L. Andreev about "crime and punishment" in the story "Thought"; expression of the narrative, the role of image-symbols

The spiritual picture of the beginning of the 20th century is distinguished by contradictory views, a sense of catastrophic, crisis of being. Artists of the early 20th century lived and worked in the times preceding the Russo-Japanese War and the Revolution of 1905, the First World War and the two revolutions of 1917, when old concepts and values, centuries-old foundations collapsed, noble culture disintegrated, the nervous life of cities grew - the city enslaved with its mechanics.

At the same time, there are many events in the field of science (the theory of relativity, x-rays). Discoveries of this kind have led to the feeling that the world is fragmenting, a crisis of religious consciousness is coming.

In February 1902, Leonid Andreev wrote a letter to Gorky, in which he says that much has changed in life: “... People do not know what will happen tomorrow, they are waiting for everything - and everything is possible. The measure of things is lost, Anarchy is in the very air. The inhabitant jumped off the shelf, surprised, confused and sincerely forgot what is possible and what is not.

The measure of things is lost - this is the main feeling of a person at the beginning of the century. A new concept was required, a new moral system of the individual. The criteria for good and evil were blurred. In search of answers to these questions, the Russian intelligentsia turned to two great thinkers of the 19th century - Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

But it was F.M. Dostoevsky who turned out to be close to “the sick society of the early 20th century, it was to him that the artists of the turn of the century turned in search of answers to the questions of what happens to a person, what does he deserve: punishment or justification?

The theme of "crime and punishment", deeply explored by F.M. Dostoevsky, again attracted attention at the turn of the century.

The traditions of Dostoevsky in the works of L. Andreev are more often spoken of, referring to the early, so-called realistic stories of the writer (for example, the general attention for artists to the “little man” is emphasized). In many respects, Andreev also inherits Dostoevsky's methods of psychological analysis.

The “Silver Age” of Russian literature is not so much a phenomenon corresponding to a certain historical period that gave Russia and the world a galaxy of brilliant literary talents, but a new type of artistic thinking, born of a complex, controversial era that absorbed two wars and three revolutions. This type of thinking was formed in the philosophical, aesthetic atmosphere of the previous decades, and its characteristic features were a decrease in social determination, deep philosophical and intellectual validity, and the non-mass character of the aesthetic concepts it created.

Russian classical literature has always responded to the "cursed questions" of our time, paid attention to ideas that "was in the air", sought to reveal the secrets of the inner world of a person, to express spiritual movements as accurately and vividly as a person cannot do in everyday life.

The place of Dostoevsky and Andreev in the Russian classics is affirmed as a priority in the formulation of the most acute and daring philosophical and psychological questions by the writers.

In L. Andreev's story "Thought" and F. Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment", moral problems are posed: crimes - sin and punishment - retribution, the problem of guilt and moral judgment, the problem of good and evil, norms and madness, faith and unbelief.

The story of Raskolnikov and the story of Kerzhentsev can be called the story of an intellect lost in the darkness of unbelief. Dostoevsky saw a gaping abyss of ideas that deny God, when all sacred things are rejected, evil is openly glorified.

“Thought” is one of Andreev’s most significant and most pessimistic works on the topic of the unreliability of thought, reason as a tool for a person to achieve his goals, the possibility of “treason” and “rebellion” of thought against its owner.

... "Thought" by L. Andreev is something pretentious, incomprehensible and, apparently, unnecessary, but talentedly executed. There is no simplicity in Andreev, and his talent resembles the singing of an artificial nightingale (A, P. Chekhov. From a letter to M. Gorky, 1902).

For the first time - in the journal "God's World", 1902, No. 7, with a dedication to the wife of the writer Alexandra Mikhailovna Andreeva.

On April 10, 1902, Andreev informed M. Gorky from Moscow to the Crimea: “I finished Mysl; now she is being rewritten and will be with you in a week. Be a friend, read it carefully and if something goes wrong - write. Is such an end possible: “The jury went to deliberate?” The story does not satisfy artistic requirements, but this is not so important for me: I am afraid whether it is sustained in relation to the idea. I think that I do not give ground for the Rozanovs and Merezhkovskys; one cannot speak directly about God, but what exists is rather negative” (LN, vol. 72, p. 143). Further in the letter, Andreev asked M. Gorky, after reading "Thoughts", to send the manuscript to AI Bogdanovich in the journal "The World of God". M. Gorky approved the story. On April 18-20, 1902, he answered the author: “The story is good<...>Let the tradesman be afraid to live, fetter his vile licentiousness with iron hoops of despair, pour terror into an empty soul! If he endures all this, he will recover, but he will not endure, he will die, he will disappear - cheers! (ibid., vol. 72, p. 146). Andreev accepted M. Gorky's advice to remove the last phrase in the story: "The jurors retired to the conference room" and end "Thought" with the word - "Nothing." On June 30, 1902, the Courier informed readers about the release of the book “World of God” with Andreev’s story, calling Andreev’s work a psychological study, and defining the idea of ​​the story with the words: “The bankruptcy of human thought.” Andreev himself in October 1914. called "Thought" - a sketch "in forensic medicine" (see "Birzhevye Vedomosti", 1915, No. 14779, morning issue April 12). In "Thoughts" Andreev seeks to rely on the artistic experience of F. M. Dostoevsky. Doctor Kerzhentsev, who commits murder, is to a certain extent conceived by Andreev as a parallel to Raskolnikov, although the very problem of “crime and punishment” was solved by Andreev and F. M. Dostoevsky in different ways (see: Ermakova M. Ya. Novels by F. M. Dostoevsky and creative searches in Russian literature of the XX century. - Gorky, 1973, pp. 224-243). In the image of Dr. Kerzhentsev, Andreev debunks the Nietzsche "superman", who opposed himself to people. To become a "superhuman"

F. Nietzsche, the hero of the story, stands on the other side of "good and evil", steps over moral categories, rejecting the norms of universal morality. But this, as Andreev convinces the reader, means the intellectual death of Kerzhentsev, or his madness.

For Andreev, his "Thought" was through and through a journalistic work in which the plot has a secondary, side role. Just as secondary for Andreev is the solution of the question - is the killer insane, or is he just impersonating a madman in order to avoid punishment. “By the way: I don’t understand a thing in psychiatry,” Andreev wrote on August 30-31, 1902 to A. A. Izmailov, “and I didn’t read anything for“ Thought ”(RL, 1962, No. 3, p. 198). However, the image of Dr. Kerzhentsev confessing his crime, so vividly written out by Andreev, obscured the philosophical problems of the story. According to critic Ch. Vetrinsky, the “heavy psychiatric apparatus” “eclipsed the idea” (“Samarskaya Gazeta”, 1902, No. 248, November 21).

A. A. Izmailov classified "Thought" in the category of "pathological stories", calling it by impression the most powerful after the "Red Flower" by Vs. Garshin and "The Black Monk" by A.P. Chekhov ("Birzhevye Vedomosti", 1902, No. 186, July 11).

Andreev explained the dissatisfaction of critics with "Thought" by the artistic shortcomings of the story. In July - August 1902, he confessed in a letter

V. S. Mirolyubov about “Thoughts”: “I don’t like it for some of its dryness and ornateness. There is no great simplicity” (LA, p. 95). After one of his conversations with M. Gorky, Andreev said: “... When I write something that especially excites me, it’s as if the bark falls off my soul, I see myself more clearly and see that I am more talented than what I wrote. Here is Thought. I was expecting it to amaze you, and now I myself see that this is, in essence, a polemical work, and it has not yet hit the mark ”(Gorky M. Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 16, p. 337).
III

In 1913, Andreev completed work on the tragedy "Thought" ("Doctor Kerzhentsev"), in which he used the plot of the story "Thought".

His hero, Dr. Kerzhentsev, using the weapon of logic (and not at all resorting to the idea of ​​God) destroyed "fear and trembling" in himself and even subdued the monster from the abyss, proclaiming Karamazov's "everything is allowed." But Kerzhentsev overestimated the power of his weapon, and his carefully thought out and brilliantly executed crime (the murder of a friend, the husband of the woman who rejected him) ended in complete failure for him; the simulation of madness, played out seemingly flawlessly, itself played a terrible joke on Kerzhentsev's mind. The thought, obedient only yesterday, suddenly betrayed him, turning into a nightmarish guess: “He thought he was pretending, but he really is crazy. And now he's crazy." The mighty will of Kerzhentsev lost its only reliable support - the thought, the dark beginning prevailed, and it was this, and not the fear of retribution, not remorse, that broke through the thin door separating the mind from the terrible abyss of the unconscious. The superiority over the "little people", embraced by the "eternal fear of life and death", turned out to be imaginary.

So the first of Andreev's pretenders to the superhumans turns out to be a victim of the abyss opened by the writer. “... I am thrown into the emptiness of infinite space,” writes Kerzhentsev. “... An ominous loneliness, when I am only an insignificant particle of myself, when in myself I am surrounded and strangled by gloomy silent, mysterious enemies.”

In the artistic world of Andreev, a person is initially in a state of "terrible freedom", he lives at a time when there are "so many gods, but there is no single eternal god." At the same time, the worship of the "mental idol" is of particular interest to the writer.

Existential man, like the heroes of Dostoevsky, is in a state of overcoming the "walls" that stand in his way to freedom. Both writers are interested in those people who "allow themselves to doubt the legitimacy of the court of nature and ethics, the legitimacy of the court in general and expect that The “weightless” is about to become heavier than the weighty, in spite of self-evidence and self-evidence-based judgments of the mind, which has already thrown not only the “laws of nature”, but also the laws of morality onto its scales.

Irrationality, perhaps, can be called one of the main features of the heroes of L. Andreev. In his work, a person becomes a completely unpredictable, fickle creature, ready at every moment for fractures and spiritual upheavals. Looking at him, sometimes I want to say in the words of Mitya Karamazov: "The man is too wide, I would narrow it down."

The special attention of Dostoevsky and Andreev to the deformed human psyche is reflected in their work both on the borders of the mind and madness, and on the borders of being and otherness.

In Dostoevsky's novel and in Andreev's story, the crime is committed from certain moral and psychological positions. Raskolnikov is literally burned with anxiety about the humiliated and insulted, the fate of the disadvantaged turned him to an individualistic boot, to a Napoleonic solution to a social problem. Kerzhentsev, on the other hand, is a classic example of a Nietzschean superman without the slightest glimpse of compassion. Merciless contempt for the weak is the only reason for bloody violence against a defenseless person.
Kerzhentsev continues those traditions of Raskolnikov, which were absolutized by the German philosopher Nietzsche. According to Raskolnikov’s theory, “people, according to the law of nature, are generally divided into two categories: the lowest (ordinary), that is, so to speak, into the material that serves only for the birth of their own kind, and actually into people, that is, those who have the gift or talent to speak in its environment a new word.

Contempt for the "ordinary" makes Raskolnikov the forerunner of Kerzhentsev. He confesses frankly, expressing his anti-human essence: "I would not have killed Alexei even if the criticism was right and he really would have been such a major literary talent." Feeling "free and master over others", he controls their lives.

One hypostasis of Raskolnikov - namely, the starting individualistic position, which does not exhaust the complex content of his personality, finds its further development first in the philosophy of Nietzsche, and then in the reasoning and actions of the Andreev hero.

Kerzhentsev is proud that, due to his exclusivity, he is lonely and deprived of internal connections with people. He likes that not a single curious glance penetrates into the depths of his soul with "dark chasms and abysses, on the edge of which the head is spinning." He admits that he loves only himself, "the strength of his muscles, the strength of his thought, clear and precise." He respected himself as a strong man who never cried, was not afraid, and loves life for "cruelty, for ferocious vindictiveness and satanic fun playing with people and events."

Kerzhentsev and Raskolnikov, although their individualistic claims are somewhat similar, are still very different from each other. Raskolnikov is occupied with the idea of ​​shedding human blood according to conscience, that is, in accordance with universally binding morality. In an ideological conversation with Sonya, he still wrestles with the question of the existence of God. Kerzhentsev, on the other hand, consciously denies moral norms rooted in the recognition of an absolute principle. Addressing the experts, he says: “You will say that you cannot steal, kill and deceive, because it is immoral and a crime, and I will prove to you that it is possible to kill and rob and that this is very moral. And you will think and speak, and I will think and speak, and we will all be right, and none of us will be right. Where is the judge who can judge us and find the truth? There is no criterion of truth, everything is relative and therefore everything is allowed.

The problem of the dialectical relationship of consciousness, subconsciousness and superconsciousness - the position from which Andreev portrayed the inner drama of the hero-individualist, was not considered by researchers.
Like Raskolnikov, Kerzhentsev is obsessed with the thought of his exclusivity, of permissiveness. As a result of the murder of Savelov, the idea of ​​the relativity of good and evil perishes. Madness is the penalty for violating the universal moral law. It is this conclusion that follows from the objective meaning of the story. Mental illness is associated with the loss of faith in the power and accuracy of thought, as the only saving reality. It turned out that in himself Andreev's hero found spheres unknown and incomprehensible to him. It turned out that in addition to rational thinking, a person also has unconscious forces that interact with thought, determining its nature and course.

Once sharp and clear, now, after the crime, the thought has become "eternally lying, changeable, illusory" because it ceased to serve his individualistic mood. He felt in himself some mysterious spheres unknown to him, which turned out to be beyond the control of his individualistic consciousness. “And they changed me. Vile, insidious, how women, serfs and - thoughts change. My castle has become my prison. Enemies attacked me in my castle. Where is the salvation? But there is no salvation, because "I - I am the only enemy of my Self."

In a roll call with Dostoevsky, Andreev leads Kerzhentsev through a test of faith. Masha, a nurse in a hospital, quiet and selfless, a simplified version of Sonya Marmeladova, interested Kerzhentsev with her frenzied faith. True, he considered her a “limited, stupid creature,” at the same time possessing a secret inaccessible to him: “She knows something. Yes, she knows, but she can't or doesn't want to say." But unlike Raskolnikov, he is not able to believe and survive the process of rebirth: “No, Masha, you will not answer me. And you don't know anything. In one of the dark rooms of your simple house there lives someone who is very useful to you, but this room is empty for me. He died long ago, the one who lived there, and on his grave I erected a magnificent monument. He died, Masha, he died - and will not rise again. He buried God like Nietzsche.

Kerzhentsev is far from remorse, from remorse. Nevertheless, the punishment followed. Kerzhentsev, like Raskolnikov, reacted to the shedding of human blood with illness. One turned out to be delirious, the other lost his self-control and power over thought. In himself, Kerzhentsev felt the struggle of opposing forces. The turmoil of internal separation is expressed by him in the following words: “A single thought was broken into a thousand thoughts, and each of them was strong, and they were all hostile. They danced wildly." In himself, he felt the struggle of hostile principles and lost the unity of personality.

The inconsistency of Raskolnikov's theory is proved by its incompatibility with the "nature" of a person, the protest of a moral feeling. Andreev's story depicts the process of spiritual decay of a criminal who is dramatically experiencing a decrease in his intellectual potential.

Andreev came close to Dostoevsky, united with him with the moral pathos of his work: he showed that the violation of an objectively existing moral law is accompanied by punishment, a protest of the inner spiritual “I” of a person.
Complete internal isolation due to a crime that cut off the last ties with humanity makes Kerzhentsev mentally ill. But he himself is far from the moral judgment of himself and is still full of individualistic claims. “For me there is no judge, no law, no forbidden. Everything is possible,” he says, and strives to prove it when he invents an explosive substance “stronger than dynamite, stronger than nitroglycerin, stronger than the very thought of it.” He needs this explosive to blow into the air "a cursed land that has so many gods and no single eternal god." And yet the punishment triumphs over the sinister hopes of the criminal. Human nature itself protests against such nihilistic abuse of itself. Everything ends with complete moral devastation. In his defense at the trial, Kerzhentsev did not say a word: “With dull, as if blind eyes, he looked around the ship and looked at the audience. And those on whom this heavy, unseeing look fell, experienced a strange and painful feeling: as if from the empty orbits of the skull, indifferent and dumb death itself looked at them. Dostoevsky, on the other hand, leads his individualist hero to a moral revival through rapprochement with representatives of the people's environment, through an internal conflict, through love for Sonya.

List of used literature

1. 
   ANDREEV L.N. From the diary //Source. 1994. N2. -S.40-50 Y.ANDREEV L.N. From letters to K.P. Pyatnitsky //Questions of Literature 1981. N8
2. 
   ANDREEV L.N. Unpublished letters. Introductory article, publication and commentary by V.I. Vezzubov // Scientific Notes of the Tartu University. Issue 119. Works on Russian and Slavic Philology. V. - Tartu. 1962.
3. 
   ANDREEV L.N. Unpublished letter of Leonid Andreev //Questions of Literature. 1990. N4.
4. 
   ANDREEV L.N. Correspondence of L. Andreev with I. Bunin // Questions of Literature. 1969. N7.
5. 
   ANDREEV L.N. Collected Op. in 17 tons, -Pg .: Book publisher. writers in Moscow. 1915-1917
6. 
   ANDREEV L.N. Collected Op. in 8 volumes, St. Petersburg: ed. t-va A.F. Marks 1913
7. 
   ANDREEV L.N. Collected Op. in b t., -M .: Khudozh. literature. 1990
8. 
   ARABAZHIN K.I. Leonid Andreev. Results of creativity. -SPb.: Public benefit. 1910.
9. 
   Dostoevsky F.M. Sobr. op. in 15 volumes, -L .: Nauka. 1991
10. 
    Dostoevsky F. Crime and punishment. – M.: AST: Olimp, 1996.
11. 
    GERSHEnzon M.Ya. The life of Vasily of Fiveysky // Weinberg L.O. Critical allowance. T.IV. Issue 2. -M., 1915.
12. 
    Evg.L. A new story by Mr. Leonid Andreev // Bulletin of Europe. 1904, Nov. -S.406-4171198. ERMAKOVA M.Ya. L.Andreev and F.M.Dostoevsky (Kerzhentsev and Raskolnikov) //Uch. app. Gorky ped. institute. T.87. Series of Philological Sciences. 1968.
13. 
    EVNIN F. Dostoevsky and militant Catholicism in 1860-1870 (on the genesis of "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor") // Russian Literature. 1967. N1.
14. 
    S.A. Esenin Mary's Keys. Sobr. op. in 3 vols., v.Z, -M. : Twinkle. 1970.
15. 
    Esin A.B. Artistic psychologism as a theoretical problem // Bulletin of the Moscow University. Series 9. Philology. 1982. N1.
16. 
    Esin A.B. Psychologism of Russian classical literature. Book for teachers. -M.: Enlightenment. 1988.
17. 
    ZHAKEVICH 3. Leonid Andreev in Poland //Uch. app. Higher teacher, school (Opole). Russian philology. 1963. N 2. -S.39-69 (translated by Pruttsev B.I.)
18. 
    Iezuitova L.A. Creativity of Leonid Andreev.- L., 1976.
19. 
    Shestov L. Works in two volumes. - T. 2.
20. 
    Yasensky S. Yu. The art of psychological analysis in creativity

Thought is energy, a force that has no limits.

Most of the people on our blue globe are capable of thinking or once could. It was only at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries that they were able to figure out what thought is, when the avant-garde of scientists began to storm the human brain, but writers are not scientists, they interpret the question in a completely different way, and as a result, a masterpiece can turn out. The "Silver Age" began to advance, and changes swept over the coastal islands like a tsunami. In 1914, the story "Thought" was published.

Andreev was able to write a story about psychology and the human psyche, being without any education in this area. "Thought" - that same story - was unique in its kind at that time. Some people saw it as a treatise on the human psyche, others as a philosophical novel in the style of Dostoevsky, which Andreev admired, but there are those who argued that "thought" is nothing more than some kind of scientific work and was written off from the real prototype. Andreev, in turn, said that he had nothing to do with the field of psychology.

The story begins with the lines:

“On December 11, 1900, Doctor of Medicine Anton Ignatievich Kerzhentsev committed a murder. Both the whole set of data in which the crime was committed, and some of the circumstances that preceded it, gave reason to suspect Kerzhantsev of the abnormality of his mental abilities.

Next, we follow how Kerzhantsev describes in his diary the purpose of the murder, why he did it, and most importantly, what thought overcame him and is still spinning in his head. We read a full analysis of his actions in a few days, we observe that Anton Ignatievich intended to kill his best friend, since he married a girl whom he himself wanted to be married to, but she refused him. Surprisingly, Kerzhantsev himself was loved, he found the same one after an unsuccessful relationship with the wife of Alexei, the best friend of the protagonist.

An incomprehensible motive, strange thoughts - all this makes Kerzhantsev remember his childhood. His father did not love and did not believe in his child, so Anton Ignatievich proved all his life that he was capable of much. And he proved - becoming a respected and wealthy doctor.

The thought of killing Alexei absorbed him more and more, Kerzhantsev began to feign seizures, so that in which case he would not end up in hard labor. He learned that his inheritance is completely suitable: his father was an alcoholic, and his only sister Anna suffered from epilepsy. And in the end, in complete surprise to himself, he commits crimes when he convinced everyone of his bad condition (surprises because he intended to kill in a completely different way than he did). Kerzhantsev kills Alexei and hides from the place of his misdeed.

He makes his notes for experts who must decide whether the offender is healthy. Experts are the reader, and this mission is put on us. Finding out the adequacy of the hero. He doubts his goals, but he is sure that he is not crazy. Although he asks a very strange question, which is more for himself than for others: “Did I pretend to be crazy in order to kill, or did I kill because I was crazy?”.

And he concludes that the most amazing and incomprehensible thing in the world is human thought. At the end of the story, no verdict is issued about the future fate of Anton Ignatievich, as he predicted - opinions on his adequacy were divided, and as a result, we only get resources for reasoning and arguing over this difficult issue.

Thought is an engine, it turns the piston in the minds of many, and as one of the attempts to understand the operation of this engine, Andreev made in his brilliant and rather difficult story - “Thought”. Did he succeed in this attempt? Only those who read the work will answer, even after more than a hundred years from the moment of writing.

Leonid Andreev

On December 11, 1900, Doctor of Medicine Anton Ignatievich Kerzhentsev committed a murder. Both the entire set of data in which the crime was committed, and some of the circumstances that preceded it, gave reason to suspect Kerzhentsev of an abnormality in his mental abilities.

Put on probation at the Elisavetinskaya psychiatric hospital, Kerzhentsev was subjected to strict and careful supervision by several experienced psychiatrists, among whom was Professor Drzhembitsky, who had recently died. Here are the written explanations that were given about what happened by Dr. Kerzhentsev himself a month after the start of the test; together with other materials obtained by the investigation, they formed the basis of the forensic examination.

Sheet one

Until now, Messrs. experts, I hid the truth, but now circumstances force me to reveal it. And, having recognized it, you will understand that the matter is not at all as simple as it may seem to the profane: either a fever shirt or shackles. There is a third thing here - not shackles and not a shirt, but, perhaps, more terrible than both combined.

Alexei Konstantinovich Savelov, whom I killed, was my friend at the gymnasium and the university, although we differed in specialties: as you know, I am a doctor, and he graduated from the law faculty. It cannot be said that I did not love the deceased; he was always sympathetic to me, and I have never had closer friends than he. But with all the sympathetic qualities, he did not belong to those people who can inspire respect in me. The amazing softness and suppleness of his nature, the strange inconsistency in the field of thought and feeling, the sharp extreme and groundlessness of his constantly changing judgments made me look at him like a child or a woman. People close to him, who often suffered from his antics and at the same time, due to the illogicality of human nature, loved him very much, tried to find an excuse for his shortcomings and their feelings and called him an "artist". And indeed, it turned out that this insignificant word completely justifies him and that which for any normal person would be bad, makes it indifferent and even good. Such was the power of the invented word that even I at one time succumbed to the general mood and willingly excused Alexei for his petty shortcomings. Small ones - because he was incapable of big things, like everything big. This is sufficiently evidenced by his literary works, in which everything is petty and insignificant, no matter what short-sighted criticism may say, greedy for the discovery of new talents. Beautiful and worthless were his works, beautiful and worthless was he himself.

When Alexei died, he was thirty-one years old, a little over a year younger than me.

Alexei was married. If you have seen his wife now, after his death, when she is in mourning, you cannot imagine how beautiful she once was: she has become so much, so much uglier. The cheeks are grey, and the skin on the face is so flabby, old, old, like a worn glove. And wrinkles. These are wrinkles now, and another year will pass - and these will be deep furrows and ditches: after all, she loved him so much! And her eyes no longer sparkle and laugh, and before they always laughed, even at the time when they needed to cry. I saw her for just one minute, accidentally bumping into her at the investigator's, and was amazed at the change. She couldn't even look at me angrily. So pathetic!

Only three - Alexei, me and Tatyana Nikolaevna - knew that five years ago, two years before Alexei's marriage, I made an offer to Tatyana Nikolaevna, and it was rejected. Of course, it is only assumed that there are three, and, probably, Tatyana Nikolaevna has a dozen more girlfriends and friends who are fully aware of how Dr. Kerzhentsev once dreamed of marriage and received a humiliating refusal. I don't know if she remembers that she laughed then; probably does not remember - she had to laugh so often. And then remind her: On the fifth of September she laughed. If she refuses - and she will refuse - then remind her how it was. I, this strong man who never cried, who was never afraid of anything - I stood before her and trembled. I was trembling and I saw her biting her lips, and I already reached out to hug her when she looked up and there was laughter in them. My hand remained in the air, she laughed, and laughed for a long time. As much as she wanted. But then she did apologize.

Excuse me, please,” she said, her eyes laughing.

And I smiled too, and if I could forgive her for her laughter, I would never forgive that smile of mine. It was the fifth of September, at six o'clock in the evening, St. Petersburg time. Petersburg, I add, because we were then on the station platform, and now I can clearly see the big white dial and the position of the black hands: up and down. Alexei Konstantinovich was also killed at exactly six o'clock. The coincidence is strange, but able to reveal a lot to a quick-witted person.

One of the reasons for putting me here was the lack of a motive for the crime. Now you see that the motive existed. Of course, it wasn't jealousy. The latter presupposes in a person an ardent temperament and weakness of mental abilities, that is, something directly opposite to me, a cold and rational person. Revenge? Yes, rather revenge, if an old word is really needed to define a new and unfamiliar feeling. The fact is that Tatyana Nikolaevna once again made me make a mistake, and this always angered me. Knowing Alexei well, I was sure that in marriage with him Tatyana Nikolaevna would be very unhappy and regret me, and therefore I insisted so much that Alexei, then just in love, should marry her. Just a month before his tragic death, he told me:

It is to you that I owe my happiness. Really, Tanya?

Yes, brother, you gave a blunder!

This inappropriate and tactless joke shortened his life by a whole week: I originally decided to kill him on the eighteenth of December.

Yes, their marriage turned out to be happy, and it was she who was happy. He did not love Tatyana Nikolaevna much, and in general he was not capable of deep love. He had his favorite thing - literature - which led his interests beyond the bedroom. And she loved him and lived only for him. Then he was an unhealthy person: frequent headaches, insomnia, and this, of course, tormented him. And she even looked after him, the sick, and fulfill his whims was happiness. After all, when a woman falls in love, she becomes insane.

And so, day after day, I saw her smiling face, her happy face, young, beautiful, carefree. And I thought: I did it. He wanted to give her a dissolute husband and deprive her of himself, but instead of that, he gave her a husband whom she loves, and he himself remained with her. You will understand this strangeness: she is smarter than her husband and loved to talk with me, and after talking, she went to sleep with him - and was happy.

I don't remember when the idea first came to me to kill Alexei. Somehow imperceptibly she appeared, but from the first minute she became so old, as if I had been born with her. I know that I wanted to make Tatyana Nikolaevna unhappy, and that at first I came up with many other plans that were less disastrous for Alexei - I have always been an enemy of unnecessary cruelty. Using my influence with Alexei, I thought of making him fall in love with another woman or making him a drunkard (he had a propensity for this), but all these methods did not work. The fact is that Tatyana Nikolaevna would have managed to remain happy, even giving it to another woman, listening to his drunken chatter or accepting his drunken caresses. She needed this man to live, and she somehow served him. There are such slave natures. And, like slaves, they cannot understand and appreciate the power of others, not the power of their master. There were smart, good and talented women in the world, but the world has not yet seen and will not see a fair woman.

On December 11, 1900, Doctor of Medicine Anton Ignatievich Kerzhentsev committed a murder. Both the entire set of data in which the crime was committed, and some of the circumstances that preceded it, gave reason to suspect Kerzhentsev of an abnormality in his mental abilities.

Put on probation at the Elisavetinskaya psychiatric hospital, Kerzhentsev was subjected to strict and careful supervision by several experienced psychiatrists, among whom was Professor Drzhembitsky, who had recently died. Here are the written explanations that were given about what happened by Dr. Kerzhentsev himself a month after the start of the test; together with other materials obtained by the investigation, they formed the basis of the forensic examination.

Until now, Messrs. experts, I hid the truth, but now circumstances force me to reveal it. And, having recognized it, you will understand that the matter is not at all as simple as it may seem to the profane: either a fever shirt or shackles. There is a third thing here - not shackles and not a shirt, but, perhaps, more terrible than both combined.

Alexei Konstantinovich Savelov, whom I killed, was my friend at the gymnasium and the university, although we differed in specialties: as you know, I am a doctor, and he graduated from the law faculty. It cannot be said that I did not love the deceased; he was always sympathetic to me, and I have never had closer friends than he. But with all the sympathetic qualities, he did not belong to those people who can inspire respect in me. The amazing softness and suppleness of his nature, the strange inconsistency in the field of thought and feeling, the sharp extreme and groundlessness of his constantly changing judgments made me look at him like a child or a woman. People close to him, who often suffered from his antics and at the same time, due to the illogicality of human nature, loved him very much, tried to find an excuse for his shortcomings and their feelings and called him an "artist". And indeed, it turned out that this insignificant word completely justifies him and that which for any normal person would be bad, makes it indifferent and even good. Such was the power of the invented word that even I at one time succumbed to the general mood and willingly excused Alexei for his petty shortcomings. Small ones - because he was incapable of big things, like everything big. This is sufficiently evidenced by his literary works, in which everything is petty and insignificant, no matter what short-sighted criticism may say, greedy for the discovery of new talents. Beautiful and worthless were his works, beautiful and worthless was he himself.

When Alexei died, he was thirty-one years old, a little over a year younger than me.

Alexei was married. If you saw his wife, now, after his death, when she is in mourning, you cannot imagine how beautiful she once was: she has become so much, so much ugly. The cheeks are grey, and the skin on the face is so flabby, old, old, like a worn glove. And wrinkles. These are wrinkles now, and another year will pass - and these will be deep furrows and ditches: after all, she loved him so much! And her eyes no longer sparkle and laugh, and before they always laughed, even at the time when they needed to cry. I saw her for just one minute, accidentally bumping into her at the investigator's, and was amazed at the change. She couldn't even look at me angrily. So pathetic!

Only three - Alexei, me and Tatyana Nikolaevna - knew that five years ago, two years before Alexei's marriage, I made an offer to Tatyana Nikolaevna and it was rejected. Of course, it is only assumed that there are three, and, probably, Tatyana Nikolaevna has a dozen more girlfriends and friends who are fully aware of how Dr. Kerzhentsev once dreamed of marriage and received a humiliating refusal. I don't know if she remembers that she laughed then; she probably doesn't remember - she had to laugh so often. And then remind her: On the fifth of September she laughed. If she refuses - and she will refuse - then remind her how it was. I, this strong man who never cried, who was never afraid of anything - I stood before her and trembled. I was trembling and I saw her biting her lips, and I already reached out to hug her when she looked up and there was laughter in them. My hand remained in the air, she laughed and laughed for a long time. As much as she wanted. But then she did apologize.

“Excuse me, please,” she said, her eyes laughing.

And I smiled too, and if I could forgive her for her laughter, I would never forgive that smile of mine. It was the fifth of September, at six o'clock in the evening, St. Petersburg time. According to Petersburg, I add, because we were then on the station platform, and now I can clearly see the big white dial and the position of the black hands: up and down. Alexei Konstantinovich was also killed at exactly six o'clock. The coincidence is strange, but able to reveal a lot to a quick-witted person.

One of the reasons for putting me here was the lack of a motive for the crime. Now do you see that the motive existed? Of course, it wasn't jealousy. The latter presupposes in a person an ardent temperament and weakness of mental abilities, that is, something directly opposite to me, a cold and rational person. Revenge? Yes, rather revenge, if an old word is really needed to define a new and unfamiliar feeling. The fact is that Tatyana Nikolaevna once again made me make a mistake, and this always angered me. Knowing Alexei well, I was sure that in marriage with him Tatyana Nikolaevna would be very unhappy and regret me, and therefore I insisted so much that Alexei, then just in love, should marry her. Just a month before his tragic death, he told me:

“I owe my happiness to you. Really, Tanya?

- Yes, brother, you gave a blunder!

This inappropriate and tactless joke shortened his life by a whole week: I originally decided to kill him on the eighteenth of December.

Yes, their marriage turned out to be happy, and it was she who was happy. He did not love Tatyana Nikolaevna much, and in general he was not capable of deep love. He had his favorite thing - literature, which brought his interests beyond the bedroom. And she loved only him and lived only for him. Then, he was an unhealthy person: frequent headaches, insomnia, and this, of course, tormented him. And she even looked after him, the sick, and fulfill his whims was happiness. After all, when a woman falls in love, she becomes insane.

And so, day after day, I saw her smiling face, her happy face, young, beautiful, carefree. And I thought: I did it. He wanted to give her a dissolute husband and deprive her of himself, but instead of that, he gave her a husband whom she loves, and he himself remained with her. You will understand this strangeness: she is smarter than her husband and loved to talk with me, and after talking, she went to sleep with him and was happy.

I don't remember when the idea first came to me to kill Alexei. Somehow imperceptibly she appeared, but from the first minute she became so old, as if I had been born with her. I know that I wanted to make Tatyana Nikolaevna unhappy and that at first I came up with many other plans that were less disastrous for Alexei - I have always been an enemy of unnecessary cruelty. Using my influence with Alexei, I thought of making him fall in love with another woman or making him a drunkard (he had a propensity for this), but all these methods did not work. The fact is that Tatyana Nikolaevna would have managed to remain happy, even giving it to another woman, listening to his drunken chatter or accepting his drunken caresses. She needed this man to live, and she somehow served him. There are such slave natures. And, like slaves, they cannot understand and appreciate the power of others, not the power of their master. There were smart, good and talented women in the world, but the world has not yet seen and will not see a fair woman.