Chapter Fifteen A person of French nationality. Died famous French composer Francis Le What was not easy

Chapter fifteen

PERSON OF THE FRENCH NATIONALITY

Alain Delon, Alain Delon doesn't drink cologne...

Ilya Kormiltsev

Dumas had a lot of Russian acquaintances: Karatygins, Muravyov, his son's beloved (he, after Lydia Nesselrode, in 1852 got along with Nadezhda Naryshkina, the wife of the old prince, a former girlfriend of the playwright Sukhovo-Kobylin); he also knew Dmitri Pavlovich Naryshkin, chamberlain of the Russian imperial court, married to an acquaintance of Dumas from his youth, actress Jenny Falcon, who served in the troupe of the Mikhailovsky Theater in St. Petersburg; even Benckendorff, Uvarov and Nicholas I, one might say, were his acquaintances. In 1845, when the Karatygins arrived in Paris, he asked if they would let him into Russia. A. M. Karatygin: “We answered that, with the exception of inveterate republicans and, in general, persons who are in bad standing with our government, the entry of foreigners into Russia is not prohibited; if our court does not receive eminent French citizens who come to St. Petersburg with the same cordiality, the reason for this is the vile ingratitude of the Marquis Custine. Dumas reacted with indignation to the act of Custine. (We are talking, of course, about Custine's book Russia in 1839.)

It is unlikely that they would have let him in: after the "Fencing Teacher" he was "in a bad way." Since 1847, the "Library for Reading" published translations of "Vicomte de Brazhelon" and "Balsamo" (torn off with hands), but "Balsamo" in 1848 was banned by the censorship committee at the direction of the king. S. N. Durylin found in the archives of the Third Section the correspondence of the spy Yakov Tolstoy with the Minister of Foreign Affairs K. V. Nesselrode: the chief of the gendarmes, Orlov, wanted to know who the author of the pamphlet "Northern Nabab" allegedly published in Paris in 1852 was. No "nabab" was found, but Tolstoy reported that he met with both Dumas, who were among the suspects. “Alexandres Dumas - father and son - told my bookseller that they knew nothing. Alexander Dumas son added that he "did not write anything either for or against Russia." Orlov strained the authorities of Brussels, Dumas father was again interrogated - with the same result. But now times have changed: instead of Nicholas there was Alexander I.

Once upon a time there was Count Grigory Alexandrovich Kushelev-Bezborodko, married to Lyubov Ivanovna Krol - the marriage excluded him from aristocratic circles and brought him closer to literary ones. In 1857, in Rome, the Kushelevs met the English spiritualist Daniel Hume, Lyubov's sister, Alexandra, became engaged to him, and they decided to play the wedding in St. Petersburg. In 1858, the Kushelevs and Hume opened a salon in the Three Emperors Hotel in Paris, Hume gave sessions, Dumas went to them, however, the spiritualist did not succeed with him (as did Dumas himself with witnesses), but Hume became interested in him, called to the wedding, and the Kushelevs were invited to their place. The time was good for a journalistic trip: the Peasant Reform was being prepared (in Europe it was called the “abolition of slavery”), in November 1857 its first draft was published (liberation without land), now a new one was being discussed - with the redemption of a land allotment. Dumas contacted the Naryshkins, and they also invited them to visit. He said that he wanted to see the village, the Volga and the Caucasus (his "conquest" by the Russians was just ending), - they promised to arrange that too. On June 17, he promised the readers of Monte Cristo to meet in Astrakhan with "Indians and Cossacks", to show "the rock to which Prometheus was chained", and "to visit the camp of Shamil, another Prometheus, who fights in the mountains against the Russian tsars." Jules Janin: “We entrust him to the hospitality of Russia and sincerely wish that he will receive a better reception than Balzac. Balzac arrived in Russia at the wrong time - immediately after Custine, and therefore, as often happens, the innocent suffered for the guilty. As for innocence ... nothing could be more innocent than Mr. Alexandre Dumas. Believe me, gracious sovereigns, that he will talk about everything he sees and hears, sweetly, harmlessly, with tact, with praise ... "

The Russians did not believe and bristled. Artist A.P. Bogolyubov, “Notes of a sailor-artist”: “Grigory Kushelev ... was married to a lively woman, Ms. Krol, whose sister was married to Leistin Hume, a well-known magician at that time. They lived quite openly on the Palais Royal in a hotel of the same name. Here the famous Alexandre Dumas was a regular. He told fascinating lies, ordered Lukullian dinners, and it was truly very amusing to listen to him. Having never been to Russia, he spoke about it as if he were an old-timer of St. Petersburg ... He seemed to be present at the death of Emperor Paul I, talking about some kind of rescue paths, deliberately damaged c. Palen ... The case ended with the fact that the count took him to his place in Russia, and at his expense he traveled around our homeland and wrote a vulgar book that fooled even more French about our fatherland, filling it everywhere with lies and vulgar stories.

It is difficult to understand the hatred of the Russian bohemia for Dumas - do not explain it with envy! I didn’t like how he writes, Nekrasov called his style “variegated and pretentious” - apparently he read it in translations, since Dumas has neither variegation nor pretentiousness, and he can rather be accused of excessive smoothness; Chekhov believed that there was a lot of superfluous in Dumas' novels, and in the 1890s he ruthlessly cut it down for Suvorin's publication (before that, Dumas had been published by Smirdin - more or less completely; the tradition of cutting Dumas was preserved by Soviet translators). Well, ignore it if it's bad. But Sovremennik bit him incessantly. Annenkov: “In Dumas' speech ... every thought is an absurd claim and every word is a hilarious self-praise. This is Khlestakov ... " Belinsky - criticism of V. P. Botkin: "I'm not talking about your protege A. Dumas: he is a filthy and vulgar, Bulgarin by the nobility of instincts and convictions, and by talent - he really has talent, I am against this not a word, but a talent that is related to art and literature in the same way that the talent of a rope dancer or a horsewoman from the Franconi troupe is related to the performing arts. (Botkin did not share this opinion.) For what? What does Bulgarin have to do with it? Well, here is the magazine of Bulgarin and Grech “Son of the Fatherland”: “There are rumors about the imminent arrival here of the long-awaited Hume and the completely unexpected great (sic!) Dumas father. The first is brought here by family circumstances, the second is the desire of people to see and show themselves, I think the second is even more so than the first. That, I think, he will write magnificent impressions de voyage, what a rich subject! La Russie, les Boyards russes, our oriental manners and customs, after all, this is a treasure for the famous storyteller, enough witty chatter for ten volumes! .. You will see that my words will come true, he will write, by God, he will write ... and we will buy and read , and we are not alone, and the French will buy, the Germans will buy, and even translate, perhaps! However, the same thing can happen to us, and we will find, what good, a swindler-translator who will convey French stories about Russia in an ugly language in Russian translation.

For the time being, we endured "French tales". In 1800, Jean-Francois Georgel gave a rather neutral account of the journey; in 1809, Joseph de Maistre, in St. Petersburg Evenings, praised order and serfdom (but in a private letter he remarked: mind to burn St. Petersburg, no one will tell him that this act is fraught with some inconvenience ... no, everyone will remain silent; in extreme cases, subjects will kill their sovereign (which, as you know, does not mean in the least that they do not have respect for him) - but even here no one utters a word. In 1812, Anna de Stael arrived, expelled by Napoleon, and issued a set of platitudes in the book “Ten Years of Exile”: “This people was created from opposites ... it cannot be measured by ordinary measures ...”, called Russia an ideal, but did not want to live in it. In 1815, Dupré de Saint-Maure arrived, described carnivals, customs, recounted terrible stories; in 1826, playwright Jacques Anselot published Six Months in Russia: a collection of platitudes in assessments, but many facts (Dumas used his book). In 1829, a Freemason traveler under the pseudonym Jean Baptiste May in the book "St. Petersburg and Russia in 1829" described the people "deformed by a vicious regime", but the effect was softened in 1834 by the sugary "Balalaika" of Paul de Julvecourt, who married a Russian , and in 1839 thunder struck - the Marquis Astolphe de Custine (1790-1857): his "Russia in 1839", released in May 1843, was already banned by the Foreign Censorship Committee on June 1; Grech even banned abusive review of her - there was no such book! (Even before the publication of Custine’s book, “The Pilgrim” by Victor d’Arlencourt, who was in Russia a year later than the Marquis, appeared: “everything is imbued with barbarism and despotism”, “nothing is subject to publicity and discussion. there were more, and he was not so offended.)

Custine did not want to offend anyone; however, his words "no one was more shocked than me by the greatness of their nation and its political significance" was not noticed. He wrote that his predecessors flattered the Russians "like little children"; he thought they could be spoken to like adults. Wrong. Who can endure, for example, this: “When I saw the Russian courtiers in the line of duty, I was immediately struck by the extraordinary humility with which they fulfill their role; they are a kind of high-ranking slaves. But as soon as the monarch retires, the ease of gestures, the confidence of manners, the swagger of tone return to them, unpleasantly contrasting with the complete self-denial, which they showed a moment ago; in a word, the habits of servants are visible in the behavior of both masters and servants. Not just court etiquette rules here ... no, disinterested and unaccountable servility dominates here, which does not exclude pride ... "; “Is it my fault if, having arrived in a country with unlimited state power in search of new arguments against despotism at home, against the disorder called freedom, I saw nothing there but abuses perpetrated by autocracy? ..” Pushkin - P A. Vyazemsky: "Of course, I despise my fatherland from head to toe - but I'm annoyed if a foreigner shares this feeling with me." Stalin apparently thought the same way and banned de Custine.

The French who visited us between Custine and Dumas were reserved. 1840: Henri Mérimée published A Year in Russia in 1847, in which he wrote that the serfs were "happy in their own way." 1842: Xavier Marmier published "Letters on Russia, Finland and Poland" with arguments that everything Russian "is an organic product of soil and character" is incomprehensible, and just in case the book was banned. 1843: art critic Louis Viardot visited, published enthusiastic Memoirs of a Hunt and guidebooks. 1851: Charles de Saint-Julien, a lecturer in French literature at the university, who lived in St. Petersburg for 15 years, published A Scenic Journey Through Russia, stipulating that it was "a simple journey, and by no means a pamphlet." Balzac came in 1843. He quarreled with Custine over "Russia in 1839", wrote "Letters about Kyiv" himself in 1847, but did not publish during his lifetime. "Northern Bee": "Balzac spent two months with us and left. Many are now wondering what he will write about Russia. For some time now, Russia has been well aware of its own worth and has little interest in the opinion of foreigners about itself, knowing in advance that it is difficult to expect a true judgment from people who come here as tourists ... ”From Russia, he was offered to write a“ refutation ”on Custin - he refused:“ They tell me that I missed the opportunity to earn big money ... What a stupidity! Your monarch is too smart not to realize that a hired pen will never inspire confidence. I am not writing for or against Russia.” And yet he wrote both "against" and "for". “Prospect [Nevsky] is no more like the Boulevards [Paris] than rhinestones are on a diamond, it is deprived of the life-giving rays of the soul, the freedom to make fun of everything ... Everywhere there are only uniforms, cock feathers, overcoats ... Nothing unforeseen, no virgins of joy, no joy itself. The people, as always, are poor and take the rap for everything. But: “Unlike other Europeans visiting Russia, I have not the slightest desire to condemn her so-called despotism. I prefer the power of one person to the power of the crowd, because I feel that I will never be able to agree with the people. He noted that Russia is an “Asian” country and one cannot look at it “through constitutional glasses”, but he wrote more about how disgusting he was with Jews and Poles who are all rocking the boat, while Russians tend to “submit, despite that, to submit with danger to life, to submit even when humility is meaningless and unnatural ”- and thanks to this humility they will be able to conquer Europe if they are told. As for the serf: “under the current order of things, he lives carefree. He is fed, he is paid, so that slavery for him turns from evil into a source of happiness.

In 1858, Theophile Gauthier came and wrote only about architecture. Hugo was not in Russia and could not stand her: she “devoured Turkey”, the Russian emperor was a “monster”. Michelet, the idol of Dumas, called Russia a country without a future, whose population is disgusted by the principles of property, responsibility and work. Dumas did not share their hostility. But we expected insults. Did you wait?

There is a lot of confusion in the lists of Dumas' books about Russia. Let's figure it out. Firstly, there are “Letters from St. Petersburg”, published in “Vek” from December 21, 1858 to March 10, 1859, then banned in France and published in Belgium in 1859 as “Letters on the Emancipation of Slaves in Russia ". Actually, the trip is not told there, it is an essay on serfdom. The work “From Paris to Astrakhan” is devoted to the journey - 43 essays in “Monte Cristo” from June 17, 1858 to April 28, 1859, also published in the “Constitutional” in 1861, a separate book was published in Leipzig as “Impressions of the trip to Russia" together with "Letters on the emancipation of slaves in Russia", then in Belgium and France (with Levy) in nine volumes, and finally, in 1865-1866, Levy published the four-volume book "In Russia", including "Letters on the emancipation of slaves in Russia ". Notes about the second part of the journey - through the Caucasus - were published in the newspaper "Kavkaz" from April 16 to May 15, 1859 and simultaneously in four volumes in the "Theater Library" series, in Leipzig - as "The Caucasus. New Impressions” and in Paris as “The Caucasus from Prometheus to Shamil”, then as “The Caucasus: Impressions of the Trip”; there were other options. Plus a few texts about Russian writers, sometimes included, sometimes not included in publications. For a long time, these books were not translated in our country, only notes about a trip to the Caucasus in an abbreviated form under the title “Caucasus. The Journey of Alexander Dumas” appeared in Tiflis in 1861, translated by P. N. Robrovsky. But there were magnificent survey works by S. N. Durylin, as well as M. I. Buyanov (“Dumas in Dagestan”, 1992; “Marquis against the Empire”, 1993; “Dumas in Transcaucasia”, 1993; “Alexander Dumas in Russia”, 1996). In 1993, the book “From Paris to Astrakhan” was published in the translation of M. Yakovenko under the title “Travel Impressions. In Russia”, and in 2009 it was published under its real name in the translation of V. A. Ishechkin. The most complete translation of "Caucasus" - Tbilisi, 1988; a translation is being prepared (perhaps it has already been released) by the Art-Business Center publishing house, which publishes the collected works of Dumas.

Dumas conspired to go with the artist Jean Pierre Moinet (in the absence of cameras, there is no way to travel without an artist); the retinue of the Kushelevs also included the Italian singer Milleotti and the Frenchman Dandre, an accountant and secretary. In Stettin they boarded the ship "Vladimir" - to Kronstadt, then on the ship "Cockerill" they arrived in St. Petersburg. This is where the date confusion begins. In Europe, the Gregorian calendar, we have the Julian; in the diary of P. D. Durnovo, a relative of Kushelev, it is noted that the guests arrived on June 10 (June 22, according to a new style), the maid of honor A. F. Tyutcheva wrote in her diary of June 10: “The arrival of Hume the table-rotator.” And Dumas claimed that he ended up in St. Petersburg on June 26, that is, according to the old style, on the 14th. “We said goodbye to Princess Dolgoruky, said goodbye to Prince Trubetskoy, who repeated his invitation to me for a wolf hunt in Gatchina, and sat down in three or four carriages of Count Kushelev, who were waiting to take us to the Bezborodko dacha, located on the right bank of the Neva beyond St. Petersburg, a kilometer from the Arsenal, opposite the Smolny Monastery. (This is in the Petrovsky Park area.) Walks around the city, places that a foreigner is supposed to see, white nights; I learned to communicate with cabbies, learned the words "naprava", "naleva", "pachol". But first of all - prisons.

They were not allowed into the Peter and Paul Fortress, but he wrote about it and gave advice to Alexander I: “On the first anniversary of my stay on the throne, I would open all the casemates ... and allow the people to examine them; then I would call for volunteers, and they would fill them up in public; behind them - masons, who in front of everyone would have laid the doors. And he would say: “Children, in the previous reigns, the nobility and the peasants were slaves. And my predecessors needed prison cells. In my reign, the nobility and the peasants are all free. And I don't need dungeons." It was possible through the Kushelevs to get permission to visit the prison "between Gorokhovaya and Uspenskaya streets." At the beginning of the 19th century, the Third Department was located on the corner of Gorokhovaya, the Okhrana appeared later; perhaps we are talking about the Directorate of the Admiralty part, under which there was a detective department. Through an interpreter, he spoke to a peasant who set fire to a manor house because his wife was breastfeeding puppies. “I shook hands with him wholeheartedly, even though he was an arsonist. And he would not give his hand to his master, no matter what prince he was.

In the first evenings at Kushelev’s, Dumas met “a writer who shares with Turgenev and Tolstoy the favorable attention of the young Russian generation,” Dmitry Vasilyevich Grigorovich (1822–1899), the son of a Russian landowner and a Frenchwoman. Grigorovich writes that they met at Hume's wedding. But the wedding was on July 20, according to the old style (August 2), and guests to the Kushelevs began to arrive "at Dumas" immediately; Durnovo wrote on June 27 that there were "too many people" - everyone wants to see a celebrity. Grigorovich agreed to be a guide, which cost him dearly. A.F. Pisemsky - A.V. Druzhinin: “Grigorovich, probably wanting to get the final European fame, became some kind of henchman of Dumas, travels everywhere with him and translates novels with him.” I. A. Goncharov - A. V. Druzhinin: “Now Petersburg is empty: only Grigorovich is busy with Dumas and spends his days at Kushelev-Bezborodko. Dumas also lives there: Grigorovich takes him around the city and around and serves him as the only source of information about Russia. What will come of it - God knows. And Tyutchev called Grigorovich "Kornak-leader", which leads the Frenchman "like a rare beast" ...

The first excursion is Peterhof, the dacha of Ivan Ivanovich Panaev (Grigorovich: “Dumas asked for an opportunity to meet one of the real Russian writers. I named him Panaev and Nekrasov”), Oranienbaum. Dumas was preparing for the visit: “I heard a lot about Nekrasov, and not only as a great poet, but also as a poet whose genius meets today’s needs” - he bought Nekrasov’s collection and translated two poems overnight from Grigorovich’s interlinear translation: “quite enough, to get an idea of ​​the caustic and sad genius of their author. Grigorovich: I. I. Panaev, whom I warned, was also very pleased. We agreed on the day and the two of us set off on a steamboat. I sincerely thought to please both parties, but I made a mistake in the calculation: this trip did not cost me in vain. Evdokia Panaeva wrote in her memoirs that Dumas appeared uninvited to the dacha (I wonder how it would be possible?), He ate a lot, the French are always hungry, she offered to go for a walk, but he wanted to eat more, after breakfast he began to whine about lunch, somehow managed to take him out, he imposed himself again and ate again, asked to spend the night "with swagger", while he cursed the Kushelevs' house, his secretary was "a nondescript fool", whom Dumas "pushed around like a lackey" (this is about Moine), then Dumas came a hundred more times and kept asking for food, but she didn't give him pillows, etc. Babi's delirium spread throughout the city. N. P. Shalikova - S. D. Kareeva: “Alex. Dumas, p?re in St. Petersburg. Good goose, they say! At a dinner with Panaev in the presence of his wife, he appeared in something resembling a shirt. Such, they say, self-praise and mauvais ton, what a horror. Of course, he doesn’t put ours in anything, only Nekrasov alone doesn’t worship him ... "Grigorovich:" I was subsequently accused in print that, without saying a word to anyone, from the bay, I suddenly brought Dumas to the dacha to Panaev and with him were several other unknown Frenchmen... On the occasion of this trip, Dumas was also taken. It is told how several times later, and also as a surprise, he appeared at the dacha to Panaev, accompanied by several unfamiliar Frenchmen, once brought as many as seven of them, and stayed overnight without ceremony, thus putting the owners of the house in a tragic position, who did not know what to feed and where to lay this uninvited gang... You would think that here we are not talking about a civilized, intelligent Frenchman, who is perfectly familiar with the conditions of decency, but about some wild bashi-bazouk from Adrianople. I was only once with Dumas at Panaev's dacha; on the same day, in the evening, we went back on the steamer to St. Petersburg. Dumas, however, writes: "... we spent the night with Panaev and the next day, in the morning, we left for Oranienbaum." He did not really say how Nekrasov received him, but, apparently, dryly. (Later there was a conflict connected with the fact that in 1856 a rumor spread in St. Petersburg secular circles about the death of Countess A.K. it is believed that he described this story. In fact, in the month of publication of "Princess" Dashkova was alive and her husband, Baron Pouilly, took care of her. Dumas, commenting on his translation of the poem, said this, and Pouilly then came to Russia and summoned Nekrasov to duel.)

Panaev in Sovremennik: “Petersburg received Mr. Dumas with complete Russian cordiality and hospitality ... and how could it be otherwise? Mr. Dumas enjoys almost the same popularity in Russia as in France, as well as all over the world among lovers of light reading ... All of St. Petersburg during the month of June was devoted only to Mr. Dumas. There were rumors and anecdotes about him in all strata of St. Petersburg society; not a single conversation went without his name, he was sought out at all the festivities, at all public gatherings, God knows what gentlemen were mistaken for him. It was worth shouting jokingly: Out Dumas! - and the crowd began to get excited and rushed in the direction you pointed to. Tyutchev: “The other evening I met Alexandre Dumas ... It was not without difficulty that I squeezed through the crowd that had gathered around the celebrity and made loudly in his face more or less ridiculous remarks caused by his personality, but this, apparently, did not annoy him at all, and did not hinder a very lively conversation that he had with one too famous lady, the divorced wife of Prince Dolgorukov ... Dumas was with his head uncovered, as is his custom, as they say; and this already gray-haired head ... is quite sympathetic with its liveliness and intelligence.

Many people were pissed off by this excitement. A. F. Pisemsky told how, at one of the evenings at Kushelev’s, the writer L. A. Mei, “having drunk enough, explained Dumas frankly everything that they think of him in Russia, which terribly offended him, so he wanted to challenge him to a duel ". N. F. Pavlov, “Votyaki and Mr. Dumas” (“Russian Messenger” by Katkov): “Who is unfamiliar with the works of Mr. Dumas? It seems that you should burn with shame if you are convicted that you do not know a word of them. Meanwhile, in any European salon, in the society of European scientists, writers, you can safely say: I have not read a single page from Mr. Dumas, and no one will suspect you of ignorance or indifference to art. On the contrary, you will give a favorable opinion about yourself ... ”Herzen,“ The Bell ”:“ With shame, with regret, we read how our aristocracy creeps at the feet of A. Dumas, how it runs to look at the “great and curly man” through the bars of the garden, asking take a walk in the park to Kushelev-Bezborodko. Panaev stood up for the guest, although sourly - “it is known what kind of talent he has”, but one cannot offend and “Dumas’ little finger is more significant than the little fingers of Messrs. Grech and Bulgarin together. Grech is not without reason, there was a literary and political war between him and Sovremennik; he invited Dumas to dinner, but Dumas did not mention him. Actress P. I. Orlova-Savina: “N. I. Grech and my other friends ... said that such a gentleman is not worth a good job. (We are talking about a blanket that she allegedly was going to give Dumas.) The cartoonists had fun: N. Stepanov depicted how Kushelev puts bags of money in Dumas, and later drew Dumas with Caucasians and the signature: “Mr Dumas! We bow to you - take off our hats; why don't you answer the same? You might as well take off your hat. Dumas: I don't have a hat on; and that I do not bow to anyone, walk the streets in a fantastic costume and appear in decent houses with dirty feet, this is because I left politeness in the last European city - Petersburg. This is some completely unimaginable nonsense. But there was also a witty one: Dumas holds Shamil by the clothes, he asks to leave him - “I am in a hurry to repel the Russian attack”, Dumas replies: “You can think about this trifle later, and now I need to have a serious talk with you: I came here to write your notes in 25 volumes and I wish to get down to business right away.

Goncharov - Druzhinin: “I saw Dumas twice for about five minutes, and he told me that he was planning to write up to 200 volumes of travel, and by the way he determines 15 volumes for Russia, 17 for Greece, 20 for Asia Minor, etc. e. By God, so! He was reminded of Mirekur's book, the magazine "Illustration" called him a literary day laborer: "... for Dumas, this or that king is all the same and he does not bother about history." Dostoevsky, “A number of articles on Russian literature” (“Vremya”, 1861): “... the Frenchman knows everything, even without studying anything ... he already knew in Paris that he would write about Russia; even, perhaps, he will write his journey in Paris, even before going to Russia, sell it to a bookseller and only then come to us - to shine, captivate and fly away. The Frenchman is always sure that he has no one to thank and nothing for, even if they really did something for him ... because he is absolutely sure that ... with his one appearance he made happy, consoled, rewarded and satisfied everyone and everyone on his way ... having learned in passing Russian boyars (les boyards) to turn tables or blow soap bubbles ... he finally decides to study Russia thoroughly, in detail, and goes to Moscow. In Moscow, he will look at the Kremlin, think about Napoleon, praise tea ... attack Peter the Great and then, quite appropriately, tell his readers his own biography ... By the way, he will also pay attention to Russian literature; he will talk about Pushkin and condescendingly remark that this was a poet not without talents ... Then the traveler says goodbye to Moscow, travels further, admires the Russian troikas and finally appears somewhere in the Caucasus, where he shoots Circassians together with Russian scouts, makes acquaintance with Shamil and reads with him "Three Musketeers" "...

Soviet critics scolded Dumas for talking not with Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, but with some third-rate fools. Morois and Troyat (both, by the way, Russians) - too. Troyatt: “I didn’t hear anything about a novice writer named Lev and named Tolstoy ... and about another debutant, Fyodor Dostoevsky, who at that time was in hard labor in Siberia ...” In fact, Dumas wrote that Grigorovich “shares with Turgenev and Tolstoy favorable attention of the young Russian generation. Why didn't you go to Yasnaya Polyana or to Dostoevsky in Tver? Nobody invited.

Another reproach - he distorted everything, wrote nonsense. Morois: “His stories upon his return from Russia surpassed the adventures of Monte Cristo with their improbability. It is good to invent for someone who has come from afar. In parallel with the publication of travel notes in France, articles with refutations were pouring in Russia: he described the hunt for wolves incorrectly, the wheel of the tarantass was incorrect ... He described the hunt from the words of Prince Repnin and reported it - but what a difference! Fool! One of the first commentators on “From Paris to Astrakhan” N.I. Berzenov reproached Dumas with “French boasting”, at the beginning of the 20th century E.I. his journey in a book filled with fables and nonsense. They also attributed to him the “spreading cranberry”, which was invented in 1910 by the theater expert Kugel for the parody play “Love of a Russian Cossack” ...

We speak now disdainfully, even lovingly. Dmitry Bykov: “About half of his notes are descriptions of gastronomic miracles and female types that were here at his service.” In fact - 12 pages out of 450. We misrepresent shamelessly. From the same article by Bykov in 2008 (very benevolent): “What prevented many from accepting Dumas’s point of view (especially unpleasant, of course, for any reformers, especially the Bolsheviks) was his quiet, benevolent amazement of a European in front of the natives: if they live so, then, it means they like it! .. In a conversation with Nekrasov (a traveler is obliged to see the opposition, that’s how it is) Dumas dropped a revealing remark: “By abolishing serfdom, Russia will embark on the path of an enlightened Europe - the path leading to damn it!’”. This quote at one time was very fond of citing us - Dumas was against revolutions, he said that the country after the abolition of serfdom "will go to hell", and this is bad. In fact, the phrase is used in the following context: when we sailed to St. Petersburg, “among other distinguished passengers, Prince Trubetskoy and Princess Dolgorukaya were with us on board. In all cases, naming a loud Scandinavian, Russian, Muscovite, Mongolian, Slavic or Tatar name, we will not say what it will come to. With the decree of His Majesty Emperor Alexander on the liberation of the peasants, I think the entire Russian aristocracy will go the same way that ours from 1889 to 1893 - to hell ... But I will tell you where it came from ... I will try to find out everything well to help you distinguish hereditary princes from false." Not a country to hell, but an aristocracy, and to hell with it ...

We know that he wrote with inhuman scrupulousness. (Panaev admitted: “It is difficult to imagine a more active and industrious person.”) People who were not too lazy to read his books noticed this. Historian Pavel Nikolayevich Ardashev (“Petersburg Echoes”, 1896): “When I was in Narva, I read Dumas’ Impressions of a Travel in Russia. It is customary to consider his stories about Russia and Russian history as a model of fantastic lies, but meanwhile what turns out to be? Everything that he conveys, for example, about the behind-the-scenes history of the Russian court at the beginning of the reign of Catherine II, turned out to be familiar to me - from Bilbasov's book, written on the basis of archival documents. The only difference is that Bilbasov's work was published two or three years ago, while Op. Dumas - almost 50 years. In addition, Bilbasov, of course, all this is much more detailed. It is curious that Dumas even cites (in translation, of course) Orlov's letter to Catherine about the murder of Peter III. Bilbasov's 'discovery' turned out to be anticipated for half a century."

M. I. Buyanov conducted titanic investigations to establish how accurate Dumas was, and came to the conclusion: “And he was not mistaken, and he did not invent ... as an observant person, he paid attention to such trifles that people of a different warehouse did not consider it necessary to notice” . V. A. Ishechkin, a translator, says that he was motivated by “a growing sense of protest against the assertions of literary critics of the past and present that the famous guest from France did not understand Russian life, mixed up everything in his essays, and they are unworthy of the reader’s attention ... My trust in Dumas fully justified. Each page turned confirmed that there was no confusion in the essays. The essays are written with guide-book accuracy. Knowing the old names, it is easy to find Dumas' trace in the city on the Neva, in Moscow and the Volga cities, in the Caucasus. I was convinced of this by traveling in his footsteps. For example, on Valaam, without questioning, according to the author's descriptions, it was possible to identify the bay where Dumas got off the ship ashore; there even the trees along the path leading to the monastery stairs stand the same way.” The historian N. Ya. Eidelman noted that Dumas had almost no mistakes either in Russian history, or in geography, or in ethnography, that, having visited the Borodino field, he accurately restored the course of the battle; a botanist from Dagestan A. Adzhieva noted that Dumas was the first foreigner to describe Sarykum, the highest dune in Eurasia ... He didn’t invent anything - he didn’t know how.

His thoroughness is amazing. He wrote the word "king" - on two pages the etymology of the word with links to sources. He gave an overview of Russian journalism with an indication of circulation, printing houses, directions, authors. He explained how janitors differ from porters and concierges, and guards from policemen. I saw an eunuch in the shop - he led a study on eunuchs. He described the views not approximately - “ah, white nights” - but precisely: “Right in front of the balcony is the embankment, from it two large granite stairs with a 50-foot flagpole lead down to the river bank ... Behind the landing stage, washing it with its own waters, is the slow Neva ; it is 8-10 times wider than the Seine in Paris at the Pont des Arts; the river is littered with ships under long red pennants flapping in the wind, loaded with spruce timber and firewood, coming from the center of Russia along the internal channels of the work of Peter the Great. These ships never return to where they came from; built to deliver timber, they are sold along with the timber, then dismantled and burned like firewood. Fair on the Volga - when it was founded, everything with numbers, what goods, where, for what amounts. Geology: “After accepting the Kama, the Volga River becomes wider, and islands appear; the left bank remains low, while the right, uneven, from the Lower, rises to a height of 400 feet; it is composed of pottery clay, aspid (roofing slates), limestones and sandstones without a single rock. About mail: “Every postmaster, moreover, has a sealed, sealed with the wax seal of the district postal book on his desk from the spine on a cord, which he is expressly forbidden to cut. He loses his certificate if the wax seal is broken, and the starosta does not give sufficient reasons for its violation. Ethnography: “Kyrgyz are not at all indigenous people, they are from Turkestan and, apparently, are natives of China ... Previously, Kalmyks lived here, who occupied the entire steppe between the Volga and the Urals ... Now about why the migration happened. The most possible reason: the methodical restriction of the power of the leader and the freedom of the people, practiced by the Russian government ... "

Reproach: all this information is taken from books and newspapers. Excuse me, but was he supposed to invent them? Of course, he worked on the basis of oral stories and written sources, immediately upon arrival in St. Petersburg he ran to Dufour's bookstore, read Karamzin ... "From Paris to Astrakhan" - a short course in the history of Russia with all the murders and coups, about which we were forbidden to write and read . Tyutchev to his wife on August 6, 1858: “I was rudely interrupted by the arrival of a courier sent by Minister Kovalevsky with a very hasty letter in which he asks me to make sure that our censorship committee missed a certain issue of a magazine published by Dumas and called Monte Cristo. Just yesterday I accidentally learned in Peterhof from Princess Saltykova about the existence of this issue, containing, apparently, rather immodest details about the Russian court ... ”It was about the destruction of the will of Catherine II, who had given the throne to her grandson; it was a state secret. Paul's madness, the pacification of the Streltsy rebellion, Biron's favoritism - of course, Dumas's book does not pull for a dissertation, but he did not make gross mistakes, and if he told a story, he said that it was a story. Naturally, he liked Peter I: “it’s terrible to think where Russia would be if Peter’s heirs shared the progressive ideas of this brilliant man,” more or less Catherine II; Alexander I - "a kind, subtle, unhappy person." Nothing good to say about the rest.

That he poked us with his nose into our history is not so bad; it seemed terrible that he wrote about us in general. Walks: “Russians are more than ghosts: ghosts; with a serious look they walk next to each other or one after another and go neither sad nor joyful, not allowing themselves a word or a gesture. “Poor people! Has it not been the habit of slavery that has brought up speechlessness in you? Well, speak, well, sing, well, read, be cheerful! You are free today. Yes, I understand that, you just have to acquire the habit of freedom… To believe in something, you need to know something, but the Russian peasant does not know what freedom is.”

He compiled a kind of Russian dictionary. Scaffolding erected for the restoration of the bell tower of Peter and Paul: “It's been a year since these scaffoldings have been raised, and they will stand for another year, and two, and maybe three years. This is called un frais in Russia - Milch cow. Milch cow is an abuse. There are no words in Russian to translate our common expression - "arr"; "ter les frais" - put an end to unnecessary expenses. In Russia, costs of this kind are not transferred at all: new ones appear or the old ones continue to be wound up. “These two sous were inflated to 1,500 rubles. This is what they call un frais - scam, fraud."“In Russia, everything is run by rank. Chin- translation of the French word "rank". Only in Russia the rank is not earned, it is acquired; men there serve in accordance with rank, not personal merit. According to one Russian, the rank is also a greenhouse for intriguers and swindlers. “When in Russia they are dissatisfied with some colonel, he is promoted to general. And how the colonels operate there, you will see now; this is pretty easy and without sin, as they say in Russia, so that all tricks or maneuvers do not look like armed robbery. Kickbacks: “Official prices are negotiated between the colonel and the authorities. The authorities issue certificates, according to which the colonels are reimbursed for their expenses. Prices are inflated; the authorities receive a third, the colonels two-thirds of the profit. And all this is hidden from the emperor, so as not to upset his majesty ... Do not upset host, such is the biggest concern of a Russian person - from a serf to a prime minister. “Philanthropic institutions are mainly oriented towards giving a certain number of employees the opportunity to live. Those for whom the shelters are created, get there only later, and sometimes they don’t get there at all. Nothing! The establishment exists; that's all it takes." “What is the Russian clergy, it is known - corruption that corrupts a person, but corruption with a proudly raised head, with a respectable beard and luxurious clothes.” “The most typical story during my trip: firemen extinguish the house. For water you have to run half a verst to the pond. On my proposal to organize a chain, the head of the fire brigade explains that this is not provided for by the laws ... "

“Russia is a huge facade. But no one does what is behind the facade. Anyone who tries to look behind the facade is like a cat that first saw itself in a mirror and goes behind it, hoping to find a second cat on the other side. And what's funny is that in Russia - a country of abuses - everyone, from the emperor to the janitor, wants to put an end to them. Everyone talks about abuses, everyone knows about them, analyzes them and regrets them ... But as soon as they touch on any abuse in Russia, you know who raises a cry? The ones who got hurt? No, that would be too clumsy. Those who have not yet been touched are screaming, but who are afraid that their turn will come. “It is unheard of that sounds in the stories of the Russians themselves about thefts that are committed in the administrations ... Everyone knows about thefts and thieves, however, crooks continue to steal, and thefts are becoming more and more loud. The only one who allegedly does not know about thefts or thieves is the emperor. “But there are laws against abuse, aren't there? Oh yeah. Ask what the local police do ispravnik. Ispravnik "II touche la dome du vol" - beret. Yes, these abuses are prohibited by law. But the thing that should not be talked about, but shouted about, is that the law in Russia is in the hands of officials who are paid not for keeping the law, but for trading it. “We talked about the difficulties of getting rid of abuses in Russia: just touch one of the guilty, the rest begin to shout indignantly in defense. In Russia, the sacred ark is abused: whoever touches it will not do well. Oh really?!

The Letters on the Emancipation of Slaves have not yet been translated into Russian, and there is the most unpleasant thing that not only an official, but also an oppositionist is unlikely to like. From Dumas you expect a fiery statement: long live freedom, how can slavery be allowed! - but this is a very dry work, which sets out a comparative history of slavery in the Roman Empire, Gaul and Ancient Russia. Dumas studied (with the help of translators) Russkaya Pravda (the code of legal norms of medieval Russia), the Sudebnik of 1497 and 1550 - did many of us at least open them? He explained who the smerds, ryadovichi, zakupy, izorniki, ognischane, tiuns, keykeepers, serfs and servants were and where they all came from; do we know that? Dumas' main idea: if in Europe slavery arose by capturing prisoners and the liberation struggle was a struggle against a stranger (here he gave a brief outline of the French revolutions with a full justification of the Great Revolution, because of this "Letters" were banned), then "Russian chronicle positively say that Russian slavery began not by conquest, but by voluntary conscription. Self-sale into slavery, entry into the service (tiunas, housekeepers) “without a row” (without reservations), bankruptcy; as a result, “the landowner, the ruler is not, as in France, a conqueror and, therefore, an enemy from which the people seek to free themselves. This is the protector, as people call him, too weak to defend themselves, they transfer to him the right to protect them and the rights to themselves ... A people who, incapable of self-government, and now and then calls on a foreign ruler, whom he allows to take for himself and as much land as he wishes for his close associates; a people that does not put limits on the power of the ruler, because it does not like fighting and loves passivity ... a people that gives up its freedom itself, without observing precautions, in order to receive payment for the loss of freedom, to keep some rights for itself, who, having received food and shelter , does not care about freedom for his children, just as he did not care about his own; such a people one day finds itself, incapable of resistance, in the hands of usurpers and murderers ... He complains, but does not rise, all hoping for the justice of the ruler, whom he calls his father, like God ... ".

The situation of serfs in the 19th century was described in detail - the subtleties of corvée, dues, conscription into the army, corporal punishment. He outlined the published draft of the reform and characterized the parties that discussed it - reactionaries, moderates and radicals; he himself is on the side of the third, that "they want emancipation at any cost, as a return to moral consciousness, as an atonement for age-old injustice." But it is not enough to abolish serfdom - "it is necessary to change the system, where the desire of the ruler is above the laws." What changes can await a country in whose genes - voluntary servility? According to the "Letters" it turns out that none. But in the "Caucasus" Dumas made a prediction: "Russia will break ... There will be a northern empire with a capital in the Baltic, a western empire with a capital in Poland, a southern one in the Caucasus and an eastern one, including Siberia ... An emperor who will rule at the time when this great upheaval takes place , will retain St. Petersburg and Moscow, that is, the true Russian throne; the leader, supported by France, will be elected king of Poland; an unfaithful governor will raise troops and become king in Tiflis; some exile ... will establish a republic from Kursk to Tobolsk. It is impossible for an empire covering a seventh of the globe to remain in one hand. A hand that is too firm will be broken, a hand that is too weak will be unclenched, and in both cases it will have to release what it is holding. He was wrong about Siberia... but he didn't say when all this would be.

He not only wrote about Russians, but also translated them: in St. Petersburg, Grigorovich made for him interlinear translations of Lermontov, Pushkin, Bestuzhev, Vyazemsky; he got to other poets in Tiflis, there were enough assistants everywhere. “And no one, including the real hereditary boyar Naryshkin, who was always dissatisfied with the translations of others, who would not condescend to make his own translation ... Women were especially disposed towards Lermontov.” Lermontov was translated to him by Princess Dolgorukaya (he calls her Anna, but it seems that Olga Dmitrievna Dolgorukaya, the wife of Prince P.V. Dolgorukov, nicknamed Crooked Legs, is meant - Tyutchev wrote that he saw Dumas with her). As early as 1854–1855, Dumas published A Hero of Our Time in The Musketeer, translated by Eduard Schaeffer (that was the fourth translation into French, Dumas erroneously indicated that it was the first). Now he wrote off and met (in August 1858 in Moscow) with E. P. Rostopchina, who knew Lermontov closely, she wrote an essay about him, which Dumas included in The Caucasus. He assessed it as follows: “This is the spirit of the scale and strength of Alfred de Musset, with which he has a great resemblance ... only, in my opinion, better built and more durable, it is intended for a longer life ...” Translated and published “Gifts of the Terek”, “ Duma”, “Dispute”, “Cliff”, “Clouds”, “From Goethe”, “Gratitude”, “My Prayer” and threw a riddle to literary critics: a poem, which he called “Wounded”. There are still disputes whether it means some well-known thing that Dumas translated in such a way that it is not recognizable, or (recently they tend to this point of view) he really found the lost text in the albums.

CHAPTER 19 THE SECOND PERSON IN THE STATE A few weeks after the fiasco of our community, around the beginning of May 1943, Goebbels was not slow to discover in Bormann precisely the virtues that he had so recently attributed to Goering. He gave Bormann assurances henceforth everything