The problem of the death of the human soul. Souls dead and alive in the poem N

Shamova Olga Yurievna,

teacher of Russian language and literature

MBOU SOSH № 53 of the city of Kirov.

Gogol was looking for answers to questions more important than the problems of artistic creation, albeit very subtle ones - although they could not but entice his imagination: after all, he was an artist. He was an artist of the highest level, but he also possessed a heightened religious endowment, and she prevailed in him over a purely artistic thirst for creativity. Gogol realized that art, no matter how high it ascended, would remain among the treasures on earth. For Gogol, however, treasures in heaven were always more needed.

Belinsky felt this with irritation. Later, many and many who tried to comprehend the fate of Gogol spoke and wrote about this - in different ways, of course, evaluating it. Gogol's religious wanderings were not without wanderings and falls. Only one thing is certain: it was Gogol who directed Russian literature to the conscious service of Orthodox Truth. It seems that K. Mochulsky was the first to clearly formulate this: “In the moral sphere, Gogol was brilliantly gifted; he was destined to abruptly turn all Russian literature from aesthetics to religion, to move it from the path of Pushkin to the path of Dostoevsky. All the features that characterize the “great Russian literature” that became world-wide were outlined by Gogol: its religious and moral structure, its civic spirit and public, its militant and practical nature, its prophetic pathos and messianism. A wide road, world expanses begins with Gogol. " This is the main treasure bequeathed by Gogol, which everyone could and can inherit - with an internal need. This inner need to bestow is the true acquisition of not imaginary values. One of the great Fathers of the Church, Maxim the Confessor, put it this way: "Mine is only what I have given."

We will try to consider the most difficult question of the meaning of life from the point of view of the Christian faith on the example of the heroes of the most famous work of N.V. Gogol, a landmark work for all Russian literature, his great poem "Dead Souls"

The title of the poem is multifaceted, it combines the plot and spiritual plans of the work. It should also be said that the combination “dead souls” was “invented” by Gogol. In the language there was a combination of "lost souls". From a letter from Pogodin to Gogol on May 6, 1847: There are no "dead souls" in the Russian language. There are souls revision, attributed, departed, arrived. " Gogol wanted to give these words a special meaning not only to Chichikov's scam, but to the entire work. The fact that in the title Gogol points to landowners and officials, Chichikov himself, was already obvious to the first readers of Gogol. A.I. Herzen wrote in his diary in 1842: "... not revision - dead souls, but all these Nozdrevs, Manilovs and all the others - these are dead souls and we meet them at every step." Everyone understands the lexical meaning of the word "dead" - deprived of life, deceased. But it is also clear that in the poem "dead souls" are quite living people who even, let's say, succeed, first of all, in their own opinion. So why are they "dead" when they are alive? Obviously, the answer to this question is that their life does not have the highest meaning that it should have.

Gogol puts into the mouth of old man Murazov (in the second volume of Dead Souls) one of his most soulful thoughts: which are yours. Your destiny is to be a great man, but you have lost yourself and ruined yourself. " These words, addressed to Chichikov, without a doubt, were recognized by the author as addressed to every person. The heroes of the poem, passing before the reader in exactly the order in which the genius Gogol arranged them, stand on the steps of a staircase, but a staircase that leads not up, but down. Not to God, but in a completely different direction. Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev, Sobakevich, Plyushkin. From my own experience, I can say that the guys are very attracted and evoked in them the greatest response to the image of Plyushkin. Therefore, I would like to dwell on this character, standing at the very end of the gallery of Gogol's landowners.

As the writer and literary critic Igor Volgin said, "Gogol's landowners are types cast in bronze." Gogol's great talent paints them with scrupulous precision and brightness. Gogol describes the estate, the house, the appearance of the heroes, the speech of the heroes is expressive. They all react differently to Chichikov's offer to sell them dead peasants. But the story about Plyushkin differs significantly from the chapters about other landowners. The sixth chapter of the poem opens with a lyrical digression, in which the writer recalls his youth. In this lyrical digression, we see a very important word - vulgarity. Vulgarity is the key word when it comes to Gogol's work. It was first pronounced by Pushkin, and Gogol assimilated and approved this concept in relation to the life he depicted: “They talked a lot about me, sorting out some of my sides, but they did not define my main being. Only Pushkin heard him. He always told me that no other writer had this gift to expose the vulgarity of life so brightly, to be able to outline in such force the vulgarity of a vulgar person, so that all that trifle that escapes the eyes would flash into everyone's eyes. This is my main property, which belongs to me alone and which, for sure, other writers do not have. It subsequently deepened in me even deeper ... "- this is how Gogol testified later (in" Selected Places ... "). O. Vasily Zenkovsky, who devoted the best, perhaps, pages of his research about Gogol to the topic of vulgarity, wrote: “The topic of vulgarity is, therefore, a topic about the impoverishment and perversion of the soul, about the insignificance and emptiness of its movements with the presence of other forces that can lift a person. Wherever it is about vulgarity, the author's hidden sadness is heard - if not real “tears through laughter,” then the mournful feeling of the tragedy of everything that actually amounts to a person’s life, from which it is actually composed. The vulgarity is an essential part of the reality that Gogol describes ... "

Pay attention to the last words from the statement of Fr. Vasily Zenkovsky: "... a mournful feeling of tragedy of everything, to which a person's life actually boils down, from which it is actually composed." The chapter about Plyushkin, like no other, is imbued with this sense of tragedy.

The garden, once wonderful and alive, has fallen into disrepair. This suggests an analogy with the garden of the human soul. A village in which everything: both the roads and the houses of the peasants - resemble half-decayed bodies (comparing logs and dismantled roofs with protruding ribs), rotten bread in huge treasures. Two! rural churches, deserted, stained and cracked. The house, almost dead, with closed windows - eyes (one and a half just looked at this world). Cold coming from Plyushkin's house. Plyushkin himself in a terrible greasy dressing gown. The story of his constant collection of all sorts of unnecessary things. And the most important thing is the story of Plyushkin's life, the story of his reincarnation from a zealous intelligent owner and a kind husband and father into a “hole in humanity”, into a “devil,” according to the buyers who stopped visiting him. The reader sees Gogol's grief over "to what insignificance, pettiness, nastiness a person can condescend." “Everything quickly turns into a person; before you have time to look back, a terrible worm has already grown inside, and autocraticly drew all the juices of life to itself. And more than once, not only a wide passion, but an insignificant passion for something small grew in those born for the best deeds, forced him to forget the great and holy duties and see the great and holy in insignificant trinkets, ”Gogol writes. (You can correlate these words with a detail: the chandelier is like a cocoon with a worm sitting inside it under the ceiling in Plyushkin's room).

Why? Why did this happen to the person? Because the hero of Gogol (all his heroes are landowners, and even Chichikov) lives in a horizontal direction, he loses his connection with the sky and ceases to be a man. He wastes his strength on the wrong side. "What is the use of a man if he gains the whole world, but damages his soul?" - we read in the Gospel of Mark. What is the use of all these riches that have rotted away and brought no one happiness and joy. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal; But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal, for where your treasure is, there your heart will also be ”- the Gospel of Matthew. Plyushkin does not see that his heart is where everything is rotten, everything is empty and cold. It's scary that he also condemns other people for their love of money (clerks who ask for payment for their work). A spiritually dead, really dead soul, Plyushkin mentions God several times, but these are only words. His faith is dead, since it is not the meaning of life for him, does not lead to spiritual life, does not bear fruit.

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh said: “Will our prosperity close our eyes to the fact that life has depth, meaning, and purpose, and that we are striving to meet God, and that this meeting will be the last and truly terrible judgment if will there be love - pure, genuine love? " “Spiritual progress is ultimately and best certified by only one thing: our ability to love. To love - in the sense of pure respect, service, selfless affection that does not require return payment; in the sense of “sympathy”, or “empathy,” which encourages us to forget about ourselves in order to “co-feel”, “feel in another,” wrote Olivier Clement, French theologian, historian, professor at the St. Sergius Orthodox Institute in Paris, author many books. There is no love, mercy in Plyushkin's life: he sends curses to his children, peasants for him are only thieves and swindlers, he suspects and condemns everyone, he is completely alone. The first step on the path to God is to see your passions and sins, to realize them, to repent. But this is not the case in Plyushkin's life. And therefore "he himself turned, at last, into some kind of hole in humanity." And his very life becomes a semblance of death in the midst of stench and putrefaction. How scary. But it is even more terrible that Gogol, who perfectly knows the hearts of people in whom, according to Dostoevsky, the devil fights with God, is trying to reach out to every reader, especially a young one. Everyone knows the words of the writer: “And to what insignificance, pettiness, disgusting man could condescend! could have changed so much! And it looks like the truth? Everything looks like the truth, everything can happen to a person. The current fiery youth would have jumped back in horror if they had shown him his own portrait in old age. Take away with you on the way, leaving the mild youthful years in the harsh hardening courage, take with you all human movements, do not leave them on the road, do not pick them up later! "

Gogol liked to repeat that his images will not be alive if every reader does not feel that they are taken "from the same body from which we are." This property of Gogol's images - a certain recognition, closeness to the soul of each of us - was already noted by the writer's contemporaries. “Aren't we all, after adolescence, in one way or another, leading one of the lives of Gogol's heroes? - Herzen wrote in his diary in July 1842. - One remains with Manilov's dull daydreaming, the other - rampages a laNosdreff, the third - Plyushkin ... "" Each of us, "Belinsky said," no matter how good a person he is, if he delves into himself with the impartiality with which he delves into in others, it will certainly find in itself, to a greater or lesser extent, many of the elements of many of Gogol's heroes. " Gogol's great book, written in the middle of the 19th century, is also addressed to us. There is a deep spiritual meaning in the book. It was revealed by Gogol in his dying record: “Be not dead, but living souls. There is no other door, except for the one indicated by Jesus Christ, and everyone, pretending otherwise, is a thief and a robber. " According to Gogol, the souls of his heroes did not die at all. In them, as in every person, there is a true life - the image of God, and at the same time the hope of rebirth. Jesus said: I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me (John 14: 6). The writer went in the poem from the Gospel tradition, to which the understanding of the “dead” soul as spiritually deceased ascends. Gogol's plan is consonant with the Christian moral law formulated by the holy Apostle Paul: “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will come to life” (1 Cor. 15:22). Related to this is the main idea of ​​Dead Souls - the idea of ​​the spiritual resurrection of a fallen person. It was supposed to be embodied in the first place by the main character of the poem. “And, perhaps, in this very Chichikov lies what will then plunge a person into dust and knees before the wisdom of heaven,” the author predicts the coming revival of his hero, that is, the revival of his soul. Not only Chichikov was to be reborn in soul, but also other heroes - even Plyushkin, perhaps the most "dead" of all. When Archimandrite Theodore asked whether the other characters in the first volume would be resurrected, Gogol answered with a smile: "If they want to." Spiritual rebirth is one of the highest abilities bestowed on man, and, according to Gogol, this path is open to everyone. And this revival was to take place on the basis of "our root nature, forgotten by us," and serve as an example not only for compatriots, but for all of humanity. This was one of the "super tasks" of Gogol's poem "Dead Souls".

And in conclusion I would like to quote the statement of Yuri Mann: "According to the publisher of the poem, Dead Souls is a great book, but it is understandable only to a Russian, foreigners will not understand it." But in England a collection was published called "1001 Works You Must Read Before You Die." There are two books by N.V. Gogol. The first is the poem "Dead Souls".

Literature

Answer to ticket number 12

Souls dead and alive in the poem by N.V. Gogol's Dead Souls.

1. The main conflict of the poem by N.V. Gogol's Dead Souls.

2. Characteristics of different types of landlords. Dead souls:

Manilov;

Sobakevich;

Box;

Nozdryov;

Plyushkin.

3. The image of Chichikov.

4. Living souls are the embodiment of the talent of the people.

5. The moral degradation of the people is the result of the moral devastation of society.

1. The pinnacle of N.V. Gogol became the poem "Dead Souls". Starting to create his grandiose work, he wrote to Zhukovsky that "all Russia will appear in him!" The basis of the conflict in the poem, Gogol put the main contradiction of contemporary reality between the gigantic spiritual forces of the people and their enslavement. Realizing this conflict, he turned to the most pressing problems of that period: the state of the landlord economy, the moral image of the local and bureaucratic nobility, the relationship of the peasantry with the authorities, the fate of the people in Russia. Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" displays a whole gallery of moral monsters, types that have become common names. Gogol consistently portrays officials, landowners and the main character of Chichikov's poem. The poem is plotted as the story of the adventures of Chichikov, an official who buys up “dead souls”.

2. Almost half of the first volume of the poem is devoted to the characterization of various types of Russian landowners. Gogol creates five characters, five portraits that are so unlike each other, and at the same time, typical features of a Russian landowner appear in each of them. The images of the landowners whom Chichikov visits are presented in the poem in a contrasting manner, since they carry various vices. One after another, each spiritually insignificant than the previous one, the owners of the estates follow in the work: Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev, Sobakevich, Plyushkin. If Manilov is sentimental and sugary to the point of cloying, Sobakevich is straightforward and rude. Their views on life are polar: for Manilov, everyone around them is beautiful, for Sobakevich they are robbers and swindlers. Manilov shows no real concern for the welfare of the peasants, the welfare of the family; he entrusted all management to the rogue clerk, who ruins both the peasants and the landowner. But Sobakevich is a strong owner, ready for any scam for the sake of profit. Manilov is a reckless dreamer, Sobakevich is a cynical fist-burnout. Korobochka's soullessness manifests itself in petty hoarding; the only thing that worries her is the prices for hemp, honey; “Would not be cheap” even when selling dead souls. Korobochka reminds Sobakevich of stinginess, a passion for profit, although the stupidity of the “clubhead” brings these qualities to the comic limit. The "accumulators", Sobakevich and Korobochka, are opposed by the "wasteful" - Nozdrev and Plyushkin. Nozdryov is a desperate bastard and a thug, a devastator and a ruiner of the economy. His energy turned into a scandalous bustle, aimless and destructive.

If Nozdryov let his whole state go down the wind, then Plyushkin turned his into one appearance. The last trait to which a mortification of the soul can lead a person, Gogol shows by the example of Plyushkin, whose image completes the gallery of landowners. This hero is no longer so much ridiculous as scary and pathetic, since, unlike the previous characters, he loses not only spirituality, but also his human appearance. Chichikov, seeing him, wonders for a long time whether it is a man or a woman, and finally decides that this is a housekeeper. And yet he is a landowner, the owner of more than a thousand souls and huge storerooms. True, in these pantries, bread rots, flour turns into stone, cloth and canvases - into dust. No less terrible picture appears in the man's house, where everything is covered with dust and cobwebs, and in the corner of the room “heaps of things that are coarser and unworthy to lie on tables are piled up. It was difficult to decide what exactly was in this heap ", just as it was difficult to" find out what was made of ... the dressing gown "of the owner. How did it happen that a rich, educated person, a nobleman, turned into a “hole in humanity”? To answer this question. Gogol refers to the hero's past. (He writes about the other landowners as already formed types.) The writer very accurately traces the degradation of man, and the reader understands that man is not born a monster, but becomes one. So this soul could live! But Gogol notes that over time, a person submits himself to the laws prevailing in society and betrays the ideals of youth.

All Gogol landowners are bright, individual and memorable characters. But with all their external diversity, the essence remains unchanged: possessing living souls, they themselves long ago turned into dead souls. We do not see the true movements of a living soul neither in an empty dreamer, nor in a strong-willed hostess, nor in a “cheerful boor,” nor in a landlord-fist-like bear-like landlord. All this is just an appearance with a complete lack of spiritual content, which is why these heroes are ridiculous. Convincing the reader that his landowners are not exclusive, but typical, the writer also calls other noblemen, characterizing them even by their surnames: Svinin, Trepakin, Blokhin, Kissyev, Bespechny, etc.

3. The reason for the mortification of the human soul Gogol shows on the example of the formation of the character of the protagonist - Chichikov. A bleak childhood, deprived of parental love and affection, service and the example of bribe-taking officials - these factors have formed a scoundrel, who is like everyone around him. But he turned out to be more greedy in the pursuit of acquisitions than Korobochka, callous Sobakevich and more insolent than Nozdryov in the means of enrichment. In the final chapter, which complements Chichikov's biography, his final exposure takes place as a clever predator, acquirer and entrepreneur of the bourgeois warehouse, a civilized scoundrel, master of life. But Chichikov, differing from the landowners in enterprise, is also a “dead” soul. The “shining joy” of life is not available to him. The happiness of the “decent person” Chichikov is based on money. Calculation drove all human feelings out of him and made him a “dead” soul. Gogol shows the emergence of a new person in Russian life, who has neither a noble family, nor a title, nor an estate, but who, at the cost of his own efforts, thanks to his intelligence and resourcefulness, is trying to make a fortune for himself. His ideal is a penny; marriage is seen by him as a good deal. His addictions and tastes are purely material. Having quickly figured out a person, he knows how to approach everyone in a special way, subtly calculating his moves. Internal versatility, elusiveness is also emphasized by his appearance, described by Gogol in vague features: “The gentleman sat in the chaise, neither too fat nor too thin, it cannot be said that he was old, but not so that he was too young”. Gogol was able to discern in his contemporary society the individual features of the emerging type and brought them together in the image of Chichikov. The city officials of NN are even more impersonal than the landlords. Their death is shown in the scene of the ball: people are not visible, everywhere there are muslins, satins, muslin, hats, tailcoats, uniforms, shoulders, necks, ribbons. All the interest in life is focused on gossip, gossip, petty vanity, envy. They differ from each other only in the size of the bribe; all idlers, they have no interests, these are also “dead” souls.

4. But behind the “dead” souls of Chichikov, officials and landowners, Gogol saw the living souls of the peasants, the strength of the national character. In the words of A. I. Herzen, in Gogol's poem appear "behind dead souls - living souls." The talent of the people is revealed in the dexterity of the coachman Mikheev, the shoemaker Telyatnikov, the bricklayer Milushkin, the carpenter Stepan Probka. The strength and acuteness of the people's mind was reflected in the briskness and accuracy of the Russian word, the depth and integrity of the Russian feeling - in the sincerity of the Russian song, the breadth and generosity of the soul - in the brightness and unrestrained joy of folk holidays. The boundless dependence on the usurpatory power of the landowners, condemning the peasants to forced, exhausting labor, to hopeless ignorance, gives rise to stupid Mityaev and Minyaev, the downtrodden Proshek and Pelagia, who do not know "where is right, where is left", obedient, lazy, depraved Petrushek and Selifanov. Gogol sees how high and good qualities are distorted in the kingdom of "dead" souls, how peasants perish, driven to despair, rushing into any risky business, just to get out of serfdom.

Not finding the truth with the supreme power, Captain Kopeikin, helping himself, becomes the chieftain of the robbers. “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin” reminds the authorities of the threat of a revolutionary uprising in Russia.

5. Feudal death destroys good inclinations in a person, destroys the people. Against the background of the majestic, endless expanses of Russia, the real pictures of Russian life seem especially bitter. Having outlined Russia in the poem "from one side" in its negative essence, in "stunning pictures of triumphant evil and suffering hatred", Gogol once again convinces that at his time "it is impossible otherwise to direct society or even an entire generation to the beautiful, until you show the whole the depth of his true abomination. "

Orthodox psychotherapy [patristic course of healing the soul] Vlachos Metropolitan Hierotheos