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.

After a night conversation with the prince, the narrator leaves indignantly. He is "amazed", he cannot "describe his anger". But if he had thought about the words of the "bastard" whom he wanted to crush, perhaps he would have confessed that there was much truth in them. The novel that he himself tells seems to deliberately confirm the prince's theory of egoism. Aren't Alyosha and Katya selfish, aren't Natasha selfish, who buys her happiness with the misfortune of her parents and the suffering of her fiancé? Isn't the "kindest" old man Ikhmenev an egotist, who is going to provoke a duel with the prince, and thus destroy Natasha, for the sake of satisfying his revenge? And all the "humiliated and insulted" are egoists precisely in their humiliation and suffering. The author explains his paradox using the example of Nelly and her mother. Ivan Petrovich surrounds the poor orphan with contentment and solicitude, but she runs away from him and begs for alms. The narrator remarks: "She was offended, her wound could not heal, and she seemed to be deliberately trying to exacerbate her wound. It was as if she was enjoying her own pain, this selfishness of suffering, if you can "burst out" like that. In the denouement of the novel, it turns out that Nelly's mother was legally married to Prince Volkovsky, kept an official document and could save herself and her daughter from poverty and death. But she sacrificed both herself and her daughter only to enjoy her proud suffering to the end. The prince confesses that he did not give her his father's stolen money, because he reasoned that "by giving her the money, he would make her, perhaps, even unhappy." I would take away from her the pleasure of being unhappy entirely because of me, he says, and cursing me for it all her life. Believe me, my friend, in a misfortune of this kind there is even a kind of supreme ecstasy to be aware of oneself as quite right and magnanimous, and to have every right to call one's offender a scoundrel. This ecstasy of malice is found in Schiller's natures, of course: "Perhaps afterwards she had nothing to eat, but I am sure that she was happy." In suffering there is selfishness, intoxication with malice, contempt for persecutors, enjoyment of shame, revenge on an unjust fate, admiration of one's own nobility, defiance of the world. "The humiliated and insulted" are not so unhappy: they know refined pleasures, which they "would not exchange. for any well-being.

Thus Dostoevsky explodes the "natural" morality of godless humanism.

Chapter 11. Vremya magazine (1861–1863). "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions". Romance with A. Suslova.

In the autumn of 1860, Dostoevsky made an announcement about the publication of a new magazine "Time". This manifesto speaks of "a huge upheaval taking place in Russia." Peter's reform reached its last limits. A new era is coming. "We have finally become convinced that we are also a separate nationality, highly original, and that our task is to create our own new form, our own, native, taken from our soil, taken from the spirit of the people and from the principles of the people." Peter's reform was necessary, but it was too expensive: it separated the educated class from the people. The new journal will fight for the "reconciliation of civilization with the people"; His motto is: "Unite at all costs, in spite of any donations and as soon as possible!" And the announcement ends with an inspired prophecy: "We foresee, and foresee with reverence, that the character of our future activity must be in the highest degree universal; that the Russian idea may be a synthesis of all those ideas which Europe is developing with such persistence and courage in its individual nationalities, that perhaps everything hostile in these ideas will find its reconciliation and further development in the Russian nationality."

"Time" wants to create a new social trend, occupying a middle place between Westernism and Slavophilism. For the first time, the main idea of Dostoevsky's journalism of the 70s sounds: the Russian idea is the reconciliation of all European ideas, the Russian ideal is universal.

The new journal entered into the fierce struggle between the Westernizers and the Slavophiles as if it were "not a fighter of two camps"—an ambiguous and dangerous position. He preached reconciliation, but soon he had to endure two-sided fire and fight on two fronts. In the very first issue (January 1861) the editors declared: "Society has realized that with Westernism we stubbornly pull on someone else's caftan, despite the fact that it has long been bursting at all the seams, and with Slavophilism we share the poetic dream of recreating Russia according to an ideal view of ancient life, a view that instead of the real concept of Russia, some kind of ballet scenery, beautiful, but unfair and abstract... But now we want to live and act, not fantasize." The positions of the Westernizers and Slavophiles were clear: the former were materialists, liberals, cosmopolitans, the latter Orthodox, conservatives, nationalists; the position of "Time" was confusing in its vagueness: "the combination of civilization with the people's origin", "reconciliation of ideas" seemed to be vague concepts.