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.

But the magazine attracted readers with its literary content. The official editor was Mikhail Mikhailovich Dostoevsky; Fyodor Mikhailovich was in charge of the art and criticism department. In the very first book were published "Humiliated and Insulted"; they were followed by "Notes from the House of the Dead", works by Ostrovsky, Nekrasov, Turgenev and Shchedrin. Dostoevsky does not disdain "sensations": he publishes a translation of "The Crimes of Lasener" and excerpts from "The Memoirs of Casanova". For the first issue, he wrote a feuilleton "Petersburg Dreams in Verse and Prose" - one of his most poetic creations. He managed to attract two young gifted critics to cooperate: Apollon Grigoriev and N. N. Strakhov. This is how a group of "pochvenniki" was formed. N. Strakhov in his memoirs sketched Dostoevsky as he was in the era of "Time". He then wore only a mustache and, in spite of his huge forehead and beautiful eyes, had the appearance of a completely soldier, i.e., the features of the common people." He spoke almost in a whisper, but inspired he spoke loudly; he adored Pushkin and loved to read "Just on the Spring Thaws" and "Like the Spring Warm Time". At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, employees usually met in the editorial office; before lunch they walked; in the evening, at seven o'clock, Dostoevsky often called on Strakhov; at twelve he sat down to work and wrote until five or six o'clock in the morning, supporting himself with tea. I slept until two o'clock in the afternoon. This is how he worked all his life. The very process of writing was painful for him. "It has always been more pleasant for me to think over my compositions," says his alter ego, Ivan Petrovich in "The Humiliated and Insulted," and to dream of how they would be written, than to actually write them, and, really, it was not from laziness. Why? "This question is answered by N. Strakhov: "Inner work was constantly going on in him, there was an increase and movement of thoughts, and it was always difficult for him to tear himself away from this work for writing. Apparently idle, he worked tirelessly... His thoughts were boiling; new images, plans for new works were constantly created, and old plans grew and developed." For two years of work in the magazine "Time", Dostoevsky, by his own admission, wrote up to a hundred printed sheets. At what price this terrible tension was bought, this is evidenced by the notebook of 1862-1863: "Fits of falling fever: April 1 - strong; August 1 – weak; November 7 – medium; January 7 – strong; March 2 - medium. " But, Dostoevsky wrote, the success of the magazine that was beginning was dearer to me than anything else, and success was achieved. The editor of "Time" and the author of the sensational "Notes from the House of the Dead" was satisfied. My name is worth a million," he proudly declared to Strakhov.

From January to November 1861, Dostoevsky published articles on Russian literature in Vremya, in which he tried to clarify the ideology of the new movement. The European civilization met the needs of the Russian "soil", but now it "has already completed its entire circle with us; we have already survived it all; we have accepted from it everything that was due, and we freely turn to our native soil." The author is full of joyful hopes: "New Russia is already being felt little by little, is already gradually becoming aware of itself... "He tells "the story of our development": how consciousness arose in Russian society, how analysis penetrated into it, how self-accusation and self-flagellation were born; mentions the enthusiastic admiration for George Sand, the foundation of the "natural school", Russian Byronism, the appearance of "two demons" Gogol and Lermontov, the origin of "accusation".

"No, we have been peering into everything for a long time, analyzing everything; we ask ourselves riddles, we yearn and are tormented by clues... After all, we also lived and lived a lot... "

Dostoevsky sums up the Petrine period of Russian life and asserts its spiritual significance. This is his first experience in the philosophy of Russian culture. Russia's apprenticeship is over, he thinks, it has matured to its original idea: all-humanity. "Yes, we believe that the Russian nation is an extraordinary phenomenon in the history of all mankind... And it's scary, TO) to what extent a Russian person is free in spirit... "In the year of the emancipation of the peasants, the writer predicts for Russia "a new activity, unknown in history." He looks at the future optimistically: the intelligentsia will bring its education to the people, and the people "will lovingly appreciate their teachers and educators in the educated class, will recognize us as their true friends, will appreciate in us not mercenaries, but pastors... ".

Caught up in the idyllic mood of the first days of the reforms, the former convict forgets about the terrible experience of the Omsk prison; the abyss between the civilized class and the people seems to him not so deep: reconciliation is near.

The historiosophy of the "Writer's Diary" is already worked out in the articles of 1861. The ideas of Pushkin's speech "survived by the author for twenty years. The colossal significance of Pushkin "is that he is the embodiment of the Russian spirit, the Russian ideal. " The phenomenon of Push^kina, writes Dostoevsky in "Time", is proof that the tree of civilization has already ripened to fruit, and these fruits are not rotten, but magnificent golden fruits. We "understood in him that the Russian ideal is wholeness, all-reconciliation, all-humanity." Pushkin is the justification of Peter's case, the meaning of the St. Petersburg period of our history, of our "European captivity". For us, he is "the beginning of everything that we now have." The Russian man realized himself in Onegin: "he does not yet know what to do, does not even know what to respect, although he is firmly convinced that there is something that must be respected and loved.

Dostoevsky polemicizes with both Westernizers and Slavophiles, but at first his sympathies are on the side of the former. He is outraged by the contemptuous and arrogant tone of Konstantin Aksakov, the formalism and intolerance of the newspaper "Den". Slavophiles have a rare ability to understand nothing in modern reality. Their ideal consists of "a panorama1 of Moscow from the Sparrow Hills, a dreamy representation of Moscow life in the middle of the 17th century, the siege of Kazan and the Lavra, and other panoramas presented in the French taste by Karamzin." Westernism "was still more real than Slavophilism." In the article "Literary Hysteria" directed against Katkov's "Russian Herald", Dostoevsky ardently defends the "groundless Westernizers". Yes, they had no ground, their activity was false and their life was fantastic. But is it possible to mock this Russian tragedy? Wasn't it a testimony to a busy life? "Blessed is he," exclaims the author, who is able to see even in an ugly phenomenon its historical serious side; Is a mistaken man necessarily a scoundrel? Yes, sometimes it is precisely the uglier life manifests, the more convulsive, the uglier, the more tireless this manifestation is, the more it means that life wants to assert itself at all costs—and you say that there is no life at all. There is anguish, suffering, but what is the matter with you? ". Such was the initial position of the "pochvenniki". Sharply dissociating itself from the Slavophile "Day" and Katkov's "Russian Herald", "Vremya" maintained friendly relations with the radical "Sovremennik"; Nekrasov and Shchedrin collaborated in it. "A contemporary" praised the novel "Humiliated and Insulted" and even placed a hymn to "Time". The government considered the Dostoevsky brothers' magazine to be oppositional and dangerous.