Pisareva, Grigorieva. The controversy of critics around the drama "Thunderstorm"

"The Thunderstorm" caused the most stormy and most ambiguous responses in criticism. The most generalizing character had articles in something close (for example, in the rejection of "art for art's sake"), but in relation to Ostrovsky polemically opposed to each other critics: the soil activist A. A. Grigoriev and the democrat N. A. Dobrolyubov.

From Grigoriev's point of view, The Thunderstorm only confirmed the critic's view of Ostrovsky's plays before The Thunderstorm: the key concept for them is the concept of "nationality", "poetry of folk life".

Describing Ostrovsky as a whole, A. A. Grigoriev writes: “The name for this writer ... is not a satirist, but a folk poet. The word for unraveling his activities is not "tyranny", but "nationality".

N. A. Dobrolyubov, disagreeing with the point of view of A. A. Grigoriev, sees in the drama the answer to the question posed before: “But is there any way out of this darkness?” The key concept in the article about "The Thunderstorm" is still "tyranny", in Katerina's protest the critic sees "a terrible challenge to tyrannical power" - a challenge that is especially significant, because it comes from the depths of people's life in the turning point of the turn of the 1850s-1860s. With the help of The Thunderstorm, Dobrolyubov seeks to see and understand the fundamental movements of the social and spiritual life of the time on the eve of the abolition of serfdom.

The Thunderstorm... produces a less heavy and sad impression than Ostrovsky's other plays... There is even something refreshing and encouraging in The Thunderstorm. This “something” is, in our opinion, the background of the play, indicated by us and revealing the precariousness and the near end of tyranny. Then the very character of Katerina, drawn against this background, also blows on us with a new life, which opens up to us in her very death ... We have already said that this end seems to us gratifying; it is easy to understand why: in it a terrible challenge is given to self-conscious force, he tells it that it is no longer possible to go further, it is no longer possible to live with its violent, deadening principles.

"Motives of Russian Drama" (1864). The play came to life again in the stream of modern life when the critic of the later generation of democrats D. I. Pisarev published an article about it. Pisarev agrees with Dobrolyubov in everything when it comes to the "dark kingdom". He does not question either the method of "real criticism" or the social typicality of the main character. But Pisarev's assessment of her actions, their human and social significance is completely at odds with the assessments of Dobrolyubov and A. A. Grigoriev.

The critic proceeds from the fact that Katerina's type did not play the progressive role destined for him in Russian reality. Apparently, Dobrolyubov "carried away" the personality of Katerina, which was partly justified by the historical moment. Now the "thinking proletariat" must enter the public arena - people like Bazarov or the heroes of Chernyshevsky. Only they, armed with theory and extensive knowledge, can really move life for the better. From this point of view, Katerina is not a “beam of light” at all, and her death is not tragic - it is ridiculous and meaningless.

Commenting on the reviews of critics about The Thunderstorm that do not coincide in the main, the modern literary critic A. I. Zhuravleva notes:

“It was precisely from Dobrolyubov’s article that a strong tradition of interpreting Katerina as a heroic personality, in which the powerful potentials of a folk character are concentrated, has developed in Russian culture. The grounds for such an interpretation are undoubtedly laid down in Ostrovsky's play itself. When in 1864, in the context of a decline in the democratic movement, Pisarev challenged Dobrolyubov's interpretation of Katerina in the article "Motives of Russian Drama", then, perhaps, sometimes more accurate in details, on the whole he turned out to be much further from the very spirit of Ostrovsky's play.

"The Unavoidable Questions". In the plays of the fourth, last period of the playwright's work - from 1861 to 1886 - those "inevitable questions" (A. A. Grigoriev), which sounded loudly in his works of the previous time, deepen. Everyday "scenes" and "pictures" are created, going back to the "physiological" manner of the early plays. Basically, these works are published in Sovremennik, the democratic edition of which since the end of the 1850s has become spiritually close to Ostrovsky. The center of the new plays is the “little man”, as he appeared in the 1860s in the daily struggle for a piece of bread, modest family happiness, the opportunity to somehow defend his human dignity (“Labor Bread”, “Hard Days”, “Abyss”, etc.).

New in the work of Ostrovsky was a purposeful appeal to the themes of national history - in the chronicles "Kuzma Zakharych Minin-Sukhoruk", "Dmitry the Pretender and Vasily Shuisky", "Tushino", in the historical and everyday comedies "Voevoda, or Dream on the Volga", "Comedian of the 17th century", in the psychological drama "Vasilisa Melentyeva". The playwright is not interested in outstanding personalities in themselves and not in climactic moments of history that captivate the imagination. In historical genres, he remains, in a broad sense, a writer of everyday life, highlighting the diverse manifestations of the national character.

Study note for students

Isaac Levitan. Evening. Golden Ples (1889)

Incredible controversy around the play by A. Ostrovsky "Thunderstorm" began during the life of the playwright. There are five articles:

• N. Dobrolyubov "A Ray of Light in the Dark Kingdom" (1860);
• D. Pisarev "Motives of Russian drama" (1864);
• M. Antonovich "Mistakes" (1864);
• A. Grigoriev “After Ostrovsky's Thunderstorm. Letters to I. S. Turgenev” (1860);
• M. Dostoevsky “The Thunderstorm”. Drama in five acts by A. N. Ostrovsky (1860).

Let's look at the points of view expressed by critics.

N. A. Dobrolyubov

The Thunderstorm is, without a doubt, Ostrovsky's most decisive work; the mutual relations of tyranny and voicelessness are brought in it to the most tragic consequences; and for all that, most of those who have read and seen this play agree that it makes an impression less heavy and sad than Ostrovsky's other plays (not to mention, of course, his sketches of a purely comic nature). There is even something refreshing and encouraging about The Thunderstorm. This “something” is, in our opinion, the background of the play, indicated by us and revealing the precariousness and the near end of tyranny. Then the very character of Katerina, drawn against this background, also breathes on us with a new life, which opens up to us in her very death.

The fact is that the character of Katerina, as he is portrayed in The Thunderstorm, is a step forward not only in Ostrovsky's dramatic activity, but in all of our literature. It corresponds to the new phase of our people's life, it has long demanded its implementation in literature, our best writers circled around it; but they could only understand its need and could not comprehend and feel its essence; Ostrovsky managed to do this.<...>

First of all, you are struck by the extraordinary originality of this character. There is nothing external, alien in him, but everything comes out somehow from within him; every impression is processed in it and then grows organically with it. We see this, for example, in Katerina's ingenuous story about her childhood and about life in her mother's house. It turns out that her upbringing and young life did not give her anything: in her mother's house it was the same as at the Kabanovs - they went to church, sewed with gold on velvet, listened to the stories of wanderers, dined, walked in the garden, again talked with pilgrims and prayed themselves ... After listening to Katerina's story, Varvara, her husband's sister, remarks with surprise: "But we have the same thing." But the difference is determined by Katerina very quickly in five words: “Yes, everything here seems to be from bondage!” And further conversation shows that in all this appearance, which is so common with us everywhere, Katerina was able to find her own special meaning, apply it to her needs and aspirations, until the heavy hand of Kabanikha fell upon her. Katerina does not at all belong to violent characters, never satisfied, loving to destroy at all costs. On the contrary, this character is predominantly creative, loving, ideal. That is why she tries to comprehend and ennoble everything in her imagination; the mood in which, according to the poet, -

The whole world is a noble dream
Before him cleansed and washed, -

this mood does not leave Katerina to the last extreme.<...>

In Katerina's position, we see that, on the contrary, all the "ideas" instilled in her from childhood, all the principles of the environment - rise against her natural aspirations and actions. The terrible struggle to which the young woman is condemned takes place in every word, in every movement of the drama, and this is where all the importance of the introductory characters for which Ostrovsky is so reproached turns out. Take a good look: you see that Katerina was brought up in the same concepts with the concepts of the environment in which she lives, and cannot get rid of them, having no theoretical education. The stories of the wanderers and the suggestions of the family, although they were reworked by her in her own way, could not help but leave an ugly trace in her soul: and indeed, we see in the play that Katerina, having lost her rosy dreams and ideal, lofty aspirations, retained one strong feeling from her upbringing - fear some dark forces, something unknown, which she could neither explain to herself well, nor reject. For every thought she fears, for the simplest feeling she expects punishment for herself; she thinks that the storm will kill her, because she is a sinner; the picture of fiery hell on the church wall seems to her already a foreshadowing of her eternal torment ... And everything around her supports and develops this fear in her: Feklushis go to Kabanikha to talk about the last times; Wild insists that a thunderstorm is sent to us as punishment, so that we feel; the mistress who has come, inspiring fear in everyone in the city, is shown several times in order to shout over Katerina in an ominous voice: “You will all burn in fire in unquenchable.”<...>

In Katerina's monologues it is clear that even now she has nothing formulated; she is guided to the end by her nature, and not by given decisions, because for decisions she would need to have logical, solid foundations, and yet all the principles that are given to her for theoretical reasoning are resolutely contrary to her natural inclinations. That is why she not only does not take heroic poses and does not utter sayings that prove the strength of her character, but on the contrary, she appears in the form of a weak woman who cannot resist her instincts, and tries to justify the heroism that manifests itself in her actions. She decided to die, but she is terrified by the thought that this is a sin, and she seems to be trying to prove to us and to herself that she can be forgiven, since it is already very difficult for her. She would like to enjoy life and love; but she knows that this is a crime, and therefore she says in her own justification: “Well, it doesn’t matter, I’ve ruined my soul!” She complains about no one, blames no one, and even the thought of nothing like that comes to her; on the contrary, she is to blame for everyone, she even asks Boris if he is angry with her, if he curses ... There is neither malice nor contempt in her, nothing that usually flaunts disappointed heroes who arbitrarily leave the world. But she can't live any longer, she can't, and that's all; from the fullness of her heart she says: “I am exhausted ... How much longer will I suffer? Why should I live now, well, why? I don't need anything, nothing is nice to me, and the light of God is not nice! - and death does not come. You call her, but she doesn't come. Whatever I see, whatever I hear, only here (pointing to heart) hurt". At the thought of the grave, she becomes lighter - calmness seems to pour into her soul. “So quiet, so good... But I don’t even want to think about life... To live again?... No, no, don’t... it’s not good. And the people are disgusting to me, and the house is disgusting to me, and the walls are disgusting! I won't go there! No, no, I won't go... If you come to them - they go, they say, - but what do I need it for? At the last moment, all domestic horrors flash especially vividly in her imagination. She cries out: “They will catch me and bring me back home by force! .. Hurry, hurry ...” And the matter is over: she will no longer be a victim of a soulless mother-in-law, she will no longer languish locked up with her spineless and disgusting husband. She's released!

Sad, bitter is such a liberation; But what to do when there is no other way out. It's good that the poor woman found determination at least for this terrible exit. That is the strength of her character, which is why "Thunderstorm" makes a refreshing impression on us, as we said above.<...>

D. A. Pisarev

Ostrovsky's drama "Thunderstorm" caused a critical article from Dobrolyubov under the title "Ray of Light in the Dark Kingdom". This article was a mistake on the part of Dobrolyubov; he was carried away by sympathy for the character of Katerina and took her personality for a bright phenomenon. A detailed analysis of this character will show our readers that Dobrolyubov's view in this case is wrong and that not a single bright phenomenon can either arise or take shape in the "dark kingdom" of the patriarchal Russian family, brought to the stage in Ostrovsky's drama.<...>

Dobrolyubov would have asked himself: how could this bright image have been formed? In order to answer this question for himself, he would trace Katerina's life from childhood, all the more so since Ostrovsky provides some materials for this; he would have seen that upbringing and life could not give Katerina either a firm character or a developed mind; then he would look again at those facts in which one attractive side caught his eye, and then the whole personality of Katerina would appear to him in a completely different light.<...>

Katerina's whole life consists of constant internal contradictions; every minute she rushes from one extreme to another; today she repents of what she did yesterday, and yet she herself does not know what she will do tomorrow; at every step she confuses her own life and the lives of other people; finally, having mixed up everything that was at her fingertips, she cuts the tightened knots with the most stupid means, suicide, and even such suicide, which is completely unexpected for herself.<...>

M. A. Antonovich

G. Pisarev decided to correct Dobrolyubov, as Mr. Sechenov's Zaitsev, and to expose his mistakes, among which he lists one of the best and most thoughtful articles of his "Ray of Light in a Dark Kingdom", written in connection with Mr. Ostrovsky's "Thunderstorm". It is this instructive, deeply felt and thoughtful article that Mr. Pisarev is trying to drown in the muddy water of his phrases and commonplaces.<...>

It seemed to G. Pisarev that Dobrolyubov imagined Katerina as a woman with a developed mind and a developed character, who allegedly decided to protest only as a result of the education and development of her mind, which is why she was called “a ray of light”. Having thus imposed on Dobrolyubov his own fantasy, Mr. Pisarev began to refute it as if it were Dobrolyubov's. How is it possible, Mr. Pisarev reasoned to himself, to call Katerina a ray of light when she is a simple, undeveloped woman; how could she protest against tyranny when her upbringing did not develop her mind, when she did not know at all the natural sciences, which, in the opinion of the great historian Buckle, are necessary for progress, did not have such realistic ideas as, for example, Mr. Pisarev himself, she was even infected with prejudices, she was afraid of thunder and the picture of hellfire painted on the walls of the gallery. So, Mr. Pisarev concluded, Dobrolyubov is mistaken and is a champion of art for art's sake when he calls Katerina a Protestant and a ray of light. Amazing proof!

Is that how you, Mr. Pisarev, are attentive to Dobrolyubov, and how do you understand what you want to refute? Where did you find this, as if Dobrolyubov portrays Katerina as a woman with a developed mind, as if her protest stems from some definite concepts and conscious theoretical principles, the understanding of which really requires the development of the mind? We have already seen above that, according to Dobrolyubov, Katerina's protest was of such a kind that it did not require either the development of the mind, or knowledge of the natural sciences and Buckle, or understanding of electricity, or freedom from prejudices, or reading the articles of Mr. Pisarev; it was a direct, so to speak, instinctive protest, a protest of an integral normal nature in its primitive form, as it came out of itself without any means of artificial education.<...>

Thus, all this fanfare of Mr. Pisarev is, in essence, very pathetic. It turns out that he did not understand Dobrolyubov, reinterpreted his thought and, on the basis of his lack of understanding, accused him of unprecedented mistakes and non-existent contradictions ...

A. A. Grigoriev

A strong, deep, and mostly positively general impression was made not by the second action of the drama, which, although with some difficulty, can still be drawn to the punishing and accusatory kind of literature, but by the end of the third, in which (the end) there is absolutely nothing else but the poetry of folk life - boldly, widely and freely captured by the artist in one of its most essential moments, which does not allow not only denunciation, but even criticism and analysis: so this moment with grasped and conveyed poetically, directly. You have not yet been to the performance, but you know this moment, magnificent in its bold poetry - this hitherto unprecedented night of rendezvous in a ravine, all breathing with the proximity of the Volga, all fragrant with the smell of herbs of its wide meadows, all sounding with free songs, "funny", secret speeches, all full of charm of cheerful and wild passion and no less charm of passion deep and tragically fatal. After all, it was created as if not an artist, but a whole people created here! And this was precisely what was most strongly felt in the work by the masses, and, moreover, by the masses in St. Petersburg, divi in ​​Moscow, - a complex, heterogeneous mass - felt with all the inevitable (although much less than usual) falsehood, with all the frightening harshness of the Alexandrian execution.

M. M. Dostoevsky

Only Katerina perishes, but she would perish even without despotism. This a victim of one's own purity and one's beliefs. <...>Katerina's life is broken and without suicide. Whether she will live, whether she will take the veil of a nun, whether she will lay hands on herself - the result is one in relation to her state of mind, but completely different in relation to the impression. G. Ostrovsky wanted her to complete this last act of her life with full consciousness and reach it through reflection. The thought is beautiful, even more intensifying the colors so poetically generously spent on this character. But, many will say and are already saying, does not such a suicide contradict her religious beliefs? Of course it contradicts, it completely contradicts, but this trait is essential in Katerina's character. The fact is that, due to her extremely lively temperament, she can in no way get along in the narrow sphere of her convictions. She fell in love, fully conscious of all the sin of her love, and yet she fell in love all the same, come what may; later she repented of seeing Boris, but she herself nevertheless ran to say goodbye to him. In the same way, she decides to commit suicide, because she does not have enough strength to endure despair. She is a woman of high poetic impulses, but at the same time very weak. This inflexibility of beliefs and frequent betrayal of them is the whole tragedy of the character we are analyzing.

The situation has developed in such a way that, although Ostrovsky produced a great effect in literature, none of the critics has yet given a full description of his talent and has not even pointed out the special features of his works. Critics did not understand his innovation at all: "They wanted to make him a representative of a certain kind of convictions." Dobrolyubov alluded to the neo-Slavophiles Apollon Grigoriev, Terty Filippov from The Moskvityanin, who tried to influence Ostrovsky in their spirit. Dobrolyubov objected to the praise of Lyubim Tortsov, the hero of the comedy "Poverty is not a vice", as the spokesman for Ostrovsky's "nationality".

And in the article "A Ray of Light in the Dark Kingdom", Nikolai Alexandrovich Dobrolyubov pointed out the individual peculiarity of Ostrovsky: in Ostrovsky “you find not only the moral, but also the worldly, economic side of the issue, and this is the essence of the matter. You can clearly see in him how tyranny rests on a thick purse... and how the unanswerability of people in front of him is determined by their material dependence on him...”. And this quality of Ostrovsky's poetics is a great achievement of all Russian realism. The material and everyday conditionality of Ostrovsky's images does not prevent them from having a complex and deep psychological pattern.

The attention paid by Ostrovsky to nature, the natural properties of people, in the eyes of Dobrolyubov has a double innovative meaning. Firstly, under naturalness there are self-willed principles, and often they were a form of expression of certain social ideals of heroes. “We take as a measure of the dignity of a writer or an individual work how much they serve as an expression of the natural aspirations of a certain time and people.” Under the expression "natural aspirations" lies not only Dobrolyubov's anthropological understanding of the essence of man, but also an anti-serfdom program, a desire to free a person from social shackles. This is a revolutionary thesis. Secondly, naturalness also has the meaning that it is an organic property of the masses, the people, the middle stratum, not spoiled by any reflection, capable of acting decisively on a whim. Rudin, Insarov look like "artificial" heroes nurtured in the educated upper classes of society. And they didn't achieve anything. Ostrovsky solves the problem of public protest from the other side, from the side of the possibilities of protest of people from the mass of the people. It was also a "sign of the times". The protest of the downtrodden meant a lot. He is spontaneous and indomitable. An innumerable mass of people moved to fight. According to Dobrolyubov's logic, this is the starting point for a completely different measure of success in constructing a typology of literary heroes. This is not a curve ascending from Rudin to Insarov and even, perhaps, to Bazarov (but along the female line from Tatyana to Elena and Olga), but the beginning of a completely new line in the image of a democratic hero, ultimately leading to the image of the masses as a hero of history.

All Dobrolyubov's analyzes of Ostrovsky are literally permeated with a thirst to find "rays of light" in the dark realm. “It's sad, it's true; but what to do? We must confess: we did not find a way out of the "dark kingdom" in the works of Ostrovsky ... But the way out must be sought in life itself ... "

The character of Katerina in The Thunderstorm, Dobrolyubov noted, "is a step forward not only in Ostrovsky's dramatic activity, but in all of our literature." There is even “something refreshing and encouraging” about The Thunderstorm. Of course, Katerina protests less consciously than Elena or Olga, not to mention Rudin or Insarov. If we approach with a formal measure of progressiveness, as Pisarev did, then Katerina is a step backwards compared to the previous heroes. But Dobrolyubov drew attention to the essence of the issue, to what layer Katerina came from, how many obstacles she had to overcome in the struggle for her human rights. Here, even the focus of analysis shifted from revealing the heroine's beliefs to her nature, from active struggle in the usual sense to such a passive form of protest as suicide. And in all this, Dobrolyubov saw a deep meaning.

Katerina's character is versatile - "loving and creative." Again, a surprise was noted in Ostrovsky's dramaturgy: the heroine is a suicide, and her character is creative. “It is sad, bitter is such a liberation; But what do you do when there is no other way out? Life in the dark realm is worse than death.

The struggle between the characters, which is necessary according to the aesthetic theory of drama, is removed in Ostrovsky's plays by contradictions of a higher order that dominate the characters. Tikhon exclaims at the end of the play: “Good for you, Katya! Why am I left to live in the world and suffer!” This is the key to the play: "They make the viewer think no longer about a love affair, but about this whole life, where the living envy the dead, and even some suicides." Ostrovsky's plays are not plays of intrigue, and not even plays of characters, they are "plays of life." It could not be better to express the democratization of literature in its genres, aspirations, search for a positive hero. As the populist Mikhailovsky would later say, Katerina is lower in her "degree" of development and intellect than the former heroes from the nobility, but in her "type" she is higher. This type is popular. No wonder Dobrolyubov emphasized the following at the end of the analysis: “This is the height to which our folk life reaches in its development ...”.

QUOTATIONS FROM THE ARTICLE: . The characters of the characters must be clearly marked, and gradualness must be necessary in their discovery, in accordance with the development of the action. The language must be commensurate with the situation of each person, but not deviate from the purity of the literary and not turn into vulgarity. Here are all the main rules of drama. Critics like N. F. Pavlov, Mr. Nekrasov from Moscow, Mr. Palkhovsky consider as immutable, obvious to all axioms a multitude of such opinions, which only they seem to be absolute truths, and for the majority of people represent a contradiction with some generally accepted concepts. Ostrovsky captured such general aspirations and needs that permeate the whole of Russian society, whose voice is heard in all the phenomena of our life, whose satisfaction is a necessary condition for our further development. His plays, more clearly than any reasoning, show the attentive reader how a system of lack of rights and coarse, petty selfishness, established by tyranny, is instilled in those who suffer from it; how they, if they retain the remnants of energy in themselves, try to use it to acquire the opportunity to live independently and no longer understand either the means or the rights. In The Thunderstorm, the need for so-called "unnecessary" faces is especially visible: without them we cannot understand the face of the heroine and can easily distort the meaning of the whole play, which happened to most of the critics. (About the dark kingdom - tyranny) The absence of any law, any logic - that is the law and logic of this life. This is not anarchy, but something far worse. In addition to them, without asking them, another life grew up; with other origins. The Thunderstorm is Ostrovsky's most decisive work. The character of K., as he is performed in The Thunderstorm, is a step forward not only in the dramatic activity of Ostrovsky, but in all our literature. She endures until some interest speaks in her, especially close to her heart and legitimate in her eyes, until such a demand of her nature is offended in her, without the satisfaction of which she cannot remain calm. Then she won't look at anything. She will not resort to diplomatic tricks, to deceit and trickery - she is not like that. If it is necessary to deceive without fail, then it is better to try to overcome herself. In this personality we see already mature, from the depths of the whole organism, the demand for the right and the scope of life that arises. Her actions are in harmony with her nature, they are natural, necessary for her, she cannot refuse them, even if this had the most disastrous consequences. We have already said that this end seems to us gratifying; it is easy to understand why: in it a terrible challenge is given to the tyrannical force, he tells it that it is no longer possible to go further, it is impossible to live any longer with its violent, deadening principles. In Katerina we see a protest against Kabanov's conceptions of morality, a protest carried to the end, proclaimed both under domestic torture and over the abyss into which the poor woman has thrown herself. She does not want to be reconciled, she does not want to take advantage of the miserable vegetative life that is given to her in exchange for her living soul. What a gratifying, fresh life a healthy person breathes in us, finding in himself the determination to put an end to this rotten life at all costs!...

Dmitry Ivanovich Pisarev in the image of Katerina, as already mentioned, he, unlike Dobrolyubov, did not see signs of protest against the "dark kingdom".

The article expanded and deepened the controversy between Russkoye Slovo and Sovremennik, which had begun earlier. In this article, Pisarev directly points to the article "A Ray of Light in the Dark Kingdom" by Dobrolyubov (1860) as his "mistake". Pisarev sharply disputes Dobrolyubov's interpretation of Katerina from Ostrovsky's "Thunderstorm" in this article, believing that Katerina cannot be regarded as a "resolute integral Russian character", but is only one of the offspring, a passive product of the "dark kingdom". Thus, the idealization of this image is attributed to Dobrolyubov, and the debunking of this image seems to be the true task of "real criticism." "It's sad to part with the bright illusion," notes Pisarev, "but there's nothing to be done; this time, too, we would have to be satisfied with the dark reality." Moreover, Pisarev leaves no doubt that this is not about particulars - the interpretation of one image and the assessment of one work of the playwright, but "about the general issues of our life." In the whole direction of his article, Dobrolyubov led the reader to the idea of ​​the growing revolutionary situation in the country, the maturation of people's self-consciousness, the strength of the spontaneous resistance of the people to the "dark kingdom", the impossibility for the people to put up with the old and live in the old way. Pisarev, in the era of the decline of the democratic movement, does not see the conditions for the direct action of the masses, considers them not ready for conscious action. The emphasis is shifted to the formation of thinking workers like the Bazarovs, who are "not like Katerina" and who can take on the difficult task of educating the people. People of this type should devote all their efforts to preparing the conditions for a radical reorganization of social life on new reasonable and just principles, to enlighten the people. "How much, how little time we will have to go to our goal, which is to enrich and enlighten our people - it is useless to ask about this. This is the right road, and there is no other right way." In addition to this main subject of the article - the substantiation and defense of the new tactics of the democratic movement, opposed to the old tactics, justified by Sovremennik during the years of the revolutionary situation of 1859-1861 - Pisarev argues here with the "literary program" of Sovremennik. He accuses the editors of the journal of ideological illegibility. Criticism of Ostrovsky's works "Kozma Zakharyich Minin Sukhoruk" and "Hard Days" follows this line.

QUOTATIONS FROM THE ARTICLE: we will need to defend his ideas against his own passions; where Dobrolyubov succumbed to an impulse of aesthetic feeling, we will try to reason in cold blood and see that our family patriarchy suppresses any healthy development. the article was a mistake on the part of Dobrolyubov; he was carried away by sympathy for the character of Katerina and took her personality for a bright phenomenon. Katerina's whole life consists of constant internal contradictions; every minute she rushes from one extreme to another; she repents today

what she did yesterday, and she herself does not know what she will do tomorrow; at every step she confuses her own life and the lives of other people; finally, having mixed up everything that was at her fingertips, she cuts the tightened knots with the most stupid means, suicide, and even such

suicide, which is completely unexpected for herself. Passion, tenderness, sincerity are indeed the predominant properties of K. The cruelty of a family despot, the fanaticism of an old hypocrite, the unhappy love of a girl for a scoundrel, the meekness of a patient victim of family autocracy, outbursts of despair, jealousy, greed, fraud, violent revelry,

educative rod, educative caress, quiet daydreaming, enthusiastic sensitivity - all this motley mixture of feelings, qualities and actions that arouse a whole storm of high sensations in the chest of a fiery aesthetic. All these are various manifestations of inexhaustible stupidity. There is nothing to expect from dwarfs and eternal children; they will not produce anything new, if it seems to you that a new character has appeared in their world, then you can safely say that this is an optical illusion.

Apollon Alexandrovich Grigoriev believed that Ostrovsky possessed "a native Russian worldview, healthy and calm, humorous without pain, direct without hobbies ...".

Grigoriev credited himself with the honor of Ostrovsky's discovery. And he really was one of the first who spoke loudly about the emergence of a new big talent. Grigoriev saw Ostrovsky's innovation in the following: in the news of the depicted life, in the news of the author's attitude to this life, in the news of the manner of depiction. But Grigoriev still perverted the image of the writer. He interpreted Ostrovsky as a singer of Russian morals, able to show "ideals". Grigoriev argued with Dobrolyubov, his social interpretation of Ostrovsky as an accuser of the "dark kingdom".

In the article "After Ostrovsky's Thunderstorm", Grigoriev disputed Dobrolyubov's assertion that Katerina is a "protesting" character; Ostrovsky is not a satirist, but a "people's" writer. Let us note in passing: Grigoriev did not distinguish between the concepts of “people's” and “national”, he did not introduce anything new into the theoretical development of these important issues. The very distinction between these concepts was simply removed from him, since he understood both “folk” and “national” as an “organic” unity of all strata of the nation in the spirit of a certain unified worldview. In this sense, in his opinion, Ostrovsky was popular. Grigoriev stressed at the same time that Ostrovsky had nothing in common with the primitive common people. But what about the way of life outside Moscow, is it not common people? Dobrolyubov clearly said that Ostrovsky was rising to the level of universal human interests, showing "rays of light" breaking through in the "dark kingdom". Grigoriev understood Ostrovsky's "ideals" differently. For him, the Russian merchant class, taken as a whole, was the guardian of the Russian nationality, the "soil" of the Russian people.

QUOTATIONS FROM THE ARTICLE: Yes, this life is terrible, like a secret is terrible, and, like a secret, it beckons us and teases and drags us ... But where? -- that is the question. Into the pool or into space and into the light? The name for this writer, for such a great writer, despite his shortcomings, is not a satirist, but a folk poet. The word for unraveling his activities is not "tyranny", but "people". Only this word can be the key to understanding his works. Theorists can only wish for a little more religiosity, that is, respect for life and humility before it, but aestheticians, really, have nothing to wish for!

It is difficult to find a more or less educated person in Russia who would not know the names of the great critics, whose life and work significantly influenced the development of Russian literature of the nineteenth century, and largely determined the nature of the literary process in the subsequent stages of its development.
Two outstanding writers of the 19th century, two critics and publicists: Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky (1811-1848) and Nikolai Alexandrovich Dobrolyubov (1836-1861). They are buried at the Literary Mostki necropolis of the Volkovsky cemetery in St. Petersburg.
The construction of the unique necropolis "Literary Bridges" began with the appearance of the graves of Belinsky and Dobrolyubov here. Thus, even after their death, the great writers continued to serve Russian culture and contributed to Russian necropolitics.
The most reliable information about Belinsky was left by A.N. Pypin (1833-1904), Russian literary critic, ethnographer, one of the authors of the Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron in the articles: “V.G. Belinsky, his life and correspondence”, “Characteristics of literary opinions”.
N.G. Chernyshevsky (1828-1889), Russian materialist philosopher, revolutionary democrat, scientist, literary critic, publicist, writer: “Essays on the Gogol period of Russian literature”, “Memoirs of I.S. Turgenev”.
Apollon Grigoriev (1822-1864), poet, literary and theater critic, Belinsky and the Negative View in Literature. All this is included in the Collected Works of Belinsky in 12 volumes, published in Moscow in 1959, reprinted three times (from Wikipedia).
The main source of information about N.A. Dobrolyubov is captured by N.G. Chernyshevsky in the journal Sovremennik, 1862, No. 1. A continuation followed only 27 years later in the journal Russkaya Mysl, 1889. After Chernyshevsky's death, materials about Dobrolyubov ceased to be printed, but in 1890 they were published as a separate book in Moscow. Also in the magazines of 1861: "Russian invalid", "Contemporary", "Book Bulletin", "Moscow Observer". In 1862: "Library for reading", an article by O. Bibikov "On the literary activity of N.A. Dobrolyubov", Zaitsev "Belinsky and Dobrolyubov", etc.
After 150 years since the birth of Belinsky, grateful compatriots continued to honor his memory, recognizing that he was one of the most prominent figures in progressive literature, social thought and the revolutionary movement in Russia in the 19th century. N.G. Dobrolyubov was also revered in Soviet times and now, like his predecessor.
Dobrolyubov N.A. - the most famous Russian critic after Belinsky, a representative of the method of journalistic popularization of literary works. The short life of a gifted young man was not fun. He was a dazzling star in terms of published literary results, but his personal life was very dull. Fate played a cruel joke with him, which he was afraid of. In one of the poems he wrote just before his death: “Let me die, there is little sadness,” he expressed his fears with bitter foreboding: “So that under the grave earth I would not become an object of love, so that everything that I wanted so greedily and so vainly I was alive, smiled at me joyfully over my coffin board.
In fact, everything turned out the opposite. Glory, influence, popular sympathy - all this came to Dobrolyubov after death, and during his lifetime he unrequitedly, reverently strove for ardent affection, but he knew, basically, only the torments of creativity; the triumph of his ideas began to take the desired shape, but the evil disease was already at the gates.
Evidence of the glory of Russian critics is the perpetuation of their names in their small homeland, the place where they were born and spent their childhood. The name of Dobrolyubov is included among the famous people of Nizhny Novgorod, there are busts and monuments in his honor in a number of scientific centers, a city in the Arkhangelsk region and a library are named after him.
Monuments and busts were erected to VG Belinsky in St. Petersburg, Penza and the city of Chembar, Penza region (county). His name was given to a park in Penza, the Penza State Pedagogical Institute (University), the Penza Gymnasium of the secondary school in Chembar.
The activities of the founders of Russian literary criticism continue to arouse the interest of the thinking, creative part of the Russian population. Now, after 207 and 182 years from the date of their birth, when the world is rapidly changing, the value orientations of our people are also changing, the popularization and interpretation of their work is especially important. Their work requires historical rethinking. But the significance of their activities in cultural and historical terms will never lose its relevance.

Similarities and differences in the work of great critics
V. G. Belinsky and N. A. Dobrolyubov are well-known personalities in Russia who lived their lives for the benefit of the development of Russian culture. Belinsky, from the standpoint of today, is regarded as a patriot of Russian literature, who laid the foundation for the development of critical thought in the culture of Russia. It is he who is puzzled by the state of the existing literary process in the 30s of the nineteenth century, and takes decisive measures for himself to enlighten the young talents of that time, whom he later helps to grow and improve.
After 25 years, Russia receives another future critic who continued the work of his predecessor. He treated his senior colleague with great respect and devoted a number of his works to his work. A contemporary, colleague of outstanding critics, younger than Belinsky, but older than Dobrolyubov, another remarkable figure in Russian literature, a materialist philosopher, revolutionary democrat, scientist, publicist and writer, Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky (1828-1889) played a huge role in perpetuating the names of the founders of Russian literary criticism.

The Epoch of the Golden Age of Russian Literature and the Birth of Literary Criticism
The 19th century entered the history of Russia with an unprecedented scope for the development of culture, which affected all levels of life, and was conditioned, first of all, by the fact that the country was undergoing economic and political transformations, including reforms in education, science, and art. Being basically agrarian, Russia gradually began to develop as a bourgeois country. A network of enterprises of heavy and light industry began to appear.
Under the new economic conditions that arose as a result of the emergence of bourgeois relations, the need for literate people steadily increased. The influence of the Age of Enlightenment, which began in Europe a little earlier than in Russia, but by the nineteenth century already had a firm position in the Russian cultural and educational space, was also important. Book printing developed, works on the history of Russia were written, theatrical art, painting, architecture, music spread, Russian journalism was born: periodicals appeared.
The 19th century was marked by the emergence of higher educational institutions: starting with the foundation of gymnasiums in major cultural centers (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan, already in the middle of the 18th century) and ending with the foundation of three universities in the cities mentioned. Later, two-year schools for the children of peasants and workers and other educational institutions of various directions and levels began to open.
General tendencies of cultural and historical development in Russia could not help but influence the development of literature. Russian literature of the 19th century entered the history of Russian and world culture as the Golden Age. Today there is no more developed literature in the world than this period. This is the century when the Age of Enlightenment was replaced by the dominance of critical realism, which manifested itself in the work of Russian classics.
The major historical events of the early 19th century also had their impact on everything that happened in the country, including the variety of literary topics. These are the war with the French (1812), the Decembrist uprising (1825), the abolition of serfdom (1861). The last event was a decisive result, for the implementation of which the progressive thought of the Russian intelligentsia worked for many decades.
The 19th century gave Russia such literary geniuses as A.S. Griboedov, A.S. Pushkin, M.Yu. Lermontov, N.V. Gogol, I.A. Goncharov, A.N. Ostrovsky, I.S. wrote their immortal works, but also opened new periodicals, often printing houses were created at universities and all the news of cultural and scientific university life were published.
Magazines "Telescope", "Contemporary", "Russian Thought", "Moscow Observer", "Domestic Notes", "Bell" and others. Supplements to them were published as separate books, a number of specialized newspapers were published; a geographical society worked, research was conducted on the ethnography of the peoples of Russia, historical works were written, textbooks for children of different social classes, etc.
Therefore, the appearance of great critics of literature at that historical time was a natural phenomenon, the development of the literary process and the improvement of the work of individual writers and poets needed a critical assessment of their work.
VG Belinsky was the generator and guide of many poets and prose writers of his time. The baton of literary criticism was passed on to a younger follower of his work - N.A. Dobrolyubov.
In the development of critical thought in Russia, the metropolitan universities played a major role: Moscow University and the St. Petersburg Pedagogical Institute. It was in these higher educational institutions that young talents and caring minds united in order to create a great culture and literature in their homeland. The influence of Europe was also great, especially of German philosophers. Later, these associations spread to all the major scientific centers of St. Petersburg and Kazan and received the same wide influence on the development of scientific thought in the country.

Historical and cultural conditions and fate
The founders of Russian critical thought, who lived on a historical scale at the same time, have much in common in their fate by the fact that both were born in families related to religion. V. G. Belinsky is the grandson of a priest, N. A. Dobrolyubov is a son. And people from the Russian outback: one from the Penza province, another native of the city on the Volga Nizhny Novgorod, who managed to influence life in the capitals on a scale of the entire large country.
Grandfather VG Belinsky - a priest in the village of Belyn (Nzhnelomovsky district of the Penza province), his father - a doctor who served in the Baltic fleet; The future critic was born on May 30, 1811 in Sveaborg, where his father lived at that time. Subsequently, they moved (1816) to their homeland and the father received a position as a county doctor in the city of Chembar. The boy early learned to read and write from a local teacher, continued his education at the county school in Chembar. In 1825 he was sent to the provincial gymnasium, studied for three and a half years, the gymnasium did not satisfy him, and he did not complete her course. There was an idea to enter the Moscow University. The execution of this plan was not easy, Belinsky's father was poor and was unable to support his son in Moscow. The young man took full responsibility for his life and became a student. In August 1829, he began his studies at the Faculty of Literature, at the end of the same year he was transferred to the state account.
Dobrolyubov was born on January 24, 1836 in Nizhny Novgorod, his father was a priest of St. Nicholas Church there. The native family was considered prosperous, for this reason, Dobrolyubov's comrades, the children of deacons and village priests, did not come to their house, they considered this house too significant and noble. Dobrolyubov's father was passionate about the construction of houses, not everything went well with him, and this weighed heavily on him and, despite his good nature, poured out the bitterness of business failures on his family. The relationship between father and son was strained. Little Nicholas in every possible way showed sincere exemplary respect to his father, but he shunned him and was shy before him, as before a stranger. What he lacked in his father's love was compensated for by his boundless affection for his mother, a kind, affable, intelligent, noble woman. From his mother passed to him a gentle spiritual appearance, the desire for moral perfection and the integrity of nature. “From her,” he wrote in his diary shortly after her death, “I received my best qualities; I became related to her from the first days of my childhood; my heart flew to her, wherever I was; everything I did was for her.” The death of his mother plunged Dobrolyubov into the deepest despair. Evidence of this is the pages of the diary dedicated to a terrible blow for him, in which the most touching manifestation of filial love is felt.
Dobrolyubov's love for his mother revealed in him an amazing reserve of tenderness, striking anyone who approached the personal intimate life of the founder of Russian "denial". Having the image of a "heartless mocker" and a "destroyer" of all sorts of "illusions", the imaginary prototype of Bazarov was an exemplary son, brother and relative, and in addition, was filled with a romantic desire for ideal attachments. In Dobrolyubov's papers, Chernyshevsky found a long but unsent letter from 16-year-old Dobrolyubov to his seminary teacher Sladkopevtsev. The letter reveals such selfless devotion that it is difficult to find a novel in which the lover would speak with the same enthusiasm and enthusiasm about his beloved. Chernyshevsky, sorting through Dobrolyubov's papers, could not maintain his usual calmness and burst out in Materials for the Biography of Dobrolyubov (Sovremennik, 1862 No. 1) with an indignant tirade against those who called Dobrolyubov a man without soul and heart.
From Herzen's memoirs about Belinsky: Without objections, without irritation, he did not speak well, but when he felt wounded, when his dear convictions were touched, when his cheek muscles began to tremble and his voice broke, then it was necessary to see him; he threw himself at the enemy with a leopard, he tore him to pieces, made him ridiculous, made him miserable, and along the way he developed his thought with extraordinary strength, with extraordinary poetry. The dispute very often ended in blood, which poured from the patient's throat; pale, breathless, with eyes fixed on the person he was talking to, he raised his handkerchief to his mouth with a trembling hand and stopped, deeply afflicted, humiliated by his physical weakness.
As you can see, both critics were from a galaxy of people who are not indifferent, perhaps devoted to their ideas and principles to the point of fanaticism. Both ended their lives very early, from tuberculosis, which was common at that time. Consumption has taken away these luminaries of the Russian science of literature.
Already from these brief facts about the biography of our critics, we see that, despite the fact that Dobrolyubov was more fortunate financially than Belinsky, he did not have enough attention from his father, and was orphaned early, after which he took care of the material maintenance of his younger brothers and sisters. Belinsky was simply poor and experienced material need very often.
Apparently, thanks to the diary and the efforts of Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov was more fortunate, more information was preserved and survived to this day about his inner essence, vulnerable soul. Neither one nor the other had family personal happiness, did not raise children.
The spirit that dominated Moscow University in the 1930s was still not much different from the pre-reform era; but young professors had already appeared there, introducing students to real science; these were the forerunners of a brilliant period in the life of Moscow University in the 1940s. Lectures by N.I. Nadezhdin and M.G. Pavlov introduced students to the ideas of German philosophy (Schelling and Oken), which caused strong mental excitement among young people. Fascinated by new thoughts and ideals, gifted students reunited in close friendly circles, which later turned out to be very influential figures in Russian literature and public life. And Belinsky in such circles during his student years, and later found his beloved friends who shared his aspirations (Herzen, Ogarev, Stankevich, Ketcher, E. Korshidr.). The philosophy, and even more so, literary romanticism, which was in the air of that time, inspired the young Belinsky to enter the literary field with a tragedy in the style of Schiller. The "robbers" contained strong tirades directed against serfdom. The censorship, which consisted of university professors, not only did not allow this tragedy to be published, but also became the source of a number of troubles for Belinsky, as a result of which he was expelled from the university "out of inability" (1832). The future critic was left without a livelihood and was forced to survive by lessons and translations. During this period of his life he translated Paul de Kock's novel Magdalene, Moscow, 1833. Having become close with Professor Nadezhdin, who founded the new journal Teleskop in 1831, he began to translate small articles for the journal and in September 1834 he made his first serious critical article, and his serious literary activity begins with it.
In 1853, Dobrolyubov was one of the first to complete the course of the Seminary, dreaming of Kazan University, but his father, completely confused by that time, was not able to support him, and Dobrolyubov left for St. Petersburg to enter the Theological Academy.
Fearing to upset his father, Dobrolyubov enters the Main Petersburg Pedagogical Institute, where they taught according to the university program, and the students were in state care. The Institute gave a lot to the development of a remarkable mind. Outstanding professors of that time Lorentz, Blagoveshchensky, Sreznevsky helped to comprehend the wisdom of science, a circle of like-minded friends introduced him to the social life of the institute, the opportunity to do a lot was like a balm for his soul. The unfavorable conditions prevailing around contributed to the fact that a feeling of protest against vulgarity grew in him, which had matured in him even earlier, in Nizhny Novgorod.
As a third-year student, Dobrolyubov took the article "Interlocutor of the Russian Word" to Sovremennik. She was willingly placed in the magazine in the fall of 1856 under the pseudonym "Laibova", at the end of her name and surname: Nikolai Dobrolyubov. Thus began a long-term friendship between Dobrolyubov and the editor-in-chief of Sovremennik Chernyshevsky, who quickly appreciated the abilities of the young talent and, after the first meeting, immediately told his family that he had just been visited by a man of extraordinary intelligence. The article really impressed with its subtle wit, maturity of judgment, excellent form and sharpness of historical criticism, despite the fact that the author was only 20 years old. But it was written with great care, it was about Catherine, there was an abundance of commendable epithets of the “great monarch”, sincere sympathy for the nature of the journal edited by her. By that time, the article had many innovations, adjoining the "Notes of the Fatherland" A.D. Galakhov considered that the article was not respectful enough.
The dry, formal and callous attitude of the director of the Institute, Ivan Ivanovich Davydov, infuriated the young Dobrolyubov. Four years of stay at the Institute were filled with a struggle with Davydov, it was not visible from the outside, but in reality it was extremely intense. It was expressed in the fact that the most morally sensitive students were grouped around Dobrolyubov and expressed opposition to the moral rules of Davydov. After graduating from the institute, the struggle, hidden in every possible way from publicity to the general public, is transferred to the press. In Sovremennik 1856, No. 8, Dobrolyubov placed an analysis of one of the Institute's reports, which attracts attention with subtle irony.
Dobrolyubov's many years of struggle with Davydov sometimes took fierce, undisguised forms, for which some accused Dobrolyubov. Allegedly, Davydov rendered a significant service to Dobrolyubov when he was threatened with a serious punishment for poisonous poetry.
And again we observe a similarity in fate: both Belinsky and Dobrolyubov came into conflict with the leadership of higher educational institutions, in which they successfully received education at public expense.
Common strokes in the fate of the critics we are interested in are also manifested in the fact that both of them matured early, began to cooperate with print publications already in their student years. Both of them were united by the Russian capitals: Moscow and St. Petersburg, and their further life passed in close connection with St. Petersburg, the northern capital of Russia. The largest cultural center of the world played a significant role in the development of their work. Even their graves rest there, and nearby.
A critical article by Belinsky, published in several issues of the Telescope-Molva supplement: “Literary Dreams. Elegy in Prose" is an emotionally and beautifully written overview of the historical development of Russian literature. Having defined, in accordance with the characteristics of the era, the concept of "literature" in the ideal and comparing with it the true state of Russian literature from Kantemir to modern times, Belinsky says that "we have no literature", but there are only a small number of writers. He mercilessly expresses this negative conclusion of his, but he sees the fact that it does not exist as a guarantee of the development of a rich future for Russian literature. The conclusion is significant, it is the first scientific realization of the true meaning of literature; it was from him that active development into success should have begun.
Claiming that there is no literature in Russia, Belinsky foresaw the key to future success in revealing this truth. He relied on the generation of young authors and stated that young people are disappointed in the literature of the present, that the genius of the works of Russian writers is groundless bragging. I was glad that young people were not in a hurry to publish their immature creations, but indulged in the study of science, drawing new knowledge. "Noble poverty is better than dreamy wealth!" Belinsky said. He believed that the time would come when enlightenment in Russia, the mental physiognomy of the people would clear up, and then everything that would come out of the hands of Russian creators would bear the stamp of the Russian spirit.
Already in this first article, which made a strong impression on readers, Belinsky appeared as a direct successor to Nadezhdin, and as a spokesman for the thoughts of the members of Stankevich's circle, who had an undeniable influence on the formation of the critic's convictions.
Nadezhdin rebelled against the romanticism of that time, condemned him for wild passions and transcendental dreams, believed that literature should be simpler and have a direct bearing on life. Stankevich's circle, oriented towards philosophy, brought to the fore the education in oneself of the "absolute man", i.e. they were concerned about personal self-development, in isolation from the surrounding reality and social life. These provisions were taken by Belinsky as the basis of his critical reasoning. The emotionally rich tone of the presentation of thoughts, the passion for what was stated, were a distinctive feature of everything that came out from under his pen. This corresponded to his nature and distinctive character traits, in the words of Turgenev, "the impetuous harassment of truth." In the state of this “harassment”, Belinsky, who has an extremely receptive and impressionable nature, spent his life giving himself up without a trace to what he considered the truth at the given moment, stubbornly and courageously defended his views, but at the same time did not stop looking for new ways to resolve his doubts. New paths were shown to him by Russian life and Russian literature, which by the second half of the 1930s (with the advent of Gogol) began to become a spokesman for reality.
Both of our critics showed themselves as true citizens and patriots of Russia, cared for its prosperity, not sparing themselves, did not know how to make any compromise, so their whole life passed like on the edge of a saber.
Belinsky's second literary review appeared in Telescope in 1836. It was imbued with the same negative spirit. The essential idea of ​​this work is expressed in the title itself: "Something about nothing, or the report of the mister publisher of Telescope for the last half year (1835) of Russian literature." But by that time, Gogol's stories and Koltsov's poems appeared, which gives hope for a better future. He sees in these works the beginning of a new era of Russian literature. This idea is clearly expressed in a large article: "On the Russian story and the stories of Gogol", followed by articles on the poems of Baratynsky, Benediktov and Koltsov.
Nadezhdin, traveling abroad in 1835, entrusted the publication of The Telescope to Belinsky, who, taking advantage of the moment, tried to revive the magazine and attract fresh literary forces from the circle of people close to him to cooperation. Upon the return of Nadezhdin, Belinsky continued to take the same active part in the journal, until its prohibition (1836). This fact left Belinsky without a livelihood. Efforts to find work were unsuccessful; he could not find application for himself in any other field of activity, except for literary. Published by Belinsky in the middle of 1837, "Russian Grammar" did not have any success; he fell ill from failures and went to the Caucasus to be treated. He was worried about the debts in which he found himself and lived, mainly on donations from friends. Belinsky's difficult financial situation improved somewhat at the beginning of 1838, he became the unspoken editor of the Moscow Observer. Here he also remained true to himself and, in fact, was the same tireless worker as in the Telescope. He publishes a number of major critical articles: a detailed treatise on Hamlet, a 5-act drama "A Fifty-Year-Old Uncle or a Strange Illness", and finally becomes convinced that his vocation is only in criticism.
In the middle of 1857, after graduating from the Institute, Dobrolyubov suddenly noticed that his best comrades, who had always treated him with respect, were turning away from him. He did not inquire about the reasons for such a change, after a while he found out that he had become a victim of slander. It turned out that Davydov, who was aware of Dobrolyubov's hostile actions against him, distorted the meaning of the conversation and started a rumor that Dobrolyubov asked him for a good position as a teacher. In fact, Dobrolyubov was not going to teach, although he was obliged to do so, since he studied at public expense. By 1857, Dobrolyubov was already a secret but very active employee of Sovremennik; he decided to devote himself entirely to literary activity, set in motion acquaintances in order to be listed in the educational department. The false accusation caused him burning moral suffering and forced Dobrolyubov to do nothing for a year and a half to refute it. Faithful friends - Bordyugov, Shchepansky, Zlatovratsky and others understood the absurdity of the accusation and became close again with Dobrolyubov.
The alienation of his comrades, caused by slander, hurt Dobrolyubov painfully, at that time he suffered terribly from mental loneliness. The first year of study at the institute was a tragedy for Dobrolyubov - his mother died. In the summer of 1854 in Nizhny Novgorod, his father died of cholera, leaving in a confused state of affairs, and seven orphans, younger than Nikolai. This was followed by a whole series of losses of relatives, shocking Dobrolyubov with continuity and some kind of systematicity. Within two or three years, Dobrolyubov's brother, sister, and two beloved aunts died. This instilled such horror in him that he was afraid to open letters from Nizhny Novgorod, expecting that he would now find out about a new death.
By the end of the 1930s, Stankevich's circle directed all the forces of the mind and creative potential to the study of Hegel's philosophical system, its provisions were carefully analyzed by the circle members to the smallest detail and commented on in endless disputes. The main orator of the circle was M.A. Bakunin, he amazed everyone with his erudition and logic. Accepting his views, Belinsky completely mastered one of the main provisions of the Hegelian worldview: "everything that is real is reasonable." He was a passionate defender of this position, especially in relation to Russian reality. Belinsky and his friends at that time lived only by one philosophy, they decided everything from a philosophical point of view. The organ of this philosophy was the Moscow Observer, led by Belinsky and his friends. Characteristic features: full recognition of "reality" and reconciliation with it, as with a legitimate and reasonable fact; the theory of pure art, the purpose of which was not the reproduction of life, but the artistic embodiment of "eternal" ideas; admiration for the German lights, especially for Goethe. The magazine preached hatred or contempt for the French for the fact that instead of the cult of eternal beauty, they bring into poetry the burning problems of our time. Belinsky, with his characteristic passion, defended in the articles of the Moscow Observer what he believed in. The former focus on personal self-improvement, without any relation to the issues of external life, was replaced by worship of the social principle. Belinsky argued that reality is more significant than dreams, but at the same time he looked at it with the eyes of an idealist: he tried not to study it, but transferred his ideal to it with the belief that this ideal corresponds to our reality. Tried to see similarities with Hegel's system.
This confidence soon vanished, aided by two circumstances: heated debates between Belinsky and his friends and the circle of Herzen and Ogarev, who abandoned theoretical philosophizing in order to study social and political issues; and direct contact with the Russian social life of that time, as a result of Belinsky's move to St. Petersburg.
Belinsky moved to St. Petersburg in 1839, when, finding himself in an extremely difficult financial situation, it turned out that the publication of the Moscow Observer magazine could not continue, he accepted the offer of A.A. Kraevsky to take over the department of criticism in Fatherland Notes. With a depressing heart, he left Moscow and friends, in St. Petersburg for a long time he could not get used to the new position: his first articles in Fatherland Notes (about the anniversary of the battle of Borodino, about A.S. Griboedov’s play “Woe from Wit”) are not yet completely freed from the “Moscow spirit”. The reality of Petersburg horrified him, and his old thoughts took on other priorities. The ardor of moral aspirations for a lofty ideal, a fiery love for truth, previously directed at the idealism of personal life and art, turned into grief at the realization of this reality, so far from perfect, to fight evil, to defend the mercilessly trampled dignity of the human person.
It is under such conditions that Belinsky's criticism acquires social significance; he is more and more imbued with the living interests of Russian life. Every year there are fewer discussions about abstract subjects in Belinsky's articles; the predominance of aspects of real life is more and more decisively observed, vitality becomes the main task of literature. Along with serving society in the literary field, he sees his mission in educating society through literature. Belinsky believes that his generation should suffer so that it would be easier for children and grandchildren to live.
“... There is no gun, take a shovel, and clean off (dirt) from the “Russian” public. I will die on a magazine, and I will order you to put a book of “Domestic Notes” under your head in a coffin. I am a writer; I say this with painful and at the same time joyful and bitter conviction. Rasian literature is my life and my blood. made her the main interest of his life ... ".
Otechestvennye Zapiski now absorbed all Belinsky's activities, he worked with great enthusiasm, and the magazine soon won a high rating, came out on top among literary publications. In a number of large articles, Belinsky appears not as an abstract esthete, but as a merciless critic-publicist. It exposes falsehood in literature, castigates society for the lack of interest in mental content, for unsystematic views, philistinism, complacency, and the patriarchal nature of provincial customs. Calls for humanity, exposes the brutality against the lower strata, the slavery of women and children under the yoke of family despotism, and so on. Literature requires the fullest possible truthful depiction of reality. In one of his articles, he says that the freedom of creativity is easily consistent with the service of modernity. To do this, you do not need to force yourself to write on fashionable topics, to force fantasy; to do this, you only need to be a citizen, a son of your fatherland and your era, to assimilate its interests, making them your own, to strive to merge your aspirations with the aspirations of the fatherland. Sympathy, love, a healthy practical sense of truth must be developed, which does not separate convictions from deeds, writings from life.
Belinsky developed a tradition of publishing annual reviews of current literature in Otechestvennye Zapiski, and spoke in them with particular completeness and consistency about it. These are articles about the theater, and a lot of bibliographic and political notes. During the period 1840-1846, Belinsky published very objective articles in the journal about Derzhavin, Lermontov, Maykov, Polezhaev, Marlinsky, about Russian folk poetry in general, and a number of large articles about Pushkin (1844), they made up a whole volume of his writings and, in fact, represented the complete history of our literature from Lomonosov to Pushkin's death.
Belinsky's health, exhausted by restless journal work, was rapidly deteriorating: he developed a severe form of consumption. In the autumn of 1845, he suffered another severe attack of tuberculosis: hard work, limited in time, became unbearable for him; this naturally affected relations with the editors of Fatherland Notes, they began to deteriorate, and at the beginning of 1846 Belinsky was forced to leave the magazine. He spent summer and autumn with the artist Shchepkin in the south of Russia, and upon his return to St. Petersburg he became a permanent contributor to the new Sovremennik magazine, which was published by N.A. Nekrasov and I.I. Panaev, around whom the leading literary forces of that time were gathered. The days of Belinsky's stay in this world were coming to an end. In addition to small bibliographic notes, he managed to publish in Sovremennik only one large article: Review of Literature in 1847. Increased consumption caused him to travel abroad (from May to November 1847), but this did not bring the expected relief; Belinsky was fading away and on May 28, 1848 he was gone.
Dobrolyubov often laughed at his enthusiasm for bibliography, but at the same time he himself was carried away by bibliography, compiled an index to Arch. Philaret's Survey of Spiritual Literature and studied the smallest literary facts with extraordinary thoroughness. The past of our literature turned out to be the favorite subject of the founder of journalistic criticism. In 1859, at the very height of his enthusiasm for journalistic topics, he wrote a huge article about the satirical magazines of Catherine's time with special love and with the same brilliance of special erudition. Both of these articles have such indisputable scientific merit that they are cited with respect by literary historians of a wide variety of trends. But for some reason, the attention of special criticism has not yet been paid to Dobrolyubov's three large articles devoted to Ustryalov's History of Peter the Great. They are remarkable for their vivid selection of facts, which prove that Peter's reforms were not such a sudden and violent phenomenon as many believe, it was a spectacular completion of a slow but very steady process of "Europeanization" of Russia, which began in the 16th century.
At the present time, when a number of studies on foreign influence on pre-Petrine Rus' have undermined the Petrine legend, Dobrolyubov's articles no longer represent anything special; but in 1859 it was necessary to have great insight in order to draw such convincing conclusions from the pile of raw material collected by Ustryalov, which strongly diverged from the prevailing view. Dobrolyubov's compilation article on Robert Aries was also of great importance in its time; it belongs to Dobrolyubov's most widely read articles to this day.
Dobrolyubov matured extremely early. At the age of three, he perfectly recited Krylov's fables. He was lucky with his teachers. When he was 8 years old, a seminarian of the philosophical class M.A. was assigned to him. Kostrov, later he married Dobrolyubov's sister and became a relative. Kostrov led the training, bypassing the stereotyped path of memorization, trying to develop the boy's sharp mental abilities. Dobrolyubov's mother recalled that all she heard from her son's classroom was: "why?", "why?", "how?". Classes with Kostrov gave a brilliant result. Having come to the senior class of the Theological School, 11-year-old Kolya Dobrolyubov impressed everyone with the meaningfulness of his answers and erudition. Success did not leave him, and when a year later he moved to the Seminary and immediately found himself among the first students, who were sometimes 4-5 years older than him. He was timid and shy, shunned fun and games with his comrades, and spent the whole day reading: at home and in class during lessons. So he got acquainted quite early with elegant and scientific Russian literature, and this is already evident in his first articles. Dobrolyubov handed over huge texts of his essay to seminary teachers, 30, 40 and even 100 sheets. Particularly voluminous were the creations of the young talent on philosophical topics, on Russian church history and the teachings of the church fathers. At the age of 14, Dobrolyubov already collaborated with the editors, he translated the poems of Horace, by the age of 15 he began to keep a diary that is not inferior to a work of literature. The diary reflects the perspectives of the subsequent Dobrolyubov, with the difference that the direction of the author of the diary has little in common with what grew out of him three or four years later.
Dobrolyubov graduated brilliantly from the Institute in 1857, but did not receive a gold medal due to a feud with Davydov. Finally joining Sovremennik; becomes an active contributor to the journal. Almost every issue of the journal publishes his article or review. The first of the large articles of 1857 - "On the Importance of Authority in Education" becomes the beginning of a whole cycle of social and pedagogical articles by Dobrolyubov on the activities of Pirogov. At first, Dobrolyubov treated the author of Questions of Life with respect, saw a “deep, holy meaning” in the success of Pirogov’s book, and in his first article he logically developed some of the ideas of the famous scientist. And in the second article devoted to Pirogov, which appeared in 1859, Dobrolyubov treated him sympathetically. But it was precisely the praise that Dobrolyubov showered on Pirogov that turned out to be the source of attacks on him. Dobrolyubov was deeply upset when the enemy of “influences” and concessions, glorified by him, suddenly made a concession to scholastic pedagogy and, in the Rules on Misdemeanors and Punishments of Students of the Gymnasiums of the Kiev District, published by him, with various reservations, legalized the section. Passionately devoted to the cause, and not to persons, a fiery rigorist, Dobrolyubov undoubtedly changes his attitude towards his yesterday's idol. Places an article similar to the rumble of thunder against Pirogov under the title: "All-Russian illusions destroyed by rods" and bluntly calls the Kiev section "crime".
In 1857, Dobrolyubov completely switched to journal work. His first major article on a purely literary topic about Shchedrin's provincial essays. This is an article typical of Dobrolyubov's style, where the author of the analyzed work remains on the sidelines and the whole task of the critic is to discuss the conditions of existing social life on the basis of the material contained in the work. Opponents of Dobrolyubov see in this method the complete destruction of aesthetics and the abolition of art. They look to Dobrolyubov as one of the founders of the extremely utilitarian view of art, which later took root in the face of Pisarev. There is a misunderstanding in this widespread understanding of Dobrolyubov's method of work. It is impossible to deny the genetic connection between the leaders of successive generations, but Dobrolyubov's boundless respect for Pushkin shows that an unconditional connection cannot be established between them. Pisarev dreamed of journalism, his ideal is to bring journalism closer to art. Dobrolyubov laid the foundation for journalistic criticism. In his project, the publicist is not an artist, but only a critic of pure water. And he treated art rationally and tendentiously, by the way, he refused to analyze Pisemsky's "A Thousand Souls", because he believed that its content was adapted to a popular idea. Dobrolyubov demanded only one thing from a literary work - the truth of life, which would make it possible to trust him. Art, therefore, for Dobrolyubov is a completely self-sufficient thing, as interesting as it is independent. The complete groundlessness of the accusations against Dobrolyubov of destroying art becomes even more obvious if we try to actually consider what exactly in the sphere of Russian art he destroyed. The inflated reputations of Countess Rostopchina, Rosenheim, Benediktov, Sollogub, Dobrolyubov really destroyed with witty ridicule. But the fame of the two largest representatives of the "aesthetic" generation of the 40s is also associated with the name of Dobrolyubov. Dobrolyubov contributed to Goncharov's fame with his famous article: "What is Oblomovism?" Thanks to Dobrolyubov, the deep meaning hidden in the novel, which so eloquently reflected the life of serf Russia, was revealed. The interpretation given by Dobrolyubov in the article "A Ray of Light in a Dark Kingdom" about Ostrovsky's work is disputed; but no one has yet disputed the fact that it was the “whistle-blower” Dobrolyubov who provided all-Russian fame to Ostrovsky, which his closest literary friends did not deliver to him.
In "A Ray of Light in the Dark Kingdom" and "What is Oblomovism?" Dobrolyubov's talent reaches its climax. Particularly remarkable is The Ray of Light in the Dark Realm, which occupies a special place not only in Russian, but also in European criticism in literature. This is not a stereotyped service analysis, but an independent, purely creative synthesis that has created a logical construction of disparate features that is striking in its harmony. Apollon Grigoriev, who for ten years tried to characterize the works of Ostrovsky, getting confused in mystical abstractions and interpretations in narrow circles, was blinded by the light thrown on the work of his idol by a man of the “party” opposite to Ostrovsky. Dobrolyubov drew the high animation and fiery indignation that pervaded the "Dark Kingdom" not in adherence to one or another literary circle, but in a deep humane feeling that permeated his entire being. It gave him the foresight of the heart, with the help of which he was able to analyze a stunning picture of tyranny, lack of rights, spiritual darkness and the complete absence of a concept of human dignity, in their totality forming a world branded by Dobrolyubov under the term "dark kingdom".
Dobrolyubov was sympathetic to Zhadovskaya, Polonsky, Pleshcheev, Marko-Vovchka; he softly and sympathetically characterized Turgenev's "On the Eve" ("When will the real day come?") and with deep understanding reviewed Dostoevsky's "Humiliated and Insulted" ("The Downtrodden People").
Going through a long series of literary talents, the reputation of which was established thanks to the powerful support in the weighty authoritative word of Dobrolyubov, one may ask with bewilderment: why, how did Dobrolyubov earn the epithet "negative"? Is it only because the general meaning of his work is a protest against lawlessness and he preaches the denial of the dark forces of our life that prevent the onset of the “present day”?
The Whistle is a satirical supplement to Sovremennik founded in 1858 by Dobrolyubov and Nekrasov. Dobrolyubov was a more active contributor to the Whistle, writing under the pseudonyms of Konrad Lilienschwager, Jacob Ham, and others. He published many poems and satirical articles, which were enough for half the contents of the fourth volume of his collected works. Even Dobrolyubov's obvious well-wishers charged him for the "Whistle", allegedly, he laid the foundation for the "whistle dance", i.e. he was accused of mocking unquestioned authorities in the unbridled tone that prevailed in journalism in the 1860s. This accusation is a misunderstanding and the result of mixing Dobrolyubov into one whole with the later phenomena of Russian literary life. And the rumors that Dobrolyubov propagated tendentious art in Russia also find no justification in reality. If you take a closer look at what Dobrolyubov wrote in The Whistle, you can see that, with the exception of a few and very mild mockery of Pogodin and Vernadsky, Dobrolyubov's "whistle-dancing" is not directed against "authorities", but, on the contrary, ironically at "his" people.
Dobrolyubov understood that the unexpected newborn “progress” was nothing more than a herd feeling, the mentality of the crowd, this revolted his extremely sincere nature, he was disgusted by the parody of progressiveness. "Whistle" - more often ridicules Benediktov, Rosenheim, Kokorev, Lvov, Semevsky, Sollogub, who "blew our ears, crying out about truth, publicity, bribes, free trade, the dangers of farming, the vileness of oppression" and so on.
With regards to the notorious rudeness of Dobrolyubov's "pandemonium": the so-called rudeness has nothing to do with reality. Dobrolyubov possessed a rare wit, had an excellent command of versification, his irony was distinguished by subtlety and delicacy. One of the writers once put it - the polemicists of the 60s went out to battle armed with dirty mops. Dobrolyubov, unlike them, always went into a duel with the thinnest intelligent "sword" in his hand.
If you distribute Dobrolyubov's articles in chronological order by year, you can be sure that he has done a great job as the owner of the most unsurpassed talent. During 1857, 1858 and half of 1859, Dobrolyubov wrote four printed author's sheets every month. He devoted himself entirely to exhausting intensive work on critical articles, he did not write, he was on fire. And overstrained, of course, in the end. After his death, ill-wishers slandered that he had been frail and weak since childhood; but this has nothing to do with the truth. He was overwhelmed, broken by the excessive tension of his mind and heart. What he wrote in his poem is in no way at odds with the truth that he is dying of excessive “honesty”, he took the good of the Motherland too close to his heart and mercilessly placed on himself the duty to contribute to this with all the immense potential of his mental and physical strength.
To prevent the onset of consumption, the editors of Sovremennik sent Dobrolyubov abroad in the spring of 1860. He lived for more than a year in Germany, Southern France, Italy, but without significant relief. In August 1861, through Greece and Constantinople, he returned to St. Petersburg and, slowly fading away, died on November 17, 1861 and was buried at the Volkhov cemetery.

Similarities in the biography and life of great critics

Belinsky and Dobrolyubov have a lot in common. People from the Russian hinterland, were born in a family related to religion.
Both received an excellent education, studied at public expense, had the good fortune to study, to communicate with the outstanding minds of their time.
Both he and the other joined the activities of student circles of interest; were very erudite, early matured mentally; were extremely prolific and began their literary activity, aimed at developing critical thought, as students.
Belinsky and Dobrolyubov came into conflict with the leadership of their educational institution, were slandered, since both had an independent disposition, did not subordinate the interests of the people (with faith in their rightness) for the sake of personal needs.
They were not careerists and gluttons. Belinsky, at the beginning of his creative activity, strove to become an “absolute man”, Dobrolyubov reveals in his diary his desire to avoid all kinds of vices, i.e. both sought, above all, for personal improvement.
Plekhanov considered Belinsky the most thoughtful of our critics, possessing the flair of a brilliant sociologist.
Dostoevsky writes in his “Diary of a Writer” that Belinsky is a reflective personality, who values ​​reason, science and realism above all, but he understood that reason, science and realism can only create an “anthill”, but not social harmony in which a person could get along. The basis of everything is the moral principle. Belinsky believed insanely in the new moral foundations of socialism.
Dmitry Svyatopolka-Mirsky believed that everything that Dobrolyubov writes is devoted to fiction, it would be unfair to consider that this is pure criticism. With his fiery articles on the works of Ostrovsky, Goncharov, Turgenev, he appeals primarily to the moral principle of the reader.
Both critics worked hard, took what they believed in very close to heart, the question arises: what is their criticism? Both of them criticized the existing reality reflected in literature through the prism of idealism. Both burned out from consumption. Belinsky lived 37, and Dobrolyubov only 25 years.
Differences in worldview and principles of creativity
Belinsky, even chose for himself a materialistic approach to covering the event, he demanded the same from the authors of works of art, but, in fact, remained an idealist, and hoped to fit the existing Russian reality to his ideas.
Dobrolyubov was a materialist philosopher from the very beginning, he shrewdly saw reality without embellishment, but, according to the facts of his biography, he was very gentle in soul and impractical in everyday matters. His kindness and disinterestedness were often used by relatives.
Despite his idealism, masked by talk of reality and passion in his statements, Belinsky was a pragmatic person, but, nevertheless, often found himself in a financial hole.
Dobrolyubov really needed intimate relationships, his soul longed for love and sincere affection, but he was basically not limited in funds, which for the most part he spent not on himself, but on numerous relatives and his beloved woman.
Belinsky well mastered the laws of literary creativity of his time, his reviews of literary phenomena were a purely literary opus in the light of the philosophy of German scientists.
Dobrolyubov in his writings gave an assessment not to personalities and not even to the literary process, but to objective events that took place in real life and reflected in the work he analyzed.
Belinsky was a hopeless atheist, and he had the most negative attitude towards religion.
Dobrolyubov, a seminarian, is a soulful, deeply believing young man, informally, but really fulfilling the prescriptions of religion. Here is his post-communion post. “I don’t know if I will have the strength to give myself every day an account of my sins, but at least I ask my God to let me lay, although a good start.” It also contains the strictest introspection and self-flagellation of such vices as "thoughts of glory and pride, absent-mindedness during prayer, laziness in worship, condemnation of others."
In addition to literary criticism, Dobrolyubov showed himself as a teacher, satirist poet, ethnographer, and an ardent supporter of materialistic philosophy.
He saw the tasks of his contemporary upbringing in the upbringing of a citizen with strong convictions, a patriot, a highly ideological person with personal independence of the spiritual forces of his nature, which should develop in the unity of thoughts, words and actions.
Belinsky's writings are devoted mainly to general reviews, the laws of the literary process of that time, Dobrolyubov brings a literary work closer to real life, without adjusting it to scientific categories, which are always conditional.
We have completed our short study on the characteristics of two outstanding figures of Russian thought in the field of literature, pioneers in the development of critical thought about the literary work of contemporary writers.
They did a common thing, but each in his own role. Their work is united by a common impulse of a sincere heart, a desire to see their native people more educated, liberated, active and cultured.
In the course of the investigation, we collected and systematized the available material about the individuals of interest to us; revealed similar aspects of their biography and life.
They also revealed the differences inherent in their views, directions in the course of the development of scientific literary thought in Russia, which, in part, depended on the lifetime of each of them.
In the 1930s, Russian literature experienced a period of development of romanticism, it was an invisible bridge from purely educational (didactic) literature to fiction literature, the prominent representatives of which were A.S. Griboyedov, A.S. Pushkin, M.Yu. Lermontov and others.
The 1950s, when Dobrolyubov set about creating the foundations of critical thought, were the time of the development of high classics-prose in the style of critical realism: Goncharov, Turgenev, L.N. Tolstoy, Ostrovsky and others.
The significance of Belinsky and his influence in our literature was enormous and is felt to this day. He not only established the correct concepts of art and literature for the first time and indicated the path that literature should follow in order to become a social force, but he was a teacher and leader of the young generation of writers, our glorious galaxy of the 40s, all of whose representatives, most of all, owe the ideological side of their works to Belinsky. Welcoming with delight any newly emerging talent, Belinsky almost always accurately guessed the future path of development and, with his sincere, captivating and passionate preaching, irresistibly influenced the direction of young literary figures. The theoretical propositions developed by him have become common property and for the most part retain their force to this day; and the noble and tireless search for truth and the lofty view of the enlightening and liberating significance of literature will forever remain a dear testament for new literary generations.
The significance of Dobrolyubov also deserves to be studied, analyzed, supplemented by new facts of his biography and creativity. Modern literature and scientific thought about it create tendencies for the creative heritage of the great fathers of Russian critical thought and the beginning of the development of literary criticism to be rethought from the standpoint of today.
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