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Comments Stepan Petrovich Shevyrev A Russian View of the Modern Education of Europe. A Russian perspective on modern European education Need help learning a topic

Comments Stepan Petrovich Shevyrev A Russian View of the Modern Education of Europe. A Russian perspective on modern European education Need help learning a topic

Vestnik PSTGU
IV: Pedagogy. Psychology
2007. Issue. 3. S. 147-167
A RUSSIAN VIEW ON MODERN EDUCATION
EUROPE
S.P. SHEVYREV
Readers are invited to publish a well-known article
S.P. Shevyrev "A Russian's View of Modern Education in Europe".
Despite the fame and numerous references, the article, however,
less, has not been published anywhere else (as far as the author knows
publications), although it is of undoubted interest not only for
philologist, but also for the history of pedagogy.
The publication was prepared by Ph.D. ist. sciences, leading research collaborator
Nickname of the Institute of Theory and History of Pedagogy of the Russian Academy of Education L.N. Belenchuk.
Stepan Petrovich Shevyrev (1806-1864) - the largest historian of literature
tours, professor at Moscow University, taught history for over 20 years
literature, poetry, other courses in philology. Since 1851 S.P. Shevy-
rev at the same time headed the department of pedagogy, established in Moscow
university in the same year. Since 1852 he was an ordinary academician
(highest rank) of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
Lectures by S.P. Shevyrev invariably aroused great interest among listeners.
tel and were very popular. His course of lectures was famous
tions "History of Russian Literature", in which he drew the attention of the public
influence on the vast Old Russian literature, until that time there was little
studied. This course was a kind of response to the 1st "Philosophical
letter” by P. Chaadaev, in which he claimed the lack of content and
the insignificance of the ancient culture of Rus'.
His scientific articles on pedagogy on the impact of family education on
the moral state of society, moreover, on the state
stvo, widely known and more relevant than ever for our time.
The main idea of these articles is that when the family is destroyed, both society and
the state - is only now receiving a real assessment, and its view of the
nutrition as a process that continues throughout life, received today
definition as “continuous (lifelong) education”. At the same time, S.P.
Shevyrev emphasized that the process and quality of education are influenced by the most
different environmental factors. In almost all of his works
Shevyrev touched upon the issues of education, in which he invested a wide
meaning.
147
P u b l and c a c and
Of Shevyrev's pedagogical writings, his lecture
(and then the article) “On the relationship of family education to state
mu. Speech delivered at the solemn meeting of the Imperial
Moscow University June 16, 1842" (M., 1842). In it, Shevyrev defines
shared the main goal of education (“By the name of education one should understand
full development of all close, mental and spiritual abilities is possible
of a person, given to him by God, development in accordance with his highest purpose
we accept and applied to the people and the state, among which Providence is named
he began to act”; With. 4), its means, the role of the state, family and society
in education, and also touched upon the topic of differences in education in Western
Europe and Russia. 15 years earlier than N.I. Pirogov the main question of the ped-
Gogiki Shevyrev called "the upbringing of a person" ("From the university comes
student or candidate; a person comes out of your hands - a title, more important -
neck of all other ranks "; With. 4). Arranging the right transition from family to
school is one of the main tasks of state education,
he claimed. The speech had a wide public response.
Article by S.P. Shevyreva "The view of the Russian on modern education
Europe" was published in the first issue of the magazine "Moskvityanin" (1841,
No. 1, p. 219–296) and, according to our data, has not been published anywhere else, although
its materials were used by the author in other works and courses of lectures,
for example, in the History of Poetry (of which only one was published).
volume). Many researchers consider it a program for "Moskvityanin".
Indeed, it reflects all the main problems being developed
Slavophilism, to which S.P. Shevyrev was very
close: the cultural beginnings of Europe and Russia, the origins of European culture
and enlightenment comparative analysis cultures of its largest states,
Russia's place in world human culture. The content of the article on
at first glance it seems much wider than stated in the title. However, this
reflects the specific understanding of Shevyrev and his associates of education
as a broad education of a person in all spheres of his life
ness (and not only in educational institutions), as the formation of his worldview
based on core values. Therefore, in the article, the problems actually
education in our today's highly specialized understanding
not much space has been allocated. But everything that makes up the humane is analyzed.
container aspect of personality culture.
Let us draw the reader's attention to the brilliant knowledge of S.P. Shevyrev
Western European culture, its various directions (few of
Westerners knew Western culture so well then!), respect and love for higher
its achievements and the best representatives. negative critical
can be considered only an essay on the culture of France. May be,
S.P. Shevyrev, ahead of his time, saw better than others the trends emerging
developed in Europe and developed rapidly in the future. Banners-
It is noteworthy that in the early 1990s, the Pope of Rome, visiting France, exclaimed
zero: "France, what have you done with your baptism!" (Quoted by: Kuraev A.

Bulletin of PSTGU

IV: Pedagogy. Psychology

2007. Issue. 3. S. 147-167

A RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE ON MODERN EDUCATION

Europe S.P. Shevyrev

Readers are invited to publish a well-known article by S.P. Shevyrev "A Russian's View of Modern Education in Europe". Despite the fame and numerous references, the article, nevertheless, has not been published anywhere else (as far as the author of the publication knows), although it is of undoubted interest not only for the philologist, but also for the history of pedagogy.

The publication was prepared by Ph.D. ist. Sciences, leading researcher of the Institute of Theory and History of Pedagogy of the Russian Academy of Education L.N. Belenchuk.

Stepan Petrovich Shevyrev (1806-1864) - the largest historian of literature, professor at Moscow University, taught the history of literature, poetry, and other courses in philology for over 20 years. Since 1851 S.P. Shevyrev simultaneously headed the department of pedagogy, established at Moscow University in the same year. From 1852 he was an ordinary academician (highest rank) of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

Lectures by S.P. Shevyrev invariably aroused great interest among the audience and enjoyed great popularity. famous was his course of lectures "History of Russian Literature", in which he drew public attention to the extensive ancient Russian literature, until then little studied. This course was a kind of response to the 1st "Philosophical Letter" by P. Chaadaev, in which he asserted the emptyness and insignificance of the ancient culture of Rus'.

His scientific articles on pedagogy on the influence of family education on the moral state of society, moreover, on the state system, are widely known and more relevant than ever for our time. The main idea of these articles - with the destruction of the family, both society and the state collapse - is only now getting a real assessment, and his view of education as a process that continues throughout life has today been defined as "continuous (life-long) education." At the same time, S.P. Shevyrev emphasized that a variety of environmental factors influence the process and quality of education. In almost all of his works, Shevyrev touched upon the issues of education, in which he put a broad meaning.

Of Shevyrev's pedagogical works, the most famous is his lecture (and then the article) “On the Relationship of Family Education to State Education. Speech delivered at the solemn meeting of the Imperial Moscow University on June 16, 1842. (M., 1842). In it, Shevyrev defined the main goal of education (“Under the name of education, one should understand the possible complete development of all the close, mental and spiritual abilities of a person given by God to him, development that is consistent with his highest purpose and applied to the people and state, among which Providence appointed him to act ”; p. 4), its means, the role of the state, family and society in education, and also touched on the topic of differences in education in Western Europe and Russia. 15 years earlier than N.I. Pirogov, Shevyrev called the main issue of pedagogy “the upbringing of a person” (“A student or candidate comes out of the university; a person comes out of your hands - a title that is more important than all other titles”; p. 4). Arranging a correct transition from family to school is one of the main tasks of state education, he argued. The speech had a wide public response.

Article by S.P. Shevyreva "A Russian's View of the Modern Education of Europe" was published in the first issue of the Moskvityanin magazine (1841, No. 1, pp. 219-296) and, according to our data, was not published anywhere else, although its materials were used by the author in other works and lecture courses, such as in the History of Poetry (of which only one volume has been published). Many researchers consider it a program for "Moskvityanin". indeed, it reflects all the main problems developed by Slavophilism, to which S.P. Shevyrev was very close in his worldview: the cultural beginnings of Europe and Russia, the origins of European culture and enlightenment, a comparative analysis of the cultures of its largest states, Russia's place in the global human culture. The content of the article at first glance seems to be much broader than stated in the title. However, this reflects the specific understanding of Shevyrev and his associates of education as a broad education of a person in all spheres of his life (and not just in educational institutions), as the formation of his worldview based on basic values. Therefore, not much space is given in the article to the problems of education itself in our today's highly specialized understanding. on the other hand, everything that makes up the humanitarian aspect of the culture of the individual is analyzed.

Let us draw the reader's attention to the brilliant knowledge of S.P. Shevyrev of Western European culture, its most diverse trends (few Westerners knew Western culture at that time!), respect and love for its highest achievements and best representatives. Only an essay on the culture of France can be considered negatively critical. Maybe S.P. Shevyrev, ahead of his time, saw better than others the trends that originated in Europe and developed rapidly in the future. It is significant that in the early 1990s, the Pope of Rome, visiting France, exclaimed: “France, what have you done with your baptism!” (Quoted by: Kuraev A.

Why are the Orthodox like that?.. M., 2006. P. 173). So, if Shevyrev's assessment seemed unfounded to his contemporaries, who revered France as a country of great culture, on the whole it was completely fair. And it is absolutely surprising that Shevyrev's critics do not pay attention to the fact that he was a believer, an Orthodox person, and it was from these positions that he tried to find in every culture features close to his Christian well-being and worldview, and even in pagan France he searches for elements of its Christian past. and hence hope for the future.

Like other Slavophiles, Shevyrev considered the religion of a person, his religious ideas, to be the basis of culture and education, agreeing in this, in particular, with I.V. Kireevsky, who wrote: “... I came to the conclusion that the direction of philosophy (and, therefore, of all education based on it. - L.B.) depends in its first beginning on the concept that we have about the Holy Trinity "(Complete collection of works. M., 1911, v. 2, p. 281).

The article is published in the magazine "Moskvityanin" (1841, part 1, no. 1, pp. 219-296). We took the liberty of slightly shortening the fragments of the article devoted to particular problems of the development of certain types of art (painting, theater). Abbreviations are marked in the text with<...>Author's footnotes are given at the end of the page and are marked with *; our footnotes are marked with Arabic numerals and are given at the end of the text. The text of the article is brought into line with the modern norms of the Russian language (in such words, for example, as "debate", "form", "history", "Russian", "Frenchman", "Englishman", etc., capital letters were replaced by lowercase letters, unnecessary, unused letters were removed, etc.). The article will be published in two issues of the PSTGU Bulletin: the first part includes an analysis of education in Italy and England, the second - in France and Germany.

There are moments in history when all mankind is expressed by one all-consuming name! These are the names of Cyrus1, Alexander2, Caesar3, Charlemagne4, Gregory VII5, Charles V6. Napoleon was ready to put his name on contemporary humanity, but he met Russia!

There are epochs in history when all the forces acting in it are resolved into two main ones, which, having absorbed everything extraneous, come face to face, measure each other with their eyes and come out for a decisive debate, like Achilles and Hector at the conclusion of the Iliad. Here are the famous martial arts of world history: Asia and Greece, Greece and Rome, Rome and the German world.

In the ancient world, these martial arts were decided by material force: then force ruled the universe. In the world of the Christian world-

New conquests have become impossible: we are called to single combat of thought.

The drama of modern history is expressed by two names, one of which sounds sweet to our heart! The West and Russia, Russia and the West - this is the result that follows from everything that has gone before; here is the last word of history, here are two given (as in the text. - LB) for the future!

Napoleon (not without reason that we started with him) contributed greatly to outlining both words of this result. In the face of his gigantic genius, the instinct of the entire West concentrated - and moved to Russia when he could. Let's repeat the words of the Poet:

Praise! He showed the Russian people the High Lot.

Yes, a great and decisive moment! The West and Russia are facing each other, face to face! Will he carry us away in his worldwide aspiration? Will he get it? Shall we go in addition to his education? Shall we make some superfluous addition to his story? Or will we stand in our own identity? Shall we form a special world, according to our principles, and not the same European ones? Let's take one sixth of the world out of Europe... the seed for the future development of mankind?

Here is a question - a great question, which is not only heard in our country, but is also answered in the West. Solving it - for the good of Russia and mankind - is the business of our present and future generations. Everyone who has just been called to any significant service in our Fatherland must begin by resolving this issue if he wants to connect his actions with the present moment of life. That's the reason why we start with it.

The question is not new: the millennium of Russian life, which our generation may celebrate in twenty-two years, offers a complete answer to it. But the meaning of the history of every nation is a mystery hidden under the outward clarity of events: each solves it in his own way. The question is not new; but in our time its importance has revived and become palpable to all.

Let us take a general look at the state of modern Europe and the attitude in which our Fatherland is towards it. We eliminate here all political views and confine ourselves to only one picture of education, embracing Religion, science, art8 and literature, the latter as the fullest expression of all human life peoples. We will touch, of course, only the main countries that are active in the field of European peace.

Let us begin with those two whose influence reaches us least of all, and which form the two extreme opposites of Europe.

We mean Italy and England. The first took to its share all the treasures of the ideal world of fantasy; almost completely alien to all the lures of modern luxury industry, she, in the miserable rags of poverty, sparkles with her fiery eyes, enchants with sounds, shines with ageless beauty and is proud of her past. The second selfishly appropriated all the essential benefits of the worldly world; drowning herself in the richness of life, she wants to entangle the whole world with the bonds of her trade and industry.

The first place belongs to that which, with noble self-sacrifice, takes us from the world of selfish essentiality to the world of pure pleasures. It used to happen that the peoples of the north rushed through the Alps with weapons in their hands to fight for the southern beauty of the European countries, which attracted their eyes. Now every year colonies of peaceful wanderers flow from the peaks of Simplon, Mont Cenis, Col del Bormio, Shilugen and Brenner9, or both seas: the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, into her beautiful gardens, where she treats them peacefully with her sky, nature and art.

Almost alien to the new world, which is pushed away from it forever by the snow-domed Alps, Italy lives on the memories of antiquity and art. Through her we received the ancient world: she is still faithful to her cause. All its soil is the grave of the past. Under the living world, another world is smoldering, an obsolete world, but eternal. Her vineyards bloom on the ruins of the cities of the dead; her ivy wraps around the monuments of the greatness of the ancient; her laurels are not for the living, but for the dead.

There, at the foot of the smoking Vesuvius, the dead Pompey slowly shakes off his ashen shroud. Strangled with a fiery bogey in the full minute of her life and buried in the ground with all her treasures, she now betrays them in a wonderful integrity so that we can finally unravel ancient life in all its details. New discoveries in architecture, sculpture, painting of the ancients completely change the old views and are waiting for a new Winckelm-on,10 who would say a decisive word about them.

the ancient Forum of Rome is lazily shedding its centuries-old embankment, while Italian and German antiquarians idly argue about the names of its nameless and mute buildings.

The cities of Etruria11 open their tombs - and the treasures of the times, perhaps Homeric (i.e. Homer. - LB), faithfully preserved by the disinterested earth, are brought to light in the halls of the Vatican.

Soon antiquity will be as accessible and clear to us as the life around us: a person will not lose anything from his boundless

the past, and everything noticeable in the life of all ages will become the property of its every minute. We now have the opportunity to talk with ancient writers, as if with our contemporaries. Graceful antiquity will ennoble and adorn the forms of our ordinary life with the beauty of its forms. Everything that serves a person and for his worldly needs must be worthy of him and bear the imprint of his spiritual being. On this matter, of course, not so important in the life of mankind, Italy continues to work, keeping all the luxury of fine antiquity.

Art, like a faithful ivy, wraps around the ruins of Italy. The former slaughter of peoples has now become the workshop of the whole world, where they argue no longer with a sword, but with a brush, a chisel and a compass. All her galleries are populated by crowds of artists who besiege the great works of genius, or strolling wanderers who slavishly bow to her past. It is curious to see how Russian, French, German, English painters sit around one Raphael's "Transfiguration"12 at the same time and different types to repeat images of the inimitable, elusive with a draw brush.

There was a time when Italy transmitted to all Western countries the elegant forms of her poetry: now she has done the same in relation to other arts. On the banks of the Isar, the Rhine, the Thames, the Seine, the Neva,13 the graceful forms of Italian art have been assimilated by all educated nations. They vary according to the particular character of each, but in the main the Italian ideal is understood.<...>

Science in Italy has its representatives in some separate parts, but does not unite anything as a whole. The fragmentation of the political system is reflected both in science and in literature. The scientists of Italy are islands floating separately on the sea of ignorance. In the north, where there is more activity, the annual congresses of scholars were conceived: Pisa,14 the cradle of the enlightenment of the new Italy, gave the first voice. Florence, Milan, Turin held out their hands to her. But the Pope, under pain of being expelled from the church, twice forbade the scientists of Rome to go to these congresses. Where are Nicholas V, Lions X, Julius II15?

Despite the circumstances unfavorable to the sciences, they are guided by old traditions. Even Naples came to life. And it publishes journals, to which German philosophy also reaches, and where aesthetic theories are expounded, hitherto unheard of on the shores of a wonderful bay.

So, Bianchi,16 an archaeologist like few in Europe, will lead you through the streets of Pompeii and, with his living story, will resurrect before you all

the life of the ancients; will inhabit these streets, temples, basilicas, the forum, baths, houses. The imagination of the Italian will give color and life to the dry searches of the scientist. In Rome, Angelo Mai,11 that last of the gigantic philologists of Italy, continues to rummage through the codices of the Vatican; but it must be noted that since the purple robe invested the philologist with the title of cardinal, his researches are not as active as before. But in Rome there is another cardinal, a miracle of human memory, the glorious Menzofanti, who speaks 56 living languages. In the same place, the learned Jesuit Markus discovered the traces of their colonization and penetrated into the secrets of its ancient history. Nibby,19 whose loss the eternal city had not yet mourned, had lately lived in the Rome of the Republic and the Caesars, and carried his readers there with him. Canina20, an antiquarian and philologist, recreates the plan of ancient Rome with all its glorious buildings and streets - and you, reading ancient history, you can imagine the place of the event. In Pisa, Rosellini21, having established a chair of the Coptic language, resurrects the Alexandrian-Egyptian world in a new form. In the same place, Rosini22, leaving the pen of the novelist, an imitator of Manzoni,23 studies the history of painting in Italy from monuments that have not yet been explored. In Florence, Chiampi24 rummages through archives and libraries and looks for traces of Italian influence on Russia and Poland. The Roman curia looks askance at his work and bans it in their regions: the reason is that Chiampi discovered many intrigues of papism and the Jesuits against Russia. In Padua, the professor of world history, Menin, resurrects in his lectures the historical readings of Thucydides. Having the gift of words in the highest degree and having formed it classically, he paints pictures of history with words in such a way that all of it passes in the imagination of the listeners, like a living panorama of events. Count Litta25 in Milan publishes the histories of all the most famous families of Italy, based on documents of the most reliable and gleaned from private archives, which abound in her cities. Wonderful material for the history of the Middle Ages! Giulio Ferrari continues his enormous work there: he studies the external life of all the peoples of the world, ancient and new, their clothes, customs, holidays, arts, crafts, and so on. and brings it all to life with drawings. His new aesthetic view of the life of mankind is remarkable. Important guide for artists!

Such is the activity of scientists in Italy. It has nothing whole, nothing total. It is more focused on what surrounds them, what enters the world of antiquity or art.

The state of literature presents the same feudal aspect as does science. Until now, the governments of Italy have not yet thought of providing

chit literary property * and protect the rights of authorship. In some states of Italy, authors are given privileges against reprinting; but there are no positively approved laws - and there is absolutely no reciprocity between states. An author who publishes something remarkable in Milan can be sure that it will immediately appear in Florence, Pisa, Lugano, Rome, Naples, and so on, and everywhere its price will be cheaper. This is why booksellers seldom buy works or translations of writers, and the only poor means left for this is to publish by subscription, or to use their technical term: per via di associazione. Of course, genius is possible in all respects of life; but means are needed for its education and for the stimulation of its activity. Literature, on the other hand, cannot consist of works of genius alone: it must embrace all phenomena. modern life.

A very remarkable feature of the real literature of Italy: despite the fact that all the works of French literature are read by the writers of Ausonia,27 their taste has remained completely pure from the corrupt influence of France. The novels of Hugo, Soulier, Sue, and others, the offspring of French drama, produced nothing of the kind in Italy. It would be unfair to leave such an inviolable integrity of her taste to the solicitude of Italian censorship and to think that this latter is guarded by morality, decency and taste. No, it would be an extra honor for her: the censorship in Milan would even allow obscene things in novels, in the hope of providing pleasant entertainment to the public. In addition, outside of Italy there is another, itinerant, uncensored literature: Lugano, Paris and London print everything irresponsibly. Sometimes, both in Florence itself and in other cities of Italy, books with the name of London are published. And meanwhile, even here, where the eyes of Austrian, papal, or Neapolitan censorship do not reach, you will not find either spoilage of taste or depravity of morals! No, the reasons for this phenomenon lie deeper; they are in the spirit and character of the Italian people.

The first of these is a religious feeling, deeply hidden in it. The Italian is faithful to him in all respects of life. All itinerant Italy, and in the midst of godless Paris, feeds on Religion. The second reason is the aesthetic sense, the sense of beauty. The immoral in poetry is repugnant to the Italian because it is ugly. Literature

* Recently there was news in the newspapers that the Austrian and Sardinian governments had agreed to establish a law of literary property on a mutual basis between the two possessions, and that the Pope had expressed his consent to this.

Italy in decline; but the taste for the elegant, nourished by eternal patterns that are part of the education of the people, is supported by legend.

The sad relationship of literature to state life is seen especially in how little prolific those writers are whose genius is recognized by all of Europe. Manzoni died alive. Since his The Betrothed, in which he surpassed the best novels of W. Scott, Manzoni has not written a single line. For several years already he has been promising to publish a new novel: La Colonna infame (The Pillory), whose contents seem to be taken from an episode of The Betrothed. This year a rumor has spread in Italy that the novel is already being printed in Turin, also per via di associazione; but still nothing comes out.

Silvio Pellico28, after his "Dungeons and Duties", published several poems; but his poems are weak after prose, nourished by a suffering life. He recently told the story of how his "Dungeons" came into being. It is heard that he is going to write his autobiography. Who will not read such a book with avidity? But I must say that his life is too holy for our era and will seem fiction. The confession of a sinner in the sense of our age would, of course, be more entertaining and, told with feeling, could have a stronger effect.

Among the novelists, whose tribe does not cease in Italy, Cesare Cantu29 is now especially famous, following worthily in the footsteps of Manzoni and Grossi. His novel "Margherita Pusterla", taken from the Milan history of the 14th century, made a strong impression in Milan. The second edition was banned by the government.

In 1831, Italy lost the historian Colletta31, who wrote in the style of Tacitus32. We mention a writer who died long ago only because the ingratitude of his contemporaries, who know so little about him, is incomprehensible. In relation to the style, Collette occupies decisively the first place among all historians of our time, and yet his name is hardly known to us! Botta33 is, of course, inferior to his talent; but his name is known because he was more talked about in Paris. Of the new historians, Cesare Balbo34 appears on the scene: he recently published in Turin a biography of Dante, inscribed with a hot pen.

Some poetic phenomena in Italy are remarkable: they flare up from time to time, like sparks in an extinct volcano. But even here there is a misfortune: her poets of genius either die soon a real death, or die alive. There is almost no one of them who would support his field until the end of his life. Here is the most striking sign of decline in the spirit of the people!

In 1857, Italy lost its glorious lyricist, who could excel not only in her, but also in Europe. His name is Giacomo Leopardi. His Songs were nourished by sorrow, as well as by life. His lyre recalls the best creations of Petrarch and is imbued with a feeling even deeper than the songs of the Troubadour of Avignon. Germany, which is now so rich in lyric poets, will, in spite of its Kerners and Uhlands37, yield the palm in patriotic song to the lyric of Italy, who wandered long in exile, but died under the sky of Naples.

There is another lyric poet, inferior to Leopardi in the depths of feeling, but possessing well-aimed arrows of satire, saturated not with mockery, but with sorrow. This is Giovanni Berchet. Others say that his name is fictitious. His writings, for some political reasons, are strictly prohibited within Austria. Berchet38 lives outside of Italy.

The Borghi in Florence are famous for their religious hymns. Belli in Rome - a satirist - owns a comic sonnet. His sonnets are pictures taken from the ordinary life of Rome: this is Pinelli in verse. The best are written in the Roman dialect. They walk in the mouths of the people. The printed ones are much weaker than those known orally.

The poets of Italy, endowed with a more lively and fiery talent, without being protected in literary property, embark on an improvisation that takes the listeners back to the primeval times of poetry, when neither pen nor printing press cooled inspiration. We recently heard Giustiniani39 in Moscow: his momentary improvisations aroused distrust in some and seemed like miracles to many. His pupil, Regaldi, is gloriously following in the footsteps of his teacher in Paris.

Dante is still the subject of the deepest research of Italian writers and scientists. And in London, and in Paris, and in all the capitals and wonderful cities of Italy, there are people who dedicate themselves to this in order to study the great Homer of the Middle Ages. New editions come out frequently. The last comment belongs to Tommaseo. They publish a lot, and meanwhile, even the most remarkable codices of the Divine Comedy have not yet been collated. This is the labor awaiting the laborers. Florence erected in the church of the Holy Cross a monument to her exile, stripped of his ashes; and until now he will not make another literary monument to him - he will not publish his poem, collated according to all the best codes, at least the XIV, XV and XVI centuries. This is unlikely to happen as long as the Accademia della Crusca rules the scepter of language and literature of Tuscan and

stagnant in his deep-rooted prejudices, against which there is no higher Areopagus in Italy. The Tuscan Academy has not yet understood that in ancient works one should not change either the language or the spelling. Not so long ago she published a commentary on the Divine Comedy, allegedly contemporary with the work, but written in prose, which does not differ in the slightest from the prose of the living and writing members of the Academy itself.

For some time now they began to study in Italy the poets who preceded Dante. The beginning of these works belongs to Count Pertica-ri, a famous philologist, who was early stolen from Italy by death. The appearance of Dante no longer seems so sudden in relation to language, as it seemed before. Countless poets preceded him in all the cities of Italy. Of course, he managed to cover everyone with his name and glory. Thus, in England it was discovered that Shakespeare was surrounded by seventy dramatic poets. How do these two great events explain the riddle of Homer, who, probably, with his name also covered all other names that have been carried away forever by primitive antiquity.

Of the modern works in the part of literature that preceded Dante, the most remarkable is the work of Mazi. He found in the Vatican Library a code of poets of the 13th century, written at the same time. Not a single learned philologist has so far paid attention to this code: it must be hoped that Mr. Mazi will publish it soon.

The dramatic literature of Italy produces nothing remarkable. Alfieri, Goldoni, Giraode, Nota41 - make up the national repertoire. But more abundant are the much endless translations from French, as in all the theaters of Europe except England. Speaking of drama in Italy, one cannot fail to mention the many folk theaters that exist in it, for which playwrights who are completely unknown write. The material of these plays is the customs of the city in which the theater is located; their language is the dialect of the people. These are the most curious performances in Italy, where laughter does not fade away during the performance. Actors are always excellent: because the models are before their eyes. They themselves have come out of the circle they represent. This folk drama could serve as material for a future Ausonian Shakespeare, if it were possible.

England is the extreme opposite of Italy. There is complete insignificance and political impotence; here - the focus and power of modern politics; there are the wonders of nature and the carelessness of human hands; here - the poverty of the first and the activity of the second;

there - poverty sincerely wanders along the high roads and streets; here it is hidden by luxury and external wealth; there is an ideal world of fantasy and art; here - an essential sphere of trade and industry; there is the lazy Tiber, on which you occasionally see a fishing boat; here is the active Thames, which is crowded with steamers; there the sky is eternally bright and open; here fog and smoke hid the pure azure forever from human eyes; there are religious processions every day; here is the dryness of a non-ritual religion; there every Sunday is a noisy feast of the walking people; here it's Sunday - dead silence in the streets; there - lightness, carelessness, fun; here is the important and severe thought of the north...

Isn't this striking contrast between the two countries the reason why the English love Italy so much and populate it with annual colonies! It is natural for a man to love what he sees reverse side the life that surrounds him. With it he completes his being.

You revere this country when you see in it with your own eyes the lasting prosperity that it has arranged for itself, and so wisely and vigilantly maintains. The islanders sometimes seem funny and strange when you get to know them on solid ground; but with involuntary respect you bow before them when you visit them and look at the miracles of their universal strength, at the activity of their mighty will, at this great present of theirs, with all its roots kept in the depths of the strictly guarded and respected past. Looking at the outward appearance of England, you think that this power is immortal, if only any earthly power can be immortal in a world where everything passes!

This force contains two others, the mutual union of which establishes the unshakable strength of England. One of these forces aspires outside, longs to embrace the whole world, to assimilate everything to itself; it is the insatiable colonial force that founded the United States, conquered the East Indies, laid hands on all the glorious harbors of the world. But there is a different force in England, an inner, dominant force, which arranges everything, preserves everything, strengthens everything, and which feeds on what has passed.

Not so long ago, before our eyes, these two forces were personified in two writers of England, after whose death she did not produce anything higher than them: these are Byron and W. Scott. It seems wonderful from the first glance how these two geniuses, completely opposite in spirit and direction, could be contemporaries and even friends. The secret of this is in the life of England itself, and even in the life of all of Europe.

Byron personifies for me the insatiable, stormy power of England, which foams all the seas, flutters the flags on the winds of the whole world. Byron is the product of this endless thirst that England suffers, this eternal discontent that stirs her up and drives her into the world. He expressed in himself the inexhaustible pride of her indomitable spirit!

W. Scott, on the other hand, is the spokesman for her other power, which builds within, preserves and observes. This is an unchanging faith in one's great past; it is an infinite love for him, leading to reverence. The poetry of W. Scott comes from the beginning that everything historically correct is already beautiful because it is sanctified by the tradition of our country. The novels of W. Scott are the artistic apotheosis of history.

When in London, walking along the immense docks, you survey the ships ready to fly to all sorts of countries of the world, then it becomes clear how in such a land the insatiable, stormy spirit of Byron could be born and brought up.

When one reverently enters under the dark vaults of Westminster Abbey42 or walks through the parks of Windsor, Gamptoncourt, Richmond43 and rests under oaks, a birth contemporary to Shakespeare, then one comprehends how the vigilant genius of W. Scott could ripen on this soil of tradition.

Both of these great phenomena of the literature of this century could not be one without the other. They expressed not only England, but the whole of Europe. The stormy spirit of Byron was reflected both in the state life of peoples and in the private life of mankind; he was opposed by the desire of W. Scott to preserve the past and sanctify any nationality.

How little are all the phenomena of English literature after these two, which still continue to have a dual influence on the entire writing world of Europe!

Of all the modern writers in England, E.L. Bulwer44. It hurts to think how the literature of England could sink to such mediocrity! It was difficult to choose a new path after the giants of English poetry. Bulwer decided to choose something in between, but it turned out to be neither one nor the other. His heroes do not have the ideality of Byron's heroes and are alien to the life that W. Scott gives to his own. Mediocrity always loves the colorless middle.

The superiority of Bulverovo, secured to him by the mediocrity of modern English literature, will soon be beaten off from him by Dickens, a fresh and national talent. Dickens' inspiration is the same English humor from which, starting with Shakespeare, all the folk geniuses of England drew. Dickens takes his characters from nature, but finishes them on the model of English caricatures. Main sphere

his is that lower area of calculation and industry, which drowns out all human feelings. It was necessary to stigmatize this vulgar world with satire, and Dickens responds to the need of the time.

We could have imitators of Dickens, if in this case Russia had not outstripped England. Dickens has many similarities with Gogol, and if we could assume the influence of our literature on English, then we could proudly conclude that England is beginning to imitate Russia. It is a pity that the satire of our comedian will not take into its department the society of our industrialists, as it has already taken away the society of officials.

It is said that in England many ladies entered the literary scene. And in this case, isn't England imitating us? Of the female poets, Miss Norton and Miss Brooke are especially famous. The first has recently become famous for its poem "The Dream", written in Byro's new style.

In England, the same phenomenon as in Italy, in relation to the modern literature of France: this latter did not produce any influence on the writers of England. French novels and dramas do not even find translators there. In Italy we found two reasons for this: Religion and aesthetic feeling. In England there are also two: the traditions of one's own literature and public opinion. The literature of England always had a moral goal in mind, and each of its works, having appeared in the world, in addition to its aesthetic value, had the value of a moral deed, which was subjected to public judgment. This is how it should be in a well-organized state. Public opinion in England is also a power that puts up barriers to the abuse of the personal freedom of a writer who, with his corrupted imagination, would want to corrupt the people as well. In England, even the well-known correspondence of a child with Goethe* in translation could not be successful because of social relations: how could the novels of some Soulier appear with impunity?

But many translations from German are published in England. The Germans, who owe so much to the literature of Albion, in their turn exert their influence on it. This, of course, involves a new generation of Englishmen who often complete their education in German universities. The English have a special passion for translating Faust: many translations of him have come out with great merit.

Decreasing literatures, due to the lack of the present, usually resort to their great memoirs, to the study of their

* Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde ("Goethe's correspondence with one child").

past. England studies Shakespeare in detail, as Italy studies Dante, as Germany studies Goethe. For some time now, many works on Shakespeare alone have been published in England: now, year by year, the richest materials are being collected to explain his works, materials that German criticism has not yet had time to sufficiently use. The manifestation of a great genius always remains a heavenly riddle for mankind; but his upbringing, the gradual maturation, the materials he had at hand, the age in which he lived, all this will in time be brought into transparent clarity. The history of the English stage before Shakespeare, Collier46 and Drek's essay: "Shakespeare and his age" *, these are still the best comments on the great

to the dramatist of England**.

Despite the fact that the English study so much Shakespeare, their critical way of looking at this writer has not changed at all. It is strange how all the studies or aesthetic discoveries of Lessing47, Goethe, August Schlegel48 and Tieck49 are for the English in vain and are in no way accepted on the basis of English criticism. It is worth reading Coleridge's lectures on Shakespeare, published not so long ago, and read by him after Schlegel's lectures, to be convinced of this. With the exception of a few remarks, deep and sensible, Coleridge's criticism has no basis: it is unable to comprehend the ideas of the work; she doesn't even ask herself the question. So little do the Western nations change with their discoveries in the field of science, and so each habitually stagnates in its prejudices, which, according to legend, pass from generation to generation.

To see further how the aesthetic criticism of Germany has remained completely alien to English writers who study works of literature, it is worth looking at the work of Gallam50 "The History of European Literature in the 15th, 16th and 17th Centuries". It is a collection made from the writings of Tiraboschi, Genguenet, Sismondi, Butervek51, Wharton52 and others, inanimate by any thought. Gallam's criticism is no higher than Wharton's: both are compilers.

* Here are the books waiting for translators or abridgers in Russia. It would be both more useful and more curious than the many novels that appear with us, as if for the sole purpose of enriching the sheets of journal bibliography.

It is strange that until now the English have not published a complete library of all those modern books of Shakespeare from which he drew his dramas: it is necessary to collect all this raw material that served for his creations. Much has already been done in this area. But it is strange how it has never occurred to anyone to collect a complete collection. Hollinshed's chronicle still costs about 800 rubles in England and is one of the bibliographic rarities; and without it all the dramas of Shakespeare borrowed from English history cannot be explained.

English drama is in decline: it cannot produce anything like Shakespeare's creations. But on the other hand, with what splendor his dramas are now being played out at the Covent Garden Theater! What if the playwright of the famous Globe54, a theater that had labels instead of scenery with an inscription of what the stage should represent, had risen from the coffin? What if he stood up and saw this pomp of the present situation, the wonders of the scenery that deceives the eye, the splendor of the costumes, the siege of the city on the stage in the faces? How surprised he would be, on the one hand, but how sorry, on the other! Why, then, did the English of the sixteenth century, who did not know the wonders of present-day stage mechanics, have Shakespeare? Why do the English of the 19th century have Macready*, who brought the stage performance of Shakespeare's drama to the highest degree luxury rather than have Shakespeare? Is it destined for mankind not to connect one with the other? Is it really in our time that England is destined only to perform a magnificent funeral feast on Shakespeare in the wonderful atmosphere of his dramas on the stage of Coventgarden?

Although we limited ourselves to one elegant literature of England; but we cannot help mentioning the name of a historical writer who is now making a great impact in his own country and will, of course, arouse sympathy throughout Europe when he is more familiar: this is Thomas Carlyle,55 the author of the History of the French Revolution, written with a satirical pen. He alone knew how to rise above this event and tell an impartial and bitter truth about it. His fantasy and style were brought up by Germany and reek of strangeness. Even though Carlyle finds many imitators in England.

We will conclude a brief outline of the literary development of modern England in the words of one of the most witty French critics, who has every means to observe closely the literature of a neighboring state. These words will also serve as a transition for us to the present question, from which we have so far been distracted by episodes. This is how Philaret Schal concludes his review of modern English literature, published in the first November book, Revue des deux mondes56:

“In vain, with some sense of trust and hope, we try to reject the fatal truth. The decline of literatures, resulting from the decline of minds, is an event that cannot be denied. Everyone sees that we European peoples, as if by unanimous consent, are descending to some kind of half-Chinese insignificance, to some kind of universal and inevitable weakness, which the author of these observations predicted.

* Actor and director of the Covent Garden Theater in London.

has been going on for fifteen years and for which he finds no cure. This descent, this dark path, which someday will lead us to a flat level in mental development, to the crushing of forces, to the destruction of the creative genius, is accomplished in various ways, depending on the degree of weakening of the various tribes of Europe. The southern peoples descend first: before all they received life and light, before all the night of insignificance comprehends them. The northern ones will follow them: the fortress of the vital juices of the world has found refuge in them. The Italians, a noble tribe, are already there, in the depths, calm, quiet, blessed with their climate, and alas! intoxicated with the happiness of impotence - this last disaster of peoples. The Spaniards, the second children of the new Europe, torment their insides with their hands and gnaw at themselves, like Ugolino, before entering this deep silence of Italy, this fullness of death. On the same slope down, but more lively with their strength, other peoples are agitated: they still hope, still sing, enjoy, make noise and think with railways and schools to resurrect the flame of social life, trembling with the last light. England itself, deprived of its Saxon energy, its puritanical ardor, having lost its literary powers, having buried its Byrons and W. Scotts, what will it be like in a hundred years? God knows!

But even if the signs announced by the philosophers were true; if in that vast galvanic stream of annihilation and re-creation, which is called History, all of Europe for a thousand and two hundred years, with its laws, rights, beginnings, thoughts, with its double past, Teutonic and Roman, with its pride, moral life, physical power, with her literatures, should slowly wear out and fall asleep with eternal sleep, why be surprised? If she had been appointed to experience the same fate that once befell the Greek world, then the Roman world, both smaller both in space and time than our Christian Europe; if the fragments of the old vessel, in turn, were to serve to create a new, fresh vessel, can we complain about that? Did this civilization, which we call European, not last long enough? But are there not new, young countries on earth that will accept and are already accepting our inheritance, as our fathers once accepted the inheritance of Rome, when Rome made its fate? America and Russia are not here? Both crave fame to go on stage, like two young actors craving applause; both equally burn with patriotism and strive for possession. One of them, the only heiress of the Anglo-Saxon genius: the other, with her Slovene mind, immensely flexible, patiently learns from the peoples

New Romans and wants to continue their latest traditions. And beyond Russia and America, aren't there other lands that, for millions of years, will continue, if necessary, this eternal work of human education?

There is no need to despair for humanity and for its future, even if we, the peoples of the West, had to fall asleep - fall asleep with the sleep of the decrepit tribes, immersed in the lethargy of vigil, in living death, in fruitless activity, in an abundance of bastards, which the dying Byzantium suffered for so long. I'm afraid we won't live up to the same. On literature finds delirium of fever. The material man, the worker of the body, the bricklayer, the engineer, the architect, the chemist, may deny my opinion; but the evidence is clear. Discover at least 12,000 new acids; guide balloons by electric machine; invent a means to kill 60,000 people in one second: in spite of all this, the moral world of Europe will still be what it already is: dying, if not completely dead. From the height of his solitary observatory, flying over dark spaces and foggy waves of the future and the past, the philosopher who is obliged to strike the clock of modern history and report on the changes that are taking place in the life of peoples - everyone is forced to repeat his ominous cry: Europe is dying!

These cries of despair are now often heard from Western writers, contemporary to us. Calling us to the heritage of European life, they could flatter our vanity; but, of course, it would be ignoble of us to rejoice at such terrible cries. No, we will accept them only as a lesson for the future, as a warning in our current relations with the languishing West.

England and Italy never had a direct literary influence on Russia. Our artists cross the Alps and study art in Raphael's homeland; the industrialists of England visit us and instruct us in their work. But we still learned the literature of Italy and England through France and Germany. Byron and W. Scott acted on the best minds of our literature through French translations. The Germans introduced us to the treasures of Shakespeare. For some time now, we have begun, bypassing intermediaries, to recognize the riches of southern and northern literature, but we still look at them through German glasses. It must be hoped that the spread of foreign languages will lead us to a more independent view. But where is the reason why England and Italy have not yet had a direct influence on us in the intellectual and literary sense?

niya? They are shielded from Russia by the two countries to which we now turn.

(Publication continued in the next issue of the Bulletin) Notes

1 Cyrus - Persian king, conqueror of the East in the VI century. BC e.

2 This refers to Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), the king, the creator of a vast empire from Greece to the Indus.

3 Caesar, Guy Julius (100-44 BC) - the first emperor of Ancient Rome, who expanded its borders to the territories of Europe, Asia and Africa.

4 Charlemagne - king of the Franks, who founded the empire (688-741).

5 Gregory VII - Pope of Rome (1073-1085), who approved the primacy of papal power over secular power, the infallibility of the pope, and the vow of celibacy for the Roman clergy.

6 Charles V - King of Spain (1500-1558), who reunited many Spanish lands and led the reconquista (liberation of Spanish territories from the Arabs).

7 Lines from a poem by A.S. Pushkin "Napoleon".

8 Sections of the article devoted to art (painting and theater) are abbreviated.

9 The mountain peaks of the Alps that separate Italy from the rest of Europe.

10 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim (1717-1768) - historian, art critic, archaeologist, one of the first to show the importance of ancient art.

11 The country of middle Italy, later - Tuscany. The Etruscans are considered the ancestors of the Romans.

12 Raphael (Santi, 1483-1520) is a great Italian Renaissance painter. "Transfiguration" - his last painting, written for the Vatican.

13 The rivers on which major capitals world culture: Munich, Dusseldorf, London, Paris, St. Petersburg.

14 Pisa is a major scientific and Cultural Center Italy, capital of Tuscany. It has an ancient university, an academy, famous architectural monuments, including the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

15 Popes - reformers, patrons of the arts, science and culture.

16 Name unknown.

17 Mai, Angelo (1782-1832) - Jesuit, philologist, literary historian, publisher of ancient writings.

18 Ass - a coin of ancient Rome.

19 Name unknown.

20 Canina, Luigi (1795-1856) - archaeologist, architect and writer, excavated the Forum in Rome.

21 Rosellini (1800-1843) - Egyptologist, Champollion's assistant. Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Pisa.

22 Rosini (1748-1836) - archaeologist, led the excavations of Herculaneum.

23 Manzoni (Manzoni), Alessandro (1785-1873) - poet and writer.

24 Ciampi (1769-1847) - historian, priest. Studied ancient Roman manuscripts.

25 Litta, Pompeo (1781-1852) - a historian who studied 75 of the most prominent clans in Italy, his work was then continued by followers.

26 via subscription.

27 The poetic name of Italy, derived from the name of the ancient people of the Avzones.

28 Pellico, Silvio (1789-1851) - writer, imprisoned for his sympathies with the Carbonari. One of his famous works is Francesca da Rimini.

29 Historian and novelist (1807-?). The prayer of a child for the Fatherland from the novel "Margarita Pusterla" has become truly popular in Italy.

30 Grossi, Tomaso (1791-1853) - poet, famous for his satires.

31 Colletta, Pietro (1775-1839) - historian and statesman. Minister of War of Naples.

32 Tacitus (155-120) - an ancient Roman historian, the most important source on the history of the Romanesque and Germanic peoples.

33 Botta, Carlo Giuseppe (1766-1837) - historian and poet, participant in the French Revolution.

34 Balbo, Cesare (1789-1863) - statesman and historian. Supporter of the unification of Italy.

35 Leopardi, Giacomo (1798-1837) - lyric poet.

36 This refers to Petrarch, who lived in Avignon and its environs.

37 Kerner father - Christian Gottfried (1756-1831), a friend of Schiller. Kerner-son - Karl Theodor (1791-1813), died in the war, wrote patriotic poems. Uhland, Ludwig (1787-1862) - philologist, literary historian and poet.

38 Berchet, Giovanni (1783-1851) Romantic poet.

39 Giustiniani is an Italian family known by poets and historians.

40 i.e. courts (lat.)

41 Italian playwrights, of which the most popular are Carlo Goldoni (comedies) and Vittorio Alfieri (tragedies).

42 Cathedral of St. Petra, the place of coronation and burial of English kings and other great men of England.

43 Green areas of London and its environs.

44 Bulwer, Edward George (1803-1873) - writer and politician.

45 Poetess, granddaughter of the poet Sheridan (1808-1877).

46 Collier (Collier, Collier), John Pen (1789-1883) - English literary historian, Shakespeareologist.

47 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1728-1781) - German writer, esthetician.

48 Schlegel, August Wilhelm (1767-1845) - German critic, orientalist, poet, historian of literature and art.

49 Tieck, Ludwig (1778-1853) - critic, poet and writer, one of the founders of the romantic school in Germany.

51 Tiraboschi, Giralamo (1731-1794) - Italian literary historian; Genguenet, Pierre-Louis (1748-1816) - French literary historian and poet; Sismondi, Jean Charles Leonard (1773-1842) - French economist and historian; Buterwek, Friedrich (1766-1828) - German esthetician and philosopher, professor at the University of Göttingen.

52 Name not found.

53 It has existed since 1732. Now it is an opera house, in the first half of the 19th century. it had different performances.

54 Globe - theater (1599-1644), where plays by Shakespeare were staged.

55 Carlyle, Thomas (1795-1881) - philologist, historian, publicist, apologist for Bismarck.

56 Solid French magazine.

The publication was prepared by a candidate of historical sciences, a leading researcher at the Institute of Theory and History of Pedagogy of the Russian Academy of Education

L.N. BELENCHUK

A RUSSIAN VIEW ON TODAY'S EDUCATION

A well-known article by S.P. Shevyrev entitled A Russian View on Today’s Education in Europe’ is published. As far as the author of the present publication knows, this article has never been reprinted despite its fame and numerous references to it, and also despite the fact that it is undoubtedly of interest to philologists as well as to historians of pedagogics.

This publication has been prepared by L.N. Belenchuk, Ph.D. in History, a leading researcher at the Institute of Theory and History of Pedagogy of the Russian Academy of Science.

Ermashov D.V.

Born October 18 (30), 1806 in Saratov. He graduated from the Noble boarding school at the Moscow University (1822). Since 1823, he was in the service of the Moscow archive of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs, entering the circle of the so-called. "archival youths", who later formed the backbone of the "Society of Philosophy" and engaged in the study philosophical ideas German romanticism, Schelling, and others. Pushkin. In 1829, as a teacher of the son of Prince. BEHIND. Volkonsky went abroad. He spent three years in Italy, devoting all his free time to studying European languages, classical philology and art history. Returning to Russia, at the suggestion of S.S. Uvarov took the place of an adjunct in literature at Moscow University. In order to acquire the proper status, in 1834 he presented the essay "Dante and His Age", two years later - his doctoral dissertation "The Theory of Poetry in its Historical Development among Ancient and New Nations" and the study "History of Poetry", which deserved positive feedback from Pushkin. For 34 years he taught a number of courses on the history of Russian literature, the general history of poetry, the theory of literature and pedagogy. Professor at Moscow University (1837–1857), head of the department of the history of Russian literature (since 1847), academician (since 1852). All these years he was actively engaged in journalistic activity. In 1827–1831 Shevyrev - an employee of the "Moscow Bulletin", in 1835-1839 - the leading critic of the "Moscow Observer", from 1841 to 1856 - the closest associate of M.P. Pogodin according to the edition of "Moskvityanin". Some time after his dismissal from the post of professor, he left Europe in 1860, lectured on the history of Russian literature in Florence (1861) and Paris (1862).

Shevyrev was characterized by the desire to build his worldview on the foundation of Russian national identity, which, from his point of view, has deep historical roots. Considering literature as a reflection of the spiritual experience of the people, he tried to find in it the origins of Russian identity and the foundations of national education. This topic is a key one in Shevyrev's scientific and journalistic activities. He deserves the merit of the "discoverer" of ancient Russian fiction in general, he was one of the first to prove to the Russian reader the fact of its existence since the time of Kievan Rus, introduced into scientific circulation many now known monuments of pre-Petrine Russian literature, attracted many novice scientists to the comparative study of domestic and foreign literature, etc. the political views of Shevyrev developed in the same spirit, the main motives of his journalism were the assertion of Russian originality and criticism of Westernism, which rejected it. From this point of view, Shevyrev was one of the largest ideologists of the so-called. theory of "official nationality" and at the same time one of its brightest popularizers. During the period of cooperation in "Moskvityanin", which brought him a reputation as an ardent supporter of the official ideology, Shevyrev applied his main efforts to the development of one problem - proof of the detrimental effect of European influence on Russia. A significant place among the thinker's works on this topic is occupied by his article "A Russian's View of the Modern Education of Europe", in which he postulated the theses that later became widely known about the "decay of the West", its spiritual incurable disease; about the need to counteract the "magic charm" that the West still fascinates the Russian people, and realize their originality, putting an end to disbelief in their own strength; about the calling of Russia to save and preserve in a higher synthesis all the spiritual healthy values of Europe, etc., etc.

Compositions:

A Russian's view of the modern education of Europe // Moskvityanin. 1941. No. 1.

Anthology of world political thought. T. 3. M., 1997. S. 717–724.

The history of Russian literature, mostly ancient. M., 1846–1860.

About native literature. M., 2004.

Letters to M.P. Pogodina, S.P. Shevyreva and M.A. Maksimovich to Prince P.A. Vyazemsky. SPb., 1846.

Bibliography

Peskov A.M. At the origins of philosophizing in Russia: The Russian idea of S.P. Shevyreva // New Literary Review. 1994. No. 7. S. 123–139.

Texts

A Russian's view of contemporary education in Europe (1)

There are moments in history when all mankind is expressed by one all-consuming name! These are the names of Cyrus (2), Alexander (3), Caesar (4), Charlemagne (5), Gregory VII (6), Charles V (7). Napoleon was ready to put his name on contemporary humanity, but he met Russia.

There are epochs in history when all the forces acting in it are resolved in two main ones, which, having absorbed everything extraneous, come face to face, measure each other with their eyes and come out for a decisive debate, like Achilles and Hector at the conclusion of the Iliad (8 ). - Here are the famous martial arts of world history: Asia and Greece, Greece and Rome, Rome and the German world.

In the ancient world, these martial arts were decided by material force: then the force ruled the universe. In the Christian world world conquests have become impossible: we are called to single combat of thought.

Napoleon (we started with him not for nothing); contributed a lot towards scheduling both words of this result. In the person of his gigantic genius, the instinct of the entire West concentrated - and moved to Russia when he could. Let's repeat the words of the Poet:

Praise! He to the Russian people

high lot indicated.(9)

Yes, a great and decisive moment. West and Russia stand in front of each other, face to face! - Will he carry us away in his worldwide aspiration? Will he get it? Shall we go in addition to his education? Shall we make some superfluous additions to his story? - Or will we stand in our originality? Shall we form a special world, according to our principles, and not the same European ones? Let's take a sixth part of the world out of Europe... the seed for the future development of mankind?

Here is a question - a great question, which is not only heard in our country, but is also answered in the West. Solving it - for the good of Russia and mankind - is the business of generations to us modern and future. Everyone who has just been called to any significant service in our Fatherland must begin by resolving this issue if he wants to connect his actions with the present moment of life. That's the reason why we start with it.

Let us take a general look at the state of modern Europe and the attitude in which our Fatherland is towards it. Here we eliminate all political views and confine ourselves to only one picture of education, embracing religion, science, art and literature, the latter as the most complete expression of the whole human life of the peoples. We will touch, of course, only the main countries that are active in the field of European peace.

Let us begin with those two whose influence reaches us least of all, and which form the two extreme opposites of Europe. We mean Italy and England. The first took to its share all the treasures of the ideal world of fantasy; almost completely alien to all the lures of modern luxury industry, she, in the miserable rags of poverty, sparkles with her fiery eyes, enchants with sounds, shines with ageless beauty and is proud of her past. The second selfishly appropriated all the essential benefits of the worldly world; drowning herself in the richness of life, she wants to entangle the whole world with the bonds of her trade and industry. […]

France and Germany are the two parties under whose influence we have been and are now. In them, one might say, the whole of Europe is concentrated for us. There is neither a separating sea nor an obscuring Alps. Every book, every thought of France and Germany resonates with us rather than in any other country of the West. Previously, French influence prevailed: in new generations it is mastering German. All educated Russia can rightly be divided into two halves: French and German, according to the influence of one or another education.

That is why it is especially important for us to delve into the current situation of these two countries and the attitude in which we are towards them. Here we boldly and sincerely state our opinion, knowing in advance that it will arouse many contradictions, offend many vanities, stir up the prejudices of education and teachings, violate the traditions hitherto accepted. But in the question we are solving, the first condition is sincerity of conviction.

France and Germany were the scenes of two of the greatest events to which the whole history of the new West is summed up, or rather, two critical illnesses corresponding to each other. These diseases were - the reformation in Germany (10), the revolution in France (11): the disease is the same, only in two different forms. Both were the inevitable consequence of Western development, which has incorporated a duality of principles and established this discord as the normal law of life. We think that these illnesses have already ceased; that both countries, having experienced the turning point of the disease, entered again into healthy and organic development. No, we are wrong. Diseases have generated harmful juices, which now continue to operate and which, in turn, have already produced organic damage in both countries, a sign of future self-destruction. Yes, in our sincere, friendly, close relations with the West, we do not notice that we are dealing, as it were, with a person who carries within himself an evil, contagious disease, surrounded by an atmosphere of dangerous breath. We kiss him, embrace him, share a meal of thought, drink a cup of feeling... and we don't notice the hidden poison in our careless communion, we don't smell the future corpse in the fun of the feast, which he already smells of.

Ermashov D.V.

Born October 18 (30), 1806 in Saratov. He graduated from the Noble boarding school at the Moscow University (1822). Since 1823, he was in the service of the Moscow archive of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs, entering the circle of the so-called. "archival youths", who later formed the backbone of the "Society of Philosophy" and studied the philosophical ideas of German romanticism, Schelling, and others. Pushkin. In 1829, as a teacher of the son of Prince. BEHIND. Volkonsky went abroad. He spent three years in Italy, devoting all his free time to studying European languages, classical philology and art history. Returning to Russia, at the suggestion of S.S. Uvarov took the place of an adjunct in literature at Moscow University. In order to acquire the proper status, in 1834 he presented the essay "Dante and His Age", two years later - his doctoral dissertation "The Theory of Poetry in its Historical Development among Ancient and New Nations" and the study "History of Poetry", which deserved positive feedback from Pushkin. For 34 years he taught a number of courses on the history of Russian literature, the general history of poetry, the theory of literature and pedagogy. Professor at Moscow University (1837–1857), head of the department of the history of Russian literature (since 1847), academician (since 1852). All these years he was actively engaged in journalistic activity. In 1827–1831 Shevyrev - an employee of the "Moscow Bulletin", in 1835-1839 - the leading critic of the "Moscow Observer", from 1841 to 1856 - the closest associate of M.P. Pogodin according to the edition of "Moskvityanin". Some time after his dismissal from the post of professor, he left Europe in 1860, lectured on the history of Russian literature in Florence (1861) and Paris (1862).

Shevyrev was characterized by the desire to build his worldview on the foundation of Russian national identity, which, from his point of view, has deep historical roots. Considering literature as a reflection of the spiritual experience of the people, he tried to find in it the origins of Russian identity and the foundations of national education. This topic is a key one in Shevyrev's scientific and journalistic activities. He is credited with the "discoverer" of ancient Russian literature as a whole, he was one of the first to prove to the Russian reader the fact of its existence since the time of Kievan Rus, introduced into scientific circulation many now known monuments of pre-Petrine Russian literature, attracted many novice scientists to the comparative study of domestic and foreign literature, etc. In a similar spirit, Shevyrev's political views developed, the main motives of his journalism were to affirm Russian originality and criticize Westernism, which rejected it. From this point of view, Shevyrev was one of the largest ideologists of the so-called. theory of "official nationality" and at the same time one of its brightest popularizers. During the period of cooperation in "Moskvityanin", which brought him a reputation as an ardent supporter of the official ideology, Shevyrev applied his main efforts to the development of one problem - proof of the detrimental effect of European influence on Russia. A significant place among the thinker's works on this topic is occupied by his article "A Russian's View of the Modern Education of Europe", in which he postulated the theses that later became widely known about the "decay of the West", its spiritual incurable disease; about the need to counteract the "magic charm" that the West still fascinates the Russian people, and realize their originality, putting an end to disbelief in their own strength; about the calling of Russia to save and preserve in a higher synthesis all the spiritual healthy values of Europe, etc., etc.

Compositions:

A Russian's view of the modern education of Europe // Moskvityanin. 1941. No. 1.

Anthology of world political thought. T. 3. M., 1997. S. 717–724.

The history of Russian literature, mostly ancient. M., 1846–1860.

About native literature. M., 2004.

Letters to M.P. Pogodina, S.P. Shevyreva and M.A. Maksimovich to Prince P.A. Vyazemsky. SPb., 1846.

Bibliography

Peskov A.M. At the origins of philosophizing in Russia: The Russian idea of S.P. Shevyreva // New Literary Review. 1994. No. 7. S. 123–139.

Texts

A Russian's view of contemporary education in Europe (1)

Praise! He to the Russian people

high lot indicated.(9)

He captivated us with the luxury of his education; he carries us on his winged steamers, rolls us on the railroads; caters without our labor to all the whims of our sensuality, lavishes before us the wit of thought, the pleasures of art.... We are glad that we got to the feast ready for such a rich host... We are intoxicated; we have fun for nothing to taste what cost so much .... But we do not notice that in these dishes there is a juice that our fresh nature cannot bear .... We do not foresee that the satiated host, having seduced us with all the charms of a magnificent feast, will corrupt our mind and heart; that we will leave him drunk beyond our years, with a heavy impression of an orgy, incomprehensible to us ...

But let us rest in faith in Providence, whose finger is open in our history. Let us delve better into the nature of both ailments and determine for ourselves the lesson of wise protection.

There is a country in which both turning points took place even earlier than in the entire West and thereby forestalled its development. This country is an island for Europe, both geographically and historically. The secrets of her inner life have not yet been unraveled - and no one has decided why both upheavals that took place in her so early did not produce any, at least visible, organic damage.

In France, a great affliction has engendered the depravity of personal freedom, which threatens the whole state with complete disorganization. France takes pride in having acquired political freedom; but let us see how she applied it to the various branches of her social development? What did she do with this acquired tool in the field of religion, art, science and literature? We will not talk about politics and industry. Let us only add that the development of its industry is hampered year by year by the self-will of the lower classes of the people, and that the monarchical and noble character of the luxury and splendor of its products does not in the least correspond to the direction of its popular spirit.

What is the state of religion in France now? - Religion has two manifestations: personal in individual people, as a matter of conscience for everyone, and state, as the Church. Therefore, it is possible to consider the development of religion in any people only from these two points of view. The development of a state religion is obvious; it is in front of everyone; but it is difficult to penetrate into the development of her personal, family, hidden in the secret of the life of the people. The latter can be seen either on the spot, or in literature, or in education.

Since 1830, as is known, France has lost the unity of the state religion. The country, originally Roman Catholic, allowed free Protestantism both into the bosom of its people and into the bosom of the reigning family. Since 1830, all the religious processions of the Church, these solemn moments in which she is the servant of God before the eyes of the people, have been destroyed in the life of the French people. The most famous rite of the Western Church, the splendid procession: the corpus Domini, performed so brilliantly in all the countries of the Roman Catholic West, is never again performed in the streets of Paris. When a dying person calls to himself the gifts of Christ before his death, the church sends them without any triumph, the priest brings them secretly, as if during the time of persecution of Christianity. Religion can perform its rites only inside temples; she alone seems to be deprived of the right to publicity, while everyone in France uses it with impunity; the temples of France are like the catacombs of the original Christians, who did not dare to bring out the manifestations of their worship of God. [...]

All these phenomena of the present life of the French people do not show a religious development in them. But how to solve the same question concerning the inner life of families in France? Literature brings us the saddest news of this, revealing the pictures of this life in its tireless stories. At the same time, I remember a word heard from the lips of a certain public teacher, who assured me that all religious morality can be concluded in the rules of Arithmetic. [...]

Literature among the people is always the result of its cumulative development in all branches of its human education. From the foregoing, the reasons for the decline of modern literature in France, whose works, unfortunately, are too well known in our Fatherland, can now be clear. A people that, through the abuse of personal freedom, has destroyed the feeling of Religion in itself, has desensitized art and made science meaningless, must, of course, bring the abuse of its freedom to the highest degree of extremeness in literature, which is not curbed either by the laws of the state or by the opinion of society. [...]

We conclude the deplorable picture of France by pointing to one a common denominator, which is clearly visible in almost all of its contemporary writers. All of them themselves feel the painful state of their fatherland in all branches of its development; they all unanimously point to the decline of his Religion, politics, education, sciences, and Literature itself, which is their own business. In any essay dealing with contemporary life, you will surely find several pages, several lines, devoted to the condemnation of the present. Their common voice can sufficiently cover and reinforce our own in this case. But here's the weird thing! That feeling of apathy, which always accompanies such censures, which have become a kind of habit among the writers of France, have become a fashion, have become a commonplace. Every ailment among the people is terrible, but even more terrible is the cold hopelessness with which those who, the first, should have thought of means to cure it, speak of it.

Let us cross over the Rhine (13), into the country next to us, and try to delve into the secret of its intangible development. In the first place, we are struck by how striking a contrast to the land from which we have just emerged is the outward improvement of Germany in everything that concerns her state, civil and social development. What order! what slenderness! One marvels at the prudence of the German, who skillfully removes from himself all the possible temptations of his rebellious neighbors beyond the Rhine and strictly confines himself to the sphere of his own life. The Germans even harbor a kind of open hatred or lofty contempt for the abuse of personal freedom with which all sections of French society are infected. The sympathy of some German writers for French self-will found almost no echo in prudent Germany and left no harmful trace in her entire present way of life! This country in different parts of his own can present excellent examples of development in all branches of complex human education. Its state structure is based on the love of its Sovereigns for the good of their subjects and on the obedience and devotion of these latter to their rulers. Its civil order will rest on the laws of the purest and most frank justice, inscribed in the hearts of its rulers and in the minds of subjects called to the execution of a civil cause. Its universities flourish and pour the treasures of teaching into all the lower institutions to which the education of the people is entrusted. Art is developing in Germany in such a way that it now puts it in a worthy rival with her mentor, Italy. Industry and domestic trade are making rapid progress. Everything that serves to facilitate communication between her various dominions, everything that modern civilization can boast of in relation to the conveniences of life, such as post offices, customs, roads, etc., all this is excellent in Germany and elevates her to the rank of a country, excelling in its external accomplishment on the solid ground of Europe. What does it seem to lack for her unshakable eternal prosperity?

But above this solid, happy, well-ordered appearance of Germany, another intangible, invisible world of thought floats, completely separate from its external world. Her main ailment is there, in this abstract world, which has no contact with her political and civil system. In the Germans, miraculously, mental life is separated from external, social life. Therefore, in the same German you can very often meet two people: external and internal. The first will be the most faithful, most humble subject of his Sovereign, a truth-loving and zealous citizen of his fatherland, an excellent family man and unfailing friend, in a word, a zealous performer of all his external duties; but take the same man inside, penetrate his mental world: you can find in him the most complete corruption of thought - and in this world inaccessible to the eye, in this intangible mental sphere, the same German, humble, submissive, faithful in state, society and family - is violent, violent, raping everything, not recognizing any other power over his thought ... This is the same ancient unbridled ancestor of his, whom Tacitus (14) saw in all his native savagery coming out of the cherished forests of his , with the only difference being that the new, educated person transferred his freedom from the external world to the mental world. Yes, debauchery of thought is the invisible malady of Germany, engendered in her by the Reformation and deeply hidden in her internal development. [...]

The direction now being taken by those two countries, which have exercised and continue to exercise the strongest influence on us, is so contrary to our life principle, so inconsistent with everything that has gone by that we all, more or less, inwardly recognize the need to sever our further ties with the West in literary terms. respect. Of course, I am not talking here about those glorious examples of its great past, which we must always study: they, as the property of all mankind, belong to us, but to us, by right, the closest and direct heirs in the line of peoples entering the stage of the living and the active world. I'm not talking about those contemporary writers who in the West, seeing for themselves the direction of humanity surrounding them, arm themselves against it and oppose it: such writers sympathize with us a lot and even impatiently await our activity. However, they are a minor exception. Of course, I do not understand those scientists who work on certain individual parts of the sciences and gloriously cultivate their field. No, I'm talking in general about the spirit of Western education, about its main thoughts and the movements of its new literature. Here we meet such phenomena that seem incomprehensible to us, which, in our opinion, do not follow from anything, which we are afraid of, and sometimes we pass them indifferently, senselessly, or with a feeling of some kind of childish curiosity that irritates our eyes.

Russia, fortunately, has not experienced those two great ailments, which harmful extremes begin to strongly act there: hence the reason why local phenomena are not clear to her and why she cannot connect them with anything of her own. Peacefully and prudently she contemplated the development of the West: taking it as a safety lesson for her life, she happily avoided discord or duality of principles, to which the West was subjected in its internal development, and retained its cherished and all-sustaining unity; she assimilated only what could be decent for her in the sense of universal humanity and rejected the extraneous ... And now, when the West, like Mephistopheles in the conclusion of Goethe's Faust, preparing to open that fiery abyss where he aspires, comes to us and thunders with his terrible: Komm ! Komm! (15) - Russia will not follow him: she did not give him any vow, she did not bind her existence with his existence by any agreement: she did not share his ailments with him; she retained her great unity, and in a fateful moment, perhaps, she was also appointed by Providence to be His great instrument for the salvation of mankind.

Let's not hide the fact that our literature, in its relations with the West, has developed some shortcomings in itself. We bring them to three. The first of these is a characteristic feature of our moment, there is indecision. It is clear from what has been said above. We cannot continue literary development together with the West, because there is no sympathy in us for its contemporary works: in ourselves, we have not yet fully discovered the source of our own people's development, although there have been some successful attempts in this. The magical charm of the West still has a strong effect on us, and we cannot suddenly give it up. This indecision, I believe, is one of the main reasons for the stagnation that has been going on for several years in our literature. We wait in vain for modern inspirations from where we formerly drew them; The West sends us what is rejected by our mind and heart. We are now left to our own forces; we must necessarily confine ourselves to the rich past of the West and seek our own in our ancient history.

The activities of the new generations, who enter our field under the habitual influence of the latest thoughts and phenomena of the modern West, are involuntarily paralyzed by the impossibility of applying what is there to ours, and any young man seething with strength, if he looks into the depths of his soul, he will see that all ardent delight and all inner his strength is fettered by a feeling of heavy and idle indecision. Yes, the whole of literary Russia is now playing the role of Hercules, standing at the crossroads: the West is treacherously beckoning her to follow him, but, of course, Providence has destined her to follow another road.

The second shortcoming in our literature, closely connected with the previous one, is distrust of own forces. Until when, in any case, the last book of the West, the latest issue of a magazine, will act on us with some kind of magical power and fetter all our own thoughts? How long will we greedily swallow only ready-made results, deduced there from a way of thinking that is completely alien to us and inconsistent with our traditions? Do we really not feel so much strength in ourselves to take up the sources ourselves and discover in ourselves our new view of the entire History and Literature of the West? This is a necessity for us and a service for him, which even we owe him: no one can be impartial in his work, and peoples, like poets, creating their being, do not reach his consciousness, which is given to their heirs.

Finally, our third shortcoming, the most unpleasant one, from which we suffer the most in our Literature, is Russian apathy, a consequence of our friendly relations with the West. Plant a young, fresh plant under the shade of a hundred-year-old cedar or oak, which will cover its young being with the old shade of its wide branches, and will only feed it through them with the sun and cool it with heavenly dew, and will give its fresh roots little food from the greedy, mature in that land. their roots. You will see how a young plant will lose the colors of youthful life, will suffer from the premature old age of its decrepit neighbor; but cut down the cedar, return the sun to its young tree, and it will find a fortress in itself, rise cheerfully and freshly, and with its strong and harmless youth will even be able to gratefully cover the new shoots of its fallen neighbor.

Attach an old nurse to a lively, frisky child: you will see how the ardor of age disappears in him, and the seething life will be fettered by insensitivity. Make friends with an ardent young man, full of all the hopes of life, with a mature, disappointed husband who squandered his life, having lost both faith and hope with her: you will see how your ardent young man will change; disappointment will not stick to him; he did not deserve it with his past; but all his feelings are shrouded in the cold of inactive apathy; his fiery eyes will grow dim; he, like Freishitz, will tremble at his terrible guest; with him, he will be ashamed of his blush and his ardent feelings, blush of his delight, and like a child, put on a mask of disappointment that does not suit him.

Yes, the disappointment of the West gave rise to one cold apathy in us. Don Juan (17) produced Eugene Onegin, one of the common Russian types, aptly captured by Pushkin's brilliant thought from our modern life. This character is often repeated in our Literature: our narrators dream about him, and until recently, one of them, who brilliantly entered the field of the Poet, painted for us the same Russian apathy, even more degree, in the person of his hero, whom we, according to our national feeling, would not like to, but must be recognized as a hero of our time.

The last defect is, of course, the one with which we must most of all struggle in our modern life. This apathy is the cause in us of both the laziness that overcomes our fresh youth, and the inactivity of many writers and scientists who betray their high vocation and are distracted from it by the cramped world of the household or the large forms of all-consuming trade and industry; in this apathy is the germ of that worm-longing, which each of us more or less felt in his youth, sang in verse and bored his most supportive readers with it.

But even if we endured some inevitable shortcomings from our relations with the West, for that we kept pure in ourselves three fundamental feelings, in which the seed and guarantee of our future development.

We have preserved our ancient religious feeling. The Christian cross placed its sign on our entire primary education, on our entire Russian life. Our ancient mother Rus' blessed us with this cross, and with it she set us free on the dangerous path of the West. Let's say a parable. The boy grew up in the holy house of his parents, where everything breathed the fear of God; his first memory was imprinted with the face of a gray-haired father, kneeling before a holy icon: he did not get up in the morning, did not go to sleep without a parental blessing; every day of his was sanctified by prayer, and before every feast the house of his family was a house of prayer. Early the lad left his parent's house; cold people surrounded him and darkened his soul with doubt; evil books corrupted his thought and froze his feeling; he was visiting peoples who do not pray to God and think that they are happy ... The stormy time of youth passed ... The young man matured into a husband ... The family surrounded him, and all childhood memories rose like bright angels from the bosom of the soul his... and the feeling of Religion woke up more vividly and stronger... and his whole being was sanctified again, and the proud thought was dissolved in a pure prayer of humility... and a new world of life opened up to his eyes... The parable is clear to each of us: is it necessary interpret its meaning?

The second feeling, by which Russia is strong and her future prosperity is ensured, is the feeling of her state unity, which we also learned from our entire history. Of course, there is no country in Europe that could be proud of such a harmony of its political existence as our Fatherland. Almost everywhere in the West, discord has begun to be recognized as the law of life, and the whole existence of peoples is accomplished in a hard struggle. With us, only the Tsar and the people make up one inseparable whole, which does not tolerate any barrier between them: this connection is established on the mutual feeling of love and faith and on the endless devotion of the people to their Tsar. Here is a treasure that we have carried away from our ancient life, which the West, divided in itself, looks with particular envy, seeing in it an inexhaustible source of state power. He would like everything he can to take him away from us; but now they are not able to, because the former sense of our unity, accepted by faith, carried away by us from our former life, having passed all the temptations of education, having passed all doubts, has risen in every educated Russian, who understands his history, to the degree of clear and firm consciousness, and now this conscious feeling will remain more than ever unshakable in our Fatherland.

Our third fundamental feeling is the consciousness of our nationality and the certainty that any education can only put down a firm root in our country when it is assimilated by our people's feeling and is expressed in people's thought and word. This feeling is the reason for our indecision to continue literary development with the languishing West; in this feeling is a powerful barrier to all his temptations; this feeling breaks all the private fruitless efforts of our compatriots to instill in us that which does not suit the Russian mind and Russian heart; this feeling is the measure of the enduring success of our writers in the history of literature and education, it is the touchstone of their originality. It expressed itself strongly in the best works of each of them: Lomonosov, and Derzhavin, and Karamzin, and Zhukovsky, and Krylov, and Pushkin, and all those close to them, no matter what Latin, French , German, English or other influence. This feeling now directs us to the study of our ancient Rus', in which, of course, the original pure image of our nationality is preserved. The Government itself actively urges us to do so. With this feeling, our two capitals are related and act as one, and what is planned in the north passes through Moscow, as through the heart of Russia, in order to turn into the blood and living juices of our people. Moscow is that sure furnace in which all the past from the West is burned and receives the pure stamp of the Russian people.

Our Rus' is strong by three fundamental feelings and its future is sure. The man of the Tsar’s Council, to whom the generations that are being formed (18) have long been entrusted, expressed their deep thought, and they are the basis for the education of the people.

The West, by some strange instinct, does not like these feelings in us, and especially now, having forgotten our former kindness, having forgotten the sacrifices made to it from us, at any case expresses its dislike to us, even similar to some kind of hatred, offensive to every Russian visiting his lands. This feeling, undeserved by us and senselessly contradicting our previous relations, can be explained in two ways: either the West is in this case like a squeamish old man who, in the capricious impulses of powerless age, is angry with his heir, who is inevitably called upon to take possession of his treasures in due course; or another: he, knowing by instinct our direction, anticipates the gap that must inevitably follow between him and us, and himself, with a rush of his unjust hatred, hastens the fateful moment even more.

In the disastrous epochs of fractures and destruction, which the history of mankind represents, Providence sends, in the person of other peoples, a force that preserves and observes: may Russia be such a force in relation to the West! may it preserve for the benefit of all mankind the treasures of its great past and may it prudently reject everything that serves for destruction, and not for creation! may he find in himself and in his former life a source of his own people, in which everything alien, but humanly beautiful, merges with the Russian spirit, the vast, universal, Christian spirit, the spirit of all-encompassing tolerance and universal communion!

Notes

1. "The view of the Russian on the modern education of Europe" - an article specially written by S.P. Shevyrev at the end of 1840 for the magazine "Moskvityanin", published by M.P. Pogodin in 1841-1855, in the first issue of which it was published in January 1841. Here excerpts are published according to the edition: Shevyrev S.P. A Russian's view of the modern education of Europe // Moskvityanin. 1841, No. 1, pp. 219–221, 246–250, 252, 259, 267–270, 287–296.

2. Cyrus the Great (year of birth unknown - died in 530 BC), king in ancient Persia in 558-530, became famous for his conquests.

3. Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), king of Macedonia from 336, one of the outstanding commanders and statesmen of the ancient world.

4. Caesar Guy Julius (102 or 100-44 BC), ancient Roman statesman and politician, commander, writer, dictator of Rome for life from 44 BC.

5. Charlemagne (742-814), king of the Franks from 768, emperor from 800. Charlemagne's wars of conquest led to the creation for a short time in medieval Europe of the largest state comparable in size to the Roman Empire. The Carolingian dynasty is named after him.

6. Gregory VII Hildebrand (between 1015 and 1020–1085), Pope from 1073. He was an active figure in the Cluniac reform (aimed at strengthening the Catholic Church). The reforms he carried out contributed to the rise of the papacy. He developed the idea of subordinating the secular authorities to the church.

7. Charles V (1500-1558) from the Habsburg family. King of Spain in 1516–1556. German king in 1519–1531. Emperor of the "Holy Roman Empire" in 1519-1556. He waged wars with the Ottoman Empires, led military operations against the Protestants. For some time, his power extended to almost all of continental Europe.

8. The heroes of the epic poem by Homer (not later than the 8th century BC) "Iliad", whose duel, which ended in the death of Hector, is one of the popular images in world culture for the metaphorical designation of an uncompromising and cruel fight.

9. Lines from a poem by A.S. Pushkin "Napoleon" (1823).

10. Religious, social and ideological movement in Western Europe in the 16th century, directed against the Catholic Church and its teachings and resulting in the formation of Protestant churches.

11. This refers to the Great French Revolution of 1789-1794, which overthrew the monarchy in France and marked the beginning of the death of the feudal-absolutist system in Europe, clearing the ground for the development of bourgeois and democratic reforms.

12. Corpus Domini - the feast of the "body of the Lord", one of the most magnificent and solemn holidays of the Catholic Church.

13. The Rhine is a river in the West of Germany, in the cultural and historical sense, personifying the symbolic border between the German and French territories.

14. Tacitus Publius Cornelius (about 58 - after 117), famous Roman historian writer.

15.Comm! Komm! - Come, come (to me) (German) –– The words of Mephistopheles, addressed to the choir of angels, in one of the final scenes of the tragedy "Faust" by the German poet and thinker Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832).

16. The main character of the opera of the same name by Carl Weber (1786–1826) Freishitz (Magic Shooter). In this case, it serves as a metaphor for timidity and excessive modesty.

17. We are talking about the protagonist of the unfinished poem of the same name by the English poet George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) Don Juan, a bored romantic traveler trying to fill the emptiness of his life with the search for adventure and new passions. Byron's image of Don Juan served as A.S. Pushkin one of the sources for creating the literary hero of the novel in verse "Eugene Onegin".

18. This refers to Sergei Semenovich Uvarov (1786–1855), Minister of Public Education (1833–1849), author of the famous triad "Orthodoxy. Autocracy. Nationality", which formed the basis not only of Uvarov's concept of education in Russia, but of all politics and ideology of autocracy in the reign of Nicholas I.

The forties brought that significant split in the Russian Spirit, which was expressed in the struggle between the Westernizers and the Slavophiles. The groupings themselves were formed a long time ago - for already in the 18th century there were two currents in the Russian public, and in the 19th century, even before the 40s, their influence
it got stronger and stronger. However, as early as the 1930s, as mentioned above, the trend that later took shape as Slavophilism did not deviate much from the then “Westernism” - it is no coincidence, after all. that one of the leaders of Slavophilism, I. V. Kireevsky, in 1829 called his journal "European". Not separating themselves from Europe, but already more and more critical of it and more and more thinking about the "historical mission" of Russia, the future Slavophiles (Belinsky then joined them) did not yet stand out in a special group. The Moscow and St. Petersburg disputes ended, however, in the early 1940s with the declaration of a sharp war between the two camps—the Slavophils became, if you like, anti-Westernists. However, this moment in their mindset was not the main and decisive one; Slavophiles were only staunch defenders of Russian originality, and they saw the core and creative basis of this originality in Orthodoxy - and this religious moment is actually

separated them completely from the Westerners. Of course, Slavophilism is very complicated, especially if it is presented as a “system”, which it actually was not, because the so-called older Slavophiles (A. S. Khomyakov, I. V. Kireevsky, K. S. Aksakov, Yu. F. Samarin) are still very dissimilar to each other. But it is precisely the complexity of Slavophilism that does not allow us to reduce it to one anti-Westernism - a secondary and derivative moment. Actually, the Slavophils did not even have a particular "disappointment" in Europe, although there was a significant repulsion from it - and this throws its light on how the problem of Europe was posed by them. The main pathos of Slavophilism lies in the feeling of having found a foothold - in the combination of national consciousness and the truth of Orthodoxy; the creative path of the Slavophiles was in the development of this religious-national idea - and from here their scientific-literary and social and philosophical positions stemmed - from here their attitude towards the West was determined. Contrary to the current word usage, according to which anti-Westernism is identified with Slavophilism, it can just be argued that in Slavophilism, for all the sharpness and intensity of their criticism of the West, anti-Westernism was not only not strong (compared to other similar trends), but was even constantly softened by their Christian universalism. , this historical transcription of the universal spirit, the spirit of which in Orthodoxy it was they who so deeply felt and expressed. Defense of Russian originality and a sharp, often even biased fight against Westernism, against the absurd

or the deliberate transfer of Western customs, ideas, and life forms to Russian soil; finally, a keen sense of the religious unity of the West and the impossibility of ignoring the religious difference between the West and Russia—all this was not anti-Westernism at all, but was even combined with a peculiar and deep love for it. In order to feel this more clearly among the Slavophils, let us cite, for contrast, a few strokes precisely from the anti-Western attacks that were already being heard at that time.

In 1840, the journal "Lighthouse of Modern Education and Education" began to appear under the editorship of S. Burachka and P. Korsakov. Although this magazine cannot be placed higher than third-rate publications in terms of its share, it is interesting in terms of its anti-Western tendencies. Burachek, in one of his articles, looked forward to the death of the West and the time when "in the West, on the ashes of the kingdom of the pagan (!), the kingdom of this world, the East will shine." In an effort to protect Russian identity from the harmful influence of Western enlightenment, Mayak gave scope to vivid anti-Westernism. Much softer, but no less characteristic, is the famous article by Shevyrev “The Russian View on the Modern Education of Europe”, published in another journal that then arose, “Moskvityanin” (in 1841) ". Back in 1830, in a letter to A. Shevyrev wrote to V. Venevitinov: “For the time being I am devoted to the West, but without it we cannot exist.” Even Shevyrev ended his article of 1841 with the following words: “May Russia be a force that preserves and observes in relation to the West, yes she will keep

the good of all mankind the treasures of his great past". These words reflected that undeniable respect for the West, for its past, which Shevyrev had, but in relation to the present, Shevyrev was stern - although he, of course, does not rejoice at those "shouts of despair that rush from the West." “We will accept them only as a lesson for the future, as warning in contemporary relations with the languishing West. However, clear signs of extinction are already visible in Europe. “In our sincere, friendly, close relations with the West,” he writes, “we do not notice that we are dealing, as it were, with a person who carries within himself an evil, contagious disease, surrounded by an atmosphere of dangerous breath. We kiss with him, embrace, share the meal of thought, drink the cup of feelings. and we do not notice the hidden poison in our careless communication, we do not smell in the fun of the feast - the future corpse, which he already smells". This feeling of the “decay of the West” is completely different from what we had previously seen in Gogol, in Shevyrev (and not in him alone), the then popular idea of the “decrepitude” of the West was combined with the idea that creative life in the West had not only ended, but that processes of decomposition are already underway; revival for Europe can only come from Russia. This last thought was especially vividly carried out in the same journal by Pogodin in his article "Peter the Great". When Pogodin was abroad (1839), he wrote in one letter: “Why are you Europeans boasting about your enlightenment? What is it

is it worth it, how to look into the interior (Pogodin's italics) of France, England, Austria? There is a brilliant fruit, another, a third on this tree, and what else? Broken coffin! “Tell me,” he writes from Geneva, “why is our age called “enlightened”? In what wild and barbarous land are people subjected to greater misfortunes than within Europe? Pogodin, however, also had other moods, as can be seen from the article on Peter the Great. “Both educations, Western and Eastern, taken separately, are one-sided, incomplete, they must unite, replenish one another and produce a new complete formation, Western-Eastern, European-Russian.” Pogodin lives with a “sweet dream” that our fatherland is destined to show the world the fruits of this longed-for, universal enlightenment and sanctify Western inquisitiveness with Eastern faith. Even later (in 1852) he wrote: “Providence has given the West its task, it has given another task to the East. The West is just as necessary in higher economy as the East.

We have quoted these lines in order to soften the usual harsh judgment about the group of Shevyrev, Pogodin, of course, more thoughtful and profound than the frantic publishers of Mayak, but nevertheless there remained a deep spiritual difference between the said group and the Slavophiles. Anticipating the future emergence of a government party (for the first time represented here by M. N. Katkov) and being spiritually deeper and more independent than journalists like Grech, Bulgarin, who were distinguished by rude and often shameless servility, the group of Shevyrev and Pogodin still had a lot of narrowness, national

self-confidence and intolerance. And the Slavophils were the ideologists of national originality, but, in addition to deep culture, which freed them from any narrowness, the Slavophils sought to religiously understand the fate of Russia and Europe. The ardent patriotism of the Slavophils was illuminated from within by a deep penetration into the spirit of Orthodoxy, while we do not find this at all in Pogodin and his friends. In this respect, the almost cynical thoughts expressed by him in 1854 are extremely curious. “For the people,” he wrote, “ New Testament, but for the state in politics - Old: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, otherwise it cannot exist. How profoundly different this is from everything that the Slavophils thought and wrote!*) Here lies the dividing line between the two groups: in the different perception of the religious foundations of the worldview, that which, in practical life, assumed an impassable boundary between them. We shall see further that the Slavophils, having taken up the editing of The Moskvityanin, who had previously been the conductor of the ideas of Shevyrev, Pogodin, even found it necessary to sharply fence themselves off from them. Slavophilism was deeply and internally free - and here it was completely homogeneous with Westernism in the person of Herzen, Belinsky, Granovsky, as Herzen eloquently told about this in the well-known chapter of "The Past and Thoughts". Slavophiles, with all their fiery patriotism and ardent defense

*) Barsukov (Life and Works of Pogodin, vol. XIII, pp. 96-97) gives an interesting response to this by Prot. Gorsky, full of Christian truth.

Russian originality was completely alien to servility, servility and gagging of opponents - it is no accident that the wonderful poems praising the "free word" were written just by a Slavophile. These were big people Russian life, in which a deep faith in the truth of the Church and in the great forces of Russia was combined with a real defense of freedom. Khomyakov's philosophy of freedom, the Aksakovs' defense of political freedom—from within were connected with the spirit of their teaching; all Slavophiles staunchly defended their ideas and all suffered from a short-sighted government. K. Aksakov was forbidden to stage his play, I. V. Kireevsky was closed three times. Khomyakov published his theological writings in Prague, and Samarin was arrested for his letters about the Germanization of the Baltic region. This is no longer a historical accident, but a historical evidence of their fidelity to the beginning of freedom.

The spirit of freedom pervades from within the whole teaching of the Slavophiles, and from this one must proceed in order to understand their attitude towards the West. Inwardly free, they were in everything and inwardly truthful - in that spiritual structure, of which they were living carriers, the freedom of the spirit was a function of its fullness, its inner integrity. And if there is no doubt that the influence of German romanticism and philosophy (especially Schelling) played a significant role in the genesis of Slavophilism, then all the same these external influences could not by themselves create that inner world that developed in them, which was the source of their ideas in them. In themselves they found that integrity, that fullness, the idea of which was also in the West;

but here their deep religiosity and connection with Orthodoxy are more important than external influences. In the Slavophiles we see not prophets, but living bearers Orthodox culture- their life, their personality is marked by the same thing that they revealed in an enlightened and finished form in Orthodoxy. The strength of the influence of the Slavophils lay precisely in this - as a phenomenon of Russian life, as a living manifestation of its creative forces, they are, perhaps, more valuable than their ideological constructions, in which there was much accidental and unsuccessful.

The attitude of the Slavophiles towards the West has gone through several stages, and this must be taken into account when assessing their position. In the 1930s, according to contemporaries, everyone was European *), and of course it was not by chance that I. V. Kireevsky then called his journal “European”. A. S. Khomyakov in one poem (1834) wrote:

Oh sad, sad me. Thick darkness falls

In the far West, the land of holy wonders.

All Slavophiles aspired to see the West, and their immediate impressions were by no means even as acute as those of other Russian writers, whose reviews we have quoted above. The problem of Russia occupied them even then, but together with all the thinkers of that time they were looking for the mission of Russia in human history, they strove to assimilate to Russia the task of higher synthesis and

*) “At that time, in the early 20s and 30s. - all without exception were Europeans ”(Memories of D.N. Sverbeev about A.I. Herzen).

Reconciliation of various principles that spoke in the West. This idea of synthesis is very curiously expressed in one of the early letters of I. V. Kireevsky to Koshelev (in 1827): “We will return the rights of true religion, we will agree gracefully with morality, we will arouse love for truth, we will replace stupid liberalism with respect for laws and the purity of life let us exalt above the purity of the syllable." In the spiritual path of I.V. Kireevsky himself, these ideas did not lose their significance even further. Extremely important for understanding Slavophilism is the fact that when the magazine Moskvityanin (which had previously been published under the editorship of Shevyrev and Pogodin) passed into their hands (in 1845), the Slavophiles found it necessary to fence themselves off from the former editorial boards with their intolerance towards the West. Kireevsky even declared that both directions are false in their one-sidedness (he called them the “purely Russian” and “purely Western” directions): “purely Russian is false because,” he wrote, “it inevitably came to the expectation of a miracle ... for only a miracle can resurrect the dead - the Russian past, which is so bitterly mourned by people of this view. It does not see that whatever European enlightenment may be, but to destroy its influence after we once became partakers of it, is already beyond our power, yes it would be a great disaster"... "Tearing off from Europe," he remarks, "we cease to be a universal nationality." As a result, I. V. Kireevsky believes that “love for European education, as well as love for ours, both coincide in

ice point of its developmentinto one love, into one striving for living, and therefore all-human and truly Christian enlightenment. In another place, I. V. Kireevsky wrote: “All disputes about the superiority of the West or Russia, about the dignity of European or our history, and similar arguments are among the most useless, most empty disputes.” “Rejecting everything Western,” we read further, “and recognizing that side of our society that is directly opposite to the European one, is a one-sided direction.”

In the same issues of Moskvityanin, A. S. Khomyakov touched on these topics. “There is something funny and even immoral in the fanaticism of immobility,” he wrote, referring to the “purely Russian” group, “do not think that under the pretext of preserving the integrity of life and avoiding European bifurcation, you have the right to reject any mental or material improvement Europe". Still later, Khomyakov wrote: "We really put the Western world above ourselves and recognize its incomparable superiority." "There is an involuntary, almost irresistible charm in this rich and great world of Western enlightenment." And K. S. Aksakov, the most ardent and even fanatical representative of Slavophilism, who wrote that “The West is all imbued with inner lies, phrase and effect, it constantly fusses about a beautiful pose, picturesque position,” this same K. S. Aksakov in one of his later articles he wrote: “The West did not bury the talents given to it from God!

Russia recognizes this, as it has always recognized. And God save us from belittling the merits of another. This is a bad feeling... Russia is alien to this feeling and freely does justice to the West.” All these references are very essential for a correct understanding of the attitude of the Slavophiles towards the West. They knew and loved the West and gave him his due - they do not even have a taste for those biased judgments about the West that were still in use with us in the 30s - and this is precisely what must explain the significant influence that the Slavophils had on a group of Westerners - especially on Granovsky and Herzen. In Belinsky, the statement of the Slavophiles in 1845 caused only irritation, but we have already noted the reflection and even the influence of Slavophile sentiments in Belinsky above. It is curious to note right away that even in Chaadaev, despite the gloomy view of Russia that he expressed in the famous “philosophical letter” (1836), the reflection of the Slavophil faith in Russia’s special path also found its place. Already in 1833 (after writing a letter published only in 1836) Chaadaev wrote: "Russia developed differently than Europe"; in 1834 he wrote to Turgenev: "In my opinion, Russia is destined for a great spiritual future: it must resolve all the issues that Europe argues about." "I think," he wrote in The Madman's Apology, "that we have come after the others in order to make them better." As Herzen later did, Chaadaev even expressed the conviction that “we are called upon to solve most of the problems of the social system, to complete most of the ideas that

fallen in the old society, to answer the most important questions occupying humanity." The thoughts that Chaadaev came to later were even more imbued with faith in Russia, the consciousness of her originality, the providential nature of her paths.

The older generation of Westernizers - Belinsky, Chaadaev, Herzen, Granovsky were not against the idea of an original development of Russia and learned a lot from the Slavophiles, but this was possible only because in the Slavophils they did not feel hatred for Europe or sharp hostility towards it, one might even say that the Slavophiles were not anti-Western in the serious sense of the word. For Slavophilism, the center of gravity lay in understanding the uniqueness of Russia's paths, and from this already, from the need to understand Russia, flowed the need to critically evaluate the West. The problems of the West, its destinies are not foreign or uninteresting to them; reveal its causes in order to avoid the mistakes of the West. Only one thing was unquestionably alien and disgusting to the Slavophils - this was slavish admiration for the West, some kind of renunciation of the healthy principles of one's country, which was encountered more than once in the history of the Russian intelligentsia. In one place, Khomyakov says with extreme harshness that in spiritual slavery to the Western world, our intellectuals often “manifest some kind of passion, some kind of comic enthusiasm, denouncing and majestic.

the most mental poverty, and perfect self-satisfaction.

Slavophiles perceived the West as Christendom - hence the feeling of deep kinship with him, the homogeneity of tasks, and hence the free, and not biased, not malicious discussion of his history, his results. At the basis of all criticism of the West lies precisely the religious attitude towards the West - and here the Slavophiles were very close to Chaadaev, who also felt the West religiously with extraordinary strength, although he disagreed with them in assessing the West. Among the Slavophils, this religious perception of the West was combined with a deep sense of Russian originality, which for them was inseparable from Orthodoxy. This deep connection of national and religious self-perception among the Slavophils, which determined the whole logic of the development of Slavophilism, demanded a clear and consistent separation of itself from the Western Christian world, and the last roots of all criticism of the West among the Slavophils lie in their direct experience of Russia and in those formulations in which they expressed this direct experience of theirs... The Slavophils in their development were oriented not anti-Western, but extra-Western, and this must always be kept in mind when evaluating their views.

Turning to the very criticism of the West by the Slavophils, we must say that it is extremely difficult to separate it, for the reasons indicated, from their entire worldview. Here, of course, is not the place to

to understand their worldview, and we willy-nilly must confine ourselves to only those material that is directly related to our topic, referring the reader for a general acquaintance with the Slavophiles to the works of Khomyakov, Kireevsky - as the most characteristic and brightest representatives of this trend.

Let us first dwell on the general assessment of Western culture among the Slavophils.

“Until recently,” writes Khomyakov in one place, “the whole of Europe was in a kind of enthusiastic intoxication, seething with hopes and in awe of its own greatness.” But now “confusion” has already begun in Europe, “passionate and gloomy anxiety” is heard everywhere. “European enlightenment,” writes Kireevsky, “reached its full development in the second half of the 19th century... but the result of this fullness of development, this clarity of results was an almost universal feeling of discontent and deceived hope.” “A modern feature of Western life,” writes I. V. Kireevsky, “is in the general, more or less clear consciousness that the beginning of European education ... in our time is already unsatisfactory for the highest requirements of education.” “To be frank,” the same author remarks elsewhere, “I still love the West, but, appreciating all the benefits of rationality, I think that in final in its development, it is clearly revealed by its painful unsatisfactoriness as a one-sided beginning.

“In the West,” writes K. Aksakov, “ the soul is waning, being replaced by the improvement of state

forms, police amenities; conscience is replaced by law, internal motives by regulations, even charity turns into a mechanical affair: in the West, all concern for state forms". “The West therefore developed legality,” wrote the same K. Aksakov, “because it felt a lack of truth in itself.” We note these thoughts of Aksakov, partly close to what we saw in Gogol, because here the positive socio-political program of the Slavophiles appears in a hidden form, in which, as you know, there was no place for a constitution and legal regulation of the relationship of power to the people. The development of external life in Europe is put in connection with the fact that the "soul is decreasing" - as if withdrawing into itself, as a result of which extreme individualism develops - and in parallel with this, culture is rationalized and divided into a number of independent spheres. I. V. Kireevsky draws with extraordinary force the results of this entire process in the West in his remarkable article “On the Character of the Enlightenment of Europe” (1852): every minute of life is like a different person. In one corner of his heart lives a religious feeling, in the other separately - the power of the mind and the efforts of worldly pursuits ... ”This fragmentation of the spirit, the lack of inner integrity undermines the strength and weakens the Western man. Violent and external nature of changes in life, whim

fashion, the development of partisanship, the development of pampered daydreaming, the inner anxiety of the spirit with rational self-confidence—all these features Kireevsky elevates to the basic fragmentation of the spirit, to the loss of inner integrity and inner unity.

But these features of the West are not in themselves important for the Slavophils in their analysis of the West, but those “beginnings”, as they like to say, which underlie all life in the West and which are now “extinct”, according to Khomyakov. “It is not the forms that have become obsolete, but the spiritual beginning,” writes one, not the conditions of society, but the faith in which societies lived and the people included in them. In the revolutionary tension that is being felt throughout Europe, Khomyakov sees precisely the "internal mortification of people", which is expressed by the "convulsive movement of social organisms." All Slavophiles hold on to the idea that in the West the internal development of the living principles that once created European culture has ended, that the West has now reached a dead end, from which there is no way out, as long as it clings to these already dead principles. Khomyakov even thinks that “to the people of the West, his present state must seem like an unsolvable riddle: only we, brought up by a different spiritual principle, can understand this riddle *) The living content of life is eroding, what Europe once lived with disappears - and as a result we see " empty soul" of European enlightenment, as Khomyakov puts it.

*) Herzen also developed this idea.

The disappearance of the living spirit in Europe, the disappearance of creative forces and inner integrity, some self-destruction found by Slavophiles in the West. “Centuries-old cold analysis,” Kireevsky writes, “destroyed all the foundations on which European enlightenment stood from the very beginning of its development, so that its own fundamental principles, from which it grew, became extraneous, alien, contradictory to its latest results, and this very analysis that destroyed its roots, this self-propelled knife of reason, this abstract syllogism (a hint at Hegel’s philosophy. - V. 3.), this autocratic reason, which does not recognize anything but itself and personal experience, turned out to be his direct property. “Europe has fully expressed itself,” we read further in Kireevsky’s second article, “in the 19th century, it completed the circle of its development that began in the 9th century.” “The modern precariousness of the spiritual world in the West,” writes Khomyakov, “is not an accidental and transient phenomenon, but a necessary consequence of the internal split in European society.” “The very course of history,” he writes much later, “denounced the lies of the Western world, for the logic of history pronounces its verdict not on the forms, but on the spiritual life of the West.”

Feeling the suspension of inner productive creativity in the European soul it is unusually strong among the Slavophils. They understand well the possibility of a purely technical progress in Europe and at the same time they feel that the creative spirit is being suffocated.

in the lifeless conditions of life in the West, they deeply feel this tragic spiritual barrenness and "emptiness". The "fading" of spiritual life in the West is not only not weakened by the grandiose development of intellectual and technical culture, but, on the contrary, it is directly proportional to its increase. And for the Slavophils, therefore, the internal fragmentation of the spirit, its splitting becomes the main fact of the spiritual
life of the West, the main source of his tragedy. The one-sided development of rationality, the isolation of reason from the living wholeness and fullness of spiritual forces is for them evidence of the fading of life in the West, no matter what illusions the force of historical inertia creates. “Not because,” I. V. Kireevsky wrote, “western enlightenment turned out to be unsatisfactory for the sciences in the West to lose their vitality... that the very triumph of the European mind revealed the one-sidedness of its fundamental aspirations, because with all the wealth, one might say, the enormity of private discoveries and successes in the sciences, the general conclusion from the entire body of knowledge presented only a negative value for the inner consciousness of man, because with all the brilliance, with all the conveniences of external improvements in life, life itself was devoid of essential meaning.

All these sad outcomes of Western culture go back not only to the “preponderance of rationality” in

a fallen soul - although it is precisely from this that the Slavophils explain the peculiarities of religious and philosophical thinking, the ways of the state and social life of the West. No less essential for understanding the fate of the West extreme development of the personal principle in him: individualism and rationalism are so closely linked in the West that it is impossible to separate them from one another.

The doctrine of personality is very important for Slavophilism, for its assessments and theoretical constructions. Being convinced and staunch defenders of freedom in the life of the individual, the Slavophils fought against that “separation” of the individual, that isolation that expanded and exaggerated his strength, strengthened his self-absorption and invariably had to end in self-confidence and pride. For the Slavophiles, who were deeply and consciously religious, humility was a condition for the flourishing and growth of personality, and from here a perspective opened up for understanding one of the deepest spiritual differences between the Christian West and East. The restoration of internal integrity for the Slavophiles is inseparable from the inclusion of oneself in the supra-individual unity of the Church, while the flourishing of the individual in the West is inevitably accompanied by the separation of the single individual from all. In a dispute between Kavelin and Samarin, which flared up already in the 70s, this topic was agreed upon, which began back in the 40s, when Kavelin (in 1847) published his remarkable work “A Look at the Legal Life of Ancient Russia”. While the Slavophiles, pro-

paving the way for later populism here, they saw in the origins of Russian life the development of a communal principle that subjugated an individual (according to K. Aksakov, “the personality in the Russian community is not suppressed, but only deprived of its violence, egoism, exclusivity ... the personality is absorbed in community only by the selfish side, but free in it, as in a choir”), Kavelin revealed in his very thorough historical work how the beginning of personality began to develop in Rus' with the advent of Christianity. According to Kavelin, “degrees of development of the beginning of personality. define periods in Russian history. We will not follow the further development of this idea, nor the polemics more nasty, but we will dwell only on the material that completes the worldview of the Slavophils and their assessment of the West. After the appearance of Kavelin's work, Samarin then wrote an interesting article about it ("Moskvityanin", 1847). Idea of personality, outside self-denial, Samarin thinks, is the beginning of the West, the beginning, tearing away from Christianity, because in Christianity the liberation of the individual is inextricably linked with self-denial. The one-sided development of the personality is the content of European individualism, the impotence and inconsistency of which is now recognized in the West as well*). The doctrine of personality in general is one of the most valuable aspects in philosophical work.

*) Ivanov-Razumnik (History of Russian social thought. T. I, p. 313) sees here a hint of Louis Blanc, on it "Histoire de la revolution française".

in honor of Samarin*). In essence, Samarin sought to transfer into social and historical philosophy what he found in the teachings of the Church, in the spirit of Orthodoxy, hence the sharpness of his assessments of the West in its individualistic currents, in which he saw a reaction to the wrong suppression personalities in Catholicism. “In Latinism,” Samarin wrote (Coll., vol. I), “the individual disappears in the Church, loses all his rights and becomes, as it were, a dead, integral particle of the whole ... The historical task of Latinism was to distract from the living principle Church the idea of unity, understood as power ... and turn the unity of faith and love into legal recognition, and the members of the church into subjects of its head. These lines clearly show that, while fighting against the atomizing individualism that led to the revolution, to Protestantism and Romanticism, the Slavophils also fought against that absorption of the individual, which suppressed it and deprived it of freedom in Catholicism.

The loss of correct connections with the “whole” is the same in both opposing forces ruling in the West: the suppression of the individual in Catholicism is wrong, and the one-sided individualistic culture of the anti-Catholic currents of the West is also wrong. Here lies the key to understanding how the correct hierarchy of forces in Western man was violated, how the disintegration of the integrity of spiritual life and fragmentation of the spirit appeared.

*) M. O. Gershenzon tried to reproduce it, but, unfortunately, it was not prominent enough in his Historical Notes.

According to Khomyakov, "our soul is not mosaic"; all its forces are internally connected, and even science "grows only on the vital root of living human knowledge." Hence Khomyakov's persistent struggle against the philosophical one-sidedness of the West - with its separation of thought from the living integrity of the spirit, with its predominant development of rational analytical thinking. Khomyakov builds a kind social theory of knowledge: Here, for example, is an interesting quote: “All the life-giving abilities of the mind live and grow stronger only in the friendly communication of thinking beings, but the mind in its lowest branch, in analysis, does not require this, and therefore it becomes inevitable the only representative of the thinking ability in impoverished and selfish soul". Even more important is his next thought: “Private (i.e., in an individual person) thinking can be strong and fruitful only when the highest knowledge and the people expressing it are connected with the rest of the organism of society by bonds of free and reasonable love.” “The conditional develops more freely in history than the living organic; reason matures in a person much more easily than reason. Building the beginnings of "cathedral epistemology" (a remarkable addition to which was developed by Prince S. Trubetskoy in his articles "On the Nature of Human Consciousness"), Khomyakov constantly emphasized the limitations of rational knowledge, which "does not embrace reality knowable” and does not go beyond the understanding of the formal

sides of being; true knowledge is given only to the mind. “Logical reason,” Khomyakov writes in one place, “is lawless when it thinks to replace reason or even the fullness of consciousness, but he has his rightful place in the circle of reasonable forces. However, "all the deep truths of thought, all the highest truth of free aspiration are accessible only to the mind, arranged within itself in full moral harmony with the omnipresent mind." Therefore, the individual man is not the organ of knowledge.: Although Khomyakov (and even Trubetskoy) did not finish this profound doctrine of the cognizing subject, Khomyakov still expressed the basic ideas of "cathedral" epistemology with sufficient force.

Here are two more passages from Khomyakov's system that complete his idea. "Inaccessible to individual thinking, the truth available he writes, only collections of thoughts connected by love»; therefore, for Khomyakov - and here he restores the deepest constructions of Christian philosophy, expressed by St. Fathers, “the rationality of the Church is the highest possibility of human rationality.”

This is not the place to develop and explain these philosophical constructions of Khomyakov and the constructions of I. V. Kireevsky close to him, but now we understand all the internal connectedness philosophical criticism of the West among the Slavophiles with their general understanding of the West. Western rationalism is not only condemned in its origin from the religious splitting of the once integral spirit, but also revealed dialectical

The one-sidedness and limitation of the highest manifestation of philosophical creativity in the West, Kantianism, consisted, according to Khomyakov, in the fact that, being a purely rational philosophy, it considered itself a philosophy of mind, while the truth of only the possible, and not real, the law of the world, not the world. Khomyakov criticizes Hegel in an interesting and subtle, although incomplete, way, expressing in passing thoughts that were later developed by a number of Russian thinkers. Let us also note Khomyakov's attitude to science - Khomyakov once sharply spoke out against irrationalism, in which he saw an extreme, opposite to the extremes of rationalism. “Let us leave,” he wrote, “to the despair of some Western people, frightened by the suicidal development of rationalism, a stupid and partly feigned contempt for science - we must accept, preserve and develop it in all the mental space that it requires ... only in this way can we elevate science itself, give it fullness and integrity, which she hasn't had yet.».

Slavophiles found in Orthodoxy an eternal image of spiritual integrity and harmony of spiritual forces. Hence, very early on, the Slavophiles' criticism of the West turns into deriving the tragedy of the West from the history of its religious life—from the peculiarities of Catholicism and Protestantism. For them, the modern tragedy of the West was the inevitable result of its religious untruth, in which, as it were, its main disease thickens and concentrates.

Everything that the Slavophils reproached the West was for them a symptom of this disease, and if the young Samarin was still tormented by the problem of how to combine Hegel's philosophy with Orthodoxy, then he very soon agreed with all the Slavophils in the conviction that Europe was incurably sick precisely because she is religiously impoverished. The characteristics and criticism of Western Christianity are developed by Khomyakov, in his truly brilliant theological works, into a whole system of Christian (in the spirit of Orthodoxy) philosophy. Rationalism, which is so essentially connected with the entire system of Western culture, is only the fruit, and not the basis, of the tragedy of the West, for it grew out of the soil of the drying up of that spirit of love, without which Christian social life dies. Since the keys of Christian power are still alive in Europe, it is still alive, it is still rushing about in anguish and in terrible anxious tension is looking for a way out of the impasse, but it has become so weak, spiritually so broken, it believes in one-sided reason instead of an integral mind that has not separated from the living connection. with all the forces of the spirit that there is no way out for her.

That is why, as a result of a long and passionate struggle with the West, the Slavophiles return to the same melancholy that sounded very early in their assessment of the West. Their words addressed to the West are often full of deep sadness, as if by clairvoyance of feeling they feel the corrosive disease of the West, as if they feel the breath of death over it. It's hard for the West

even to understand one’s illness: the decay of the former integrity of the spirit has gone so far that in the West they don’t even feel pain in the separation of spiritual forces, in the complete separation of the intellect from the ethical movements in us, from art, from faith. The West is seriously ill and suffers painfully from his illness, but he can hardly understand it himself; we, Russians, who live by other spiritual principles, can more quickly and easily understand not only the disease of the West, but also the causes of its disease.

Criticism of European culture is among the Slavophils a transitional step towards the construction of an organic worldview on the basis of Orthodoxy. The presentation of this complex, not completely completed system, where theology turns into philosophy, epistemology into ethics, psychology into sociology, is not part of my task. I will only note that the final lines of Kireevsky in his remarkable article on the nature of European enlightenment are as follows: “I only wish that those principles of life that are preserved in the teachings of the Orthodox Church fully penetrate the convictions of all degrees of our estates; so that these higher principles, ruling over European enlightenment and not displacing it, but, on the contrary, embracing it with its fullness, gave it the highest meaning and the last development. This idea synthesis European culture and Orthodoxy, being, as it were, a testament of Kireevsky, it resumes the task that young Samarin once faced.

Criticism of European culture among the Slavophiles

has a philosophical and religious character, not so much because it is directed at the results of the philosophical life and religious development of the West, but because it refers to the "principles", i.e., to the principles of European culture. The definiteness and distinctness of the formulations, the clear diagnosis of the “illness” of the West, and the deep faith in the truth of other spiritual principles that the Slavophils lived by give their thoughts a value that has not faded to this day. What Gogol felt in the West as an artist and a religious man, the Slavophils experienced as philosophers, but Gogol has in common with the Slavophils a deep sense of the religious tragedy of the West. Both Gogol and the Slavophils see the originality of the Russian path in Orthodoxy, and therefore the West is illuminated for them by the way they understand the historical paths of Christianity and the great split between East and West. Western Christianity has, in their opinion, invaluable historical merits in the creation and development of European culture, but it is also guilty of the deepest spiritual illness of Europe, in its religious tragedy. The analysis of this tragedy involuntarily turns into a denunciation of untruth in Western Christianity and just as naturally ends with the disclosure of a holistic and harmonious understanding of life on the foundations of Orthodoxy. Both Gogol and the Slavophiles are therefore forerunners, prophets of Orthodox culture. This is the whole originality of their critical and positive constructions, but this, of course, is also the reason for the low popularity of these constructions so far.

Finishing this chapter on the Slavophiles, we cannot but add to it the most brief mention of F. I. Tyutchev, also an ardent Slavophile, but in his worldview, philosophically extremely close to Schellingism, which followed its own independent path. In the writings of F. I. Tyutchev, we will find three theoretical articles on the topic that occupies us today, namely: 1) "Russia and Germany" (1844), 2) "Russia and the Revolution" (1848) and 3) "The Papacy and the Roman Question" (1850). In the first article, we will note only strong and bitter lines about the hatred for Russia that began to spread in Western Europe; this motive, as we shall see, came out with greater force and influence after the Crimean War. For us, Tyutchev's two second articles are more important, in which the feeling of an anti-Christian principle in Europe is expressed with extreme force and clarity - ever more growing, more and more taking possession of Europe. In the light February Revolution, which served as such a strong impetus for various directions of Russian thought, which had previously been given by the French Revolution, Tyutchev deeply felt the strength and significance of revolutionary sentiments in Europe, and most importantly, felt their historical legitimacy and derivativeness from the entire spiritual world of the West. “Over the past three centuries, the historical life of the West,” Tyutchev writes, “necessarily has been a continuous war, a constant assault directed against all Christian elements that were part of the old Western society.” “No one doubts,” writes another

place Tyutchev - that secularization is the last word of this state of affairs. At the basis of this pernicious separation of life and creativity from the Church lies the “profound distortion to which the Christian principle was subjected by the order imposed on it by Rome ... the Western Church became a political institution ... throughout the Middle Ages, the Church in the West was nothing but Roman colony established in the conquered country. “The reaction to this state of affairs was inevitable, but it, having torn the personality away from the Church, opened up “in it space for chaos, rebellion, boundless self-assertion.” “Revolution is nothing else,” writes Tyutchev, “as the apotheosis of the human self,” the word of separation of the individual from the Church, from God. The human self, left to itself, is contrary to Christianity in essence". That is why "the revolution is first of all the enemy of Christianity: the anti-Christian mood is the soul of the revolution." The final lines of the article “Russia and the Revolution” very concentratedly convey this gloomy mood of Tyutchev regarding the West: “The West disappears, everything collapses, everything perishes in this general inflammation: the Europe of Charlemagne and the Europe of the treatises of 1815, the Roman papacy and all the kingdoms, Catholicism and Protestantism , - faith, long lost, and reason, brought to meaninglessness, order, now unthinkable, freedom, now impossible - and above all these ruins, created by her, a civilization that kills itself with its own hands ... "There is only one bright and joyful hope - and it is bound

with Russia, with Orthodoxy (Tyutchev does not separate one from the other). “For a long time already in Europe,” he thinks, “there have been only two forces—the revolution and Russia. These two forces are now opposed to each other, and perhaps tomorrow they will enter into a struggle ... on the outcome of this struggle, the greatest struggle that the world has ever witnessed, the entire political and religious future of mankind depends for many centuries. In the days when this book is being written, we know that Tyutchev's prediction came true: the revolution entered into a fierce and uncompromising struggle with Christianity. Tyutchev alone did not foresee that Russia itself would be the arena of this struggle, that the revolution would take over Russia and its struggle with Christianity would not be a struggle of Western Europe with Russia, but a struggle of two principles for the possession of the Russian soul.

Thus, while keenly perceiving the religious and historical process in the West, Tyutchev still did not look hopelessly at him. With lines testifying to this, we will finish the presentation of Tyutchev's views. Here are his words: “The Orthodox Church ... never ceased to recognize that the Christian principle never disappeared in the Roman Church, it was stronger in it than error and human passion. Therefore, she harbors a deep conviction that this principle will prove stronger than all her enemies. The Church also knows that... and now - the fate of Christianity in the West is still in the hands of the Roman Church, and she firmly hopes that on the day of the great reunion, this Church will return this sacred deposit intact to her.

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