The novel “Break. Ivan goncharov - cliff cliff author

The Petersburg day is drawing to a close, and everyone who usually gathers at the card table, by this hour, begins to bring themselves into the appropriate form. Two friends, Boris Pavlovich Raysky and Ivan Ivanovich Ayanov, are also going to spend this evening again in the Pakhotins' house, where the owner himself, Nikolai Vasilyevich, his two sisters, old maids Anna Vasilievna and Nadezhda Vasilievna, and also a young widow, Pakhotin's daughter, a beauty, live. Sofia Belovodova, who is the main interest in this house for Boris Pavlovich.

Ivan Ivanovich is a simple man, without fuss, he goes to the Pakhotins only in order to play cards with avid players, old maids. Another thing is Paradise; he needs to stir up Sophia, his distant relative, turning her from a cold marble statue into a living woman full of passions.

Boris Pavlovich Raisky is obsessed with passions: he draws a little, writes a little, plays music, putting the strength and passion of his soul into all his activities. But this is not enough - Raisky needs to awaken passions around him in order to constantly feel himself in the boiling of life, at that point of contact of everything with everything, which he calls Ayanov: "Life is a novel, and a novel is life." We get to know him at the moment when “Raisky is over thirty years old, and he has not yet sown anything, has not reaped anything and has not walked along a single track, along which those who come from inside Russia walk.”

Having once arrived in St. Petersburg from a family estate, Raisky, having learned a little of everything, did not find his vocation in anything.

He understood only one thing: the main thing for him was art; something that particularly touches the soul, causing it to burn with passionate fire. In this mood, Boris Pavlovich goes on vacation to the estate, which, after the death of his parents, is managed by great-aunt Tatyana Markovna Berezhkova, an old maid who, in time immemorial, was not allowed by her parents to marry her chosen one, Tit Nikonovich Vatutin. He remained a bachelor, and he travels all his life to Tatyana Markovna, never forgetting gifts for her and the two relative girls whom she is raising, the orphans Verochka and Marfenka.

Malinovka, Raisky's estate, a blessed corner in which there is a place for everything that pleases the eye. Only now the terrible cliff that ends the garden frightens the inhabitants of the house: according to legend, at the bottom of it in ancient times “he killed his wife and rival for infidelity, and then he himself stabbed himself, one jealous husband, a tailor from the city. The suicide was buried here, at the crime scene.

Tatyana Markovna joyfully greeted her grandson, who had come for the holidays - she tried to bring him up to date, show him the economy, get him addicted, but Boris Pavlovich remained indifferent both to the economy and to the necessary visits. Only poetic impressions could touch his soul, and they had nothing to do with the thunderstorm of the city, Nil Andreevich, whom his grandmother certainly wanted to introduce, or with the provincial coquette Polina Karpovna Kritskaya, or with the lubok family of the old Molochkovs, like Philemon and Baucis who lived their lives inseparable...

The holidays flew by, and Raisky returned to St. Petersburg. Here, at the university, he became close to Leonty Kozlov, the son of a deacon, "downtrodden with poverty and timidity." It is not clear what could bring such different young people together: a young man who dreams of becoming a teacher somewhere in a remote Russian corner, and a restless poet, artist, obsessed with the passions of a romantic young man. However, they became really close to each other.

But university life ended, Leonty left for the provinces, and Raisky still cannot find a real job in life, continuing to be an amateur. And his white marble cousin Sofya still seems to Boris Pavlovich the most important goal in life: to awaken a fire in her, to make her experience what a “thunderstorm of life” is, to write a novel about her, to paint her portrait ... He spends all the evenings with the Pakhotins, preaching to Sofya the truth of life. On one of these evenings, Sophia's father, Nikolai Vasilyevich, brings Count Milari, "an excellent musician and a most amiable young man," to the house.

Returning home on that memorable evening, Boris Pavlovich cannot find a place for himself: he either peers at the portrait of Sophia he started, then re-reads the essay he once started about a young woman in whom he managed to arouse passion and even lead her to a “fall” - alas , Natasha is no longer alive, and the pages he wrote did not imprint a genuine feeling. The episode, which turned into a memory, appeared to him as an alien event.

Meanwhile, summer came, Raysky received a letter from Tatyana Markovna, in which she called her grandson to the blessed Malinovka, a letter also came from Leonty Kozlov, who lived near the family estate of Raysky. "It is fate that sends me ..." - decided Boris Pavlovich, who was already bored with awakening passions in Sofya Belovodova. In addition, there was a slight embarrassment - Raisky decided to show the portrait of Sofya Ayanov, which he painted, and he, looking at the work of Boris Pavlovich, passed his sentence: "She seems to be drunk here." The artist Semyon Semyonovich Kirilov did not appreciate the portrait, but Sophia herself found that Raisky flattered her - she is not like that ...

The very first person that Raisky meets in the estate is a charming young girl who does not notice him, busy feeding poultry. Her whole appearance breathes with such freshness, purity, grace that Raisky understands that here, in Malinovka, he is destined to find the beauty, in search of which he languished in cold Petersburg.

Raisky is joyfully greeted by Tatyana Markovna, Marfenka (she turned out to be the same girl), and servants. Only cousin Vera is visiting her friend, the priest, across the Volga. And again, the grandmother tries to captivate Raysky with household chores, which still do not interest Boris Pavlovich at all - he is ready to give the estate to Vera and Marfenka, which causes the wrath of Tatyana Markovna ...

In Malinovka, despite the joyful chores associated with the arrival of Raisky, everyday life goes on: the servant Savely is called upon to give an account of everything to the arrived landowner, Leonty Kozlov teaches children.

But here's a surprise: Kozlov was married, but to whom! On Ulenka, the coquettish daughter of "the housekeeper of some government institution in Moscow", where they kept a table for incoming students. All of them were gradually in love with Ulenka then, only Kozlov did not notice her cameo profile, but it was him that she eventually married and left for a far corner of Russia, the Volga. Various rumors circulate about her around the city, Ulenka warns Raisky that he might hear, and asks in advance not to believe anything - obviously in the hope that he, Boris Pavlovich, will not remain indifferent to her charms ...

Returning home, Raisky finds a full estate of guests - Tit Nikonovich, Polina Karpovna, everyone gathered to look at the mature owner of the estate, grandmother's pride. And many sent congratulations on their arrival. And the usual village life with all its delights and joys rolled along the well-worn rut. Raisky gets acquainted with the surroundings, delves into the lives of people close to him. The courtyards sort out their relationship, and Raisky becomes a witness of Savely's wild jealousy for his unfaithful wife Marina, Vera's trusted servant. This is where true passions boil! ..

And Polina Karpovna Kritskaya? Who would willingly succumb to Raisky's sermons, if it occurred to him to captivate this aging coquette! She literally climbs out of her skin to attract his attention, and then carry the news throughout the town that Boris Pavlovich could not resist her. But Raisky shied away in horror from the lady who was obsessed with love.

Quietly, calmly, the days in Malinovka drag on. Only now Vera does not return from the priest; Boris Pavlovich, on the other hand, does not waste time - he tries to “educate” Marfenka, slowly finding out her tastes and predilections in literature and painting, so that he can begin to awaken real life in her. Sometimes he comes into Kozlov's house. And one day he meets Mark Volokhov there: “fifteenth grade, an official under the supervision of the police, an involuntary citizen of the local city,” as he himself recommends.

Mark seems to Raisky a funny person - he has already managed to hear a lot of horrors about him from his grandmother, but now, having introduced

Well, he invites you to dinner. Their impromptu dinner with the indispensable burning woman in the room of Boris Pavlovich wakes up Tatyana Markovna, who is afraid of fires, and she is horrified by the presence of this man in the house, who has fallen asleep like a dog, without a pillow, curled up.

Mark Volokhov also considers it his duty to awaken people - only, unlike Raisky, not a specific woman from the sleep of the soul to the storm of life, but abstract people - to anxieties, dangers, reading forbidden books. He does not think to hide his simple and cynical philosophy, which is almost all reduced to his personal benefit, and even charming in his own way in such childish openness. And Raisky is carried away by Mark - his nebula, his mystery, but it is at this moment that the long-awaited Vera returns from behind the Volga.

She turns out to be completely different from what Boris Pavlovich expected to see her - closed, not going to frank confessions and conversations, with her own small and big secrets, riddles. Raisky understands how necessary it is for him to unravel his cousin, to know her hidden life, the existence of which he does not doubt for a moment ...

And gradually the wild Saveliy awakens in refined Paradise: just as this yard guard watches over his wife Marina, so Paradise “knew at any moment where she was, what she was doing. In general, his abilities, directed at one subject that occupied him, were refined to incredible subtlety, and now, in this silent observation of the Faith, they have reached the degree of clairvoyance.

In the meantime, grandmother Tatyana Markovna dreams of marrying Boris Pavlovich to the daughter of a farmer, so that he will forever settle in his native land. Raisky refuses such an honor - there is so much around the mysterious, what needs to be unraveled, and he will suddenly fall into such prose at his grandmother's will! .. Moreover, there are really a lot of events around Boris Pavlovich. The young man Vikentiev appears, and Raisky instantly sees the beginning of his affair with Marfenka, their mutual attraction. Vera still kills Raisky with her indifference, Mark Volokhov has disappeared somewhere, and Boris Pavlovich sets off to look for him. However, this time Mark is not able to entertain Boris Pavlovich - he alludes to the fact that he knows well about Raisky's attitude towards Vera, about her indifference and the fruitless attempts of the capital's cousin to awaken a living soul in the provincial. Finally, Vera herself can’t stand it: she resolutely asks Raisky not to spy on her everywhere, to leave her alone. The conversation ends as if with reconciliation: now Raisky and Vera can talk calmly and seriously about books, about people, about understanding life by each of them. But this is not enough for Raisky ...

Tatyana Markovna Berezhkova nevertheless insisted on something, and one day the whole city society was called to Malinovka for a gala dinner in honor of Boris Pavlovich. But a decent acquaintance never succeeds - a scandal breaks out in the house, Boris Pavlovich openly tells the venerable Nil Andreevich Tychkov everything that he thinks about him, and Tatyana Markovna herself, unexpectedly for herself, takes the side of her grandson: “He was swollen with pride, and pride is a drunken vice , leads to oblivion. Sober up, get up and bow: Tatyana Markovna Berezhkova is standing in front of you! Tychkov was expelled from Malinovka in disgrace, and Vera, conquered by the honesty of Paradise, kisses him for the first time. But this kiss, alas, does not mean anything, and Raisky is going to return to St. Petersburg, to his usual life, his usual environment.

True, neither Vera nor Mark Volokhov believe in his imminent departure, and Raisky himself cannot leave, feeling around him the movement of a life inaccessible to him. Moreover, Vera is again leaving for the Volga to her friend.

In her absence, Raisky tries to find out from Tatyana Markovna: what kind of person is Vera, what exactly are the hidden features of her character. And he learns that the grandmother considers herself unusually close to Vera, loves her with a deep, respectful, compassionate love, seeing in her, in a sense, her own repetition. From her, Raisky also learns about a man who does not know “how to proceed, how to woo” Vera. This is the forester Ivan Ivanovich Tushin.

Not knowing how to get rid of thoughts about Vera, Boris Pavlovich allows Kritskaya to take him to her house, from there he goes to Kozlov, where Ulenka meets him with open arms. And Raisky could not resist her charms ...

On a stormy night, Tushin brings Vera on his horses - finally, Raisky has the opportunity to see the person Tatyana Markovna told him about. And again he is obsessed with jealousy and is going to Petersburg. And again he remains, unable to leave without unraveling the secret of Vera.

Raisky even manages to alarm Tatyana Markovna with constant thoughts and arguments that Vera is in love, and the grandmother conceives an experiment: a family reading of an edifying book about Kunigunde, who fell in love against the will of her parents and ended her days in a monastery. The effect is completely unexpected: Vera remains indifferent and almost falls asleep over the book, and Marfenka and Vikentiev, thanks to the instructive novel, declare their love to the nightingale's singing. The next day, Vikentiev's mother, Marya Yegorovna, arrives in Malinovka - an official matchmaking and conspiracy takes place. Marfenka becomes a bride.

And Vera? .. Her chosen one is Mark Volokhov. It is to him that she goes on dates to the precipice, where the jealous suicide is buried, it is he who she dreams of calling her husband, first remaking him in her own image and likeness. Vera and Mark share too much: all the concepts of morality, goodness, decency, but Vera hopes to persuade her chosen one to what is right in the "old truth". Love and honor for her are not empty words. Their love is more like a duel between two beliefs, two truths, but in this duel, the characters of Mark and Vera are more and more clearly manifested.

Raisky still does not know who is chosen as his cousin. He is still immersed in the mystery, still looking gloomily at his surroundings. Meanwhile, the calm of the town is shaken by the flight of Ulenka from Kozlov with the teacher Monsieur Charles. Leonty's despair is boundless, Raisky, together with Mark, are trying to bring Kozlov to his senses.

Yes, passions really boil around Boris Pavlovich! A letter has already been received from St. Petersburg from Ayanov, in which an old friend talks about Sophia’s romance with Count Milari - in a strict sense, what happened between them is not a romance at all, but the world regarded a certain “false step” by Belovodova as compromising her, and thus the relationship between the Pakhotin family and the count ended.

The letter, which could have offended Raisky quite recently, does not make a particularly strong impression on him: all thoughts, all feelings of Boris Pavlovich are completely occupied by Vera. Imperceptibly the evening comes on the eve of Marfenka's engagement. Vera again goes to the precipice, and Raisky is waiting for her at the very edge, understanding why, where and to whom his unfortunate, love-obsessed cousin went. An orange bouquet, ordered for Marfenka for her celebration, which coincided with her birthday, Raisky cruelly throws through the window to Vera, who falls unconscious at the sight of this gift ...

The next day, Vera falls ill - her horror lies in the fact that it is necessary to tell her grandmother about her fall, but she is unable to do this, especially since the house is full of guests, and Marfenka is escorted to the Vikentievs. Having revealed everything to Raisky, and then to Tushin, Vera calms down for a while - Boris Pavlovich tells Tatyana Markovna about what happened at the request of Vera.

Day and night, Tatyana Markovna takes care of her misfortune - she walks non-stop through the house, through the garden, through the fields around Malinovka, and no one is able to stop her: “God has visited, I don’t go myself. His strength wears - you must endure to the end. If I fall, pick me up…” Tatyana Markovna says to her grandson. After many hours of vigil, Tatyana Markovna comes to Vera, who is lying in a fever.

When Vera leaves, Tatyana Markovna realizes how necessary it is for both of them to ease their souls: and then Vera hears her grandmother's terrible confession about her long-standing sin. Once in her youth, an unloved man who wooed her found Tatyana Markovna in a greenhouse with Tit Nikonovich and took an oath from her never to marry ...

The post was inspired by the reading of Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov's novel "The Precipice".

Reference

Full name: "Break"
Genre: novel
Original language: Russian
Years of writing: 1869
Year of publication: 1869
Number of pages (A4): 441

Summary of the novel by Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov "Cliff"
The protagonist of the novel is Boris Raisky, a 35-year-old man looking for his calling in life. The army and civil service did not attract him, because he wanted to become an artist, a prisoner, an artist. Being a man not without talent, he nevertheless did not succeed in anything, since his ardent disposition was very quickly ignited and just as quickly cooled down to whatever he started.

Raisky leads a secular lifestyle, revolves around artists and artists. One day, he became interested in his distant relative, who has a rare beauty. He tried to approach her, but ran into a wall of old, as he called them, principles. His expectations were not met, and he decided to leave for his village, which was ruled by his grandmother Berezhkova Tatyana Markovna. Boris himself showed no interest in managing the estate and traveled to the countryside for inspiration and images for the novel he was about to write. In the village, he met his cousin Marfinka, who was distinguished by her beauty, but at the same time she had a too lively, simple and naive character that Raisky's love very quickly passed.

After some time, Marfinka's sister Vera arrived in the village, who was also very beautiful, but at the same time had a sharp mind and a strong character. Raisky fell ardently in love with her and tried to win her over by teaching and developing her mind. With great surprise, he discovered in Vera a great inner strength and a very developed intellect. Vera saw through his whole game and was very burdened by the fact that Raisky was encroaching on her freedom.

Raisky's grandmother Berezhkova Tatyana Markovna personifies the old way of life: she is a zealous and hospitable hostess, passionately honoring traditions. She hates the representative of the new time, Mark Volokhov, who lives in the province under police supervision. Volokhov is a nihilist who hates the old way of life, but is not ready to offer anything in return. Having a strong character, he quickly converges with Vera and they ... fall in love with each other, hoping to remake each other. Volokhov longs to make Vera his comrade without the obligatory fulfillment of traditions and rituals. Vera hopes to instill in Volokhov the ideals of family life.

The action develops and goes to a big drama: Raisky's hopes for a joint future with Vera do not come true, Vera decides to break up with Volokhov, but during the last meeting they indulge in passion and sin, the grandmother is very hard going through what happened.

The author still leaves the main characters of the novel a chance for happiness. Raisky becomes a devoted friend and brother of Vera, Vera is cured of a fever by her grandmother Tatyana Markovna, who admitted that in her youth there was exactly the same case. Volokhov is so in love that, contrary to his principles, he proposes marriage to Vera, but receives a decisive refusal, which she conveys through the landowner Tushin, who ardently loves her, an extraordinary person and a progressive industrialist.

Raisky leaves the village, wishing to become a sculptor. He travels through the countries of Europe, looking for himself.

Meaning
The novel "Cliff" by Goncharov is interesting both by the interweaving of the fates of the main characters, and the main idea, which is the clash of the so-called old and new values. Old values, despite their lack of flexibility, can compete with new values ​​that are just breaking through and looking for their place in people's lives.

Conclusion
I didn't like Goncharov's novel "Cliff". Barely read it. In my opinion, it is very tight and could be at least four or five times shorter. At the same time, I cannot but note that the general idea and most of the characters in the novel were very sympathetic to me. Anyway I do not recommend reading.

On January 1, 1867, Goncharov was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir of the 3rd degree "for excellent and diligent service". However, this award, in fact, summed up the performance of the writer. Obviously, he informed the authorities in advance that in 1867 he was going to resign. In addition to the order, his retirement was also marked by a four-month vacation abroad, which the novelist badly needed to complete The Cliff. The Cliff is Goncharov's last novel, completing his novel trilogy. He saw the light in 1869 on the pages of the journal "Bulletin of Europe", where he was published from January to May in every issue. When the "Cliff" was being actively written, Goncharov was already over 50 years old. And when he finished it - already 56. The last novel is marked by an unusual height of ideas, even for Goncharov, an unusual breadth of problems. The novelist was in a hurry to throw out in the novel everything that he had experienced and changed his mind in his life. The Precipice was to be his main novel. The writer, obviously, sincerely believed that his best novel should now come out from under his pen, which will put him on the pedestal of the first novelist in Russia. Although the best in terms of artistic performance, in terms of plastic intuition, the novel "Oblomov" was already behind.

The idea of ​​the novel arose in the late 1840s in his native Simbirsk, Goncharov was 37 years old at that time. “Here,” he wrote in the article “Better late than never,” “old familiar faces poured on me in a crowd, I saw the patriarchal life that had not yet come to life and, together, new shoots, a mixture of young and old. Gardens, the Volga, the cliffs of the Volga region, native air, childhood memories - all this stuck in my head and almost prevented me from finishing Oblomov ... I took the new novel away, took it around the world and in a program carelessly written on scraps ... "Goncharov wanted to finish almost already drawn in the head of the novel "Oblomov", but instead "in vain" spent the summer in Simbirsk and began sketching a new novel on his favorite "scraps". Something powerful must have intervened in his life. Love for Varvara Lukyanova? A piercing feeling of love for your native provincial Russia, seen after a 15-year break? Probably both. Goncharov has already written "Oblomov's Dream", where the native Volga region was presented in the spirit of classical antique idyll and at the same time not without irony. But suddenly a different perception of familiar places woke up: they were all lit up with the light of intense passion, bright colors, music. It was a completely different homeland, a completely different Russia. He must write not only good-natured, but sleepy Oblomovites, not only a thousand-year dream and a thousand-year-old mystery of these places! He must write a living seething life, today, love, passion! The garden, the Volga, the cliff, the fall of a woman, the sin of the Faith and the awakened memory of the sin of Grandmother (the spiritual law of life from the day of the fall of Adam and Eve!), the difficult and painful return to herself, to the chapel with the image of Christ on the bank of the cliff - that's what now irresistibly attracted him ... Oblomov began to hide in some kind of fog, besides, it became clear that this hero could not do without love, otherwise he would not wake up, the depth of his drama would not be revealed ... And the 37-year-old Goncharov rushed to his "shreds", trying to capture the feeling that gripped him, the very atmosphere of love, passion, provincial kindness, serious severity, as well as provincial ugliness in people’s relationships, in living life ... Being already a somewhat experienced artist, he knew that it was the atmosphere of place and time that would disappear first of all from memory, important details, smells, images will disappear. And he wrote and wrote, as yet without thinking, without a plan. The plan grew by itself from the details dear to the heart. Gradually, the atmosphere of the work was determined: if in the “Ordinary Story” behind the typical plot about the arrival of a provincial to the capital there is an imperceptible immersion of the human soul into the cold of death, into despair, into “clothing of the soul”, if in “Oblomov” it was an attempt to rise from this despair, wake up, comprehend yourself and your life, then here, in the "Cliff", there will be the most precious thing - the awakening, the resurrection of the soul, the impossibility for a living soul to finally fall into despair and sleep. On this trip to his native Simbirsk, Goncharov felt like some kind of Antey, whose strength increases from touching the ground. Such Antaeus is in his novel and main character- Raisky.

The novel "Cliff" is conceived more broadly and capaciously than the previous "Ordinary History" and "Oblomov". Suffice it to say that the novel ends with the word "Russia". The author openly declares that he speaks not only about the fate of the hero, but also

about the future historical fate of Russia. This was a significant difference from previous novels. The principle of a simple and clear in its structure "artistic monograph" in "The Cliff" is replaced by other aesthetic settings: by its nature, the novel is symphonic. It is distinguished by a relative "popularity" and multi-darkness, a complex and dynamic development of the plot, in which the activity and mood swings of the characters "pulsate" in a peculiar way. The artistic space of Goncharov's novel has also expanded. In its center, in addition to the capital Petersburg, were the Volga, the county town, Malinovka, the coastal garden and the Volga cliff. There is much more here than what can be called the "diversity of life": landscapes, birds and animals, visual images in general. In addition, the whole novel is riddled with symbolism. Goncharov here more often than before, refers to the images of art, more widely introduces sound and light images into the poetics of the work.

The novel gives a broad, "stereoscopic" picture of contemporary Russia. Goncharov remains true to himself and contrasts the mores of the capital and the provinces. At the same time, it is curious that all the writer's favorite characters (Grandmother, Vera, Marfenka, Tushin) are representatives of the Russian hinterland, while there is not a single remarkable hero in the capital. The Petersburg characters of "The Cliff" make you think about a lot, the writer needs them and in many ways explains the main character - Raisky - but the novelist does not feel a cordial, warm attitude towards them. A rare case in the practice of the writer! It is obvious that by the time of writing "The Cliff" Goncharov had already experienced serious changes in his assessments of the surrounding reality and, more broadly, of human nature. After all, his provincial heroes live primarily with their hearts and are distinguished by the integrity of their nature, while, depicting the St. Petersburg secular environment, the writer notes the soullessness, arrogance and emptiness of the life of the cold St. Petersburg aristocrats and the highest noble-bureaucratic circles. Pakhotin, Belovodova, Ayanov - in all these people there is no inner moral search so dear to Goncharov, which means there is no search for the meaning of life, no awareness of one's duty ... Here everything is frozen in petrified immobility. Complex questions of human life are replaced by an empty form. For the Pakhotins it is aristocracy, for Ayanov it is a thoughtless and non-binding "service", etc. An empty form creates the illusion of real existence, a found life niche, a found meaning of life. The main thing that Goncharov has been talking about for many years is that the high society has not known their country for a long time, lives in isolation from the Russian people, does not speak Russian, egoism and cosmopolitan moods dominate in this environment. Such an image of high society directly echoes the novels of L. Tolstoy. But Goncharov develops the theme and shows that the lack of spirituality, the petrification of the "pillars of society" is one of the reasons for another Russian illusion: nihilism, the thirst for "freedom" from rules and laws. The metropolitan world, alien to Russian soil, is opposed in the novel by the province, filled with warm and lively, although sometimes ugly figures. However, it also has its own "illusions", its own self-deception, its own lies. Raisky's grandmother endured this lie in her life for many years, but it was revealed when the main event of the novel took place: the "cliff" of her granddaughter Vera. Tychkov, the courtyard woman Marina, the Kozlovs, etc. have their own lies. However, in the provincial part of the novel, events take place dynamically, the spiritual state of people is subject to change, it does not freeze forever. Raysky is forced to admit that in St. Petersburg people seek the truth with a cold mind, reflectively, while in the provinces people who live with a heart find it “for nothing”: “Grandmother! Tatyana Markovna! You stand at the heights of development, mental, moral and social! You are a completely ready, developed person! And how it was given to you in vain when we fuss, fuss!”

The first attempt to complete The Cliff dates back to 1860. And again, she was associated with a trip to her beloved Marienbad. In early May, Goncharov, together with the Nikitenko family, went by boat from Kronstadt to Stettin, and from there by train to Berlin, then to Dresden, where he was visiting the famous gallery for the second time, and finally to Marienbad. On June 3, he already writes to the Nikitenko sisters, Ekaterina and Sofya, about working on The Cliff: “I felt cheerfulness, youth, freshness, I was in such an unusual mood, I felt such a surge of productive power, such a passion to express myself, which I have not felt since the age of 57 . Of course, this was not in vain for the future (if only there will be) novel: it all unfolded in front of me for two hours, ready, and I saw there a lot of things that I had never dreamed of. For me, now only the meaning of the second hero, Vera's lover, became clear; a whole half has suddenly grown to him, and the figure comes out alive, bright and popular; there was also a living face; all other figures passed in front of me in this two-hour poetic dream, as if at a review, they are all purely folk, with all the features, colors, with Slavic flesh and blood ... ”Yes, the novel, perhaps, unfolded all ready, but only a couple hours. Everything turned out to be not so simple. By this time, about 16 printed sheets had already been written by Goncharov's hand, but nevertheless the novel as a whole still remained in the fog, only separate bright scenes, images, pictures clearly appeared in the mind. There was no main thing - a unifying plot and a hero! Hence the complaint in a letter to Father Nikitenko: “Faces, figures, paintings appear on the stage, but I don’t know how to group them, find meaning, connection, the purpose of this drawing, I can’t ... and the hero has not yet come, is not ...” Of these figures in the foreground, as Goncharov's letters from that time show, are Mark and Marfenka. Raisky was not given to Goncharov, although it was an image largely autobiographical. By the end of June, it turned out that the situation was very bad: “I froze on the 16th sheet ... No, I was not lazy, I sat for 6 hours, wrote until I was faint on the third day, and then suddenly it seemed to break off, and instead of hunting there was despondency, heaviness , spleen ... "

Goncharov complains that he works a lot, but does not create, but composes, and therefore comes out "bad, pale, weak." Maybe in France it will be written better? Goncharov leaves for Boulogne, near Paris. But even there it is not better: there is a lot of noise around, and most importantly - the hero is still in the fog. In August, Goncharov was forced to confess: “The hero definitely does not come out, or something wild, unimaginative, incomplete comes out. It seems that I have taken on the impossible task of depicting the inside, the giblets, the backstage of the artist and art. There are scenes, there are figures, but in general there is nothing.” It was only when he returned to Dresden in September that one chapter of the novel was written. Not thick for a four-month vacation! He had to admit to himself that in 1860 he still did not see the whole, that is, the novel itself.

However, the writer stubbornly goes to his goal. Goncharov already felt the unusual and alluring "stereoscopic" nature of his new work, felt that he was already succeeding or almost succeeding in the main thing: the height of ideals, unusual even for Russian literature. Only Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov could handle such a height... Work on the novel could not be abandoned in any case! And he stubbornly continued to display scene after scene, picture after picture. The novel was fairly "overexposed" for 13 years of work on it. Moreover, the idea grew and was constantly being clarified with greater breadth and concreteness. Upon his arrival at home at the end of September, Goncharov again turned to The Cliff, even published one chapter in Otechestvennye Zapiski. By the end of 1861, three of the five parts of The Cliff were written. But the actual dramaturgy of the action, the unusual play of passions, the very essence of the novel - all this was still untouched! All this will unfold only in the last two parts, raising the novel to new heights.

For almost twenty years, the plan of the "Cliff" was considered. It turned out to be so extensive that it no longer fit into the framework of the linear “education novel” (“Ordinary History”), “life novel” (“Oblomov”). Some new form must have been born, some new novel, not at all linear, not in the form of a lonely alley in a garden: no, here the garden must be divided into many lonely trees standing in clumps, into many shady alleys and sunny glades, on symmetrically and disorderly standing flowerbeds with various flowers ... Here the most important impressions and results of life had to fit in: faith, hope, love, Russia, art, a woman ... an almost fifty year old man?

Be that as it may, in the early 1860s, the novel remained unfinished. Goncharov, who was about to retire, continues to serve. In September 1862, he was appointed editor of the official newspaper of the Ministry of the Interior, Severnaya Pochta. A few months ago, representatives of the revolutionary democracy D.I. Pisarev, N.G. Chernyshevsky, H.A. Serno-Solov'evich. The publisher of Sovremennik, Nekrasov, breaks with the "liberal camp": Turgenev, Goncharov, Druzhinin, Pisemsky. Turgenev, in letters to Herzen and Dostoevsky, calls Nekrasov, with whom he had recently been on friendly terms, a "dishonest person", a "shameless mazurik." Nekrasov is forced to keep the Sovremennik staff from publishing attacks on Turgenev. Goncharov never broke personal relations with people whose views did not coincide with his own. For many decades, he maintained even friendly relations with Nekrasov. If the novelist realized that Herzen's activities abroad were not useful for Russia, then how could he cruelly and with personal feeling judge his old acquaintance Nekrasov? True, he decided to give his novel not to the Nekrasov magazine. In 1868, Nekrasov asked to publish "Cliff" in the journal "Domestic Notes", which took a clearly democratic position, but received in response: "I do not think that the novel could be suitable for you, although I will not offend either the old or the young generation in it. , but its general direction, even the very idea, if it does not directly contradict, then does not completely coincide with those, not even extreme, principles that your journal will follow. In a word, there will be a stretch.

Consent to be appointed to the semi-official "Northern Post" at a time of intensification of the ideological struggle in society is a demonstrative step. In this situation, Goncharov in the eyes of many becomes a "guardian". The writer understood this very well, and if he nevertheless went for it, then, therefore, he had some serious motives of his own, because, as before in censorship, he in no way sacrificed his fundamental convictions. So he was hoping for something. For what? In November 1862, he submits a memorandum addressed to the Minister of the Interior P. A. Valuev “On the methods of publishing the Northern Post”. The note outlined a project to reorganize the newspaper. Wanting to make the newspaper more public than other official and unofficial newspapers, Goncharov demands more freedom in discussing "the most remarkable phenomena of public life and government actions." “We need to allow more courage, I'm not talking about political courage; let political convictions remain within the limits of government directives, I am talking about greater freedom to speak publicly about our internal, public and domestic affairs, about removing those proprieties in the press that lie on it, not because of once urgent, now past needs, but because of long the dominant fear of censorship, which left behind a long trace of certain habits - on the one hand, not to speak, on the other - not to be allowed to talk about much that can be said out loud without harm. He expresses his intention to "bring the language in the newspaper to the degree of correctness and purity to which modern literature and society have placed it." That's what Goncharov wanted to make out of the police newspaper! Of course, it was a utopian dream, although it would seem that someone, but Goncharov, is not at all inclined towards utopia. Yes, it is clear that the rapidly advancing reforms of Alexander II stirred up natural idealism in him, successfully outlived over a quarter of a century of service in various “departments”. Less than a year, Goncharov served in the "Northern Post", never overcoming the inertia of newspaper officialdom. On June 14, 1863, Minister of the Interior P. A. Valuev petitions Alexander II to appoint Goncharov a member of the Council of the Minister of the Interior for book printing and to grant him a full state councilor with a salary of 4,000 rubles a year. This was already a general's position, which Goncharov was not forgiven by many, and above all by writers. Even Nikitenko, who favored Goncharov, wrote in his diary: “My friend I. A. Goncharov will do his best to get his four thousand regularly and act carefully so that both the authorities and the writers are pleased with him.” However, everything turned out to be completely different from what Nikitenko thought, who, in the depths of his soul, considered Goncharov to be a “too prosperous” person. In fact, the novelist has always carried out his service, trying not to compromise fundamental personal opinions. And it had its own drama. No wonder Goncharov constantly complained about his unbearable position in the Press Council, about intrigues, about narrow-minded censorship policy. In general, looking at Goncharov's approach to the service, you clearly realize that in his official activity, the main role is played, in essence, not by belonging to any party (liberals, guardians), but by real patriotism and broad-mindedness. But loneliness is inherently dramatic...

Summer vacations in 1865 and 1866 Goncharov spends on the European resorts he has already mastered (Baden-Baden, Marienbad, Boulogne and others), trying to budge the "Cliff". But it was poorly written. In a letter to S. A. Nikitenko from Marienbad dated July 1, 1865, he admitted: “I started sorting through my notebooks, writing, or, rather, scratching and scribbled two or three chapters, but ... But nothing will come of this ...“ Why won't it come out?" - you ask again, - but because, as it seemed to me, it remained only to cross the river in order to be on the other side, and when I now approached the river, I saw that it was not a river, but a sea, that is, in other words, I thought that I had already written half of the novel in rough form, but it turned out that I had only collected material and that the other, main half, was everything and that, apart from talent, a lot of time was needed to overcome it.

Going on a vacation abroad in 1867, Goncharov secretly hopes that the “Marienbad miracle” will repeat itself, as ten years ago, when the novel “Oblomov” was completed in three months of fast and energetic work. However, each novel has its own destiny and its own character. "Cliff" was much wider in concept than "Oblomov", and the past years did not add freshness and energy ... On May 12, 1867, Goncharov arrived in the resort town of Marienbad, where he had been repeatedly, and stayed at the Stadt Brussel Hotel. He spent a month working on the novel. That very month, about which nothing is known at all in his life: he did not even write a single letter and did not receive a single line from anyone. One can imagine how every morning he sat himself at the table and tried to renew the old plan. However, he didn't get anything. A little embarrassed to admit even to old acquaintances in his defeat, he is cunning in a letter to A.B. Nikitenko on June 15: “Hoping to get better, not jokingly, to freshen up, but only drooped in health and moldy in spirit; I wanted to get down to the old, forgotten work, took with me the notebooks yellowed from time and did not touch them from the suitcase. Neither health nor work has succeeded, and the question of labor is decided in the negative forever. I drop my pen."

Of course, Goncharov could not quit his pen: too much had already been invested in the last novel, and most importantly, Goncharov's parting love and warnings to Russia and the Russian people should have sounded in it on the eve of serious historical trials. However, on this vacation, the novelist really will no longer take up the pen. He tries to unwind, changes places of residence: visits Baden-Baden, Frankfurt, Ostend, meets with Turgenev, Dostoevsky, critic Botkin. In Baden-Baden, Turgenev reads his novel "Smoke" to him, but Goncharov did not like the novel. And besides, I didn’t like it because Turgenev, having taken up a topic that echoed his “Cliff”, did not put into “Smoke” a drop of love for Russia and the Russian people, while he himself is tormented by what he tries and cannot express it is love, which in the end will permeate his entire novel: every image, every landscape, every scene. In a letter to A. G. Troinitsky dated June 25, he will speak out: “The first scenes revolt me ​​not because the Russian pen is hostile to the Russian people, mercilessly executing them for emptiness, but because this pen betrayed the author, art here. It sins with some kind of dull and cold anger, it sins with unfaithfulness, that is, with a lack of talent. All these figures are so pale that it is as if they are invented, composed. Not a single living stroke, not a marked feature, nothing resembling a physiognomy, a living face: just a bunch of nihilists painted on a stencil. But it was not by chance that Goncharov showed in "The Cliff" that grandmother Tatyana Markovna (and is she Markovna by any chance?), although she scolds, she loves and pities Volokhov's "Markushka". The writer himself loved everyone he painted in his last novel, including the nihilist Volokhov. Why? Yes, because he treats Volokhov in the gospel way - as a “prodigal son”, a lost, but his own child. In general, there is so much love in "The Cliff" that there was not even in "Oblomov", where Goncharov truly loves only two heroes: Ilya Ilyich and Agafya Pshenitsyna. In The Ordinary Story, there is even less love coming from the core of the writer's being: the novel is very smart and not devoid of warmth of feeling. Why did everything change so much in "The Cliff"? Not because Goncharov grew up as an artist (although this is a fact!), but for the simple reason that he simply grew older, warmer, softened in soul: the novel showed an unspent paternal feeling, in which paternal love is mixed with wisdom, self-sacrifice and the desire to protect young life from all evil. In the early novels, this sense of fatherhood has not yet matured to that extent. In addition, by the time the "Cliff" was written, the writer, wise by the experience of traveling around the world and endless reflections, was already clearly aware of Russia's special place in the world. He saw thousands of shortcomings in her life and did not object at all to transferring a lot of good things to Russian soil from Europe, but he loved the main thing in her, that which could not be destroyed by any borrowings: her extraordinary sincerity and inner freedom, which was in no way connected with parliamentarism or a constitution... Russia-Robinovka is for him the guardian of an earthly paradise, in which every little thing is precious, where peace lives and unimaginable peace in earthly life, where there is a place for everything and everything. Here Raisky arrives in Malinovka: “What kind of paradise opened up to him in this corner, from where he was taken away in childhood ... The garden is vast ... with dark alleys, an arbor and benches. The farther from the houses, the more neglected the garden was. Near a huge spreading elm, with a rotten bench, cherries and apple trees crowded: there are mountain ash; there was a bunch of linden trees, they wanted to form an alley, but suddenly they went into the forest and fraternally got mixed up with a spruce forest, a birch forest ... Near the garden, closer to the house, there were kitchen gardens. There are cabbages, turnips, carrots, parsley, cucumbers, then huge pumpkins, and watermelons and melons in the greenhouse. Sunflowers and poppies, in this mass of greenery, made bright, conspicuous spots; Turkish beans curled around the stamens ... Swallows curled around the house, nesting on the roof; robins, orioles, siskins and goldfinches were found in the garden and grove, and nightingales clicked at night. The yard was full of all sorts of poultry and dogs of all kinds. In the morning the cows and the goat with two girlfriends would go to the field and return in the evening. Several horses stood almost idle in the stables. Bees, bumblebees, dragonflies soared above the flowers near the house, butterflies fluttered in the sun, cats and kittens huddled in the corners, basking in the sun. What joy and peace lived in the house! The general feeling from such a description is the motley excess of life pouring over the edges of a warm and sun-soaked vessel. Real paradise! And next to the small sunny house, Goncharov depicts a gloomy and gloomy old house, and next to the grandmother's "Eden" - a cliff from which poisonous fumes seem to rise and where evil spirits and ghosts live, where no good person will set foot. The cliff has already come close to the peaceful grandmother's garden, which becomes all the more expensive because danger hangs over it. Sweet garden! It is worth loving, it is worth cherishing, it must be protected! It is with these feelings that "Cliff" was written: with filial love for Russia and with a paternal warning against the mistakes of Russian youth.

On September 1, Goncharov returned from his foreign vacation without completing the novel, and at the very end of the year, on December 29, he resigned. Goncharov was assigned a general's pension: 1,750 rubles a year. However, it was not so much. In one of the letters to Turgenev, he admits: “The pension, thanks to God and the tsar, assigned me, gives me the means to exist, but without any bliss ...” Having finally become free, Goncharov again rushes to his novel. Already in February, he reads "The Cliff" in the house of the historian and journalist Yevgeny Mikhailovich Feoktistov, and in March - in the house of Count Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy, the author of "The Silver Prince" and a dramatic trilogy from the time of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Tolstoy and his wife, Sofya Andreevna, played a significant role in the fact that the “Cliff” was nevertheless completed. Like any artist, Goncharov needed friendly participation, praise, support - and the Tolstoy family turned out to be an indispensable support for Goncharov in 1868. About Tolstoy, the novelist wrote: “Everyone loved him for his intelligence, for his talent, but most of all for his kind, open, honest and always cheerful character. Everyone clung to him like flies; there was always a crowd in their house - and since the count was equal and equally kind and hospitable to everyone, people of all fortunes, ranks, minds, talents, among other things beau monde, gathered at his house. The countess, a subtle and intelligent, developed woman, educated, reading everything in four languages, understanding and loving the arts, literature - in a word, one of the few women in terms of education. Goncharov at certain times visited the Tolstoys almost daily.

Alexei Tolstoy turned out to be an artist who was very close to Goncharov in spirit. His lyrics are inspired by the omnipresence of God, to whom the poet composes joyful, bright hymns. Even Tolstoy's love lyrics are imbued with the thought of saving the human soul, of the highest meaning of human life. The fact that Goncharov got along with him at the end of the "Cliff" is quite characteristic. It seems that in talking about modern nihilism they had serious points of contact.

A. Tolstoy, in turn, is actively worried about the fate of Goncharov's novel. November 24 Goncharov receives a letter from A. K. and S. A. Tolstykh. The letter expressed his approval of the work on the preparation of the novel "The Precipice" for publication. Moreover, Alexei Tolstoy somehow took part in the work on Goncharov's novel. Goncharov - apparently with the consent or even at the suggestion of the poet - placed in the 5th part of the "Cliff" his translation of Heine's poem:

Enough! It's time for me to forget this nonsense! Time to get back to sanity! Enough with you, like a skilled actor, I played the drama as a joke. The backstage was colorfully painted, I recited so passionately; And the mantle is shiny, and the hat has a feather, And the feeling - everything was perfect! Now, even though I threw this rag, Though there is no theatrical rubbish, Still hurts my heart, It's like I'm playing a drama. And what a fake pain I thought That pain was alive - Oh God, I'm wounded to death - played, Gladiator representing death!

To the preface to the novel “The Cliff” (November 1869), Goncharov will add: “I consider it my duty to state with gratitude that the excellent translation of Heine’s poem, placed in the 5th part as an epigraph to Raysky’s novel, belongs to Count A. K. Tolstoy, author of the dramas "The Death of Ivan the Terrible" and "Theodore Ioannovich".

The ever more trusting friendship between A. Tolstoy and Goncharov ended with the death of the poet in September 1875. But even after that, the author of The Cliff retains a very warm memory of A. Tolstoy.

On March 28, 1868, the editor of Vestnik Evropy M. M. Stasyulevich, who shared his impressions with his wife, was present at the first reading of The Cliff at the Tolstoy’s, on March 28, 1868: “This is a charm of high caliber. What a profound talent! One scene is better than the other ... The Bulletin of E[uropa] will jump high if he manages to take Marfenka into his hands. Throughout April, Stasyulevich fought for the manuscript of "Cliff" - and finally achieved his goal: on April 29, Goncharov promised that after the end of the novel he would give it to Vestnik Evropy.

Well, the novel itself rushed forward with renewed vigor. Praise acted on Goncharov, as well as on any artist - quite encouraging. On May 25, Goncharov confesses to his “friend-secretary” Sofya Aleksandrovna Nikitenko: “Stasyulevich energetically knows how to stir his imagination with smart, sober, conscious criticism and very subtly affects self-esteem. Imagine that under the influence of this, in conversations with him, my nerves and imagination began to play, and suddenly the end of the novel stood before me clearly and distinctly, so it seems that I would sit down and write everything now. And the next day he writes to Stasyulevich himself: “Now everything is boiling in me, as if in a bottle of champagne, everything is developing, clearing up in me, everything is easier, further, and I can hardly stand it, alone, I sob like a child, and with an exhausted hand I hasten to celebrate somehow, in disarray ... everything that I considered dead wakes up in me.

In dusty summer Petersburg, Goncharov did not like to stay at all, and he simply could not do creative work. He finished his great novels in European resorts. The next day, May 27, 1868, Goncharov leaves the country. From Kissingen, he writes: “I have two small, cozy rooms near the source and the kursaal ... An angle and perfect silence, and one or two familiar faces - that’s what I need now to sit down and finish in two or three sittings.” True, the novelist prefers to hide from "familiar faces" and devotes all his strength to solitude and creating in silence. However, there was still no “perfect silence”, namely it is the main condition for creativity for Goncharov: “In my work I need a simple room with a desk, an easy chair and bare walls, so that nothing even entertains the eyes, and most importantly, to no external sound penetrated ... and so that I could peer, listen to what is happening in me, and write down. It should be noted that, in addition to silence, Goncharov needed well-warmed, dry summer air, pleasant weather: his artistic body was very capricious, the pen easily fell out of his hands, the "spleen" attacked. And all the nerves! This summer, the nervous mood swings characteristic of Goncharov somehow manifested themselves especially strongly: from depression to a creative upsurge. In fact, the speed of work is the same as in Marienbad: despite the uneven mood, he processes, cleans and finishes ten printed sheets a week! So June, July pass, and on August 5 he writes to the Stasyulevichs that he is approaching the end of the novel: “Today or tomorrow, or I don’t know when, I need to write the night scene of my grandmother with Vera.” The whole novel was roughly finished by September. Stasyulevich was already triumphant, but too early! He did not know the character of Ivan Alexandrovich well. Doubts again attacked Goncharov, especially about the first chapters of the novel. In a letter to A.A. Muzalevskaya at the end of September, he writes: “I began to work diligently in the summer, brought my old work to an end and even agreed with one editor to print it. Yes, I didn't have the patience. The beginning was stale and now it is old, and the newly written one needs a lot of polishing, and I waved my hand and threw it away. Stasyulevich and Alexei Tolstoy had to start all over again. Long persuasion and negotiations ended in complete success. Beginning in January 1869, Vestnik Evropy began publishing The Cliff. But the novelist did not calm down: while the novel was being printed, Goncharov continued to process it in proofs, which completely exhausted the editor of the magazine.

According to Goncharov, he put into "Cliff" all his "ideas, concepts and feelings of goodness, honor, honesty, morality, faith - everything that ... should constitute the moral nature of a person." As before, the author was concerned about "general, global, controversial issues." In the preface to The Cliff, he himself said: “Questions about religion, about the family union, about the new structure of social principles, about the emancipation of women, etc. - are not private, to be decided by this or that era, this or that nation, of one generation or another. These are common, global, controversial issues, running in parallel with the general development of mankind, on the solution of which every era, all nations have worked and are working ... And not a single era, not a single nation can boast of the final overcoming of any of them ... "

It is precisely the fact that the “Cliff” was conceived shortly after the writing of “An Ordinary History” and almost simultaneously with the publication of “Oblomov’s Dream” testifies to the deep unity of Goncharov’s novel trilogy, and also to the fact that this unity concerns primarily the religious basis of Goncharov’s novels. Hence, there is a clear pattern in the naming of the main characters: from Ad-uev through Oblomov to Raisky. The autobiographical hero of Goncharov is looking for the right attitude to life, God, people. The movement goes from hell to heaven.

This evolution goes from the problem of "returning to God the fruit from the grain thrown by Him" ​​to the problem of "duty" and "human purpose". Let's make a reservation right away that Goncharov will never draw an absolute ideal. Yes, he will not attempt to create his own "idiot" in search of the absolute, as F. Dostoevsky did. Goncharov thinks of a spiritually ideal hero within the limits of a possible earthly and, moreover, fundamentally mundane. His character is fundamentally flawed. He is a sinner among sinners. But he is endowed with spiritual impulses and aspirations, and thereby shows the possibility of spiritual growth not for the elect, but for every person. Note that, with rare exceptions, all the other main figures of the novel are “sinners”: Vera, Grandmother. All of them, passing through their "cliff", come to repentance and "resurrection".

The Christian theme of the novel resulted in the search for the "norm" of human love. Boris Raisky himself is looking for this norm. The plot core of the work, in fact, was Raisky's search for the "norm" of female love and female nature ("poor Natasha", Sofya Belovodova, provincial cousins ​​Marfenka and Vera). Babushka, Mark Volokhov, and Tushin are looking for this norm in their own way. Faith is also looking for, which, thanks to the “instincts of self-consciousness, originality, self-activity,” stubbornly strives for truth, finding it in falls and dramatic struggle.

The theme of love and Raisky's "artistic" quest at first glance seems to be valuable in itself, occupying the entire space of the novel. But the search for the "norm" is conducted by Goncharov from a Christian position, which is especially noticeable in the fate of the main characters: Raisky, Vera, Volokhov, Babushka. This norm is "love-duty", impossible for the author outside the Christian attitude to life. Thus, in comparison with the previous "Ordinary History" and "Oblomov", the creative range of the novelist, the ideological and thematic scope and the variety of artistic techniques are significantly expanded. It is no coincidence that some researchers say that Goncharov's last novel paves the way for twentieth-century romance.

The title of the novel is ambiguous. The author also talks about the fact that in the turbulent 60s of the XIX century there was a “break” in the connection of times, a “break” in the connection of generations (the problem of “fathers and children”) and a “break” in women’s fate (“the fall” of a woman, the fruits of "emancipation"). Goncharov intensely, as in previous novels, reflects on the "cliffs" between feeling and reason, faith and science, civilization and nature, etc.

"Cliff" was written in conditions when Goncharov, together with the entire liberal wing of Russian society, had to feel what kind of fruit liberalism had brought during the decades of its existence in Russia. In the novel, Goncharov speaks covertly and openly against the contemporary positive worldview, outright atheism, and vulgar materialism. Religion (and love as its fundamental manifestation in human nature) is opposed to all this in The Cliff. Goncharov still stands for progress, but emphasizes the inadmissibility of breaking new ideas with the traditions and eternal ideals of mankind. This concept is artistically embodied primarily in the love story of Vera and the nihilist Mark Volokhov. Volokhov, distinguished by a certain frankness and honesty, a thirst for clarity and truth, is looking for new ideals, abruptly cutting off all ties with traditions and universal human experience.

The Volokhovs appealed to science and opposed it to religion. It was another Russian illusion. The writer seriously followed the development of science. In the preface to The Cliff, he remarked: “One cannot sacrifice serious practical sciences to the faint-hearted fears of an insignificant part of the harm that can result from the freedom and breadth of scientific activity. Let there be among young scientists those whose study of the natural or exact sciences would lead to the conclusions of extreme materialism, negation, etc. Their convictions will remain their personal lot, and science will be enriched by their scientific efforts. Goncharov, judging by his review letter, agrees, in any case, that religion and science should not oppose each other. He claims: “Vera is not embarrassed by any“ I don’t know ”and extracts everything she needs in the boundless ocean. She has a single and all-powerful tool for the believer - feeling.

The (human) mind has nothing but the first knowledge necessary for domestic, earthly use, that is, the ABC of omniscience. In a perspective that is very vague, false and distant, the daring pioneers of science have the hope of reaching the secrets of the universe someday in a reliable way of science.

Real science shimmers with such a faint light that so far it gives only an idea of ​​the depth of the abyss of ignorance. She, like a balloon, barely takes off above the earth's surface and falls back helplessly. In the preface to the novel "The Cliff", the writer formulated his understanding of the problem of the relationship between science and religion: "... Both paths are parallel and endless!"

The novelist was very well versed in the new doctrine. During his service in censorship, he read a lot of materials from the Russkoye Slovo magazine, whose task was to popularize the ideas of the positivists in Russia, and, undoubtedly, deeply delved into the essence and even the genesis of this doctrine. Goncharov wrote censor reviews on such significant works of D. I. Pisarev, popularizing the teachings of the positivists, as “The Historical Ideas of Auguste Comte” and “Popularizers of Negative Doctrines”. After reading the article "The Historical Ideas of Auguste Comte", intended for the 11th issue of the "Russian Word" for 1865, Goncharov, as a censor, insisted on declaring a second warning to the journal, since he saw in Pisarev's article "an obvious denial of the sanctity of the origin and significance of the Christian religion." Isn't that why in the preface to the novel "The Cliff" one can find a hidden polemic with Pisarev? Later, in The Extraordinary History, he would formulate his claims to positivist ethics as follows: "All good or bad manifestations of psychological activity are brought under laws subject to nervous reflexes, etc." Good and evil as a derivative of "nervous reflexes" - this anti-positivist theme brings Goncharov closer to the author of The Brothers Karamazov. In Dostoevsky’s novel, Mitya and Alyosha discuss this positivist theory of man: “Imagine, it’s there in the nerves, in the head, that is, there are these nerves in the brain ... there are such sort of tails, these nerves have tails, well, as soon as they tremble there ... that is, I look at something with my eyes, like this, and they tremble, tails, and as they tremble, then the image appears ... that's why I contemplate, and then think, because the tails, and not at all because that I have a soul ... "

The militant positivist in The Cliff is Mark Volokhov, who sincerely believes that it is precisely in physiology that the key to man lies. He addresses Vera with the words: “Are you not an animal? spirit, angel - an immortal creature? In this question of Mark, one can hear an echo of the definition of a person that was characteristic of the positivists. So, in 1860, P. L. Lavrov formulated: “Man (homo) is a zoological genus in the category of mammals ... a vertebrate animal ...” Similar views were developed by M. A. Bakunin. Of course, Goncharov could not agree with such an understanding of human nature. In his opinion, Volokhov "debunked man into one animal organism, taking away from him the other, non-animal side." Goncharov's controversy with the positivists on the question of whether a person is only an "animal", or whether he also has a "soul", determined many of the features of the novel "The Precipice" and, in particular, an abundance of animalistic images, uncharacteristic of Goncharov's earlier works. The novelist himself sees a lot of “animal” in a person, but, unlike the positivists, he does not simply state this fact, but gives it an appropriate assessment, shows the struggle between the “animal” and “spiritual” in a person and hopes for his humanistic “humanization” and return to Christ. Goncharov's entire ethical doctrine is based on this hope, beginning with the works of the 1840s. After all, already in the "Letters from a metropolitan friend to a provincial groom" the concept of a gradual ascent from the "beast" to the true "man" is clearly visible. In The Cliff, Goncharov felt a threat not only to religion, to traditional morality, but also to morality as such, for positivism abolished and ignored the very task of the moral improvement of man. Indeed, for a "vertebrate animal" it is impossible - there is simply no need for it. For Mark Volokhov, “people … crowd like midges in hot weather in a huge column, collide, rush, multiply, feed, warm themselves and disappear in the stupid process of life, in order to give place tomorrow to another similar pillar.

“Yes, if this is so,” Vera thought, “then you shouldn’t work on yourself in order to become better, cleaner, more truthful, kinder by the end of your life. For what? For use for several decades? To do this, you need to stock up, like an ant with grains for the winter, the everyday ability to live, such honesty, which is synonymous with dexterity, such grains to last for a life, sometimes very short, so that it is warm, comfortable ... What are the ideals for ants? Ant-like virtues are needed… But is it so?”…”

The doctrine that Volokhov adheres to, as it were, leaves an imprint on his appearance, on his behavior. In it, by the will of the author, a beast, an animal constantly peeps through. His very name suggests a wolf. “You are a straight wolf,” Vera says about him. During the culminating conversation with her, Mark shook his head, “like a shaggy beast”, “walked ... like a recalcitrant beast, moving away from the prey”, “like a beast, rushed into the gazebo, carrying off the prey”. In The Cliff, not only Mark Volokhov, but also many other characters are given in animalistic lighting. Leonty Kozlov is even endowed with a speaking surname. Kozlov's wife, Ulyana, looks at Raisky with a "mermaid look". Tushin resembles a fabulous bear. “When a thunderstorm rumbles, Vera Vasilievna,” he says, “save yourself beyond the Volga, into the forest: there lives a bear that will serve you ... as they say in fairy tales.” Yes, and in Paradise - not only the "fox". In his justification for the pain he caused, he says to Vera: "It was not me, not a man: the beast committed a crime." A storm of passion and jealousy "drowned out everything human in him." Marina, Savely's wife, is compared in the novel to a cat. Even about Marfenka it is said that she loves the summer heat, "like a lizard."

Goncharov also argues with utilitarian ethics, which naturally follows from the "zoological" understanding of man. A person who lives by the needs of not only the "body" but also the "soul" lives only in the "body" and his ethics are inevitably selfish. It is known that in the 1860s, in connection with the publication in Russia of the works of Bentham's follower J. S. Mill, disputes about utilitarian ethics flared up in the press with renewed vigor. In a conversation with Raisky, Volokhov clarifies his ethical attitudes with the utmost frankness: “What is honesty, in your opinion? .. It is neither honest nor dishonest, but useful for me.”

Finally, Goncharov shows that Mark Volokhov's behavior also manifests the third principle of positivist ethics, "lack of free will." In the philosophy of positivism, “the mind and its functions turn out to be pure mechanics, in which there is even no free will! Man is not guilty, therefore, of either good or evil: he is a product and a victim of the laws of necessity ... Here ... is what the newest age reports, in the person of its newest thinkers, to the old age. Vulgar materialism and positivism really advocated the idea of ​​the most severe determinism and even "historical fatalism". What was it like for an old admirer of Pushkin, who proclaimed the principle of “independence of man”!

Another important theme of Goncharov's last novel is the theme of trust in God. Undoubtedly, in the years since Ordinary History and Oblomov, Goncharov has changed a lot. Peter Aduev, Stolz constantly feel the shortcomings of human nature and propose radical measures for its alteration. These are heroes-transformers who do not hear life itself, its organics, its natural rhythm. In The Cliff, Goncharov finally comes to the conclusion that listening to the depths of nature is more important than reshaping it. Now he is much more sober and more careful. So to speak, he began to trust God more, to believe more in God's providence for man. The writer is sure that every person is endowed with certain gifts from God, that there are simply no "talentless" in the world. It is another matter that a person himself rejects these gifts, departs from God. Nature should not be altered, but the possibilities inherent in it should be developed! In Oblomov, the educator Stolz argued that man was created to "change his nature." Tushin is a completely different matter: “But Tushin keeps at his height and does not leave it. The talent given to him - to be a man - he does not bury, but puts into circulation, without losing, but only benefiting from the fact that he was created by nature, and did not make himself the way he is. In the writer’s reasoning, thoughts unfamiliar to us from the first novels about the real boundaries in the possibilities of human self-reformation begin to flicker: which - one might say - almost no one is given, but meanwhile many, tired, despairing or bored with the battles of life, stop halfway, turn aside and, finally, completely lose sight of the task of moral development and stop believing in it. This statement was impossible either in Ordinary History or in Oblomov. In The Cliff, the author's confidence in the "natural" in man is much greater than before. Here, as never before, there are many heroes who are distinguished by natural harmony, and not by harmony acquired in the course of self-remaking. In addition to Tushin, one should name, for example, Tatyana Markovna, about whom Raisky reflects: “I fight ... to be humane and kind: my grandmother never thought about it, but she is humane and kind ... my grandmother has the whole principle ... in her nature!” In the province portrayed by Goncharov, in general, “there was no pretension in anyone to seem something different, better, higher, smarter, more moral; and meanwhile, in fact, it was higher, more moral than it seemed, and almost smarter. There, in a bunch of people with developed concepts, they struggle to be simpler, and they don’t know how - here, without thinking about it, everyone is simple, no one climbed out of his skin to fake simplicity.

Like Tushin, Marfenka has natural harmony. True, this harmony is very specific, the author is not inclined to consider it exemplary. But he believes that there is no need to “remake” anything in Marfenka: this can only upset the balance established in her nature. No wonder her name is Marfa: her life path passes under the cover of this gospel saint. Martha in the Gospel, although she is opposed to Mary, is not rejected, her path of salvation will not be rejected: service to others. Sensitive Raysky correctly understood that attempts to remake, even with good intentions, would destroy this fragile harmony. He does the only right thing when he retreats from Marfenka, asking her the question: “Don’t you want to be another?” - and received in response: “Why? ., I'm from here, I'm all from this sand, from this grass! I don’t want to go anywhere…” For Raisky, the way of salvation lies in the gospel words: “Push around and it will be opened to you.” For Marfenka, this is a completely different path, the path of happy and quiet family harmony among many children.

Throughout the action taking place in Malinovka, Raisky significantly changes his ideas about the “naturally given” in a person. The first thought that comes to him upon arrival at Grandma's is: "No, it all needs to be redone." But in the end, he is forced to recognize a more significant force than stubborn self-education, which only leads rare people to the heights of moral development, the force of a happy nature: “Grandma! Tatyana Markovna! You stand at the pinnacle of development… I refuse to re-educate you…”

Actually, in the center of the novel is the love story of Mark Volokhov and Vera. But Goncharov is interested not only in a single story, but also in the philosophy of love as such. That is why all the loves of the changeable Paradise are shown (Natasha, reminiscent of " poor Lisa Karamzin, Sofya Belovodova, Vera, Marfenka), the love of the armchair man Kozlov for his frivolous wife, the young love of Marfenka and Vikentiev, etc., etc. “Cliff” can generally be read as a kind of encyclopedia of love. Love had previously played a big role in the works of Goncharov, who inherited Pushkin's principle of testing his hero primarily with love. Turgenev believed that a person cannot lie about two things: love and death. In the stories and novels of Turgenev, few of the men stand the test of female love. The situation is similar in Goncharov's novels. Alexander Aduev does not stand this test, Peter Aduev, Oblomov, even Stolz do not rise to the height of moral requirements.

For Goncharov, the problem of love has always been the subject of very deep reflections. According to him, love is the "Archimedean lever" of life, its main foundation. Already in Oblomov, he shows not only various types of love (Olga Ilyinskaya, Agafya Pshenitsyna, Oblomov, Stolz), but also historically formed archetypes of love feelings. Goncharov is harsh in his verdict: all these epoch-making stylized images of love are lies. For true love does not fit into the fashion and image of the era. He gives these arguments - rightfully or not, this is another matter - to his Stolz: “When asked: where is the lie? - in his imagination, the colorful masks of the present and the past stretched out. With a smile, now blushing, now frowning, he looked at the endless line of heroes and heroines of love: at Don Quixotes in steel gloves, at the ladies of their thoughts with fifty years of mutual fidelity in separation; at the shepherdesses with ruddy faces and bulging innocent eyes, and at their Chloe with lambs.

Powdered marquises in lace appeared before him, with eyes twinkling with intelligence and with a depraved smile; Don Giovanni, and smart people, trembling suspicions of love and secretly adoring their housekeepers ... everything, everything! The true feeling is hidden from the bright light, from the crowd, it is comprehended in loneliness: “... those hearts that are illuminated by the light of such love,” Stolz thinks further, “are shy: they are shy and hide, not trying to challenge the wise men; maybe they pity them, forgive them for the sake of their happiness, that they trample a flower in the mud for lack of soil, where it could take deep roots and grow into a tree that would overshadow all life. It is not often that Goncharov talks about love so openly in his novels, but many pages of his letters are devoted to a detailed expression of his own point of view on this subtle subject. Ekaterina Maykova, who, having read the latest books, unexpectedly left her family, leaving her children to live with a student teacher, the novelist wrote of necessity concisely and concisely, dwelling on the main thing and exposing the primitive and very widespread opinion about this life-forming feeling: “... Love ... lay down in best years Of your life. But now you seem to be ashamed of this, although it is completely in vain, because it is not love that is to blame, but your understanding of love. Instead of giving movement to life, it gave you momentum. You considered it not a natural need, but some kind of luxury, a celebration of life, while it is a powerful lever that moves many other forces. It is not high, not heavenly, not like this, not that, but it is simply the element of life, developed in subtle, humanely developed natures to the degree of some other religion, to a cult around which all life is concentrated ... Romanticism built temples of love, sang hymns to her, imposed on her an abyss of stupidest symbols and attributes - and made a stuffed animal out of her. Realism brought her into a purely animal sphere… And love, like a simple force, acts according to its own laws…”

In "The Cliff" love is no longer only a means of testing, a moral test of the characters. Love, the “heart” in “The Cliff” is equalized in rights with the “mind”, which has an unconditional preponderance in public moral practice. Goncharov discusses this in the novel: “And as long as people are ashamed of this power, cherishing “serpentine wisdom” and blushing “pigeon simplicity”, referring the latter to naive natures, as long as mental height will be preferred to moral, until then the achievement of this height is unthinkable, therefore true, lasting, human progress is unthinkable. The writer urges a person "to have a heart and cherish this power, if not higher than the power of the mind, then at least on a par with it." Prior to The Cliff, Goncharov affirmed the balance of "mind" and "heart", sensing a lack of "intelligence" in a society that was moving onto the rails of capitalism. In the last novel, however, the balance is established with a clear deficit of "heart" felt by the author, a deficit of "idealism".

According to the original plan, the novel was to be called The Artist. It is generally accepted that Goncharov put his idea about the artistic character of Raisky into this name - and nothing more. Much has been written about this, and it has become a commonplace. However, the name "Artist" - in the context of Goncharov's religious thought - was also ambiguous - and, moreover, too pretentious. Goncharov did not dare to take it. The artist is after all not only and not so much Paradise as the Creator Himself, God. And Goncharov's novel is about how the Creator, step by step, creates and prepares a human personality for the Kingdom of Heaven, and also about the fact that each person is, first of all, the creator (artist) of his spiritual life. In fact, the main thing that Raisky does in the novel is that he “manufactures” his soul, tries to create a new person in himself. This is a spiritual, evangelical work: “He transferred his artistic requirements to life, interfering with universal human ones, and painted the latter from life, and then, involuntarily and unconsciously, put into practice the ancient wise rule, “knew himself”, peered with horror and listened to the wild impulses of an animal, blind nature, he himself wrote her execution and drew new laws, destroyed the “old man” in himself and created a new one. Such is the colossal "artistic" work done in the novel by Raisky, the hero who bears a clearly speaking surname! Depicting Raisky's introspection, Goncharov tries to translate the patristic ideas about the action of the Holy Spirit in man into the language of artistic and psychological analysis: something of a mysterious spirit that sometimes subsided in the crackle and smoke of an impure fire, but did not die and wake up again, calling him, first quietly, then louder and louder, to difficult and endless work on himself, on his own statue, on the ideal of man. He trembled joyfully, remembering that it was not life's lures, not cowardly fears that called him to this work, but a disinterested desire to seek and create beauty in himself. The spirit beckoned him along, into the bright, mysterious distance, as a person and as an artist, to the ideal of pure human beauty. With a secret, breathtaking horror of happiness, he saw that the work of a pure genius does not collapse from the fire of passions, but only stops, and when the fire passes, it goes forward, slowly and tautly, but everything goes on - and that in the soul of a person, regardless of the artistic another creativity is hidden in them, there is another living thirst, besides the animal, another strength, besides the strength of the muscles. Running mentally the whole thread of his life, he recalled what inhuman pains tormented him when he fell, how slowly he got up again, how quietly the pure spirit woke him up, called him again to endless labor, helping him to get up, encouraging, comforting, restoring his faith in beauty. truth and goodness and strength - to rise, to go further, higher ... He was reverently horrified, feeling how his forces were coming into balance and how the best movements of thought and will went there, into this building, how easier and freer it was for him when he heard this secret work and when he himself makes an effort, movement, he will give a stone, fire and water. From this consciousness of creative work within himself, even now passionate, caustic Faith disappeared from his memory, and if it came, then only so that he would call her with a prayer there, to this work of the secret spirit, to show her the sacred fire within himself and awaken him in her, and beg to cherish, cherish, nourish him in herself. Here the novelist speaks of the main thing in his search for Paradise:

about "other creativity", "independent of artistic", about the "secret work" of the Spirit in man.

Yes, like every person, Paradise is weak and sinful. He stumbles and falls (like other heroes of the novel, like Vera, like Grandmother), but everything goes forward, strives for the purity of the "image of God" in himself (or, as the novel says, for the "ideal of pure human beauty"). Unlike the Artist-Creator, Raisky is an amateur artist, an imperfect artist, just like all earthly artists. But in this case, it's not the result, but the desire. Imperfection is forgiven. Lack of striving for perfection - no.

Raisky is conceived by Goncharov as a personality, undoubtedly superior to both Alexander Aduev and Ilya Oblomov. All three novels coexisted in the mind of the writer as early as the 1840s and could not but correct the general idea. And this idea was: to build a globally significant Christian ideal of a person in modern conditions, to show the ways of spiritual growth of a person, various options"salvation" and "fight against the world". This was the idea closest in Russian literature to the religious aspirations of Gogol. Author " dead souls” and “Correspondence with Friends” also directed all the efforts of his soul not to the particular problems of human life and society, but to the development of the main problem: the religious transformation in Christ of the modern Russian person. But, unlike Gogol, Goncharov does not declare his thoughts, in principle he does not go beyond the depiction of a seemingly quite ordinary life. Both the vices and the virtues of modern Russian man are given to them not in a semi-fantastic highlight, not in a satirical or pathos image. It is more important for Goncharov to show precisely the ordinary course of life, in which collisions of the gospel plan are constantly reproduced. It can be said that if Gogol brings a magnifying glass to the personality of modern man and judges the human soul in the light of the teachings of the Holy Fathers of the Church, recognizing the terrible abyss of sin behind ordinary manifestations and being horrified by this, then Goncharov appeals only to the Gospel, only to the words of Christ about man and his free choice between good and evil.

Paradise - the image is not absolutely positive, not far-fetched, not exceptional. He is not Hamlet, not Don Quixote, not a “positively beautiful person”, not a fighter at all. It's not his job to change lives. Many, many things he will do is try to artistically embrace her with his thought and fantasy. But, as far as his strength allows him, he fights to remake life. He influenced many in the novel. It was he who woke up Grandmother, who until then all her life put up with the rogue and hypocrite Tychkov and his ilk. His role in the novel by Volokhov and Vera is not only comic and suffering. Vera unwittingly uses Raisky's argument in her spiritual duel with Volokhov. Unlike Alexander Aduev and 06-Lomov, Raisky is the kind of person who not only does not want, but is no longer able to give in to his high ideals.

The grain of Christian thought in this image is not that Raisky has reached "paradise", but that in all circumstances of life, always, everywhere, with any of his imperfections and falls, without despondency and despair, strives to embody the Christian ideal. This is the whole realistic task for a modern layman, Goncharov believes.

Yes, Raisky is as weak as the heroes of the first two novels, but he has a desire for "creativity" over his own personality, in fact, he is more religious. That is why Goncharov calls him Paradise: despite all the failures and falls, he does not leave his desire for paradise, actively preaches goodness, despite his own imperfection.

I wouldn't be surprised if you put on a cassock and suddenly start preaching...

And I won’t be surprised, - said Raisky, - even though I don’t put on a cassock, but I can preach - and sincerely, wherever I notice lies, pretense, anger - in a word, the lack of beauty, there is no need that I myself am ugly ...

Goncharov considers it unnatural for a layman to dress up in a monastic cassock, leave the world, "pedal" Christianity in worldly activities, including art. Therefore, next to the amateur Raisky, he places another "artist" - Kirilov. It is not enough for Kirilov to be just a Christian. In the article “Intentions, tasks and ideas of the novel “The Precipice””, Goncharov reveals the idea of ​​this image in this way: “In contrast to such amateur artists, in my first part there is a silhouette of an ascetic artist, Kirilov, who wanted to escape from life and fell into another extreme, gave himself up to monasticism, went into an artistic cell and preached a dry and strict worship of art - in a word, a cult. Such artists fly to the heights, to the sky, forgetting the earth and people, and the earth and people forget them. There are no such artists now. Such was partly our famous Ivanov, who was exhausted in fruitless efforts to draw what cannot be drawn - the meeting of the pagan world with the Christian world, and who drew so little. He moved away from the direct goal of plastic art - to portray - and fell into dogmatism.

Compared to Ordinary History (1847) and Oblomov (1859), The Precipice is a more tense and dramatic work. The heroes no longer slowly sink into a sucking vulgar way of life, but make obvious big life mistakes, suffer moral collapse. The novel's multifaceted issues are focused on such global themes as Russia, faith, love... In the 1860s, Goncharov himself experienced a deep ideological crisis. Without completely breaking with the liberal-Western sentiments, he considers the problem of Russia and the Russian leader already within the framework of Orthodoxy, seeing in the latter the only reliable means against the social decay observed in the country and in the human person.

The main plot of the novel is grouped around the figures of Faith and Mark. In The Cliff, an open spiritual struggle is depicted, as never before with Goncharov. This is a struggle for the soul of the Faith and for the future of Russia. The author, without going beyond realism, is ready for the first time to introduce "demons" and "angels" into the work in their struggle for the human soul. By the way, Goncharov not only does not deny the mystical, but also tries to reproduce it by means of realistic art. Of course, the novelist did not fantasize and, like Gogol, depict the demon in its purest form, with a tail and horns, but resorted to another means: to a clear parallel with M. Yu. Lermontov's poem "The Demon". Such a parallel was supposed to accentuate the author's thought about the spiritual essence of Mark Volokhov.

The scene of the acquaintance of Mark and Vera is built as a biblical mythologeme, which already contains an indication of the demonic role of Volokhov. Volokhov offers Vera... an apple. And at the same time he says: “You probably haven’t read Proudhon… What Proudhon says, don’t you know?.. This divine truth goes around the whole world. Would you like me to bring Proudhon? I have it". So the seductive apple offered to Vera turned into ... a newfangled theory. It is quite obvious that in the garden of the Grandmother ("Eden") the mythologeme of the seduction of Eve by Satan, who took the form of a snake, is reproduced. Goncharov does this quite deliberately. His entire novel is saturated with Christian images and myths. All this is very reminiscent of the speeches of Goethe's demon, the conversations of Bulgakov's Woland, the reflections of Pechorin. From the same demonic height, Mark Volokhov tries to look at the life surrounding Vera, at “grandmother, provincial dandies, officers and stupid landowners”, at the “gray-haired dreamer” of Raisky, at “the stupidity ... of grandmother’s beliefs”, “authorities, memorized concepts” etc. He also proves to Vera that she “does not know how to love without fear”, and therefore is not capable of “true happiness”. By the way, it would be a mistake to think that Goncharov does not love his hero. Volokhov is also a child of Russia, only a sick child, a lost son. This is what the author of the novel comes from. In a letter to E. P. Maikova at the beginning of 1869, he writes: “Or maybe you will scold me for one person: this is Mark. It has in itself something modern and something non-modern, because at all times and everywhere there were people who did not sympathize with the prevailing order. I do not insult him, he is honest with me and only true to himself to the end.

What is the parallel with Lermontov and why does Goncharov need it? In the poem "The Demon", Tamara, listening to the demon, "clung to her guardian breast, // Silencing the horror with prayer." After receiving a letter from Volokhov, Vera is also looking for someone to snuggle up to whose “guardian chest”. She finds protection in Tushino, partly in Babushka and Raisky: "She found protection from her despair on the chest of these three people." It was Tushin who was chosen by her to play the role of a guardian angel for a meeting with Mark. He must protect her from the "evil sorcerer". Lermontov's situation in "Cliff" is undeniable. She dictates figurative parallels. Not only Mark Volokhov in something fundamentally important is similar to Lermontov's Demon. The same similarity can be found between Tamara and Vera. In Tamara, only a concise outline of what is unfolding with all the power and detail of Goncharov's psychological analysis in Vera. The seduction could not have taken place if it were not for the pride of Tamara, who responded to the proud call of the Demon and his crafty complaint:

Me good and heaven You could return again. Your love with a holy cover Dressed, I would appear there ...

The problem of female pride has long interested Goncharov. Let us recall at least Olga Ilyinskaya, who dreams of completely changing the life of Ilya Oblomov, his soul with her own strength: “And she will do all this miracle, so timid, silent, whom no one has obeyed so far, who has not yet begun to live! She is the culprit of such a transformation! .. To bring a person back to life - how much glory to the doctor ... But to save the morally perishing mind, soul? .. She even trembled with proud, joyful awe ... ". Both the heroes and the author talk a lot about Vera's pride in the novel. She herself says, approaching Olga Ilyinskaya: “I thought to defeat you with another force ... Then ... I took it into my head ... that ... I often said to myself: I will do that he will cherish life."

Then Tamara's "fall" naturally follows. This is the same scheme of Vera's behavior in "The Cliff". Faith refers to the image of the Savior in the chapel for the first time only in the fifteenth chapter of the third part of the novel. The intensity of her spiritual and religious life grows in her as the end of her relationship with Mark approaches. The closer to the "fall", the more often you can see Faith in front of the image of the Savior. She asks Christ about what she should do. She "in the look of Christ was looking for strength, participation, support, again a call." But the pride of Vera does not give her a pure, cleansing prayer, the outcome of the struggle is almost a foregone conclusion: "Paradise did not read on her face either prayer or desire." Several times in the novel, Vera says, "I can't pray."

Faith gradually replaces Raisky in the novel, occupying a central place in his ideological and psychological conflict.

Raisky worries about Vera, is ready to give her all kinds of support, suggest, but he acts in the novel and opposes unbelief - it is and above all she. It is she, like Grandmother, who will go through the classical Christian path: sin - repentance - resurrection.

It is about finding ways to overcome the "cliffs" in modern life and modern personality. Goncharov purposefully builds the images of heroes, leading them from the fall to repentance and resurrection. Faith is experiencing a drama characteristic of modern man. The whole question is whether she will stand in her faith. Faith is a person, which means that she must test it on her own experience and only after that consciously accept the fundamental principles of the Grandmother. Her independence in everything is noticeable from childhood, however, along with independence, self-will is naturally present. Goncharov is not afraid of the doubts that Vera experiences. What is she asking for? What does Vera want? After all, she believes that a woman was created "for the family ... first of all." The girl does not doubt the truth of Christianity for a minute. These are not doubts, but an arrogant, like Tamara's in Lermontov's "Demon", an attempt to reconcile Mark Volokhov with God - through his love. Looking at the extraordinary figure of Volokhov, falling in love with him, Vera did not doubt God for a minute. She only made an erroneous sacrifice - herself - hoping for the spiritual and moral rebirth of her hero.

Faith was not seduced by the new teaching that Volokhov brought with him. It was not Mark's ideas that attracted her, but his personality, so different from others. She was struck by the refraction of these ideas in the personality of Mark, who aptly and correctly struck the shortcomings of the "old" society in which Vera lived. Shortcomings that she noticed herself. Vera's experience, however, was not enough to understand: there is a huge distance from true criticism to a true positive program. The new ideas themselves were not able to lead her away from faith in God, from an understanding of moral principles. Doubting and testing, Vera shows herself to be a morally healthy person who must inevitably return to tradition, although she may lose ground under her feet for some time. In Christ for Vera there is “eternal truth”, to which she dreamed of leading the nihilist Mark Volokhov: “Where is the “truth”? - he did not answer this Pilates question. Over there, - she said, pointing back to the church, - where we were now! .. I knew this before him ... "

The image of Vera, who went through demonic temptation, turned out to be a real artistic victory in Goncharov's work. In terms of psychological persuasiveness and realistic authenticity, he took his place immediately after Ilya Oblomov, somewhat inferior to him in plasticity and degree of generalization, but surpassing him in romanticism and ideal aspiration. Faith is infinitely higher than Olga Ilyinskaya, about whom H.A. Dobrolyubov once said: "In her development, Olga represents the highest ideal that a Russian artist can now evoke from present-day Russian life." It was still a tendentious assessment of a revolutionary democrat and a supporter of women's emancipation, who saw a ray of light in a dark kingdom and in the image of Katerina from A. N. Ostrovsky's "Thunderstorm". In Faith there is a struggle with passions, there is repentance, and these are the most important components of the true spiritual life of a person. This is not the case with Olga. The image of Faith in its symbolic content approaches the prototype of the penitent Magdalene. Faith is indeed depicted as a repentant sinner who first fell into spiritual delusions, into pride, and then into carnal sin. This is truly "a harlot at the feet of Christ." In the draft version of the novel, Grandmother prays: “Have mercy on us, on our weakness ... we did not ... lie, we loved ... sinful creatures ... and both humble ourselves under Your wrath ... Have mercy on this child, have mercy ... she is cleansed, repentant, according to Your word, better many righteous women now ... dearer to you than your sinless sister, your pure lamp ... ". And in fact, Vera is deeper and “sweeter” than the God of the sinless Marfenka, because Marfenka is not tempted, that is, her virtue costs her nothing, she had no struggle with herself. In this sense, she is reminiscent of Raisky's St. Petersburg cousin, Sofya Belovodova. “There,” Raisky says, “is a wide picture of cold slumber in marble sarcophagi, with golden coats of arms embroidered on velvet on coffins; here is a picture of a warm summer dream, on greenery, among flowers, under a clear sky, but all a dream, a deep sleep! Marfenka is, according to Goncharov, "an unconditional, passive expression of an era, a type cast like wax into a finished, dominant form." Faith, unlike her sister, undergoes temptation - thus her faith in Christ is only strengthened.

Only by outlining the living figure of a Christian woman, who not only talks about her duty, but also tries to practically fulfill it (although not without mistakes), could Goncharov put into the mouth of Paradise pathetic words about a man and especially about a woman as an “instrument of God”: “ We are not equal: you are superior to us, you are a force, we are your instrument… We are external figures. You are the creators and educators of people, you are the direct, best instrument of God.

Evangelical logic undoubtedly dominates in The Cliff. Moreover, this time Goncharov allows himself much more noticeable author's accents and even direct references to the Bible. Moreover, Goncharov also mentions the Holy Fathers of the Church in his novel The Cliff. Nothing like this could be in the first two novels, which were created not in conditions of violent controversy, but in a relatively calm social atmosphere.

Goncharov's latest novel is full of biblical reminiscences. Raisky reminds Sofya Belovodova of the biblical command to "be fruitful, multiply and inhabit the earth." Mentioned in the novel are such Old Testament characters as Jacob, Jonah, Joachim, Samson and others. Goncharov uses the Old Testament and the Gospel primarily to develop "parable" situations. Mark Volokhov is portrayed as a "seducer from straight paths" in "The Cliff". "Doesn't like straight roads!" - Raisky says about him. At the pole of “faith”, of course, grandmother Tatyana Markovna Berezhkova occupies an extreme right position, which is why she bears a surname associated with the word “shore” (as well as with the words “protect”, “protects”). Marfenka stands firmly on this shore; she will never disobey Grandma. But the thinking Faith must pass through doubts and experience. The psychological core of the novel is precisely hidden in the spiritual throwing of the Faith between the traditional morality of the Grandmother and the "new religion" of Mark Volokhov. The name of Vera underlines the point around which the most important disputes flare up in the novel. With faith, with Orthodoxy, Goncharov now connects the further historical destinies of Russia. Where Vera will go - a lot depends on this.

The plot lines in the novel "The Precipice" are very tense - and this is no coincidence. Each situation, each plot move, each character, the name of the hero, etc. - all this is symbolic in the novel, in all this the author's extreme desire is hidden to generalize the main problems of our time. This gave the novel some congestion and heaviness. The key problem in the novel is spiritual. It is connected not only with the fate of the hero (as was the case in Ordinary History and Oblomov), but also with the fate of Russia.

Goncharov compares Vera and Marfenka with the biblical Mary and Martha and at the same time with Tatyana and Olga Larin from Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin". But the comparison of Vera with the night, and Marfenka with the sun, brings a special flavor to the novel: “What a contrast with my sister: that ray, warmth and light; this whole thing is flickering and mystery, like a night full of haze and sparks, charms and miracles! This comparison of "night" and "day" is not only poetic. It is also spiritual. Marfenka is simple, pure, understandable. Looking at her, one recalls the gospel: “Be like children” ... Marfenka the Kingdom of Heaven is given, as it were, without labor and special temptations. Such is the fate of "ordinary" people. Raisky, who once almost decided to seduce Marfenka, himself suddenly felt the unnaturalness of his desires: the girl reacted so innocently to his brotherly caresses. Realizing her childlike purity, he says: “You are all a ray of sunshine!., and let him be damned who wants to throw an unclean grain into your soul!” Grandmother calls Marfenka "a pure lamp." It is clear that the heroine embodies the idea of ​​light.

The image of sunlight, a sunbeam turned out to be in the novel a symbol of virgin purity, the inconceivability of a feminine and spiritual fall. Unlike Vera, who is full of “charms” (not only feminine, but also spiritual, for Vera succumbs to the deception of the “magician-sorcerer” Volokhov for some time), Marfenka cannot fall. If Marfenka is only sunlight, then Vera is given by the writer in chiaroscuro. It is more prominent, but also more “torn”, torn by doubts and struggles with itself and Mark, in the end it is less solid. Her image is dramatic, because it is associated with repentance. Marfenka is not mistaken and she has nothing to repent of. Faith, on the other hand, is a dramatically repentant image, more lively and real. From here, the association with the biblical Saint Job again characteristically emerges. Based on the Old Testament story about the sufferings of the righteous Job and how his closest friends reacted to him, seeing him as if abandoned by God, Goncharov raises the important question in The Cliff that one judgment is with people, and the other is with God. He writes about the “sinful” Faith abandoned by everyone: “She is a beggar in her native circle. Those close to her saw her fallen, came and, turning away, covered her with clothes out of pity, proudly thinking to themselves: “You will never get up, poor thing, and will not stand next to us, accept Christ for our forgiveness.”

The novel is built on a stable basis of the Orthodox worldview. In Christianity human life is divided into three main periods: sin - repentance - resurrection in Christ (forgiveness). We find this model in all major works of Russian classics (remember, for example, “Crime and Punishment” by F. M. Dostoevsky!). It is reproduced in the "Cliff". Moreover, the theme is connected primarily with the fate of the Faith.

For the first time in Goncharov's novel, not only sin is shown, but also repentance and the resurrection of the human soul. "The Cliff" completes the novel trilogy, in which the characters of the main characters are not only related, partly similar to each other, but also develop from novel to novel in an ascending line: from Ad-uev to Paradise. For Goncharov himself, who insisted on a certain unity of the three novels, the unifying dominant was the religious idea of ​​man's salvation in Christ. The idea of ​​the hero's ever-increasing participation in the life of society and getting rid of Oblomovism was, of course, secondary. The hero of The Ordinary Story, in essence, betrays his youthful dreams, his ideals. Ilya Oblomov no longer compromises his humane ideals, but still does not put them into practice. Raisky, on the other hand, is constantly trying to practically translate his ideals into real life. And although he does not succeed in this, he is already good in his desire for this. Goncharov showed that in Raisky, as a representative of the outgoing class of Russian life, the moral possibilities of the nobility had been exhausted. In The Cliff, the noble hero reached the possible moral heights - he had nowhere to go further. Further, the spiritual aspirations of the writer were already expressed in the dramatic portrayal of the female image. Goncharov had to fully show not only the fall (break-sin), not only repentance, but also the “resurrection” of his hero. When depicting a socially active male hero, a “worker” in Russian society, Goncharov inevitably had to go into utopia (“The Idiot”). He didn't want it. Therefore, he transfers the center of gravity of the novel to the moral plane. The fall of a woman is a story connected not only with the "latest teachings", it is an eternal story. That is why Vera occupies a central place in the novel.

Raisky is Vera’s spiritual “mentor” in the novel: “From this consciousness of creative work within himself, passionate, caustic Vera disappeared from his memory, and if she came, then only so that he would call her with a prayer there, to this work secret spirit, show her the sacred fire within yourself and awaken it in her, and beg to cherish, cherish, nourish it in yourself. Faith recognizes this teaching role in Paradise, saying that if he overpowers his passion, then he will be the first to come to him for spiritual help. His surname associates ideas not only about the Garden of Eden (Eden-Robin), but also about the gates of paradise, for his sincere desire to remake life brings to mind the gospel expression: “Push around - and it will open to you” (into the gates of paradise). It cannot be said that Raisky was completely able to rid himself of the “old man”. But he set himself such a task and tried to fulfill it as best he could. In this sense, he is not only the son of Alexander Aduev and Ilya Oblomov, but also a hero who managed to overcome a certain inertia in himself, to enter into an active, although not completed, struggle with sin.

In "The Precipice" the main expectation is the expectation of the mercy of the Creator. All the heroes who connect their lives with God are waiting for him: Grandmother is waiting, who wants to atone for her sin, but does not know how and with what. Faith is waiting, having suffered a life catastrophe. Paradise awaits, endlessly falling and rising from sin. It becomes clear that the heroes of Goncharov are divided in the novel into those who express a desire to be with God, and those who consciously move away from Him. The former are by no means holy. But after all, God, as the proverb says, “kisses even for intention.” Grandmother, Vera, Paradise want to be with God, arrange their lives under His guidance. They are not at all immune from mistakes and falls, but the main thing is not in this, not in sinlessness, but in the fact that their consciousness and will are directed towards Him, and not vice versa. Thus, Goncharov does not require holiness from his heroes. Their salvation is not in the hopelessness, but in the direction of their will - towards God. The work of their salvation must be completed by God's mercy. If we compare a work of art with a prayer, then the novel "Cliff" is a prayer "Lord, have mercy!", Appeal to God's mercy.

Goncharov will never become a writer-prophet, an artist like Kirilov. The author of The Cliff is a stranger to absolute aspirations, he does not prophesy, does not look into the abysses of the human spirit, does not look for ways to universal salvation in the bosom of the Kingdom of God, etc. He does not absolutize any principle, not a single idea, he looks at everything soberly , calmly, without the apocalyptic moods, forebodings, impulses into the distant future characteristic of Russian social thought. Belinsky noted this outwardly visible “calmness”: “He is a poet, an artist - nothing more. He has neither love nor enmity for the persons he creates, they neither amuse him nor make him angry, he does not give any moral lessons ... "The already mentioned letter to S. A. Nikitenko (June 14, 1860) about the fate of Gogol ("he did not know how to humble himself in his plans ... and died") indicates that Goncharov followed a fundamentally different, non-prophetic path in his work. Goncharov wants to stay within the bounds of art, his Christianity is expressed more like Pushkin than like Gogol. Gogol-Kirilov - not his way in art, and in religion.

The novel "Cliff" sharply increased the circulation of the journal "Bulletin of Europe", in which it was published. The editor of the magazine M. M. Stasyulevich wrote to A. K. Tolstoy on May 10, 1869: “There are a variety of rumors about Ivan Alexandrovich’s novel, but still they read it and many people read it. In any case, only they can explain the terrible success of the magazine: last year for the whole year I got 3,700 subscribers, and now, on April 15, I have crossed the magazine's pillars of Hercules, that is, 5,000, and to

May 1 had 5200”. "Cliff" was read with bated breath, passed from hand to hand, made notes about it in personal diaries. The public rewarded the author with well-deserved attention, and Goncharov from time to time felt a crown of real glory on his head. In May 1869, he wrote to his friend Sofya Nikitenko from Berlin: “The cliff has reached here too ... At the very border, I received the most cordial welcome and seeing him off. The Russian customs director threw himself into my arms, and all her members surrounded me, thanking me for the pleasure! I hinted that on the way back I would also like to drive separately, calmly, alone in a special room. “Whatever you want, whatever you want,” they said, “just let me know when you return.” And in St. Petersburg, the head and assistant of the station were kind and put me in a special corner, and my name was written on the window, with an inscription busy. All this touches me deeply.” The images of Grandmother, Vera and Marfenka, painted with extraordinary love, immediately became a household name. On the eve of the 50th anniversary of Goncharov's writing work, he was visited by a delegation of women who, on behalf of all the women of Russia, presented him with a watch decorated with bronze statuettes of Vera and Marfenka. The novel was to bring the author another triumph. However, the situation in society and journalism has changed. Almost all the leading journals by that time took radical positions and therefore sharply critically perceived the image of the nihilist Volokhov, negatively outlined by Goncharov. In the June issue of the journal "Domestic Notes" for 1869, an article by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "Street Philosophy" was published, in which famous writer gave a sharply negative review of the novel and reproached Goncharov for not understanding the progressive aspirations of the younger generation. Clever, very clever was the great satirist, but nevertheless he was mistaken in expecting good things for Russia from the young nihilists. The revolutionary democrat N. Shelgunov also gave a devastating review of the novel in the article "Talented mediocrity". Both critics reproached Goncharov for caricaturing Mark Volokhov. Actually, it was not a criticism, but a reason to "buzz".

In a letter to M. M. Stasyulevich, the novelist wrote: “As far as I hear, they attack me for Volokhov, that he is a slander on the younger generation, that there is no such person, that it is composed. Then why be angry? To say that this is a fictitious, false personality - and turn to other persons in the novel and decide whether they are true - and analyze them (which Belinsky would have done). No, they go berserk for Volokhov, as if the whole thing is in the novel in him! And yet, after some time, there was one wise writer who, although he sympathized with the notorious “young generation”, turned out to be wider than narrow party tendencies and expressed an already calm, settled view of Goncharov’s work and, in particular, of his “Cliff”: “ Volokhov and everything connected with him will be forgotten, just as Gogol's Correspondence will be forgotten, and the figures created by him will rise for a long time above the old irritation and old disputes. So wrote Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko in the article “I. A. Goncharov and the "young generation".

A. K. Tolstoy highly appreciated the novel: he, like Goncharov himself, felt the conspiracy of the "advanced" magazines against the "Cliff", especially since a critical article about the novel appeared even in ... "Bulletin of Europe", which had just finished publishing Goncharov's work. It was something new, unpleasant and indecent, which had never been seen before in Russian journalism. A. Tolstoy could not resist not expressing his feelings to Stasyulevich: “In your last (November. - V. M.) issue there is an article by your brother-in-law, Mr. Utin, about disputes in our literature. With all due respect to his mind, I cannot, with my frankness, fail to notice that he is doing a strange service to the younger generation, recognizing the figure of Mark as his representative in the novel ... After all, this ... is called the thief's hat is on fire! As best he could, Tolstoy tried to console his acquaintance. In 1870 he wrote the poem "I. A. Goncharov":

Don't listen to the noise Rumors, gossip and trouble, Think your own mind And go ahead. You don't care about others Let the wind carry them barking! What is ripe in your soul - Put on a clear image! Black clouds hung - Let them hang - the hell with two! For your live only thoughts The rest is tryn-grass!

Goncharov really had no choice but to go deeper and withdraw into himself: critics wrote as if not about his novel, but some completely different work. Our thinker V. Rozanov remarked on this occasion: “If you re-read all the critical reviews that appeared ... about The Cliff, and all the analyzes of some contemporary and long-forgotten work, you can see how much the second was approved more ... than the novel Goncharova. The reason for this hostility here was that if it weren’t for these talents (like Goncharov. - V. M.), current criticism could still vacillate in the consciousness of its uselessness: it could justify its weakness by the weakness of all literature ... But when literature existed artistic talents and she did not know how to connect a few meaningful words about them; when society was reading their works, despite the malicious attitude of criticism towards them, and no one read the novels and short stories approved by it, it was impossible for criticism not to feel all the futility of its existence. Nevertheless, the hastily and very tendentiously written articles about the novel hurt Goncharov painfully. And precisely because the most hidden, deepest ideas of the novelist were laid in The Cliff. In none of his novels did Goncharov try to express his worldview, his Christian foundation, in such a concentrated manner. The main thing is that the novel depicted a real homeland permeated with warmth and light, depicted heroes who, being ordinary people, at the same time carried the features of the highest spirituality. Rozanov saw the origins of this in Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter. But the “advanced” journalism did not even notice the main thing in the novel, did not see the love that the novelist put into the description of the Russian woman, the Russian province, did not see his concern for Russia and the height of the ideal from which Goncharov looks at Russian life. She was only interested in narrow-party solidarity with the nihilist, negatively portrayed in the novel. It was not easy for them to recognize the complete artistic objectivity of this image. But until now, when people talk about nihilists in Russian literature of the 19th century, the first thing that comes to mind is

Mark Volokhov is a relief and, by the way, not at all without love depicted the figure of a young man who succumbed to yet another Russian illusion. The rejection of the "Cliff" became for the writer not an ordinary literary fact, but a personal drama. Meanwhile, his novel predicted the drama of all of Russia. And the writer turned out to be right: the old Russia did not overcome another historical "cliff".

All three illusions - romantic self-deception, aestheticized lazy irresponsibility and destructive nihilism - are interconnected in Goncharov's mind. This is a "childhood disease" of the national spirit, a lack of "adulthood" and responsibility. The writer in his novels was looking for an antidote to this disease. On the one hand, he portrayed people of systematic work and adult responsibility for their actions (Peter Aduev, Stolz, Tushin). But even in these people, he saw and showed the imprints of the same disease, for only external salvation is hidden in systemic work. In these people, the same childish irresponsibility remains: they are afraid to ask themselves simple questions about the ultimate meaning of their life and activities and, thus, are content with the illusion of the case. On the other hand, Goncharov offers his personal recipe: this is the growth of a person in the spirit, from Hell-uyev to Paradise. This is constant intense work on oneself, listening to oneself, which Raisky felt in himself, who only tried to help the “work of the spirit” that was going on in him, regardless of himself. The writer, of course, talked about the divine nature of man, about the work of the Holy Spirit in him. This is the difference between man and animal! Goncharov set himself a colossal artistic task: to remind a person that he was created "in the image and likeness of God." It is as if he takes his reader by the hand and tries to ascend with him to the heights of the spirit. It was a unique artistic experiment in its own way. Goncharov put his entire conscious creative life on it. But big is seen from a distance. His colossal plan was not understood in all its depth not only by his one-day ideological opponents, who could judge a work of art only on the basis of narrow party logic, but also by quite sympathetic people. Only separate images and fragments of a huge artistic canvas were seen and appreciated, the wide scope and significance of which will more and more clarify time.

The Petersburg day is drawing to a close, and everyone who usually gathers at the card table, by this hour, begins to bring themselves into the appropriate form. Two friends are also going - Boris Pavlovich Raysky and Ivan Ivanovich Ayanov - to spend this evening again in the Pakhotins' house, where the owner himself, Nikolai Vasilyevich, his two sisters, old maids Anna Vasilyevna and Nadezhda Vasilyevna, as well as a young widow, Pakhotin's daughter, a beauty, live. Sofia Belovodova, who is the main interest in this house for Boris Pavlovich.

Ivan Ivanovich is a simple man, without fuss, he goes to the Pakhotins only in order to play cards with avid players, old maids. Another thing - Paradise; he needs to stir up Sophia, his distant relative, turning her from a cold marble statue into a living woman full of passions.

Boris Pavlovich Raisky is obsessed with passions: he draws a little, writes a little, plays music, putting the strength and passion of his soul into all his activities. But this is not enough - Raisky needs to awaken passions around him in order to constantly feel himself in the boiling of life, at that point of contact of everything with everything, which he calls Ayanov: "Life is a novel, and a novel is life." We get to know him at the moment when “Raisky is over thirty years old, and he has not yet sown anything, has not reaped anything and has not walked along a single track, along which those who come from inside Russia walk.”

Having once arrived in St. Petersburg from a family estate, Raisky, having learned a little of everything, did not find his vocation in anything.

He understood only one thing: the main thing for him is art; something that particularly touches the soul, causing it to burn with passionate fire. In this mood, Boris Pavlovich goes on vacation to the estate, which, after the death of his parents, is managed by great-aunt Tatyana Markovna Berezhkova, an old maid who, in time immemorial, was not allowed by her parents to marry her chosen one, Tit Nikonovich Vatutin. He remained a bachelor, and he travels all his life to Tatyana Markovna, never forgetting gifts for her and the two relative girls whom she is raising, the orphans Verochka and Marfenka.

Malinovka, Raisky's estate, a blessed corner in which there is a place for everything that pleases the eye. Only now the terrible cliff that ends the garden frightens the inhabitants of the house: according to legend, at the bottom of it in ancient times “he killed his wife and rival for infidelity, and then he himself stabbed himself, one jealous husband, a tailor from the city. The suicide was buried here, at the crime scene.

Tatyana Markovna joyfully greeted her grandson who had come for the holidays - she tried to bring him up to date, show him the economy, get him addicted, but Boris Pavlovich remained indifferent to the economy and to the necessary visits. Only poetic impressions could touch his soul, and they had nothing to do with the thunderstorm of the city, Nil Andreevich, whom his grandmother certainly wanted to introduce, or with the provincial coquette Polina Karpovna Kritskaya, or with the lubok family of the old Molochkovs, like Philemon and Baucis who lived their lives inseparable...

The holidays flew by, and Raisky returned to St. Petersburg. Here, at the university, he became close to Leonty Kozlov, the son of a deacon, "downtrodden with poverty and timidity." It is not clear what could bring such different young people together: a young man who dreams of becoming a teacher somewhere in a remote Russian corner, and a restless poet, artist, obsessed with the passions of a romantic young man. However, they became really close to each other.

But university life ended, Leonty left for the provinces, and Raisky still cannot find a real job in life, continuing to be an amateur. And his white marble cousin Sofya still seems to Boris Pavlovich the most important goal in life: to awaken a fire in her, to make her experience what a “thunderstorm of life” is, to write a novel about her, to paint her portrait ... He spends all the evenings with the Pakhotins, preaching to Sofya the truth of life. On one of these evenings, Sophia's father, Nikolai Vasilyevich, brings Count Milari, "an excellent musician and a most amiable young man," to the house.

Returning home on that memorable evening, Boris Pavlovich cannot find a place for himself: he either peers at the portrait of Sophia he started, then re-reads the essay he once started about a young woman in whom he managed to arouse passion and even lead her to a "fall" - alas , Natasha is no longer alive, and the pages he wrote did not imprint a genuine feeling. The episode, which turned into a memory, appeared to him as an alien event.

Meanwhile, summer came, Raysky received a letter from Tatyana Markovna, in which she called her grandson to the blessed Malinovka, a letter also came from Leonty Kozlov, who lived near the family estate of Raysky. “It is fate that sends me ...” - decided Boris Pavlovich, who was already bored with awakening passions in Sofya Belovodova. In addition, there was a slight embarrassment - Raisky decided to show the portrait of Sofya Ayanov, which he painted, and he, looking at the work of Boris Pavlovich, delivered his sentence: "She seems to be drunk here." The artist Semyon Semyonovich Kirilov did not appreciate the portrait, but Sophia herself found that Raisky flattered her - she is not like that ...

The very first person that Raisky meets in the estate is a charming young girl who does not notice him, busy feeding poultry. Her whole appearance breathes with such freshness, purity, grace that Raisky understands that here, in Malinovka, he is destined to find the beauty, in search of which he languished in cold Petersburg.

Raisky is joyfully greeted by Tatyana Markovna, Marfenka (she turned out to be the same girl), and servants. Only cousin Vera is visiting her friend, the priest, across the Volga. And again, the grandmother tries to captivate Raysky with household chores, which still do not interest Boris Pavlovich at all - he is ready to donate the estate to Vera and Marfenka, which angers Tatyana Markovna ...

In Malinovka, despite the joyful chores associated with the arrival of Raisky, everyday life goes on: the servant Savely is called upon to give an account of everything to the arrived landowner, Leonty Kozlov teaches children.

But here's a surprise: Kozlov was married, but to whom! On Ulenka, the coquettish daughter of "the housekeeper of some government institution in Moscow", where they kept a table for incoming students. All of them were gradually in love with Ulenka then, only Kozlov did not notice her cameo profile, but it was him that she eventually married and left for a far corner of Russia, the Volga. Various rumors circulate about her around the city, Ulenka warns Raisky that he might hear, and asks in advance not to believe anything - obviously in the hope that he, Boris Pavlovich, will not remain indifferent to her charms ...

Returning home, Raisky finds a full estate of guests - Tit Nikonovich, Polina Karpovna, everyone gathered to look at the mature owner of the estate, grandmother's pride. And many sent congratulations on their arrival. And the usual village life with all its delights and joys rolled along the well-worn rut. Raisky gets acquainted with the surroundings, delves into the lives of people close to him. The courtyards sort out their relationship, and Raisky becomes a witness of Savely's wild jealousy for his unfaithful wife Marina, Vera's trusted servant. This is where true passions boil! ..

And Polina Karpovna Kritskaya? Who would willingly succumb to Raisky's sermons, if it occurred to him to captivate this aging coquette! She literally climbs out of her skin to attract his attention, and then carry the news throughout the town that Boris Pavlovich could not resist her. But Raisky shied away in horror from the lady who was obsessed with love.

Quietly, calmly, the days in Malinovka drag on. Only now Vera does not return from the priest; Boris Pavlovich, on the other hand, does not waste time - he is trying to “educate” Marfenka, slowly finding out her tastes and predilections in literature, painting, so that he can begin to awaken real life in her. Sometimes he comes into Kozlov's house. And one day he meets Mark Volokhov there: “fifteenth grade, an official under the supervision of the police, an involuntary citizen of the local city,” as he himself recommends.

Mark seems to Raisky a funny person - he has already heard a lot of horrors about him from his grandmother, but now, having met, he invites him to dinner. Their impromptu dinner with the indispensable burning woman in the room of Boris Pavlovich wakes up Tatyana Markovna, who is afraid of fires, and she is horrified by the presence of this man in the house, who has fallen asleep like a dog, without a pillow, curled up.

Mark Volokhov also considers it his duty to awaken people - only, unlike Raisky, not a specific woman from the sleep of the soul to the storm of life, but abstract people - to anxieties, dangers, reading forbidden books. He does not think to hide his simple and cynical philosophy, which is almost all reduced to his personal benefit, and even charming in his own way in such childish openness. And Raisky is carried away by Mark - his nebula, his mystery, but it is at this moment that the long-awaited Vera returns from behind the Volga.

She turns out to be completely different from what Boris Pavlovich expected to see her - closed, not going to frank confessions and conversations, with her small and big secrets, riddles. Raisky understands how necessary it is for him to unravel his cousin, to know her hidden life, the existence of which he does not doubt for a moment ...

And gradually the wild Saveliy awakens in refined Paradise: just as this yard guard watches over his wife Marina, so Paradise “knew at any moment where she was, what she was doing. In general, his abilities, directed at one subject that occupied him, were refined to incredible subtlety, and now, in this silent observation of the Faith, they have reached the degree of clairvoyance.

In the meantime, grandmother Tatyana Markovna dreams of marrying Boris Pavlovich to the daughter of a farmer, so that he will forever settle in his native land. Raisky refuses such an honor - there are so many mysterious things around that need to be unraveled, and he will suddenly hit his grandmother's will into such prose! .. Moreover, there are really a lot of events around Boris Pavlovich. The young man Vikentiev appears, and Raisky instantly sees the beginning of his affair with Marfenka, their mutual attraction. Vera still kills Raisky with her indifference, Mark Volokhov has disappeared somewhere, and Boris Pavlovich sets off to look for him. However, this time Mark is not able to entertain Boris Pavlovich - he alludes to the fact that he knows well about Raisky's attitude towards Vera, about her indifference and the fruitless attempts of the capital's cousin to awaken a living soul in the provincial. Finally, Vera herself can’t stand it: she resolutely asks Raisky not to spy on her everywhere, to leave her alone. The conversation ends as if with reconciliation: now Raisky and Vera can talk calmly and seriously about books, about people, about understanding life by each of them. But this is not enough for Raisky ...

Tatyana Markovna Berezhkova nevertheless insisted on something, and one day the whole city society was called to Malinovka for a gala dinner in honor of Boris Pavlovich. But a decent acquaintance never succeeds - a scandal breaks out in the house, Boris Pavlovich openly tells the venerable Nil Andreevich Tychkov everything that he thinks about him, and Tatyana Markovna herself unexpectedly takes the side of her grandson: “He was swollen with pride, and pride is a drunken vice , leads to oblivion. Sober up, get up and bow: Tatyana Markovna Berezhkova is standing in front of you! Tychkov was expelled from Malinovka in disgrace, and Vera, conquered by the honesty of Paradise, kisses him for the first time. But this kiss, alas, does not mean anything, and Raisky is going to return to St. Petersburg, to his usual life, his usual environment.

True, neither Vera nor Mark Volokhov believe in his imminent departure, and Raisky himself cannot leave, feeling around him the movement of a life inaccessible to him. Moreover, Vera is again leaving for the Volga to her friend.

In her absence, Raisky tries to find out from Tatyana Markovna: what kind of person is Vera, what exactly are the hidden features of her character. And he learns that the grandmother considers herself unusually close to Vera, loves her with a deep, respectful, compassionate love, seeing in her, in a sense, her own repetition. From her, Raisky also learns about a man who does not know “how to proceed, how to woo” Vera. This is the forester Ivan Ivanovich Tushin.

Not knowing how to get rid of thoughts about Vera, Boris Pavlovich allows Kritskaya to take him to her house, from there he goes to Kozlov, where Ulenka meets him with open arms. And Raisky could not resist her charms ...

On a stormy night, Tushin brings Vera on his horses - finally, Raisky has the opportunity to see the person Tatyana Markovna told him about. And again he is obsessed with jealousy and is going to Petersburg. And again he remains, unable to leave without unraveling the secret of Vera.

Raisky even manages to alarm Tatyana Markovna with constant thoughts and arguments that Vera is in love, and the grandmother conceives an experiment: a family reading of an edifying book about Kunigunde, who fell in love against the will of her parents and ended her days in a monastery. The effect is completely unexpected: Vera remains indifferent and almost falls asleep over the book, and Marfenka and Vikentiev, thanks to the instructive novel, declare their love to the nightingale's singing. The next day, Vikentiev's mother, Marya Yegorovna, arrives in Malinovka - an official matchmaking and conspiracy takes place. Marfenka becomes a bride.

And Vera? .. Her chosen one is Mark Volokhov. It is to him that she goes on dates to the precipice, where the jealous suicide is buried, it is he who she dreams of calling her husband, first remaking him in her own image and likeness. Vera and Mark share too much: all the concepts of morality, goodness, decency, but Vera hopes to persuade her chosen one to what is right in the "old truth". Love and honor for her are not empty words. Their love is more like a duel between two beliefs, two truths, but in this duel, the characters of Mark and Vera are more and more clearly manifested.

Raisky still does not know who is chosen as his cousin. He is still immersed in the mystery, still looking gloomily at his surroundings. Meanwhile, the calm of the town is shaken by the flight of Ulenka from Kozlov with the teacher Monsieur Charles. Leonty's despair is boundless, Raisky, together with Mark, are trying to bring Kozlov to his senses.

Yes, passions really boil around Boris Pavlovich! A letter has already been received from St. Petersburg from Ayanov, in which an old friend talks about Sophia’s romance with Count Milari - in a strict sense, what happened between them is not a romance at all, but the world regarded a certain “false step” by Belovodova as compromising her, and thus the relationship between the Pakhotin family and the count ended.

The letter, which could have offended Raisky quite recently, does not make a particularly strong impression on him: all thoughts, all feelings of Boris Pavlovich are completely occupied by Vera. Imperceptibly the evening comes on the eve of Marfenka's engagement. Vera again goes to the precipice, and Raisky is waiting for her at the very edge, understanding why, where and to whom his unfortunate, love-obsessed cousin went. An orange bouquet, ordered for Marfenka for her celebration, which coincided with her birthday, Raisky cruelly throws through the window to Vera, who falls unconscious at the sight of this gift ...

The next day, Vera falls ill - her horror lies in the fact that it is necessary to tell her grandmother about her fall, but she is unable to do this, especially since the house is full of guests, and Marfenka is escorted to the Vikentievs. Having revealed everything to Raysky, and then to Tushin, Vera calms down for a while - Boris Pavlovich tells Tatyana Markovna about what happened at the request of Vera.

Day and night, Tatyana Markovna takes care of her misfortune - she walks non-stop through the house, through the garden, through the fields around Malinovka, and no one is able to stop her: “God has visited, I don’t go myself. His strength wears - must endure to the end. If I fall, pick me up…” Tatyana Markovna says to her grandson. After many hours of vigil, Tatyana Markovna comes to Vera, who is lying in a fever.

When Vera leaves, Tatyana Markovna realizes how necessary it is for both of them to ease their souls: and then Vera hears her grandmother's terrible confession about her long-standing sin. Once in her youth, an unloved man who wooed her found Tatyana Markovna in a greenhouse with Tit Nikonovich and took an oath from her never to marry ...

th in 1869 and is the third final part of the series of novels "Ordinary History", "Oblomov".

The novel shows the critical attitude of the author to nihilistic theories that destroy the moral traditions that have developed over the centuries and the foundations of modern society, expressed by the socialists of the sixties.

The protagonist of the work, Boris Pavlovich Raysky, is a wealthy aristocrat, disappointed in everything, wherever he tries his hand.

For his 30 years he has lived, he has not done anything useful, despite his talent and desire to devote himself to the world of art, elementary laziness does not allow him to realize his potential. He seeks, as he says, "to awaken life" in socialite Sofya Belovodova, all his forces are directed to this.

Sophia personifies a woman devoid of feelings. Coldness, icy beauty and fatal resignation to fate, this is the image that she carries. Despite the repeated and varied topics of conversation between the characters,

Sophia remains impregnably cold. The author shows how natural feelings are sacrificed to generally accepted conventions. Direct acquaintance with the concept of "cliff" takes place in the homeland of the hero, the village of Malinovka. The cliff is the place where a terrible crime took place - a double murder, and the murderer who committed suicide is also buried here.

All the characters in the novel have a fear of this place. A beautiful and intelligent woman, Tatyana Markovna, is in charge of all affairs in the village. She is the true embodiment of conservative Russia, in Malinovka she is a real king and god, the true embodiment of wisdom and worldly cunning - an intelligent and unusually kind woman. Raisky, who arrived in the village and expects to plunge into boredom, suddenly turns out to be surrounded by real feelings and passions. He sees how bread is obtained, how simple peasants earn their livelihood.

Raisky tries to wake Sophia with the sights of a hard peasant life, but all to no avail, she only calls him Chatsky and does not want to leave her imaginary cocoon, in which she hid from the external manifestations of life. In contrast to Sophia, the images of two more girls are displayed in the novel. One of them is Marfinka, an unusually agile young woman, intelligent and delving into all the details of the village economy. The second of them is the mysterious Vera, who has an unspoken charm, she is almost the only one who is not afraid to visit a terrible ravine. Her chosen one is a nihilist - Mark Voloshin, who lowers both himself and Vera to an animal existence, it is not for nothing that he is compared to a wolf.

There is a moral fall of Vera, she remains with Volokhov. The last part of the novel shows the revival of Vera, she finds a person who truly loves her. Tushin convinces Mark of the uselessness of communication with Vera, and he leaves for military service in the Caucasus. Faith must conduct business on the estate. Without exception, all the heroes were touched by the purifying pain of suffering. Raisky must become an artist. The fates of the heroes are not written out clearly, the reflections are unfinished, and they are fraught with a lot of surprises, just like the world in which they live. The final novel cannot be called the result of the story, and what awaits the heroes in the distance is unknown.