(1876-09-08 ) A place of death

...the most daring of the early decadent life-builders: he behaved like a priest, smoked opium, lived in a black room, etc.; then he went “to the people” and founded the “Dobrolyubovtsy” sect; At the end of his life, he almost forgot how to write correctly, although back in the 1930s, forgotten by everyone, he made attempts to publish.

Biography

At the beginning of the summer of 1899, Dobrolyubov left the monastery to go on a pilgrimage across Russia and, opposing himself to the state and the Church, to found a sect (in the Orenburg and Samara region). For incitement to renunciation military service was arrested, but soon, with the help of his mother, was released as a mentally ill person. Subsequently, from time to time from the Volga region, where he was in 1905-1915. was the head of the “Dobrolyubov” sect (he himself called his followers “brothers”), visited Moscow and St. Petersburg; according to Merezhkovsky, Dobrolyubov was endowed with enormous power of spiritual influence. His latest collection of lyrics "From the Invisible Book"() indicates neglect of earthly goods; here he declares his renunciation of literature. The collection is full of religious and folk-style poems; “The Birch Tree’s Complaint on Trinity Day” is an example of how both lines contradict each other. The collection was supported by Valery Bryusov, who five years earlier compiled the “Collected Poems of Dobrolyubov”; Bryusov's wife and sister looked through the layout. During these years, Dobrolyubov also met with L. Tolstoy, who was deeply impressed by the personality of the head of the sect, but not by his work as a poet.

After the revolution, his traces are lost. Until 1923, he lived with his followers in Siberia (near Slavgorod), in 1923-1925 near Samara, doing earthworks, in 1925-1927 he led a nomadic life in Central Asia, then worked in an artel of stove makers in Azerbaijan. During these years, he also corresponded with I. M. Bryusova, the widow of the poet, and V. V. Veresaev. These letters contain some poems and four manifestos, indicating that Dobrolyubov sought to return to literature. It is interesting that the author of the letters has achieved complete simplification - they were written by an illiterate person. He died in 1945, apparently, immediately after the war.

Dobrolyubov is significant as one of the phenomena of Russian symbolism driven by the most powerful internal tension, less so as a poet, especially since much of his controversial work disappeared immediately after its creation. His early lyrics were associated with nature, the poetry of the decadent times was determined by the motif of death, and also testifies to the influence

The meaning of DOBROLUBOV ALEXANDER MIKHAILOVICH in Brief biographical encyclopedia

DOBROLUBOV ALEXANDER MIKHAILOVICH

Dobrolyubov, Alexander Mikhailovich - one of the characteristic representatives of the initial phase of “new trends”. Born 1876; studied at the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg University. He acted not only as a preacher of the most extreme aesthetic “decadence”, but also of “magism” and “demonism” in the style of Huysmans, Sarah Peladan, as well as the sweetness of using hashish. I was fascinated by the idea of the beauty of suicide; Due to some success of this sermon among students, Dobrolyubov had to leave the university. The expression of the first page of Dobrolyubov’s activity was his book “Natura Naturans. Natura Naturata” (St. Petersburg, 1895). This is a collection of “poems”, mostly without rhyme or meter, with musical notations “andante con fuoco”, “scherzo”, “pianissimo”, some prose passages in a poetic manner and, finally, just white pages with the inscription Moderato or Allegro con moto and dot stitching. In the prose passages one could feel knowledge of the folk-epic language, but in general Dobrolyubov’s book caused bewilderment even in areas fascinated by “new trends.” Soon, a sharp change occurs in Dobrolyubov’s moods: he abandons aestheticism and falls into religious asceticism. As a simple wanderer, living on alms, he goes on foot to Solovki and lives there as a novice for a number of years. His closest friends considered him as if dead and published his “Collected Poems” (Moscow, 1900, with articles by Konevsky and Bryusov). Around 1905, Dobrolyubov reappeared in the world for a short time and published the religious work “From the Invisible Book” (Moscow, 1905). This is a kind of sermon of repentance based on love not only for all people, but even for the elements. The words “brother” and “sister” are indifferently lavished on everyone and everything: “brother Leo” (Tolstoy), and “brother Moses” (the prophet), and “brother day”, and “sister water”, and “sister dawn”, and even to the "dog brothers". Over time, “all matter will become spirit.” At the same time, the book is filled with contempt for art and science. It is written in a very elevated, pompous tone and is full of exorbitant pride. The author knows all the commandments: “small, and great, and least, and endless.” He is in direct relationship with God; urging me to enter into an “alliance with animals,” he reports that “bears and wolves bypassed my path in the forests.” The poems found in the book are not poetic and resemble Quaker hymns, but in the prose there are glimpses of talent and good, original folk language. Continuing to wander around various outskirts and preach, Dobrolyubov founded a special sect of “Dobrolyubovtsy” on the foundations of Christian anarchism. “Dobrolyubovtsy” refuse to carry out military service and willingly accept the suffering associated with this refusal. S.V.

Brief biographical encyclopedia. 2012

Alexander Mikhailovich Dobrolyubov

Dobrolyubov, Alexander Mikhailovich - Russian poet. Born into the family of an official. Studied at the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg University. The herald of militant aestheticism and individualism, and later of religious asceticism. D. was a “hermit”, wandered around the Olonets province, lived in the Solovetsky Monastery, organized a sect of “Dobrolyubov” in the Volga region. Served a prison sentence for refusing conscription and anti-war propaganda. He began his literary activity as a symbolist. The first book of poems “Natura naturans. "Natura naturata."

(1895), dealing with themes of death and rebirth, was eccentric and whimsical in form. In 1900, D.’s “Collected Poems” was published in Moscow (with a preface by Iv. Konevsky “To the Study of the Personality of Alexander Dobrolyubov” and V. Bryusov “On Russian Versification”). D.'s latest collection, “From the Book of the Invisible” (1905), is a sermon of repentance, love for all people, animals and even the elements. Here D. forever renounced literary activity. D.'s poems are characterized by a desire for formal word creation, for the “dissolution” of the word in mystical experiences. His verse is something between free and folk verse (use of spells, etc.). Brief literary encyclopedia in 9 volumes. State Scientific Publishing House "

Soviet encyclopedia

The son of an actual state councilor, permanent secretary for peasant affairs in the Kingdom of Poland. Received home education. He had an excellent memory and read a lot and enthusiastically. Knowledge foreign languages allowed him to get acquainted with Western European literature in the original. He studied at the Warsaw Gymnasium for 5 years. His father's resignation in 1891 prompted the family to return to Russia. After graduating from the 6th St. Petersburg Gymnasium, he published his first book of poems, “Nature naturans. Natura natu-rata" (“Generative nature. Generated nature”) (1895) and in the same year he was admitted to the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University without exams. Having defeated the temptation of decadence, Dobrolyubov comes to the decision to break with “cruel debauchery,” refined sensations and the “madness of the finite world,” brought to the point of abstraction. Dobrolyubov talks about this spiritual revolution in a letter to a friend: “For a year now a new revolution has been taking place in my depths, and my heart has often cried. This time was the most difficult for me” (RO IRLI. - F.77).

He realizes the idea of his simplification and self-sacrifice for the sake of bridging the gap between “educated” society and working people in concrete actions: leaving the university and receiving a certificate of higher education for 3 courses and a vacation certificate with the right to travel, Dobrolyubov gives away his belongings, books and manuscripts, renounces the title of nobility in his passport, and in the spring of 1898 begins the existence of a man living with the fruits of his hands. This was the purpose of his departure to the North, his wanderings throughout the Olonets and Arkhangelsk provinces, his stay in the Solovetsky Monastery, where he, being a “laborer,” wore chains, preparing to accept obedience. Having left the monastery to reflect on the path and find like-minded people among people who work manually, Dobrolyubov continues his wanderings. After some time, having found supporters, he appears in St. Petersburg and Moscow. “He was in a peasant dress, a sermyag, a red shirt, and big boots<...>Now he became simple, now he knew how to talk to everyone<...>And everyone involuntarily smiled joyfully at his words. Even the animals came to him trustingly and caressed him” (Bryusov V. Diaries. 1891-1910. M., 1927. P.41-42). The “departure” of the Dobrolyubovs to the people carried a religious and rebellious character, identified with the coming socially just renewal and radical spiritual transformation of Russia. He wrote to N.Ya. Bryusova in 1936: “For me, a revolution is always mainly a spiritual revolution” (RO GBL.-F.386). Dobrolyubov consistently carried out his uncompromising decision to radically change the entire life of not only his own, but also those who unite with him. After many persecutions, false accusations of mental illness (see: Drawings from a Madhouse (Literary Essay) // Northern Flowers. 1902. pp. 109-112), living under police supervision, arrests, trial and even a brief prison sentence, Dobrolyubov by 1906 he moved to his like-minded people and fell among the peasants in the Urals, Siberia, Perm, Ryazan, Samara and Orenburg provinces. Becomes an authoritative mentor for many. Fascinated by the possibility of labor independent from the authorities, peasants unite into communities, calling themselves “dobrolyubovtsy.”

Dobrolyubov himself, showing everyone an example of a righteous and selfless life, works as a farm laborer mainly for the poorest and refuses to pay for his work. From the moment of “leaving” and simplification, the main thing for the Dobrolyubs was the principle of “invisible doing”, the basis of which was manual labor. Dobrolyubov limited himself to the fact that the peasants fed him, gave him lodging for the night, and sometimes clothes. An important part of the voluntary protest he took upon himself against the “educated” society and people of mental work was for him the strictest self-prohibition on writing, which also applies to writing poetry: “Despite the strongest desire, not to touch the pen...” (Dobrolyubov’s letter to his brother G. M. Dobrolyubov (July 1912), stored in the personal archive of G.E. Svyatlovsky). The period of “invisible doing”, i.e. continuous manual labor, covers approximately 1898-1944. Wandering around Russia on foot, Dobrolyubov would stop for a long time, then leave and change his shelter. However, in reality this was not the vagrancy and wandering of a beggar: Dobrolyubov himself verified the real possibilities of creating in Russia an independent community of peasant farmers - “free Christians”. He preached throughout the Far North and Trans-Urals, across central Russia (Rybinsk, Bologoye, Samara), through some regions of Azerbaijan and Armenia, occasionally visiting Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The basis of the religious and philosophical teaching of the Dobrolyubs is made up of covenants, partly repeating in form the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus Christ, but completely original. They are included in the third collection, “From the Invisible Book.” Actual conditions and the publishers of this book, in the absence of the author, were V.Ya. Bryusov’s wife Ioanna and his sister Nadezhda (like-minded people of Dobrolyubov; the latter in the 1930s was the correspondent and addressee of Dobrolyubov’s lyrics), to whom Dobrolyubov left all the manuscripts at full disposal.

The collection “From the Invisible Book” contains spiritual parables, revelations, repentances, poems and letters from Dobrolyubov, his appeals to the editors of the magazine “Libra”, to famous writers and acquaintances, as well as renunciation of previous errors with condemnation of “former like-minded people.”

Dobrolyubov’s “departure” into “invisible work” was not sectarianism; It is also a mistake to assert that Dobrolyubov came to atheism. Having recognized the free will of his “I” and recognized “God as good,” Dobrolyubov “did not throw away” his faith (as he himself wrote), but began to see the world differently. Dobrolyubov, like other charismatic people in Russia, had the privilege of experiencing a rare insight into the “light of his personality,” which was nothing more than a continuation of the light of the Creator (Dobrolyubov’s letter dated August 24, 1940 to fellow believers // Prometheus. M., 1980. Vol. 12. P.312).

Fresh thinking life path, the creativity and philosophical quest of Dobrolyubov as a poet and an effective thinker is facilitated by a newly found (with author's correction) copy of his treatise “World Outlook” (RO Museum of Leo Tolstoy), rewritten by one of his followers among the intelligentsia (N.Ya. Bryusova, A Kolesnichenko, L.D. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky, N.G. Sutkova, I.P. Yarkov, etc.). Dobrolyubov either passionately asserted, then cautiously advised, or bitterly complained: “A person only needs to cleanse himself, and then revelation, and direct communication with the spiritual, invisible world, and miracles will be possible for him.”<...>like death, your life is so hard for me. All of you are concerned only with the body and mind, but you do not know the spirit. You don’t even know your own spirit, but the Spirit of God is hidden from you” (From the Invisible Book, pp. 85-88).

Dobrolyubov’s romantic maximalism, his “mind, extreme in its denial of everything emlyrical” (Vl. Gippius), led him through a decadent-anarchic rebellion and through a series of spiritual crises to the formation of an integral philosophical and religious worldview, to the comprehension of Christianity and its Orthodox life-building basis . Dobrolyubov followed this path with his inherent will, as his contemporaries noted, to always and in everything go “to the end”, not only to implement, but also to test on himself all the extremes of decadence (individualism with the arts of emancipation and aestheticism, with “poisons” non-existence, with preaching ideas of suicide or self-deification, etc.). A. Bely wrote: “...the path of Alexander Dobrolyubov: for nine years now, together with Vlas, he has been walking towards the “bright city of new life.” This lonely image of a Russian symbolist who overcame our tragedy cannot but excite us: we will also go, we cannot mark time: but... where will we go where are we going?" (Bely A. Symbolism as a worldview. M., 1994. P. 352).

The “self-prohibition” on creativity was later overcome by Dobrolyubov himself; at the end of 1930 he returned to poetry. IN early period Dobrolyubov, who knew the French symbolists well in the originals, sought to penetrate into the realm of the supersensible; in fact, he can be called one of the founders of Russian symbolism. Characterizing Dobrolyubov’s poetry before his “departure,” the poet I. Konevsky, the author of the article “Towards the Study of the Personality of A. Dobrolyubov” in his second collection “Poems” (1900), writes about “special creativity”, “composed of reflection and shadows." Dobrolyubov himself calls his vision of the world “instantism.” Dobrolyubov meant the instantaneity of Divine “illumination from above reason,” which is largely intuitive and beyond the control of the poet and his intellect. Dobrolyubov’s first two poetic books were not only met with misunderstanding, but also provoked criticism for the poet’s attempt to combine the poetic word with music, for his idea of a synthesis of the arts. At the same time, such poems as “Did I get up at night...”, “Daughters of the People”, “I will open my mouth in fortune-telling”, “Every sound of church bells”, “The complaint of a birch tree on Trinity Day” received public recognition. An important evidence of Dobrolyubov’s creative activity is his creation of a number of hymns and psalms, prayer verses, performed in those years and to this day in Christian communities of “Dobrolyubovites”.

The poetic significance of Dobrolyubov’s poetry for a wide range of readers is confirmed today by the inclusion of his poems in all published books about prominent poets of the Silver Age. Judging by the surviving manuscripts, Dobrolyubov not only did not lose his poetic gift in the 1930s, but also significantly enriched it. The poems written during this period are perhaps the best of all that he created during his long and difficult life. The verse attracts attention. “Answer to Lermontov’s Palestinian palm tree”: “I am a palm tree of the Arabian deserts, / Burnt by the fire of the day / And by the scorching Syrian wind, - / The thought is always about one thing: / Let the dust of the roads greedily cover even the roots, / Let even the foliage wither in the merciless deserts, / Let the links rush, and let the links follow the links / There will be no end to the ladder of links” (Covenants for everyone. St. Petersburg, 1995. P.66-70). Life was especially difficult for Dobrolyubov after 1937, when his arrests became more frequent for “lack of writing” (i.e., lack of documents) and for some time Dobrolyubov was in a NKVD colony in the city of Zagatali, Azerbaijan SSR. The one-act drama “Feast on the University Campus of Madrid” (RO GBL. F.386) was written there - a kind of hymn to eternal Femininity. The drama was staged in 1993 in St. Petersburg by a youth theater group (dir. N.A. Mikhailova).

No written evidence has yet been found about Dobrolyubov’s last years.

Dobrolyubov was known to his contemporaries as a symbolist poet of the Silver Age who fell silent early. Today there is every reason to talk about him as a major philosopher of an active religious nature. This was also noticed by L.N. Tolstoy, with whom Dobrolyubov met three times. On July 20, 1907, Tolstoy wrote in his diary: “You cannot preach a doctrine while living contrary to this doctrine, as I live. The only proof that this teaching brings benefit is to live according to it, as Dobrolyubov lives.”

Dobrolyubov tried to the best of his ability to help bridge the centuries-old gap between science and religion in order to help strengthen “reasonable faith and the believing mind” (Stankevich L.G., Kharchenko L.N. Proceedings of the VIII International Congress of Psychologists “Interaction of Science, Philosophy and Theology in formation of spiritual and economic thinking". St. Petersburg, 1995. P.85). Dobrolyubov strove for “the study of something inexplicable, a thorough study of all, even the most hostile concepts and trends” (letter to N.Ya. Bryusova // RO GBL. F.386). He made a valuable contribution to the understanding of the philosophy of religion, which found expression in his artistic work. A. Zakrzhevsky in the book “Religion. Psychological parallels” (1913) wrote: “We have become too unaccustomed to true seers of God, from miracles, from ascetics, from saints - we don’t want to believe that they are still among us... But among modern religious creators, the personality of Alexander Dobrolyubov is the only living one, a bright, unusual personality, and in her is the mystery of Russia, and in her is her shrine.” Poetry was dedicated to the Dobrolyubs by Al. Blok, V. Bryusov, N. Klyuev (“Alexander Dobrolyubov is a pure little candle”), Ars. Tarkovsky (“Poet of the beginning of the century”) and others.

G.E. Svyatlovsky,
A.P. Terentyev-Katansky

Materials used from the book: Russian literature of the 20th century. Prose writers, poets, playwrights. Biobibliographical dictionary. Volume 1. p. 625-628.

Read further:

Russian writers and poets(biographical reference book).

Essays:

Nature naturals. Natura naturata = Generative nature. Nature generated. St. Petersburg, 1895;

Collected poems / comp. V.Bryusov; entry article by I. Konevsky. M., 1900;

From the Book of the Invisible / comp. N.Ya.Bryusov and I.M.Bryusov in the absence of the author. M., 1905;

My eternal companions. M., 1906 (?); silver Age. St. Petersburg poetry of the late XIX - early XX centuries. P., 1991. P.111-115;

Russian poetry of the Silver Age. 1890-1917. Anthology. M., 1993. pp. 151-155.

Literature:

Gippius V., A. Dobrolyubov, in the book: Russian literature of the twentieth century, 1890-1910. Ed. S.A. Vengerova, vol. 1, M., 1914, P.272-288;

Extreme A. [Gippius 3.N.] Criticism of love: Literary diary. St. Petersburg, 1908. P.45-63;

Fomin A.G., A.M. Dobrolyubov, ibid., vol. 2, M., 1915;

Poyarkov N., Poets of our days, M., 1907;

Prugavin A.S., A.M. Dobrolyubov and his followers, in the book: Those who do not accept the world. Essays on religious quests, M., 1918;

History of Russian literature of the end XIX - early XX centuries.

Bibliographic index ed. K.D. Muratova, M.,-L., 1963.

Chulkov G.A. The Veil of Isis: Critical Essays. M., 1909. P.91-98;

Azadovsky K.M. The path of Alexander Dobrolyubov // Blokovsky collection. Issue 3. Tartu, 1979. P.121-146;

Kishilova A. The path and work of Alexander Dobrolyubov: [diss]. Paris, 1979;

Grossman J. Alexander Dobrolyubov / intro. article and commentary on the rotaprint edition of Dobrolyubov’s collection “Generative Nature. Nature generated" (St. Petersburg, 1895) and Dobrolyubov's books "Collected Poems" (M., 1900). Berkeley, 1981;

Grossman J. Alexander Dobrolyubov / intro. article and commentary on the rotaprint edition of Dobrolyubov’s book “From the Invisible Book” (M., 1905). Berkeley, 1983;

Kreid V. Memories of the Silver Age. M., 1993;

Otsup N. Ocean of time. M., 1993. P.475, 606;

Svyatlovsky G.E. Biographical information about A.M. Dobrolyubov and other materials // Testaments for everyone. St. Petersburg, 1995;

Tarkovsky Ars. Poet of the beginning of the century (1959) // Poetry of the Silver Age / comp. M. Kralin. St. Petersburg, 1996.

Alexander Dobrolyubov

After they didn’t transfer me from the senior preparatory school to the sixth grade of the Lyceum, I ended up with Gurevich - a “realist”, despite my successes in Latin: they didn’t teach Greek at the Lyceum. Later, in order to enter the university, I had to take both languages additionally with the special permission of the minister. I more or less mastered all the classical wisdom, up to Horace and Herodotus, studying at home, and successfully passed the exams (at the eighth gymnasium) already as a volunteer student at the university.

I mention this to explain why my friends from the “Gurevichs” were not realists, but high school students: we were brought together by the shadows of the ancient world, poetry, art: the realists dreamed of a career as engineers. However, the “real” program also corresponded to my craving for natural science: at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, having chosen the natural sciences department, I focused on botany and zoology. It seemed to me that the rest of the sciences could be learned this way, but for the natural sciences a university was needed... Then, having already decided to serve in the State Chancellery, I continued to attend the university as a volunteer lawyer and even took several transitional exams (my history classes began at the same time arts that distracted us from both natural history and jurisprudence).

Let's return to the corner of Basseynaya and Obvodny Canals - to the “Gurevichs”. Friendly environment in educational institution, nurtured by the tireless labors of Yakov Grigoryevich Gurevich, differed sharply from the environment of the Lyceum, where barchuks from the bureaucratic nobility predominated. Yakov Grigoryevich - small, plump, gray-haired, clean-shaven (only his gray sideburns stuck out comically like sausages) - was proud that he was entrusted with children by the selected intelligentsia (he pronounced “intelligentsia”, “literature”); his gymnasium established a reputation as a nursery of a semi-privileged type... Of course, Yakov Grigorievich, who valued his connections in radical circles, did not make a distinction between noble-born and mere mortals (although he pursued the names of scientists, writers, artists, like Ustryalov, Mikhailovsky, Weinberg, Zabela, Stravinsky, Abaza, Prince Tenishev), but he still boasted that Count Sergei Dimitrievich Sheremetev himself and Princess Yusupova trusted his sons... The teaching staff was also selected accordingly: General Pulikovsky taught geography, Russian literature was taught by A. A. Vitberg (native the son of an unlucky genius builder and freemason from the time of Alexander the Blessed), Gurevich shared history lessons with the brilliant one-handed associate professor Forsten (in the late 90s he received a university department), and our German was a popular translator of Lermontov and Alexei Tolstoy - Fyodor Fedorovich Fiedler. Much attention were given lessons in drawing, modeling and singing.

But, it must be said, Gurevich’s complacently liberal pedagogy did not arouse any particular zeal for science in his pupils: in other state-owned gymnasiums, or, for example, in Peterschule and Annenschule, young people studied much harder. Hence the comparative ease of exams “at Gurevich’s” - this was widely used by mama’s boys, moustachioed slackers who sat in the back desks.

But we diligently read the most different books both at home and in the classroom; the teachers did not interfere with us, asked lessons without pedantry and were carried away by their “professor’s lectures.” I immediately joined a friendly company of precocious youths, who were spurred on by a thirst for out-of-school knowledge - a very superficial know-it-all, but this filled in, to a certain extent, the gaps in school studies...

For boys without parental shelter (in St. Petersburg), Gurevich had a boarding school. It was boring here, with a random composition of students, and life was from vacation to vacation. For the whole winter, until my mother returned from abroad, I remained in this boarding school, in the care of my uncle and aunt, the Sultanovs, with whom I spent the holidays. Ekaterina Pavlovna Sultanova, a radical public figure, writer, signed her own stories and translated novels from Italian, mostly with her maiden name Letkova. My uncle, an architect (later director of the Institute of Civil Engineers), was at that time building the Kremlin monument to the Tsar Liberator, in collaboration with P.V. Zhukovsky (the son of the poet). Nikolai Vladimirovich Sultanov was not distinguished by his artistic talent, but he was an educated and extremely intelligent man - Russian to the point of fanaticism, with a bias - alas - towards the Black Hundreds.

My “cultural initiation” began at the Sultanovs. At a dacha near Moscow in the village of Medvedkovo (not far from the famous Ostankino), where I came to them from Nice to enter the Lyceum, spiritual interests dominated: I found myself in an environment saturated with literature, art, and political disputes. In the autumn, in St. Petersburg, this circle expanded significantly: Uncle Kolya had his own regulars: he was friends with Barsukov, gr. S.D. Sheremetev, Sobolevsky, Likhachev, Aunt Katya has her own: Boborykin, Polonsky, Koni, Milyukov, Batyushkov, P. Vinogradov, who sometimes came from London. They didn’t have children at that time; I was accepted as a spoiled nephew. I turned fifteen years old.

It is not surprising that as soon as I gained an independent spirit, communicating with my elders as an almost adult, I myself began to write and immersed myself in a wide variety of reading in all four languages, which I was taught by the governesses: from Sultanov’s rich library I took everything that fell under hand.

So Gurevich’s high school students became my bosom friends. I will name those with whom the “Dobrolyubov” episode I want to talk about is connected. An episode characteristic of the era, and the main character, Alexander Dobrolyubov, a decadent poet, who had just published “Notebook no. I" of aphoristic speculations, under the title "Natura naturaus - Natura naturata", is worth remembering.

During the winter at the boarding school, I became closest to Konstantin Petrovich Fan-der-Fleet, the son of a physics professor, Pyotr Petrovich. He was three years older than me. It's hard to imagine a more charming young man. Handsome, smart, chivalrously kind, a defender of the weak and oppressed (there are always oppressed people in a youth hostel), a merry fellow and a dreamer who inherited a passion for mechanics from his father, and a native esthetician in all manifestations of a courageously truthful and childishly sensitive soul. He had an athletic build, fenced beautifully, danced a jig like a real dancer, and played the flute for hours; was loved by everyone.

I was also friends with several “coming” people - among them were the sons of the famous Nikolai Konstantinovich Mikhailovsky (editor of Russian Wealth) - Nikolai and Mark.

Nikolai Mikhailovsky was a high school student, as they say, intellectual: serious, well-read. But he was drawn not to literature, but to the theater. Tall, respectable: humped nose, thick hair, short-sighted (he always wore pince-nez), slow movements, low, velvety voice. He recited poetry in an exemplary manner and looked like an actor. I remember vaguely about Mark Nikolaevich; next to him he seemed a colorless and undersized addition to his brother.

Passion for the theater brought the Mikhailovskys closer to another “Gurevich”, Pavel Pavlovich Gaideburov (son of the editor of “The Week”). Pasha was a theatergoer to the core, a theater reformer and social activist who dreamed of his own theater, his own repertoire, his own productions in the spirit of “avant-garde”, as they say now, stage ideas, designed, moreover, not for a select minority, but for the general public and in capitals and in the provinces. He subsequently realized his plan, marrying an actress, the sister of the famous Kommisarzhevskaya, and created the Mobile Theater, where he “reincarnated” together with his wife in a variety of roles. He turned out to be a mediocre artist (he could never overcome his lack of pronunciation and had a strong lisp), but he remained to the end, despite many failures, an enthusiast, fanatically devoted to the idea of a new public Russian theater.

Almost every day, a high school student who showed great promise, although not a “Gurevich,” Evgeniy Mikhailovich Kuzmin, came to see me. Possessing exceptional abilities, impressing everyone with his erudition and boldness of generalizations, as well as cheerful enthusiasm, he was known as a phoenix among us. Zhenya Kuzmin was a helpful comrade, a faithful leader in our youthful antics. In the episode with Alexander Dobrolyubov, he had the least rewarding role.

I need to introduce two more participants before moving on to the episode itself, to the evening organized in my apartment (Nadezhdinskaya 11) in honor of Alexander Dobrolyubov. Firstly, Tardov, he often came with Fan der Fleet and expressively read his lyrical stanzas in the style of either Fofanov or Apukhtin:

The old leafy garden sleeps peacefully.

The night is magical and mysterious

And full of languid laziness...

Tardov, also not a “Gurevich,” was small in stature, big-headed, white-haired, and judged poetry with authority; I was afraid of his criticism and did not dare to read to him my youthful poem “Haskem”.

But another Gurevich high school student, my proven friend, Lev Aleksandrovich Velikhov, enthusiastically praised this poem. For many years we were inseparable; in his family I was accepted as one of their own, we traveled around Europe together, toured Italy, went to Spain, and somehow inadvertently even ended up in the United States. Levushka was a young man of remarkable abilities, an admirer of muses and an idealistic social activist, played masterfully chess (we all played voraciously, but poorly), philosophized until he was hoarse, smoked cigarette after cigarette, and sang as a throaty tenor in the gymnasium choir. Osmyu years later, he was elected to the Third Duma from the curia of homeowners in St. Petersburg.

It remains to mention the over-aged realist-mustachioed Sergeev, a very musical young man; we brought him in as an improvising pianist. He didn’t belong to our circle, but the evening’s program required music—can you create the appropriate “mood” without music and melodic recitation?

Our school plot was to “play” the newly minted decadent poet (none of us knew him personally) in a purely mysterious atmosphere. It was planned: first, a reading in my room of poems composed ad hoc, covert parodies, then improvisation, of course, memorized in advance, in the style of Pythian influx to the sounds of a muffled piano, and finally - a cold dinner with speeches and a report on future symbolism.

Symbolism... During these years, his Russian shoots were just making their way and the caricature of some of them was the talk of the town. Burenin was not the only one who made fun of the one-line poem of the young man Bryusov:

Oh, close your pale legs...

Vladimir Solovyov (wasn’t he, however, the founder of Russian symbolism?) was fond of his parodies of decadents:

Chandeliers are burning in the heavens, and darkness is below.

Did you or didn’t you go to him? Tell me yourself.

We, the “Gurevichs,” were especially amused and even outraged by Dobrolyubov’s little book with a pretentious Spinoza-like title. Before that, Valery Bryusov published Dobrolyubov’s poems in a thin collection - “Russian Symbolists”... With boyish enthusiasm, we decided to teach the brilliant author of “Natura naturaus” a lesson. What disrespect for the Amsterdam genius! The whole summer before, in Medvedkovo, I puffed over Spinoza’s “Ethics” in the Russian translation and was imbued with reverence for the great Jew, and here - some kind of philosophizing and frills of an undergrowth who decided that he had “comprehended everything”! In addition, there were rumors in the city about the “Wildism” of the author, about his dandyism (gardenia in his buttonhole, bright ties, black kid gloves) and about the moral laxity of the decadent clique to which he belonged...

It was decided to lure the self-proclaimed “Spinoza” into a trap - if he gets caught, literary St. Petersburg will laugh at him... Well, what if the joke fails? What to do, that’s what youth is for, so as not to be afraid of risk. And the idea itself was tempting: a whole theatrical performance with a distribution of roles, careful direction, and rehearsals.

The main director turned out to be, of course, Pasha Gaideburov. He approached the matter with his usual precision. My study (which also served as my bedroom) turned into a kind of camera obscura: the walls, cabinets, shelves with books were covered with black wrapping paper; hiding in the corner, invisible behind the screens, was a piano. The most intricate poems were composed for the occasion, but without unnecessary exaggeration. They decided to read in front of a specially constructed lectern with a thick wax candle attached to it - the lamps, then still kerosene, had to be extinguished. They decided to put a skull on top of the necklace “for the mood,” and to make the poetic improvisation that ended the program more convincing, they took out something like a tripod—for the inspiring smoke, a pack of “nuns” was reserved.

We entrusted Kuzmin with a diplomatic mission: to invite the hero of the occasion to his “honoring” and to invite him in such a way as to set him in an elevated mood in advance. In the end, during the rehearsals of our “act”, we ourselves became carried away by this “theater”, sometimes forgetting that the entire staging was nothing more than a hoax: a black room, a flickering candle on a lectern, a skull, the soulful bass of Nikolai Mikhailovsky and Sergeev’s minor chords behind the screens - all this somehow affected the imagination. Theater is always theater. And I must admit: the performers turned out to be at their best.

Dobrolyubov immediately responded with a kind letter, but in an extraordinary style, with very peculiar turns of phrase: for some reason, almost every noun was preceded by the adjective “human.” I was also struck by the handwriting - somehow bold and graphic. But the meaning was clear: thanks, he will come. The same Kuzmin undertook to pick him up at his house, just to be sure.

So the curtain is up. Characters assembled. I met Dobrolyubov as the host of the evening, but did not immediately introduce him to anyone. Kuzmin sat him down next to him on the ottoman.

The performance has begun. We all dressed in a kind of mantle made from sheets. The high priest of the pyitic ritual, Mikhailovsky, and his assistant Gaideburov, for greater effect, took off their school jackets and rolled up the sleeves of their shirts: from under their mantles their bare hands were released, for which gilded wrists were found. The nuns started smoking, Sergeev launched into his heart-tugging “moonlight sonata”, we sat down on the floor (you can’t allow such vulgarity as “human” chairs!). The reader of the poems approached the lectern and, looking at the skull, chanted his stanzas. Dobrolyubov listened, maybe not completely listened, but he seemed concentrated, moved and grateful.

It's my turn. I wrote a whole poem for the occasion, providing it with illustrations - I made them together with my sister Elena. The poems were on the theme - the origin of man: the anthropoid ancestor wandered through tropical forests and swamps “alone with a club in his hands” (a reminiscence of Darwin, whom I swallowed shortly before, along with Haeckel and Vogt, - it was not for nothing that I outlined the science department). The image seemed convincing: to be honest, I even became a little carried away by my Neanderthal ghost; Instead of a parody, it turned out to be simply inflated doggerel.

The permissive chord was my own improvisation (of course, memorized by heart) under the influence of the mesmeric passes of Mikhailovsky and Gaideburov. They, the future actors, turned out to be fully armed and with the most serious look they plunged me into a trance, raising their bare hands high at the wrists and pronouncing magic spells. Inspiration gradually rolled over me, and so, staggering, choking, I began to mutter rhymed stanzas in a sepulchral voice, breathing heavily at calculated pauses. Sergeev skillfully echoed me from his corner; the chorus of listeners listened intently; the candle on the mantle was burning dimly, illuminating the faces of the hierophants sitting in a circle on the floor... I see the whole scene, as if everything happened yesterday. Particularly touching was the athletic, mustachioed Fan der Fleet in the open sheet, from under which the silver embroidery of his gymnasium uniform gleamed - his eyes were bulging, his beautiful swollen lips were half-open, there was complete bewilderment throughout his whole figure...

In the “improvised” poem, it was about people who were convicts of fate, digging the earth in some unknown country at the behest of unknown spirits. The comedy lasted about five minutes, with impressive pauses that the Moscow Art Theater could envy.

At the end of the improvisation, I fell unconscious on the floor, in front of the tripod... However, I was soon brought to my senses, and all the actors, having taken off their mantles, headed to the dining room.

At dinner I introduced our guest to those present and took a first look at him. He was handsome: short, pale, slightly puffy face, hooked nose; very black eyes with long eyelashes struck with a hot shine; His thick chin betrayed his stubborn will. But the voice was weak, shy.

A friendly conversation began, speeches were brought in, and I spoke again - I made a speech... about symbolism.

Dobrolyubov, apparently, was pleased with the speech. He said that he was inspired by my words (I remember exactly), and supplemented them with his comments, even graphically depicted on paper his understanding of various artistic styles: classical, romantic and symbolic. The drawing was kept in my papers for a long time.

Thanking him for the welcome, he left around midnight, and as soon as the door slammed behind him, we were almost rolling on the floor with laughter. Everything was a great success! Our nonsense was taken at face value... But at the same time, although we did not admit it to each other, each of us felt a little ashamed that we were so lucky to deceive this gullible person, imbued with some kind of self-confidence, very sincere, with a heart devoted to literature and probably not a completely normal young man. We decided not to talk left and right about the hoax that had taken place... God be with him! Some kind of obsessed, helpless dreamer...

But you can’t hide an sew in a bag. The prank was discovered, and it was “explained” to Dobrolyubov. He was beside himself with resentment.

Several days passed. One evening a naval cadet came to see me. The brother of Alexander Dobrolyubov (Georgiy) introduced himself and asked on behalf of his brother to welcome him to the “return evening”. I wisely declined the invitation...

And a few days later I receive, from the victim himself, a long letter, this time far from symbolic in content, although the adjective “human” was again attached to many nouns. The letter venomously told about how he, Dobrolyubov, having met a certain Kuzmin on the “human” streets near the academic square on Vasilievsky Island, approached him and, with a “human” umbrella, caressed him, Kuzmin, on his “human” face.

That same day I asked Kuzmin: “Did Dobrolyubov beat you with an umbrella?”

Kuzmin did not argue; he had come to terms with the fate of the scapegoat in advance.

That was the end of the matter, but not quite. For Dobrolyubov, many of us in literary circles were indignant at all of us, and at me in particular. The episode was discussed in the editorial office of Severny Vestnik, but they didn’t pat me on the head. In “advanced” St. Petersburg, any innovation of the piititic youth was accepted as some kind of future truth, mocking the “decadents” was left to the routinists and vulgarities, to Burenin and his modern-day readers. It is not for nothing that Merezhkovsky never forgave Vladimir Solovyov for his parodies of decadents. In addition, Dobrolyubov already had a circle of admirers. He wrote poorly then, but had the gift of captivating, bewitching...

So, our gymnasium prank seemed to St. Petersburg an unacceptable encroachment on the holy of holies of poetry. This sentence against the youngsters who had not yet hatched from school jackets was too strict, perhaps - in essence, we were carried away, luring Dobrolyubov to ridicule, by the theatricality of the idea, and not at all by the desire to cruelly infringe on him... And yet this prank was, of course, an evil prank, and we needlessly offended the young man who least deserved the offense. He proved this throughout his subsequent life.

The poet Tardov, whose lines about the moon over the “densely leafed garden” I remembered, was the only one, it seems, of the participants in the “Dobrolyubov” evening who continued literary activity and under the Bolsheviks. He signed articles by T. Ardov. About thirty years ago, I came across an article by him in one of the Soviet periodicals. He talks condescendingly and cheerfully about the episode of 1995, but unfortunately - inaccurately and with unnecessary embellishments... And not a word about the most important thing: about future fate About his passion for Tolstoyism, about his transition to the position of a wandering poet, about the days of novitiate in the Solovetsky Monastery and about the days in a psychiatric hospital (where his parents placed him to protect him from hard labor for “insulting sanctity and majesty”), about a complete break with literature and about activities as a planter of fraternal “villages” in the Volga provinces and in Siberia.

It is worth dwelling on Dobrolyubov, the “man of God,” a traveling preacher, information about whom ceased after the revolution: how indicative for Russian self-knowledge is this transformation of a decadent esthete into a Christian populist! Then, back in 1995, and especially after his “Collected Poems” five years later, I sensed some other Dobrolyubov behind his decadent eccentricities and regretted that the “history” that happened to him prevented our rapprochement. I made inquiries about him.

Alexander Mikhailovich Dobrolyubov belonged to a wealthy family (his father was a prominent St. Petersburg official). He had three brothers and four sisters. He himself is the eldest, born in 1876. Sister Masha, a year younger than him, was famous for her beauty - no, more than beauty: a spiritual charm that both drove you crazy and evoked involuntary awe... On this occasion, I heard from one Petersburger, who knew the whole Dobrolyubov family closely, a story about how like D. S. Merezhkovsky, - he was friends with Alexander Mikhailovich and valued him very highly (in the book “Not Peace, but a Sword” he compares him with Francis of Assisi), - at one of the “Religious and Philosophical Meetings”, speaking about Renaissance painting, he admired the amazing harmony of the earthly and heavenly, found by the Quattrocento artists in the image of the Mother of God... And suddenly, turning by chance to Masha Dobrolyubova standing next to him, he involuntarily fell silent and exclaimed:

Madonna!

I saw a photograph of Masha from her younger brother, Georgy Mikhailovich. She is 28 years old in this photo (in a nurse costume). Indeed, she is a beauty and a Madonna, but not so much of the Italian Renaissance type, but rather a Madonna from a painting by Murillo...

Maria Mikhailovna Dobrolyubova was a creature of extraordinary spiritual selectivity. “Doing good” was her calling. Having graduated from the Smolny Institute (with a code), she immediately rushed “to starvation” to the Volga provinces; when it broke out Japanese war- went to Siberia, where she worked selflessly as a sister of the St. George’s community... And she died tragically, as chosen ones die. During the years of our first revolution (1905-06), Masha Dobrolyubova devoted herself selflessly to the political struggle, entered a military organization and had (the lot fell) to participate in some kind of murder. But she couldn't. Not out of cowardice - my conscience did not allow me: to kill. And Masha took poison... She was only twenty-nine years old. So, at least, the rumor decided - the sudden death of a girl in bloom with health could not be explained otherwise.

Masha was closely connected with her older brother by a common spiritual disposition. She also belonged to the breed of “pure in heart”...

In 1897, Alexander Dobrolyubov renounced his decadent ventriloquism and became a religious thinker. He “said goodbye” according to Tolstoy, “went to the people,” - seeking the New City, he began to wander. From that time on, he walked the length and breadth of Russia with a knapsack over his shoulders, deepening love for his neighbor in his heart, blessing the earthly creature and all of God’s creation. At first, he expressed this wandering delight (what Florensky called “loving pity for all that exists”) in poetry, and his poems almost always sound very authentically folk - from the heart and from the completeness of merging with the people, without sentimental panache and literary pretentiousness... Here, for example, are the lines he composed “on the way from Nizhny to Balakhna”:

Mountains, hills, lands - my brothers, sisters,

Even the stones are dear - my friends are faithful,

The vaults of the sky, the rays - like my fathers,

Wild animals are dear brothers,

Quiet rivers - betrothed to me, forever mine.

And peace to you, star sisters,

The stars are clear - you are the flowers of heaven,

I'm illuminated by all of you,

And the orphan little epic, you, my dear.

Dobrolyubov recalls his wanderings throughout Great Rus' even more artlessly in prosaic passages. Here is one of them - “On the Roads”:

“A wanderer in a yellow sheepskin coat walks along the road. Wide highway lay down like an arrow, feathered by two groves. It’s still completely dark, but my usual feet are hitting the frozen ground. No one at this hour, not even a travel companion, would notice or recognize what was going on in the soul of the wanderer. But in his eyes there are quiet tears of prayer for everyone and for everything, for those who are perishing in the stormy steppe, for those floating, for all workers, for babies and for robbers, for all kinds of grass, for cattle - the sweet peasant belly, for fields and for fierce animals, for the free bird, for every grain of sand on earth, for heaven and earth, for valleys and mountains, for all the rich and poor of the earth. He brings peace and blessing to the birch sisters and the bridge, closed by a snowdrift. He brings peace to the river and tries to find out its heart, how to lie there until spring.”

And the passage ends like this:

“In simple-minded villages, the stranger is greeted from the window. Even the distrustful factory workers smile at him. And in all corners - on the plains, in the forests and in the mountains - pious, wise, meek people are gradually scattered everywhere: thoughtful women, guys with a gentle soul, sedate peaceful householders who look like their own fathers, strict old men who are ready to forgive everything. Even shy children invite a wanderer in other places. He walks like this all his life and on the road he gets sick and dies.” (“From the Invisible Book”).

There were rumors about Dobrolyubov’s wanderings in St. Petersburg. Some of my friends met him, listened to his instructions...

It was interesting to talk with him about literary topics. He was very well read, knew several languages - his books are replete with epigraphs from Ruskin, Vl. Solovyov, Plotinus, Pascal, Schelling, Epicurus, Heraclitus, with references to the prophets, to the Revelation of John, to the Zend Avesta, Kaballa, to Bunyan, Clement, the Apostolic, Francis of Assisi, Paul of Tarsus and Buddha. But at that time, what was most interesting in his writings, in his entire spiritual appearance, was Tolstoyism, “simplification,” mystical populism, which turned into a tender, tenderly benevolent pantheism:

All the flowers of the fields are wearing royal crowns,

The sun's rays are joyful messengers,

The stones are peaceful, roadside, silent,

I prostrate myself to the ground before you, before everyone,

I am enlightened by all of you...

This folk style - from an akathist, from a psalm, from a folk song - marks a deep turning point in the soul of the Wildean poet, which occurred under the pressure of an irresistible religious anxiety...

How characteristic is the poet’s desire for wandering! Having shaken off the ashes of “literature” and all sorts of cultural sophistications, he intoxicated himself with his new mission as a wanderer through the peasant expanses and began to glorify his wandering feat with songs reminiscent of either our “spiritual poems” or the hymns of Simeon the New Theologian. Here are more lines from one of these poems by Dobrolyubov. They struck me even then, half a century ago, with the spontaneity of feeling against the background of the then St. Petersburg and Moscow symbolic romance, so borrowed from Western writers, so far-fetched at times:

What's beyond the distant mountains

After those deep northern deserts,

Without reaching the forested mountains,

I saw an ancient and glorious river there.

Overgrown with tallows, meadows,

Everything is decorated with flood plains.

Only free wanderers pass there,

Restless eaglets are unstoppable,

Not subject to the old law,

Unconstrained by anyone or anything...

Returning from his wanderings to his family in St. Petersburg, Dobrolyubov visited both his former worldly friends and his former enemies. He himself said: “I go to those whom I may have offended, and to those who offended me”... Obviously, I belonged to the second category.

"Wanderer", in one winter morning he came to me too. He showed up unannounced, from the back door; He said to the maid who opened the door: “Tell the master that a stranger has come to him.”

“Master, a stranger has come to see you,” the maid repeated in bewilderment.

What wanderer? - It never occurred to me that this was the same Alexander Dobrolyubov.

And this one... Not old, with a knapsack, strange.

Well, ask...

Never before have “strangers” wandered into my place. I knew that there were such people in Rus', but there seemed to be no place for them in St. Petersburg, and the police did not like them. But it’s interesting... a wanderer!

“Ask to the dining room,” I repeated, “and serve some tea.”

The maid returned a minute later.

Doesn't work. “No need,” he says, “just warm up.”

I went into the kitchen and at first did not recognize the guest. Standing in front of me was a stout, intelligent-looking young man in a peasant's sheepskin coat and felt boots. A dark beard protruded from under a scarf tied around his neck; in his hands he held a three-piece. The face was ruddy, puffy, black hot eyes stared at me piercingly. I recognized him from those eyes.

To break the ice, I started with repentance:

A lot of water has passed under the bridge, Alexander Mikhailovich. I hope you have forgiven us for our boyish prank?

In response, he only smiled and waved his hand, but never entered the room. I sat him down at the kitchen table and made him drink a glass of tea.

What we were talking about? I'm afraid to mix it up. The conversation lasted about half an hour. He spoke about the most important things for himself, what he was already used to talking about: about the people, about God, about the soul. He spoke, pronouncing the words in a folk style, a little into a sing-song voice, but without any showmanship... Yes, Tolstoy set him up for heroic deeds... Mentioning his wanderings through Russian villages with a word of consolation, he modestly corrected himself:

No, I didn’t go to teach the people, but to understand the people, to hear the message hidden among the people... I myself still...

He didn't finish. I realized that he had not yet found himself completely and was waiting for the unwritten, ineffable truth of life to shine in him, from him... More than once after this, apparently, Dobrolyubov changed his point of view on this truth, sided with one thing or another to another sectarian sense, he even experienced bouts of complete disbelief in Christ, but in the end he created an entire movement among the Volga peasantry (around 1903), which was closest to the Molokans.

I often thought about this brief conversation of mine with the former decadent Dobrolyubov and understood more and more that his words were about “truth,” about the people’s, Russian truth of mind and heart, which did not coincide with church dogma, which did not fit into the framework of any time-honored creed, that this painful need to hear God in the last depths of conscience is what we have the right to recognize as a very Russian phenomenon, if you like - national. Russian people, even if they are non-believers, “are tormented by spiritual thirst”...

The Russian God-seeker is not looking for traditional faith, but for his own religious truth, breaking from the shackles of the prescribed. Hence the love of the common people for religious wisdom... And how close this love is to our cultural search for God! The faith of the most prominent exponents of Russian religiosity is for the most part something very personal and unclear, and turns inward, to the irrationality of the spirit...

It is clear why our metaphysics is so poor - it is always at the mercy of some German. Russian people, thinking about the mystery of the universe, look for God - God in themselves, in the only directly felt depth of consciousness. At this depth, thinking comes into contact with moral will: the wisdom of the heart, the light of goodness, love, as it were, are identified with the divine principle, with the spirit of the spirit. In this sense, it seems to me, one must understand Dostoevsky’s words about the “God-bearing people.”

Dostoevsky himself spent his whole life tormented on the brink of holiness and devilry. Perhaps this is what attracts him most of all. No one has penetrated more deeply in the search for God into the nature of good and evil and has not wavered more painfully between the promised paradise and the devilish underworld. Tolstoy's God-seeking is just as Russian as Dostoevsky's God-seeking. But Tolstoy’s soul is much closer to the earth and much rougher mentally. And yet Tolstoy’s faith is no less genuine for this, and the right to refer to Christ is no less hard-won for him. Of course, the exalted pride of a brilliant writer who decided to start the history of Christianity all over again - amateurish interpretations of the Gospels - is akin to the positive criticism of the 19th century: Renan, Feuerbach. But Tolstoy’s “unbelief” is religious in essence, and how indicative of Russian God-seeking is precisely this religiosity, irreconcilable with the teachings of the church! Tolstoy, having lost his “childish faith,” was saved from death when suddenly the gospel truth about the salvation of man by love, which imparts the immortality of all humanity to a mortal person, suddenly appeared before him as a revelation. This is the essence of Tolstoy’s faith: Christ did not think otherwise according to Tolstoy, and therefore Tolstoy, who always brought his thoughts to the end, saw in the church an obstacle to the truth and became a fighter against the church.

Alexander Dobrolyubov did not become such a fighter. Convincing evidence of this is the aforementioned collection published in 1905 by Scorpio - “From the Book of Unseen And mine” (with emphasis on the last and). Let's dwell on this wonderful book.

It begins with this “Warning to educated people.” “I am a person brought up in a so-called educated society, but God put me on a different path. I spent several years in solitude and in the spiritual desert, in search and labor and silence among the silent working people. With childish, perhaps for many, funny steps, I entered the path of faith and deeds, my sincere path. Living among people despised by everyone, I heard their simple, deep language and saw that it could express everything just as well and better than the dry words of the educated... Before I knew many languages, but I did not know one - the truly heartfelt... Connection, connection - here a word that I found among the people. Instead of division, the union of everything, instead of dry reason, a comprehensive spiritual aspiration, instead of the study of parts, instead of the slavery of individual private sciences - faith, which creates everything, giving its place to the study of the visible world and work and bodily labor, but the main thing is connection and faith.

On the path of this faith, Alexander Dobrolyubov, I repeat, moved away from Tolstoy, overcoming the rational criticism of the teacher with heartfelt inspiration, the delight of love for the Living God and for all that exists. Tolstoy, in search of the meaning of life, having loved Christ, rejected the church, the sacred hierarchy, sacraments, and religious symbols. Dobrolyubov also retreated from the church cult, but became a mystic who affirmed the miracle of universal transformation. He says: “This is the prophetic part - the prophecy of the new testament, the prophecy of the final transformation of the universe”... “Isn’t the invisible fire stronger than the visible? Was it not our spirit that, in the Fall, arranged the entire erroneous path of the world? Will not this world of death burn from the fire of love? and there will be no more death.”

Alexander Dobrolyubov found transforming, fiery faith. Here he argues heatedly with Tolstoy and his followers. “You and Tolstoy,” he says, “prohibit much research about the invisible world, about the end of the world, about all the secrets. You wanted to be freed from the modern unbelieving society, from the poison of unbelieving education, but you were not freed. This is the leaven of materialists returning to you, the leaven of crudely positive science. I heard from you, brother Leo, the ancient rule of dead schools: you need to think with the least expenditure of effort, it is enough to know that there is a God. But then shouldn’t we throw away all faith? Isn’t it enough to just love people without God? No, brothers! spare no effort on the eternal road.”

L. Tolstoy’s attitude towards Dobrolyubov is eloquently indicated by the mention of the great writer about him in a letter to his daughter Tatyana Sukhotina by her husband. When Tolstoy decided to “leave” from Yasnaya Polyana, finally breaking with his family, he was drawn to the Volga, to one of Dobrolyubov’s fraternal “colonies”; on the way, he intended to visit his sister, a nun, in Optina Pustina. L. Tolstoy communicates this intention to his beloved daughter in his suicide letter. The fact is undoubtedly extremely significant for Tolstoy’s biography; one can only be surprised that criticism did not pay due attention to it. Tolstoy, leaving before his death for the Dobrolyubovsky village on the Volga, is no longer the same Tolstoy who submitted to Chertkov! Dobrolyubov's mystical sectarianism is of a different order.

“From the Invisible Book” is a confession of mystical knowledge of God. Over the course of two hundred pages, the author finds truly illuminating words when turning to God. These words never seem made up. Dobrolyubov obsessed feeling of God, choking on His omnipresent nearness: “And I exclaimed: “To the Living, the Living, Living in the ages of ages, the Beginningless, the Infinite, the Most Invisible, the One I give, I give my life. I am not You, my spirit is not Your spirit, Your spirit is not mine, but I am like You, Father.”

The same obsession in verses similar to psalms (from the section “You have overcome, O Galilean!”):

Lord, where is Your strength and Your spring?

Where on earth does Thy triumph dwell?

Return me, my life, to Your heart,

Give me back the heart of ancient days,

Give me back my faith and my soul,

Write me on Your hand,

Write my walls on Your hand,

My walls are always before Your eyes!

Remember Your solemn, invincible days,

When Your hand led me even in the darkness!

I met Him on my way.

He approached me from behind,

He touched me invisibly

He struck me down on His land,

Stepped on me, defeated me,

Fought me with great strength,

Called me “my God-fighter”

And in the twilight of the morning he blessed me...

...He joined me in a mysterious marriage.

My rivers flow into the sea of seas

And I saw his names in the streams,

There is no end to His names.

My Father and my Son, my beloved,

My elder brother, my bride and my sister,

My right hand

He is my whole life and my soul!

"In great humiliation, in great secret, in purity, chastity, in great humility, in great simplicity He hides. He is the hidden God."

Addressing a memo-letter to his brother George before he left for war, Alexander Dobrolyubov exclaims: “Even though I perish, I will seek Him even to death, among the abyss and abysses.” “He is the Most True, the Most Perfect, and therefore the Most Alive. Only with Him full life, because His name is Infinite Life. One can sooner doubt the life of everything than the life of God... He is the Living Truth, not the dead glories, the Blessed God of truth.”

And yet, Alexander Dobrolyubov, a mystic of higher reason and transformative will, is at the same time a “simplified” Tolstoyan, sadly rejecting the entire false culture of the non-peasant world, feeling himself a defender of slaves among slave owners, “in that great modern Babylon of knowledge and luxury, in the midst of this universal desert”... With the same Tolstoyan absolutism, he denies art and science and dreams of the return of humanity to the holiness of primitive ignorance.

“Like death, your life is so hard for me,” he writes with a letter to the editors of “Libra.” “All of you are occupied only with the body and mind, but you don’t know the spirit... All your books, all your arts, all your science, all your education, all your cities and customs are one great desert.” In particular, he rebels against poetry as poetry: “The more you forget about the clothing of the poems, about the external size, about the indispensable consonance of the letters at the end of each line, only then will the song be free, uncontrollable, and its place will be the Church and Life. And then God will give her immortal and truly beautiful clothes.”

In one of the villages of Dobrolyubov, another retired poet, Leonid Semenov Tian-Shansky (often came to me in 1904; the Sodruzhestvo publishing house, which I was in charge of, published his book of poems), spent about a year, shot by peasants in 1917. A. P. Semenov Tien-Shansky, brother untimely dead poet, writes in the brochure he published (on the rotator). “My brother never spoke about A. Dobrolyubov, in whose colony he lived as if in special spiritual obedience, with any of his relatives except his younger sister, because he considered him so spiritually high that talking about him with the uninitiated probably recognized it as something like blasphemy”...

Not all Russian poets were born Dobrolyubovs and not all, having heeded Tolstoy, rejected aesthetics, but extremely characteristic of Russian poetry, especially of the “advanced” at the beginning of the century, is its connection with the search for God: with the spirit seer Vladimir Solovyov, with the God-fighter Dostoevsky and his antipode, lover of Christ at Yasnaya Polyana. The religiosity of symbolism, which flared up on the eve of the revolution with the glow of romantic mysticism in the poems of Ivan Konevsky, Andrei Bely, and Alexander Blok, is also characteristic of Russian poets. It was not the love of civil freedom that fired it up, Russian poetry, although its representatives in the “terrible years of Russia”, of course, called for political changes on which the entire historical future depended - it fired up (often in connection with revolutionary sentiments) with the anxiety of other, spiritual quests: “decadents”, nourished by the West, the Parnassian aesthetics of the West and its “Cursed Poets”, easily left the idol of beauty to pray according to the “Invisible Book”.

It seems to me that a lot of underground work is being carried out even now in Russia: the rougher and more murderous its reality, the more spiritual it is in its anguish for the light of love. Against the background of this reality, don’t the “good lovers” seem to be the forerunners of some kind of future mysticism? And the figure of Alexander Dobrolyubov himself, with whom I am connected through high school memories, is not growing into a significant, thought-provoking, very Russian and very significant phenomenon?

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