Provincial essays" by Saltykov-Shchedrin as a cycle. "Provincial essays" M

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The writing

Saltykov-Shchedrin is an original writer who occupies a special place in Russian literature. In his work, he showed social disadvantages social order Russia, painted life without embellishment, but not only gave a set of vices and abuses, but also caustically ridiculed them. Saltykov-Shchedrin worked in the genre of social satire. At a time when censorship ruled in Russia, it was very dangerous to ridicule the shortcomings of rulers and officials. Satire often caused discontent among readers who did not want to pay attention to the shortcomings of life, to how they themselves live. Since the authors of satirical works at all times had a hard time, the writers used a special Aesopian language. This method of allegory was named after the ancient Greek author Aesop, who hid satire behind outwardly neutral or frivolous things. It takes great courage to ridicule the order and structure of the country in which you live. But the ability to laugh at yourself, at your own shortcomings, is already the way to correct them. The work of Saltykov-Shchedrin, which revealed to the whole world the troubles of Russia, was at the same time an indicator of national health, an inexhaustible supply of forces that would eventually be used for the good of the country.

The writer had the gift of sensitively capturing the most acute conflicts brewing in Russia and parading them in front of the entire Russian society in his works. Most closely Shchedrin studied the political life of Russia: the relationship between different classes, the oppression of the peasantry by the upper strata of society. A close study of the life of Russia, the life of its lower classes, counties, was also facilitated by the seven-year service of Saltykov-Shchedrin as a provincial official of the provincial government in Vyatka. There, the future satirist, through his own experience, got acquainted with the life of petty officials, the peasantry, and the merchants. Saltykov looked at the state system of Russia from the inside. The main inconvenience for Russia was, in his opinion, the excessive centralization of power. It leads to the emergence of a mass of officials who cannot understand the needs common people. Centralized power kills the people's initiative, does not allow the people to develop, and in this backwardness the people support centralization and bureaucracy. The result of seven years of service as an official was a collection of short stories "Provincial Essays", in which Saltykov-Shchedrin draws pictures of Russian life in a satirical manner, and also jokingly sets out the theory of state reorganization, which he calls "the theory of driving an influential person by the nose." Soon after the “Provincial Essays”, the writer creates “The History of a City”, in which he rises to a satirical image of not provincial, but statesmen. Brief characteristics mayors - the "fathers" of the city - are replete with fantastic features and sarcasm. The characteristics of the inhabitants of the city of Glupov, who are similar to the capital and provincial townspeople, are also fantastic. The mayors combine the features typical of Russian tsars and nobles. Working on the "History of a City", Saltykov-Shchedrin uses his experience in public service, and also relies on the works of prominent Russian historians.

Very clearly, the satirical talent of Saltykov-Shchedrin manifested itself in the cycle "Fairy Tales for Children of a Fair Age". This book is considered the final work of the writer. It includes all the main satirical themes of his work. Fairy tales are written in Russian traditions folk tales: the characters are animals, their problems are unprecedented, and, finally, each work contains a lesson for the reader. But animals, fish and birds behave just like people. These inconsistencies with traditions are a confirmation of the originality of the cycle of "Tales" by Saltykov-Shchedrin.

The smallest details in describing the behavior of animals, their way of life, they make us understand that these “Tales” tell about the pressing problems of Russia. The form of the fairy tale helped the author to enlarge the scale of the artistic image, to give the satire a greater scope. Behind the fabulous story, the reader should see not only the life of Russia, but of all mankind.

A fairy tale is the most successful form for conveying satirical content. Borrowing from the people ready fairy tales, Shchedrin develops the satirical content inherent in them and supplements them with details and recognizable signs of the era. In all the abundance of fairy tales by Saltykov-Shchedrin, four main themes can be distinguished: satire on the government, denunciation of the philistine-minded intelligentsia, depiction of the masses, exposure of the morality of predatory owners, and propaganda of a new morality.

The “selfless hare” reminds us of a law-abiding citizen who does not resist the treachery of the supreme power. In the fairy tale "The Wise Scribbler" in an allegorical form, a timid intellectual is ridiculed, who is afraid of the changes taking place in society, and therefore strives to live in such a way, "... that no one notices."

But not in all "Tales" Saltykov-Shchedrin only denounces. Thus, in "Konyaga" the author discusses the state of affairs of the peasantry and asks about its future. The same problem is also considered by the writer in "The Tale of How One Man Feeded Two Generals." In this tale, Shchedrin satirically shows the complete helplessness of the rulers, and their dependence on the peasantry. However, no one in power appreciates the work of a peasant. Saltykov-Shchedrin sees in the peasant the only force capable of acting, of creating. But the hero, who had every opportunity to hide, surprisingly, does not take any action to save himself. This wordless slavish obedience angers the writer. I. S. Turgenev wrote: “I saw how the audience writhed with laughter while reading some of Saltykov's essays. There was something terrible about that laugh. The audience, laughing, at the same time felt how the scourge whipped itself.

Other writings on this work

"The History of a City" by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin as a satire on the autocracy “Saltykov has ... this serious and vicious humor, this realism, sober and clear among the most unbridled imagination ...” (I.S. Turgenev). "History of one city" as a socio-political satire Analysis of 5 chapters (optional) in the work of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "The History of a City" Analysis of the chapter "Fantastic Traveler" (based on the novel by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "The History of a City") Analysis of the chapter "On the Root of the Origin of the Foolovites" (based on the novel by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "The History of a City") Foolov and the Foolovites (based on the novel by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "The History of a City") Grotesque as a leading artistic technique in the "History of a City" by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin Grotesque, its functions and meaning in the image of the city of Glupov and its mayors The twenty-third mayor of the city of Glupov (based on the novel by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "The History of a City") The yoke of madness in the "History of a City" by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin The use of the grotesque technique in depicting the life of the Foolovites (based on the novel by Saltykov-Shchedrin "The History of a City") The image of the Foolovites in the "History of a City" Images of mayors in the "History of one city" M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. The main problems of the novel by Saltykov-Shchedrin "The History of a City" Parody as an artistic technique in the "History of a City" by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin Parody as an artistic technique in the "History of a City" by M. Saltykov-Shchedrin Techniques of a satirical image in the novel by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "The History of a City" Methods of satirical depiction of mayors in the "History of one city" by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin Review of the "History of a City" by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin The novel "The History of a City" by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin - the history of Russia in the mirror of satire Satire on the Russian autocracy in the "History of one city" M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin Satirical chronicle of Russian life Satirical chronicle of Russian life (“History of one city” by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin) The originality of satire by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin Functions and meaning of the grotesque in the image of the city of Glupov and its mayors in the novel by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "History of one city" Characteristics of Vasilisk Semenovich Wartkin Characteristics of the mayor Brodasty (based on the novel by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "The History of a City") A series of mayors in the "History of one city" M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin What brings together Zamyatin's novel "We" and Saltykov-Shchedrin's novel "The History of a City"? The history of the creation of the novel "The History of a City" Heroes and problems of satire M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin Laughter through tears in the "History of a City" People and power as the central theme of the novel The activities of the mayors of the city of Glupov Elements of the grotesque in the early works of M. E. Saltykov The theme of the people in the "History of one city" Description of the city of Glupov and its mayors Fantastic motivation in the "History of a City" Characteristics of the image of Benevolensky Feofilakt Irinarkhovich The meaning of the finale of the novel "The History of a City" The plot and composition of the novel "The History of a City" Satirical depiction of mayors in the "History of one city" by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin The story of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "The History of a City" as a socio-political satire The content of the history of the city of Glupov in the "History of one city" Characteristics of the image of Brodystoy Dementy Varlamovich Characteristics of the image of Dvoekurov Semyon Konstantinych Composition based on the story "The History of a City" Grotesque of Foolov's "history" Grotesque in the image of the city of Glupov Ways of expressing the author's position in the "History of one city" M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin What causes the author's irony in the novel by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin Characteristics of the image of Wartkin Vasilisk Semenovich Characteristics of the image of Lyadokhovskaya Aneli Aloizievna Genre features of the novel "The History of a City" The role of the Grotesque in the "History of a City" by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin The originality of the satire of Saltykov-Shchedrin on the example of "The History of a City" The denunciation of a stupid and self-satisfied administration in the "History of a City" by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin Grotesque figures of mayors in the "History of a City"

Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin

Provincial essays

INTRODUCTION

And in fact, there is not even a road further from this city, as if the end of the world is here. Wherever you look around - forest, meadows and steppe; steppe, forest and meadows; somewhere a country road winds in a whimsical twist, and a cart, drawn by a small frisky horse, will gallop along it briskly, and again everything will calm down, everything will drown in the general monotony ...

Krutogorsk is located very picturesquely; when you drive up to it on a summer evening, from the side of the river, and your eyes from afar will open a city garden abandoned on a steep bank, government offices and this beautiful group of churches that dominates the entire neighborhood, you will not take your eyes off this picture. It's getting dark. Fires are lit in public places and in the prison, standing on a cliff, and in those shacks that are crowded, below, near the water itself; the whole coast seems to be dotted with lights. And God knows why, whether as a result of mental fatigue or simply from road fatigue, the prison and public places seem to you shelters of peace and love, shacks are inhabited by Philemons and Baucids, and you feel such clarity in your soul, such meekness and gentleness ... But then they fly before you the sounds of bells calling for the vigil; you are still far from the city, and the sounds touch your hearing indifferently, in the form of a general rumble, as if the whole air is full of wonderful music, as if everything around you lives and breathes; and if you have ever been a child, if you have had a childhood, it will stand before you in marvelous detail; and suddenly all its freshness, all its impressionability, all its beliefs, all that sweet blindness, which later experience dispelled and which so long and so completely consoled your existence, will rise in your heart.

But darkness more and more takes possession of the horizon; the high spiers of churches sink into the air and seem to be some kind of fantastic shadows; the lights along the shore are getting brighter and brighter; your voice is louder and clearer in the air. Before you is a river ... But its surface is clear and calm, even its pure mirror, reflecting the pale blue sky with its millions of stars; the damp air of the night caresses you softly and softly, and nothing, no sound disturbs the seemingly numb surroundings. The ferry seems to be not moving, and only the impatient thud of a horse's hoof on the platform and the splash of a pole taken out of the water bring you back to the consciousness of something real, not fantastic.

But here is the coast. A commotion begins; moorings are taken out; your carriage moves a little; you hear the dull tinkling of a tied bell; fasten harness; at last everything is ready; a hat appears in your tarantass and you hear: “Wouldn’t your grace come, father?” - "Touch!" - is heard from behind, and here you are briskly climbing a steep mountain, along a postal road leading past a public garden. And in the city, meanwhile, fires are already burning in all the windows; scattered groups of walkers still roam the streets; you feel at home and, stopping the driver, get out of the carriage and go wandering yourself.

God! how fun you are, how good and gratifying on these wooden sidewalks! Everyone knows you, they love you, they smile at you! There flashed through the windows four figures at a quadrangular table, indulging in business leisure at the card table; here from another window a pillar of smoke pours, revealing those who have gathered in the house cheerful company clerks, and perhaps even dignitaries; then you heard laughter from a neighboring house, ringing laughter, from which your young heart suddenly fell in your chest, and right next to it, a wit is pronounced, a very good wit, which you have heard many times, but which, this evening, seems especially attractive to you, and you do not get angry, but somehow smile at her good-naturedly and kindly. But here are the walkers - more and more female, around which, as elsewhere, like mosquitoes over a swamp, young people swarm. This youth sometimes seemed unbearable to you: in her aspirations for the female sex, you saw something not entirely neat; her jokes and tenderness resounded in your ears rudely and materially; but tonight you are kind. If you met the ardent Trezor wagging his tail languidly on the run after the flirtatious Dianka, you would find a means here to find something naive, bucolic. Here she is, the Krutogorsk star, the persecutor of the famous family of the princes Chebylkin - the only princely family in the entire Krutogorsk province - our Vera Gotlibovna, German by birth, but Russian in mind and heart! She walks, and her voice rushes from afar, loudly commanding over a whole platoon of young admirers; she goes, and the gray-haired head of Prince Chebylkin, which has just leaned out of the window, hides, the lips of the princess, eating evening tea, are burned, and a porcelain doll falls out of the hands of a twenty-year-old princess playing in the dissolved window. Here you are, magnificent Katerina Osipovna, also a Krutogorskaya star, you, to whom luxurious forms resemble better times humanity, you, whom I dare not compare with anyone, except for the Greek woman Bobelina. Admirers also swarm around you and a fat conversation winds, for which your charms serve as an inexhaustible subject. And all this smiles at you so affably, you shake hands with everyone, you enter into conversation with everyone. Vera Gotlibovna tells you some new trick of Prince Chebylkin; Porfiry Petrovich relates a wonderful incident from yesterday's preference.

But now his excellency himself, Prince Chebylkin, deigns to return from the vigil, quadruplets in a carriage. His Excellency graciously bows to all sides; a quadruple of well-fed horses drags the carriage with a measured and languid step: the dumb ones themselves feel the importance of the feat entrusted to them and behave like good-mannered horses.

Finally, it got completely dark; walkers disappeared from the streets; the windows in the houses are closed; somewhere you can hear the slamming of shutters, accompanied by the tinkling of iron bolts being pushed in, and the dull sounds of a flute, extracted by a melancholic clerk, reach you.

All is quiet, all is dead; dogs on stage...

It would seem that this is not life! Meanwhile, all the officials of Krutogorsk, and especially their spouses, attack this city with bitterness. Who called them there, who glued them to a land so hateful to them? Complaints about Krutogorsk form an eternal canvas for conversation; they are usually followed by aspirations to Petersburg.

– Charming Petersburg! the ladies exclaim.

- Dear Petersburg! the girls sigh.

“Yes, Petersburg…” the men respond thoughtfully.

In the mouths of all, Petersburg is presented as something like a bridegroom coming at midnight (See Notes 1 at the end of the book); but neither one nor the other, nor the third is sincere; it is so, façon de parler, because our mouth is not covered. Since then, however, since Princess Chebylkina twice went to the capital with her daughter, the enthusiasm has cooled a little: it turns out, “qu "on n" y est jamais chez soi”, that “we have lost the habit of this noise”, that “le prince Kurylkin , jeune homme tout-à-fait charmant, - mais que ça reste entre nous - m "a fait tellement la cour, which is simply ashamed! - but still, what a comparison is our dear, our kind, our quiet Krutogorsk!"

- Dushka Krutogorsk! - squeaks the princess.

- Yes, Krutogorsk ... - the prince responds, smiling carnivorously.

Passion for French phrases is the common malady of the Highmountain ladies and maidens. The girls will gather, and their first condition is: “Well, mesdames, from today we will not speak a word in Russian.” But it turns out that in foreign languages they know only two phrases: permettez-moi de sortir and allez vous en! Obviously, all concepts, no matter how limited, cannot be expressed in these two phrases, and the poor girls are again condemned to resort to this oak Russian language, in which you cannot express any subtle feeling.

However, the estate of officials is the weak side of Krutogorsk. I do not like his living rooms, in which, in fact, everything looks somehow awkward. But it is comforting and fun for me to roam the streets of the city, especially on the market day, when they are seething with people, when all the squares are littered with various rubbish: chests, beetroot, buckets, and so on. I love this general conversation of the crowd, it caresses my ears more than the best Italian aria, despite the fact that it often contains the strangest, most false notes. Look at these tanned faces: they breathe intelligence and intelligence, and at the same time some kind of genuine innocence, which, unfortunately, is disappearing more and more. The capital of this simplicity is Krutogorsk. You see, you feel that here a person is satisfied and happy, that he is ingenuous and open precisely because there is no reason for him to pretend and dissemble. He knows that th about whatever befalls him, whether grief or joy, all this is his, his own, and does not grumble. Sometimes only he will sigh and say: “Lord! if there were no fleas and camps, what kind of paradise would it be, and not life! - he will sigh and humble himself before the hand of Providence, who made both Kieferon, the sweet-voiced bird, and various reptiles.

In 1856, Saltykov returned from exile to St. Petersburg and wrote a series of works, united under the general title "Provincial Essays" (1856-1857). "Provincial Essays" opened the first page of the "chronicle" of Russian social life, which Shchedrin created in his work. The exceptional success of the "Provincial Essays" in the second half of the 50s is explained not only by their artistic merit, how many of their qualities that gave N. Chernyshevsky reason to call the book “a wonderful literary phenomenon” and classify it among “ historical facts Russian life. These words of Chernyshevsky contain an exact definition of the meaning of the Essays for the Russian society of that time. They reflected the era of pre-reform reality, seen by the author "from the inside". Shchedrin creates a “portrait” of the modern province in the genre of a cycle of essays: the writer’s artistic generalizations were based on numerous life facts and observations of the life and customs of the provincial nobility, bureaucracy, merchants, philistinism of Vyatka, Vyatka and Tula provinces, and the Ural region. N. Shchedrin begins with the “Provincial Essays” (it was with this pseudonym that M. Saltykov signed his work), a satirist writer, but here the satire still does not go beyond plausibility.

Genre originality"Provincial essays".

The genre nature of the essays is a cycle. The works included in it are united by the theme - the image of the Russian province before the reform of 1861, the image of the narrator - court adviser N. Shchedrin, through heroes - Prince Chebylkin, Porfiry Petrovich, Buerakin, as well as the democratic pathos of the image.

The plot-compositional structure of the essays is peculiar: the author trusts the characters to express themselves independently, avoiding a direct assessment of the depicted. The Russian province in the chapter “Past Times” is given through the prism of its perception by a sublingual, in the essay “Mrs. Muzovkina” the self-revealing monologue of the heroine is preceded by a detailed dialogue between the official N. Shchedrin and Akim Prokhorov, and in the essay “ Big Picture"The author moves along with a crowd of pilgrims and the image of the provincial world is made up of numerous auditory and visual impressions that themselves "find" the narrator.

Shchedrin singled out works in the form of a dramatized essay or one-act drama in a separate chapter, "Dramatic Scenes and Monologues". Many plot situations of essays contain elements of a "dramatic form" that do not require the author's commentary.

So, in the essay "Korepanov" one of the central scenes is the dialogue between Korepanov and Furnachev's son. Outwardly, it is built as a dialogue, the purpose of which is to expose the moral character of Furnachev Sr. But a five-year-old boy answers the questions of the county wit, so the irony of the hero becomes a means of satirical characterization of the "talented" nature - Korepanov himself.

In the plots of the one-act comedies The Petitioners and The Profitable Marriage, there is no opposition between good and evil, traditional for a comedy, since the conflict unfolds in a homogeneous environment of provincial officials. Shchedrin develops a tradition satirical comedy Gogol, whose conflict "ties up" the electricity of rank, and not love.

The "Gogolian" beginning characterizes the entire style of the "Provincial Essays", manifesting itself in a combination of irony and sarcasm in depicting the negative aspects of Russian reality and deep lyricism, caused by Shchedrin's love for Russia. This stylistic tradition is already found in the lyrical essays “Introduction” and “Road” that frame the cycle. In the "Introduction" there is a Gogol motif of a road that ends in Krutogorsk, a city, entering which "you can no longer demand anything from life ... you can only live in the past and digest your memories." The image of patriarchal silence and "general monotony" is replaced by sketches of the mores of the city, from which it follows that here, too, life is in full swing, different from that in St. Petersburg. They expand the horizons of the reader's understanding of Russian reality. The images of the heroes of the essays are only named here, but the criticism of their moral emptiness and ignorance is still ahead, but it turns out that the road that led the narrator to Krutogorsk is the beginning of a new useful life. It will be dedicated to "discovering evil, falsehood and vice", "full sympathy for goodness and truth." The epilogue of the "Provincial Essays" ends with the image of a dream in which the author mentally returns to Krutogorsk, which he leaves after seven years of exile. Before the reader unfolds a picture of the symbolic funeral of the "past times" that have become obsolete socially and morally. Many contemporaries shared the writer's hope for the imminent advent of the new era: the end of the Crimean campaign and the coming to power of a new tsar caused a wave of optimism in Russian society. Describing the then situation, F. Dostoevsky wrote in 1861: “We remember the appearance of Mr. Shchedrin in the Russian Messenger. Oh, it was such a joyful, hopeful time! After all, Mr. Shchedrin chose a minute when to appear. However, as time has shown, Shchedrin hastened to bury what he had to fight with all his life.

By 1857, the idea of the cycle “About the Dying” dates back, for which the story “The Bridegroom” was written, as well as the family comedy “The Death of Pazukhin”. In these works, the heroes familiar from the "Provincial Essays" reappear: General Golubovitsky, Porfiry Furnachev, official Razbitnaya. In the story "The Bridegroom" Shchedrin turns to the grotesque, depicting the mores of a provincial society. Elements of the grotesque can also be found in the image of Captain Makhorkin - a semi-real, semi-fantastic personality that appears from nowhere. The plot situation of the story focuses on the absurd talk of the townspeople about the origin of Makhorkin (devil or man?), And the image of the captain himself plays the role of a “mirror”, which reflects the “crooked face” of provincial reality. The idea of the cycle remained unfulfilled, and by the beginning of the 60s, the image of the city of Glupov appeared in the work of Shchedrin, which replaced the patriarchal Krutogorsk. The birth of Glupov is the next stage in the development of the writer's satire.

The next ten years of Shchedrin's life - from 1858 to 1868 - the time of the active work of the writer in the administrative field. Shchedrin gradually rises up the rungs of the career ladder: vice-governor in Ryazan and his native Tver, chairman of the state chamber in Penza, Tula, Ryazan. During his stay in the "temple of liberalism", as the writer himself defined his service, Shchedrin stopped any attempts to violate the rule of law and justice and acquired the nickname "vice-Robespierre". This characterization is evidence of the irreconcilable struggle that Shchedrin, as an administrative official, waged against the bureaucratic system of the Russian autocracy. In 1868, with the rank of state general, Shchedrin retired and devoted himself entirely to literary activity.

Since 1868, together with Nekrasov, he edited the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski, and after the death of Nekrasov in 1877, he directed the editorial office of the journal until it was closed by censorship in 1884.

The time of Shchedrin's work in Fatherland Notes is the most brilliant time of his work, the period of the highest flowering of his satire. The volume created by the writer in these years is enormous. The problems of his works are expanding, new genre forms appear, satirical skills are honed. The focus of Shchedrin's attention is the discovery of the anti-people essence of autocratic power and statehood. At a new stage in his literary activity, the writer again turns to the problem of the people and power, the study of which determines the writer's search for new artistic forms.

In the 1960s, Shchedrin worked on the series of essays Foolov and Foolovites, Foolov's Debauchery, Capons, and Slander. The journalistic beginning in them noticeably prevails over the plot narrative, and the grotesque over other forms of the comic. In the essay “Slander”, the grotesque is aimed at revealing the essence of the socio-political contradictions of Russian reality. It is presented in the essay in the form of a pot in which the Foolovites live, fed by a hand that threw a fatty piece into the pot and then scalded the inhabitants of the pot. With this allegory, Shchedrin assesses the anti-people nature of the reform of 1861 ..

In the journalism of the 60s, fantasy and the grotesque determine the originality of the plot of works devoted to problems seemingly far from the sphere of politics. In 1864, Shchedrin wrote an article - a review of "Petersburg Theaters", criticizing the repertoire of the capital's theaters. One of the objects of his satire is the ballet Naiad and the Fisherman, whose libretto he characterizes as a pitiful imitation of art. The writer, without analyzing the shortcomings of the dramaturgy of the performance, offers his own "plot" of the "modern-domestic-fantastic" ballet "Imaginary enemies, or lie and do not be afraid." Parodying the senseless flight of fancy that determined the content of modern ballet art, Shchedrin enumerates in detail the characters in his work. This is the Patriotic conservative force in the images of Davilov, Obiralov and the Dentist, and Patriotic liberalism, personified by Khlestakov. Among the main characters are Bribery, Lies, Lies and Nonsense. In the denouement of the action, the viewer must observe the apotheosis of conflict resolution: a whirlwind dance that united all the characters in a single rhythm. The sharp, topical satire of a political nature testified to Shchedrin's virtuoso mastery of the publicist and parodist.

Shchedrin's first major work, entirely printed in N. Nekrasov's Fatherland Notes, was The History of a City (1869-1870). This work is dedicated to the philosophical understanding of the historical fate of autocratic Russia, despotic power and a dark, destitute people. The story of the fantastic Foolov, who grew up either on the "mountains", or on some kind of "bog" and almost "eclipsed the fame ancient rome", in one of Turgenev's notes was called "a strange and amazing book." What was the peculiarity of this work?

Provincial essays

"Provincial Essays", which appeared in print as separate stories and scenes in 1856–1857, constituted Saltykov's first major work. The origin of the concept of "Provincial Essays" and the work on them date back to the time of the writer's return from Vyatka, where he was exiled by Nicholas I in 1848.

Saltykov returned to St. Petersburg at the beginning of 1856, shortly before the Peace of Paris. This peace ended the Crimean War, in which "tsarism," according to F. Engels, "suffered a pitiful collapse." Under these conditions, the government itself did not consider it possible or expedient to maintain the existing order of things in complete inviolability. The next step was the elimination of serfdom - the fundamental social evil of old Russia, which lay like a stone in the way of a progressive solution of all the main tasks facing the country.

The beginning of the historical turning point, on the one hand, responded in the life of Russian society with an "unprecedented sobering up", the need to take a critical look at one's past and present, and on the other hand, caused a wave optimistic expectations, associated with the emerging hope to take an active part in the "making" of history.

In this situation, the “Provincial Essays” arose - one of the milestone works of Russian literature. “We remember the appearance of Mr. Shchedrin in the Russian Messenger,” Dostoevsky wrote in 1861. - Oh, then it was such a joyful, hopeful time! After all, Mr. Shchedrin chose the minute when to appear...” This “minute” turned out to be the two-year period of 1856-1857, which was truly unusual in Russian literature and public life. when, along with the “Provincial Essays”, Tolstoy’s “Sevastopol Stories” and Turgenev’s “Rudin”, Aksakov’s “Family Chronicle” and “ Plum Ostrovsky, "Settlers" by Grigorovich and "Krechinsky's Wedding" by Sukhovo-Kobylin; when the first book of Nekrasov's poems was published and "burned - according to Ogarev - the soul of a Russian person," when Chernyshevsky's articles were published one after another in the Sovremennik magazine, revealing the horizons of a new, revolutionary-democratic worldview; when Herzen, who had already created the "Polar Star", founded the famous "Bell" and by ringing it, as Lenin said, broke the "servile silence" in the country; when, finally, "accusatory literature", one of the most characteristic forms of social life of that historical moment, began her noisy campaign in Russia.

"Provincial essays" were part of the general stream of these phenomena and occupied one of the first places among them in terms of the strength of their impression on contemporaries. This is "a book that undoubtedly had most significant success in the past<1857>year, ”testified the then-famous magazine columnist Vl. Raf. Zotov. And a little earlier, the same author, wishing to determine the position of the "Provincial Essays" in the historical and literary perspective of the last decade, confidently gave them "the third place of honor next to the two best works of our modern literature- "Dead Souls" and "Notes of a Hunter".

Years will pass, Saltykov will create a number of deeper and more mature works. But in the minds of many contemporary readers, his reputation as a writer will for a long time be associated mainly with the "Provincial Essays". “I must confess to you,” Saltykov concluded on this occasion in a letter dated November 25, 1870 to A. M. Zhemchuzhnikov, “that the public has cooled somewhat towards me, although I can’t say that I moved back after the“ Provincial essays ". Considering myself neither a leader nor a first-class writer, I nevertheless went a little ahead against the Provincial Essays, but the public, apparently, thinks differently about this. Indeed, none of Saltykov's subsequent works was accepted by the "public" with such burning interest, as excitedly and fervently as his first book. But the point here was, of course, not in the backward movement of Saltykov's talent. It was in the changed socio-political situation. The exceptional success of the "Provincial Essays" in the second half of the 50s was determined, first of all, not by the artistic merits of the work, but by its objective sound, those qualities that gave Chernyshevsky grounds not only to call the book a "wonderful literary phenomenon", but also classify it among historical facts Russian life.

With these words, Chernyshevsky very precisely defined the general meaning of the Gubernskie Essays. The artistic prism of this work reflected the deep shifts in Russian public consciousness during the years of the beginning of the "revolution" in the life of the country. objective historical content This “revolution” (in its final results) was, according to Lenin, “the change of one form of society by another - the replacement of serfdom by capitalism ...”.

Despite the great popularity of the "Provincial Essays" among contemporaries, the history of writing and printing the work is known to us only in the most general terms.

All authors who touched on this issue rely on the memoirs of L. F. Panteleev about Saltykov in their presentation. These memoirs, which go back to the memoirist's record of Saltykov's own story, rank among the first places among memoirs about the writer in terms of their reliability. Nevertheless, there are inaccuracies and errors in Panteleev's memoirs. There are also in the story about the "Provincial essays". Meanwhile, this story has been used in the literature about Saltykov for more than half a century without the necessary corrections and explanations. Moreover, it is sometimes presented in arbitrary versions, “deepening” the inaccuracies or ambiguities of the original source to the extent of distortions of facts that are absent in it.

The exact date of the start of work on the Essays is unknown (in an article about Saltykov, placed in the Russian Biographical Dictionary, A. N. Pypin, who knew the writer closely, suggested that the “beginning” of the Provincial Essays “was written back in Vyatka "). However, there is reason to believe that Saltykov began writing his stories somewhere between mid-February and early March 1856.

Panteleev reports: “Mikhail Evgrafovich wrote“ Provincial Essays ”in 1856 in St. Petersburg, living in the Volkov Rooms ...” Panteleev could hear this detail - about the place of work on the Essays - Panteleev could only hear from Saltykov himself. But he misunderstood or inaccurately stated the story of the writer and thus misled himself and later researchers.

Saltykov arrived in St. Petersburg on January 13 or 14, 1856 and stayed with his elder brother Dmitry Evgrafovich, in his own house. But in the middle or at the end of February, he really moved to the "Volkov house" on Bolshaya Konyushennaya. In May of the same 1856, in connection with the upcoming marriage, Saltykov rented another apartment, on Galernaya, in the house of Utin. However new flat for some time she got off and furnished, and Saltykov, apparently, continued to live at the old address until June 1 - the day of his departure for Moscow, where his wedding was scheduled. Taking into account that from April 9 to April 25 Saltykov was not in St. Petersburg - he left for Moscow and Vladimir - it should be concluded that in the Volkov rooms Saltykov lived in total no more two to two and a half months.

We do not know how many "essays" and which ones were written during this time. However, it can be stated with full confidence that Saltykov then only began to embody his plan, which was still far from being completed. The writing and printing of "essays" continued in the summer, autumn, and winter of 1856, and then throughout the first half of 1857. This can be seen at least from Saltykov's letter to Katkov dated July 14, 1856, which contains a notice of the end work on "two new essays". The same is evidenced by the entry in the diary of A. I. Artemyev dated October 10, 1856: “In the morning I was in<Статистическом>committee and talked with Saltykov. He wrote "Provincial essays" ... ".

The mistake of Panteleev, who attributed all the work on the "Provincial Essays" to the time of Saltykov's life in the Volkov rooms, that is, to two or two and a half months in the spring of 1856, gave rise to a number of other errors and inaccuracies. They are also included in many presentations of the history of the creation of the writer's first book.

"After graduating“Provincial essays,” continues Panteleev, “Mikhail Evgrafovich first of all gave them to read to A. V. Druzhinin. Druzhinin's review was the most favorable: “Here you are on real road: this is not at all like what was written before. Through Druzhinin, the “Provincial Essays” were handed over to Turgenev. The latter expressed the opposite opinion: “This is not literature at all, but the devil knows what it is!” As a result of Turgenev's attitude to the Provincial Essays, Nekrasov refused to accept them in Sovremennik, although censorship considerations also played a part in this.

Is it true, however, that Turgenev's "opinion" cited by Panteleev was expressed by him after he had read the manuscript of the "finished" "Provincial Essays"?

In a letter to P. V. Annenkov dated January 2, 1859, Saltykov reports that, having met the author of the Hunter's Notes "on arrival" from Vyatka, that is, at the beginning of 1856, he "later", calmed down from resentment, which, in his opinion, Turgenev soon caused him (did not pay a return visit), "gave" his "first literary experiments" to him for viewing. The word "subsequently" indicates some and most likely a significant period of time that separated the events in question. But Turgenev left Petersburg on May 3, 1856. He went to Moscow and Spasskoe-Lutovinovo, and then abroad - he left for a long time. And in April - from 9 to 25 - Saltykov was not in St. Petersburg.

Consequently, Saltykov could "give", and Turgenev "receive" to view the manuscript of "essays" only in March - early April 1856 . This means that these were really “first literary experiments” - just a few initial stories. There can hardly be any doubt that these were stories subsequently collected in the section "Past Times", to which, therefore, the words of Turgenev, spoken in the spring of 1856 to Druzhinin or Nekrasov, should be attributed.

Is it also true that Saltykov, before turning to Moscow, to the newly founded journal Russky Vestnik, founded by Katkov, one of the representatives of the then liberal movement, offered his Essays to the democratic Sovremennik and was refused?

It must be admitted that in this part of Panteleev's memoirs, at least, they are not accurate. The author of other well-known memoirs about Saltykov, his close friend and attending physician N. A. Belogolovy, otherwise points to the circumstances that determined Saltykov's choice of the journal for printing Essays. “Immediately after moving to St. Petersburg,” writes Belogolovy, “he was not familiar with the Sovremennik circle, and therefore, on the advice of friends<В. П. Безобразова, А. В. Дружинина и Е. С. Есакова>sent them<«Очерки»>to Moscow, to Russkiy Vestnik, to Katkov…”

Is it possible that, when telling Belogolovy in the summer of 1885 in Wiesbaden about his past, Saltykov omitted or hushed up such an episode, remarkable for his biography as a writer, as the rejection by the editors of the famous Sovremennik of the manuscript of his first book he had proposed?

Such an assumption is psychologically implausible and is in conflict with the chronicle of the author's work on the work.

It is impossible to find confirmation of this version in the correspondence of members of the editorial board of Sovremennik. Let us refer at least to the letters of Chernyshevsky to Nekrasov dated September 24 and November 5, 1856 and Panaev to Botkin dated September 8 of the same year. In these letters, their authors inform addressees who are abroad about a remarkable literary novelty - the printing of a socially acute work called "Provincial Essays" that began in the Russky Vestnik. At the same time, Chernyshevsky accompanies his information with explanations based on the belief that Nekrasov, who went abroad on August 11, still does not know anything, has not heard anything about the Essays, nor about their author. As for Panaev, in his letter he evaluates the first Saltykov stories that appeared in print with the word “commendable” and declares: “It should and is useful to print such things without a doubt ...” (although he denies them artistic merit).

It is quite obvious that neither Chernyshevsky nor Panaev could write about the Essays in this way if Saltykov really offered them to Sovremennik and they were discussed and rejected by the editors, that is, by the same Nekrasov, Chernyshevsky and Panaev.

It is quite possible that when Saltykov handed over to Turgenev the manuscripts of his first stories - "accusatory" - he counted on his mediation in possible negotiations with Nekrasov, whom he was not yet familiar with. The desire to see his work in Sovremennik was natural for a writer "brought up on Belinsky's articles." But the matter did not come to negotiations with the editors. Nekrasov, after Turgenev's negative review, apparently had no practical interest in the Essays. Otherwise, before his departure abroad, he would undoubtedly have informed Chernyshevsky and Panaev, in whose hands the Sovremennik had left, of the negotiations that had begun or were only supposed to be held with Saltykov. But it wasn't. Chernyshevsky learned about the "Essays" from the publication of the "Russian Messenger" and only then, on their own initiative, tried through Panaev to attract Saltykov to Sovremennik.

There is nothing surprising in the fact that Nekrasov looked at the first stories of Saltykov, perhaps without even reading them, through the eyes of Turgenev. Firstly, over Nekrasov's theoretical ideas about art, the aesthetic views of the group of Turgenev, Druzhinin, Botkin, who were hostile to the "utilitarian", "social-resultative" aesthetics that Saltykov proclaimed, strongly weighed then. Secondly, Nekrasov, the largest representative of Gogol's "negative" trend in poetry, like Turgenev, was hostile (as Saltykov himself soon was) to accusatory literature, since even then he saw in it petty reformist practicality.

Only the huge public success of the "Provincial Essays" forced Nekrasov to reconsider his position. Upon returning from abroad in the summer of 1857, Nekrasov, according to the same memoirs of Panteleev, came to visit Saltykov and expressed extreme regret that, relying on Turgenev’s review, he did not give place to the “Provincial essays” in Sovremennik, and offered him cooperation.

From what has been said above, however, it is clear that the words “did not give space” should be understood as regret not about the rejection of the manuscript of the entire work, which had just begun at that time, but that, as a result of Turgenev’s recall, Nekrasov did not show his usual publishing instinct for the book , which soon found itself in the center of the literary and social life of the country.

In the “Provincial Essays”, contemporaries saw a broad picture of the life of that Russia, the last years of the serfdom, about which even the representative of the monarchist ideology, the Slavophil Khomyakov, wrote with bitterness and indignation in a poem about the Crimean War:

In the courts it is black with a black lie
And branded with the yoke of slavery,
Godless flattery, pernicious lies
And laziness is dead and shameful
And it's full of filth.

To create this picture, Saltykov had to, in his words, "plunge into the swamp" of the pre-reform province, peer closely into its way of life. “Vyatka,” he said to L.F. Panteleev, “had a beneficial effect on me: it brought me closer to real life and gave me a lot of materials for the Provincial Essays, and earlier I wrote nonsense.”

On the other hand, in order to creatively rework the impressions of the “ugliness of provincial life”, which, while in Vyatka, Saltykov, by his own admission, “saw<…>but he didn’t think about them, but somehow mechanically absorbed them with his body ”, and to create from these materials a book that is deeply analytical and at the same time has the power of broad figurative generalizations - for this, the author had to develop his own view of modern Russian reality and find artistic means of its expression.

It has long been shown in the literature how densely the "Provincial Essays" are saturated with Vyatka observations and experiences of the author (although far from them alone). The "heroes" of Saltykov's first book, everyday life and landscape sketches in it, as well as its artistic "toponymy" are connected with Vyatka, with the Vyatka and Perm provinces. So, “Krutogorsk” (originally “Steep Mountains”) is Vyatka itself, “Sryvny” - Sarapul, “Okov” - Glazov, “Krechetov” - Orlov, “Chernoborsk” - Slobodskoy, etc. A lot in the “Provincial essays "and genuine geographical names: the provinces of Perm and Kazan, the districts of Nolinsky, Cherdynsky, Yaransky, the rivers Kama and Vetluga, Lupya and Usta, Pilva and Kolva, the Porubovskaya and Trushnikovskaya piers, the villages of Lenva, Usolye, Bogorodskoye, Ukhtym, the ironworks in Ocher, Pig mountains, etc.

Vyatka, the Vyatka province and the Ural region inspired the collective image of the Russian people in the first book of Saltykov (generally the first in his work). The depiction of the people in the “Provincial Essays” is dominated by features characteristic of the rural population of the northeastern provinces: not landowners, but state, or state, peasants, adherents not of the official church, but of the “old faith” (schismatics), not only “Great Russians” , but also "foreigners" - "votyaks" and "zyryans", that is, Udmurts and Komi.

Directly from Vyatka observations, Saltykov borrowed the plot bases for most of his "essays", with the exception, however, of the section "Talented natures", which has little to do with Vyatka material.

Below, in the comments to individual "essays", the reader will find other references confirming that the "Provincial essays", as P.V. Annenkov wrote in 1857 to I.S. Vyatka ".

For understanding artistic method"Provincial essays", and - more broadly - the entire ideological basis of the work, the article written by Saltykov in May - July 1856 on Koltsov's poems is of great importance. In his original form it was banned by the censors and appeared in print only today.

Saltykov speaks in this article with a programmatic presentation of his social and literary and aesthetic positions in the initial period of work on the "Provincial Essays", at the time of returning to literature after an eight-year break from the "Vyatka captivity". Saltykov's program is based on a passionate elevation of the social and practical role of art and literature. It requires the artist to have a direct and necessarily effective impact on the life of society and the actions of individuals through his work. To do this, he declares, the artist must be "a representative of the modern idea and the modern interests of society." He should only take on topics "offered by life itself." Only under this condition will he participate with his creativity in the "labor of modernity", which is the purpose of the writer. The most important task that modernity poses to literature (as well as to science) is “ development of Russian life, study of "economic" (socio-political), "ethnographic" and "spiritual" conditions of existence Russian person. This task is determined by the need to "know ourselves, with all our shortcomings and virtues", in order to be able to actively influence the historical development of the country, to direct this development towards certain social ideals. And for this "development" to be "practically fruitful", it must meet two mandatory conditions: to be conducted " without prejudice", that is, without being affected by any speculative concepts, and be " monographic", to which Saltykov attaches particular importance.

The wording about the writer's "monographic activity" was apparently suggested to Saltykov by the opening lines of Chernyshevsky's dissertation, which had just been published at the time. Explaining the nature and form of constructing his aesthetic treatise, Chernyshevsky pointed out that modernity requires “monographs” (“now is the age of monographs”), that is, not generalizing works, but special studies devoted to the development of individual issues and phenomena. These thoughts, strongly emphasizing them, are developed by Saltykov in his keynote address in relation to writing. The task of the writer is not the development of general "views" on reality, for which the time has not yet come, but a concrete-analytical "study" of life in all its "tiniest bends".

In search of a literary form that best meets the proclaimed program, Saltykov turns to the usual for realism " natural school” essay, but not to the “physiological”, typical of the 40s - early 50s, but to the newly emerged variety of this genre: the accusatory essay generated by the new demands of the time.

True, when starting his work, Saltykov, apparently, did not want to put it under the banner of satire and denunciation. This seems to be evidenced by the epigraph, which was originally prefaced to the Essays: "Sine ira". To write history objectively, "sine ira et studio" - "without anger and predilection", as the ancient Roman historian Tacitus demanded - such is Saltykov's desire. It seemed to follow from the first programmatic condition, theoretically formulated by him in an article about Koltsov: to conduct "development of Russian life" analytically, "without prejudice." In reality, however, Saltykov was resolutely incapable of relating to the subject of his literary work - contemporary Russian reality - from the standpoint of a legendary chronicler, "listening to good and evil indifferently." And the epigraph, so contrary to the whole spirit of the Essays, was promptly removed. It remained in the manuscript as a curious evidence of some hesitation experienced by the author of the Essays during the initial consideration of the artistic method of the work.

Saltykov makes full use of the possibilities of the chosen form to achieve the second and main task: "a monographic study of various phenomena of modern life." Indeed, each "provincial" essay is devoted, as a rule, to the "study" of any one characteristic phenomenon from the life of the then Russian province or folk life. The characterization of this phenomenon or image, starting in this essay, ends in it: biographies of bribe-taking officials in the section “Past Times”; officials-administrators - in the section "Holy Fools"; "autobiographical stories" of prisoners in the section "In prison"; male and female types of folk pilgrims in the essays "Retired Soldier Pimenov" and "Pakhomovna"; different types or categories of "talented natures" in the essays "Korepanov", "Luzgin", "Buerakin", "Gorekhvastov"; provincial living room in the essay "A Pleasant Family" and so on.

That's what it is " monographic study. At the same time, Saltykov leads it in various literary forms, sometimes departing very far from the essay itself. A story, a “portrait”, a genre painting, a landscape sketch, a dramatic scene or monologue, a folk tale, a “lyrical digression”, an ethnographic essay, a memoir sketch or a “diary” are some of the forms used by Saltykov in his first book.

However, with all the thematic and genre diversity of the Essays, with a general look at them, they do not break up into separate “monographic” characteristics, but, as it were, merge into one large artistic canvas. Such an impression is created not contrary to the author's intention, but, on the contrary, in full accordance with it. "Essays" were conceived not as a collection of independent stories, but as a kind of work of a large form, subject to a holistic concept and a single composition.

The “essays” included in the cycle are combined using several methods. These include, for example, the grouping of material according to thematic sections. Even more important is another method of composition: the work begins and ends with two framing "essays" - "introduction" and "epilogue". They summarize the main ideas of the entire cycle and give it a structural completeness. Finally, the most important thing: in all the "essays" two main "characters" participate and thus connect them: "the city of Krutogorsk" and the observer of its customs, "retired court adviser Nikolai Ivanovich Shchedrin."

"Provincial Essays" came not only from the realism of the "natural school", but even more from the realism of Gogol. In particular, the image of the "city" in the "Provincial Essays" is genetically linked to the images of the "city" in "The Government Inspector" and "Dead Souls". However, with all the closeness of this relationship, Krutogorsk is no longer an abstract Gogol's "city", where "everything bad is collected in one heap." At the same time, this is also not the future Saltykovsky Foolov - a merciless symbol of all the reactionary depths and possibilities of old Russia. Krutogorsk - like Herzen's Malinov immediately preceding it from Notes of a Young Man - is a completely concrete, "really existing and at the same time typically generalized pre-reform provincial city Russian Empire. In this "city" - the first in the famous satirical "toponymy" of the writer - much is not only condemned, but also completely denied by the author. At the same time, for Krutogorsk there is still hope for the possibility of a “revival” (although accompanied by reservations and doubts), while for Glupov such a prospect will be completely excluded. The author of the story admits that he is not indifferent to Krutogorsk, with which his fate was connected for many years, that this city “somehow speaks especially” to his “heart”.

A review of the Krutogorsk life is “conducted” in the “Essays” by “a retired court adviser Shchedrin”, a participant in the recent events depicted, who left his “notes” about them. The bifurcation of the author into a "narrator" (in this case, a "memoirist") and a "publisher" who found the manuscript is a technique common in literature. Let us recall at least Belkin's Tale, A Hero of Our Time, or Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. The appeal to this technique in the Essays was probably prompted by the same Saltykov's view of the writer's work as the work of a "researcher", "analyst", who must always deal with concrete and reliable material, with "documents". Using the mask of the “publisher” of the “notes” that arose in the hot pursuit of events, Saltykov, as it were, put the reader of the Essays face to face with facts and phenomena drawn directly from life itself.

However, the "court adviser Shchedrin" is not only a conditional character, a certain technique in the composition of the work. It is also the face that lives in it, objective art form.

True, the image seems to be divided and multiplied in the facets of several characteristics that seem mutually exclusive at first glance. On the one hand, the “author of the notes” is just a serviceman in Krutogorsk. He is involved in all the "wrongdoings" of the local bureaucracy, does not separate himself from it, and even in Zhivnovsky's "projector" he guesses "our field's berry." At the same time, a self-portrait emerges from the pages of the intimate-lyrical "diary" of this "philistine". advanced Russian man, brought up on the mental moods of the era of the 40s - the moods of Belinsky, Herzen, Petrashevsky - but found himself in the "corrupting" conditions of a distant province in front of the tragically felt threat of "reconciliation" with the world of social evil. On the one hand, the "author of the notes" confidently refers to himself as " quite a business man”and proves to his interlocutors the need and opportunity to be useful in any, even the smallest area of practical work, which for him is synonymous with the work of an honest official. On the other hand, with the same decisiveness he admits himself, on the contrary, " a person unfit for practical activities, because the latter necessarily requires deals with "conscience" and "reason", and he is an "idealist" who denies compromise. No less inconsistency in the judgments about Nikolai Ivanovich Shchedrin of his Krutogorsk acquaintances. According to the landowner Buerakin, this is "an exemplary official", an incorruptible guardian of the law, "our Nimrod". In the view of "His Excellency" - the governor - Nikolai Ivanovich is a "scumbag" and "mumbler", and not an administrator; after all, he rejects the view of bureaucracy as a "higher organism."

The inconsistency of the characteristics, however, does not deprive the image of the “author of the notes” of either vitality or internal unity. It is similar to the complex integrity of the ideological searches and practical experience of Saltykov himself during the years of Vyatka exile. The biographical commentary establishes that the writer learned a lot from this experience, which was reflected in the image of Nikolai Ivanovich Shchedrin. But Saltykov, of course, did not set himself the task of portraying himself and his life in Vyatka in the "author of the notes". He sharply protested when some of his contemporaries, such as Turgenev, were sometimes inclined to attribute such intentions to him.

His goal was different. He wanted to give the portrayer of the life and customs of Krutogorsk the features of a progressive-minded figure, a “liberal”, in practical work. This type was extremely rare, and essentially utopian in the life of the then Russian society, which (like the literature reflecting it) in accordance with reality put forward more people of “good impulses” among the bearers of advanced views than positive achievements. Saltykov, both by the properties of the “businesslike fold” of his nature, and by his involvement in enlightenment illusions, which in the early years of the reign of Alexander II objectively approached the then widespread reformist illusions, highly valued at that time this type, in which he subsequently became completely disappointed.

Search action man, capable of overcoming the paralysis of practice, to which the democratically minded intelligentsia was doomed by the Nikolaev regime, were conducted by Saltykov at that time very intensively. They were inseparable from inner doubts, they took place in the writer's disputes with himself and, probably, with those with whom he shared his thoughts. These fluctuations are clearly reflected in the image of the "author of notes", on whose behalf Saltykov himself often, but not always, speaks to readers. As in the image of Nikanor the Shabby, on whose behalf the memoir chronicle of the Poshekhonskaya antiquity is being conducted, last work the writer, in a similar image of his first book, “own” is mixed with “alien”, and at the same time, a place is given to “fiction”.

In addition, the role of the spokesman for his own thoughts and moods Saltykov plays in the "Essays" not only some gentleman he knew, bearing the name of Shchedrin. The writer entrusts this role to other actors, including negative characters. He doesn't speak for himself anywhere.

In his first autobiographical note, dated 1858, Saltykov considered it necessary to say: “To characterize the writer’s view, one can point to the following essays:“ Boredom ”,“ Inept ”(end),“ Mischievous ”and“ Road ””. Turning to these stories, the reader is convinced that only in the first and last of them is the "I" of the narrator, that is, Nikolai Ivanovich Shchedrin, the spokesman for Saltykov's moods. In the essay "Inept" (at the end of it), this role is transferred to the "smart old man" tradesman Golenkov. As for the Mischievous Ones, the writer's views here should be judged by his sharply negative attitude towards the hero of this story-monologue. An official of the highest order, a fierce anti-democrat, a formalist, an opponent of originality, a theorist and conductor of the principle of “bureaucratic centralization” hated by Saltykov, depicted in The Mischiefs, appears before the reader as a complete antipode of that figure practitioner, which the writer tried, at that time, to create in literature and in life.

In the “essays” named by Saltykov, the reader will find a “characteristic” of mainly those of his views that, in the perspective of the writer’s further development, turned out to be transient, associated with his then reassessment of the socially transforming possibilities of “honest service”. Of course, by referring only to these views in his autobiography of 1858, Saltykov emphasized the importance he attached to them at that time. Indeed, knowledge political biography author of "Provincial Essays" helps to understand something in this work. But it is much more important to know with what general worldview the writer approached in his first book the depiction of contemporary reality.

The basis of the "concept" of Russian life, artistically developed in the "Provincial Essays", is democracy. Moreover, this democracy is no longer abstract and humanistic, as in the youthful stories of the 1940s, but historically concrete, associated with the peasantry. Saltykov is full of feelings of direct love and sympathy for the long-suffering peasant Russia, whose life is filled with "heartache", "sucking need".

Saltykov sharply separates in his "Essays" the laboring subordinate people (peasants, philistines, lower officials) both from the official world, represented by all ranks of the pre-reform provincial administration, and from the world of the "first estate". People, officials and landowners-nobles- three main collective images of the work. Between them, basically, a motley crowd is distributed, about three hundred characters of the Essays - living people of the Russian province of the last years of the reign of Nicholas.

Saltykov's attitude to the main groups of the then Russian society and the method of depicting them are different. He does not hide his likes and dislikes.

The writer's ideas about people's life are still devoid of socio-historical perspective and clarity. They reflect peasant democracy in its initial stage. The image of the Russian people - the "baby-giant", still tightly swaddled with serfdom swaddling clothes, is recognized by Saltykov as "mysterious" for the time being; various manifestations of Russian folk life - enveloped in "gloom". It is necessary to unravel this "mystery", to dispel the "darkness". It is necessary to find out the innermost thoughts and aspirations of the Russian people and thereby find out what are its moral forces that can lead the masses to conscious and active historical activity (as the educator Saltykov attached special importance to these forces). Takova positive program Saltykov in "Provincial Essays". To implement it, Saltykov focuses on the "research" of the predominantly spiritual side of people's life.

In the stories "In the jail" ("First visit"), "Arinushka", "Christ is risen!" and in the first essays of the section "Pilgrims, wanderers and travelers" Saltykov tries to look into the very soul of the people and try to understand the inner world of the "simple Russian person". In search of means of penetration into this then almost unexplored sphere, Saltykov sets himself the task of establishing "the degree and manner of manifestation of religious feeling" and "religious consciousness" in different strata of the people. But unlike the Slavophiles, who prompted the writer to formulate this task, its real content had nothing in common with the reactionary-monarchist and Orthodox ideology of "Holy Russia".

Under the religious and church cover of some historically established phenomena in the life of the Russian people, such as, for example, going on a pilgrimage or wandering, Saltykov is looking for the original people's dream of truth, justice, freedom, looking for practical carriers of "spiritual achievement" in the name of this dream.

Faithful to reality, Saltykov also portrays such aspects of the national character as "indisputability", "gentleness", "patience", "submission".

In the very first "introductory essay" Saltykov declares that although he is "sweet" to the "general dialect of the crowd", although he caresses his ears "more than the best Italian aria", he "often" hears in it "the strangest, most false notes ".

Speech goes here about the heavy still unawakenedness of the masses, their darkness, civic underdevelopment and, above all, passivity. In articles written simultaneously with "Essays" ("A. V. Koltsov" and "The Tale of the Wandering<…>Monk Parthenius). Saltykov explains these and others negative traits folk life and psychology are two main reasons. The first of them is the historical youth of the Russian people, "who are still in infancy." The second and main one is "artificial economic relations", that is, serfdom.

Subsequently, when Saltykov's democracy reaches its maturity, the theme of popular (peasant in the first place) passivity - one of the most important in the work of the satirist - will be embodied in the image of Glupov, full of bitterness. In the "Provincial Essays" this theme is still kept in balance with epic everyday life, imbued with lyricism and poetry. This key was needed by the author in order to more clearly, more emotionally show the spiritual beauty, wealth and strength of a simple Russian person.

But the author's attitude to "our beautiful people" is free from the idealization of negative aspects peasant life and psychology, in particular, from the idealization of "people's humility", for which he was unfoundedly reproached and is sometimes reproached. No one was more infallible than Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov in feeling any falseness, no matter how small its dose, when it came to the people and their attitude towards them. Both leaders of Sovremennik highly appreciated the image of the people in Saltykov's first book. "One page<…>stories from the common people's life Shchedrin, - wrote Chernyshevsky, - about the people are collected more than in all the writings of Dahl. And Dobrolyubov about the same stories “Pilgrims, Wanderers and Passers-by” responded as follows: “There is no sentimentality and false idealization; the people appear as they are, with their shortcomings, rudeness, and underdevelopment.

But the author of the “Provincial Essays,” Dobrolyubov emphasizes, “loves this people, he sees many good, noble, albeit undeveloped or misdirected instincts in these humble, simple-hearted workers.” He refers to the people without any denial.

A positive program in the "Essays" associated with the disclosure ("research") of spiritual wealth people's peace and the image of the motherland, determined the deep lyricism of the folk and landscape pages of the book, perhaps the brightest and most sincere in all the writer's work.

“Yes, I love you, distant, untouched land! - the author addresses Krutogorsk and all Russia behind it. - I love your spaciousness and the innocence of your inhabitants! And if my pen often touches such strings of your body that emit an unpleasant and false sound, then this is not from a lack of ardent sympathy for you, but because, in fact, these sounds resound sadly and painfully in my soul.

These words from the "Introduction" - words almost Gogol's even in language - determine the structure of the entire work, in which irony and sarcasm coexist with the elements of lyricism - lyricism is not only accusatory, bitter, but also bright, caused by a deep feeling of love for people's Russia and for their native nature (see especially the essays "Introduction", "General Picture", "Retired Soldier Pimenov", "Pakhomovna", "Boredom", "Christ is Risen!", "Arinushka", "Elder", "Road").

Democracy, as the basis of the "concept" of Russian life, developed in the "Essays", determined and negative program Saltykov in his first book. The purpose of this program was to "explore" and then denounce, by means of satire, those "forces" in the then Russian life that "stand against the people", thereby fettering the development of the country.

In the first book of Saltykov, "objective" satire in the form of everyday life still prevails. It achieves accusatory power without sharp caricature sharpenings and displacements of the real proportions of the criticized phenomena or characters. This is still mainly the line of Griboedov and Gogol - Gogol's Dead Souls - which, however, in some places (for example, in the story "Mischiefs") already shows a tendency to move into a drier and tougher, and at the same time more "subjective" ”and the passionate Saltykov line, when the satirical essence of the image is achieved by grotesque or hyperbolic sharpness of details, when laughter becomes more fierce and merciless, angry and executing.

The fundamental social evil in the life of the Russian people was serfdom, protected by its state guard - the police-bureaucratic system of the Nikolaev autocracy.

In the "Provincial Essays" there are relatively few pictures that give direct image peasant-serf life. Only a few times, and then in passing, with the exception of only the stories "Vladimir Konstantinovich Buerakin" and "Arinushka", the sale of people, the cruel treatment of the landowners with the courtyards and peasants, and some inhuman forms of their forced labor are pointed out. This circumstance is explained by two reasons. On the one hand, life in the non-noble, non-gentry Vyatka could not supply Saltykov with a supply of necessary observations. And on the other hand - and this is the main thing - 1856-1857, when the Essays were written and printed, were the years of peasant unrest and panic rumors among the landowners about the upcoming abolition of serfdom. In accordance with the instructions of the authorities, the editor of Russkiy Vestnik, Katkov, sought to prevent any allusions to the position of serfs and, moreover, the depiction of their struggle with their oppressors, with the class of landlords, on the pages of his journal.

For all that, the accusatory pathos and the main socio-political tendency of the "Provincial Essays" are imbued with anti-serfdom, anti-noble content, reflect the struggle of the masses against the age-old bondage of feudal enslavement. Together with "Poshekhonskaya antiquity", which ended the creative and life path of the writer, "Provincial Essays" are among the largest anti-serf works in Russian literature.

Lenin wrote: “Tsarist autocracy is the autocracy of officials. The tsarist autocracy is the serfdom of the people on the officials and most of all on the police. The angle of attack chosen by Saltykov in his attack on the pre-reform bureaucracy allowed him to show with all persuasiveness that the Nikolaev state administration - the administration of Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky and Derzhimord - could grow only in an atmosphere of serfdom, economic basis which was the forced labor of the serfs, and psychological essence- the complete humiliation of the personality of some, forced to obey, and the unlimited arbitrariness of others, intended, in the name of preserving the existing order, to crush those subject to them.

Exposing the provincial underside of the front "empire of facades" of Nicholas I, drawing all these administrators - "mischievous" and "living throats", officials - bribe takers and embezzlers of public funds, rapists and slanderers, ridiculous and semi-idiotic governors, Saltykov denounced not just bad and incapable people dressed in uniforms. With his satire, he put to pillory the entire serf system and generated by it, according to Herzen's definition, "civilian clergy, serving as priests in the courts and police and sucking the blood of the people with thousands of mouths, greedy and unclean" .

The same Herzen characterized the people of the "noble Russian class" as "drunken officers, bullies, card players, heroes of fairs, hounds, brawlers, sequins, seralniks", and "beautiful" Manilovs, doomed to extinction. Saltykov, as it were, embodies these Herzenian definitions, which subsequently attracted the attention of Lenin, into a series of completed artistic images or sketches.

The retired lieutenant Zhivnovsky, who drank himself in circles and embarked on "projecting"; Ms. Muzovkina, an extortionist and litigator; the “most educated” landowner-rapist Nalyotov, “guilty of the murder of a Chernoborskaya petty-bourgeois girl”; "sentimental brawler" Zabiyakin, always ready to "bleed" his neighbor; swindler and sharper Gorehvastov; finally, the "talented natures" - Korepanov, Luzgin, Buerakin - who failed to find a socially useful application for their abilities, lost all their living principles and plunged into the mire of trifles and idle dreaminess - these are the main figures in the "group portrait" of the Russian local nobility, created in the "Provincial essays".

In this "portrait" the "upper class of society" is nowhere, never once shown in the flowering of noble culture, as in some works of Turgenev and Tolstoy. Everywhere it is only a brute, coercive force, or an exhausted, useless force.

The deeply critical depiction of the Russian nobility in the Gubernskie Essays marked the beginning of Saltykov's remarkable chronicle of the collapse of the ruling class of old Russia. From now on, the writer kept this “chronicle” without interruption, right up to the dying “Poshekhonskaya antiquity”.

Attributing everything positive in "Essays" to the people, the people's camp, and everything negative to the camp against the people, Saltykov clearly showed on which side his sympathies and antipathies are.

For all that, behind the deeply humane people-loving motives and intentions of the writer, there was not yet in the Essays a fully matured, thoroughly thought-out social program. The main thing was that Saltykov's democracy was still deprived at that time of the consciousness of its unity with the peasant revolution. The writer will come to this consciousness at a later stage of his biography - at the stage of ideological rapprochement with Chernyshevsky's Sovremennik. In the meantime, Saltykov is trying to replace this lack of real support for his democracy with hopes that the government itself, the power itself, proclaiming a liberal course, can come to help the peasantry, the people - not yet ready at this stage of their development for independent struggle. Only they - in the then view of Saltykov - are able to protect "Ivanushki" from the class-egoistic claims of a well-organized noble-landlord force.

The theoretical source that fueled these delusions was Saltykov's misunderstanding of the class nature of the state. It was not his individual fault. Such a misunderstanding was, in one form or another, inherent in all enlighteners and utopian socialists. Considering the supreme power that has historically developed in Russia as a force that stood above society, Herzen wrote in 1862: “Imperial power in our country is only power, that is, strength, organization, furnishing; there is no content in it, duties do not lie on it, it can become a Tatar khanate and the French Committee of Public Safety - was not Pugachev the Emperor Peter III?

Saltykov, like Herzen, drew the same erroneous conclusions from these erroneous theoretical premises, that Alexander II, who announced the forthcoming transformations, would go so far in them that he could "start the human era in Russian development." Hence the calls to honestly and competently serve the government, to help it in its "fight against the evil" of the feudal system.

“I dare to think,” Saltykov programmatically finished his “Introduction” to “Essays” in 1856, “that all of us, from young to old, seeing that stubborn and unceasing struggle against evil undertaken by those in whose hands the fate of Russia is kept, - we are all obliged, to the best of our ability, to contribute to this struggle and facilitate it.

Such a position - Saltykov abandoned it in the coming years, but was able to remove the quoted words from the work only in 1864, when the 3rd edition of the Essays was needed - was not only acceptable, but also desirable for the government, forced in a crisis regime, after the Crimean War, seek support and assistance in the liberal circles of society. There is nothing surprising, therefore, that the representatives of the so-called governmental liberalism, including Tsar Alexander II himself and his Minister of the Interior S. S. Lanskoy, as well as the later famous leader of the peasant reform N. A. Milyutin, are a “red bureaucrat”, like his called in the protective camp - at first they all found it useful to work containing ( it was about the magazine editorial) not only criticism of the shortcomings of the "state machine", but also calls to assist the government in establishing it, to cooperate with the authorities.

When, at the end of 1856, at the insistence of the Minister of Justice, the extreme reactionary Count V. N. Panin, the “Provincial Essays” were “thrown at the discretion of the sovereign,” he responded that he “rejoices at the appearance of such works in literature.” And in 1858, approving the report of Lansky, who represented Saltykov for the post of vice-governor in Ryazan, Alexander II, in response to the minister’s remark, with which he wanted to protect himself, “this is the same Saltykov who writes and so on. ", said: "And fine; let him go to serve, but do it himself as he writes.

Liberals could and did find in the Essays statements similar to their mottos. But, in essence, Saltykov filled these calls with content other than liberal ideologists and politicians. The government of Alexander II, with its slogans of “renewal activity,” could find, and found in the Essays, grounds for appointing their author to a responsible administrative post. But it was not an ordinary tsarist official who went to Ryazan, the conductor of the next government course, but a kind of utopian official, eager to practically participate in the work for the benefit of the people, hoping to bring him this benefit in the field of state-administrative activity.

In order to correctly imagine the nature of the impact of the first major work of Saltykov on his contemporaries, it is necessary to point out one important circumstance. The reformist illusions in the Essays - what in them belongs not to democracy, but to liberalism - are actually embodied only in the image of the "author of the notes", an image that is largely subjective. It is the reasoning and remarks of Nikolai Ivanovich Shchedrin, relating to the search for a social cause, "practice", that sin with formulations, the political meaning of which does not go beyond liberalism.

But in general, with all the objective artistic content of his “Essays”, Saltykov not only rejects the liberal-enlightenment idealization of the state-administrative apparatus of the autocracy and stigmatizes its servants-officials in a series of accusatory “biographies”, but also sharply contrasts the noble-landlord and bureaucratic-state pathos " state Russia“democratic feeling of immediate love for the motherland and for its simple working people.

And, of course, the huge success of the "Provincial Essays" when they appeared was not explained by the author's calls to promote the reform initiatives of the authorities. Such appeals were heard at that time from all sides. The main reason for the success was the strength of the impression of Saltykov's criticism of modern Russian life - criticism, rich in thought, and the reliability of realistic observations of reality, and the inner fire of persuasion, and the artistic brightness of colors, and the lyricism of indignation.

In the atmosphere of the beginning of a democratic upsurge and excitement, the Provincial Essays immediately became a central literary and social phenomenon.

Already in his response to the first four "provincial" essays that had just appeared, Chernyshevsky, with his characteristic instinct for the socio-political situation, expressed "confidence" that "the public will reward the author with its sympathy." As the next books of the Russkiy Vestnik are published, Chernyshevsky notes in brief mentions the steady growth of the public interest predicted by him in Saltykov's stories. And the article, specially devoted to "Essays", he begins with the recognition of the universality and enormous success of Saltykov's accusatory work.

Dobrolyubov also begins his article on Saltykov's work with the statement that the Essays "were met with enthusiastic approval by the entire Russian public."

"Russian Messenger" goes uphill<…>especially in the last books, - M. S. Shchepkin informs his son, - “Provincial essays” are extremely lively and true - they are now a general rumor. "The reading world is busy<…>"Russian Bulletin", where Shchedrin's "Provincial Essays" are published. He is already being put above Gogol ... ”- E. A. Stackenschneider writes in his diary on December 28, 1856. “The other day I saw Saltykov, the author of the Provincialessays ”, making a splash, ”writes I. S. Turgenev in Paris on January 20, 1857 M. N. Longinov. “The success of the Russian Messenger is incredible, unprecedented,” informs A.I. Herzen in a letter dated February 28, N.A. Melgunov and explains: “But do you know why? By the grace of Shchedrin (provincial< !>essays)…”

Very soon, the ever-increasing success of the Essays paves the way for them and to grassroots reader- first to the capital. About the "perfect delight" of this reader - "Petersburg lovers and lovers of pleasant, fascinating, but at the same time extremely satirical reading" - one of the secret agents informs the III Department in a note dated October 26, 1857. At the same time, he adds: "Oh Saltykov, in general, many here are of the opinion that if he gives even more freedom to his pen and censorship does not shorten his impulses, then he can imperceptibly become the second Iskander.

From the capitals, the success of the Essays quickly spread throughout Russia. Having just returned from abroad, Leo Tolstoy - he stayed there for half a year - first of all takes up reading the first two volumes of the Essays, published in his absence, rumors about which met him at home, and perhaps among Russians abroad. He enters in his diary an entry about his first impressions: “At home, I read. Saltykov talent, serious.

On the way from exile to his homeland, Taras Shevchenko hurries to get acquainted with the "Essays" on the Volga steamer. The great Ukrainian democrat is strongly impressed by Saltykov's defense of the working people, the peasant - "the abused dumb stink" - from the tsarist officials, "these soulless, cold, these disgusting harpies."

L. F. Panteleev, S. N. Egorov, N. A. Belogolovy, V. I. Taneev and other memoirists.

Naturally, the keenest interest was shown in the "Essays" in that city and in that province, which gave the writer a vital basis for most of the images and pictures of the work. M. I. Shemanovsky, an institute comrade of N. A. Dobrolyubov, wrote to him from Vyatka in March 1859 that the Essays were “known throughout the Vyatka province”, known even to “station wardens and postal drivers”.

The consequence of the extraordinary success of the Essays was that the hitherto unknown name of Saltykov, or, more correctly here, Shchedrin, immediately became one of the most popular and became in line with the names of the then literary luminaries - Turgenev and Goncharov, Tolstoy and Grigorovich.

Actors from both capitals, as well as provinces, including such famous ones as Shchepkin, Sadovsky and P. Grigoriev, ask Saltykov for permission to stage scenes and monologues from his Essays on their anniversaries, or dramatizations of his stories, and these performances with They are also successful in the Moscow Maly Theater and in the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, as well as in the theaters of Kazan, Yaroslavl, Tomsk and other cities. The well-known artist E. E. Bernardsky expresses a desire - it is rejected by Saltykov - to engrave and publish his portrait. From the second half of 1857, the weekly magazine Son of the Fatherland started a special department of illustrations for Essays. Separate editions of the work - the first sold out within one month - are given as a reward to students at annual acts in gymnasiums. Reports of "Essays", then selective, and soon complete translations of the work appear in the West - in English, Italian, German, French, Polish, Hungarian and Czech.

The editorial offices of almost all metropolitan magazines invite Saltykov to their staff. Responding to the proposals made, he participates or agrees to participate in eight journals and collections: "Russian Bulletin", "Library for Reading", "Contemporary", "Athene", "Russian conversation", "Molva", in conceived but not implemented the satirical newspaper Pravda by Nekrasov and the Orlovsky Collection by his friend I.V. Pavlov. The editor of the well-known magazine “Son of the Fatherland” at that time, A. V. Starchevsky, is also busy with attracting him to cooperation. And when Iv. Panaev, who, at the insistence of Chernyshevsky, tried to “acquire Shchedrin” for Sovremennik, failed to bring the negotiations to a practical result, Nekrasov himself came to visit Saltykov in the summer of 1857, having just returned from abroad, where he had spent almost a year .

In the extreme right-wing circles of the government and society, more than once attempts were made to stop or at least stop the noisy procession around the country of the “court adviser Shchedrin” with his “Essays”. At the same time, for intimidation, analogies with Herzen and his "Bell" were more than once launched. General and publicist N. B. Gersevanov saw in the author of "Essays" "an imitator of the brilliant fanatic Diderot." The head of the Vilna gendarmerie district, Kutsinsky, referred Saltykov to "home Herzens, who are almost more dangerous than London." Minister of Justice Count V. N. Panin also argued that the direction of the "Provincial essays" "will lead to the articles of Herzen." The head of the censorship of the book. P. A. Vyazemsky drew the attention of the tsar himself to the “extremely accusatory tone” of Saltykov’s book in his “most submissive report”. However, in the midst of a "crisis at the top" and liberal maneuvering of power, attempts by individual representatives of the reaction to impose a ban on the distribution of Saltykov's incriminating work remained practically ineffectual.

The huge success of the Essays was a real force, around which and for the possession of which a struggle immediately arose among the then social groups and trends. This struggle gave rise, in particular, to a rather extensive critical literature- extensive, however, in terms of the number of titles, and not in terms of the volume and solidity of the articles. Not only in the capitals, but also in the provinces, there was no magazine or newspaper (with literary sections) that would not have published articles, notes on "essays" or some reader's response. Even the official organ "Russian Invalid" and the foreign official newspaper "Le Nord" published articles about the work of the "young author of the Gogol school".

The press greeted the "Essays" laudatory. Single exceptions only set off the dominant tone of recognition. And in his own way, the critic V. R. Zotov was right when he remarked about one negative review: “For Mr. Shchedrin’s full fame, until now, only a detractor of his book was missing. Mr. N. B<унако>took on this role."

However, behind the outward unity of praise and approval of the Essays, there were deep fundamental differences in the approach to the work. The complexity of the ideological struggle was reflected in the originality of critical assessments.

The second half of the 50s, on the eve of the revolutionary situation and the fall of serfdom, was a time of rapid ideological formation and, at the same time, the beginning of a demarcation of the two main trends in Russian social thought. mid-nineteenth in. - bourgeois-gentry liberalism and peasant democracy.

Both liberals and democrats really welcomed and highly appreciated the work, which captured the attention of all reading Russia. But they assessed it from different positions and defined its main political trend in different ways: some - as leading to the camp of liberal "renovators" of the existing system, others - to the camp of fighters for the complete decisive transformation of this system.

Hence such a picture, which at first glance is difficult to explain, when among the figures who welcomed the "Provincial essays" in the press and outside it, we see representatives of the most diverse classes and socio-political groups of that time: the peasant democrats Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, the noble liberals Druzhinin and Bezobrazov, the Slavophiles Konstantin Aksakov and Koshelev, the opponent of accusatory literature of Leo Tolstoy, the "soil" Dostoevsky, the millionaire farmer Kokorev, the priest-publicist Bellyustin, finally Tsar Alexander II and other leaders of government liberalism.

To correctly understand this picture, it is necessary to take into account one more significant circumstance.

The "Provincial Essays", created in parts over a period of about fifteen months (and not three or four, as is usually reported), are by no means a work written in one key and in a single key. On the contrary, they clearly show (especially if you read the stories in the order in which they were written) the development of the views, ideas, artistic method of the writer, and very intensive, at this time of rapidly developing social events, into the stream of which the writer plunged headlong, passionately searching for his place in modern times.

It is necessary to take into account the dynamics of Saltykov's ideological and artistic path during the period of writing and printing the Essays in any appeal to the judgments of his contemporaries about his first book. After all, the vast majority of these judgments do not apply to the entire work, but to its individual sections and even single stories and images. And these judgments were made in a rapidly changing social environment. It is obvious that one-sided generalization of such particular judgments is impossible. One of the most revealing "curves" in creative history"Essays" is a decline, the fading in them of lines connected - ideologically and stylistically - with the so-called accusatory literature and its political equivalent, reformism.

Accusatory literature, the "initiator" and "patriarch" of which contemporaries unanimously, but unfoundedly considered Saltykov with his "Essays", arose as one of the forms of the liberal movement of the mid-late 50s, during the acute crisis of the autocratic-feudal regime. At that time it was part of the general system of the bourgeois-democratic opposition to this regime and was historically progressive. The revolutionary democrats Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, Herzen and Shevchenko welcomed the "accusers". Documentary vivid pictures of bureaucratic arbitrariness and embezzlement, appearing from the pen of a whole army of accusatory writers - Elagin and Selivanov, Melnikov-Pechersky and Lvov and many others - were eagerly read by the entire grassroots literate Russia. From the point of view of the revolutionary democrats, these denunciations, although their authors did not connect the pictures of arbitrariness and robbery they drew with the general political order of the then Russia, were a good agitational tool in preparing the struggle against the autocratic-landowner system.

But soon the situation changed.

After the well-known tsarist rescripts of November and December 1857, which signaled the government's practical approach to the peasant reform, the political situation in the country began to heat up rapidly. Under the conditions of a sharp intensification of the class struggle, in the conditions of an imminent revolutionary situation, the liberal movement began to gradually turn into a support for government and landowner reaction.

On the other hand, the government of Alexander II and the liberals, who had previously seen in denunciations of private abuses and individual holders of power a kind of valve for weakening the power of democratic criticism of the regime, strengthened in these positions. They would like to pay off the revolution, which was already knocking at the door, by "glasnost", "accusation". Hence the encouragement of "accusers" in liberal criticism and "from above".

The first stories of Saltykov's "Essays", which later became part of the "Past Times" section and were close to them, were really involved in "accusatory" literature, which Turgenev also called "correctional" and "police", and Dobrolyubov (later) - "legal". These stories are completely immersed in the rough and dirty world of bureaucratic arbitrariness and lawlessness, which are still drawn mainly from the outside: the motifs of bribes, extortion, and slander developed here were indeed characteristic of the “accusatory genre”.

However, in subsequent "essays" Saltykov will already set himself the task of highlighting the world of bureaucratic arbitrariness and theft not from the outside, only from the side of criminally punishable or morally condemned facts, as in the "clerk's stories", but from within. He will deal, especially intently in the story "The First Step", one of the best in the "Essays", with material conditions and the psychology of bureaucratic life that depends on them, which the "denunciators" did not do. Thus, he will lead the reader to the question of the root causes of the corruption and incapacity of the administration in then Russia. As an artist, he will provide a lot of material that allows us to see these reasons not in particular, individual, but in general - in the imperfection of the entire existing “order of things” (which Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov emphasize in their reviews in the first place). At the same time, expanding the artistic canvas of the work wider and wider, Saltykov will begin to fill it more and more densely with the image of not only bureaucratic, but all of "provincial" and "district" Russia - landowner-noble, merchant-commercial, petty-bourgeois, and most importantly, people -peasant - serf, schismatic, wanderer, guarded.

The democratic stream, which made its way in the first "essays" through accusatory description of everyday life ("daguerreotypes") and reformist hopes, turned into a strong stream that filled the main images of the work with deep content. And if the first volume of "Essays" was still really more than anything a book about bad bureaucracy and contained recipes for its correction, then in the second and third volumes Saltykov rose to deeply critical, artistically generalized images of all-powerful bureaucracy and irresponsible administration, useless in building a new life for noble landlords. and yet mute, oppressed, but rich hidden forces people.

Liberal criticism most enthusiastically welcomed the early stories in the Essays, finding and one-sidedly generalizing in them, as in other stories, the material that was close to its own position. The first to speak publicly with a critical analysis of the “Essays” - “Introduction” and the first seven stories that began printing, was A. V. Druzhinin, a noble liberal, an advocate of “light”, “soothing” art. In his article, published in the December 1856 issue of the Library for Reading, Saltykov received both compliments and warnings, in which there was a censure. The critic praised the author for looking at "official interests" with the "eye of a useful and practical official." “The reader sees and understands very well,” wrote Druzhinin, “that the hand that sketched a portrait of some harmful Porfiry Petrovich will be able to catch Porfiry Petrovich in life, take him by the collar and bring him to justice, in spite of all the intrigues of the guilty.” At the same time, Druzhinin warned Saltykov, already foreseeing the depth of his future social criticism, that he "could go into a one-sided view", become a completely "didactician" and get away from Pushkin's precepts of "artistry", poetry, in the name of "one-sidedly" understood Gogol.

Liberal criticism looked or preferred to look at Saltykov's book, proceeding mainly from the declaration proclaimed by him in the "Introduction" of assistance to the government in its "fight against evil."

The objective artistic content of the work, which denied this reformist declaration, was either hushed up or, following Druzhinin, was interpreted as "one-sidedness" and "didactics."

The view of liberals who wanted to limit the strength and depth of Saltykov's criticism of reality to the framework of reformist ideology and reconciling satire, which would balance "good" and "evil", was vividly expressed by one of the representatives of this circle, M.F. years of the literary salon. In a letter to Ya. P. Polonsky dated October 7/19, 1857, devoted to accusatory literature, she wrote: “If Gogol had not had so many and often mediocre followers, his satire would have been more useful. But diluted with water, his caustic medicines lost their strength. Shchedrin updated his methods with his well-aimed essays, but even behind him a phalanx of imitators will destroy his good influence, and he himself repeats himself too often. Having performed the operation, one should pour clean water over the wound, and not poison it with a caustic substance. Rather live.<…> We have evil only mold, which can be removed with a spoon. For this operation, our two Gogarts, Gogol and Shchedrin, are sufficient.

Why, after reading the sermons of English literature, something seems to be added to the soul, why do you look at life somehow more cheerfully and more willingly? Is it not because English writers, next to the sad picture of human vices, also present other, more comforting ones: from these opposites, the colors of both become brighter and evil seems more disgusting. In our country, when reading Essays, you forget that there are good people in the world ... "

Thus, the recognition of what was in the Essays as a transient weakness of the democratic writer was interrupted by hostility to what was in them a force that foreshadowed the future power of Saltykov's satire.

The revolutionary democrats Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov saw and explained to Russian society, and partly to Saltykov himself, this leading force of a talent that had not yet fully matured and realized itself.

At the same time, they put the accusatory work of the writer who returned from exile into the ranks of the struggle against the existing order in Russia.

Chernyshevsky wrote an article about the first two volumes Provincial essays. Dobrolyubov, as if continuing the critical analysis that had begun, about the third volume. Both articles appeared in Sovremennik in 1857; the first - in June, the second - in December. In addition, both Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov left a number of comments about the Essays in their other articles, as well as in letters. These reviews date back to 1856–1861. They show that, in the context of the rapidly developing events of this turbulent five-year period, the perception and evaluation of the socially acute work by the leaders of Sovremennik did not take shape immediately and were far from immobility. This can be seen especially clearly in the remarks of Dobrolyubov scattered in his articles of 1858-1861. This dynamics is an undeniable fact that must be taken into account in order not to generalize one-sidedly individual, sometimes polemically pointed judgments relating to different times and associated with specific facts of the ideological struggle of the era (especially with the disputes of 1859 about accusatory literature).

In 1856, both Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov gave exceptionally high marks to the Gubernsky Essays. They did not then consider Saltykov their complete adherent. The leaders of Sovremennik understood that the author of the Essays still believed in the peaceful paths of progress, while they believed in the revolution. He also appealed to the supreme power, and they appealed to the masses. Saltykov optimistically believed that the orders he denounced were already doomed to death by the reforms announced by the government. He called these orders "past times" and even gave them a "funeral" in the final essay "The Road". The leaders of Sovremennik, who did not believe in reforms and were on a course to disrupt them, condemned these naive illusions. Chernyshevsky's article initially ended with a "severe censure" of this "important mistake, or shortcoming, or delusion" of the author of the Essays, who hastened with his "funeral wishes." For tactical reasons, so as not to alienate the writer who came to see him from Sovremennik, Chernyshevsky refrained from publishing his "severe censure." He crossed out this passage in the proofs when signing the article for publication. Dobrolyubov, less prone to tactical compromises than Chernyshevsky, nonetheless pointed out to Saltykov this "important mistake." However, he already had the opportunity to recall it as a mistake, to some extent understood by the writer. “No further than last year,” Dobrolyubov wrote, “Mr. Shchedrin himself buried the past. But here again, all the dead turned out to be alive and responded in a loud voice in the third part of the Essays and in other literary works of recent times.

The reformist hopes in the "Provincial Essays" did not prevent Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov from giving the work a high appraisal from the point of view of the main political tasks facing the emerging camp of Russian revolutionary democracy. In the objective artistic content of the Essays, they saw not just a denunciation of "bad" officials in order to replace them with "good" ones, and not everyday memoirs about provincial life, but a work rich in social criticism. This deep criticism and the heat of indignation that permeated it were, in the opinion of the leaders of Sovremennik, an effective weapon in the struggle against the autocratic-landowner system. And they brilliantly used this weapon. At the same time, all the socio-political issues and goals of the articles by Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov were posed and developed by them not in external connection with the work in question (“criticism about”), but based on an analysis of artistic material, based on the astutely guessed originality of Saltykov’s realism and creative individuality. a writer who has not yet fully unfolded in his first major work.

Chernyshevsky's article opened with words about the "spirit of truth" that fills the work - the truth is "very lively", "very important" and "often very bitter." Gogol paved the way for depicting the "bitter truth" of Russian reality in literature. And Chernyshevsky immediately defines Saltykov as a follower and successor, in new historical conditions, Gogol's realism. Then Chernyshevsky poses questions: with what feeling should one look at the negative heroes of the Essays, should one hate or pity them? “Is it necessary to consider them people as bad by nature, or to believe that their bad qualities developed as a result of certain circumstances, regardless of their will”?

These questions contain the formulation of the main task that the critic set for himself: to show the indissoluble connection drawn in the "Essays" pictures of bureaucratic arbitrariness and robbery, landlord arbitrariness and violence with the general order of the then Russia.

The main thesis of Dobrolyubov's article is also in line with the same theme about the socio-political conditioning, psychology and actions of the heroes of the Essays. The wording of the thesis reads: Russian society played in some way a talented nature.

In the images of “talented natures” created by Saltykov, personifying the sad fate of people who do not look at life realistically, but through the prism of their imagination and idle dreaminess, Dobrolyubov saw a vivid reflection of the “dominant character of the then Russian society”, saw criticism of the impotence of noble liberalism. Dobrolyubov took advantage of this artistic criticism for a harsh journalistic trial of society, which at that very time, after the tsarist rescripts, which meant the government’s practical approach to the peasant reform, was taking the first steps along the path of “treason of liberalism” (Lenin), on the path of turning away from the recent enthusiastic sympathy for all "reforms" and "progress" to support the existing system, to participate in the development and promotion of protective ideology.

Thus, the leaders of Sovremennik pursued, in their speeches about the Gubernskie Essays, primarily journalistic goals. They drew political conclusions from a work of art. And these were revolutionary-democratic conclusions. It turned out to be possible to draw such conclusions only because, already in his first book, Saltykov clearly revealed the position of the writer, who acts not only as an “explainer”, but also as a judge and “director” of life - towards broad democratic ideals; he showed himself to be an innovative artist in his approach to the depiction of social evil and the "disorganization of life."

The political aims of the articles by Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov did not hinder, but helped them to give a profound explanation of all these questions, which already pertain to literary analysis works.

“He is a predominantly mournful and indignant writer,” Chernyshevsky defined the image of the author of the Essays. But Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov saw the main originality of Saltykov's talent in the writer's ability to portray the "environment", the material and spiritual conditions of the life of society, in its ability to guess and reveal the features of social psychology in the characters and behavior of both individuals and entire socio-political groups. It was this originality of the realism of the Essays that allowed the leaders of Sovremennik to use Saltykov's denunciations to propagate the revolutionary democratic educational thesis: "Remove harmful circumstances, and a person's mind will quickly brighten and his character will be ennobled."

“Gogol,” wrote Herzen, “raised one side of the curtain and showed us the Russian bureaucracy in all its ugliness; but Gogol involuntarily reconciles with laughter: his enormous comic talent prevails over indignation.

In Saltykov, on the contrary, already in his first book, despite the lyricism of many pages, indignation prevails, and this indignation, together with the writer’s new approach to depicting the “vices and evils of life”, which he sees not in the depravity of individual people, but in nature social order, gave Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov grounds to see in the Essays qualitatively new elements in the development of Russian critical realism. “Shchedrin,” Chernyshevsky pointed out, “does not look at bribery so instinctively - read his stories “Inept” and “Mischiefs”, and you will see that he understands very well where bribery comes from, what facts it is supported by, what facts it could would be exterminated. In Gogol you will not find anything like the thoughts that permeate these stories.

And Dobrolyubov, developing and summarizing these observations, but already in comparing the realism of Shchedrin in "Essays" with the realism of not Gogol, but Turgenev, indicates that the "Turgenev school" failed to take advantage of the "good and very strong" motive put forward by it: "environment seizes person." “The image of the “environment,” says Dobrolyubov, took over the Shchedrin school…»

Thus, in the articles and individual statements of the leaders of Sovremennik about the Provincial Essays, the most correct revolutionary-democratic interpretation of the work itself was given for its time. At the same time, on the basis of his material, important questions were raised for the further development of the literature of Russian critical realism.

In conversations with his friend N. A. Belogolov, Saltykov told him that upon his return from Vyatka to St. Petersburg, he felt that "Chernyshevsky's consistent and convinced logic did not remain without influence on him." There is no doubt that this recognition also applies to Chernyshevsky's thoughts about the "Provincial Essays" - a work that was destined to immediately receive recognition as one of the major phenomena of Russian literature.

“Provincial essays,” Chernyshevsky ended his article, “are proud and will be proud of our literature for a long time. In every decent person of the Russian land, Shchedrin has a deep admirer. Honestly, his name is among the best, and the most useful, and the most gifted children of our Motherland. He will find many panegyricists for himself, and he is worthy of all panegyrics. No matter how high the praises for his talent and knowledge, his honesty and insight, with which our colleagues in journalism will hasten to glorify him, we say in advance that all these praises will not exceed the merits of the book he wrote.

With this assessment, the "Provincial Essays" entered the great Russian literature, with this assessment they live in it to this day.

This edition of the "Provincial Essays" has been prepared on the basis of a study of all handwritten and printed sources of the text of the work. This principle was first implemented by B. M. Eikhenbaum and K. I. Khalabaev in the publication of “Provincial Essays” in 1933 (N. Shchedrin, Poln. sobr. soch, Goslitizdat, vol. II). However, in accordance with the tendency characteristic of Soviet textual criticism of the 1920s and 1930s to return the text to the original sources, the editors introduced a number of passages from the manuscripts into the work, which Saltykov himself removed for reasons not only of self-censorship, but also for artistic reasons. In addition, the textual value of the 1933 edition turned out to be reduced due to a significant number of misprints and erroneous readings of individual words (more than a hundred).

Of the manuscripts relating to the "Provincial Essays", not much has been preserved. Only four autographs have come down to us. All of them are stored in the Department of Manuscripts of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad:

1. “The first story of the clerk” and “The second story of the clerk” (in one autograph). White manuscript edited in pencil and ink.

2. Khreptyugin and his family. A white manuscript, which, however, has been turned into a rough draft by many corrections and insertions.

3. “Last night was so quiet…” A sketch (possibly an independent literary concept), part of the text of which is used in the essay “Boredom”. White manuscript with corrections.

4. "Elder". The beginning of the original edition under the title "Melchizedek". White manuscript with corrections.

"Provincial Essays" were first published in the Moscow journal "Russian Messenger" for the second half of 1856. This publication included twenty "essays" out of the future thirty-three.

At the beginning of 1857, "Provincial Essays" came out first separate edition in two volumes (“In the printing house of Katkov and Co.” Moscow. Censored date - January 11, 1857). The work was published in the magazine signed by N. Shchedrin. In a separate edition, this pseudonym, unknown to anyone then, was revealed and at the same time it was given the meaning of the image of the narrator, on whose behalf the narration is being conducted. on the cover and title page was marked: “Provincial essays. From the notes of a retired court adviser Shchedrin. Collected and published by M. E. Saltykov.

In a separate edition, the author introduced an additional three "essays", which originally appeared in the same "Russian Bulletin", but after the printing of the "magazine edition" of 1856 had ended there. Thus, the total number of "essays" was increased to twenty-three . At the same time, Saltykov changed their sequence and grouped the material into seven thematic sections. In addition, some banknotes of censored origin were eliminated from the text of the "journal edition" of 1856. The number of restorations of the author's text turned out to be extremely insignificant (Saltykov additionally restored something in the 3rd separate edition - 1864). Meanwhile, there is a version, dating back to Saltykov himself, according to which the "Provincial Essays" suffered greatly from censorship. In 1861, the writer stated in a conversation with a certain D. A. Byrdin that "many essays" were not published in the journal due to circumstances beyond the author's control. And in the mid-80s, in a conversation with L. F. Panteleev, then recorded by him in a “memorable book”, Saltykov said that “a third” of essays were thrown out, and added that “proofreading without omissions should have been preserved » .

There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of these testimonies, although "corrections without gaps" could not be found. But the evidence cited must be properly interpreted. For this, two factors must be taken into account.

Firstly, the indication that “about a third” was omitted from the “Provincial Essays” refers, as follows from L.F. Panteleev’s entry, not to the final corpus of the work, but to the “journal edition” of 1856, which, as said, included only twenty "essays". If these twenty "essays" really amounted to only two-thirds of what Saltykov intended to publish in 1856, then it turns out that the "thrown out" third included about ten "essays", if the account went to "essays", or about six printed sheets, the format of the Russkiy Vestnik, if volume was meant.

Secondly, there can hardly be any doubt that Saltykov nevertheless printed what was "thrown out", and, moreover, very soon. We do not have data to document this material in the writer's writings. But one should look for it among those "essays", also "provincial", which appeared in print immediately after 1856. There are sixteen such "essays". They can be divided into four groups. The first group is formed by "essays" "First Step", "Mischievous" and "Torn", written in 1856, but first published in the January book of "Russian Messenger" for 1857. These are the same three "essays" with which Saltykov supplemented "journal edition" of 1856 at the first separate edition of the work. Politically the most acute - in them the satirist began his merciless criticism of the state apparatus of tsarism - these "essays" could, of course, arouse fears on the part of the censor N. F. Kruse or the editor of the journal. The second group - ten "essays", published in the "Russian Bulletin" from April to August 1857 and published in October in a separate, third volume. The next, third group is represented by just one "essay" - "The Petitioners" ("Provincial Scenes"). This sharp satire on the highest provincial administration was originally published in the May issue of the Library for Reading magazine for 1857 and then was also introduced into the third volume. Finally, the last fourth group make up those two "essays" - "The arrival of the auditor" and "Christmas story" - which were not included in a separate edition of "Provincial essays", although by all indications they belonged to this cycle and were later included in another book - in the collection "Innocent Stories" . Exact dates the writings of all the “essays” mentioned are unknown, and it is precisely this circumstance that does not allow us to name with complete certainty among them those that, as one might think, were originally included in the “journal edition” of 1856, but were withdrawn from it and printed somewhat later (to be maybe in a slightly softened form) in the same "Russian Bulletin" and in other journals.

The first separate edition of "Provincial Essays" sold out within a month. Such a success, exceptional for that time, prompted Katkov, who funded the publication, to repeat it, and Saltykov himself to continue working on the work.

In July 1857 in Moscow, at the Katkov printing house, “ second edition" " Provincial essays”, like the first one, in two volumes; no changes were made to the text by the author. In October 1857, the third volume was published, consisting of ten "essays", among which, along with new ones, there could be those previously written, but not included in the publication of 1856 (the censored date of the third volume is September 7, 1857. ).

At the end of 1863, Saltykov prepared for publication third separate edition. It was published at the beginning of the next year, 1864, in St. Petersburg by N. Tiblen - in two volumes (censored date of vol. I - December 30, vol. II - December 21, 1863). This edition for the first time included all thirty-three "essays". In addition, the third edition differed from the first two editions by a new rearrangement of the material, now arranged not in seven, but in nine sections.

The changes that the author made to the composition and composition of the “Provincial Essays” on the way from the first printed journal publications to the third separate edition of the work, in which it finally (with the exception of some trifles) took shape in textual and structural terms, are visible from the table below. The Roman numerals in it repeat the numbering of the "essays" in journal publications of 1856-1857. Direct Arabic numerals indicate the order of the "essays" that was established by the author for the first and second separate editions of 1857; italic Arabic numerals are for the third separate edition in 1864. This order was no longer changed.

First printed publication in Russkiy Vestnik. August-December 1856

The first and second separate editions are in two volumes. January and July 1857

I 1 1 "Instead of an introduction." In 4th ed.; "Introduction".

II 2 2 “Past times. (The story of the clerk). Starting from the 1st ed.: "The first story of the clerk."

III 15 20 "Unskillful".

IV 3 3 “Past times. (Another story of a clerk). Starting from the 1st ed.: "Second story of the clerk" "Russian Messenger", vol. 4, 1856, August, book. 2

V 10 15 “Profitable marriage. Dramatic Scenes.

VI 6 6 "Porfiry Petrovich".

VII 18 27 "In prison". Starting from the 1st ed.: "First Visit". "Russian Messenger", vol. 5, 1856, September, book. 2

VIII 5 5 “Dreams and hopes at the station, or a deceived lieutenant. (Road scene)." Starting from the 1st ed.: "Deceived Lieutenant".

IX 7 7 "Princess Anna Lvovna".

X 12 17 Boredom. Thinking out loud". From 1st ed.: Boredom. "Russian Messenger", vol. 5, 1856, October, book. 2

XI 21 30 "Elder".

XII 4 4 "Still past times." From 1st ed.: "Unpleasant Visit".

XIII 11 16 “What is commerce. Dramatic Scenes. "Russian Messenger", vol. 6, 1856, November, book. 2

XIV 8 25 "Vladimir Konstantinovich Buerakin".

XV 19 28 “In prison. Second visit. Starting from the 1st ed.: "Second Visit".

XVII 13 18 "1. Folk Holidays. In 1st and 2nd ed.: "A Wonderful Boy"; in the 3rd and 4th - "Christmas Tree".

XVII 14 19 "2. Christ is risen!".

XVIII 9 8 "A pleasant family."

XIX 23 33 “Road. instead of an epilogue. "Russian Messenger", vol. 6, 1856, December, book. 2

The third volume, supplementary to the two volumes of the first and second separate editions. October 1857

I 22 32 "First step".

II 16 21 "Mischievous".

In 1882, as indicated on the title, but in fact in October 1881, in St. Petersburg, the bookseller P. E. Kekhribardzhi published fourth edition Provincial essays" - for the first time in one volume. In composition and composition, it repeated the 1864 edition, but quite a few abbreviations were made in the text. The proofreading of the book was read by Saltykov, as we know from his letter to N. A. Belogolovy dated October 14, 1881. last time was prepared for publication by Saltykov himself for the fourth separate edition. True, during the life of Saltykov, “Provincial Essays” appeared again - the first volume of the nine-volume collection of his works that began to appear a month before the death of the writer. But Saltykov was then already so ill that the minor discrepancies found in the text of this volume with the text of the previous edition arose, obviously, not by the will of the author, but either by accident or as a result of the intervention of the person who read the proofs. As for the only major change in the structural and compositional nature - the elimination of the section "Casus Circumstances" and the inclusion of the three essays included in it in the previous section "In the jail", this change is most likely one of those oversights, distortions, mistakes, of which there are many in a posthumous edition of 1889. The three essays in question - "The Elder", "Mother Mavra Kuzmovna" and "The First Step" - really depict the "casual circumstances" of life, borrowed from the material of the judicial investigations. It is hard to believe that Saltykov himself eliminated this section with the exact title found and instead created a not very organic and outwardly cumbersome section of six essays. But still, stories about the life destinies of people who found themselves behind prison bars could formally be united under the heading “In prison”.

The question thus remains open. Since, however, the present edition of the “Provincial Essays” is based on the edition of 1882, as the last indisputably published under the control of Saltykov, the structure of the cycle is also established from this edition: from nine, and not from eight sections.

The text of the 1882 edition is printed in this volume with corrections according to the Russkiy vestnik of 1856 (vols. 4, 5, 6) and 1857. (vols. 7, 8, 9, 10), "Library for Reading" 1857 (No. 5), separate editions - 1857 (1st and 2nd) and 1864. (3rd) and autographs.

For more than a quarter of a century, Saltykov contributed to the "Provincial essays" significant changes. They concerned both the composition, and composition, and individual places of the text. In preparing new editions, Saltykov's attention was focused on these changes. fundamental nature. But he, apparently, never did a full reconciliation of the text and did not follow very closely the elimination of individual typographical errors and minor errors that accumulated from edition to edition, both due to mechanical (typographical) errors and due to proofreading leveling of individual elements of language and style. .

A study of the manuscripts and early printed text of the “Provincial Essays” shows that Saltykov greatly valued such elements of the style and poetics of his work, which in many respects still belong to the realism of the “natural school”, as folk-regional expressions, dialect-class and professional speech features, archaisms, Church Slavonicisms , the repetition of individual words and homogeneous syntactic turns in "tales" about the people and the schism-Old Believers. Meanwhile, in individual editions, these characteristic stylistic features of the first Saltykov cycle were gradually eliminated, leveling out, due to the intervention of proofreaders, by the norms literary language. So, for example, in the manuscripts and in the journal publications of the Russkiy Vestnik we read: “loose”, “robin”, “frightened”, “self-indulgence”, “chuckles”, “everyone”, “resonance”, “pried”, “on trees”, “to be here”, “enbars”, “at least”, “nearby”, “only”, “and full and drunk”, “you know”, “if only”, etc. etc. In separate publications, these words were gradually “translated” into literary ones: “free”, “child”, “scared”, “confuse”, “chuckles”, “everyone”, “reason”, “accepted”, “on trees”, “to be here”, “barns”, “at least”, “nearby”, “only”, “and full and drunk”, “you know”, “if only”, etc., etc.

It is quite obvious that these are not the author's versions, but "corrections" that distort the living language of the work, made by proofreaders. In all such cases, in the present edition of Provincial Essays, reading is returned to the journal, and sometimes to the handwritten text.

On the other hand, the study of the handwritten and printed texts of the Gubernskie Oskreki allows us to catch a certain desire of Saltykov to remove from his first book the places and episodes of a crudely naturalistic nature that were there. This can be judged on the basis of the testimonies of contemporaries. Telling in his memoirs "Splashed Years" about his close ties with the then-established "Russian Messenger", the writer Ilya Salov says: "Having often been to the editorial office, I repeatedly happened to read the "Provincial Essays" in manuscript, and I remember very well that in In the press, much of what Saltykov wrote was either completely thrown out or corrected, because he was not shy in expressions. This author's tendency (or the sanction to the editor's proposals) does not allow us to agree with the requirements of B. M. Eikhenbaum to include in the main text all the differences of the autograph containing the stories of the clerk and other places, as was done in the 1933 edition (see later motivation B M. Eikhenbaum in his “Note<1957 г.>about the main text of the "Provincial Essays" by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. - Editor and book. Collection of articles, vol. 3, ed. "Art", M. 1962, p. 95, etc.). We cite these places, as well as the main versions of printed sources, in the notes to the relevant sections of the book.

“Whoever would like to discuss everything remarkable and important in Shchedrin’s Notes would have to add twenty huge volumes of commentary to two volumes of his “Provincial Essays,” Chernyshevsky wrote in 1857, wanting to give an idea to his readers about how densely Saltykov's work was saturated with burning issues and the socio-political life of our time.

This was also pointed out by Dobrolyubov in his assessment of the early works of "accusatory literature". “The public,” he wrote in 1859, “recognized the reality of the facts reported in the stories, and read them not as fictional stories, but as stories about true events. And I must admit that the first<…>accusatory stories gave the reader the opportunity to find the accused. Mr. Shchedrin describes, for example, Porfiry Petrovich; I knew two Porfiry Petrovichs, and our whole town knew them; he has a mayor Feyer - and I saw several Feyers ... "

Materials for those "comments" to the "Essays" that Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov wrote about, the reader of that time found in abundance everywhere around him - in every provincial and county town of Russia, and not only in Vyatka, which served as a direct kind for Krutogorsk.

To understand the "Provincial Essays" by the reader of our days, there is no need to offer him a detailed real-historical and sensible commentary. At the time of writing the "Provincial Essays" Saltykov had not yet created his "Aesopian language", with its complex allegory, deeply immersed in the political life of the era. The satire in the Essays is open, and its perception, with a few exceptions, is not difficult.

The foregoing explains the nature of the comments on the "Provincial Essays" in this edition. The main place in them is occupied not by notes to individual places in the text, but by introductory notes to sections or "headings" of the work. The purpose of these notes is to explain the author's intention of each of the sections and each of the stories ("essays") included in it.

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| Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin
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In one of the distant corners of Russia there is a city that somehow speaks to my heart in a special way. Not that it is distinguished by magnificent buildings, there are no semiramid gardens in it, you will not meet even a single three-story house in a long row of streets, and the streets are all unpaved; but there is something peaceful, patriarchal in his whole physiognomy, something that calms the soul in the silence that reigns on his pillars. Entering this city, you seem to feel that your career here is over, that you can no longer demand anything from life, that you can only live in the past and digest your memories.
And in fact, there is not even a road further from this city, as if the end of the world is here. Wherever you look around - forest, meadows and steppe; steppe, forest and meadows; somewhere a country road winds in a whimsical twist, and a cart, drawn by a small frisky horse, will gallop along it briskly, and again everything will calm down, everything will drown in the general monotony ...
Krutogorsk is located very picturesquely; when you drive up to it on a summer evening, from the side of the river, and your eyes from afar will open a city garden abandoned on a steep bank, government offices and this beautiful group of churches that dominates the entire neighborhood, you will not take your eyes off this picture. It's getting dark. Fires are lit in public places and in the prison, standing on a cliff, and in those shacks that are crowded, below, near the water itself; the whole coast seems to be dotted with lights. And God knows why, whether as a result of mental fatigue or simply from road fatigue, the prison and public places seem to you shelters of peace and love, shacks are inhabited by Philemons and Baucids, and you feel such clarity in your soul, such meekness and gentleness ... But then they fly before you the sounds of bells calling for the vigil; you are still far from the city, and the sounds touch your hearing indifferently, in the form of a general rumble, as if the whole air is full of wonderful music, as if everything around you lives and breathes; and if you have ever been a child, if you have had a childhood, it will stand before you in marvelous detail; and suddenly all its freshness, all its impressionability, all its beliefs, all that sweet blindness, which later experience dispelled and which so long and so completely consoled your existence, will rise in your heart.
But darkness more and more takes possession of the horizon; the high spiers of churches sink into the air and seem to be some kind of fantastic shadows; the lights along the shore are getting brighter and brighter; your voice is louder and clearer in the air. Before you is a river ... But its surface is clear and calm, even its pure mirror, reflecting the pale blue sky with its millions of stars; the damp air of the night caresses you softly and softly, and nothing, no sound disturbs the seemingly numb surroundings.

The ferry seems to be not moving, and only the impatient thud of a horse's hoof on the platform and the splash of a pole taken out of the water bring you back to the consciousness of something real, not fantastic.
But here is the coast. A commotion begins; moorings are taken out; your carriage moves a little; you hear the dull tinkling of a tied bell; fasten harness; at last everything is ready; a hat appears in your tarantass and you hear: “Wouldn’t your grace come, father?” - "Touch!" - is heard from behind, and here you are briskly climbing a steep mountain, along a postal road leading past a public garden. And in the city, meanwhile, fires are already burning in all the windows; scattered groups of walkers still roam the streets; you feel at home and, stopping the driver, get out of the carriage and go wandering yourself.
God! how fun you are, how good and gratifying on these wooden sidewalks! Everyone knows you, they love you, they smile at you! There flashed through the windows four figures at a quadrangular table, indulging in business leisure at the card table; here from another window a column of smoke pours, revealing a cheerful company of clerks, and perhaps even dignitaries, gathered in the house; then you heard laughter from a neighboring house, ringing laughter, from which your young heart suddenly fell in your chest, and right next to it, a wit is pronounced, a very good wit, which you have heard many times, but which, this evening, seems especially attractive to you, and you do not get angry, but somehow smile at her good-naturedly and kindly. But here are the walkers - more and more female, around which, as elsewhere, like mosquitoes over a swamp, young people swarm. This youth sometimes seemed unbearable to you: in her aspirations for the female sex, you saw something not entirely neat; her jokes and tenderness resounded in your ears rudely and materially; but tonight you are kind. If you met the ardent Trezor wagging his tail languidly on the run after the flirtatious Dianka, you would find a means here to find something naive, bucolic. Here she is, the Krutogorsk star, the persecutor of the famous family of the princes Chebylkin - the only princely family in the entire Krutogorsk province - our Vera Gotlibovna, German by birth, but Russian in mind and heart! She walks, and her voice rushes from afar, loudly commanding over a whole platoon of young admirers; she goes, and the gray-haired head of Prince Chebylkin, which has just leaned out of the window, hides, the lips of the princess, eating evening tea, are burned, and a porcelain doll falls out of the hands of a twenty-year-old princess playing in the dissolved window. Here you are, magnificent Katerina Osipovna, also a star from Krutogorsk, you, whose luxurious forms remind of the best times of mankind, you, whom I dare not compare with anyone except the Greek Bobelina. Admirers also swarm around you and a fat conversation winds, for which your charms serve as an inexhaustible subject. And all this smiles at you so affably, you shake hands with everyone, you enter into conversation with everyone. Vera Gotlibovna tells you some new trick of Prince Chebylkin; Porfiry Petrovich relates a wonderful incident from yesterday's preference.
But now his excellency himself, Prince Chebylkin, deigns to return from the vigil, quadruplets in a carriage. His Excellency graciously bows to all sides; a quadruple of well-fed horses drags the carriage with a measured and languid step: the dumb ones themselves feel the importance of the feat entrusted to them and behave like good-mannered horses.
Finally, it got completely dark; walkers disappeared from the streets; the windows in the houses are closed; somewhere you can hear the slamming of shutters, accompanied by the tinkling of iron bolts being pushed in, and the dull sounds of a flute, extracted by a melancholic clerk, reach you.
All is quiet, all is dead; dogs on stage...
It would seem that this is not life! Meanwhile, all the officials of Krutogorsk, and especially their spouses, attack this city with bitterness. Who called them there, who glued them to a land so hateful to them? Complaints about Krutogorsk form an eternal canvas for conversation; they are usually followed by aspirations to Petersburg.
– Charming Petersburg! the ladies exclaim.
- Dear Petersburg! the girls sigh.
“Yes, Petersburg…” the men respond thoughtfully.
In the mouths of all, Petersburg is presented as something like a bridegroom coming at midnight (See Notes 1 at the end of the book); but neither one nor the other, nor the third is sincere; it is so, façon de parler, because our mouth is not covered. Since then, however, since Princess Chebylkina twice went to the capital with her daughter, the enthusiasm has cooled a little: it turns out, “qu "on n" y est jamais chez soi”, that “we have lost the habit of this noise”, that “le prince Kurylkin , jeune homme tout-à-fait charmant, - mais que ça reste entre nous - m "a fait tellement la cour, which is simply ashamed! - but still, what a comparison is our dear, our kind, our quiet Krutogorsk!"
- Dushka Krutogorsk! - squeaks the princess.
- Yes, Krutogorsk ... - the prince responds, smiling carnivorously.
Passion for French phrases is the common malady of the Highmountain ladies and maidens. The girls will gather, and their first condition is: “Well, mesdames, from today we will not speak a word in Russian.” But it turns out that in foreign languages they know only two phrases: permettez-moi de sortir and allez-vous en! Obviously, all concepts, no matter how limited, cannot be expressed in these two phrases, and the poor girls are again condemned to resort to this oak Russian language, in which you cannot express any subtle feeling.
However, the estate of officials is the weak side of Krutogorsk. I do not like his living rooms, in which, in fact, everything looks somehow awkward. But it is comforting and fun for me to roam the streets of the city, especially on the market day, when they are seething with people, when all the squares are littered with various rubbish: chests, beetroot, buckets, and so on. I love this general conversation of the crowd, it caresses my ears more than the best Italian aria, despite the fact that it often contains the strangest, most false notes. Look at these tanned faces: they breathe intelligence and intelligence, and at the same time some kind of genuine innocence, which, unfortunately, is disappearing more and more. The capital of this simplicity is Krutogorsk. You see, you feel that here a person is satisfied and happy, that he is ingenuous and open precisely because there is no reason for him to pretend and dissemble. He knows that whatever befalls him, whether sorrow or joy, is all his, his own, and does not grumble. Sometimes only he will sigh and say: “Lord! if there were no fleas and camps, what kind of paradise would it be, and not life! - he will sigh and humble himself before the hand of Providence, who made both Kieferon, the sweet-voiced bird, and various reptiles.
There are no merchants in Krutogorsk. If you like, the so-called merchants live in it, but they have become so groggy that, apart from a wearable dress and unpaid debts, they have nothing. Their unfounded mind and addiction to jackets and strong drinks ruined them. At first they tried, when they still had some money, to trade with their capital, but no, it’s not argued! The merchant will settle scores by the end of the year - all loss and loss, but it seems that he did not work, he did not drink away nights on the pier with dashing people, and he did not lose the last penny in the cartege, all in the hope of increasing the parental heritage! - Things are not going my way! They also tried to make purchases of various goods for a commission, and here they turned out to be faults: a merchant would buy bristles and sprinkle sand into it for commercial circulation, otherwise he would put such a loaf of bread so that there would be more crunch - they refused here too. God! You can't do business at all.
But here comes Sunday; the whole city from early morning in agitation, as if languishing with an illness. There is noise and talk in the squares, terrible driving through the streets. Officials, who are not restrained on this day by any official place, do their best to congratulate His Excellency on the holiday. It happens that His Excellency does not quite favorably look at these worships, finding that they are not relevant at all, but the spirit of the times cannot be changed: “Have mercy, Your Excellency, this is not a burden to us, but a sweetness!”
“The weather is fine today,” says Porfiry Petrovich, addressing her Excellency.
Her Excellency listens with visible concern.
“Only it’s a little hot, sir,” the county attorney responded, rising slightly in his chair, “I, Your Excellency, am sweating ...
How is your wife's health? asks Her Excellency, turning to the engineering officer, with an obvious desire to hush up the conversation, which is becoming too intimate.
“She, Your Excellency, is always in this position at this time ...
Her Excellency is decisively lost. General embarrassment.
“And with us, Your Excellency,” says Porfiry Petrovich, “a circumstance happened last week. We received a paper from the Rozhnov Chamber, sir. We read, read this paper - we do not understand anything, but the paper, we see, is necessary. That's just Ivan Kuzmich says: "Let's call, gentlemen, the archivist - maybe he will understand." And exactly, sir, we call on the archivist, he read the paper. "Understand?" we ask. “I don’t understand, but I can answer.” Would you believe, Your Excellency, he actually wrote paper as thick as a finger, only more incomprehensible than the first. However, we signed and sent. General laughter.
- Curious, - says his excellency, - will the Rozhnov Chamber be satisfied?
"Why not be satisfied, Your Excellency?" after all, they need an answer more to clear the case: they’ll take our entire paper somewhere and write it down, sir, otherwise they’ll write it down again; that's how it goes...
But I assume that you are an employee and do not live in Krutogorsk for a long time. You are sent around the province to revise, catch and generally do useful work.
Road! How much attractive is contained in this word for me! Especially in the warm summer time, if, moreover, the upcoming journeys are not tiring for you, if you can slowly settle down at the station to wait out the midday heat, or in the evening to wander around the neighborhood, the road is an inexhaustible pleasure. You are riding lying down in your late tarantass; little philistine horses run briskly and cheerfully, fifteen versts an hour, and sometimes more; the coachman, a good-natured young fellow, constantly turns to you, knowing that you are paying for the runs, and perhaps even give you vodka. Boundless fields spread before your eyes, bordered by a forest that seems to have no end. Occasionally one comes across along the road repairs from two or three yards, or a lonely rural massacre, and again fields, again forest, land, something, land, something! what an expanse here for the farmer! It seems that he would have lived and died here, lazy and careless, in this deep silence!
However, here is the station; you are a little tired, but it is that pleasant weariness which gives even more value and sweetness to the coming rest. The impression of the sound of a bell still remains in your ears, the impression of the noise made by the wheels of your carriage. You get out of your tarantass and stagger a little. But after a quarter of an hour you are again cheerful and cheerful, you go wandering around the village, and before you unfolds that peaceful rural idyll, of which the prototype has been so completely and completely preserved in your soul. A village herd descends from the mountain; it is already close to the village, and the picture instantly comes to life; an unusual vanity appears throughout the street; women run out of huts with rods in their hands, chasing skinny, undersized cows; a girl of about ten, also with a twig, runs in a hurry, driving a calf and not finding any way to follow its races; a wide variety of sounds are heard in the air, from lowing to the screeching voice of Aunt Arina, loudly swearing at the whole village. Finally, the herd is driven out, the village is empty; only in some places old people still sit on the rubble, and even they yawn and gradually, one by one, disappear through the gates. You yourself go to the upper room and sit down at the samovar. But - a miracle! – civilization is chasing you here too! You hear voices behind the wall.
- What is your name? asks one voice.
- Whom? - answers the other.
- You.
- Me?
- Well, yes, you.
- What's your name?
- Oh, to you ...
There is applause.
“Akim, Akim Sergeev,” the voice hurriedly replies. Your curiosity is interested; you send to find out what is going on in your neighbors, and you will find out that even before you came here to conduct an investigation, and just like that day and day and toil.
You suddenly become sad, and you hastily order the horses to be laid down.
And again the road is in front of you, again the fresh wind caresses your face, again that transparent twilight embraces you, which in the north replaces summer nights.
And the full moon meekly and softly illuminates the whole neighborhood, over which a light night fog curls like steam ...
Yes, I love you, distant, untouched land! I love your spaciousness and the innocence of your inhabitants! And if my pen often touches those strings of your body that emit an unpleasant and false sound, then this is not from a lack of ardent sympathy for you, but actually because these sounds resound sadly and painfully in my soul. There are many ways to serve the common cause; but I dare to think that the discovery of evil, falsity and vice is also not useless, especially since it presupposes a complete sympathy for goodness and truth.

Fresh legend, but hard to believe ...

“... No, today is not what it was in the old days; In the old days, the people were somehow simpler, more loving. I served, now, in the Zemstvo court as an assessor, I received three hundred rubles in pieces of paper, I was oppressed by my family, and I lived no worse than people. Previously, they knew that an official also needed to drink and eat, well, and they gave a place so that there was something to feed on ... But why? because there was simplicity in everything, there was condescension from the authorities—that's what!
I have had many cases in my life, I will report to you, truly curious cases. Our province is far away, there is no such nobility, well, and we lived here like in Christ's bosom; you used to go once a year to the provincial town, bow to what God sent to the benefactors, and you don’t want to know anything else. It didn't happen to end up in court, or there were some revisions, as it is today, everything went like clockwork. But you, young people, come on, tea, think that now it’s better, the people, they say, endure less, there is more justice, officials have begun to know God. And I will report to you that all this is in vain, sir; the official is still the same, only thinner, more airy… As soon as I listen to these current ones, they begin to talk about economy and the common good, and anger rises under my heart.
We took, however, what we took - who is not sinful to God, the king is not to blame? But even then, is it better not to take money, and not to do business? as you take it, it is somehow more convenient, more encouraging to work. And now, I’ll see, everyone is talking, and more and more about this disinterestedness, but you can’t see the deeds, and the peasant doesn’t hear that he is getting better, but groans and groans more than ever.
We lived in those days, officials, all among ourselves very amicably. It’s not that envy or some kind of blackness, but everyone gives advice and help to each other. If you lose, it happened, in cards all night long, you will blow everything clean - what to do? well, you go to the police station. “Father, Demyan Ivanovich, so and so, help!” Demyan Ivanovich will listen, he will laugh bossily: “You are supposedly sons of bitches, clerks, and you don’t know how to make money, everything is in a tavern and playing cards!” And then he will say : "Well, there's nothing to do, go to the Sharkovskaya volost to collect." Here you go; you won’t collect taxes, but the kids will have milk.
And how easy it was to do! not that torture or some kind of extortion, but you will come that way, you will gather a meeting.
- Well, they say, guys, help out! the tsar-father needs money, let's pay.
And you yourself go to your hut and look out of the window: the children are standing and scratching their heads. And then confusion will set in, suddenly everyone will start talking and waving their hands, but after all, for about an hour they have been cooling off like that. And you sit to yourself, naturally, in the hut and chuckle, and in an hour you will send the sotsky to them: “He will, they say, talk to you - the master is angry.” Well, here they will have more turmoil than before; they will start casting lots - a Russian peasant cannot do without a lot. This means that things are going well, they decided to go to the assessor, whether God's mercy would not wait until earnings.
- Eh-eh, guys, but what about the father-king, then! because he needs money; Would you like to take pity on us, your bosses!
And all this with an affectionate word, not just in the teeth and by the hair: “I, they say, do not take bribes, so you know from me what kind of district I am!” - no, that way, with kindness and pity, so that through him, sir, broke through!
- Yes, is it possible, father, at least to wait until the cover?
Well, of course, in the legs.
- Wait, why not wait, it's all in our hands, but why am I in front of the authorities in response to get? - judge for yourself.
The guys will go to the gathering again, talk, talk, and go home, and in two hours, you see, the sotsky will bring you a hryvnia from the soul for waiting, and as in the volost there are four thousand souls, so four hundred rubles will come out, and where there are more ... Well, you go home more cheerfully.
And then here we have another trick that was - this is a general search. We saved these things for the summer, for the most difficult time. You go out for an investigation and start to shoot down all the roundabout people: it’s not enough for one volost, so you grab another - drag them all. Sotsky, we had a living, grated people - as is, of all trades. Three hundred people will drive away, well, and they lie in the sun. They lie for a day, they lie for another; from another and the bread that he took from the house is running out, and you are sitting in your hut, as if you were really studying. This is how they see that time is running out - the field work does not wait - well, they will start sending the sotsky: “Can’t you, they say, show mercy, ask what should be?” it’s not fun to do, but if it hurts a lot they will balk, well, it’ll still wait a day or two. The main thing here is to have character, not to be bored with idleness, not to shun the hut, yes sour milk. They will see that the person is a practical one, and they will succumb, and how else: before for a hryvnia, maybe he asked, but here you are naughty! three nickels, you couldn't even think of cheaper. When this is over, and ask them all in a crowd:
- What, they say, such and such Trifon Sidorov? scammer?
- A swindler, father, what to say - a swindler.
“But he stole a horse from Mokey?” him guys?
- He, father, he must.
-Are there any literate ones among you?
- No, father, what a letter!
This is what the peasants say is more cheerful: they know that, which means that they will have a vacation now.
- Well, go with God, but go ahead be smarter.
And you'll be released in half an hour. Of course, it’s not much work, just for a few minutes, but you judge how much you can endure here: you sit idly for two or three days, chewing sour bread ... another would curse his whole life - well, he won’t get anything in such a manner.
In all this business, our teacher and breeder was our district doctor. This man was truly, I will tell you, extraordinary and most witty in all things! Minister to him to be a real place in the mind; there was one sin: he had not only an addiction to a drink, but also some kind of frenzy. He would see, it happened, a decanter of vodka, and the whole would tremble. Of course, we all adhered to this, but still in moderation: you sit to yourself and be complacent, and drink a lot, a lot; well, and he, I will tell you, did not know the measures, he even got drunk to the disgrace of his face.
- I was still a child, - he says, it happened, - so my mother gave me vodka from a spoon so that I wouldn’t cry, and at the age of seven my parent began to let go of a glass a day.
So, such and such a passer-by and instructed us in everything.
“My word, brothers,” he says, will be such that no deed, even if it is holier than the most holy Easter, should not be done for nothing: even a dime, but do not spoil your hands.

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