Translated material
There is more than one path in the field
One hundred and seventy-five years ago Nikolai Leskov was born
Leskov spoke most clearly about his life’s work at the beginning of a series of stories about the righteous. Here, intending to die (“for the forty-eighth time”), the “great Russian writer” explains to his younger brother why in his play he presented all the titled persons in an unsightly form: “I, brother, write what I see, but I see only nasty things. ..” “How,” I thought, “is it really possible to see nothing but rubbish in either my soul, his, or anyone else’s Russian soul? Is it really possible that everything good and good that the artistic eye of other writers has ever noticed is mere fiction and nonsense? It's not only sad, it's scary. If, according to popular belief, no city can stand without three righteous people, then how can the whole earth stand with only the rubbish that lives in my and your soul, my reader?This was both terrible and unbearable to me, and I went to look for the righteous, I went with a vow not to rest until I found at least that small number of three righteous ones, without whom “the city cannot stand”; but wherever I turned, whoever I asked, everyone answered me in the same way that they had never seen righteous people, because all people were sinners, and so, both of them knew some good people. I started writing this down. Whether they are righteous, I think, for themselves, or unrighteous - all this must be collected and then sorted out: what here rises above the line of simple morality and therefore is “holy to the Lord.”
Leskov began looking for righteous people long before 1879, when he publicly responded to the tirades of the “great Russian writer,” which reflected the sentiments that were characteristic of both very many of Leskov’s contemporaries and no less of their descendants. The Russian people of the beginning of the 21st century have preserved the custom of not seeing “anything but abomination” either in their souls or in the souls of their neighbors. And they talk about the dominance of rubbish with the same pathos as their ancestors. And they argue just as temperamentally about whether the fatherland was damaged overnight (and when exactly) or whether black sickness has been nesting in our house since the times of Gostomysl.
Our debaters can easily take arguments to substantiate their versions from the same Leskov. Which is what they do. Some cheerfully declare that there were previously righteous people in Rus' - the non-lethal Golovan, the uniformless quarterly Ryzhov, who lived on a penny salary, the scythe Lefty, the wise archpriest Savely Tuberozov, the “enchanted wanderer”, who even in his old age, after long ordeals, “is very much for the people.” I want to die” (“I’ll take off my hood and put on my uniform”) and many other supporters of the common cause and kind, conscientious people. Others enthusiastically remind that the glorious Stargorod priest had a hard life, that the virtuous policeman had nothing to wear the order that the governor asked him to wear, that the savvy flea stopped giving out “beliefs”, Lefty died in a hospital for the poor, and guns - despite his admonitions - - they continued to clean with bricks, which is why they lost the Crimean War...
Both are right, but somehow not in Leskov’s way. Leskov loved antiquity and “old people,” but was not at all inclined to contrast the “good” past with the “bad” modernity. Because he found righteous people in bygone times (Nikolaev and even more distant), serfdom, police brutality, embezzlement, extortion, contempt for the individual, veneration of rank and other ancient plagues did not become less disgusting for the ardent guardian of justice and mercy. A righteous person can live at any time, belong to any class, profess any faith, but at the same time he will be a righteous person, without whom neither the small city nor the whole world can stand. And at any time (even today, even in the first centuries of the Christian era), the righteous is lonely, and his righteousness on earth is not always rewarded.
The non-lethal Golovan lived for many years with his beloved, Pavla, who was once taken from him “out of perfect love” and endured the extortion and rudeness of the fugitive soldier, Pavla’s husband (although he could and even had to hand over the criminal to the authorities, and then enter into a “legal marriage”). But he himself preferred “righteous happiness” (which “will not step over anyone”) to “sinful happiness” (which “will step over everything”). Private Postnikov, who left his post to save a drowning man, not only lost his glory to a rogue officer who turned up, but also received two hundred rods for violating the regulations. Which I was “much pleased with” because I expected the worst. And because he was one of those who “love goodness simply for its own sake.” The craftsman Lefty went to his forefathers with the consciousness of his duty fulfilled - the sovereign would be reported about the English secret. They knew they were right, and this was their reward.
However, Leskov has a more terrible story: Nikolai Fermor, faced with greed, intrigue and cynical indifference, lost faith in people - neither the love of his brother, nor the tricks of the doctors, nor the care of the sovereign himself could return it. If two other students of the engineering school were saved from worldly untruth in the monastery, then he, wanting to “confront evil and overcome it in life, buried himself in the abyss of the sea.” Let us appreciate the paradox: the story “Unmercenary Engineers” is included in the “righteous” cycle - in Leskov’s response to misanthropes. The crowd of righteous people included a man who went along the path of denying the very possibility of righteousness in this world much further than the “great Russian writer,” an ideological suicide, a sinner who should not be forgiven.
It seems that Leskov is contradicting himself here. Maybe it contradicts. But what can he do if he sees in the sinner a righteous man, not a slave to the “idea of unmercenaryism,” but simply a unmercenary who really cannot live otherwise? Life not only exceeds any “theories”, but also their theoretical negation too. Manic adherence to an idea is, no doubt, bad, but mindless acceptance of everything that exists is no better.
It’s good, brothers, for him to live in the world, / He who doesn’t have much good in his head,” wrote A.K. Tolstoy, whose poet Leskov loved and with whom - despite the striking differences between the rich aristocrat and the “proletarian of mental labor” - had much in common. But the trouble is for him, brothers, to live in the world, / To whom God has given keen eyes, / To whom He has given to see in all directions, / And those eyes run wild; / And, it seems, it’s good, but it’s better to eat, / And it’s also bad, it seems , not without good!/ And he comes to the crossroads,/ He sees more than one path in the field... It seems that this is about Leskov. He also looked “in all directions.” Couldn't get by with just one thing. I looked for the best and noticed in the bad - particles of good. (But even in good things there are dangerously painful bends.) All my life I found myself a stranger to any community and “direction.” The “leftists” despised him for his “anti-nihilistic” novels, the “rightists” - for “Little things in the life of a bishop,” although, probably, there are no more sympathetic nihilists and bishops in Russian literature than those depicted by Leskov. After all, he found righteous people everywhere - in capitals and in the wilderness, in ancient legends and in newspaper reports, among merchants, artisans, priests, artists, Old Believers, Englishmen, Germans, Jews, wild foreigners, old ladies, generals, tramps and other motley the population of the vast and multicolored (among other things, and for this Leskov loved) Russian Empire. It was much easier to find righteous people than to find one’s place in public life and the literary world.
And all the people reproach him, scold him: “Look, he walks, they say, looking around! / Look, he stands, they say, thoughtful! / He should measure and weigh everything, / He should turn on all sides! / He should not be a commander, / He should not be a mayor ,/ He will not be a Duma clerk,/ He will not rule the trade business!” In relation to an artist, this means: don’t be everyone’s idol. Like A.K. Tolstoy, author of "The Council" and "The Sealed Angel", "The Enchanted Wanderer" and "Iron Will", "Lefty" and "At the End of the World", "The Hall" and "The Immortal Golovan", "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" and "Trifles" bishop's life" (as well as a myriad of diverse and varied works - from weighty novels to notes lost in periodicals) remains in the public consciousness as a "minor writer." There is no point in arguing. The name of the Tula man who shoed the flea has been completely forgotten. Guns were and still are cleaned with bricks.