Dictations and tests - applications. V.G. Korolenko Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy Vocabulary dictation “Verb and its forms”

The next day, having said goodbye to only one count, without waiting for the ladies to leave, Prince Andrei went home.

It was already the beginning of June when Prince Andrei, returning home, again drove into that birch grove in which this old, gnarled oak had struck him so strangely and memorably. The bells rang even more muffled in the forest than a month and a half ago; everything was full, shady and dense; and the young spruces, scattered throughout the forest, did not disturb the overall beauty and, imitating the general character, were tenderly green with fluffy young shoots.

It was hot all day, a thunderstorm was gathering somewhere, but only a small cloud splashed on the dust of the road and on the succulent leaves. The left side of the forest was dark, in shadow; the right one, wet and glossy, glistened in the sun, slightly swaying in the wind. Everything was in bloom; the nightingales chattered and rolled, now close, now far away.

“Yes, here, in this forest, there was this oak tree with which we agreed,” thought Prince Andrei. “Where is he,” Prince Andrei thought again, looking at the left side of the road and without knowing it, without recognizing him, he admired the oak tree that he was looking for. The old oak tree, completely transformed, spread out like a tent of lush, dark greenery, was thrilled, slightly swaying in the rays evening sun. No gnarled fingers, no sores, no old mistrust and grief - nothing was visible. Juicy, young leaves broke through the tough, hundred-year-old bark without knots, so it was impossible to believe that this old man had produced them. “Yes, this is that same oak tree,” thought Prince Andrei, and suddenly an unreasonable, spring feeling of joy and renewal came over him. All the best moments of his life suddenly came back to him at the same time. And Austerlitz with the high sky, and the dead, reproachful face of his wife, and Pierre on the ferry, and the girl excited by the beauty of the night, and this night, and the moon - and all this suddenly came to his mind.

“No, life is not over at the age of 31, Prince Andrei suddenly finally, permanently decided. Not only do I know everything that is in me, it is necessary for everyone to know it: both Pierre and this girl who wanted to fly into the sky, it is necessary for everyone to know me, so that my life does not go on for me alone So that they don’t live so independently of my life, so that it affects everyone and so that they all live with me!”

It was seven o'clock in the evening. It had been raining all day, and now it was clearing up. The lake, blue as burning sulphur, with dots of boats and their disappearing traces, motionless, smoothly spread out in front of the windows between various green shores, went forward, shrinking between two huge ledges, and, darkening, rested and disappeared into valleys and mountains piled on top of each other , clouds and ice floes. In the foreground are wet light green spreading banks with reeds, meadows, gardens and cottages; further, dark green overgrown ledges with ruins of castles; at the bottom there is a crumpled white-purple mountain distance with bizarre rocky and matte white snow peaks. And everything is filled with a delicate, transparent azure of the air and illuminated by the hot rays of sunset breaking from the sky. Not on the lake, not on the mountains, not in the sky, not a single solid line, not a single solid color, not a single identical moment, everywhere there is movement, asymmetry, whimsicality, an endless mixture and variety of shadows and lines, and in everything calmness, softness, unity and the need for beauty. So, alone with myself, I enjoyed what you experience when contemplating the beauty of nature.

(According to L.N. Tolstoy) (157 words)

Exercise

1. Execute parsing highlighted offer.
2. Extract from the text compound word, justify your choice.
3. Perform a morphemic analysis of the participle.

2. Parse the sentences.

Leo Tolstoy is the most popular of modern Russian writers, and War and Peace, we can safely say, is one of the most remarkable books of our time. This vast work is filled with an epic spirit; in it, the private and public life of Russia in the first years of our century is depicted by the hand of a true master. A whole era passes before the reader, rich in great events and major figures (the story begins shortly before the Battle of Austerlitz and reaches the battle of Moscow), a whole world arises with many types snatched directly from life, belonging to all strata of society. The way in which Count Tolstoy develops his theme is as new as it is original; This is not the method of Walter Scott and, of course, also not the manner of Alexandre Dumas. Count Tolstoy is a Russian writer to the core, and those French readers who are not put off by the few lengths and originality of some judgments will have the right to say to themselves that War and Peace gave them a more direct and true idea of ​​the character and temperament of the Russian people and Russian life in general than if they had read hundreds of works on ethnography and history. There are entire chapters in which you will never have to change anything; Here historical figures(like Kutuzov, Rastopchin and others), whose features are set forever. This is timeless... This is a great work of a great writer - and this is genuine Russia. (200 words.)

(I. Turgenev)

Dictation 2

1. Find constructions that complicate a simple sentence. Describe them.

2. Parse:

Option 1 - the sentence that makes up the seventh paragraph;

Option 2 - sentences constituting direct speech (last paragraph).

3. Define the types subordinate clauses and methods of submission:

Option 1 - in the sentence that makes up the third paragraph;

Option 2 is in the last sentence.

Inspiration is a strict working state of a person. Emotional elation is not expressed in theatrical posture and elation. As well as the notorious “pangs of creativity.”

Tchaikovsky argued that inspiration is a state when a person works with all his strength, like an ox, and does not at all flirtatiously wave his hand.

Every person, at least several times in his life, has experienced a state of inspiration - elation, freshness, a vivid perception of reality, fullness of thought and awareness of his creative power.

Yes, inspiration is a strict working state, but it has its own poetic coloring, its own, I would say, poetic subtext.

Inspiration enters us like a radiant summer morning, just casting off the mists of a quiet night, splashed with dew, with thickets of damp foliage. It gently breathes its healing coolness into our faces.

Inspiration is like first love, when the heart beats loudly in anticipation of amazing meetings, unimaginably beautiful eyes, smiles and omissions.

Then our inner world it is tuned subtly and faithfully, like some kind of magical instrument, and responds to everything, even the most hidden, most imperceptible sounds of life.

Many excellent lines have been written about inspiration by writers and poets. Turgenev called inspiration “the approach of God,” the illumination of a person by thought and feeling.

Tolstoy said about inspiration, perhaps most simply: “Inspiration consists in the fact that suddenly something that can be done is revealed.” The brighter the inspiration, the more painstaking work must be required to fulfill it. (210 words.)

(K. Paustovsky)

Vocabulary dictations

1. Not for anyone, to rage, could not, should not, hating, unfading; an essay that was completely unthought out by me; an extremely rash act; this is completely incomprehensible; inexpensive, but good; not in a hurry, to no purpose, uneven row, not looking around, not a difficult task, despite conventions, very ugly, regardless of ranks and titles, worthless, nearby, not involved in a crime, far from stupid, in no way impossible, not right, no wonder, inopportune, underfulfilled, won’t get there, far from a friend, not protected, uninvited guest, unexpected joy; either snow or rain.

2. Side by side, as a keepsake, on demand, to no avail, in an armful, in addition, in a draw, in a low voice, in a race, hand-to-hand, mixed up, willy-nilly, criss-cross, one by one, in vain, in the middle, exactly , from bottom to top, too much, dry, anew, from time immemorial, before dark, the mistake is obvious, gradually, unbearably, backhanded, married, backwards, completely, to meet halfway, to be in view, to rise up, to spread out in breadth.

3. Valley, advance, attract, fall, swan, pluck, teach, murmur, penny, carry, splash, crow, flower, feed, crackle, run away, interpret, bind, swear, surprise, shepherd, solder, fly away, path, attractive, vague, omen, relief, lean, neglect, impression, expose, absorb, enjoyment, allow, creak, weed, quagmire, pacify, harden, bake.

Vocabulary dictation on spelling conjunctions, derivative prepositions, particles

Option I

By all means, he had nothing to do with that matter, doing it as if; what would you do to respond; talk about a meeting, say in conclusion, keep in mind, like a cube, despite the danger, for an hour, put it on the account, for a meeting with friends, find out later, in spite of everything, despite one’s feet, against the will of the mother, for excluding anyone.

Option II

Some purchases, be that as it may, are also responsible, he is also my classmate, he came to you, on the other side, despite his age, despite the restrictions, to make within a week, like a deep trench, keep in mind, regardless of age, step towards danger, in addition to school, a pattern like a snowflake, instead of an answer, beyond the norm, later met, still went, you also like to talk, what to write in a letter.

Vocabulary dictation “Verb and its forms”

Option I

Creeping clover, sensing trouble, an unshakable truth, glues envelopes, whitening birches, tormented by hatred, a chirping bird, a deflated barrel, hung with flowers, foaming milk; a hateful look, an independent commission, prickly objects, looking for the truth, tell your friends, running waves, flared trousers, walking towards you, a logical thinker, thinking about a lot, driven by the wind, looking into the distance.

Option II

Not believing in anyone, tormented by resentment, doing business, tenderly cherished, breathing in the back, feather grass spreading, keeping a distance, unacceptable decision, scorching sun, ripening watermelon, ringing bells, pumped out honey, blown by the wind, sown field, fluttering flag, dried bunches herbs, you support the decision, you don’t notice me, a perplexed look, a rumbling engine, shaving every day, led by you.

Amidst the turmoil, in the chaos of the creation of a new Russian life, the eightieth anniversary of the great Russian artist and truly wonderful person, causing surprise and delight in all reading and thinking humanity. There is no corner of the globe into which a newspaper has penetrated, no matter what language it is published in, where this name has not now penetrated. And everywhere it causes a certain movement of thought and feeling, mind and conscience, starting with simple curiosity or joyful sympathy and ending with a tense clash of religious, moral, political opinions.

The latter is especially true in our country. Here, around this complex, amazing and majestic figure, a real whirlpool of various currents is now raging, there is a clash of not only views, but also passions. Our life was shaken to its depths in the tragic effort of revival, but even among this huge movement, perhaps in organic connection with it, the holiday of literature, the holiday of free thought and speech constitutes one of the outstanding episodes that is destined to remain in the biography of the great writer and in the history of our society, a characteristic spot on a peculiar background... What a majestic, bright sunset... what an alarming, stormy situation...

Tolstoy is a great artist. This is a truth already recognized by the reading world and, it seems, not seriously disputed anywhere or by anyone. And if sometimes voices still rise, like Belavenek in the Vienna Reichstag or Bishop Hermogenes in Saratov, who recently asserted that the images of Tolstoy the artist “are beautiful, but do not have a beneficial effect on either the mind or the heart,” then the fate of such knowledgeable critics - only to set off the solemn chorus of general admiration and recognition...

Yes, Tolstoy is truly a great artist, the kind that has been born for centuries, and his work is crystal clear, light and beautiful. One of the major French writers, if I'm not mistaken, Guy de Maupassant, said that each artist depicts to us his own “illusion of the world.” It is usually customary to compare work of art with a mirror reflecting the world of phenomena. It seems to me that both definitions can be accepted in a certain combination. The artist is a mirror, but the mirror is alive. He perceives from the world of phenomena that which is subject to direct perception. But then, in the living depths of his imagination, the perceived impressions enter into a certain interaction and are combined into new combinations, in accordance with the general concept of the world lying in the artist’s soul. And at the end of the process the mirror gives its reflection, its “illusion of the world”, where we receive familiar elements of reality in new ones; combinations hitherto unfamiliar to us. The merit of this complex reflection depends on two main factors: the mirror must be smooth, transparent and clean so that the phenomena outside world penetrated into its depths, not broken, not distorted and not dull. The process of new combinations and combinations occurring in the creative depth must correspond to those organic laws according to which phenomena are combined in life. Then, and only then, do we feel living artistic truth in the artist’s “fiction”...

The illusion of the world... Yes, of course. And these illusions are complex and varied, just like the perceived world itself. The same face can be reflected in a flat, or concave, or convex mirror. None of these mirrors will lie - the elementary processes of nature cannot lie (it seems that in this sense the sophists proved that there is no lie at all). But if you reflect all these images on the screen and measure their outlines, you will see that only a straight mirror gave you a reflection whose dimensions and proportions objectively coincide with the dimensions and proportions of the object in kind. The reflection of the same face on the surface of the samovar is, of course, not a “lie”; it moves and changes expression, which means it reflects a real, living face. But between this face and the reflection we see lay the distorting properties of the convex surface. But sometimes on this surface there is also rust, or mold, or it is corroded by caverns, or is painted with random reagents that change the living color... And then, peering into the slightly flickering reflection of a living face, we barely recognize the features familiar to us: they are stretched out and disfigured , distorted; in place of the eyes there are rusty spots, instead of a living body - the color of decomposition, instead of the “illusion of a living phenomenon” - the “illusion” of a ghost.

Of course, it may happen that even with such a reflective surface, the internal process of creativity will have the properties of an organically correct and original combination, as was the case, for example, with the sick Dostoevsky. And then in distorted reflections in places, like patches of sky in black forest lakes, revelations of amazing depth and power will sparkle. They will be both precious and instructive, but always one-sided. They will reveal to us the almost inaccessible depths of a sick spirit, but do not look for any laws in them healthy life, neither her broad prospects. Continuing the earlier comparison, I will say that by the direct reflection of the landscape sketched from a bird's eye view on paper, you can navigate in nature, easily find your way and calculate the efforts required to achieve your goal. Try to do the same on a drawing reflected by an irregular mirror surface, and, of course, you will go astray.

The current period of literature is especially rich in such illusions of ghosts, that is, doubly illusions. No matter why this happens, no matter how “naturally” it is explained and no matter how “legal” it is, the fact still remains a fact: the perceiving surface of our artistic mirror is beyond recent years as if it was bent, covered with rusty spots, distorted in different ways and in different directions. I’m not talking, of course, about the fact that every now and then faces distorted with horror, dilated and frozen pupils, and hair standing on end appear on it: horror constitutes a significant moment of modernity itself. I'm talking about those perversions that do not depend directly on the phenomena of life, but only on the mirror... Painful curvatures of lines, incredible and lifeless positions and actions, an exaggerated priapic expression, completely spread out on average human faces, in the middle, apparently , setting... At the sight of these strings of wild images, rushing before the modern reader as if in a fantastic whirlwind, we no longer ask along with the “old” poet:

Who do they paint portraits of? Where are these conversations heard?

They themselves do not pretend to be similar to reality, to be simple and natural... No, when contemplating the fantastic blizzard of modernism, a paraphrase from another poet comes to mind:

How many are there, where are they being sent? Why are they singing so out of tune?

When you turn to Tolstoy after this, you feel as if you have come from Brocken and Walpurgis Night into the light of day and sun. Tolstoy's world" is a world flooded with sunlight, simple and bright, a world in which all reflections in size, proportions and light and shade correspond to the phenomena of reality, and creative combinations are made in accordance with the organic laws of nature... The sun is shining above his landscape, cloudy spots rush by, there is human joy and sadness, there are sins, crimes and virtues... And all these images, trembling with life, movement, seething with human passions, human thought, upward aspirations and deep falls, were created in full accordance with the creativity of life, their sizes, their colors, the proportions of their mutual distribution reflect accurately and clearly, like a screen under a direct mirror, the relationships and chiaroscuro of reality. And all this is marked by the stamp of the spirit, glowing with the inner light of extraordinary imagination and never-tiring, vigorous thought.

But besides this fidelity, purity and transparency of the images, the breadth of Tolstoy’s creative vision and the vastness of Tolstoy’s artistic horizon are also amazing. We, people working in the lower strata of the same region over which Tolstoy towers and soars, feel especially vividly the almost titanic power of his artistic ascent. The average artist considers himself lucky if he manages to snatch one illuminated path from the formless chaos of phenomena, at best, to break through a clearing along which the consistent development of a given image moves, illuminating something on the sides of the main path. Tolstoy's artistic capture is not a path, not a clearing, not a ribbon of road. This is a huge, far and wide horizon, lying before us in all its immeasurable space, with bends of rivers, patches of forests, distant villages. Come closer anywhere - and the polyphonic, lively chatter of the crowd will rustle in front of you. Even closer - and you see individual people from it. And all this lives its own, full, real life, ebullient, original and diverse...

The size of the article and its purpose do not allow me to provide examples and comparisons for illustration. I will allow myself, however, one quick indication. Zola, in his Debacle, developed the same theme as Tolstoy in War and Peace. Zola is a great artist and thinker, but compare his paintings with Tolstoy's paintings. Here, for example, is the movement of units. For Zola, these are “combat units”. You see them, hear the hum of their movement, observe their action in a general collision. But these are precisely collective units that move, like spots on a plan. At best, you will recognize the main character among them and separate groups, close to the main thread of the story. In Tolstoy, a regiment passing through a parade or going into battle is not a collective unit, but a human mass teeming with individual lives. Every now and then many living faces appear before you - generals, officers, soldiers, with their personal characteristics, with their random sensations of a given moment - and when this amazing movement flashed and disappeared, you still feel this tangle of human lives sweeping through the general mass ...

To put it roughly figuratively, we can say that the average artist conjures up two, three, and finally a dozen or so faces. And the more he expands his grip, the dimmer the images become. Tolstoy's imagination lifts hundreds and carries them with amazing ease, like a mighty river its caravans and flotillas... In his "Destruction" Zola is an architect who has excellent command of the material and distributes it, like a mathematician, according to the law: necessary and sufficient. Sometimes in his strictly calculated painting one can feel a drawing and a trimmed alley. Tolstoy's creative imagination knows no restraint: the field of his imagination is sown with mighty shoots, wildly growing beyond all the fences of the planned plan. It doesn't have a main character. His hero is an entire country fighting the enemy invasion. There are hundreds of faces in his picture, and each one, even accidentally, casually released into the arena, immediately declares its bright peculiarity, forcibly captures your attention for its own personal life, does not want to leave your memory... And all this together spreads in breadth, like a flood, threatening to whip out of the frame with elemental force an independent phenomenon of life, rebellious to anyone’s command. With less strength of artistic outlook, this wild fertility of the imagination could become a fatal flaw: the crowding of images could turn into a real chaos of concrete phenomena, that is, lose the meaning of a general artistic creation. Sometimes it seems that a little more, and the artist must exhaust himself under the burden of his images, like an athlete who has lifted an excessive weight, and then the expanded creation will fall again into the chaos of phenomena, merge with the disorder from which artistic creativity tried to snatch it. But Tolstoy can do what anyone else would fall under. With his truly eagle-like gaze, he constantly surveys the vast field of his action, without losing sight of a single individual face and not allowing them to obscure the whole in front of him... In the end, the uncontrollable pressure of spontaneously arising images is brought into bounds. At the conclusion of the novel, you see how the violent flood entered its shores, the grandiose epic ends smoothly, majestically and calmly...

Yes, this is an almost superhuman power of imagination and an almost magical power over the seething reflections of life. We can safely say that in terms of the direct power of creative imagination, the richness and brightness of artistic material, there is no contemporary artist equal to Tolstoy. The world-famous Ibsen cannot even remotely compare with Tolstoy in this regard: his sometimes very deep thought is not always covered with images that are too meager for it, and the artist now and then has to resort to patches of dry, abstract and bloodless symbolism.

Now from the artistic field, in which the greatness of Tolstoy is obvious and undeniable, we move on to a more controversial field, around which disagreements arise and passions boil over at the present moment.

Tolstoy the publicist, moralist and thinker was not always sufficiently grateful to Tolstoy the artist. Meanwhile, if the artist had not risen to a height from where he is visible and heard by the whole world, the world would hardly have listened to the words of the thinker with such attention. And besides, Tolstoy the thinker is entirely contained in Tolstoy the artist. Here are all its major advantages and no less major disadvantages.

It has long been noted that the works of Tolstoy the artist reflected our entire life, from the tsar to the peasant. These poles are outlined correctly: indeed, in “War and Peace,” for example, there is a strikingly vivid and real image of the tsar in the person of Alexander I. This is on the one hand. On the other, we have the almost speechless soldier Karataev and the peasant Akim (from “The Power of Darkness”). Between these extremes there are many characters - aristocracy, village nobles, - many village nobles, - serfs, courtyards, peasants, - many peasants... However, there is one significant gap in this unusually rich collection: you will in vain look in it for a “middle class”, an intellectual, a person of liberal professions, a city dweller, be it a salaried official, a clerk, an accountant, a cashier of a private bank, an artisan, a factory worker, newspaper employee, technologist, engineer, architect... The noble nobility in Tolstoy’s works gives a hand to the peasant through the tone of catching people of average wealth, who in this rich collection of characters are almost absent or are only glimpsed, without significant features of their position, their psychology and life.

The city for Tolstoy is the place where Levin falls in love, where Stiva Oblonsky sees his ladies and glasses in his dreams, where village walkers come with their petitions for the ruined Stiva and his fellow villagers, where, finally, childishly helpless villagers go to their quick death boys and girls.. But the city dweller, as such, and city life, independent of the village, with its special independent role in the general life of a great country, are not known to Tolstoy’s artistic attention. It most consistently reflected the two poles of serf Russia: the village nobleman and the village peasant. The great artist does not see our brother, the commoner city dweller, whose life revolves between these poles, does not want to know and does not want to take us into account.

I don’t know if this remark has already come across in the vast critical literature about Tolstoy. In any case, it does not belong to me: I first heard it from one of my friends, and it struck me with its accuracy. Of course, it would be strange to attribute this circumstance to the account of “shortcomings” in Tolstoy’s artistic work. Perhaps, on the contrary, it emphasizes the enormous scope of this creativity: while with other artists we indicate what exactly, what corner of life they depicted, with Tolstoy it is easier to note what he missed. But for Tolstoy, the thinker and publicist, this gap had a very significant, almost fatal, significance.

The point is precisely that Tolstoy the thinker is entirely the product of Tolstoy the artist. Of course, Tolstoy is a very educated man, who read and studied a lot. For his religious studies, he even studied the Hebrew language. But his journalistic and moral schemes never emerged from this study as an independent conclusion from accumulated knowledge. On the contrary, study was a service tool for a ready-made scheme, which was born from artistic intuition.

In the complex of spiritual properties of this wonderful person there is one feature that deserves a closer and more thorough analysis. Maybe I’ll dwell on it another time, but for now I’ll just outline it in general terms. In the materials recently published by Mr. Chertkov from the family chronicles and correspondence of the Tolstoys, there is one letter from the writer’s elder brother, and in the letter there is a characteristic phrase: “Levushka, everything is Yufanite.” The note to the letter says that Yufan was an employee at the Tolstoy estate, whom Lev Nikolaevich really liked. I liked him to such an extent that he imitated his movements, his manner of holding a plow, etc. And this was far from being in childhood and, it seems, not even in adolescence.

A lot of such examples could be given both from the works and from the biography of the great writer. This ability to be carried away by someone else's personality, to become involved, so to speak, in its sphere, constitutes a paradoxical at first glance, but very noticeable feature of Tolstoy's moral physiognomy. And, probably, this Yufan did not stand out from the crowd in anything special. There is no need here for any special depth, or originality, or richness of the spiritual structure. All that is needed is spontaneity and integrity. Soldier Karataev does not know how to connect three consecutive phrases, Akim closes his vague worldview with a magical and almost inarticulate formula: tayo-tayo. The wretchedness of the spiritual world is undeniable. Few words, few concepts, few images and few sensations. But this wretched spiritual furniture is arranged surprisingly simply and harmoniously: there is no place for various mental disturbances, such as the clash of various contradictory concepts, there is no place for reflection and doubt. Hence the calm confidence in one’s rightness, hence the spontaneity and integrity. And this is enough for a great artist, overwhelmed by a whole world of images, ideas, concepts that are always agitated, clashing in the soul and do not allow it to finally take shape in some strong and harmonious “style”, to stop in front of Karataev, in front of Akim, in front of Yufan, enchanted almost to the point of hypnosis by their simple and wretched integrity. And in his fascination with the power of his talent, he will force us to bow before this integrity and believe that in the soldier Karataev some kind of extraordinary mystical wisdom flickers, which even a brilliant artist cannot unravel.

The entire diverse history of Tolstoy’s emotional experiences comes down, in my opinion, to a greedy search for integrity and harmony of spirit. If this is possible only with spiritual and mental impoverishment, then spiritual and mental wealth is overboard! For Tolstoy, a period of communication with the Yufans, Karataevs and Akims begins in the “simple folk faith”, “at the same cup”, at the same ritual... Together with his Levin, he then goes to the village temple and with heartfelt contrition reveals his genius soul. He is involved in the spiritual sphere of the Yufanovs and Karataevs, and it seems to him that he has “learned” to believe just as thoughtlessly, simply and “correctly” as he correctly, “in the Yufanov way,” learned to hold a plow. He blew out his Diogenes lantern and with pleasure plunges into the ocean of immediate faith, without criticism, with suppressed analysis in his soul.

But, of course, this is only an illusion. It is impossible to “learn” Akim’s faith, firstly, and secondly, it is not worth it, precisely because it is impossible to learn spontaneity, and that alone attracted Tolstoy. Meanwhile, the artist’s ebullient nature, rich in colors and thought, protests against impoverishment. A crisis is coming. Analysis is dry and joyless, but it is also an element, living its own immediate life... And “folk faith is stupid” and full of non-Christian superstitions... Harmony disappears. The period of unreasoning orthodoxy is over. The eternal seeker sets out on a new path.

Tolstoy says (if I'm not mistaken, in Confession) that at that time he was close to suicide. But at this bleak crossroads, Tolstoy the artist lends a helping hand to the confused Tolstoy the thinker, and his rich imagination restores to him a picture of new spiritual spontaneity and harmony. He sleeps and dreams. Sandy, scorched desert. A bunch of unknown people in simple ancient clothes stand in the sun and wait. He himself stands with them, with his present feeling of spiritual thirst, but he is dressed like them. He is also a simple Jew of the first century, waiting in the sultry desert for the word of the great teacher of life...

And so he, this teacher, climbs onto the sandy hill and begins to speak. He says simple words gospel teaching, and they immediately bring their peace to troubled and thirsty souls.

It was. This means that this can first of all be imagined by imagination. And the agile and vivid imagination of the great artist is at his service. He himself stood at the hill, he himself saw the teacher, he himself, together with other Jews of the first century, experienced the charm of this divine sermon. Now he will preserve this spiritual structure, into the sphere of which his prophetic artistic dream threw him, and will unfold it before people. And this will be Tolstoy’s grace-filled new faith, essentially the old Christian faith, which must be extracted in the Gospel from under later layers, like gold from under slag. Tolstoy reads the Gospel, ponders the original texts of the Vulgate, studies the Hebrew language... But this study is not the study of an objective scientist, ready to accept the conclusions from the facts, whatever they may turn out to be. This is the artist’s passionate desire to restore at all costs the spiritual structure of the first Christians and the harmony of the simple, uncomplicated Christian faith that he experienced in his imagination. At the time when the feeling of grace and peace descended on him in a prophetic dream, he was a Jew of the first century. Well, he will remain so until the end. This is not difficult for him: a rich imagination is at his disposal, giving the dream the power of reality. This is the first thing. And secondly, there is also that gap in his artistic horizons that we talked about above.

Tolstoy the artist knows, feels, sees only two poles of agricultural Russia. His artistic world is the world of the rich of the agricultural system and its poor Lazarus. There are virtuous Boazs, and poor Ruths, and unrighteous kings who rob the villager of his vineyard, but there is absolutely no independent city life, no factories, no factories, no capital separated from labor, no labor deprived not only of the vineyard, but also and your own shelter, no trusts, no workers' unions, no political demands, no class struggle, no strikes... This means that none of this is needed for the only good on earth - spiritual harmony - and is not needed. Need love. The kind rich man Boaz allowed poor Ruth to gather ears of corn from his rich field. The widow humbly gleaned the ears of corn... And God arranged everything for the good of both of them... What is needed is love, not alliances and strikes... Let everyone love each other... Isn’t it clear that then paradise will be established on this troubled earth.

Tolstoy is a great artist, and Tolstoy is a thinker who shows humanity the path to a new life. Isn’t it strange that he never tried to write his “utopia,” that is, to depict in concrete, visible forms a future society built on the principles he preached. It seems to me that this apparent strangeness can be explained quite simply. For his future society, Tolstoy does not require any new social forms. His utopia is partly backward: a simple rural life, which can only be imbued with the principles of primitive Christianity. All complications and superstructures of later centuries must disappear by themselves. Tolstoy's sought-after city would be no different in its structure from what we see now. It would be a simple Russian village, the same huts, the same log walls, the roofs would be covered with the same thatch, and the same orders would reign within the village world. If only everyone would love each other. Therefore, there would be no poor widows, no one would offend orphans, the authorities would not rob... The huts would be spacious and clean, the bins wide and full, the cattle would be strong and well-fed, the fathers would be wise and supportive, the children would be kind and obedient. There would be no factories, universities and gymnasiums at all. There would be no “unions”, there would be no politics, there would be no diseases, there would be no doctors and, of course, there would be no governors, police officers, police officers and “bosses” in general.

This could be the case in this world if people wanted to listen to a Jew of the first century AD, who himself heard the words of the great teacher from a hill in the middle of the sandy desert... Heard so clearly, if only in this prophetic!

It seems to me that I am not mistaken: in this image, which Tolstoy the artist gave to Tolstoy the thinker, and in the thinker’s desire to develop specific forms a feeling of blessed spiritual harmony inspired by a dream, introducing all people to it - this is the whole law and prophets of Tolstoy, a thinker and moralist. Here is his amazing strength at times and no less amazing weakness.

Strength lies in the criticism of our system from the point of view of the Christian principles supposedly recognized by this system. Weakness lies in the inability to navigate oneself in the intricacies of this system, from which he wants to show us a way out. If indeed a Jew of the first century, who heard the living speech of Christ, by some miracle now found himself among us, then it is very likely that, stunned by the complexity of our life and its horrors, he would tell us approximately the same thing as Tolstoy: brothers, let's leave from here to the desert, where life is simpler and kinder, and when the great teacher ascends the hill, your sorrow and your confusion will subside. Alas! - he would not know that this hill exists only in a dream, that in reality there is no longer a trace left of it, that perhaps rails have been laid in that place and a train carries people there for the money, every step of which is in the holy land must be paid for with the same money... Since every piece of holy land serves as a source of greedy income...

When Tolstoy himself, with his dream, inspired by a wonderful dream, goes out onto a city street of the 20th century, he is helpless and naive to exactly the same extent as our supposed native of the first century. There are as many illustrations as you like - we’ll take one from the area of ​​the great writer’s struggle with money...

The one who, in the sultry desert, brought peace into his soul, gripped by despair and confusion, with simple words, said, among other things, the great words: “Give to the one who asks,” and “If you have two clothes, give one to the beggar.” The commandment is simple, which, apparently, you only need to wish to fulfill, and the program for execution is clear: “go and distribute your property to the poor.”

So what? Did Tolstoy lack the desire? As you know, this point is one of the most rewarding for personal attacks on the theme of the parable of the rich young man and the eye of the needle. Someone else’s soul, of course, is in the dark, but it seems to me that the point of view that I am trying to establish in this, perhaps too cursory and hasty note, excludes to a very large extent petty zoilism and malicious triumph at the sight of the “contradiction between word and deed " in the practice of this direct and sincere person.

The fact is that our first century Jew is a wonderful psychologist and observer. There was a time: he tried to fulfill the commandment. Everyone knows the episode during the census, when Tolstoy made a fairly broad attempt to help with money, and what came of it: it was not good. The money of a “simple count” attracted (let’s say, in the Khitrov market) wild greed, hypocrisy, lies and envy. And the results of such a simplified distribution were not the improvement of people, not grace-filled enlightenments in the souls of those who received them, but only the condensed darkness of greed, drunkenness, and cynicism.

"The hand of the giver never fails." On this basis, the “simple” man in the street exchanges kopecks every Saturday and distributes them on Sunday to the poor on the porch of the parish church. Tolstoy does not know such distributions and such tiny charity. All or nothing! Everything - when goodness in its sense flows directly and directly from it. What does it mean that following a simple commandment gave such strange results? We, who look at the hustle and bustle of life from a different, more modern and more complex point of view, know that charity in modern conditions requires great attention, complex system and even art. But the first century Jew doesn't want to know any complications. Evil flowed from the distribution of money. Where is it from? Obviously, not from the inner motivation of the giver. The greedy attraction of the dispossessed to the outstretched hand is also natural. Evil is in money itself, this invention of the evil city. Christ did not help with money, nor did the apostles. This is because money is evil. This means that he who gives money gives evil. You should not help your neighbor with money. You can only help with love. And love will find its own ways and its own ways of helping.

This is the theory, and it is firmly established. But then comes the difficult year 1891 - 1892. Across the vast expanse of Russia, people - adults, women, children - are sick from hunger, suffering and dying. One “St. Petersburg resident” writes a letter to Tolstoy, in which he describes his situation: he would like to help the starving, but he is a low-income city dweller living on his city earnings. The only form of helping his neighbor that is available to him is a monthly deduction from his earnings. But... money is evil! What should he do?

Whether this was truly a simple-minded question from a sincere Tolstoyan, or whether, on the contrary, it was a form of polemic against Tolstoyan ideas, it does not matter. The question was posed bluntly, and the answer undoubtedly had great value for sincere followers of Tolstoy. The question was how can an ordinary to modern man to do at least a small deed of love and help in modern conditions of division of labor and money economy.

L.N. Tolstoy responded to the request with a whole article, which, it seems, was not published, but at that time was passed around, lithographed, read in meetings, and left a feeling of dissatisfaction everywhere. From it we, diverse representatives of interpolar social strata, not rich village landowners and not poor village plowmen, had to once again become convinced to what extent both we ourselves and our position are alien to both Tolstoy the artist and Tolstoy the moralist. The article nevertheless confirmed that “money is evil” and helping with money is not real help. We need to help with love. Love requires intimacy. Let the gentlemen of the city, when summer comes, go “instead of expensive St. Petersburg dachas” to the starving villages. There, the direct contemplation of the brothers dying of hunger will tell them what to do. Instead of cold and formal monetary assistance, the city dweller will “cut off a piece of his own bread,” and this will be a labor of love.

Yes, only a man of genius can be forgiven for such advice,” one “city dweller” who read the article told me... The trouble is that Tolstoy’s questioner hardly ever went to his dachas. And if he went out, then only plank structures in Shuvalovo and Pargolovo were available to him. Perkiyarvi, from where every day, with a briefcase under his arm, he must go to work in the office, office or editorial office... “Go to the dacha” in the starving provinces!.. But then he and his family will immediately find themselves in the position of the same “starving” person, so how he has neither a rich estate, nor a peasant’s allotment, but only “education”, fees, line-by-line wages... He sells labor for money... and he can only give away money, so many rubles a month. And so many rubles is, according to the conditions of the grain market, so many pounds of bread... That is, so many people fed.

Tolstoy - honor and glory to his living feeling - himself, apparently, was not satisfied with his answer, retreated from his scheme, began accepting monetary donations and exchanging money for bread. And in the year of famine he did a great and important charitable deed...

And then... One might think that this sharp episode, this glaring contradiction between theory and inevitable practice (the harm from distributing money - money is evil; the need for financial assistance - money is good) would force Tolstoy to stop in a new thought and that from here something new would begin negation. But this time he still maintained his position, in the atmosphere of a magical dream about a first-century Jew. Although - who knows - even now, whether the tireless seeker will end with this, or whether we will once again hear about new doubts of this ever-vigorous mind... A pilgrim to the land of spontaneity and harmony of spirit will again, perhaps, take his wandering staff to set off on a new journey, and the very latest sunset will find him in the midst of this vigilant eternal aspiration...*

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* This was written in 1908. It is extremely interesting to trace how some of Tolstoy’s views changed again in the last years of his life. Symbolically, the picture is sustained to the end. Death found the great writer on the way...

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So, Tolstoy the thinker is all about Tolstoy the artist, and the flaws in his constructions almost entirely stem from the above-mentioned gap in the area of ​​his artistic observations. His wonderful dream of establishing the first centuries of Christianity can have a strong effect on simple, spontaneous or tired souls. But we, people from the interpolar world viewed by the artist, cannot follow him to this dreamed-out country. For this we do not have enough imagination, nor enough leisure and, finally, the mood. Life, complicated, confusing modern life with its conditions, it showers us, the interpolar inhabitants, with stormy whirlwinds from both poles. We, too, until recently believed in the imminent kingdom of God on earth and, like Lev Nikolaevich, we recognized the formula: all or nothing. But the harsh history of the struggle of several generations reminded us of the old truth that “the kingdom of God is in need,” that preaching alone is not enough even for education, that the forms of social life are, in turn, powerful factors in the improvement of the individual, and that it is necessary, step by step, to destroy and rebuild these forms . One of Tolstoy’s articles quotes the words of Henry George, whom Lev Nikolaevich ranks very highly. “I know,” says Henry George, “that the reform I propose will not yet establish the kingdom of justice on earth. For this, people themselves must become better. But this reform will create conditions under which it is easier for people to improve”... This is absolutely correct. thoughts are the knot of the dispute that sometimes so sharply divides the mood of Tolstoy the thinker and the advanced part of Russian society that reveres the great artist. No one denies that a person must strive to become internally worthy of freedom. The only point is that there is an organic connection between internal and external freedom, and for the very possibility of preaching about internal improvement, better, more moral forms of social relations are necessary. And that’s why this difficult struggle is going on, which has already required so many sacrifices from that very sphere of life that Tolstoy the artist overlooked and which Tolstoy the thinker and moralist does not want to reckon with. And it will require a lot more. And not for “everything,” not for immediately establishing the kingdom of God on earth, which seems so simple if everyone wanted and could believe the illuminated bright dream about the first century of the Christian era, but only so that step by step, row by row laying the foundations on which the temple of future freedom will be built. And when, in the midst of this difficult struggle, sometimes going on in the midst of darkness and fog, a Jew of the first century looks with a disdainful grin or with a grave reproach at these efforts, condemning not only the means, which are varied, but also the goals for which people (and now masses of people ) give their lives, then the feeling of reciprocal bitterness that was at times addressed to Tolstoy among the advanced strata of the struggling society and people becomes understandable... And sometimes it involuntarily comes to mind that only thanks to the fact that Tolstoy knows, sees, feels only the most the bottom and the very heights of the social system - it is so easy for him to demand “all or nothing”, so easy to refuse “one-sided” improvements, such as the constitutional system and the legal limitation of external arbitrariness in all its forms. The lower classes suffered for a long time and meekly, humbly endured... To the heights, especially to the height at which a brilliant artist stands, no wave of oppression can reach. And we, people from an unknown and unrecognized region, need at least a breath of fresh air from time to time, so as not to suffocate in this kingdom of oppression and limitless arbitrariness...

And now we are no longer alone, the interpolar inhabitants, but the very bottom are, apparently, ready to give up the “inner freedom” of uncomplaining and boundless patience... And while a paradise of complete freedom is built on earth, they would like to expand and expand their the current premises, demolish unnecessary, rotten buildings and - most importantly - feel at least to a certain extent as masters in your own home.

I am not writing a panegyric for the anniversary, but I am trying only to give a feasible description of a brilliant artist and a great, sincere, brave man. Tolstoy does not need praise, and to characterize him correctly, with all the properties of his outstanding personality, means to give an image that evokes delight and surprise. Without pointing out the features noted above, the description would not be complete...

But in the same Tolstoy dream there is also the source of his strength as a merciless critic of the modern system. We cannot follow Tolstoy into the region he dreamed up. But a sincere dream has always been an excellent criterion of reality. Where would humanity be now if from time to time reality was not forced to stand before the court of dreams? Moreover, we must not forget that simple truths derived from the first century AD are the recognized, officially sanctified and enshrined foundations of our system. This is the formal ground that is for the modern state the source of its ostentatious official morality. And in this area, a native of the first century, with all his naivety and even thanks to it, can say with great authority a lot of lively and interesting things.

And so, under the influence of his wonderful dream, in which he himself heard the words of the teacher, Tolstoy looks at our reality and rubs his eyes in amazement at the sight of everything that he once so passionately dreamed of coming to terms with. How? So is this Christianity? How? This is a society based on the covenants of Christ!.. A Jew of the first century is deeply amazed, and every amazed figure amid the hustle and bustle of everyday life involuntarily attracts everyone’s attention, excites and infects...

Hence Tolstoy’s amazing art of speaking well-known truths. Yes, it is very difficult to speak about generally known truths, that is, to speak in such a way that they acquire freshness, originality and life, and this is precisely what our modernity especially needs. We, educated people, know a lot, but in our lives we have done very little of what has already become a hackneyed, truism for us. Hence - much in our modern literature and, by the way, the desire for something “that has never happened.” Here they flog men, sometimes women and children, and respectable old men. This is shameful. And it's illegal. And this has been said many times. And it was said as a blatant and shameful violation of human rights, but... the gentlemen governors have been continuing their exercises for a long time - and in “peacetime” as freely as in times of unrest, any St. Petersburg pshut, who, thanks to patronage, found himself in the role pompadour, orders to decompose the venerable old man, who is old enough to be his great-grandfather, and in his business a hundred times smarter than the pompadour in his, and... a vine whistles in the air. We will find out this and, if we can, print an indignant article, in the style of which, however, hidden despondency and boredom sound: and there were louder vitii than us... This is for no one, alas! - not news.

But then one fine day in the late 80s, such a lightweight administrator in Orel goes on an expedition and carries out executions on the men. Of course, all this will go well for him... However, after a while a whirlwind comes from somewhere, and the career of the Oryol pompadour is ruined. What happened? Nothing special. Only a first-century Jew learned about this episode and cried out in amazement that this was not Christian. But didn't we all, from top to bottom, know this? Isn't this a well-known truth? Yes. But Tolstoy, from the depths of his mood as a first-century Jew, managed to tell this truth in such a way that it again shocks not only the “society” ready for indignation, but also those who tolerated, encouraged, and even rewarded zealous pampadours for the same events. Tolstoy said... That's a lot. But also, said “a Jew of the first century of the Christian era,” and this is, perhaps, even more.

And the point, of course, is not that one administrator, frivolous and cruel, lost his career. Others will come, no less frivolous and cruel. We know this better and more firmly than a Jew of the first century... But the fact is that under the pen of Tolstoy such “well-known truths” lose their dullness and hackneyedness, sparkle again with all the colors of life, awaken new indignation, disturb, again force one to look for a way out ... And one more thing: they cease to be dead capital, lying in storage until better times, but diverge widely, penetrating and capturing layers where dull spontaneity, pitiful obedience or blind indifference previously reigned.

At such moments, the barrier between Tolstoy the preacher and his principled opponents from among the interpolar inhabitants collapses. Because in his speeches one can hear deep sincerity. And when he talks about non-resistance to evil through violence, he is not like those Pharisees who turn their preaching exclusively to the weaker side. Tolstoy had already fearlessly and sharply condemned those who have power and strength and who are trying to base this power on the authority of Christianity and its morality...

And at the moment when I write these lines, all educated world reads again one of the “well-known truths” in Tolstoy’s coverage: his simple words on the elementary topic of death penalty again shake people's hearts... And, of course, everything that a human word can do in the literal sense and even more - what it can do indirectly, illuminating the dark abysses of our order - all this will be done by the word of a brilliant dreamer who once dreamed that he hears in the sultry desert words of love and peace from the lips of the greatest teacher...

There is another side to the huge and complex personality of Tolstoy the writer, which makes us, interpolar residents, sympathize with Tolstoy the thinker and admire him even in those cases when we fundamentally do not agree with him on everything: he raised the printed word to a height out of reach for pursuit.

True, for Tolstoy himself there is a source of peculiar moral suffering here. About 20 years ago, as a young man, having just returned from a distant exile, I visited Tolstoy for the first time, and his first words at this meeting were:

How lucky you are: you suffered for your beliefs. God doesn't send this to me. They're exiling me. They don't pay attention to me.

This is understandable: to imprint his preaching as a sacrifice for the ideas he professes is the desire of every preacher, and Tolstoy many times after this in print reproached the Russian government for inconsistency and lack of justice: why do they persecute, imprison, persecute those who are passionate about his preaching, and leave in peace of the preacher himself?

Just recently, while polemicizing with Tolstoy, the official body of the “constitutional” ministry responded, among other things, to this reproach. What to do, says "Russia": - Tolstoy is a bad thinker, but he is also a great artist. His preaching (for example, against the death penalty?) is very harmful, but evil fate created a special difficulty for the government in stopping this harm: it would have to persecute a great artist for whom you feel “involuntary tenderness”, who must be protected...

To instill “involuntary tenderness” in people who defend the use of the death penalty as an everyday, widespread, everyday phenomenon - this, if we accept the 1a lettre (literally) statement of the officialdom, is, of course, a huge moral achievement. “Others,” not so official, but equally inclined in many respects, do not experience such tenderness: all over Russia there is now a frenzied campaign against the great writer and against his honoring by grateful Russian society, and a special prayer was even attributed to the famous Kronstadt priest, very reminiscent of a report on department about the need for the speedy administrative expulsion of the great writer outside this world: he allegedly blasphemously asked God for a speedy death for Tolstoy. Oh, how far this “Christianity” is from the teachings that the Jews of the first century heard on the shores of lakes and from desert hills*...

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* Subsequently they wrote that the composition of this prayer, which went from hand to hand in certain circles, was incorrectly attributed to John of Kronstadt.

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Yes, tenderness for the great Russian artist of the retrograde layers of Russian society, shocked by the simple and powerful word of a “bad thinker,” is very conditional. And yet, the fact remains: they did not dare to touch Tolstoy, although no prohibitions could stop the spread of his thoughts and his naively simple but terrible denunciations. This saddens Tolstoy. We can't help but rejoice at this.

And not only because, despite all our disagreements, this restless great old man is dear to us, but also because in him we see the first victory of freedom of thought and thought over intolerance and persecution. Yes, he raised free speech to such a height that persecution is powerless.

And he did this only with the inner strength of his genius. The great artist created this situation for a brave thinker. We are not great artists, and all other literature still wanders in the thick darkness of arbitrariness and lawlessness. But ahead, in front of her, towering like a luminous colossus, stands above the fogs that still obscure the field of Russian life, a powerful figure who has stepped beyond the boundaries of this darkness and this lawlessness. And we feel with particular strength that he is still ours, and we are proud that he reached this height with the power of just one word. We are encouraged that he carried the light of free conscience and speech beyond the limits of oppression. And, looking at the torch raised high by him, we forget our differences and send enthusiastic greetings to this honest, courageous, often mistaken, but even in his very mistakes, deeply sincere great man...

Article two

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Someone, if I’m not mistaken, Lessing, said: “If God held out to me absolute knowledge in one hand, and in the other only the desire for truth and said: choose!” - I would immediately answer: “No, Creator! Take for yourself absolute knowledge, eternal and immovable, and give me holy discontent and continuous, selfless striving."

L.N. Tolstoy - bright representative such a desire, restless, selfless, tireless and contagious.

The formulas in which Tolstoy from time to time concludes this desire, as a ready-made truth and as a morality for behavior, have changed more than once, just as they changed with his heroes - Pierre Bezukhy, Levin. If you look at Tolstoy from this point of view, then all of him - throughout his long and brilliant work - is one fragile contradiction.

Here, for example, is one of these formulas:

"...Good for the people who, not like the French in 1813, having saluted according to all the rules of art and turning the sword over with the hilt, gracefully and courteously hand it over to the magnanimous winner, but good for the people who, in a moment of testing, without asking how according to the rules others acted in similar cases with simplicity and ease, he picks up the first club he comes across and nails it with it until in his soul the feeling of insult and revenge is replaced by a feeling of contempt and pity..."

These words, in which the feeling of “resistance” was expressed in all its immediacy and even extremes, where even towards a defeated enemy there is no other attitude than pity mixed with contempt... Can one believe that they were written by the same hand that later wrote other lines: even if wild Zulus invaded the country, killing old people and children, raping wives and daughters, then a Christian does not have the right to give free rein to “feelings of enmity and revenge,” and then he cannot oppose force to force...

And yet it was actually written by the same hand... This is not enough: the formula of absolute non-resistance is dictated by the same basic spiritual motive from which came the cruel maxim about the good of unreasoning enmity and revenge...

This motive, one and never changed in Tolstoy, is the search for truth, the desire for an integral mental structure, which is given only by deep, indecomposable analysis, faith in one’s truth and its direct application to life.

The longing for spontaneity and the search for faith, which gives integrity to the spiritual structure - this is the main note of the main characters of Tolstoy the artist, in whom his own personality was most fully reflected.

The world split, and a crack passed through the poet’s heart,” said Heine. A wonderful image that explains a lot about our mental structure. The world split a long time ago - and one part of humanity walks along the sunny side of the great social crack, the other wanders in darkness and fog. In our time, it is especially felt that there is a crack in the hearts of not only poets, and Tolstoy, with the extraordinary power of talent and sincerity, knows how to portray this feeling of mental discord of people left on the sunny side. His whole life, all his brilliant work as an artist and thinker is an expression of this spiritual discord, flowing from the consciousness of the great untruth of life, the desire for healing in some single faith that can reconcile contradictions, bring peace and harmony to troubled souls.

At one time, it seemed not only to Tolstoy that spiritual integrity remained only among the common people, as a gift of fate for the heavy burden of suffering and labor. But this gift is worth all the benefits that the lucky ones who walk on the sunny side of life took with them. It is more precious than even knowledge, science and art, because it contains complete, all-resolving wisdom. The illiterate soldier Karataev is taller and happier than the educated Pierre Bezukhy. And Pierre Bezukhy tries to penetrate the secret of this integral wisdom of an illiterate soldier, just as Tolstoy himself strives to comprehend the wisdom of the common people.

It is hardly accidental that the great artist chose for the most significant of his works an era in which the direct feeling of the people saved the state at a critical moment, when all “rational” organized forces turned out to be powerless and insolvent. Tolstoy sees the genius of Kutuzov as a commander only in the fact that he alone understood the power of spontaneous popular feeling and surrendered to this powerful current, without reasoning, blindly, with his eyes closed. Tolstoy himself, like his Kutuzov, during this period was also at the mercy of the great elements. The people, their immediate feelings, their views on the world, their faith - all this, like a mighty ocean wave, carried with it the artist’s soul, dictated to him cruel maxims about “the first club that came his way”, about contempt for the vanquished. This is whole, and, therefore, this is the law of life. Take a closer look at the amazing epic people's war, and you will find there, with surprise, perhaps with spiritual shudder, almost a justification for the murder of prisoners... This was done by a people who did not know mental discord, possessing the wisdom of a whole, unerring immediate feeling, more correct than all calculations... This means this is true.,

However, a person who knew how to portray spiritual discord, the torment of doubts and quests, as Tolstoy portrayed them in Levin, Bezukhov, Nekhlyudov, cannot remain in such a mood for long. In the strength of the popular upsurge in the era of the liberation struggle against external invasion, he found a direct impulse and completely succumbed to the hypnosis of this popular impulse, powerful and integral, immediate and unreflective. The search for this spontaneity for himself leads him to a thirst for the same integrity. But this integrity is still alien. And Pierre’s doubts and spiritual discord, Levin’s reflections, his falls, mistakes, more and more new quests, these are their own, dear, organically inherent in the soul of Tolstoy himself. And as the charm of the great epic that took possession of the writer’s soul weakened, doubts arose again, the analysis began to undermine the hypnosis of the “simple faith” of the Karataevs... “The Power of Darkness,” in which the wise simple people are depicted at the extreme stages of darkness and vice, outlined new phase in the evolution of Tolstoy. The artist was able to give this picture. This meant that the thinker freed himself from subordination to the popular worldview and set out on a new path for his tireless search.

It would be necessary to write a whole book to trace the fascinating history of these wanderings of a great and restless spirit in search of the healing harmony of truth. Elsewhere I will try to outline in somewhat greater detail the main stages of this pilgrimage. Here I will only say that, having analyzed with his analysis everything that he had recently worshiped in the “simple and integral folk faith,” Tolstoy did not find peace and refuge in everything modern world. By his own admission in Confession, the world at that time seemed to him a dead desert. The mind is joyless and dry, the “folk faith” is full of lies and superstitions... At this crossroads, Tolstoy the artist extended his hand to the weary wanderer-thinker, and his brilliant imagination created for him a world of beautiful and great dreams. In the era of "War and Peace" before Tolstoy's admiring gaze, the ocean of spiritual integrity of the opposing and fighting people swayed. And he recognized this integrity of struggle as the law of life. Now the obedient dream unfolded a picture of another wholeness, just as powerful, just as elemental and just as exciting. He was inspired by the mood of another people who, at the dawn of Christianity, amid the roar of the collapsing old world, were preparing to conquer humanity not with feelings of enmity and revenge, but with the teachings of love and meekness... The charm of this dream embraced him, lulled his restless thought, and carried him on its waves to the land of non-resistance , to the spiritual clarity of Christians of the first century... Through the darkness of centuries, the call of Christ reached his ears, and for a long time he remained in his dreamed country, calling the world, restless and suffering in the networks of irreconcilable contradictions, to his peaceful refuge...

Such are the opposite poles of a single spiritual aspiration, such is the dry and general outline the story of this bright, great life. Through the darkness of centuries, from the land of his dreams, the great artist and sincere thinker looks with an eagle's eye at the contradictions and imperfections of our life, and this special situation makes his criticism of our system, which also considers itself based on Christian principles, so irresistible.

True, we cannot follow Tolstoy to the land of his dreams. But we feel the sweetness of this dream and deeply appreciate the sincerity of his tireless search for the truth. And besides, we understand that if a thinker sometimes closes his eyes to the fact that between the first century of Christianity and our modernity lay the roads and fogs of nineteen centuries, during which new, complex and unforeseen conditions were born, then there are still echoes of the great truths that sounded then for humanity, they sometimes reverberate in the voice of an artist-dreamer with such force that it seems to disperse the mists of centuries. Simple hearts respond to their charm, and among the Pharisees of the great teaching and among the merchants in the temple they create confusion and anxiety...

Now, amidst the ever-increasing confusion, under the dark clouds that have covered our horizon, the great artist and brave seeker of truth stands in the majestic sunset of his life, and around him, preaching meekness and non-resistance, passions boil and ripple, ranging from admiration and delight to dark hatred and enmity.

More years, decades, centuries will pass... The passions of our historical moment will fall silent. Perhaps the great crack that splits the world into those who are happy and disadvantaged from birth will already close; human happiness, human grief and the struggle will find others more worthy of a person forms, mental aspirations will be directed in their flight towards new goals, now inaccessible to our imagination. But even from this distance, at the turn of two long-ago centuries, a majestic figure will still be visible, in which, as in a symbol, both the most severe discord and the best aspirations of our dark time were embodied. This will be a symbolic image of a brilliant artist who walked behind a peasant's plow, and a Russian count who put on a peasant's homespun...

Korolenko Vladimir Galaktionovich (1853-1921) Russian writer of Ukrainian origin, journalist, publicist, public figure.

I. S. Turgenev Letter to the editor 1