With what delight of destruction the author mocks the former shrine! With what malicious despair he speaks of his cherished dream – to bring heaven to earth, to build an earthly paradise!

"The sublime" feelings of "Smitikha" led to the fact that she not only died herself, but also killed her daughter Nelly.

The "naïve romanticism" of the "kindest" Nikolai Sergeevich Ikhmenev is the reason for his ruin and disgrace. He belongs to those people who, "if they love someone (sometimes God knows why), they give themselves to him with all their souls, sometimes extending their affection to the comic." He fell in love with the prince and could not forgive him for his offense; he started a lawsuit and lost it, cursed Natasha and forgave her. He does not understand anything in reality, "passes from doubt to full enthusiastic faith", he is an adult child, helpless and weak-willed. Instead of a courageous action, there is only a funny fantasy.

"Sensitive heroines", Natasha and Katya are no less powerless. They are puppets in the hands of the prince; they do not know how to fight, but only know how to sacrifice themselves fruitlessly. Natasha suffers, recites poems, walks around the room with her arms crossed, and passively watches how Alyosha gradually cools off towards her. But there is nothing she can do to keep him, to defend her love. "Enthusiastic" Katya talks about high ideas, is going to donate a million for the public good, sobs on Natasha's chest, but calmly beats off her fiancé. And with her, like Alyosha, "good" covers up the most unsightly egoism.

There remains the writer Ivan Petrovich, the author of a philanthropic story, a representative of conscious good. Alyosha has not yet grown up to the moral law; Ivan Petrovich is a convinced bearer of it. He is a humanist and moralist. The Kantian imperative lives in him, he does good for the sake of good, sacrificing his own interests, giving himself to the service of people. Ivan Petrovich saves and takes care of the orphan Nelly, admonishes and directs Alyosha to the true path, fights the villainous prince, strives to arrange Natasha's happiness. But what pathetic results! Humanistic moralism is as powerless as natural good. For a few minutes, Natasha begins to hate her selfless friend. "My consolations," remarks Ivan Petrovich, "only tormented her; my questions annoyed her more and more, even made her angry." After saying goodbye to Alyosha Natasha turns to the "comforter": "Ah, it's you! she shouts. "Now you're with me again!" Well? Again he came to console me... Go away, I can't see you! Away! Away! ". Nelly sometimes reacts in the same way to his unselfish solicitude: "she looks at him with hatred, as if he is guilty of something before her."

The tragic spectacle of the powerlessness of the "natural good": love, compassion, selflessness cannot help one's neighbor. Evil is not defeated by good. By the end of the novel, the Ikhmenevs have a broken life, Natasha has an incurable wound in her heart; Ivan Petrovich is living out his last days in the hospital, Nelly is lying in a coffin. And the traitor Alyosha is blissful with Katya, the villainous prince is prospering and is going to get married. The complete triumph of evil. Why is that? Perhaps9 the humanistic good is imaginary? This is how Dostoevsky poses his basic ethical problem. Its solution;, — in the novels-tragedies.

* * *

The author humbly admitted that in "The Humiliated and Insulted" "many dolls, not people" are exhibited, but added that in this "wild work" there are "fifty pages of which he is proud". To these pages undoubtedly belongs the striking night scene in the restaurant between the prince and Ivan Petrovich. This is the first "philosophical conversation" in Dostoevsky's work, reminiscent of the conversation in Versilov's tavern with his son and Ivan Karamazov's profession clei foi to Alyosha, also in the tavern. For the first time, the external action, the clash of events and the struggle of passions, bursts into the action like a fiery stream, the internal action, the struggle of ideas. The judgment of the imaginary good is entrusted to the evildoer.

"The idea of the personality of Prince Volkovsky goes back to the elderly and venerable official Yulian Mastakovitch, a voluptuous man who marries a young girl ("Petersburg Chronicle" and "Christmas Tree and Wedding"). About Prince Masloboev says: "He will marry next year. He looked for a bride last year. She was only fourteen years old then, now she is fifteen, I think she is still wearing an apron, poor thing." The prince himself confesses to Ivan Petrovich his love for debauchery: "Out of boredom I began to meet pretty girls,.. I love the meaning, the rank, the hotel; A huge bet in cards (I love cards terribly). But, the main thing is women and women in all forms. I even like hidden, dark debauchery, stranger and more original, even a little dirty for a change." But the voluptuous Yulian Mastakovitch is an innocent child compared to the prince. In Volkovskoye, the terrible spider-man Gazin comes to life, voluptuously slaughtering small children ("Notes from the House of the Dead"). Ivan Petrovich notes that the prince "found some pleasure, some, perhaps, even voluptuousness, in his impudence, in this impudence, in this cynicism, with which he finally tore off his mask in front of him." The comparison with a spider is repeated: "It gave me," says the narrator, "the impression of some kind of reptile, some huge spider, which I terribly wanted to crush." The prince has the same charm of power as the fearless robber Orlov. He is a strong personality who stands outside the moral law. "I have never had any remorse in anything," he proudly declares.

In the world of Dostoevsky, Prince Volkonsky has a large descendant: in one line from him come the "voluptuous" (Svidrigailov, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and countless "old men" - the Totskys, the Epanchins, the Sokolskys, etc.). According to another, they are "supermen" (Raskolnikov, Kirilov, Ivan Karamazov). Both lines are connected in Stavrogin. The portrait of Volkovsky is very reminiscent of the portrait of Stavrogin. The faces of both are beautiful, but repulsive masks. "The regular oval of the face, somewhat swarthy, excellent teeth, small and rather thin lips, beautifully outlined, a straight, somewhat oblong nose, a high forehead, on which not the slightest wrinkle was yet visible, gray, rather large eyes - all this made up almost handsome, and yet his face did not make a pleasant impression. This face was precisely repulsive by the fact that its expression was not his own, but always feigned, deliberate, borrowed... Looking intently, you began to suspect something evil, cunning and extremely egoistic under the external mask "...

The prince invites Ivan Petrovich to dine in a restaurant, and his half-drunken chatter turns into a merciless reprisal against idealism. He mocks the dedication of the abandoned fiancé. "Alyosha has wrested your fiancée," he says, "I know that, and you, like some Schiller, are crucified for them, serve them, and are almost at their beck and call. After all, this is some kind of nasty game of generous feelings... And most importantly: it's a shame! Ashamed! "He despises his son: 'I'm so tired of all these innocences, all these Alyosha pastorals, all this Schillerism, all the ags of sublimity in this accursed connection with this Natasha''... He does not believe in any good, he is the same as everyone else, only others are silent, and he speaks. "If it were possible for each of us to describe all his background, but in such a way that he would not be afraid to state not only what he is afraid to say: to all his best friends, but even what he is sometimes afraid to admit to himself, then such a stench would arise in the world that we would all have to suffocate... You accuse me of vice, depravity, immorality, and perhaps I am only guilty now because I am more frank than others, and nothing more."

The humanistic lie about the natural sinlessness of man is opposed by the religious truth about original sin. The utopian idyll ended in "The House of the Dead". A religious tragedy began.

"At the foundation of all human virtues," the prince asserts, "lies the deepest egoism. And the more virtuous the deed, the more egoism there is"... What is left for a person who is sick of all these "vulgar hills" to do? The only thing is to grimace and show your tongue. The prince continues: "One of the most piquant pleasures for me has always been to pretend first to be in this way, to enter into this tone, to encourage some eternally young Schiller, and then suddenly, at once, to stun him! Suddenly raise a mask in front of him and make a grimace out of an enthusiastic face, show him your tongue and just at the moment when he least expects this surprise." He invited Ivan Petrovich to a restaurant to give himself the pleasure of "spitting a little on this whole thing, and spitting in his eyes." The idea of the "prince" is illustrated by an anecdote about a crazy Parisian official who threw a wide cloak over his naked body and "with an important, majestic face" went out into the street. Meeting a passer-by, he "unfolded his cloak and showed himself in all his "sincerity". This image is a symbol of humanistic goodness: nudity under a lush cloak.

Prince Volkovsky rebels, but still innocently, in a boyish way: he makes grimaces and sticks out his tongue. The "gentleman" of ^Notes from the Underground" acts more boldly: he not only exposes his tongue to the "crystal edifice", this humanistic paradise on earth, but offers to "send it to the chort". Dostoevsky is one of the greatest spiritual rebels in world history.