Why you should keep your personal diary (not a blog). "Diary of one week". The problem of Radishchev's artistic method

01.10.2019

"Diary of one week". The problem of Radishchev's artistic method

A small psychological study called “The Diary of One Week” is one of the most mysterious works of Radishchev: the time of creation of this text, which was not published during Radishchev’s lifetime, has not yet been precisely established. The range of proposed dates is very large: G.P. Makogonenko refers the “Diary” to 1773; P.N. Berkov and L.I. Kulakov - by the beginning of the 1790s. ; G.Ya. Galagan - by 1801 The most likely in this chronological framework is the beginning of the 1790s. - not only because this date is most convincingly argued, and this version is supported by most researchers, but also because the plot situation of the "Diary" is clearly correlated with the initial situation of "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow", only in the opposite sense. If the traveler leaves alone, leaving in Petersburg friends whom he yearns for, then the hero of the Diary will be abandoned in Petersburg by his departed friends; with him in reality, the traveler's nightmare comes true, which visited him in the chapter "Departure", cf .:
"Travel"
After supper with my friends, I lay down in the wagon.<...>It is difficult to part, even if for a short time, with those who we need for every moment of our existence.<...>One, abandoned, a hermit in the midst of nature! I trembled. “Unfortunate,” I cried, “where are you?<...>Was the gaiety you tasted a dream and a dream? (28).
“Diary of one week”
They left, the friends of my soul left at eleven o'clock in the morning.<...>as soon as sleep closed my eyes, my friends presented themselves to my eyes, and although I slept, I was happy all night<...> (262). <...>how can a person be alone, be a hermit in nature! (267).
“One Week Diary” is entirely devoted to the analysis of the state of mind of a person who parted with friends during their ten-day absence. The psychological study begins with a mention of the departure of friends, and ends with a message about their arrival: “The carriage has stopped, they are getting out, oh joy! oh bliss! my beloved friends!.. They!.. They!..” (268). Eleven diary entries, titled days of the week, provide very little information about the author's personality and the circumstances of his life. Of these, it can only be established that he lives in St. Petersburg and occupies a fairly high position in the official hierarchy: “<...>position requires my departure - it is impossible, but from this<...>depends on the well-being or harm of your fellow citizens - in vain” (264). That is, the subject of the narrative in the "Diary" is the same generalized laboratory model as the hero-traveler, a person in general, an experimental figure, in whose place any individuality can be put.
But if the hero-traveler is endowed with a unity of heart and mind, then in the hero of the "Diary" the emotional principle prevails. The feeling dissected in the Diary is ambiguous. It has two modifications: it is love for friends and an acute sense of loneliness, into which it turns due to their absence. The main thing in the psychological analysis of the "Diary" is the proof of the social nature of what is apparently the most intimate and private feeling, since both love and loneliness are possible only in the context of a person's social ties.
“The Diary of a Week” is a polemical work, and the object of the controversy is the educational concept of J.-J. Rousseau, refuted by Radishchev with the same measure of passion with which he shared his concept of the social contract. In general terms, the educational concept of Rousseau, set out in his treatise novel “Emil, or on Education” (1762), was reduced to the thesis of the destructive influence of civilization and society on the natural kindness of a person and the proof of the need for his upbringing in solitude in the bosom of nature; hence the famous Rousseauist call “Back to nature”. It is easy to see that this concept of educating a private person is completely alternative to the ideology of Fenelon's political-state educational novel, which deals with the upbringing of a monarch in an educational journey that introduces the future ideal ruler to examples of different systems of statehood. And along this conceptual line, a deep connection between the “Diary” and “Journey” is revealed, since in the latter Radishchev projected the ideology and methodology of Fenelon’s educational novel onto the system of social ties and the emotional and intellectual level of life of a private person.
Rousseau's main thesis is refuted in the "Diary": man is by nature good, evil civilization and society make him evil; rid a man of their influence and he will return to his natural state of kindness. It is in this situation of social isolation that Radishchev places his hero, and the psychological analysis of the Diary proves with mathematical inevitability the opposite result of such an experiment. A kind and loving hero, deprived of their company, begins to experience evil vindictive feelings. The moods of the days of the week, flowing from one emotion to another, imperceptibly transform love, the most humane of all human feelings, into a state close to hatred:
Cruel, have your greetings, affection, friendship, love been a deceit for so many years in a row? —<...>But they don't come—let them leave—let them come when they want! I will accept this with indifference, for their coldness I will pay with coldness, for their absence with absence<...>. Let them forget; I will forget them... (267).
A diary form of narration in the first person, aesthetically close to the narrative style of travel notes, the typological commonality of the images of analyst characters, one of which is predominantly rational and the other emotional, complementary social positions of these characters, symmetrical mirror plot situations in which the wanderer character is placed , who left his friends for a while, and the homebody hero, temporarily abandoned by his friends - all these points of intersection of "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" and "Diary of a Week" allow us to consider them as a kind of dilogy, proving the same humane sentimentalist thesis: the need for a person to live together.
The "Diary of a Week" in its aesthetic outlines completes the methodological image of Radishchev's work as a consistent supporter of sensationalist philosophy and a sentimentalist artist. The genre forms of his artistic and journalistic prose are a letter, autobiographical notes, travel notes, a diary; the absolute predominance of first-person narrative forms; a typological conflict situation that brings together a private person and society in opposition; the pathetic and emotionally rich stylistic manner of narration - all this testifies precisely to the sentimentalist foundations of Radishchev's artistic method. The fact that in most of his works Radishchev focuses on the social aspects of the typological sentimentalist conflict and the social foundations of a person's emotional life allows us to define the originality of his creative method with the concept of "sociological sentimentalism".
However, there are more similarities than differences between the sociological and psychological varieties of Russian sentimentalism, and we have already had occasions to be convinced of the unanimity of Radishchev and Karamzin. In this regard, the “Diary of a Week” provides another convincing argument in favor of the opinion about the unity of the methodological foundations of the work of the sociologist-sentimentalist Radishchev and the psychologist-sentimentalist Karamzin, who have long been considered in literary criticism as aesthetic and ideological antagonists.
One of the arguments in favor of dating the "Diary of a Week" in 1791, cited by P. N. Berkov, connects the incentive to write the "Diary" with the publication of the first of the Russian traveler's letters; the researcher drew attention to the tonal and structural coincidence of the first phrases of Karamzin's letter and Radishchev's "Diary", cf .:
Karamzin: I broke up with you, dear, I broke up! My heart is attached to you with all my most tender feelings, and I am constantly moving away from you and will continue to move away!
Radishchev: They left, the friends of my soul left at eleven o'clock in the morning ... Following the receding carriage, I directed my eyes falling against my will to the ground. The rapidly spinning wheels dragged me with their whirlwind after them - why, why didn't I go with them? .. (262).
This associative connection of the "Diary of a Week" which was not published during Radishchev's lifetime with two major phenomena of Russian artistic prose at the end of the 18th century. emphasizes the deeply symbolic nature of the natural internal correlation between travel in Russia and travel in the countries of Western Europe. At the moment when Radishchev is forcibly excluded from Russian literature, and a censorship political ban is imposed on his name and book, Karamzin enters literature, picking up the tradition of travel literature and keeping the associative memory of his predecessor by the very title of his first book. “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” published in 1790 was continued by the publication of “Letters of a Russian Traveler”, which began in 1791.

The time of writing this work is still controversial, since it was published after the death of the author, in 1811, without a date. The manuscript has also not survived. The most convincing of all dates is 1773, proposed by G. A. Gukovsky and later by G. P. Makogonenko. "The Diary of a Week" in genre and content is one of the earliest examples of sentimental literature in Russia. It consists of eleven short lyrical entries filled with the author's sorrowful lamentations about the departure of his friends from St. Petersburg. For readers who are accustomed to judging Radishchev's work by his Journey, by his journalism, The Diary of a Week may seem alien among the sharply political works of the writer. But such an opinion is erroneous. For a correct understanding of the Diary, one should remember the special high importance that the educators of the 18th century, including Radishchev, attached to friendship. Radishchev, like Rousseau, Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach, is distinguished by a deep faith in the social possibilities of man, inherent in him by nature itself. Among social relations, an important place was given to friendship, the ability of people to unite not on the basis of blood relationship, but on the basis of mutual sympathy, similar thoughts and feelings. According to Rousseau, friendship is "the most sacred of all treaties". Holbach considered it one of the most important social unions. Friends, he wrote, "should show love, fidelity and trust in mutual relations ... the ability to keep secrets, console each other."

These qualities are endowed with the hero of the "Diary of one week." He is deeply attached to his friends. It is hard for him to return to the empty house after their departure. Habitual activities become uninteresting, food loses its taste. But on the other hand, the return of friends, which is reported in the last entry, gives an unforgettable feeling of happiness and fullness of being: “The carriage has stopped, - they are leaving, - oh joy! O bliss! my beloved friends!.. They!.. They!..»

“Private” virtues, including friendship, in the minds of the enlighteners not only do not oppose the public, but are considered their support and even a school. “Always exercise in private virtues,” wrote Radishchev, “so that you can be rewarded with the fulfillment of public ones” (T. 1. S. 294).

In the "Diary of a Week" the behavior of a person in society has not yet been shown, but his soul is revealed, capable of selfless affection, and this is a reliable guarantee of future civic virtues. Such an understanding of friendship helps to understand the connection between the "Diary" and other works of Radishchev, primarily with "The Life of Fyodor Vasilyevich Ushakov."

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outlook

Radishchev belonged to the most radical wing of the European enlightenment. While still studying at the University of Leipzig, where he was sent along with other Russian students to study law, Radishchev became acquainted with the works of Montesquieu, Mably, Rousseau. He was particularly impressed by the book of the French materialist philosopher Helvetius "On the Mind". He was imbued with the spirit of the Enlightenment and himself became one of its brightest representatives. There were bold denunciators of the landlord's malevolence and bureaucratic arbitrariness even before Radishchev. Suffice it to recall Sumarokov, Novikov, Fonvizin. The peculiarity of Radishchev's enlightenment was that he was able to connect these phenomena with the political system of Russia and its social system - with autocracy and serfdom - and issued a call for their overthrow. Radishchev expounded his views in his book Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow (1790), remarkable for its depth and boldness. The book was immediately noticed by the authorities. One of its copies fell into the hands of Catherine II. The Empress was horrified. “The writer ... - she wrote, - is filled and infected with the French delusion, looking for ... everything possible to diminish the respect for the authorities ... to bring the people into indignation against the bosses and bosses.”

The author had to burn most of the edition, as a result of which the Journey became a bibliographic rarity. On June 30, 1790, the writer was arrested. An investigation has begun. In answering the proposed questions, Radishchev adhered to well-thought-out tactics. In explanations concerning the content of the Journey, he sought, as far as possible, to soften the accusatory and revolutionary nature of the work. Despite this, the criminal chamber sentenced the writer to death "by decapitation." For more than five weeks, Radishchev was in the position of a suicide bomber, but then Catherine II replaced the execution with a ten-year exile in Siberia, in the Ilim prison. To the widower Radishchev, along with his children, came the sister-in-law E. V. Rubanovskaya, who became his wife.

In 1797, after the death of Catherine II, Radishchev was allowed to leave Siberia and settle in the Nemtsovo estate in the Kaluga province, under constant police supervision. The link continued. In 1801, Alexander I allowed Radishchev to return to St. Petersburg and even allowed him to work on the commission for drafting new legislation. Radishchev energetically set to work. Among the new resolutions, they were offered the release of the peasants and the prohibition of selling them into recruits. Radishchev's independent position irritated his immediate superior, Count P.V. Zavadovsky, who hinted to the writer that he might repeat his Siberian exile. This threat had a hard effect on the writer. Seeing the complete collapse of his hopes, he took poison and died on September 11, 1802.

Radishchev begins in Russian literature a glorious galaxy of writers who dared to enter into an unequal struggle against government arbitrariness. Neither the superior strength of the enemy, nor the difficult trials to which he doomed himself and those close to him could stop him. “A petty official,” Pushkin wrote about him, “a man without any power, without any support, dares to arm himself ... against Catherine ... He has neither comrades nor accomplices. In case of failure - and what success can he expect? - he alone is responsible for everything, he alone appears to be a victim of the law.

Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev

Diary of one week

Saturday

They left, the friends of my soul left at eleven o'clock in the morning ... Following the receding carriage, I directed my eyes falling against my will to the ground. The rapidly spinning wheels dragged me with their whirlwind after them - why, why didn’t I go with them?

As usual, I went to the office of my office. In vanity and care, not thinking about myself, I was in oblivion, and the absence of my friends was insensitive to me. The second is already an hour, I'm returning home; heart beats with joy; kiss my beloved. The doors open and no one comes out to meet me. O my beloved! you left me. - Everywhere is empty - sweet silence! luscious solitude! with you I once sought refuge; in sorrow and despondency you were companions, when the mind strove to pursue the truth; you are annoying me now! -

I could not be alone, I ran headlong out of the house and, wandering around the city for a long time without any intention, finally returned home in sweat and fatigue. I hurriedly got into bed, and - oh, blissful insensitivity! as soon as sleep closed my eyes, my friends presented themselves to my eyes, and although I slept, I was happy all night: for I talked with you.

Sunday

The morning passed in the usual bustle.

I am leaving the yard, I am going to the house where I usually go with my friends. But - and here I am alone. My sadness, pursuing me incessantly, took away from me even the necessary greeting of decency, made me almost deaf and dumb. With a burden, inexpressible to myself and to those with whom I spoke, I passed the time of dinner; hurry home. – Home? You will be alone again - let alone, but my heart is not empty, and I do not live one life, I live in the soul of my friends, I live a hundredfold.

This thought encouraged me, and I returned home with a cheerful spirit.

But I am alone - my bliss, the memory of my friends was instantaneous, my bliss was a dream. My friends are not with me, where are they? Why did they leave? Of course, the warmth of their friendship and love was so small that they could have left me! - Unfortunate! what did you pronounce? Fear! Behold the word of thunder, behold the death of thy prosperity, behold the death of thy hope! - I was afraid of myself - and went to look for an instant though peace outside of my being.

Monday

Day by day my anxiety is getting worse. In one hour, a hundred enterprises will be born in the head, a hundred desires in the heart, and all disappear instantly. “Is a man so much a slave to his sensibility that even his mind hardly sparkles when she is greatly disturbed?” O proud insect! touch yourself and know that you can reason only because you feel that your reason has its beginning in your fingers and your nakedness. Be proud of your reason, but first rise up, so that the edge does not sting you and sweetness is not pleasant to you.

But where can I seek to satisfy my grief, even if it is momentary? Where? Reason speaks: in yourself. No, no, that's where I find destruction, that's sorrow, that's hell; let's go to. - My feet are becoming quieter, the procession is smoother, - let's enter the garden, the common amusement place, - run, run, unfortunate one, all your sorrow will be seen on your forehead. - Let it; - but what's the use? They will not sympathize with you. Those whose hearts sympathize with yours are absent from you. - Let's go by. -

A collection of carriages is a disgrace, Beverley is being punished, let's go in. We shed tears over the unfortunate. Maybe my sorrow will be lessened. - Why am I here? .. But the performance attracted my attention and interrupted the thread of my thoughts.

Beverley in the dungeon - oh! how hard it is to be deceived by those in whom we place all hope! - he drinks poison - what do you care? - But he himself is the cause of his disaster - who will guarantee me that I will not be my own villain? Has anyone calculated how many traps there are in the world? Has anyone measured the abyss of cunning and cunning? .. He is dying ... but he could be happy; - about! run Run. – Fortunately for me, the entangled horses in the middle of the street forced me to leave the path along which I was walking, shattered my thoughts. - returned home; the hot day, exhausting me to the extreme, made me sleep soundly.

Tuesday

I slept for a very long time - my health was almost upset. I could hardly get out of bed, - lay down again, - fell asleep, slept until almost half a day, - woke up, I could hardly raise my head, - the position requires my departure, - it’s impossible, but success or failure in office work depends on it, well-being or harm depends your fellow citizens, in vain. I was almost in such a state of insensibility that if someone came to tell me that the room in which I was lying would soon catch fire, I would not move. “It’s time for dinner,” an unexpected guest arrived. “His presence made me almost impatient. He stayed with me until the evening ... and, marvel, boredom dispersed some of my sadness - this day the Russian proverb came true with me: to beat a wedge with a wedge.

ONCE AGAIN ABOUT "ONE WEEK'S DIARY" by A.N. RADISCHEVA:

DATING, GENRE, BIOGRAPHICAL PROBLEMS

(Experience of historical and psychological reconstruction)

The question of dating Radishchev's "Diary of a Week" has been repeatedly raised in the scientific literature and to this day has not been finally resolved. Of course, such discussions are quite common in scientific life, but in this case we are dealing with a collision that is unique in many respects. For one small text, no less than seven different dates of writing were put forward with a total spread of three decades. “Diary...” turned out to be the earliest, then the latest work of Radishchev, written by him either immediately upon his return from Germany in the 1770s, or during the years of work on “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” (1780s) , then in a fortress or Siberian exile in the 1790s, then in St. Petersburg while serving in the Commission for drafting laws in the 1800s ... At the same time, the evolution of dating in a curious way reflected the change in the ideological attitudes that prevailed in society and the state.

For the first time, V.V. Kallash, who prepared the Complete Works of Radishchev in 1907. Only two years earlier, the censorship ban on Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow was finally lifted, and the revolutionary spirit of the era prompted one way or another to correlate other works of the writer with his main book and with the repressions that it brought upon him. V.V. Kallash paid attention mainly to one detail. Watching Soren's play "Beverley" in the theater and sympathizing with the hero who got into prison and took poison, the narrator exclaims: "But he himself is the cause of his disaster - who will guarantee me that I will not be my own villain." In the "Collected Works of the Remaining Works of the Late Alexander Nikolayevich Radishchev", where the "Diary" was first published, a note was made to these words: "This came true in a few years." The scientist, without hesitation, considered this note to be the author's, interpreted it as "a hint of an exile to Siberia" and dated the "Diary ..." in the 1780s.

The same fragment formed the basis of G.A. Gukovsky, who prepared the text in the 1930s for the Soviet Complete Works. However, the ideological guidelines of this publication were completely different. It was necessary to prove that it was Radishchev who was the initiator of Russian sentimentalism, and also that the evolution of the writer went from things of a chamber nature to works of a great socio-political sound. Accordingly, the time of the creation of the "Diary ..." had to be shifted to the beginning of Radishchev's literary work. G.A. Gukovsky discovered data on the staging of Beverley in St. Petersburg in 1773 and indicated, firstly, that “we have information about the staging of this play in the 80s that relates only to Moscow (apparently, outside of Moscow she was no longer running at that time)”, and secondly, that “in the language of the 18th century, the word “several” was understood more widely and, no doubt, could mean a greater number (years. - A.Z.)" . It must be said that the latest reference publications do not confirm either of these observations. However, Gukovsky, who had not yet completely broken with the traditions of academic caution, admitted that “The Diary can be dated within the range from 1773 to the middle of the 80s.” .

A more decisive position was taken by D.D. Blagoi and G.P. Makogonenko, who basically developed the theses expressed by Gukovsky. At the same time, in the book of G.P. Makogonenko, who came out after the start of the campaign against cosmopolitanism, significantly revised Gukovsky's idea about the orientation of the early Radishchev - the author of the "Diary ..." on Rousseau. According to G.P. Makogonenko, Radishchev sharply argues with the French enlightener, striving "from the standpoint of sentimentalism<...>to give a psychological justification for the inconsistency" of the Rousseauist "theory of seclusion". It must be said that Makogonenko's approach was still of a compromise nature. Highlighting the dispute between Radishchev and Rousseau, he nevertheless, as if from the opposite, recognized the significance of foreign sources for the ideological evolution of the Russian revolutionary writer. It is not surprising that almost immediately he was strictly pointed out to this.

In the introductory article to the collection “Radishchev. Articles and materials” A.V. Zapadov reproached Makogonenko for proving an “indisputable thesis” about the superiority of Radishchev over Western thinkers. XVIII century "in the wrong way" and "actually presents the work of Radishchev as a derivative of foreign ideas, only charged with the pathos of denial" . A.V. Zapadov also supported the revision of the issue of the chronology of the “Diary ...”, undertaken by P.N. Berkov and L.I. Kulakova, who, however, offered somewhat different solutions to this issue.

According to P.N. Berkov, a quote from the "Diary ...", on which all previous dates were based, was misread by his predecessors. The words “who will vouch for me that I will not be my own villain” referred, from his point of view, not to imprisonment, but to the suicide of the hero of the drama, and the note: “this came true in a few years” was made by the first publishers "Diary...". P.N. Berkov pointed to a different, in comparison with the proposed G.P. Makogonenko, Radishchev's literary source, comparing the beginning of the "Diary ..." with the first phrases of Karamzin's "Letters of a Russian Traveler" - both works open with a description of the author's experiences when parting with loved ones. A Russian author, even one as avowedly reactionary as Karamzin, was now a less compromising source of borrowings than the Western radical Rousseau. Accordingly, Berkov considered 1791 to be the most probable time for the creation of the Diary, when Radishchev, in Siberian exile, could get acquainted with A.R. Vorontsov literary novelty - the first issue of the "Moscow Journal", where Karamzin's "Journey ..." was printed.

L.I. approaches this problem somewhat differently. Kulakova, who found parallels to the "Diary ..." not in the works of other authors, but in the work of Radishchev himself, or rather, in the "testament written by him in the Peter and Paul Fortress on July 27, 1790, i.e. when Radishchev found out that he had been sentenced to death. From the point of view of the researcher, “the story was not written in the early 70s or 80s, as is usually indicated, but later, either in the fortress or in Tobolsk after the arrival of Elizaveta Vasilievna (Rubanovskaya. — A.Z.) and children or in anticipation of them. The circumstances of the creation of the "Diary ..." determine, as L.I. Kulakov, tragic intonations sounding in it. Note that the proposed P.N. Berkov and L.I. Kulakova’s dating of the “Diary...” by the time of Radishchev’s Siberian exile was also supported by Yu.M. Lotman.

In 1956, in a new, significantly expanded version of the book about Radishchev, G.P. Makogonenko, objecting to his opponents, again insisted on early dating. He managed to clarify the date of the first production of Beverley in St. Petersburg, which took place not in 1773, as was previously believed, but in 1772, which made it possible a little more, until May 1773, to shift the lower chronological boundary of the creation of this work.

However, a thaw was coming, which made it possible to see the creative evolution of Radishchev in a new light. It turned out to be possible to assume that the writer could not start, but, on the contrary, complete his creative path with a work dedicated to intimate experiences, and, moreover, that even fiery revolutionaries at the end of their life path can be characterized by confusion and despair. .

The first late dating of the "Diary ..." was proposed by V.P. Guryanov, who pointed out that not a single previously unpublished work by Radishchev written before 1790 was published in the Collected Works of 1807-1811, and most importantly, who established, based on the archive of the imperial theaters, that "Beverley" was performed in St. Petersburg in 1802. V.P. Guryanov suggested that the "Diary" was written in the last year of the writer's life and reflected the mood that led Radishchev to suicide.

Position V.P. Guryanov was strongly supported by G.Ya. Galagan, who in 1977 returned to the thesis about the reflection of Rousseau's ideas in this work. Only in her conception, the main source for Radishchev was the Confession, first published in 1782, and not Emil, as G.A. Gukovsky and G.P. Makogonenko. The late dating of the "Diary ..." was supported by N.D. Kochetkova and A.G. Tatarintsev in the recently published third volume of Dictionary of Russian Writers of the 18th Century.

R. Lazarchuk approached this issue somewhat more cautiously, comparing the “Diary ...” with the letters of Radishchev A.R. Vorontsov and the treatise “On Man, on His Mortality and Immortality” and came to the conclusion that it was written after the treatise and, accordingly, “could not have appeared before 1792. 1792-1802 - these are the chronological frames, rather indefinite, but unconditional, within which the text was created.

However, in recent decades, Western researchers have joined this discussion that has been going on for a century, putting forward new arguments. It is interesting that if Russian scientists, who considered the issue of dating the Diary ..., gradually leaned towards an ever later date, now the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction.

In 1988, T. Page published an article in which she returned to the dating of L. Kulakova and P.N. Berkov, suggesting that "Diary ..." was written during Radishchev's stay in Tobolsk, when he was waiting for the arrival of E.V. Rubanovskaya with children. According to T. Page, according to his psychological drawing, "Diary ..." is closest to the letter of Radishchev A.R. Vorontsov dated March 8, 1791, telling about the writer's joy at meeting his relatives and the despair in which he was before their arrival. The researcher believes that the form of the diary is a purely conditional frame for confessional evidence of a deep mental crisis experienced by the author. Accordingly, it is pointless to look for direct biographical evidence here, and the mention in the text of St. Petersburg cannot prove that it was there that Radishchev wrote his work, rather it testifies to the opposite: subjective state of mind.

From these positions, T. Page approaches the impressions of the hero of the "Diary ..." from visiting the "Beverley". She refers to the research of Kross, who established that this play was played in Tobolsk in 1793, and suggested that it could have been performed in 1791 during his stay in the city of Radishchev, when the Tobolsk theater had just opened. Therefore, it is not excluded that Radishchev could have seen "Beverley" in Tobolsk, although, as the researcher emphasizes, this does not really matter for her argument. More importantly, in "Beverley" with great force it is said about the guilt of the protagonist in front of the family, whose well-being he destroyed with his bad behavior. According to Paige, these reflections must have been close to Radishchev at that time, since he was deeply distressed by the situation in which his relatives found themselves after his arrest.

In articles published in recent years, R. Baudin noted that he considers the question of the date of the text to be largely irrelevant and that disputes about the “time of writing” of the text only obscure the much more significant problem of its diegesis and internal temporality. At the same time, in a very cautious form, he nevertheless proposes to return to the early dating proposed by Gukovsky. The fact is that R. Baudin discovers in the “Diary ...” traces of the influence of Lavater’s “Secret Diary of an Observer of Oneself” first published in Leipzig in 1771, just when Radishchev was studying at the university there . According to the scientist, this book, which became one of the earliest examples of the diary genre, could serve as a model for Radishchev after his return to Russia. This hypothesis, put forward in a publication that appeared quite recently, seemed to close the circle of the history of the study of the issue, returning to the original (except for V.V. Kallash) point of view.

As this brief review shows, the question of the date of the "Diary ..." cannot be considered resolved in any way. In the works of several generations of researchers, a range of data was collected with almost exhaustive completeness, allowing us to approach the study and interpretation of this enigmatic work by Radishchev, interesting thoughts, hypotheses and arguments were accumulated, many of which we still have to return to, made by - diligent assumptions. Nevertheless, it seems that not all research resources have yet been used to clarify the question of both the time of writing this work and its place in the creative evolution and biography of Radishchev.

Further study of the problem can be based on two complementary approaches. First of all, it is required to systematize all the details of the text that give rise to any kind of chronological timing, to establish the possible spread of dating that each of them allows, and to try to reduce the results obtained into a single and, as far as possible, consistent construction. However, for a correct interpretation of the biographical data contained in the "Diary ...", it is necessary to more carefully consider the combination of documentary and fictional principles in the text. Obviously, the answer to this question is closely related to the problem of dating.

Typologically, it is possible to distinguish between three possibilities for interpreting the measure of the documentary nature of the Diary ..., between which, of course, various kinds of transitional forms are possible:

— the artistic design of the text consisted in a more or less deep creative processing of the author's original diary, which reflected the true events recorded and described as they lived;

— the narrative is a kind of memoir in the form of a diary, that is, we are talking about a real biographical experience, which, however, could be described and comprehended from an arbitrarily significant time distance with a possible retrospective projection into the text of the actual details of the latest origin;

— The Diary... is an entirely fictional work, which, of course, can be based on certain prototypical facts and events, but excludes direct correlations between the text and non-textual biographical empiricism.

Apparently, the hypothesis about the actual diary origin of this work (of course, if we are not talking about the real history of the text, for the reconstruction of which there are no data, but about genre typology) can be discarded immediately. The constitutive feature of the diary as a genre is that its author makes notes without knowing what will happen next. These entries can, of course, be subject to editorial revision, including those associated with the intention to offer them to one or another circle of readers, however, any reductions, clarifications and additions must preserve this cumulative structure. If the text is reorganized on the basis of a teleological composition organized from the final point, then it loses its constructive connection with the original diary, that is, it becomes a work of a different genre.

Meanwhile, "The Diary of a Week" has a distinct and well-thought-out compositional structure, unfolding from "Left, they left" at the beginning of the first entry to "They! .. They! .." at the end of the last. Radishchev leads his hero from the starting point to the final point of the story through the entire set of experiences that accompany separation - despair, hope, bitterness and joy of expectation, a feeling of abandonment and loneliness, giving way to the exultation of finding. In addition, he introduces into this very small text a significant amount of psychological and philosophical observations based on introspection and intense reflection on one's own feelings.

As a matter of fact, the thesis that “The Diary of One Week” is a work of art became generally accepted after the works of G.A. Gukovsky, who wrote in his now classic article “Radishchev as a Writer” about the “Diary of a Week” as an “imitation of a genuine human document”, creating a kind of “autobiographical illusion” . T. Page refers to this position of Gukovsky, noting without bewilderment that researchers who share this approach, at the same time, are looking for in the Diary ... a reflection of the real circumstances of Radishchev's biography. From her point of view, "It is methodologically unreasonable to point to biographical details in a text that you consider to be entirely artistic in nature."

Such a dichotomy is rejected by R. Bodin, rightly, in our opinion, noting that the “aesthetics of sentimentalism” “just tried to obscure the boundary between the documentary and artistic principles in favor of logic, which allows the author to truly share his affective an experience". Therefore, from his point of view, the notions that “the interpretation of a text can vary significantly depending on whether the text is documentary and artistic” are theoretically untenable.

Meanwhile, the quasi-documentary nature of European sentimental literature, noted by Gukovsky, a significant part of whose masterpieces, from Clarissa to The Sufferings of Young Werther and Sentimental Journey, were presented to the reader as stories about real events and collections of genuine documents, just makes interpretation directly dependent on the pragmatics of the text. It is about this, with the depth and sharpness of theoretical thought characteristic of him, that Rousseau speaks in the second preface to The New Eloise.

Obviously, the effect of literary imitation (unless, of course, it is an open stylization) is determined by the readiness of readers to accept it as the original. We know to what extent the audience XVIII - early XIX century was prone to naive reading, not distinguishing between empirical reality and fiction, and sometimes the tradition of such reading retained authority for many generations of researchers.

Thus, Karamzin’s “Letters from a Russian Traveler” for more than a hundred years was considered a collection of real letters sent to his friends from abroad, and for almost a hundred more - an accurate reflection of his real impressions abroad.

Yu.M. Lotman showed how Karamzin addressed in some fragments of the "Letters ..." simultaneously to different groups of readers, each of which had to interpret the text in accordance with the level of their awareness of its prototypical basis. Karamzin considered himself entitled to introduce this or that share of fiction into the text, but only to the extent that this fiction did not violate the general feeling of the documentary nature of the text - he was convinced that the text would “work” only if the reader was able to perceive it as a story about genuine impressions and really experienced emotions.

From this perspective, it is clear that the limits of a text's admissible fictionality are determined by its pragmatics - the more the intended readers know about the circumstances of the author's life, the less he can allow himself to fiction without undermining the "autobiographical illusion".

Karamzin's letters, written for publication in the Moscow Journal, were formally addressed to a narrow circle of friends, but in reality, like most classic works of European sentimentalism, they were intended for the so-called anonymous reader. (However, it must be said that the line between these two types of audience was not too sharp in Russia at the end of the 18th century, with its more than limited readership.)

However, in that era there was also a special kind of belles-lettres, the primary audience of which should have been primarily or almost exclusively people personally known to the author or even intimately close to him. Here, the "implicit reader", using the typology of V. Iser, was a circle of very specific people, for whom this or that work was primarily intended. Such an orientation did not always mean that the text was fundamentally unpublishable. More important was how reliable this text appeared in the eyes of the reader to whom it was addressed.

Examples of such writings are, say, Stern's "Diary for Eliza", written specifically for his last beloved Eliza Draper, or the epistolary writings of M.N. Muraviev. The most textbook example of this kind is, of course, Rousseau's "Confession", the chapters of which, as Pechorin noted, were read to the author's friends, many of whom remembered well the circumstances of his biography.

Radishchev has a number of works written with the same attitude. Thus, the literary nature of The Life of Fyodor Vasilievich Ushakov does not raise any doubts, and Radishchev himself published it, thus making it the property of the reader. At the same time, many of Radishchev's and Ushakov's classmates in Leipzig were still alive, and the author turned first of all to their common memory. In the same way, the “Life of Philaret the Merciful” written by him in the Peter and Paul Fortress was an allegorical autobiography of the author intended for his children.

One Week's Diary seems to be in the same category. We do not know if Radishchev intended to publish it, but, undoubtedly, it should have been read in the writer's inner circle. In this case, the “friends”, with the description of the separation with which the narrative begins and whose return ends, cannot be purely conventional figures, but are characters behind whom there are real prototypes who had the opportunity to compare the impressions of what was written with their own everyday life. experience. In order for such knowledgeable readers to accept and share the “autobiographical illusion” created by the author, his narrative had to be based on a factual basis known to them.

Thus, it turns out to be possible (for the time being in a preliminary order) to reject the version of the purely fictional nature of the Diary.... Radishchev could, of course, process the circumstances of his life and his own experiences, give them completeness and literary form, he could allow voluntary or involuntary chronological shifts or even elements of fiction, but he could not invent the prototypical texture of the text.

So, as a working hypothesis, we can put forward the assumption that the "Diary ..." is based on the real events of the author's life, to which he later gave a literary form. Then the problem of dating turns out to be necessary to pose, as it were, in two planes - we can talk both about the time when the work itself was written, and about the time when the events described in it took place. It is clear that, according to the biographical data reflected in the text, it is possible to date, first of all, the time of action (VD), while the basis for judgments about the time of writing (VN) these data can only serve as a basis terminus ante quem non.

More meaningful to define VN the mindset and feelings of the writer reflected in the text, what T. Page called it “a subjective state of mind”. Using the terminology introduced by the Dutch psychologists N. Fraida and B. Mesquito, one can speak of “emotional encodings and evaluations” inherent in the author, that is, culturally determined structures of the connection between the event and how it is experienced by the subject.

The sets of such "codings" and "assessments", which are in the emotional repertoire of the personality, change in the course of its development depending on the accumulated experience and external circumstances, and therefore, to a certain extent, can serve as the basis for dating texts or statements in which they are fixed.

At the same time, if a memoirist has the ability to speak openly about past events from the standpoint of emotional experience accumulated since then, then the author of a work written in the form of a diary is doomed to consciously or unconsciously transfer later encodings to an earlier period. He cannot get rid of the thoughts and moods that prompted him to take up the pen, and he is hardly able to strive for this, and at the same time, the chosen technique of narration does not allow him to establish a temporal distance between himself present and himself past. . This narrative move turns out to be highly characteristic of the Diary of a Week. Such a multi-layered structure of experiences, which have received literary embodiment here, makes this work a particularly fascinating object for historical and psychological analysis.

Let us first consider the biographical realities scattered throughout the text, giving grounds for judgments about VD.

My health is almost out of whack<...>The position requires my departure - it is impossible, but success or failure in office work depends on it, the well-being or harm of your fellow citizens depends - in vain.

Radishchev's mention of his service attracted the attention of many researchers of the "Diary ..." - from V.V. Kallash to G.Ya. Galagan. Its informational value, however, is low. The described events take place in St. Petersburg, where Radishchev served in various periods of his life: in the first half of the 1770s - in the Senate, in the second half of the 1770s - in the Commerce Collegium, in the 1780s - at the customs , in 1801-1802 - in the Commission for the drafting of laws. He was extremely zealous in all his official duties, and in the above quotation, in fact, we can talk about any of these periods. Thus, this fragment of the text allows you to establish only the initial, the widest possible chronological framework for WD: 1772 (December 16, 1771 Radishchev began to serve as a recorder in the Senate) - 1790 or 1801 - 1802. For the convenience of further presentation, we will name these two options: TD1(time before Radishchev's arrest) and TD2

(time after his return to Petersburg)

They left, my friends left at eleven o'clock in the morning ...<...>left. By whom? My friends, friends of my soul!

We learn quite a lot about close people, parting with which Radishchev describes in the Diary .... They live with him in the same house, share home meals with him, visit together. He waits for them to come back to my house on a predetermined day, but he constantly fears that they may not return, and when they are late, his fears and torments become unbearable.

As mentioned above, the question of the prototypes of the "friends of my soul" plays a decisive role in determining the relationship between fiction and documentary in the "Diary ...". If behind this formula were hidden real people to whom Radishchev's narrative was addressed and who could recognize themselves in it, then the measure of their awareness in the circumstances of the author's biography and spiritual life should have served as a natural boundary for the possible author's fiction.

G.P. Makogonenko, who paid the most attention to this issue, believed that they were talking about Alexei Kutuzov and Andrei Rubanovsky, Radishchev's classmates in Leipzig. As G.P. Makogonenko, in May 1773, all three left the service in the Senate, with Radishchev remaining in the civil service in St. Petersburg, and Kutuzov and Rubanovsky "were assigned to military units outside St. Petersburg and had to leave the capital." Before the final departure, they "left the city on their own business for a few days."

This version, however, does not stand up to scrutiny. The point is not only that we do not have any information that Rubanovsky really lived in the same house with Radishchev in the 70s (such information exists about Kutuzov), and not even that everyone who left on their business, friends return back, as is clear from the last entry in the Diary ..., in the same carriage. More significantly, the short departure of two young friends could hardly have caused a fit of despair in the twenty-three-year-old Radishchev, which would have thrown him into bed and would not have allowed him to go to the service, where his presence "depended on welfare or harm.<...>fellow citizens, and even more so to make him think about death. This kind of exaltation in the manifestation of friendly feelings is indeed characteristic of many examples of sentimentalist literature, but is completely alien to Radishchev's ardent and emotionally intense, but invariably courageous manner.

More importantly, the formulas "my friends" and "friends of my soul" are constantly found in the work and correspondence of Radishchev. The circle of these friends is subject to some changes, but invariably it is about members of his family. “My friends”, namely the two eldest sons of the writer, are dedicated to the treatise “On Man, His Mortality and Immortality”. Exiled to Siberia, Radishchev hopes to “kiss” them in the next world and tell them: “I love you as before.” In the Testament to Children, written in the Peter and Paul Fortress, and in letters, Radishchev addresses the children with the words “friends of my soul” - a coincidence with the text of the Diary ..., which L.N. Kulakov.

Returning from Siberia, Radishchev writes to his eldest sons Vasily and Nikolai about his desire to see them:

Here we are in Moscow, the dearest friends of my soul, and soon we will be at home. How painful it is for me to be so far from you, although we are not so far from each other as before and there is hope of seeing you. Oh, my friends, when will we be able to enjoy this long-desired happiness, which is constantly moving away from us. You already know about our irretrievable loss. Yes, my dear friends, we have lost the beloved mother who took care of your infant years.

In letters to A.R. Vorontsov, written both in Russian and in French, Radishchev uses the formula "my friends", speaking of the sister of his late wife E.V. who came to him in Siberia. Rubanovskaya and his younger children, from her first marriage, whom she brought with her. It is very characteristic that in relation to A.M. Kutuzov, with whom he really lived for many years in the same room and to whom "The Life of Fyodor Ushakov" and "Journey ..." are dedicated, in both dedications he uses the more restrained address "dearest friend".

This not quite traditional, but characteristic of Radishchev's use of the word "friends" in relation to the closest relatives was based on two specific circumstances of his biography. First of all, this is his attitude towards children, in whom he sought to see equal personalities and whom he wanted to raise like-minded people and spiritually close people. There is no doubt that these feelings were especially exacerbated, first by early widowhood, and later by arrest and exile, which forced him to constantly return to the theme of guilt before his children, who were left without his support and guidance and with the stigma that his status inevitably imposed on them. state criminal.

An equally important factor that determined Radishchev's word usage was the ambiguous nature of his relationship with E.V. Rubanovskaya, who took care of her four orphaned nephews after the death of her older sister. Radishchev's son from his first marriage, Pavel, confidently wrote in his father's biography that he "married Elizaveta Vasilievna" in Siberia. This indication was challenged by V.P. Semennikov, and later P.N. Berkov, who argued that "no priest would dare to marry them, since for such a violation of church rules he would be threatened with defrocking."

Indeed, according to the existing legislation, such a marriage was equated with incest, but it seems that P.N. Berkov somewhat exaggerated the law-abiding and incorruptible Russian clergy. But even if Radishchev and Elizaveta Rubanovskaya were married, the status of their marriage and the children born in it remained inferior, although after the death of the writer they were still, at the request of A.R. Vorontsov and G.I. Rzhevskaya was accepted into closed educational institutions "with the name of the Radishchevs."

According to the same Pavel Radishchev, his grandfather Nikolai Afanasyevich refused to recognize his new grandchildren: “Or are you a Tatar,” he cried, when his famous son, who returned from exile, announced to him about three new children brought by him from Siberia, “ to marry your sister-in-law? If you marry a serf girl, I would accept her as my daughter.

The formula "my friends" was sufficiently capacious for Radishchev that he could apply it to all members of his complex family. At the same time, such an appeal immediately outlined a narrow circle of dedicated readers who were familiar with the intimate details of the author's biography and were able to correctly understand the meaning that he put into certain expressions. Consequently, the friends who left the author could be either E.V. Rubanovskaya, who temporarily left home with his children from his first marriage, or, after her death, grown-up children. Addressing the text to people so close to the author forces one to reject the assumptions about the fictional nature of the "Diary ..." and allows one to search for the prototypical basis of the narrative. The text addressed by Radishchev to the children and left to the children could not too clearly contradict what they knew about his biography.

This analysis allows us to narrow down the chronological framework VD1. Now as terminus post quem 1783 is the year when the first wife of Radishcheva Anna Vasilievna died and the care of the children fell on the shoulders of her younger sister. Terminus ante quem for TD1- 1790, like the chronological framework

WD2:1801-1802, so far remain unchanged.

The hot day, exhausting me to the extreme, produced a sound sleep in me.

The time of the year when the action of the "Diary ..." takes place was first noticed by G.P. Makogonenko, who also noticed that one of the days the hero of the “Diary ...” spends completely in the open air at the Volkov cemetery. Taking into account the St. Petersburg climate, it can be argued that the action of the "Diary ..." unfolds in the interval from late spring to early autumn. This timing allows us to further narrow the scope VD1, excluding the last two years. A.V. Radishcheva died unexpectedly on August 3, 1783, shortly after the birth of her son Pavel, and there is no doubt that this circumstance would have been reflected in the text of the Diary ... if the events described there had taken place in the first months after her death. On the other hand, in May 1790, Radishchev, having finished printing Journey..., distributed the book, and then prepared for the repressions that awaited him. The pastime described in the Diary is, of course, completely incompatible with this activity. It also looks quite unlikely to refer TD1 to neighboring years - 1784, when Radishchev's youngest son was not yet a year old, and 1789, when Journey ... was being censored.

This fragment forces more significant changes to be made to the possible chronological framework VD2. The fact is that the decree appointing Radishchev to the Law Drafting Commission was signed on August 6, 1801; I, from where he returned only in the second half of December. Thus, if we assume that the Diary ... tells about the departure of Radishchev's adult children from St. Petersburg, the time of action can only be attributed to the summer of 1802.

Indeed, we know that at least three of Radishchev's four children from his first marriage lived with him during those months. (We have no information about the whereabouts of his three younger children.) In a letter to his parents dated August 18, Radishchev writes that the children "show their respect to them," and Ekaterina Radishcheva made a small postscript to this letter. From her letter to her aunt, quoted by A.G. Tatarintsev, unfortunately, without indicating his exact date, we learn that in two months she "left the only time." The letter says that she "has just arrived from Rzhevskaya", but this is more about a visit than a long stay - it is unlikely that Ekaterina Alexandrovna would have gone to G.I., who lived in St. Petersburg. Rzhevskaya for eleven days, especially with all the brothers.

The memoirs of Pavel Radishchev, who was next to his father on September 11, the day of his suicide, speak of the words that shortly before his death, Radishchev said "to his gathered children." Meanwhile, the hero of the "Diary" remains alone in his house. It cannot be completely ruled out that all of Radishchev's children, including the unmarried Ekaterina, who was eighteen years old, went away together for a long time in the last months of his life, and yet this does not seem very likely. It is much easier to admit that E.V. Rubanovskaya could go on a summer trip to one of her relatives or friends, taking with her sister Darya Vasilievna, who also lived at that time in the Radishchevs' house, and all four nephews, whom she was raising at that time.

So the option TD1 turns out to be much more plausible than VD2, and the events described in the "Diary of a Week" should most likely be dated 1785-1788.

Curious as it is, the question of VD, he can only play a supporting role. Only by finding out the chronology and circumstances of the creation of the "Diary of a Week" can one understand what artistic interpretation the facts that formed its biographical basis received in it. Thus, the central problem is still VN.

It is clear that VD obviously should have preceded VN, and therefore early dates can apparently be ruled out. "Diary ..." could not have been written at least until the death of A.V. Radishcheva (nee Rubanovskaya). However, it seems that the text of this work contains a sufficient number of details in order to put forward more definite assumptions on this matter.

Let us make the reservation that we will not discuss the textual parallels between the "Diary ..." and other works of both Radishchev himself and Lavater, Rousseau or Karamzin here due to the low evidentiary value of such comparisons.

Delightful silence! luscious solitude! I once sought refuge with you; in sorrow and despondency you were companions, when the mind strove to pursue the truth; you are annoying me now!

This fragment from the first entry in the Diary... was first noticed by L.N. Kulakova, who accurately noted that Radishchev here clearly “separates “once” from “now”, as if drawing a line between the period of life when his “reason tried to pursue the truth”, and the era when hopes for reason were left behind for him . The researcher compared these words with the beginning of Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, “where at the very beginning the task of the book is declared - to reveal the truth. In a sense, everything is "Journey." is the solution to this problem."

Indeed, in the dedication "Traveling ..." Radishchev writes that "man's misfortunes come from the fact that he looks indirectly at the objects around him." Not admitting the thought that nature "concealed the truth forever," he attempted to remove "the veil from the eyes of natural feeling." A symbolic depiction of how this happens is presented, in particular, in the chapter “Spasskaya Field”, where the goddess Pravvozor, who calls herself Truth, removes the thorn in the eyes of the narrator, who imagines himself the ruler of the state, and helps him to penetrate into the present state of affairs in his possessions. .

The pathos of the uncompromising pursuit of truth is no less characteristic of Radishchev's treatise On Man, His Mortality and Immortality, which was written in Ilimsk in the first half of the 1790s. At the beginning of the treatise, he says that the forced separation from loved ones became the impetus for work, when “accidental resettlement in a distant country” deprived him, “perhaps forever, of the hope of seeing” the dearest people and prompted him to explore if “ not evidence, but at least plausibility, or a single possibility" of the upcoming meeting beyond the grave. Having gone through the whole circle of observations and conclusions accessible to the mind, Radishchev finishes the treatise, because he does not want to look like "only looking for dreams and alienating the truth."

Thus, the exile's solitude becomes a "companion" for him in a unique attempt to clarify the darkest metaphysical problems of a person's posthumous existence, relying on empirical data and rational logic available to everyone. It is very likely that it was the work on the treatise that Radishchev had in mind when he spoke of the times when solitude served as a refuge for him from “sadness and despondency” and helped his thoughts. R.M. Lazarchuk sees a reference to the problems of the treatise in the author’s address to himself contained in the “Diary ...”: “Didn’t you want to accustom yourself to death in advance?”

In any case, the formula "when the mind strove to pursue the truth" definitely indicates the author's spiritual crisis. It is still impossible to conclusively state whether the arrest and the death sentence passed on him, the death of E.V. Rubanovskaya on the way back from Siberia or some other event. Nevertheless, the words testifying that the search for truth had become a thing of the past for him could not have been written by Radishchev during the period of work on Journey ..., when he "felt strong enough in himself to resist delusion," to which all of his assemblies of mankind were subject. Meanwhile, as we tried to show above, it is precisely at this time that VD"Diary..."

Thus, it is specified terminus post quem for VN"Diary" - 1790, when the writer was arrested. This date is also confirmed by the extremely important observation of V.P. Guryanov, who noted that in the Complete Collected Works of Radishchev of 1807-1811, "none of his works were printed according to the manuscripts of the 1770-1780s" .

Radishchev recalls and describes the separation from his neighbors, which happened back in his prosperous years, after the catastrophe that broke out, projecting the psychological state and thoughts characteristic of VN, on the VD. It has already been said above that for the genre chosen by Radishchev - memoirs stylized as a diary, this kind of retrospective projection is, in essence, an inevitable device.

Nobody is driving. - Whose words can you believe when my beloved did not keep this word to me? Whom to believe in the world? Everything passed, a charming cover of comfort and fun fell; - left. By whom? My friends, friends of my soul! Cruel, have your greetings, affection, friendship, love been a deceit for so many years in a row?

G.Ya. Galagan has already drawn attention to the fact that the hero of the "Diary ..." "is not so much thinking about when his friends will return, but about whether they will return at all" . Could Radishchev have any grounds for such doubts?

In the most general form, this question can be answered in the affirmative. In itself, the living of two unmarried sisters-in-law in the house of the late sister's husband was not particularly reprehensible, however, as P.N. Berkov, “Radishchev, apparently, fed to E.V. Rubanovskaya deeper feelings even before exile". In this case, her position in his house became at least ambiguous, and she could think about a possible move to one of her many relatives, or at least Radishchev could be afraid that such thoughts would come to her mind.

However, this kind of speculation seems redundant. From the "Diary ..." we know that the hero's suspicions were unfounded and unfair, and the abyss of despair into which he plunges was soon replaced by the "joy" and "bliss" of the meeting. It is more important to think at what point in life after the arrest for Radishchev could it be relevant to interpret the slight delay of loved ones as a betrayal, in which, perhaps, their many years of deceit and pretense were manifested? Or, to put the problem more precisely, at what point in his life might it have been important for these loved ones to know that their absence could be interpreted in this way?

With such a formulation of the question, it becomes clear that the biographical circumstances and mindset of Radishchev in 1790-1791, proposed as a possible time for the creation of the "Diary ..." P.N. Berkov, L.I. Kula-kova and T. Page, do not correspond to such "emotional encodings" at all. L.I. Kulakova rightly draws attention to the fact that both the “Testament to my children” written in the Peter and Paul Fortress and the “Diary of a Week” reflected Radishchev’s despair due to separation from children, but in “Testament ...” he blames only himself and expresses the deepest remorse for his recklessness.

Radishchev had no more psychological grounds to associate separation with the possible treachery of those who had forgotten him during the years of Siberian exile, where Elizaveta Vasilievna, overcoming unthinkable obstacles, brought his two younger children, leaving the two older ones in Arkhangelsk in the care of his brother. And after the death of E.V. Rubanovskaya, when Radishchev wrote tearful letters from his Kaluga village to Emperor Paul I , begging for permission to come to Petersburg to see his older sons, the real separation was much more urgent for him than the imaginary one. It is unlikely that Radishchev could in those years strive to ensure that his children read how he, even if completely unfounded, suspected them, as well as their late teacher, of having left him.

In the last Petersburg period of Radishchev's life, his situation changed dramatically. Now he finally lives surrounded by children, but under the yoke of a constant and clearly felt threat of losing them again and forever. It was in this context that the memory of the pain of loss and the joy of meeting was to regain relevance for him.

A collection of carriages is a disgrace, Beverley is being punished, let's go in. We shed tears over the unfortunate. Maybe my sorrow will be lessened. Why am I here?.. But the performance caught my attention and interrupted the thread of my thoughts.

Beverley in the dungeon - oh! how hard it is to be deceived by those in whom we place all hope! - he drinks poison - what do you care? But he himself is the cause of his misfortune - who can guarantee me that I will not be my own villain? Has anyone calculated how many traps there are in the world? Has anyone measured the abysses of cunning and cunning?... He is dying... but he could be happy; - about! run Run .

It was this passage that mainly attracted the attention of researchers involved in the dating of the Diary of One Week. P.N. Berkov even called it "the only one" containing "reference data" for dating. Indeed, to determine VN it can give a lot, but when analyzing it, it should be borne in mind that in order to establish VD its significance is minimal, since Radishchev could well be talking about a performance that he saw long before or long after the events described took place, or even did not see it at all, being familiar with the content of the play from its publication. It is noteworthy, however, how deeply the author identifies himself with the hero of the tragedy. Before us is the ultimate degree of that psychological dimension, which N. Freida and B. Mesquito called "personal involvement"(group) . Accordingly, important for determining the chronology VN diary, it turns out, first of all, to analyze the nature of such self-identification, to understand what exactly in the content of the play turned out to be so close to the state of mind of the author. It was this task that T. Page set herself, but the solution proposed by her raises the most serious doubts.

The petty-bourgeois tragedy of the French playwright J.-B. Sorena "Beverley" was a remake of the English drama by E. Moore "The Gambler". It was translated into Russian by I.A. Dmitrevsky and withstood two editions (St. Petersburg, 1773, and M., 1787). In St. Petersburg, during Radishchev's stay there, it was performed at least six times: May 11, 1772, April 15 and October 21, 1784, May 6 and November 30, 1789 and July 16, 1802. Of course, there could be other productions that were not reflected in reference publications. Bearing in mind this, as well as the reservations made above, we note, however, that only the last of the above-mentioned representations falls on the really hot season.

The hero of Beverley, a wealthy merchant and a happy family man, becomes the victim of a diabolical intrigue started by a secret enemy who seeks to destroy him. Having gained confidence in the hero, he teaches him to play cards. Yielding to a fatal passion, Beverley ruins the family and all relatives and ends up in a debtor's prison. In despair and half-madness, he takes poison and even wants to kill his little son in order to save him from poverty and shame, but he comes to his senses in time. The family members who have remained faithful to him find a way to save Beverley from death and ruin, but for him, deliverance comes too late. He dies, repentant and asking the Lord for forgiveness for what he did.

As already noted, to the phrase "... who will guarantee me that I will not be my own villain?" in the first edition of the "Diary ..." a note is made: "This came true in a few years." V.V. Kallash and G.A. Gukovsky considered this note to be the author's and attributed it to the arrest and exile of Radishchev, P.N. Berkov attributed it to publishers and connected it with the writer's suicide. Having established that the "Diary ..." could not have been written before the arrest of Radishchev, we must accept the interpretation of P.N. Berkov. Additional light on this issue can be shed by an analysis of the structure of Radishchev's "personal involvement" in the problematics of the tragedy. The author himself puts before himself and his readers the question of the nature of his interest in the misfortunes that befell the hero (What do you care about that?).

In the position of Beverley, Radishchev identifies two components - his own guilt in what happened (he is the cause of his disaster) and, to an even greater extent, the deceit of others, of which he became a victim (how hard it is to be deceived by those in whom we place all hope! Has anyone measured the abyss of cunning and cunning?).

In prison and later in Siberia, Radishchev, as L.N. Kulakov, and T. Page, were often prone to self-accusations. His "emotional assessment" of his own act, which deserved such cruel punishment, was subject to significant changes. The famous poem "Do you want to know who I am, what I am, where I am going?" imbued with calm pride, noticeable in the words from the treatise “On Man, His Mortality and Immortality” about “great men”, “daring to withdraw from the crowd”: “But circumstances are needed, their struggle is needed, and without that Johann Hus dies in flames, Galileo is drawn to prison, your friend is imprisoned in Ilimsk.

In A Testament to Children, on the contrary, Radishchev calls his act “madness” and cannot forgive himself for the “sorrow, sorrow and poverty” that he brings on loved ones. However, decisively nowhere, when discussing the circumstances of his exile, Radishchev does not imagine and does not feel like a victim: he can “emotionally code” his behavior as a feat or as recklessness, but it always remains for him an act of conscious choice. As you know, during the investigation, he resolutely refused to name the names of his accomplices, and even in his letters to Sheshkovsky he blamed only himself for what had happened. It is impossible to find the slightest hint of "the abyss of cunning and pro-diving" into which he happened to fall in the texts written in the fortress and in Siberia. Even the letters written by him in anticipation of the execution of the death sentence contain many economic orders. Saying goodbye to life, he tried to dispose of his property in such a way as to at least somewhat alleviate the situation of loved ones. Of the two components of the "emotional coding" reflected in the Diary, prompting him to identify his position with that in which Beverley found himself, only one can be found here.

After returning from exile, the psychological state of the writer turns out to be completely different. If in his letters to Vorontsov from Siberia there are no petitions of a material nature, now he again and again asks his benefactor for small financial assistance and endlessly complains to him and others about “a solicitor, a true swindler, whose goal was no other than how to ruin not only me or my children, but, if possible, my brothers”, then to the swindle and negligence of the clerk Morozov, then to the “unscrupulous buyer of his house”, then to the “Olonets salt merchant”, whose theft he had to compensate, then to Senator Kozlov, with whom his father had a long and hopeless trial. Now "cunning and cunning" surrounded him from all sides. The embezzlement of E.V.’s fortune caused Radishchev to be especially desperate. Rubanovskaya, which she entrusted to the care of the writer's father before leaving for Siberia. Note that the hero of "Beverley", having lost his own funds, then lowers the capital of his wife and her younger sister.

The place in the Law Drafting Commission, which Radishchev received under the patronage of Vorontsov, did not greatly improve his financial situation. His salary in the Commission was 1,500 rubles a year, and then it was raised to 2,000. Meanwhile, the accumulated debts, according to his son, "stretched to 40,000." Radishchev had seven children in his care, of which only two older ones began to serve, besides, he no longer had his own house in St. Petersburg and he had to "move from apartment to apartment."

Radishchev's position looked all the more hopeless in his eyes, which was aggravated by the fear of new persecution. According to Pavel Radishchev, his father's boss, Count Zavadovsky, "gave him the feeling that another time he might be subjected to a similar misfortune and even uttered the word Siberia" . According to N.S. Ilyinsky, who also served on the Law Drafting Commission, Radishchev “often went to Count Zavadovsky and<...>he was looking for 15,000 rubles to be given to him to correct his ruined state. However, irritated by the free-thinking opinions and projects of Radishchev, Zavadovsky,

bored with his demands and thoughts similar to the previous ones, he not only refused him what he wanted, but also told Count Vorontsov, who recommended him, about it. This one, calling on him, severely reprimanded him and that if he did not stop writing free-thinking thoughts, then he would be treated even worse than before.

It is impossible to say to what extent these testimonies are reliable, the author of which himself admits that he relies on rumors. It is extremely unlikely that Vorontsov actually threatened Radishchev with reprisals. However, he could well express to an overly zealous ward annoyance at the radicalism of his views, which had already once brought the highest dissatisfaction to Vorontsov himself. Meanwhile, the loss of the favor of the patron, who invariably rescued him in the most tragic circumstances of his life and constituted his only support, was tantamount to a catastrophe for Radishchev. According to the memoirs of his son Pavel, “one day, in a fit of hypochondria, Radishchev said to his children who had gathered: “Well, children, if they send me back to Siberia?”

For a decade after his arrest, Radishchev could at least hope for the highest indulgence. Now he was finally forgiven and returned to the service, and his position was completely hopeless.

In the event of a new disgrace, his enlarged family found itself in a situation worse than in 1790, when he was sentenced to death. Then his children could still count on the considerable property of the Radishchevs and Rubanovskys, and most importantly, on the constant active care of their aunt, who replaced their mother. Now they had neither.

Radishchev could well have been present at the performance of Beverley on July 16, 1802, two months before his death, and experienced a feeling of inner affinity with the hero of the tragedy, who found himself in a hopeless situation, in many respects similar to his own. However, this push might not be needed. As G.Ya. Galagan, "the plot of the drama [was] known to Radishchev's hero for a long time", and he could retrospectively see in it a source for autobiographical projections. In any case, the nature of Soren's emotional response to the tragedy reflected in the Diary fully corresponds to the state of mind of Radishchev in the last, Petersburg period of his life.

The performed analysis once again convinces of the validity of the dating of the "Diary of a Week", proposed by V.P. Guryanov and G.Ya. Galagan. Most likely, the "Diary ..." was written in 1801-1802, but it reflected the memories of the temporary departure from St. Petersburg E.V. Rubanovskaya with her children, which happened in the second half of the 1780s. However, these memories of a happy era, when a joyful meeting followed the suffering of separation, were inevitably colored for him by the bitter experience of subsequent years: prison, exile, the death of E.V. Rubanovskaya, "by all the spiritual tortures" of the last period of his life. L.I. Kulakova rightly compared "Diary ..." with "Testament to Children", but it seems more appropriate to talk not about the closeness of the time of creation of both works, but about their functional similarity. Ten years after the "Testament..." Radishchev again found it necessary to tell his children about his love for them and for their late mother and teacher, and about how unbearable it was for him to exist away from them.

If we accept the “late” dating of the “Diary of a Week” and the resulting perception of this work as a kind of second testament of Radishchev, then we inevitably face the question of to what extent the experiences that soon led the writer to suicide. Note that T. Page, who suggested an earlier dating, nevertheless gave her article on the "Diary ..." subtitle:"Radischev's record of sui-cidal despair". This seems to be an extremely accurate description of the content of this work.

As is known, Yu.M. Lotman, who addressed this topic in several works, most in detail in the classic article “The Poetics of Everyday Behavior in Russian Culture of the 18th Century”. According to the researcher,

Radishchev's suicide was not an act of despair, an admission of defeat. It was a long-thought-out act of struggle, a lesson in patriotic love of freedom.<...>By the autumn of 1802 he (Radishchev. - A.Z.), apparently, came to the conclusion that it was necessary to accomplish a feat designed to wake up and mobilize Russian patriots.

Yu.M. Lotman backs up with a number of strong arguments. Radishchev's behavior was invariably distinguished by a high degree of semioticity, "a plot approach to his own life." His activities in the Law Drafting Commission were exceptionally active, and the opinions and projects he submitted were elaborate and radical, which clearly contradicts the ideas about the brokenness of his spirit. In addition, it is obvious that even if the political views of Radishchev could cause displeasure of his superiors, then no real repressions in the liberal atmosphere of the first years of Alexander's reign threatened him.

Interest in the topic of heroic suicide accompanied Radishchev throughout his life, at least since his youthful stay in Leipzig, and was reflected in many of his works. Apparently, the most significant example where this theme was embodied for him was the tragedy of J. Addison "Cato", in particular the final monologue of the suicide hero, which Radishchev repeatedly quoted and mentioned and which he tried to translate.

Yu.M. Lotman and Karamzin's response to the death of Radishchev, which he revealed - a translated note "On Suicide", placed in the September issue of "Herald of Europe" for 1802, where Addison's tragedy was condemned for the seductive example that she sets for ardent young people.

Many arguments of Yu.M. Lotman's statements look very convincing, but it is impossible not to see that they can hardly be combined with a set of testimonies emanating from contemporaries or immediate descendants of Radishchev.

Thus Yu.M. Lotman has to be dismissed as unreliable not only in the judgments of Pushkin or N.S. Ilyinsky, who really received their information about what happened second-hand, but also the story of Pavel Radishchev, who was next to his father at the time of his death. At the same time, Karamzin, whose intuition the scientist is inclined to trust to a much greater extent, although he was interested in the personality of Radishchev, read his works and, probably, talked about him with mutual acquaintances, he was still very far from Radishchev in the last ten years of his life, and simply lived in another city.

Not so long ago, the concept of Yu.M. Lotman was sharply challenged by R. Boden, who saw in it an exaggeration of the political opposition of Radishchev, which is usual for Soviet scientists. The researcher questioned both the traditional interpretation and, with some reservations, the very fact of the writer’s suicide: “I am not trying to take a position on the cause of Radishchev’s death, since, in my opinion, he does not have an answer. I prefer to analyze the reasons, obviously ideological, for which this death was perceived not only as suicide, but also as, above all, political suicide.

As R. Boden notes, the hypothesis that the cause of Radishchev's death was an accident was already expressed by D.S. Babkin, who, however, believed that suicide was incompatible with the image of the heroic fighter against the autocracy, which was Radishchev. In his opinion, Radishchev drank “a large glass of strong vodka prepared to etch the tinsel of his eldest son’s worn epaulettes”, by mistake and only realizing the fatal mistake he had committed, he tried to cut himself with a razor, which his eldest son did not allow. This eccentric version has already been repeatedly refuted by many researchers, who pointed, among other things, to the conversation of the dying father cited by Pavel Radishchev with the court physician Willie sent to him, who “asked Radishchev what could prompt him to take his own life” .

It is impossible to imagine either that the court physician did not know the circumstances of the patient, to whom he was personally sent by the emperor, nor that Pavel Alexandrovich, an eighteen-year-old youth who survived such a terrible catastrophe, could invent such a detail. Yes, and other contemporaries who left their testimonies about the death of Radishchev were perhaps not familiar enough with the details of what happened, but they could hardly be so unanimously mistaken in the main thing. As shown by I.V. Nemirovsky, Pushkin's story, in particular, relied on the testimony of highly informed interlocutors. It seems that Radishchev's suicide can be considered a fact, established with the measure of reliability that is generally available to historical science.

However, R. Boden's article also states another position. He writes about the catastrophic domestic and material circumstances of Radishchev's life in recent years, which could serve as a more serious motive for suicide, if it really took place, than a political protest, for which Radishchev had no grounds, since his activities at that time enjoyed the full support of the court.

Indeed, the transformative projects of Radishchev as a whole lay in line with the activities of the reformers of the first years of Alexander's reign. However, the commonality of strategic goals by no means meant complete unanimity. As I.M. Trotsky, Radishchev's views were much more radical than the plans of his high-ranking patrons and could well cause their displeasure, which Pushkin, Ilyinsky, Born, and Pavel Radishchev speak about. In the conditions of growing loneliness and the unbearable burden of household chores, any signs of such displeasure could not but be perceived by Radishchev with particular acuteness. As the Diary of One Week says, “how hard it is to be deceived by those in whom we place all hope!”

It must be said that despite all the differences with Yu.M. Lotman R. Boden completely coincides with him in his skeptical attitude towards the biography written by Radishchev's son. According to Yu.M. Lotman, “Pavel Radishchev was young when his father died, and when he wrote his memoirs, with unconditional and touching admiration for his memory, he was extremely far from understanding the essence of Radishchev’s views.” In the same way, R. Bodin sees in the memoirs of Pavel Alexandrovich not evidence of the last days of his father's life, but a source of a stable myth about a rebel and a tyrant-fighter.

Meanwhile, the memoirs of Pavel Radishchev are precious not only because they contain a lot of unique information about the circumstances of the life and death of the writer. Pavel and Ekaterina were the only children of Radishchev, whose upbringing and education he always took care of himself. Their older brothers during his exile remained in the care of their uncle, and then studied and served, and Radishchev's children from his second marriage were too small by the time of his death. Meanwhile, Pavel Alexandrovich was with his father all the time, with the exception of the period from 1799 to 1801. In a petition to Emperor Paul I, Radishchev called his son "a comrade of my exile." Knowing about the special relationship that connected Radishchev with children, and about his pedagogical views, it is natural to assume that Pavel Aleksandrovich could know more about the thoughts and state of mind of his father than is commonly believed. Without a doubt, after many years he could confuse certain details, inaccurately interpret individual statements and actions, but the general nature of the mindset that ruled Radishchev during this period of his life was conveyed by him quite reliably and is fully confirmed by all other accesses. our sources.

Indeed, Pavel Aleksandrovich writes both about Radishchev's "fits of hypochondria" and "mental illness" and about the tyrannical motives discernible in his suicide. He cites the words written by his father shortly before his death: "Descendants will avenge me(La posterite me vengera)" and recalls that he "tolerated suicide: Quand on a tout perdu , quand on n " a plus d " espoir " . The last words, which, judging by the context, belonged to Radishchev himself, are taken from Voltaire's tragedy "Merop" and represent the first line of the couplet, which, in the translation of V.V. Mike sounds like this:

When everything is lost, when there is no hope,

Then life is unbearable; and duty to leave the light.

The most significant, however, is that Pavel Radishchev, who relied on the experience of direct communication with his father in the last months of his life, apparently did not believe that feelings of despair, hopelessness and persecution and the pathos of heroic tyranny fight exclude each other. friend. As a memoirist and biographer, he sought to reflect the spiritual world of his hero with all possible completeness.

We have already noted that the “symbolic models of feeling”, which a person is guided by in encodings and evaluations of certain events and impressions, do not always harmonize perfectly with each other.

At the same time, the more diverse, complex and internally intense the "emotional repertoire" is, the greater the "individual originality" of experiences will differ.

The significance for Radishchev throughout his life of the ideal of heroic suicide on the Cato model, in our opinion, is beyond doubt. It was this model, which received the most popular incarnation in the tragedy of J. Addison, that Karamzin perceptively caught and subtly reconstructed by Yu.M. Lotman. However, it seems that it needs to be supplemented with one more "emotional matrix", also of theatrical origin and at least no less significant for Radishchev in the last period of his life.

In the last act of Beverley, the hero, who has ended up in prison, killed himself and his family, betrayed by those whom he considered his friends, and sees no hope for himself, reflects on suicide:

To see his wife and son without shelter, without hope, in poverty, in extremes, to be the solicitor of their troubles and be a spectator of it; endure contempt, the worst of all disasters, finally, die every hour because there is no courage to die once. Not! In vain I hesitate ... I will go against fate: but shame, but remorse (takes a glass). Nature, you tremble ... imagining the fear of a future life, the abyss of eternity, incomprehensible darkness, every mortal in his heart will be horrified, but should I be afraid when I abhor life. I will do what fate commands (drinks)