Gogol is the most ecclesiastical writer in Russian literature. Nikolai Gogol. Experience of spiritual biography

Hieromonk Simeon: “What they are doing in Ukraine with Gogol’s works will really make you turn over in your grave”

“Gogol is one of the classics of Russian literature closest to the Church. We know that both Pushkin and Dostoevsky, after long struggles and tossing and turning, eventually found faith and became truly, and not nominally, Orthodox.

Gogol took an active part in liturgical life all his life, confessed, and received communion. And in his mature years, spiritual issues began to worry him even more than literary ones.

Gogol said that the main thing in his life is his soul. And he thought of his creativity itself as service to God, obedience, from which he had no right to evade.

But Gogol as an ascetic, a person who lived a deep spiritual life, is little known in our country,” said Hieromonk Simeon (Tomachinsky), an expert on the works of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, and the author of a Ph.D. thesis on his work, in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda.

As Father Simeon noted, Gogol wrote entire treatises on religious and moral topics: “For example, “The Rule of Living in the World” and “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy.” In order to read patristic sources in the original, Gogol even specially studied Greek.

During the Soviet era, this side of the writer’s work was hushed up. It was believed that the “early” Gogol was a wonderful artist, but in his later years he went a little crazy. Therefore, many of Gogol’s spiritual creations were not even included in the complete (academic) collection of his works. And some have only become known about in recent years.

For example, they found many notebooks in which Gogol himself copied liturgical texts from church books. Now they are kept in the manuscript department of the Pushkin House. In addition, Gogol copied the works of the holy fathers: John Chrysostom, Ephraim the Syrian, Basil the Great and others. It was a source of inspiration for him."

But what is most occupied now is not the spiritual treasures discovered in Gogol, but who he was: Russian or Ukrainian,” the hieromonk noted. In his opinion, “Gogol considered himself both. He wrote “I myself don’t know what kind of soul I have, Khokhlatsky or Russian.” Gogol loved Moscow and St. Petersburg very much, but he also loved Kyiv, his native Poltava and Dikanka.

And now we take a saw and artificially divide Gogol. It's like dividing your heart and soul in half. But for the current Ukrainian authorities, Gogol as he is is inconvenient. By throwing Gogol off the ship of modernity, Ukrainian nationalists renounced what was best and greatest in their people.

After all, if it were not for Gogol, the whole world would know much less about the Ukrainian people, their traditions and great, indestructible spirit. On the other hand, current attempts to tie Gogol’s work to a certain ideology are also proving to be a failure. After all, he himself wrote that Russians and Ukrainians are two peoples who complement each other and are created to live together.

Gogol considered the vocation of Ukrainians to preserve their identity and Orthodox civilization. Namely, Russia became the last stronghold of Orthodoxy after the fall of Constantinople. Gogol believed that only together Russians and Ukrainians could reveal “something most perfect in humanity.” Not in battles over gas prices, but in some creative endeavors.

With all this, Gogol was a devoted son of his country and never renounced the fact that he was Ukrainian.”

Discussing why N.V. Gogol wrote his works in Russian and not in Ukrainian, Father Simeon noted: “Gogol, in conversations with literary friends, always emphasized that for all of them there should be one shrine - this is the language of Pushkin.

He considered the Russian language to be unusually alive, capable of accommodating different dialects and dialects and thereby becoming richer, creating a motley palette of shades. When translating Gogol into Ukrainian, a lot is lost, it becomes monotonous and monotonous. It's like a painting painted bright colors, take it and cover it with one color.”

According to him, modern translations of Gogol into Ukrainian They also suffer from incompleteness and selectivity towards classic texts. In “The Night Before Christmas,” Gogol “shows the family connection between Russia and Ukraine, albeit in a humorous genre. This is an episode in which the Cossacks come to ask for help from Empress Catherine, and she helps them.

But when “The Night Before Christmas” was translated into Ukrainian, this scene was greatly cut down. In the Ukrainian version, the Cossacks no longer bow to the Russian Tsarina and do not remind them that they transferred her army through Perekop and helped take Crimea.”

In the story “Taras Bulba”, published in modern Ukraine, “in the translation of the rabid nationalist Nikolai Sadovsky, Gogol’s words “Rus” and “Russian” are scrupulously replaced with “Ukraine” and “Ukrainian” everywhere. For example, “broad revelry of Russian nature” is translated as “broad revelry of Ukrainian nature.”

“Manifestation of Russian power” is replaced by “Ukrainian”. But Russian strength is a more general and higher concept for Gogol, which includes Ukrainian strength. This is the same as translating the phrase: “birds are wonderful creatures” as “thrush is a wonderful creature,” noted Father Simeon. “What they are doing in Ukraine now with Gogol’s works will really make you turn over in your grave,” the priest noted sadly.

In addition, Father Simeon noted, “if Ukrainians recognize Gogol as “one of their own,” then they must recognize his concept and read in Russian. But they cannot agree with this. Therefore, they translate Gogol and thereby displace him into the sphere of foreign writers.

By abandoning its genius, Ukraine is essentially sawing off the branch on which it is sitting. Yes, you can disagree with Gogol, but let him speak in a free voice, there is no need to censor him based on momentary political ideas. Because these ideas will evaporate over time, but Gogol’s great work will remain.”

Introduction

Gogol's legacy

Gogol Nikolai Vasilievich (1809-1852)

Childhood and youth
Early creativity
The second half of life and creativity
"Reflections on the Divine Liturgy"
Recent years life

Conclusion.Gogol and Orthodoxy

References

1.Introduction

The church, state, and education system must help our people return to Orthodoxy. The secular nature of the school has been officially proclaimed, but the school must reveal to children what trace Orthodoxy has left in the culture and history of our people. There is equality of religions before the law, but in no case is there equality of religions before culture, before the history of mankind, especially before culture and history Kievan Rus. The state and school should be interested in ensuring that children are not foreigners in their own country. We must consider the history of Christian painting and church architecture in an Orthodox manner.

Turning to our spiritual roots will help us today to find the ground under our feet, to restore spiritual core of our people, will help us return to our path along the paths of history.

2.Gogol's legacy

In this context, the spiritual heritage of N.V. Gogol is extremely important for us. “Gogol,” according to Archpriest V. Zenkovsky, “is the first prophet of a return to an integral religious culture, a prophet Orthodox culture, ... he feels that the main untruth of modern times is its departure from the Church, and he sees the main path in a return to the Church and the restructuring of all life in its spirit."

The spiritual state of our contemporary Western society is fulfillment prophetic words N.V. Gogol to the Western Church: “Now that humanity has begun to reach its fullest development in all its strengths... The Western Church only pushes it away from Christ: the more it bothers about reconciliation, the more it brings discord.” Indeed, the conciliatory march of the Western Church towards the world ultimately led to the emasculation of the Spirit in the Western Church, to the spiritual crisis of Western society.

N.V. Gogol in his social views was neither a Westerner nor a Slavophile. He loved his people and saw that they “hear God’s hand more than others.”

The trouble with Gogol’s contemporary society is that “we have still not introduced the Church, created for life, into our lives.” (These words, alas, are still relevant today). “The Church alone has the power to resolve all our knots, perplexities and questions; there is a reconciliator of everything within the earth itself, which is not yet visible to everyone - our Church.” This concern of Gogol about the fate of society, distant from the Church, prompts him to work on a book that reveals the inner, hidden meaning of the Divine Liturgy and has as its goal to bring society closer to the Church.

N.V. Gogol is one of the most ascetic figures in our literature. His whole life testifies to his ascent to the heights of the spirit; but only the clergy closest to him and some of his friends knew about this side of his personality. In the minds of most contemporaries, Gogol represented classic type satirical writer, exposer of social and human vices.

Contemporaries never recognized another Gogol, a follower of the patristic tradition in Russian literature, an Orthodox religious thinker and publicist, and author of prayers. With the exception of “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” spiritual prose remained unpublished during his lifetime.

True, subsequent generations were already able to get acquainted with it, and by the beginning of the 20th century, Gogol’s spiritual image was restored to some extent. But here another extreme arose: the “neo-Christian” criticism of the turn of the century (and most of all D. Merezhkovsky’s book “Gogol. Creativity, Life and Religion”) built spiritual path Gogol according to his own standards, portraying him as a sick fanatic, a mystic with a medieval consciousness, a lonely fighter against evil spirits, and most importantly - completely divorced from Orthodox Church and even opposed to it - which is why the image of the writer appeared in a bright, but distorted form.

A mystic and poet of Russian statehood, Gogol was not only a realist and satirist, but also a religious prophet, all of whose literary images are deep symbols

“That terrible little Russian was right”

(V.V. Rozanov “Apocalypse of our time”).

“Great ignorance of Russia in the midst of Russia”

(N.V. Gogol “Selected passages from correspondence with friends”).

April 1 \ March 18, 2006 marked the 197th anniversary of the birth of perhaps the most outstanding Russian writer, political, religious and social thinker N.V. Gogol (1809-1852).

Why is Gogol interesting to us today? Do we understand him correctly, or do we still consider him a satirist-critic of state power and order, and not vice versa?

In fact, the work and life of Gogol is still incomprehensible to many literary scholars, philosophers and historians of Russian thought. With the exception of a few researchers, Gogol's work and views are not understood, and yet without a religious consideration of his views it is difficult to see the true essence of the writer's ideas.

N.V. Gogol was unfairly credited with revolutionary, Bolshevik, liberal-Western thought, expressing the essence of the ideas of the advanced intelligentsia, primarily V.G. Belinsky, the founder of realism, the natural school, satirist, critic of autocracy and statehood. Meanwhile, the true meaning of many of his works (including fiction, which largely contain satirical notes), unfortunately, remained unclear to such figures. The Russian writer and philosopher was not only a realist and satirist, but also a mystic and religious prophet, all of whose literary images are deep symbols.

And only today, thanks to the works of V. Voropaev, I. Vinogradov, I. Zolotussky, as well as articles by M.O. Menshikov we see a different Gogol: a religious prophet, the level of bl. Augustine, B. Pascal, D. Swift, S. Kierkegaard, the forerunner of F.M. Dostoevsky, statesman and monarchist.

3.Gogol Nikolai Vasilievich (1809-1852)

3.1 Childhood and adolescence

From his first moment, Nikolai Gogol's life was directed towards God. His mother, Maria Ivanovna, made a vow before Dikansky miraculously Saint Nicholas, if she has a son, name him Nicholas - and asked the priest to pray until they announced the birth of the child and asked to serve a thanksgiving prayer service. The baby was baptized in the Transfiguration Church in Sorochintsy. His mother was a pious woman, a zealous pilgrim.

N.V. was born. Gogol March 20 \ April 1, 1809 in the town of Velikie Sorochintsy, Mirgorod district, Poltava province. He came from middle-income landowners. She belonged to the old Cossack families. The family was quite pious and patriarchal. Among Gogol's ancestors there were people of clergy: his paternal great-grandfather was a priest; my grandfather graduated from the Kyiv Theological Academy, and my father graduated from the Poltava Theological Seminary.

He spent his childhood years on his parents' estate Vasilyevka. The region itself was covered in legends, beliefs, and historical stories that excited the imagination. Next to Vasilyeka was Dikanka (to which Gogol dated the origin of his first stories).

According to the recollections of one of Gogol’s classmates, religiosity and a penchant for monastic life were noticeable in Gogol “even from childhood“When he was brought up in his native village in Mirgorod district and was surrounded by people “God-fearing and completely religious.” When the writer was subsequently ready to “replace his secular life with a monastery,” he only returned to his original mood.

The concept of God sank into Gogol’s soul from early childhood. In a letter to his mother in 1833, he recalled: “I asked you to tell me about the Last Judgment, and you told me, a child, so well, so clearly, so touchingly about the benefits that await people for a virtuous life, and so strikingly, so They described the eternal torments of sinners in a terrible way, which shocked and awakened sensitivity in me. This gave rise to and subsequently produced the highest thoughts in me.”

The first strong test in the life of young Nikolai was the death of his father. He writes a letter to his mother, in which despair is humbled by deep submission to the will of God: “I endured this blow with the firmness of a true Christian... I bless you, sacred faith! In you only I find a source of consolation and quenching my sorrow!.. Take refuge as I have resorted to the Almighty."

The future writer received his initial education at home, “from a hired seminarian.”

In 1818-19 the future writer studied with his brother at the Poltava district school, in the summer

In 1820 he was preparing to enter the Poltava gymnasium.

In 1821, he was admitted to the newly opened Gymnasium of Higher Sciences in Nizhyn (lyceum). Education here, in accordance with the task set by Emperor Alexander I of combating European freethinking, included an extensive program of religious education. House Church, common confessor, common morning and evening prayers, prayers before and after the end of classes, the law of God twice a week, every day for half an hour before class lessons, reading by the priest of the New Testament, daily memorization of 2-3 verses from Scripture, as well as strict discipline, such was the almost “monastic” style defined by the Rules of the gymnasium "the life of its students, many features of which Gogol later used when describing Bursat everyday life in Taras Bulba and Viya.

3.2 Early work

After moving to the capital, Gogol plunges into literary life. But despite being busy, there is a constant dissatisfaction with the bustle, a desire for a different, collected and sober life. In this sense, the reflections on the post in the “Petersburg Notes of 1836” are very indicative: “Calm and menacing Lent. It seems that a voice is heard: “Stop, Christian; look back at your life.” The streets are empty. There are no carriages. The passerby's face shows reflection. I love you, time for thoughts and prayers. My thoughts will flow more freely, more thoughtfully... - Why is our irreplaceable time flying so quickly? Who is calling him? Great Lent, what a calm, solitary passage it is!”

If we take the moralizing side of Gogol’s early work, then there is one characteristic feature: he wants to lead people to God by correcting THEIR shortcomings and social vices - that is, by external means.

In December 1828, Gogol arrived in St. Petersburg with broad (and vague) plans for noble work for the benefit of the Fatherland. Strapped for financial resources, he tries his hand as an official, actor, artist, and earns his living by giving lessons. Gogol made his debut in print twice. First as a poet: first he wrote the poem “Italy” (without signature), and then the poem “Hanz Küchelgarten”. The latter received negative reviews in magazines, after which Gogol tried to burn all available copies.

His second debut was in prose and immediately placed Gogol among the first writers in Russia. In 1831-32. The cycle of stories “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka” was published. Thanks to this success, Gogol meets V.A. Zhukovsky, P.A. Pletnev, Baron A.A. Delvig, A.S. Pushkin. He became famous at court for his stories. Thanks to Pletnev, the Heir's former teacher, in March 1831 Gogol took up the position of junior history teacher at the Patriotic Institute, which was under the jurisdiction of Emperor Alexander Feodorovna. In Moscow, Gogol meets M.P. Pogodin, the Aksakov family, I.I. Dmitriev, M.N. Zagoskin, M.S. Shchepkin, the Kireevsky brothers, O.M. Bodyansky, M.A. Maksimovich.

By God's providence we are destined to live in an amazing and difficult time- a time of reassessment of values, a time of painful changes in public life, a time of painful search for spiritual guidelines, a time of affirmation of a largely lost national identity.
The spiritual vacuum that was forcibly created in the past decades is gradually being filled today, and people are rushing to an active search for the meaning of life. Forgetting your spiritual and national traditions, many turn their gaze to the West, trying to find a standard of social and spiritual life there. And the West extends a helping hand to us, obliging us to follow someone else’s beaten path, and thereby dooms us to an endless march in pursuit, in its footsteps. Everyone possible ways- through means mass media, in the field of education, spirituality, art, in politics, through proselytizing missions, it is imposed on us western style life, Western worldview.
From all continents globe Representatives of hundreds of sects calling themselves “churches” have rushed to us, claiming that they and only they know the path to the truth. Our people, brought up in the spirit of unbelief, rushed to these sects like a moth to the light of a fire. We have forgotten that our people were deeply ORTHODOX two or three centuries ago.
IN mid-17th century century, Archdeacon Pavel of Aleppo, accompanying the Patriarch of Antioch Macarius to Moscow, expressed his impressions of Ukraine in the following way: “Throughout the entire land of the Cossacks, we noticed a wonderful feature that aroused our surprise: all of them, with the exception of a few, even most of their wives and daughters, can read and know order church services and church tunes; In addition, the priests teach orphans and do not leave them to wander the streets as ignoramuses.”
The church, state, and education system must help our people return to Orthodoxy. The secular nature of the school has been officially proclaimed, but the school must reveal to children what trace Orthodoxy has left in the culture and history of our people. There is equality of religions before the law, but in no case is there equality of religions before culture, before the history of mankind, especially before the culture and history of Kievan Rus. It is clear that the contribution of Orthodoxy to Ukrainian culture, to the development of literature, language, and thinking is completely incomparable with, say, the contribution of Baptists or Pentecostals. The state and school should be interested in ensuring that children are not foreigners in their own country. We must consider the history of Christian painting and church architecture in an Orthodox manner. We must always remember that the Zaporozhye Cossacks did not easily defend their land, their people, but also their faith - ORTHODOXY.
We must always remember that the color and pride of our people are T. G. Shevchenko and G. S. Skovoroda, N. I. Pirogov and St. Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky), I.P. Kotlyarevsky and N.V. Gogol - were Orthodox. Turning to our spiritual roots will help us find ground under our feet today, restore the spiritual core of our people, and help us return to our path along the paths of history.
In this context, the spiritual heritage of N.V. Gogol is extremely important for us. “Gogol,” according to Archpriest. V. Zenkovsky, - the first prophet of a return to integrity religious culture, a prophet of Orthodox culture, ... he feels that the main untruth of modern times is its departure from the Church, and he sees the main path in a return to the Church and the restructuring of all life in its spirit.”
The spiritual state of our contemporary Western society is the fulfillment of the prophetic words of N.V. Gogol addressed to the Western Church: “Now that humanity has begun to achieve its fullest development in all its strengths... The Western Church only pushes it away from Christ: the more it bothers about reconciliation , the more it brings discord.” Indeed, the conciliatory march of the Western Church towards the world ultimately led to the emasculation of the Spirit in the Western Church, to the spiritual crisis of Western society.
N.V. Gogol in his social views was neither a Westerner nor a Slavophile. He loved his people and saw that they “hear God’s hand more than others.”
He sees the problem of Gogol’s contemporary society as being that “We still have not introduced the Church, created for life, into our lives.” (These words, alas, are still relevant today). “The Church alone is able to resolve all our knots, perplexities and questions; there is a reconciler of everything within the earth itself, which is not yet visible to everyone - our Church.” This concern of Gogol about the fate of a society removed from the Church prompts him to work on a book that reveals the inner, hidden meaning Divine Liturgy and whose goal is to bring society closer to the Church.
N.V. Gogol is one of the most ascetic figures in our literature. His whole life testifies to his ascent to the heights of the spirit; but only the clergy closest to him and some of his friends knew about this side of his personality. In the minds of most contemporaries, Gogol was a classic type of satirist writer, an exposer of social and human vices.
Contemporaries never recognized another Gogol, a follower of the patristic tradition in Russian literature, an Orthodox religious thinker and publicist, and author of prayers. With the exception of “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” spiritual prose remained unpublished during his lifetime. True, subsequent generations were already able to get acquainted with it, and by the beginning of the 20th century, Gogol’s spiritual image was restored to some extent. But here another extreme arose: “neo-Christian” criticism of the turn of the century (and most of all D. Merezhkovsky’s book “Gogol. Creativity, Life and Religion”) built Gogol’s spiritual path according to its own standards, portraying him as a sick fanatic, a mystic with a medieval consciousness, a lonely fighter with evil spirits, and most importantly - completely divorced from the Orthodox Church and even opposed to it - which is why the image of the writer appeared in a bright, but distorted form.
“Gogol’s genius still remains completely unknown not only to the general reader, but also to literary scholars who, in the current state national science they are simply unable to comprehend the fate of the writer and his mature prose. This can only be done by a deep connoisseur of both Gogol’s work and patristic literature, and certainly one who is in the bosom of the Orthodox Church.” We do not yet have such a researcher.
From his first moment, Nikolai Gogol's life was directed towards God. His mother, Maria Ivanovna, made a vow before the Dikansky miraculous image of St. Nicholas, if she had a son, to name him Nicholas, and asked the priest to pray until they announced the birth of the child and asked him to serve thanksgiving prayer. The baby was baptized in the Transfiguration Church in Sorochintsy. His mother was a pious woman, a zealous pilgrim.
Among Gogol's ancestors there were people of clergy: his paternal great-grandfather was a priest; my grandfather graduated from the Kyiv Theological Academy, and my father graduated from the Poltava Theological Seminary.
The concept of God sank into Gogol’s soul from early childhood. In a letter to his mother in 1833, he recalled: “I asked you to tell me about Last Judgment, and you told me, a child, so well, so clearly, so touchingly about the benefits that await people for a virtuous life, and so strikingly, so horribly described the eternal torment of sinners that it shocked and awakened sensitivity in me. This sown and subsequently produced in me the highest thoughts.”
The first strong test in the life of young Nikolai was the death of his father. He writes a letter to his mother, in which despair is humbled by deep submission to the will of God: “I endured this blow with the firmness of a true Christian... I bless you, sacred faith! In you only I find a source of consolation and quenching of my sorrow!.. Take refuge, as I have resorted, to the Almighty.”
After moving to the capital, Gogol plunges into literary life. But despite being busy, there is a constant dissatisfaction with the bustle, a desire for a different, collected and sober life. In this sense, the reflections on fasting in “Petersburg Notes of 1836” are very indicative: “Great Lent is calm and formidable. It seems that a voice is heard: “Stop, Christian; look back at your life.” The streets are empty. There are no carriages. The passerby's face shows reflection. I love you, time for thoughts and prayers. My thoughts will flow more freely, more thoughtfully... - Why is our irreplaceable time flying so quickly? Who is calling him? Great Lent, what a calm, what a solitary passage it is!”
If we take the moralizing side of Gogol's early work, then it has one characteristic feature: he wants to raise people to God by correcting THEIR shortcomings and social vices - that is, by external means. The second half of the writer’s life and work is marked by his focus on eradicating shortcomings in himself - and thus, he follows the inner path. “It is impossible to talk and write about the highest feelings and movements of a person from the imagination; you need to contain at least a small grain of this within yourself - in a word, you need to become the best” (N.V. Gogol, “The Author's Confession”).
Conventionally, Gogol's life and work can be divided into two periods - the year 1840 will be the boundary.
In the summer of 1840, Gogol experienced severe attacks of “nervous disorder” and “painful melancholy” abroad, and with no hope of recovery, he even wrote a spiritual will. But then a “miraculous healing” followed. opened up to him new way. Gogol's constant desire to improve himself begins spiritual person and the predominance of religious orientation. In “The History of My Acquaintance with Gogol,” Aksakov testifies: “Let them not think that Gogol changed his beliefs; on the contrary, from his youth he remained faithful to them. But Gogol constantly moved forward, his Christianity became purer and stricter; the high significance of the writer’s goal is clearer and the judgment on himself is more severe.”
Gogol gradually developed ascetic aspirations. In April 1840, he wrote: “I am now more suited for a monastery than for a secular life.”
In June 1842, Gogol went abroad - and there the religious mood began to dominate his life. G. P. Galagan, who lived with him in Rome, recalled: “Gogol seemed to me very pious even then. Once all the Russians gathered in the Russian church for an all-night vigil. I saw that Gogol entered, but then I lost sight of him. Before the end of the service, I went out into the vestibule and there, in the twilight, I noticed Gogol standing in the corner... on his knees with his head bowed. During certain prayers he bowed.”
Gogol begins to read books of spiritual content, mainly patristic literature. Gogol's letters from this period contain requests for books on theology, Church history, and Russian antiquities. Friends send him the works of the holy fathers, the works of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, St. Demetrius of Rostov, Bishop Innocent (Borisov), “Christian Reading” magazines. The Philokalia sent by Yazykov became one of Gogol’s reference books.
In January 1845, Gogol lived in Paris with Count A.P. Tolstoy. About this period he wrote: “I lived internally, as in a monastery, and in addition to that, I did not miss almost a single mass in our church.” He studies the rites of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great in Greek.
Gogol begins to work on the book “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy,” which organically combines the theological and artistic sides. This is one of the best examples of spiritual prose of the 19th century. In working on the book, Gogol used works on liturgics by ancient and modern authors, but all of them served him only as aids. The book embodies and personal experience Gogol, his desire to comprehend the liturgical word. “For anyone who just wants to move forward and become better,” he wrote in “Conclusion,” “it is necessary to attend the Divine Liturgy as often as possible and listen attentively: it insensitively builds and creates a person. And if society has not yet completely disintegrated, if people do not breathe complete, irreconcilable hatred among themselves, then the hidden reason for this is the Divine Liturgy, reminding a person of holy, heavenly love for his brother.” By the time the writer traveled to the Holy Land in February 1848, the first edition of the book had already been completed. Then Gogol repeatedly returned to the manuscript, revised it, but never managed to publish it. Unlike the second volume “ Dead souls”, which everyone was waiting for, few people knew about “Reflections” - Gogol wanted to release this book without his name, in a small format, put it on sale at a cheap price - to make this work truly popular, accessible for the teaching and benefit of all classes.
“Reflections on the Divine Liturgy” was first published in St. Petersburg in 1857 in a small format, as Gogol wanted, but his second wish was not fulfilled - to publish it without the name of the author.
Since 1920, for seven decades, this book has not been republished; only narrow specialists and the writer’s biographers knew about it. Little known today are his spiritual works “The Rule of Living in the World”, “ Bright Sunday”, “The Christian moves forward”, “A few words about our Church and the clergy.” These works of Gogol are a real storehouse of spiritual Orthodox wisdom, still hidden under a bushel. Indeed, “in the moral field Gogol was brilliantly gifted; he was destined to abruptly turn all Russian literature from aesthetics to religion, to move it from the path of Pushkin to the path of Dostoevsky. All the features that characterize “great Russian literature,” which has become world literature, were outlined by Gogol: its religious and moral system, its citizenship and public spirit, its militant and practical character, its prophetic pathos and messianism. With Gogol, the wide road and the open spaces of the world begin.”
What a majestic example for edification the life and work of N.V. Gogol gives us with his incomparable artistic gift and his desire for truth and for the transformation of life. We cannot understand Rus', its path, its quest and tragedy, if we do not understand the mystery of Gogol’s Way of the Cross, the torment of his soul.
N.V. Gogol dreamed of a unifying, guiding and enlightening role of the Church in society. The Lord today gives us a chance to return the Orthodox Church to its leading role in the spiritual life of society. For us, Gogol’s Orthodox spiritual experience is more relevant than ever. Many gifts were given to Rus' by the Lord through the Orthodox Church. But our people, like Adam once, did not want to live in paradise and neglected the fence of the Church. This is the tragedy of Rus', our disorder, the chaos in the soul of the people. Holy Rus', having departed from Orthodoxy, buried its power, its strength, and crucified its people.
The path of Rus' is the way of the cross. But the world after Golgotha, after Christ’s way of the cross, saw His resurrection. And now we, too, after seven decades of atheistic Calvary, stand awaiting our resurrection. But in order for our Easter to come sooner, we need to, together with Gogol, bitterly suffer from the untruths of former Rus' and understand that our spiritual resurrection, our salvation is in the Orthodox Church.

N.V. Gogol was a religious man, a sincere believer, who continued to seek new depths of faith until the end of his life. But even here he remained a completely sane person. On the one hand, he gave one of detailed descriptions and interpretations of the divine liturgy (“Divine Liturgy”, pp. 315–372), on the other hand, very practically, for example, he discussed the state of the priestly class:

- “The village priest can say much more that is truly necessary for a peasant than all these little books” (p. 159).

At the same time:

- “... the reason for all the evil is that the priests began to perform their duties carelessly” (P. 150). And in general:

- “... many of the spiritual, as I know, are saddened by the many atrocities that have arisen in lately, they were almost convinced that no one was listening to them (the 40s of the 19th century! - S.Kh.), that words and sermons were being thrown into the air and evil had taken root so deeply that it was no longer possible to even think about eradicating it” (C . 135-6). That's why:

- “... pay also attention to the city priests... Do not neglect any of them, despite the simplicity and ignorance of many” (P. 148-9). “Whoever is rude and backward (among the city priests - S.Kh.), threaten him bishop"(P. 150).

Through the question of priests, Gogol again addresses the topic of the day:

“The terrible truth of the present century is not yet clear and has not yet been fully revealed, that now everyone sins, every single one, but they sin not directly, but indirectly. The preacher himself had not yet heard this well; that’s why his preaching falls into the air, and people are deaf to his words” (p. 136); “... after such a sermon ... he will still be proud of his sinlessness” (ibid.).

- “... I am rather of the opinion that it is better for a priest who is not fully trained in his work and is not familiar with the people around him not to preach at all” (p. 161).

According to Gogol, the church is “... the supreme authority of everything... and the solution to life’s issues lies in it” (p. 313). According to Gogol, “the idea of introducing some kind of innovation in Russia, bypassing our Church, without asking her blessing for it,” is crazy (p. 109). Gogol even makes a reservation about “such a criminal offense as non-recognition of God in the form in which He Himself commanded to be recognized.” God's Son"(P. 99).

What can I say? Each person finds in the other what is close, important, and dear to them. Gogol's religious "bias" is obvious. But the completely secular nature of the bulk of his specific reasoning is also obvious. In the most religious aspect in Gogol we find a lot of wonderful philosophical generalizations. This is evidenced by his characteristics of a Christian, the knowledge contained in Christian texts:

- “... a Christian is a sage in every place, a doer of deeds everywhere” (P. 188).

- “All this universality of the humane law of Christ, all this relationship of man to humanity can be transferred by everyone to his own small field” (p. 308).

Here are Gogol's advice regarding divine authority:

- “... put it in front of God, and not in front of your face; show him how he sins against God, and not against you” (p. 156).

- “You can beg God for everything... Just act smartly. “Pray and row to the shore,” says the proverb” (p. 175). Etc.

Gogol’s statements reveal the reflexive nature of reasoning about divine authority - this companion of any emerging philosophy:

- “God knows, maybe this was also the will of Him, without whose will nothing is done in the world...” (p. 310). Or:

- “Without the will of God it is impossible to love Him. And how can one love Him whom no one has seen?” (p. 128).

Gogol's aesthetics

(using the example of Russian poetry of the 18th - first half of the 19th century centuries)

The statements of N.V. were quoted above. Gogol, containing obvious aesthetic elements: about the insight of ideals in their perverted, caricatured forms; about a one-sided ideal representation of an object, a hero, etc. They can be supplemented:

- “... that is the calling of the poet, to take from us and return us to us purified and at its best"(P. 231).

N.M. Yazykov:

- “Exalt the unnoticed worker in a solemn hymn” (p. 105). “Exalt their beautiful poverty so that... everyone... would want to be poor themselves” (ibid.).

Continuing the theme of a transformed ideal, about Fonvizin’s comedy “The Minor”:

- “These are those irresistibly terrible ideals of brutalization that only one person of the Russian land, and not another people, can achieve” (p. 247).

Gogol's aesthetics is as dialectical and objective (realistic) as all other aspects of his philosophical culture. Whatever the subject of the poet himself, in Gogol the poet himself is taken as a special objective phenomenon, developing in himself and through others. It is enough to refer to his judgments about Lomonosov, Krylov, Pushkin and others:

- “Lomonosov stands ahead of our poets, like an introduction in front of a book” (p. 215).

- “One can say about Derzhavin that he is a singer of greatness” (P. 217).

- “Before our other poets, Zhukovsky is the same as a jeweler is before other craftsmen, that is, a master who deals final finishing affairs" (p. 224-5).

About Krylov: “The poet and the sage merged into one in him” (p. 243).

About Lermontov: “No one has ever written in our country in such correct, beautiful and fragrant prose” (p. 235).

Gogol's Goethe is a personality filled with “a kind of German decorum and a theoretically German ambition to adapt to all times and centuries” (p. 228).

- “... Pushkin appeared. There is a middle in it. Neither the abstract ideality of the first (Derzhavin - S.Kh.), nor the abundance of voluptuous luxury of the second (Zhukovsky - S.Kh.)” (P. 226).

- “None of our poets was as stingy with words and expressions as Pushkin, nor was he so careful about himself, so as not to say immoderate and unnecessary things” (ibid.). “He has recently picked up a lot of Russian life and spoke about everything aptly and intelligently, so that even if you write down every word: it was worth his best poems” (p. 232).

- « Captain's daughter" - "definitely the best Russian work in a narrative manner" (p. 231).

Gogol’s Pushkin is “a wonderful image that responds to everything and only finds no response to itself” (p. 228).

1. INTRODUCTION

2. Gogol's legacy

3. Gogol Nikolai Vasilievich (1809-1852)

3.1 Childhood and adolescence

3.2 Early work

3.3 Second half of life and creativity

3.4 “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy”

3.5 Last years of life

4. Conclusion. Gogol and Orthodoxy

1.INTRODUCTION

The church, state, and education system must help our people return to Orthodoxy. The secular nature of the school has been officially proclaimed, but the school must reveal to children what trace Orthodoxy has left in the culture and history of our people. There is equality of religions before the law, but in no case is there equality of religions before culture, before the history of mankind, especially before the culture and history of Kievan Rus. The state and school should be interested in ensuring that children are not foreigners in their own country. We must consider the history of Christian painting and church architecture in an Orthodox manner.

Turning to our spiritual roots will help us find ground under our feet today, restore the spiritual core of our people, and help us return to our path along the paths of history.

2.Gogol's legacy

In this context, the spiritual heritage of N.V. Gogol is extremely important for us. “Gogol,” according to Archpriest V. Zenkovsky, “is the first prophet of a return to an integral religious culture, a prophet of Orthodox culture, ... he feels that the main untruth of modern times is its departure from the Church, and he sees the main path in a return to the Church and perestroika all life in her spirit."

The spiritual state of our contemporary Western society is the fulfillment of the prophetic words of N.V. Gogol to the Western Church: “Now that humanity has begun to reach its fullest development in all its strengths... The Western Church only pushes it away from Christ: the more it bothers about reconciliation, the more it brings discord.” Indeed, the conciliatory march of the Western Church towards the world ultimately led to the emasculation of the Spirit in the Western Church, to the spiritual crisis of Western society.

N.V. Gogol in his social views was neither a Westerner nor a Slavophile. He loved his people and saw that they “hear God’s hand more than others.”

N.V. Gogol is one of the most ascetic figures in our literature. His whole life testifies to his ascent to the heights of the spirit; but only the clergy closest to him and some of his friends knew about this side of his personality. In the minds of most contemporaries, Gogol was a classic type of satirist writer, an exposer of social and human vices.

True, subsequent generations were already able to get acquainted with it, and by the beginning of the 20th century, Gogol’s spiritual image was restored to some extent. But here another extreme arose: “neo-Christian” criticism of the turn of the century (and most of all D. Merezhkovsky’s book “Gogol. Creativity, Life and Religion”) built Gogol’s spiritual path according to its own standards, portraying him as a sick fanatic, a mystic with a medieval consciousness, a lonely fighter with evil spirits, and most importantly - completely divorced from the Orthodox Church and even opposed to it - which is why the image of the writer appeared in a bright, but distorted form.

Mystic and poet of Russian statehood, Gogol was not only a realist and satirist, but also a religious prophet, all of whose literary images are deep symbols

“That terrible little Russian was right”

(V.V. Rozanov “Apocalypse of our time”).

“Great ignorance of Russia in the midst of Russia”

(N.V. Gogol “Selected passages from correspondence with friends”).

April 1 \ March 18, 2006 marked the 197th anniversary of the birth of perhaps the most outstanding Russian writer, political, religious and social thinker N.V. Gogol (1809-1852).

Why is Gogol interesting to us today, do we understand him correctly, or do we still consider him a satirist-critic? state power and orders, and not vice versa?

3.Gogol Nikolai Vasilievich (1809-1852)

3.1 Childhood and adolescence

From his first moment, Nikolai Gogol's life was directed towards God. His mother, Maria Ivanovna, made a vow before the Dikansky miraculous image of St. Nicholas, if she had a son, to name him Nicholas - and asked the priest to pray until they announced the birth of the child and asked to serve a thanksgiving prayer service. The baby was baptized in the Transfiguration Church in Sorochintsy. His mother was a pious woman, a zealous pilgrim.

N.V. was born. Gogol March 20 \ April 1, 1809 in the town of Velikie Sorochintsy, Mirgorod district, Poltava province. He came from middle-income landowners. She belonged to the old Cossack families. The family was quite pious and patriarchal. Among Gogol's ancestors there were people of clergy: his paternal great-grandfather was a priest; my grandfather graduated from the Kyiv Theological Academy, and my father graduated from the Poltava Theological Seminary.

According to the recollections of one of Gogol’s classmates, religiosity and a penchant for monastic life were noticeable in Gogol “from childhood,” when he was brought up in his native farmstead in Mirgorod district and was surrounded by people “God-fearing and completely religious.” When the writer was subsequently ready to “replace his secular life with a monastery,” he only returned to his original mood.

The future writer received his initial education at home, “from a hired seminarian.”

In 1818-19 the future writer studied with his brother at the Poltava district school, in the summer

In 1820 he was preparing to enter the Poltava gymnasium.

In 1821, he was admitted to the newly opened Gymnasium of Higher Sciences in Nizhyn (lyceum). Education here, in accordance with the task set by Emperor Alexander I of combating European freethinking, included an extensive program of religious education. House church, common confessor, common morning and evening prayers, prayers before and after classes, the law of God twice a week, every day for half an hour before class lessons the priest reads the New Testament, daily memorization of 2-3 verses from Scripture, as well as strict discipline, such was the almost “monastic” life of its students, defined by the Charter of the gymnasium, many features of which Gogol later used when describing the Bursak way of life in “Taras Bulba” and “Viya”.

3.2 Early work

After moving to the capital, Gogol plunges into literary life. But despite being busy, there is a constant dissatisfaction with the bustle, a desire for a different, collected and sober life. In this sense, the reflections on fasting in the “Petersburg Notes of 1836” are very indicative: “Great Lent is calm and formidable. It seems that a voice can be heard: “Stop, Christian; Look back at your life." The streets are empty. There are no carriages. Contemplation is visible in the face of the passerby. I love you, time of thought and prayer. My thoughts will flow more freely, more thoughtfully... - Why is our irreplaceable time flying so quickly? Who is it? calls to itself? Great Lent, how calm, how solitary is its passage!

If we take the moralizing side of Gogol's early work, then it has one characteristic feature: he wants to raise people to God by correcting THEIR shortcomings and social vices - that is, by external means.

In December 1828 Gogol came to St. Petersburg with broad (and vague) plans for noble work for the good of the Fatherland. Strapped for financial resources, he tries his hand as an official, actor, artist, and earns his living by giving lessons. Gogol made his debut in print twice. First as a poet: first he wrote the poem “Italy” (without signature), and then the poem “Hanz Küchelgarten”. The latter received negative reviews in magazines, after which Gogol tried to burn all available copies.

His stay in the Mother See gave him the impetus for painful thoughts about fundamental differences between the original (“old world”) culture of Russia and the latest European “enlightenment” of “civilized” St. Petersburg, criticism of which was developed by him in the cycle of so-called “Petersburg” stories. These reflections also formed the basis for the contrast between “idylistic,” “non-modern,” but culturally valuable Rome and spiritually empty, vain Paris in the story “Rome” (1842), later, after several years of his stay abroad.

In 1834, Gogol, together with close friends Pletnev, Zhukovsky, Pogodin, Maksimovich, as well as S.P. Shevyrev and K.M. Basili becomes one of the first employees of the Minister of Public Education S.S. Uvarov, who proclaimed in his activities adherence to the primordial principles of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality. The result of this collaboration was the publication by Gogol in the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education, founded by Uvarov, of 4 articles closely related to the story “Taras Bulba” written later, as well as the admission of an adjunct professor to the department general history at St. Petersburg University. At the same time, this fruitful collaboration with Uvarov soon ended due to a conflict between A.S. Pushkin and S.S. Uvarov.

In April 1836, the premiere of “The Inspector General” took place on the stage of the Alexandria Theater in St. Petersburg, which was attended by Tsar Nikolai Pavlovich, who highly appreciated Gogol’s critical play and allowed the play to be staged and published. For a copy of The Inspector General, presented to the emperor, Gogol received a diamond ring.

Gogol's early work, if you look at it from a spiritual point of view, opens up from a side unexpected for ordinary perception: it is not only a collection of funny stories in the folk spirit, but also an extensive religious teaching in which there is a struggle between good and evil, and good invariably wins, and sinners are punished (the stories “The Night Before Christmas”, “Viy”, “Sorochinskaya Fair”, etc.). The same struggle, but in a more refined form, sometimes with invisible evil, is also revealed in the St. Petersburg stories; it appears as a direct defense of Orthodoxy in Taras Bulba.

In addition, Gogol speaks out in “Taras Bulba” against the betrayal of Andriy, the financial power of the Jew Yankel, and the Poles. Here he advocates the annexation of Ukraine to Russia, believing that only in Russia will she be happy.

3.3 Second half of life and creativity

Conventionally, Gogol's life and work can be divided into two periods - the year 1840 will be the boundary.

Second half of life and the writer’s creativity is marked by his focus on eradicating shortcomings in himself - and thus, he follows the inner path. “It is impossible to talk and write about the highest feelings and movements of a person from the imagination; you need to contain at least a small grain of this within yourself - in a word, you need to become the best” (N.V. Gogol, “Author’s Confession”).

In the summer of 1840, Gogol experienced severe attacks of “nervous disorder” and “painful melancholy” abroad, and with no hope of recovery, he even wrote a spiritual will. But then a “miraculous healing” followed. A new path opened up for him. Gogol’s constant desire to improve himself as a spiritual person and the predominance of the religious direction begins. In “The History of My Acquaintance with Gogol,” Aksakov testifies: “Let them not think that Gogol changed his beliefs; on the contrary, from his youth he remained faithful to them. But Gogol constantly moved forward, his Christianity became purer, stricter; the high value of the writer’s goals clearer and the judgment on oneself more severe.”

Gogol gradually developed ascetic aspirations. In April 1840, he wrote: “I am now more suited for a monastery than for a secular life.”

At the beginning of June 1842, immediately after the publication of the first volume of Dead Souls, Gogol goes abroad and there an ascetic mood begins to dominate his life.

G. P. Galagan, who lived with him in Rome, recalled: “Gogol seemed to me very pious even then. Once all the Russians were gathering in the Russian church for an all-night vigil. I saw that Gogol also entered, but then I lost sight of him. At the end of the service, I went out into the vestibule and there, in the twilight, I noticed Gogol standing in the corner... on his knees with his head bowed during famous prayers.”

Gogol begins to read books of spiritual content, mainly patristic literature. Gogol's letters from this period contain requests for books on theology, Church history, and Russian antiquities.

Friends send him the works of the holy fathers, the works of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, St. Demetrius of Rostov, Bishop Innocent (Borisov), Christian Reading magazines. The Philokalia sent by Yazykov became one of Gogol’s reference books.

In the "Author's Confession" Gogol wrote the following about this era of his life: “I left everything modern for a while, I turned my attention to learning those eternal laws by which man and humanity in general move. Books by legislators, spiritualists and observers of human nature became my reading. Everything that expressed knowledge of people and the human soul, from the confession of a secular person to the confession of an anchorite and a hermit, occupied me, and on this road, insensitively, almost without knowing how, I came to Christ, seeing that in Him the key to the soul person."

In the winter of 1843-44. In Nice, Gogol compiled an extensive collection of extracts from the works of the holy fathers. Then he has a need to enter deeper into the prayer experience of the Church. The result of this spiritual thirst was a thick notebook of church songs and canons he copied from the service Menyas. Gogol made these extracts not only for spiritual self-education, but also for his intended literary purposes.

In January 1845, Gogol lived in Paris with Count A.P. Tolstoy. About this period he wrote: “I lived internally, as in a monastery, and in addition to that, I did not miss almost a single mass in our church.” He studies the rites of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great in Greek.

Gogol’s most famous play “The Inspector General” has a deep moral and didactic meaning, revealed by the author in “The Denouement of “The Inspector General”” (1846): “Whatever you say, the inspector who is waiting for us at the door of the coffin is terrible. As if you don’t know who this auditor is? Why pretend? The auditor is our awakened conscience, which will force us to suddenly and at once look at ourselves with all our eyes.” Nikolai Vasilyevich’s main work, the poem “Dead Souls,” has the same deep subtext. On the external level, it represents a series of satirical characters and situations, while in its final form the book was supposed to show the path to the revival of the soul of fallen man.

3.4 “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy”

At the beginning of 1845, in Paris, Gogol began working on the book “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy,” which remained unfinished and was published after his death. This work organically combines the theological and artistic sides.

The purpose of this spiritual and educational work, as Gogol himself defined it, is “to show in what completeness and inner deep connection our Liturgy is performed, to young men and people who are still beginning, who are still little familiar with its meaning.” This is one of the best examples of spiritual prose of the 19th century century.

In working on the book, Gogol used works on liturgics by ancient and modern authors, but all of them served him only as aids. The book also embodies Gogol’s personal experience, his desire to comprehend the liturgical word. “For anyone who just wants to move forward and become better,” he wrote in the “Conclusion,” it is necessary to attend the Divine Liturgy as often as possible and listen attentively: it insensitively builds and creates a person. And if society has not yet completely disintegrated, if people do not breathe complete, irreconcilable hatred among themselves, then the hidden reason for this is the Divine Liturgy, reminding a person of holy, heavenly love for his brother.”

By the time the writer traveled to the Holy Land in February 1848, the first edition of the book had already been completed. Then Gogol repeatedly returned to the manuscript, revised it, but never managed to publish it. Unlike the second volume of “Dead Souls,” which everyone was waiting for, few people knew about “Reflections” - Gogol wanted to release this book without his name, in a small format, put it on sale at a low price - to make this work truly popular, accessible for learning and the benefits of all classes.

In parallel with his new works, Gogol is working intensively on the 2nd volume of Dead Souls. The writing progressed slowly. He now cannot imagine continuing the poem without first educating his soul. In the summer of 1845, a crisis broke out in Gogol, which later turned his entire worldview upside down. He writes a spiritual testament, later included in the book “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” and burns the manuscript of the second volume.

We actually have no other information about the burning itself, except for that reported by Nikolai Vasilyevich himself in the last of “Four letters to different persons regarding “Dead Souls,” published in the same book. “It was not easy to burn away five years of work, produced with such painful stress, where every line was a shock, where there was a lot of what constituted my best thoughts and occupied my soul.” In the same letter, Gogol explains the reason for the burning of his work: “The appearance of the second volume in the form in which it was, did more harm than good.”

“Reflections on the Divine Liturgy” was first published in St. Petersburg in 1857 in a small format, as Gogol wanted, but with all this his second wish was not fulfilled - to publish it without the name of the author.

Since 1920, for seven decades, this book has not been republished; only narrow specialists and the writer’s biographers knew about it. Little known even today are his spiritual works “The Rule of Living in the World,” “Bright Sunday,” “The Christian Moves Forward,” and “A Few Words about Our Church and the Clergy.” These works of Gogol are a real storehouse of spiritual Orthodox wisdom, still hidden under a bushel.

3.5 Last years of life

The last decade of Gogol’s life passed under the sign of an ever-increasing craving for monasticism. Without giving monastic vows of chastity, non-covetousness and obedience, he embodied them in his lifestyle. He himself did not have his own home and lived with friends, today with one, tomorrow with another. He refused his share of the estate in favor of his mother and remained a beggar, while helping poor students. His personal property remaining after Gogol’s death consisted of several tens of silver rubles, books and old things, while the fund he created “to help poor young people engaged in science and art” amounted to more than 2.5 thousand rubles.

Near-death illness, burning of manuscripts and Christian death of N.V. Gogol contains a lot of mysterious things. The events of the last days of Gogol’s life came as a complete surprise to many of his contemporaries. He lived in the house of gr. A.P. Tolstoy on Nikitsky Boulevard. It occupied the front part of the lower floor: two rooms with windows facing the street (the count's chambers were located upstairs).

Gogol's physical condition in last days life deteriorated sharply: eyewitnesses noticed fatigue, lethargy and even exhaustion in him, partly an exacerbation of the disease, partly the effect of fasting. According to gr. Tolstoy knows that Gogol ate food twice a day: in the morning bread or prosphora, which he washed down linden tea, in the evening, gruel, sago or prunes. But a little bit of everything. The most famous Moscow doctors were invited to see him, but he flatly refused treatment. Gogol received unction and received Holy Communion.

February 21\March 4, 1852 at about 8 a.m., N.V. Gogol introduced himself about the Lord. His last words were “How sweet it is to die!”

4. Conclusion. Gogol and Orthodoxy

Indeed, “in the moral field, Gogol was brilliantly gifted; he was destined to abruptly turn all Russian literature from aesthetics to religion, to move it from the path of Pushkin to the path of Dostoevsky. All the features that characterize the “great Russian literature” that has become world literature were outlined by Gogol: its religious and moral system, its citizenship and public spirit, its combative and practical character, its prophetic pathos and messianism, the broad road and the open spaces of the world begin with Gogol.”

Gogol expressed his love for Russia, its monarch and monarchical statehood both in his artistic works and in spiritual prose, and in particular in “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends.” In his works, Gogol continued to develop the idea of a Third Rome and called on his compatriots to return to the ideals of Holy Rus'. Unfortunately, until recently, the monarchical and patriotic position of Nikolai Vasilyevich remained unclear, and in the minds of most people, Gogol is presented as a satirist, a critic of serfdom and the founder of the natural school. Even such an outstanding Russian and philosopher as V.V. Rozanov, did not fully understand the essence of the main provisions and ideas of Nikolai Vasilyevich. At the same time, at the end of his life, having witnessed the destroyed Russian kingdom, he notes in “Apocalypse of Our Time” the following: “This terrible little crest was right.” This can probably be explained by the fact that Rozanov saw in this “apocalypse” an accurate prophecy and Gogol’s correctness. In a sense, Gogol can be considered a writer of the apocalyptic era. And maybe only today can we truly get closer to a true understanding of Nikolai Vasilyevich.

Gogol’s main idea was a critique of the Westernizing period of Russian history, expressed in criticism of St. Petersburg as a “city of “dead souls,” officials who do not know or understand their own country, robots and dolls living without soil and soul, where there is virtually no spiritual personality.

The question of patriotic service to Russia, the honest, conscientious performance by every Russian of his official duties worried Gogol all his life. “The thought of service,” Gogol admitted in the Author’s Confession, “never disappeared from me.” In another place he writes the following: “I did not know even then that a lot of love for her, which would have swallowed up all other feelings, you need to have a lot of love for a person in general and become true Christian, in every sense of the word. And therefore, it is no wonder that, not having this in myself, I was not able to serve as I wanted, despite the fact that I really burned with the desire to serve honestly.”

In “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” Gogol acts as a supporter of the original principles of Holy Rus' and calls on his compatriots to realize their unique and national essence, the historical vocation of Russia, the uniqueness of its culture and literature. Just like the Slavophiles, Nikolai Vasilyevich was convinced of the special mission of Russia, which, according to him, feels God’s hand on everything that comes true in it, and senses the approach of another kingdom. This special mission of Russia was associated with Orthodoxy as the most true, undistorted (unlike Catholicism or Protestantism) Christianity.

Reflecting on the foundations of Russian civilization, Gogol special attention pays attention to the role of the Orthodox Church in the life of Russia, arguing that the Church should not exist separately from the state; without a monarch, its full existence is impossible. He agreed with A.S. Pushkin is that “a state without a full-fledged monarch is an automatic machine: many, many, if it achieves something that is not worth a damn. A state without a full-fledged monarch is the same as an orchestra without a conductor.”

Gogol himself in “Correspondence with Friends” calls on his compatriots, who have become cosmopolitan intellectuals, to realize themselves, their national soul, their Russian essence and their Orthodox worldview, by doing what he worked so hard to achieve all his life. “The whole disorder of Russian life, quite justifiably,” Gogol believes, “comes from the fact that the Russian educated class, after the reforms of Peter I, ceased to appreciate that great, spiritual treasure that the Russian people have always valued, Orthodoxy.” He urged the intelligentsia, so that they could understand their country, to “travel around Russia,” because this layer, living in the country, “does not know it.” “Great ignorance of Russia in the midst of Russia,” such is the disappointing verdict of the Russian writer and patriot, which is completely relevant and topical today.

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