with one's own soul, it is the peace of victory over inner demons. And in prayer, peace becomes a rust caused by a lack of movement. Peace is static. Peace is like death. Peace is inhuman and destructive. Almost at the same time and practically the same thing is said by L.N. Tolstoy in one of his letters: “To live honestly, you have to break, get confused, fight, make mistakes, start and quit, and start again, and again quit, and always fight and be deprived. And calmness is a meanness of the soul ”.

The motive for death develops in the next line: “the dust of inaction to sweep away”. Sound, fire (light) and movement (breath) must conquer the silence, darkness and peace in which the soul of the lyrical hero is immersed. Dust is a reminder of the earthly, mortal nature of the human body, but this dust must be swept away from the soul, which is the breath of God. And then what is said in the third stanza will happen:

May I rise up, lifted by You,
And heeding the punishing words,
Like a stone from the blow of a mlat
Fire lurking out!

First, instead of moving downward, an ascent will begin - soaring. And secondly, the petrified soul will "emit" fire, free him from captivity. This is the very Divine fire that burns (or smolders) in any person. And thanks to Divine help, he will break free to connect with his original source. This is the living soul - the soul united with God.

It is paradoxical that in prayer, at first glance, the essence of a request is reduced not to forgiveness, but to punishment ( voice of reproach in the second stanza turns into punishing words in the third). It may seem that we have before us a prayer for punishment. But this punishment should be directed at vices, at what kills the soul. And then prayer becomes a request for resurrection.

It is also surprising that, as the prayer is pronounced, the lyrical monologue develops, what the hero asks for happens in reality: his intonation goes up, and at the end of the poem almost nothing reminds of the initial apathy-drowsiness, and the final exclamation mark - a kind of symbol of victory. The prayer was heard and fulfilled as if at the very moment of pronouncing, since the desire to free oneself from the worst in oneself, warmed by a sincere faith in Divine help, is in itself almost omnipotent.

So, the religious issues in the spiritual poetry of A.K. Tolstoy includes a wide range of issues: the relationship between the eternal and the temporal in the earthly life of a person; choice of path; realization of the gift, which is understood as mission and responsibility; Beauty and its relationship with Truth and Goodness; temptation and spiritual death, overcoming which is impossible without Divine help; word and silence; renunciation and obedience; sin and its condemnation. The statement and solution of these problems are shown by A.K. Tolstoy as a deep and distinctive religious artist and thinker. He is sincerely convinced that the eternal can become relevant without the help of topicality, as long as a person remains a person and is faced with "damned questions" to which each generation needs to seek their own answers.

I would like to believe that readers of our generation will rediscover the work of the wonderful Russian writer. And this discovery will be akin to the miracle of self-knowledge, spiritual transformation - and movement towards God.

Sinner

The people are boiling, fun, laughter,

There are greenery and flowers all around,
And between the pillars, at the entrance of the house,
Brocade severe fractures
Patterned braid raised;
The palaces are richly decorated,
Crystal and gold burns everywhere
The yard is full of charioteers and horses;
Squeezing into a great meal,
A noisy choir is feasting on the guests
Goes merging with the music
Their cross talk.

The conversation is not constrained by anything,
They speak fluently
About the hated yoke of Rome,
How Pilate rules,
About their elders gathering in secret,
Trade, peace, and war
And to that extraordinary husband,
What appeared in their country.

“With love for fellow flames,
He taught the people with humility,
He is all the laws of Moses
He subordinated love to the law;
He does not tolerate anger, nor vengeance,
He preaches forgiveness
Orders for evil to pay with good;
There is an unearthly power in him,
He returns sight to the blind,
Gives both strength and movement
One who was both weak and lame;
He does not need recognition,
The thinking of hearts is open
Of his gaze
Nobody could stand it yet.
Aiming sickness, healing flour,
Everywhere he was a savior
And stretched out a good hand to everyone,
And he did not condemn anyone.
That, apparently, is the chosen husband of God!
He is there, by one Paul Jordan,
Walked like a sent from heaven
He performed many miracles there,
Now he came, complacent,
To this side of the river
A crowd of diligent and obedient
His disciples follow him. "

So guests, arguing together,
They sit at a long meal;
Between them, draining the bowl,
A young harlot is sitting;
Her fancy outfit
Involuntarily attracts eyes
Her immodest attire
They talk about a sinful life;
But the fallen virgin is beautiful;
Looking at her, it is unlikely
Before the power of a dangerous charm
Husbands and elders will stand:
The eyes are mocking and bold
Like the snow of Lebanon, teeth are white
Like heat, the smile is hot;
Falling wide around the camp,
Through fabrics tease the eye
Shoulders are lowered from the naked.
Her earrings and wrists,
Ringing, to the delights of sensuality,
They call for fiery joys,
Diamonds shine here and there
And, casting a shadow on the Lanita,
In all the abundance of beauty
Intertwined with a pearl thread,
Luxurious hair will fall;
In her, the conscience of the heart does not disturb,
Blood does not shyly flare up,
Anyone can buy for gold
Her venal love.

And the maiden listens to conversations,
And they sound to her as a reproach;
Pride awoke in her,
And he says with a boastful gaze:
“I am not afraid of anyone’s power;
Do you want to keep a mortgage with me?
Let your teacher appear
He will not confuse my eyes! "

Wine flows, noise and laughter,
The ringing of lutes and cymbals roar,
Smoking, sun and flowers;
And now to the crowd, noisy idly
A handsome husband approaches;
His wonderful features
Posture, gait and movement,
In the splendor of youthful beauty
Full of fire and inspiration;
Its majestic appearance
Breathes with irresistible power
There is no part for earthly joys,
And the gaze looks into the future.
The husband is unlike mortals,
The seal of the chosen one on it,
He is as bright as the archangel of God,
When with a flaming sword
Enemy in the shackles of pitch
He persecuted Jehovah's mania.
An involuntarily sinful wife
Confused by his greatness
And he looks timidly, lowering his gaze,
But remembering my recent challenge
She gets up from her seat
And, straightening its flexible camp
And boldly stepping forward,
To a stranger with a cheeky smile
Phial hissing.

"You are the one who teaches renunciation -
I don't believe in your teaching
Mine is safer and more reliable!
I am not confused by thoughts now,
Alone wandering in the wilderness
Who spent forty days in fasting!
I am attracted only by pleasure,
I am unfamiliar with fasting, with prayer,
I only believe in beauty
I serve wine and kisses
You don't bother my spirit
I laugh at your purity! "

And her speech still sounded,
She also laughed,
And the foam is light wine
She ran along the rings of her hands,
As a general dialect arose around,
And the sinner hears in confusion:
"0 she was mistaken, in error
She was led by an alien face -
That is not a teacher in front of her,
Then John of Galilee,
His beloved student! "

Carelessly feeble grievances
He listened to the young maiden,
And after him with a calm look
Another approaches the temple.
In his humble expression
There is no delight, no inspiration,
But a deep thought lay
On the sketch of the wondrous brow.
This is not an eagle's eye of a prophet,
Not the charm of angelic beauty,
Divided into two halves
His wavy hair;
Falling over the tunic,
Wore a woolen riza
With a simple cloth, slender growth,
In his movements he is modest and simple;
Lying around his beautiful lips,
The brada is slightly bifurcated,
Such good and clear eyes
No one has ever seen.

And carried over the people
Like a breath of silence
And wonderfully blissful arrival
The hearts of the guests are shocked.
The talk fell silent. Pending
The motionless assembly sits,
Anxiously taking breath.
And he, in a deep silence,
I looked around the seated ones with a quiet eye
And, without entering the house of fun,
On a daring, self-praiseworthy maiden
I stopped my gaze sad.

And that gaze was like a ray of a horse,
And everything was revealed to him,
And in the heart of the gloomy harlot
He dispersed the darkness of the night;
And everything that was hidden there,
In the sin that has been done
In her eyes relentlessly
Illuminated to the depth;
Suddenly it became clear to her
The untruth of a sacrilegious life,
All the lies of her wicked deeds
And terror seized her.
Already on the verge of crushing
She comprehended in amazement,
How many blessings, how many forces
The Lord generously gave her
And how she dawns her clear
She darkened with sin hourly;
And, for the first time, disdaining evil,
She is in that blessed gaze
And punishment for your depraved days,
And I read mercy.
And feeling a new beginning
Still afraid of earthly obstacles.
She hesitated, stood ...

And suddenly in the silence there was a ringing
From the hands of a fallen phial ...
A groan is heard from the constricted chest,
The young sinner turns pale,
Open lips tremble
And she fell on her face, sobbing,
Before the shrine of Christ.

I got to know you, holy convictions,
You are companions of my days gone by
When, for a runaway without chasing a shadow,
And I thought and felt better,
And with a youthful soul I clearly saw
Everything that I loved and everything that I hated!

Amid a world of lies, amid a world alien to me,
My blood is not forever cold,
The time has come and you are resurrected again,
My old anger and my old love!
The fog cleared away and, thank God,
I'm going out on the old road!

The strength of truth still shines
Her doubts will not overshadow anymore,
The planet made an uneven circle
And rolls back to the sun again,
Winter has passed, nature is turning green,
The meadows are blooming, fragrant spring blows!

Artist Bryullov. A. K. Tolstoy in his youth

In his youth, Alexei Tolstoy was predicted to have a brilliant diplomatic career, but the young man very soon realized that he did not want to manipulate the minds of people. Brought up on the poetry of Lermontov, this representative of a noble family tried to imitate his idol in everything. It is possible that it was for this reason that Alexei Tolstoy soon began to write poetry, trying to express his true feelings in them. Just like Lermontov, he saw deceit, deceit and betrayal behind the brilliance and tinsel of high society. Therefore, he gave his word that he would at least remain honest with himself.

Soon, fate forced Alexei Tolstoy to enter into an open confrontation with the secular society, which ranked the young poet as an outcast. The thing is that he had the imprudence to fall in love with a married lady, and she reciprocated. Such novels did not surprise or shock anyone, but when the couple announced their intention to marry, it caused a wave of condemnation among the local aristocracy. The poet's mother was categorically against this union, so the lovers were able to legalize their relationship only 13 years after they met. It was during that period, in the fall of 1858, that Tolstoy wrote the poem "I recognized you, holy convictions ...".

By this time, the poet had long outgrown the period of youthful maximalism. Nevertheless, the author still managed to preserve in his soul those ideals that were so important to him in his youth. With a certain amount of sadness, the fat woman admits that earlier “I thought and felt more truly”, having a clear idea of ​​what should be loved and what should be hated. But at the same time, Alexei Tolstoy notes: "In the midst of the world of lies, in the midst of a world alien to me, my blood has not cooled forever." He knows that he is able to defend his own opinion, even if it goes against what others think. At the same time, the poet still remains pure in front of himself, since he did not betray his friends and his beloved woman, did not lie and did not try to adhere to the rules of behavior in a secular society, if he considered them stupid. “The power of truth still shines, its doubts will not overshadow any more,” the poet notes, implying that he does not repent of his choice of life position.

Sophia Miller

And this applies not only to opposition to the high society, but relations with Sophia Miller, whom the poet idolized and considered the standard of femininity, despite the fact that for many years she remained the legal wife of another person.