What to do? Roman (1862 - 1863)

On July 11, 1856, a note left by a strange guest is found in the room of one of the large St. Petersburg hotels. The note says that its author will soon be heard on the Liteiny Bridge and that no one should be suspicious. The circumstances become clear very soon: at night a man shoots himself on the Liteiny Bridge. His bullet-ridden cap is fished out of the water.

That same morning, at a dacha on Kamenny Island, a young lady sits and sews, singing a lively and bold French song about working people who will be freed by knowledge. Her name is Vera Pavlovna. The maid brings her a letter, after reading which Vera Pavlovna sobs, covering her face with her hands. The young man who entered tries to calm her down, but Vera Pavlovna is inconsolable. She pushes the young man away with the words: “You are covered in blood! His blood is on you! It’s not your fault - I’m alone...” The letter received by Vera Pavlovna says that the person writing it is leaving the stage because he loves him too much.” both of you"...

The tragic denouement is preceded by the life story of Vera Pavlovna. She spent her childhood in St. Petersburg, in a multi-storey building on Gorokhovaya, between Sadovaya and Semenovsky bridges. Her father, Pavel Konstantinovich Rozalsky, is the manager of the house, her mother gives money on bail. The only concern of the mother, Marya Alekseevna, in relation to Verochka: to marry her as soon as possible to a rich man. The narrow-minded and evil woman does everything possible for this: she invites a music teacher to her daughter, dresses her up and even takes her to the theater. Soon the beautiful swarthy girl is noticed by the master's son, officer Storeshnikov, and immediately decides to seduce her. Hoping to force Storeshnikov to marry, Marya Alekseevna demands that her daughter be favorable to him, while Verochka refuses this in every possible way, understanding the true intentions of the womanizer. She somehow manages to deceive her mother, pretending that she is luring her boyfriend, but this cannot last long. Vera's position in the house becomes completely unbearable. It is resolved in an unexpected way.

A teacher, a graduate medical student, Dmitry Sergeevich Lopukhov, was invited to Verochka's brother Fedya. At first, young people are wary of each other, but then they begin to talk about books, about music, about a fair way of thinking, and soon they feel affection for each other. Having learned about the plight of the girl, Lopukhov tries to help her. He is looking for a governess position for her, which would give Verochka the opportunity to live separately from her parents. But the search turns out to be unsuccessful: no one wants to take responsibility for the fate of the girl if she runs away from home. Then the student in love finds another way out: shortly before the end of the course, in order to have enough money, he leaves his studies and, taking up private lessons and translating a geography textbook, makes an offer to Verochka. At this time, Verochka has her first dream: she sees herself released from a damp and dark basement and talking with an amazing beauty who calls herself love for people. Verochka promises the beauty that she will always let other girls out of the cellars, locked up just like she was locked up.

The young people rent an apartment, and their life is going well. True, their relationship seems strange to the landlady: “darling” and “darling” sleep in different rooms, enter each other only after knocking, do not show themselves to each other undressed, etc. Verochka has difficulty explaining to the landlady that this is how they should be be a relationship between spouses if they do not want to bore each other. Vera Pavlovna reads books, gives private lessons, and runs the household. Soon she starts her own enterprise - a sewing workshop. The girls do not work in the workshop for hire, but are its co-owners and receive their share of the income, just like Vera Pavlovna. They not only work together, but spend their free time together: go on picnics, talk. In her second dream, Vera Pavlovna sees a field in which ears of corn grow. She sees dirt on this field - or rather, two dirt: fantastic and real. Real dirt is caring for the most necessary things (the kind with which Vera Pavlovna’s mother was always burdened), and ears of corn can grow from it. Fantastic dirt - caring for the superfluous and unnecessary; nothing worthwhile comes out of it.

The Lopukhov couple often has Dmitry Sergeevich's best friend, his former classmate and spiritually close person to him, Alexander Matveevich Kirsanov. Both of them “made their way through their breasts, without connections, without acquaintances.” Kirsanov is a strong-willed, courageous man, capable of both decisive action and subtle feeling. He brightens up Vera Pavlovna's loneliness with conversations when Lopukhov is busy, takes her to the Opera, which they both love. However, soon, without explaining the reasons, Kirsanov stops visiting his friend, which greatly offends both him and Vera Pavlovna. They do not know the true reason for his “cooling”: Kirsanov is in love with his friend’s wife. He reappears in the house only when Lopukhov falls ill: Kirsanov is a doctor, he treats Lopukhov and helps Vera Pavlovna take care of him. Vera Pavlovna is in complete confusion: she feels that she is in love with her husband’s friend. She has a third dream. In this dream, Vera Pavlovna, with the help of some unknown woman, reads the pages of her own diary, which says that she feels gratitude to her husband, and not that quiet, tender feeling, the need for which is so great in her.

The situation in which three smart and decent “new people” find themselves seems insoluble. Finally Lopukhov finds a way out - a shot on the Liteiny Bridge. On the day this news was received, an old acquaintance of Kirsanov and Lopukhov, Rakhmetov, a “special person,” comes to Vera Pavlovna. The “higher nature” was awakened in him at one time by Kirsanov, who introduced the student Rakhmetov to books “that need to be read.” Coming from a wealthy family, Rakhmetov sold his estate, distributed the money to his scholarship recipients and now leads a harsh lifestyle: partly because he considers it impossible for himself to have something that an ordinary person does not have, partly out of a desire to cultivate his character. So, one day he decides to sleep on nails to test his physical capabilities. He doesn't drink wine, doesn't touch women. Rakhmetov is often called Nikitushka Lomov - because he walked along the Volga with barge haulers in order to get closer to the people and gain the love and respect of ordinary people. Rakhmetov's life is shrouded in a veil of mystery of a clearly revolutionary nature. He has a lot to do, but none of it is his personal business. He is traveling around Europe, planning to return to Russia in three years, when he “needs” to be there. This “example of a very rare breed” differs from simply “honest and kind people” in that it is “the engine of engines, the salt of the earth.”

Rakhmetov brings Vera Pavlovna a note from Lopukhov, after reading which she becomes calm and even cheerful. In addition, Rakhmetov explains to Vera Pavlovna that the dissimilarity between her character and Lopukhov's character was too great, which is why she reached out to Kirsanov. having calmed down after a conversation with Rakhmetov, Vera Pavlovna leaves for Novgorod, where she marries Kirsanov a few weeks later.

The dissimilarity between the characters of Lopukhov and Vera Pavlovna is also mentioned in a letter that she soon receives from Berlin. he had a penchant for solitude, which was in no way possible during his life with the sociable Vera Pavlovna. Thus, love affairs are arranged to the general pleasure. The Kirsanov family has approximately the same lifestyle as the Lopukhov family before. Alexander Matveyevich works hard, Vera Pavlovna eats cream, takes baths and is engaged in sewing workshops: she now has two of them. Similarly, there are neutral and non-neutral rooms in the house, and spouses can enter non-neutral rooms only after knocking. But Vera Pavlovna notices that Kirsanov not only allows her to lead the lifestyle that she likes, and is not only ready to lend a shoulder to her in difficult times, but is also keenly interested in her life. He understands her desire to engage in some business, "which cannot be postponed." With the help of Kirsanov, Vera Pavlovna begins to study medicine.

Soon she has a fourth dream. Nature in this dream “pours aroma and song, love and bliss into the chest.” The poet, whose brow and thought are illuminated by inspiration, sings a song about the meaning of history. Vera Pavlovna sees pictures of the lives of women in different millennia. First, the female slave obeys her master among the tents of the nomads, then the Athenians worship the woman, still not recognizing her as their equal. Then the image of a beautiful lady appears, for whose sake the knight is fighting in the tournament. But he loves her only until she becomes his wife, that is, a slave. Then Vera Pavlovna sees her own face instead of the goddess’s face. His features are far from perfect, but he is illuminated by the radiance of love. The great woman, familiar to her from her first dream, explains to Vera Pavlovna what the meaning of women's equality and freedom is. This woman also shows Vera Pavlovna pictures of the future: citizens of New Russia live in a beautiful house made of cast iron, crystal and aluminum. They work in the morning, have fun in the evening, and “whoever has not worked enough has not prepared the nerve to feel the fullness of the fun.” The guidebook explains to Vera Pavlovna that this future should be loved, one should work for it and transfer from it to the present everything that can be transferred.

The Kirsanovs have a lot of young people, like-minded people: “This type has recently appeared and is quickly spreading.” All these people are decent, hardworking, with unshakable life principles and possessing “cold-blooded practicality.” The Beaumont family soon appears among them. Ekaterina Vasilievna Beaumont, née Polozova, was one of the richest brides in St. Petersburg. Kirsanov once helped her with smart advice: with his help, Polozova figured out that the person she was in love with was unworthy of her. Then Ekaterina Vasilievna marries a man who calls himself an agent of an English company, Charles Beaumont. He speaks Russian perfectly - because he allegedly lived in Russia until he was twenty. His romance with Polozova develops calmly: both of them are people who “don’t get mad for no reason.” When Beaumont meets Kirsanov, it becomes clear that this man is Lopukhov. The Kirsanov and Beaumont families feel such spiritual closeness that they soon settle in the same house and receive guests together. Ekaterina Vasilievna also sets up a sewing workshop, and the circle of “new people” thus becomes wider.

Author of the retelling: T. A. Sotnikova

Prologue. A novel from the early sixties (1867 - 1870, unfinished)

In the early spring of 1857, the Volgina spouses were walking along Vladimirskaya Square in St. Petersburg. Twenty-nine-year-old journalist Alexey Ivanovich Volgin is ugly, awkward and seems phlegmatic. His wife, twenty-three-year-old Lidiya Vasilyevna Volgina, on the contrary, is attractive, curious and accustomed to making an impact. During the walk, Volgina is carried away not so much by the conversation with her husband, but by the fact that she is helping a young lady named Antonina Dmitrievna Savelova get rid of the persecution of her jealous husband. Savelov tries to watch for his wife during her secret meeting with her lover, Pavel Mikhailovich Nivelzin. Nivelzin is an aristocrat, a fairly wealthy landowner, and in addition, a mathematician and astronomer, whose works are published in the bulletins of the Academy of Sciences.

Leaving his wife to deal with an exciting matter - someone else's love affair, Volgin talks with a student at the pedagogical institute, Vladimir Alekseevich Levitsky: he promises the famous journalist to bring some article for review. Moreover, not knowing that the dark young lady is Volgin’s wife, Levitsky asks him about her with obvious interest. During the conversation, Levitsky is surprised by the strange laughter of the liberal celebrity: “His squeals and roars are so deafening when he bursts out laughing.” Soon Savelova comes to the Volgins in order to explain her current situation. She does not love her husband, and he does not have any feelings for her: he, a major government official, needs his wife only in order to establish himself in aristocratic society. Volgina persuades Savelova to leave her husband and flee abroad with Nivelzin. Having fallen into exaltation, she agrees, and Volgina, with her usual enthusiasm, sets about organizing the matter. But at the last minute, when the foreign passports are ready, Savelova refuses to leave her husband, which greatly disappoints Volgina.

Volgina and her little son Volodya live in a dacha near the Petrovsky Palace. Her husband is busy with business in St. Petersburg and only comes to visit his family. Volgina meets the chamberlain's daughter Nadezhda Viktorovna Ilatontseva, who recently returned from abroad. Levitsky at this time serves in the Ilatontsev family as tutor to Yurinka, Nadezhda Viktorovna’s little brother. However, Volgin is trying to prevent his wife from finding out about this: noticing her obvious interest in Levitsky, Volgin does not want her to communicate with him. By the way, he tells his wife that he is worried about his future: “the affairs of the Russian people are bad,” so an influential journalist could get into all sorts of trouble. Sobbing over the fate of her husband, Volgina becomes even more affectionate towards him. She dreams that it will be said about her husband “someday that he, before anyone else, understood what was needed for the benefit of the people, and did not spare for the benefit of the people - let alone “himself” - it is of great importance for him not to spare himself! - No he pitied me too! - And they will say this, I know! - And may Volodya and I be orphans, if that is necessary! " Volgina expresses these considerations to Nivelzin, who, having lost Savelova’s favor, begins to court her.

Volgin himself has other topics for conversation with Nivelzin: they talk about the cause of the liberation of the peasants, which Volgin considers premature. And Volgin has no doubts that he understands things more correctly than others.

One day, during a regular walk along Nevsky, Volgina and Nivelzin meet Mr. Sokolovsky. A thirty-year-old dragoon officer, a Pole, wants to use all his strength to improve the lot of the Russian soldier. Sokolovsky also gets acquainted with Volgin, but he does not seek to converge with him due to a difference of views: Volgin believes that reforms should not be carried out at all, rather than carried out in an unsatisfactory manner.

While her husband is sorting out the relationship among the liberals, Volgina is sorting it out with Savelova: after refusing to run away with Nivelzin, she is again trying to get closer to Boltina. Savelova invites Volgina to her husband’s name day, and she reluctantly agrees. At dinner with the Savelovs, Volgina sees Count Chaplin - a disgusting creature “with saggy jowls up to his shoulders, with a half-open, slobbering mouth, alternately narrowing and widening with each explosion of snoring and snoring, with tiny eyes swollen with lead and lard.”

Savelova admits to Volgina that her husband requires her to flirt with the disgusting count on whom his career depends. Indignantly, Volgina again takes up the arrangement of the affairs of a strange family: she makes an suggestion to Savelov, accusing him of trading in his wife.

The next day, after dinner at the Savelovs', the St. Petersburg liberals gather at their leader, the university professor Ryazantsev. Volgin is not among those gathered. They discuss the betrayal of liberal principles by Count Chaplin and his transition to the camp of conservatives. Chaplin accused the liberals of wanting to make the emancipation of the peasants a means to overthrow the entire existing order, that is, to make a revolution. However, soon Count Chaplin goes on vacation abroad, and the liberals celebrate their victory. Now they are preparing a program for the emancipation of the peasants, which will have to be signed by influential landowners in all provinces.

Meanwhile, Volgin begins to look for Levitsky, who all this time lived in the village with the Ilatontsevs, but suddenly disappeared. It turns out that Levitsky is sick and is in St. Petersburg. The Volgins visit him and wonder why he left the village so hastily. The reasons for this act become clear from Levitsky’s diary for 1857, which makes up the second part of the novel.

The student Levitsky was the center of a circle of liberal student youth. By the end of the course, he was sure that the institute was killing the mental life of students, hunger and despotism forever taking away the health of "all those who could not reconcile themselves to the principles of servility and obscurantism." Levitsky felt a living love for people, but he believed that they were too frivolous to fight.

Levitsky is feminine. Many pages of his diary are dedicated to his mistress Anyuta. Once Levitsky protected Anyuta from her despot-husband, and then fussed about her divorce. Anyuta's story is simple, like this woman herself. She came from the middle class, was brought up even in a boarding school, but after the death of her father she was forced to go to the maids. Jealous of Anyuta for the master, the hostess accused her of stealing the brooch. Anyuta was forced to become the mistress of a police officer in order to avoid unfair punishment. Soon her patron decided to marry and at the same time married Anyuta.

Anyuta was Levitsky's good mistress, but soon she went to live with a rich merchant. Separation from her made Levitsky think: "Is it possible to love a woman who passively allows her lover to be caressed, while she herself thinks at this time what kind of dress to sew for herself: a dress or a barege one?"

In the village, on the estate of the Ilatontsevs, Levitsky met the beautiful Mary, the maid of the young lady Nadezhda Viktorovna. Mary's parents were servants of the Ilatontsevs. Mary lived with the gentlemen abroad, in Provence, then went to Paris, where she received a good salary and could live independently. But soon the girl returned to her former owners. Levitsky could not understand why the energetic and intelligent Mary had exchanged an independent life in Paris for the unenviable position of a maid in the Ilatontsev family. Being a sensual and romantic person, he fell in love with Mary. This did not prevent him, however, from having fun with the charming and easily accessible Nastya, the serf mistress of a neighbor, the landowner Dedyukhin, and even almost taking her to his support.

Mary told Levitsky that she became a maid in order to be closer to Nadezhda Viktorovna, whom she had loved since childhood. But soon, seeing that Levitsky had a sincere feeling for her, Mary confessed: she had long become the mistress of Viktor Lvovich Ilatontsev. Bored with the life to which she was doomed by her birth, Mary found the only way to get rid of her wretched fate and seduced her master. He sincerely fell in love with her, left his former mistress. Soon, Mary began to become attached to him. But she feared that the true state of things would not be revealed to Nadezhda Viktorovna. She believed that Ilatontsev was a bad father, for whom his mistress was more precious than his daughter: after all, the current marital status could prevent Nadezhda Viktorovna from finding a good husband. Levitsky advised Mary to move to St. Petersburg and live separately from the Ilatontsevs until the marriage of Nadezhda Viktorovna. In preparation for this act, the girl's further life went on.

Author of the retelling: T. A. Sotnikova

<< Back: Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin 1826-1889 (The history of one city. Based on original documents, published by M. E. Saltykov (Shchedrin). Tale (1869-1870). Gentlemen of Tashkent. Pictures of morals. Essays (1869-1872). Diary of a provincial in St. Petersburg. Cycle of stories (1872). Well-intentioned speeches. Essays (1872-1876). Messrs. Golovlevs. Novel (1875-1880). Poshekhon antiquity. Life of Nikanor Zatrapezny, Poshekhonsky nobleman. Novel (1887-1889))

>> Forward: Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy 1828-1910 (Childhood. Tale (1852). Adolescence. Tale (1854). Youth. Tale (1857). Two Hussars. Tale (1856). Cossacks. Caucasian Tale of 1852 (1853-1862, unfinished, published 1863). War and the world. Novel (1863-1869, 1st ed. 1867-1869). Anna Karenina. Novel (1873-1877). Canvas meter. History of a horse. Story (1863-1885). Death of Ivan Ilyich. Tale (1884 -1886). The power of darkness, or Claw stuck, the whole bird is lost. Drama (1886). Fruits of enlightenment. Comedy (1889). Kreutzer Sonata. Tale (1887-1889, published 1890). Resurrection. Novel (1889-1899) . Living corpse. Drama (1900, unfinished, published 1911). Hadji Murad. Tale (1896-1904, published 1912))

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