Belinsky's letter to Gogol

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

You are only partly right when you saw an angry person in my article: this epithet is too weak and tender to express the state into which reading your book led me. But you are not at all right, attributing this to your, really not quite flattering, reviews about the admirers of your talent. No, there was a more important reason. The offended feeling of pride can still be endured, and I would be smart enough to keep silent about this subject if the whole matter was only in it. But it is impossible to endure the offended sense of truth, human dignity. It is impossible to remain silent when, under the cover of religion and the protection of the whip, lies and immorality are preached as truth and virtue.

… I am not able to give you the slightest idea of the indignation that aroused your book in all noble hearts, or that cry of wild joy that from afar, when it appears, all your enemies - both literary (Chichikovs, Nozdrevs, Governor and etc.) and not literary, whose names you know. You yourself see well that even people, apparently, of the same spirit with its spirit, have abandoned your book. If it were written as a result of a deeply sincere conviction, then it would have to make the same impression on the public …

… You have not noticed that Russia sees its salvation not in mysticism, not in asceticism, not in pietism, but in the successes of civilization, the enlightenment of humanity. She needs not sermons (she had heard them enough!), Not prayers (enough she repeated them!), common sense and justice, and strict, if possible, their implementation … These are the questions that Russia is anxiously busy with in its apathetic half-sleep! And at this time, the great writer, who with his marvelous artistic creations so powerfully contributed to the self-consciousness of Russia, giving her the opportunity to look at herself as if in a mirror, appears with a book in which, in the name of Christ and the Church, teaches the barbarian landowner to profit from the peasants more money, scolding them with "unwashed snouts"!.. And that shouldn't have made me indignant ?! Yes, if you found an attempt on my life, and then I would no more hate you for these shameful lines … And after that you want to believe the sincerity of the direction of your book ?! Not! If you were really filled with the truth of Christ, and not the teachings of the devil, you would not write to your adept from the landowners at all. You would write to him that since his peasants are his brothers in Christ, and as a brother cannot be a slave to his brother, he must either give them freedom, or at least use their labor as favorably as possible for them, realizing himself, in the depths of his conscience, in a false position towards them … And what about your idea of the national Russian court and reprisals, the ideal of which you found in the words of a stupid woman from Pushkin's story and according to whose reason, supposedly, should flog both the right and the guilty? Yes, this is often done in our country, although most often only the right is flogged, if he has nothing to buy off - to be guilty without guilt. And such and such a book could be the result of a difficult internal process, high spiritual enlightenment ?! It can't be!.. Or you are sick, and you need to hurry to get treatment; or - I dare not finish my thought …

A preacher of the whip, an apostle of ignorance, a champion of obscurantism and obscurantism, a panegyrist of Tatar mores - what are you doing ?! Take a look at your feet: after all, you are standing over the abyss … That you rely on such a teaching on the Orthodox Church - I still understand: she has always been a support for the whip and a saint of despotism … But why did you mix Christ, Christ, here ?! What have you found in common between Him and some, let alone the Orthodox Church? He was the first to proclaim to people the teaching of freedom, equality and brotherhood, and he sealed martyrdom, confirmed the truth of his teaching. And it was only as long as the salvation of people, until it organized itself into a church and accepted the principle of orthodoxy as its foundation. The Church, on the other hand, was a hierarchy, therefore, a champion of inequality, a flatterer of power, an enemy and a persecutor of brotherhood between people - which it continues to be to this day. But the meaning of Christ's teaching was revealed by the philosophical movement of the last century. And that is why some Voltaire, who used a weapon of mockery to put out the fires of fanaticism and ignorance in Europe, is, of course, more a son of Christ, flesh of flesh and bone of His bones, than all your priests, bishops, metropolitans and patriarchs, Eastern and Western. Don't you know that? But all this is now not news at all for every schoolboy …

Therefore, did you, the author of The Inspector General and Dead Souls, really, sincerely, from your heart, sang a hymn to the vile Russian clergy, placing it immeasurably higher than the Catholic clergy? Suppose you do not know that the Catholic clergy was something, while Orthodox clergy have never, nothing and nowhere, except as a servant and slave of the secular power. But do you really not really know that our clergy are in universal contempt for Russian society and the Russian people? About whom do the Russian people tell obscene tales? About the priest, I'll get it, the priest's daughter, the priest's worker. Whom do the Russian people call: foolish breed, colukhans, stallions? - Popov. Isn't there a priest in Russia, for all Russians, a representative of gluttony, avarice, groveling, shamelessness? And as if you don't know all this? Weird! In your opinion, the Russian people are the most religious people in the world? - Lie! The basis of religiosity is pietism, reverence, fear of God. A a Russian man pronounces the name of God while scratching his ass. He says about the icon: "It is good to pray, it is not good to cover the pots." Take a closer look, and you will see that this is by nature a deeply atheistic people. There is still a lot of superstition in it, but there is not even a trace of religiosity. Superstition passes with the success of civilization, but religiosity often gets along with it. A living example is France, where even now there are many sincere, fanatical Catholics between enlightened and educated people, and where many, having abandoned Christianity, still stubbornly stand for some kind of God. The Russian people are not like that: mystical exaltation is not at all in their nature. He has too much against this common sense, clarity and positivity in his mind: this is perhaps what constitutes the enormity of his historical destinies in the future. Religiousness did not take root in him even to the clergy, for several individual, exceptional personalities, distinguished by their quiet, cold, ascetic contemplation, prove nothing. The majority of our clergy have always been distinguished only by thick bellies, theological pedantry and wild ignorance. It is a sin to accuse him of religious intolerance and fanaticism. Rather, he can be commended for exemplary indifference in the matter of faith. Religiousness manifested itself in our country only in schismatic sects, so opposite in spirit to the mass of the people and so insignificant in number before it.

I will not dwell on your praise of the love affair of the Russian people with their bishops. I’ll say it bluntly: this dithyramb didn’t find sympathy in anyone and dropped you in the eyes of even people who are otherwise very close to you in their direction … I will only note one thing: when a European, especially a Catholic, is possessed by a religious spirit, he becomes an accuser of an unjust government, like the Jewish prophets who denounced the lawlessness of the mighty of the earth. We have the opposite, a person (even a decent one) will suffer a disease known among psychiatrists under the name mania religiosa, he will immediately smoke more to the earthly God than to the heavenly one, and even more than enough that the heavenly and earthly God would like to reward him for slavish diligence, yes sees that this would compromise himself in the eyes of society … The beast is our believing brother, a Russian man!

I also recalled that in your book you affirm as a great and indisputable truth that literacy is not only not useful to the common people, but positively harmful. What can I tell you about this? May your Byzantine God bless you for this Byzantine thought. And did you know, betraying such an idea on paper, what you were doing?

… I can tell you, not without a certain sense of self-satisfaction, that it seems to me that I know the Russian public a little. Your book frightened me with the possibility of bad influence on the government, on censorship, but not on the public. When a rumor spread in St. Petersburg that the government wanted to print your book in many thousands of copies and sell it at the lowest price, my friends became discouraged. But then I told them that, in spite of everything, the book will not be successful and will soon be forgotten. Indeed, she is now more remembered by all the articles about her than by herself. Yes! The Russian person has a deep, although not yet developed, instinct for truth!

Your appeal, perhaps, could have been sincere. But the thought - to bring your appeal to me to the attention of the public - was the most unfortunate. The days of naive piety are long gone for our society as well.

… As for me personally, I repeat to you: you were mistaken, considering my article an expression of annoyance for your review of me as one of your critics. If only it would anger me, I would only say this with annoyance, and I would express myself calmly and impartially about everything else. And it is true that your review of former admirers is doubly bad … Before me was your book, not your intentions. I have read and re-read it a hundred times, and yet I have found nothing in it except what is written in it. And what is in her deeply angered and insulted my soul.

If I had given full vent to my feeling, this letter would soon turn into a thick notebook. I never thought of writing to you about this subject, although I painfully desired this, and although you gave everyone in print the right to write to you without ceremony, keeping in mind one truth … my nature. Let you or time itself prove to me that I am mistaken in my conclusions - I will be the first to rejoice at this, but I will not regret what I told you. This is not about my or your personality, but about a subject that is much higher not only me, but even you. And here is my last, concluding word: if you had the misfortune to repudiate your truly great works with proud humility, now you must repudiate your last book with sincere humility and atone for the grave sin of publishing it into the world with new creations that would remind your old ones. …

Salzbrunn