A seedy family. The old princess and her court

Nikolay Leskov

Seedy family

Family chronicle of the Protozanov princes

(From the notes of Princess V.D.P.)

“A generation passes and a generation comes, but the earth endures forever.”

Eccles. 14.

The old princess and her court

Chapter first

Our family is one of the most ancient families in Rus': all the Protozanovs in a direct line descend from the first ruling princes, and under our family coat of arms it is written that it was not given to us by grace, but belongs “not by literacy.” In historical stories about old Rus', many names of our ancestors appear, and some of them are remembered with great approval. Before Ivan Danilovich Kalita, they had their inheritance, and then, having lost it, under Ivan the Third they are among the honorable people of the Moscow principality and remain in a prominent position until half of the reign of the Terrible. Then political adversity broke out over one of them, and, according to the customs of that time, everyone responded for one: some of the Protozanovs were executed, others were beaten and sent to different places. From that time on, the family of princes Protozanov disappeared from the scene for a long time, and only once or twice, and then in passing, under Alexei Mikhailovich it was mentioned among the “seedy”, but during the reign of Princess Sofia, one of this family of “seedy princes,” Prince Leonty Protozanov, again made his way into the ranks and, having received control of one of the Ukrainian cities, became a “fed prince.” He fed, however, so carelessly that Peter the Great, having learned about the method of feeding him, cut off his head and ordered his bellies to be “turned to the sovereign.” At the same time, however, the sovereign’s anger was not transferred from the father to the children, but on the contrary, the eldest son of the executed man, Yakov Leontyevich, was taken to teach him all the sciences of that time. Yakov Lvovich (from now on the name Leonty in the Protozanov family gives way to the name Lev) studied in Russia, then abroad and upon returning from there he was examined by the Tsar himself, who was very pleased with him and kept him in his person. Yakov Lvovich turned out to be so convenient for carrying out the various plans of the Petrovs that the sovereign noted him with his special attention and led him from honor to honor, not forgetting to correct his family “seedyness.” Peter, however, did not make our great-grandfather a rich man, but rather only brought him out of “seedy conditions.” Prince Yakov Lvovich himself did not know how to reward himself: he, as they said at that time, “was infected with Lefort’s stupidity,” that is, he neglected methods for self-reward, and therefore did not get rich. Such was his life until Anna Ivanovna’s accession to the throne, when Yakov Lvovich caught the eye of Biron, did not like him, and then quickly found himself in exile outside Orenburg.

In exile, Prince Yakov Lvovich, according to his father’s behest, turned to humility: he never even complained about the “German”, but completely immersed himself in reading religious books, which he did not have time to become acquainted with in his youth; He led a contemplative and strict life and was known as a sage and a righteous man.

Prince Yakov Lvovich in my eyes is a charming face, revealing a number of pure and deeply sympathetic people in our family. His whole life is as bright as crystal and as instructive as a legend, and his death is filled with some kind of charming, soothing mystery. He died without any suffering on the bright day of Christ's Resurrection, after mass, at which the Apostle himself read. Returning home, he broke his fast with all the exiles and non-exiles who came to congratulate him, and then sat down to read the all-forgiving teaching of John the Theologian assigned that day and, at the end of the reading, at the last word he bent down to the book and fell asleep. His death cannot in any way be called death: it was precisely the dormition, followed by the eternal sleep of the righteous.

That same day, in the evening, a package was delivered to the exile, announcing to him forgiveness and return, granted by the will of the reigning Empress Elizabeth: but all this was already too late. Prince Yakov was released by heavenly power from all the bonds with which earthly power tied him.

Our great-grandmother, Pelageya Nikolaevna, having buried her husband, returned to Russia with one fifteen-year-old son, and my great-grandfather, Prince Levushka.

Prince Levushka was born in exile and there he received the entire foundation of his initial upbringing directly from his father, from whom he inherited his excellent qualities to a remarkable extent. Having entered the service during the reign of Catherine II, he did not make for himself the brilliant career that was initially predicted for him. My grandmother, Princess Varvara Nikanorovna, said about him that “he, at that time, was not a trump card, he despised seeking and loved virtue too much.” At the age of just over thirty, Prince Lev Yakovlevich retired, got married and settled down forever in a village above the Oka River and lived a quiet landowner’s life, engaged in reading, experiments on electricity and notes, which he wrote tirelessly, away from the light.

The efforts of this “eccentric” to completely remove himself from the court and go as far as possible from the world with which he did not get along were crowned with complete success for him: everyone forgot about him, but in our family he is highly revered and legends about him are still alive today .

From my early childhood I had some kind of majestic, although extremely brief, idea about Prince Lev Yakovlevich. My grandmother, Princess Varvara Nikanorovna, from whom I first heard his name, remembered her father-in-law with nothing less than a smile of complete happiness, but she never spoke much about him, it was definitely considered a shrine that should not be revealed until it was exposed.

It was such a custom in the house that if somehow in a conversation someone accidentally mentioned the name of Prince Lev Yakovlevich, then everyone immediately took on the most serious look and considered it necessary to remain silent. It was as if they were trying to give time to the sound of the sacred family name, without merging it with any sound of another everyday word.

And then, during these pauses, grandmother Varvara Nikanorovna usually looked around at everyone, as if thanking her for respect for her father-in-law, and said:

- Yes, he was a clean man, completely clean! He was not in the case and did not have favor - they didn’t even like him, but... they respected him.

And this was always pronounced by the old princess in the same way, with repetition, in which she used the same gesture to enhance expressiveness.

“He had no favor,” she repeated, waving the outstretched index finger of her right hand in front of her. - No, I didn’t; but... - Here she abruptly turned her finger down and finished with a stern expression on her face, - but they respected him, and for that they did not tolerate him.

Nikolai Leskov is classified as a “second-tier writer.” That is, in schools they briefly mention the name, even in humanities universities they quickly study literally a couple of “main works”...
So what remains, if you have the desire and time, is to read the writer yourself... but where can you get it - time not occupied by anything or anyone?
“A Seedy Family” does not seem to belong to the “main” books of writers, those that you absolutely need to read in order to at least remain among the ranks of intellectuals. This work is very nice, but... somehow outdated.
Because it is almost impossible to update it for yourself, to transfer this story into a modern way... This is from an “early time”, and it is spoken about in excellent literary language, which educated people spoke and thought about 150 years ago.

The history of the family of the Protozanov princes, a family chronicle collected bit by bit by their descendants, is densely eventful, but these are increasingly small events, like beads strung on a thread of days and years. On this thread there are also beads of events: Lev Protozanov died in the war... his daughter Vera left the teaching... Count Funkendorf, who, by the way, had previously wooed his mother, wooed her... But these beads are not large, changing little the descending pattern... just a little -slightly, within the history of one family, without any change in the history of the Russian State, and even more so - the world.

However, if such small beaded threads break and crumble in the context of not only this one modestly inconspicuous family, for some reason in the size of the country and the world such concepts as fidelity, honesty, hard work, love of children, responsibility, generosity fade and disappear...
The desire to give back even for a small good deed, to thank sincerely - where is all this now? Nowadays, if you stretch out your little finger, they will grab your hand up to the shoulder, and they will even mock you... No, at all times - both in those “earlier” ones and now - there have always been more scoundrels than good people (and it doesn’t matter which These people belonged to the “stratum”: both the “countess” were scoundrels, and the commoners showed pure hearts). But still - oh, what a blessing it is that there is someone nearby who will scold and punish (fairly), but will save and preserve.

Flaws - it was not done correctly, and it was wasted; they didn’t keep silent on time or didn’t say the right word - they happen to everyone. People are not Angels, they tend to make mistakes in deeds and words...
But still, the main thing is that honest people live honestly, trying to correct mistakes, and carrying great shame within themselves for their sins...

And - oh, how the pre-final conversation between Varvara Protozanova and Methodius Chervev (who never became her sons’ teacher) cut me to the heart. He tells her the right words. But it’s wrong to destroy the world built with such efforts by being right. Moreover, this world, although imperfect, is still more aimed at external good deeds than at one’s own self-satisfaction. (Varvara Nikanorovna is not Countess Khotetova, whose men live in poverty until she scatters handfuls of gold and silver throughout monasteries).

Now about yesterday’s specific performance at STI.
“A Seedy Family” is the fifth performance that I watched here (and I saw the first two back in the guys’ student days).
I once defined my beloved Hermitage as a largely LITERARY theater, in which the repertoire is built on the basis of good books, and the performances are sometimes even long - but solely because for the sake of entertainment, an important word cannot be thrown out, it must certainly be conveyed to the viewer ... even if, it seems, he didn’t remember right away, he will remember later.

Same with STI. The literature here is taken as a basis, excellent, and also not cut and shredded; even if there are inevitable cuts, then the MAIN WORD in the performance will still remain, will be said and heard.

The theater hall is relatively small, and the premises are non-standard, in which there are many photographs from performances (from rehearsals! Oh, how interesting it is!) and “family portraits” - Dostoevsky, Gogol, Leskov, Sholom Aleichem, Dickens, Venichka Erofeev...
The coffee smells delicious, and there are big green apples in vases: take it, eat it, prepare yourself for the start of the performance. By the way, the programs are distributed for free.

The scenery was designed by Alexander Borovsky, the son of the great set designer David Lvovich. The play is like frames for family portraits: sometimes they freeze, the characters are fixed in them, sometimes they move again.
Music. I listened to what seemed like a small overture before the second act: the sound of a distant trumpet sounded in it, and notes of Spanish flamenco, and a mazurka, and a Russian tune...

Actors. Literally everyone is good - well, literally: no one plays with slack, the ensemble of actors is simply amazing (well, the “wives” already had this in their student days).

But, as in any theater, there are artists who, without falling out of the overall picture, still look higher than the rest.
Alexey Vertkov. His Dormidon (Don Quixote) Rogozhin is just some kind of one-eyed miracle. All the scenes with his participation are just oh, stop for a moment, you are wonderful! Just like the Russian Don Quixote, who fights for a just cause, sparing neither eye nor neck... Because if you don’t fight, and don’t stand for a just cause, and don’t constantly move somewhere forward, forward, forward... you’ll live How? After all, it’s boring, not like Dormidon.
(And not so much to the hero, but to the artist: what an incredible voice! My God, what a voice!!!)

By the way, the performance runs for almost 4 hours. At the same time, do not expect constant emotional blows from the action - it flows quietly and calmly. But you can’t take your eyes off it. And there are tears in my eyes...

Marina Dmitrevskaya

“Young grandma, who are you?”
N. Leskov. "A seedy family." Theater Arts Studio (Moscow). Composition and staging, artist Alexander Borovsky
Oblong and black oval,
Dark dress with bells...
Young grandmother! Who kissed
Your arrogant lips?
M. Tsvetaeva. Grandma

Chapter 1
It took me a long time to get to the story of this performance. Having experienced strong human excitement after it, when in the subway, on the street, in a store you grab a notebook and feverishly write something down, because the performance does not give you peace, I decided not to rush, but took down from the shelf that dusty volume of Leskov’s collected works, which It was never opened by anyone in our house. And drowned in it.

It was summer. The “seedy family” smelled of freshly cut July grass, it reminded of itself near the preserved protected estates (well, not the Oryol region, so the Kostroma province, Shchelykovo...). In the village church, in the churchyard of Nikolo-Berezhki, it was easy to imagine grandmother Varvara Nikanorovna Protozanova coming to mass (the grandmother strictly “sought that the priests in the altar did not blow their noses loudly and did not wipe their beards with lectern towels”...).

But “The Seedy Family” became even more of a reality on the way to some Alexander factory, where only the old alleys or the stone pilasters that had sunk into the ground, which once served as the entrance to the estate, have long been reminiscent of the past estate life of the seedy families. To whom?..

It seemed that life itself was immersing me in what was “offered”, allowing me to “reincarnate”, move into Leskov’s world and from there describe the performance. But something got in the way here too. Probably, to this day I am afraid to disturb that gracious and noble inner peace that this performance gives and which almost never arises in the current restless theater. “A seedy family” does not give rise to the pathos of sharing in writing those intimate things that - directly or indirectly - arose in you and strengthened you. “Her art produced deep moral disinfection in our society,” Amphiteatrov once wrote about Yermolova. This can be said about the performance of the Zhenovacs. And this is one of the reasons for professional reluctance to share.

But, as the righteous Methodius Chervev says at the end of the play and novel, “Do as you know, no matter what, you will repent.” So I'll tell you.

The faces of the characters have been standing before my eyes for months... Some say that the novel itself seems excellent because reading it is now accompanied by “living pictures” of the performance. May be.

Chapter II
Dark, direct and demanding look,
Look ready for defense.
Young women don't look like that.
Young grandma, who are you?

As a teenager, I always wanted ancient portraits and these unknown young grandmothers in them to come to life. Alexander Borovsky cuts openings in two frontally parallel black walls. This is a kind of art gallery - and everyone, who at first appears as a “living image”, is then “portraited” in volume, with details. Each character in the portrait has its own story, and there are many of these characters.

In “A Seedy Family” (I think almost no one has read it and it is necessary to give at least the outlines of the novel) we are talking about the family of princes Protozanov, and the main person in it is grandmother Varvara Nikanorovna, nee Chestunov. They immediately say about her - “grandmother”, since the story is told on behalf of her granddaughter Vera Dmitrievna, but the princess is really a “young grandmother”, an orphan raised in a princely house and at the age of sixteen married for love to Prince Lev Lvovich, who received the rank of guards, one Of those “whose wide greatcoats resembled sails” and who died in the War of 1812, only grandfather died without glory, having suffered a series of defeats. The grandmother foresaw something bad: their life was too happy, and even the treasure they dug up increased the family’s fortune, and the Lord cannot give so much love and wealth for long...

Left a widow, the young princess “chose perhaps the best of all means—namely, intense activity” as a remedy for grief.”

Grandmothers of Russian literature... From the grandmother of “The Cliff” to Dostoev’s Babulenka... They, and not the mothers of the heroes, always had a vital support. Because - way of life, order, generations, and each next one is weaker than the previous one... It always seems that your parents are stronger than you, and your grandmother is stronger than your mother. Without grandmother there is no structure, no past, no roots, no clan.

The young grandmother Varvara Nikanorovna, for whom “the meaning of life (hereinafter italics are mine. - M.D.) was developed with amazing consistency,” “did not pursue specially outlined goals, achieving them came into her hands organically.” Her lands “became rich and prosperous: her serfs bought land on the side in her name and trusted her more than themselves.” Without making any distinction between people, the princess “forgave people easily and willingly, and, moreover, with amazing condescension for the weak.”

Grandmother Varvara Nikanorovna “did not separate morality from religion.” “She herself strictly contained the statutes of the Orthodox Church, but at the request of a person, religion did not at all make it a necessary condition for the exclusive preference of her faith over all others... She did not hide the fact that “she respects every good religion.” She said: “Let them pray wherever they want: God is one and his measure is longer than the earth,” and about the existing “clergy, in her own words, she grieved a lot, saying that “they are lazy, greedy and careless in their work, and unskillful in writing.” "".

I quote Leskov so much not only because the words “meaning of life”, “organically”, “mourned a lot” are fundamental for a literary text, which is remarkable in itself, but also because in Zhenovach’s play they are all extremely important: we are talking about value system and worldview. The impeccable stamina and morality of the princess and her entourage, in fact, are the plot, the developing theme of the play.

Varvara Nikanorovna boldly and clearly assesses the changing times (“hypocritical searches will rise. I would like to praise those who, standing at the throne, have not forgotten how to speak the truth...”), sympathizes with the victims of the Chuguev rebellion, suppressed by Arakcheev: “The heart must always and everywhere ask. God rest your poor servants, and forgive us how we endure this.” She is impeccable, strong - and so are the people around her.

This is Maria Nikolaevna, who “from the time she realized herself until she said before her death: “Accept my spirit”... never thought about herself and lived for others.” She raised two brothers and for their sake she married for convenience, asking the bishop for a groom. He gave her a young “gallop” who was “very goofy, a socialite.” But Maria Nikolaevna’s virtue was so strong that “the young “leaper” appreciated the rare virtues of this wonderful woman and... fell in love with her!” “Such is sometimes the power and force of direct good over the living soul of a person,” Leskov morally concludes.

This is Olga Fedotovna, who was with the princess all her life “more as a friend of the heart than as a servant.” The culmination of her story is her love for Maria Nikolaevna’s brother, curly-haired seminarian Vasily, whom her sister was preparing for a spiritual career. Olga Fedotovna performs a feat of self-sacrifice; she takes the word from her beloved and loving young man to fulfill her every desire - and baptizes a peasant baby with him. Vasily becomes her godfather, and marriage between godfathers is impossible. “The rest went as Olga Fedotovna wanted for the happiness of others: over the course of many years, Vasily Nikolaich, whom she poisoned like Diana Actaeon, graduated from the academy, became a monk and was, to the pleasure of his sister, a bishop...” And poor Olga Fedotovny “writhed in my heart.” When, many years later, this bishop came to serve mass, the grandmother was dissatisfied: “In vain, I find, he deigned to give such a sermon here, and I don’t understand why he got it into his head to say that “there is no more love if someone lays down his soul”... Here, out of love, we have our own academy and our own professors... There they are, rubbing my cups with a tea towel... It would be enough for him to be lucky that he could know them, let alone teach them love. This is indelicate!”

This is the most devoted footman Patrikey Semyonovich, who in his old age “walked around the house and worked hard for new servants.” Its moral culmination is the moment when Patrike’s son, who studied to be an architect in the capital, is invited by his grandmother to dinner, which is served by Patrike. While pouring wine for his son, he loses consciousness. Because life, where everything is in its place, according to an established ritual, does not imply that a father serves his son, and not serving at dinner is also a violation of the order... Patrikey is the future Firs of “The Cherry Orchard” (“her slave and her slave I will die”) .

This, of course, is “Dormidont Rogozhin, whose name was changed by his grandmother into Don Quixote Rogozhin. This man... in the words of my grandmother, was “naked, like a Turkish saint, but a knight at heart.”

In this ideal world of one-love and sacrifice, of course, there is Varvara Nikanorovna’s daughter, Princess Anastasia, spoiled by the capital’s boarding house, and the Pharisee, Princess Khotetova, and Count Funkendorf, who first chose his grandmother as his bride, and then married Anastasia. They are the destroyers of the race.

Precisely because we are talking about a worldview, the novel provides serious moral support. The skewed world of today itself demonstrates skewness next to the classical proportions of way of life, in which everything stood in its place.

Obviously the righteous life of the grandmother and her entourage, in which everyone is only busy living actively, with dignity, self-denial and delicately (a very common word in Leskov), occupying only their place and not pretending to change the wise way of life (in Olga Fedotovna, if she stayed overnight in some stranger’s house, “there was a belief that sleeping on chairs was much more delicate than lying on a bed or even on a sofa: she observed this”) - this idealized and perfect world makes you feel “fulfillment”, the possibility of such a life and at the same time the longing for its impracticability.

This performance is addressed not so much to your aesthetic as to your ethical sense. But the pathos, undoubted in Leskov, is not burdened by Zhenovach with real suffering and experiences, but gives the text a light breath of playing “portraits coming to life.”

The faces of the married couples strangely suit “that century.” Or is that age suiting them?..

In the little-known novel, the theater finds many contemporary themes and coincidences. “We have nobles, eminent families, who have become famous from the noble deeds and services of their ancestors to the state; This is what we need to remember, but in our country everything from Peter’s birth was stolen and given to ridicule. The nobility suffers because profit-makers and socialites began to become nobles not for merit, but for servanthood,” says Princess Varvara Nikanorovna. And Leskov himself, through the mouth of Princess Vera, asserts that the main reason for the “decline” of the family landed nobility was “the inability to understand their own benefit other than in connection with the general benefit.” Today, in the era of “profit-makers and sociable people”, when any opposition is lured and the centuries-old self-awareness of the Russian intelligentsia about the general benefit, which is higher than one’s own, seems absurd - this is not just an extremely modern, but a painfully modern text.

Chapter 3
We have already inherited our own stories of “seedy births”, which also ended not for genetic, but for ideological reasons, due to historical inevitability. In the genre of a leisurely narrative, in keeping with the genre of the play, I will tell you about my three grandmothers and the story of their portrait.

My grandmother had cousins, the Karpovs. Sonya, Fanya and Vera. And the younger brother Volodya, to whom the lives of these sisters were dedicated. That is, a completely Chekhovian Prozorov family. Now I’ve done the math - they were probably born in the 1890s (maybe Sonya was earlier). This was the Tsarskoe Selo family of the doctor Grigory Karpov with all their happy pre-revolutionary childhood and youth. After the revolution, naturally, it all ended, and already in my childhood I was taken to Leningrad “to see the Karpovs” in a tiny room in some communal apartment on Petrogradskaya, where three gray-haired old women, extremely intelligent, lived. They did not emigrate, but, knowing many languages from infancy, worked all their lives in the libraries of some universities...

My dad and I visited them when they got a small separate apartment on Okhta. Sonya (she was the only one who was married briefly in her youth - like Masha - and returned to her sisters) died first, then Vova, and Faina Grigorievna and Vera Grigorievna lived.

Once my father and I went to congratulate one of them on his birthday. There was a light in the window of their apartment on the first floor, but the door was not opened. By this time, Vera (the sweetest and kindest of them) had already lost her mind, and Fanya was courting her. We broke the door - it was a terrible picture. Bedlam, everything was scattered, a crazy, smiling Vera, who understood nothing, walked around the apartment, and Fanya lay under the table, almost naked. As it turned out later, she was alive, she was paralyzed, she was conscious, but could not speak. We called the doctors, she somehow still lived, but that’s not the point. In the midst of all this horror of the end of life, the end of a family, an era, etc., a large photograph hung on the wall - three angel-like girls with flowing hair and wings of light dresses, three sisters from an intelligent family of Tsarskoye Selo, looking at two crazy gray-haired old women.

The photograph hung without a frame.

A few years later, when the Karpovs all died, we were called to take something from photographs and albums. Like Soviet people, the Karpovs tore them off the mat and pasted them into albums. They spoiled it. (The portraits in Zhenovach’s play also do not have baguettes; they are “cut out” by the quick hand of A. Borovsky and seem to be placed on a landscape page.)

I took a small photograph - a print of the one that was hanging on the wall that day...

Many years have passed. And one of my friends, a director, began to stage Chekhov in a distant run-down theater. I wanted to help him with something, to send him some kind of “secret”, an artistic talisman, something that would be known only to those who make the performance and would invisibly settle in him, giving impulse and energy of authenticity. I believe in such things and for a long time I thought about what to send “directly from Chekhov” (especially since the century in which he died was ending). Since Chekhov failed in Alexandrinka, I thought about picking off a pebble, but that would mean failure, then I went to antique stores. The pince-nez are lying... So what? You cannot buy a talisman for money; you need an artistic plot (“Plot, plot…”). Moreover, perhaps this pince-nez was sitting on the nose of some Protopopov...

And I remembered the photograph of three sisters lying in my grandmother’s chest. She was exactly from there - from the 1890s: three sisters whose brother had not yet been born, and I was present at the end of life, which begins in a photograph from the turn of those centuries. I framed the photo and sent it to the run-down theater, hoping for a miracle.

... When I got there a couple of months later, in the corner of a room I saw a broken frame. In some kind of drunken acting brawl, the drunken actress trampled the glass with her heel, tore up the photograph... The performance failed a few months later. And that would be okay - another portrait of another generation of “grandmothers” has disappeared...

In Zhenovach’s performance there is almost no objective world (there is a saber, pince-nez, several suitcases, a samovar, a staff... it seems that’s all), perhaps there were no material “talismans” hidden in it (although, it seems, they went to the Oryol region, as once early artists in Rostov the Great, and “brothers and sisters” in Verkola). History is written “out of nothing,” out of an attitude towards the text, Leskov’s word, out of thinking about it. Artists are deprived of devices; they, storytellers, are almost deprived of the communication inherent in psychological creativity. Yes, this is, in fact, not psychological theater.

Chapter 4
When young grandfather Protozanov, who died in the war with Napoleon, freezes in the doorway with a saber, you immediately remember the gloomy Hermitage gallery of 1812. Even if the heroes of “A Seedy Family” did not participate in battles and did not suffer defeat, like Prince Lev Lvovich, they were still “young generals of their destinies.”

They appear from “black holes” - openings without baguettes. Frontality, peace...

Of course, the “general” here is the young grandmother (Maria Shashlova). Her portrait is almost always clear eyes looking into the distance, simple clear and even precise speech, calmly folded hands and smoothly combed blond hair. Age - appeared points. Emotions are only flashes: she rushes for support to the deceased Lev Lvovich (to the “portrait” of him?) - and he, the boy, is nervous at the moment of her explanation with her “fiancé” Funkendorf... The portrait would be completely serious if not for the actor’s subtle detachment from the character in how picturesquely the grandmother smooths her hair, how motionless her almost always closed hands are. Become - so become! Peace - so peace!

The plump-faced, rosy-cheeked beauty Maria Nikolaevna nods in agreement to the story about her life, listens carefully - have they inadvertently distorted the almost perfect story so beautifully put together as a whole? Whether they correctly assessed what was accomplished - and these assessments, either of the heroine herself, or of Anastasia Imamova, who plays her, immediately remove any pathos. The dramatic love story of the quick, nimble, often blinking eyes of Olga Fedotovna was played by Olga Kalashnikova with such a gentle temperament and ballet grace (leg - arm - finger...) and such convulsive goodbye hugs. Two whole people separate because they cannot overcome and do not want to overcome this integrity of theirs. And the next message (Vasily became a monk, and Olga Fedorovna “had cramps in her heart”) only illustrates this brief emotional outburst. And the further fate of Bishop Vasily makes it clear that the sacrifice was in vain, splitting and ultimately distorting the theologian’s soul for the rest of his life...

This is a common, conciliar, open world, safe for the time being. "We are alone?" - they ask the princess. “Yes,” and all the servants in the next window nod their heads in agreement...

The story of Don Quixote Rogozhin (Alexey Vertkov), who appeared in the portrait to the sound of castanets, the story of his mysterious fights and exploits in the company of his faithful squire Zinabey (“Zinka-bey!”), as well as his marriage to the village beauty Aksyutka (read: Dulcinea) , who happily turned out to be a Mozhaisk noblewoman, is truly a “punctual novel.” Rogozhin is a person who flouts social norms, a freethinker. He wants to exist outside the frame, but it is his poses that are always picturesque and picturesque, as if inserted into a frame. Aksyutka’s wonderful backside, which appeared to his dying gaze during a serious illness, also begs to be framed.

Aksyutka, whom Rogozhin immediately abandoned, is played by Miriam Sekhon - and she also “turns around” the main “female” enemy of Don Quixote - Princess Khotetova. In Zhenovach’s play theater, the characters generally double. Faithful Gaivorona and faithful Zinka - both squires and accomplices of exploits - are united in one actor by the wonderful Alexander Oblasov, just as the blond theologian Vasily and the equally curly-haired, but bespectacled teacher - the Frenchman Gigot - were born by the same Sergei Pirnyak. And guess what: Olga Fedotovna’s sympathy for Zhigosha is due to the fact that he reminded her of Vasily, or does Zhigosh seem similar because he is nice to Olga Fedotovna?..

The playful, theatrical and authentic are in this performance in an amazing organic combination. Let me put it another way: the effect of the “Shabby Kind” is the effect of a remarkable substitution. Let's say Leskov writes a world where they learn about people from people, search for them through people (this is how Varvara Nikanorovna finds teacher Chervev for her sons). And this is a performance where we learn about the heroes from other heroes, from the lips of loved ones, characterizing the actions and feelings of another. The wind blows across the stage with the delight of inspiration. This acting delight of the life of young actors in the fictional Protozanov. But it is similar to the romantic inspiration of Protozanov’s life itself and Leskov’s delight in it. That is, the living stage feeling is identical to the plot and plot emotions.

The history of childbirth, families, biography literature is in fashion today. The popularity of L. Ulitskaya, who slowly and consistently describes the life of Sonechka, the family of Medea and her children, Shurik, rests on this interest... The “serial” industry that produces its sagas rests on this same interest. Zhenovach puts on a book that could easily become the basis of another “Poor Nastya” with a countless swarm of mummers, each of whom has their own story, their own “series” - and what a one! But the director does not even take into account the plot conclusion of the unfinished novel and reservations about the future of the heroes along the way, because the fates and even the characters interest him less than the worldview (of both Leskov and his characters). But Zhenovach is mainly concerned with the idealized ideology of that life. And he interrupts the narrative, in comparison with the novel, sharpening the finale and ending “A Seedy Family” with the meeting of “two truths” - the grandmother and the teacher Chervev, played with remarkable inner peace by Sergei Abroskin.

Zhenovach suppresses (or does not emphasize - I won’t say for sure, I saw the performance only once) both the stories about the princess’s sons Yakov and Dmitry, and the plot reports that Varvara Nikanorovna, who had fallen into black melancholy, was nevertheless persuaded by her sons to return from being hangers-on to the house, that when her grandchildren grew up (on behalf of one, Vera, and the story is told) that although her life went differently, it did not end. In the play it clearly ends, for Chervev involuntarily undermines the foundations on which Varvara Nikanorovna’s righteous life rested and flourished. This is a meeting between creative Orthodox construction for the benefit of the Fatherland and the people living in it (like her deceased husband, Varvara Nikanorovna “servant to the Tsar, father to the soldiers”), and hermit, ascetic Orthodoxy, essentially much closer to the foundations of Christianity, but paradoxically destructive in this story.

The grandmother goes to him herself, on a boat - isn’t this an image? Chervev and his philosophy are another shore, other shores. If the grandmother always knew why she was happy or unhappy, then this is not possible to know about Chervev: “And only God knew what made him happy.” Chervev does not need money, fame, or activity, and when the Governor asks him: “Please tell me, in all honesty, have you ever argued that the authorities are not needed in the state?” - Chervev replies: “I could not say that the authorities are not needed in the state, because I do not think that the states themselves are needed.” Abroskin, almost without leaving his seat, pronounces the text, as if without coloring it at all (the stories of other heroes are undoubtedly temperamental), without putting emotions into the words...

The grandmother finds a teacher for her children who will raise the most honest... dissidents. And the princess should entrust the children to this upbringing?..

Grandmother Varvara Nikanorovna was “Chestunova” all her life, she was the earthly embodiment of justice, generosity, morality, she lived exemplarily, according to the commandments - and Chervev splits this radiant life (schism!), plunges her into “black melancholy” with even stricter Orthodoxy. One of the last lines in the princess’s dialogue with Chervev: “You robbed me like a bird of feathers. I never thought that I was not a Christian at all. But you brought me benefit, you humbled me, you showed me that I live and think like everyone else, and no better than those about whom they say that they are worse than me ... "

And who benefited from this? Chervev showed her the path of individual salvation of the soul, humble inaction. Instead of an active upbringing and improvement of morals, “grandmother got for herself what a person needs most: life did not irritate her with anything else: she, like a sheep, walked quietly, not taking her eyes off the shepherd’s crook, on the hook of which a white flower with a bloody vein shone for her.” . That is, Leskov gives a biography of almost a saint. But, having accepted Chervev’s reasoning and his path, the grandmother dooms to destruction that life to the creation of which she devoted all of herself. Her surroundings died, the joy left Protozanovo. Is it not the true Orthodoxy of Chervev, who saves their souls, that ruined the family, killed the joyful, selfless life on the estate?.. “Taking into your point of view, I feel that there is nothing left for me: I am abolished, I must condemn myself in the past and not I see what I can hold on to further.” This is almost the final confession of the grandmother.

Exacerbating the conflict, making it unresolved and insoluble in the finale, ending the performance with a climax (no love, ruin, self-denial, exploits and betrayal have hitherto been a dramatic climax, because they were within the boundaries of life, and the final conflict lies outside of it and above it) , - Zhenovach thereby radically opposes the notorious “serial thinking.” The future life of his grandmother, the fate of her sons, is not important to him, what is important to him is the destruction of ideology, the end of life as the end of an idea, and the grandmother’s idea of the embodiment of earthly justice collapsed, and time ran out.

“You are taking away from me not only my faith in everything that I have believed in all my life, but you are even depriving me of the very hope of finding harmony in the structure of the relations of my children with the religion of their fathers and with the conditions of social life,” she says to Chervev and receives answer: “To educate the mind and heart means to enlighten them and give them a straight course, and not to bring them into harmony with what, perhaps, does not itself contain anything harmonious.”

“If a tree is not shaken, it will not take strong roots; in a calm period, trees are weak-rooted,” my grandmother always said. She steadfastly endured all the trials - the death of her husband, the ruin, and the alienation of her daughter. She did not survive one test - a meeting with a righteous man. Suddenly her “brave soul fell into weakness,” “something in her soul crunched and fell apart.” And yet this performance is an ode to her. It is about how sweet the fulfillment of moral duty is, how joyful generosity is, the exact knowledge of what the truth is, and not what the truth is.

The play “A Seedy Clan” is an attempt to look into the past in order to understand where we come from, what a “clan” is. How to combine the reality that surrounds us with the ideals that live within us. Where is the golden mean of compromise, survival, connection with the moral core. How to raise children, what thoughts to teach them. The problem that Leskov poses in his work is insoluble. What to live with? How to work? Another important and serious thought of Leskov is how to learn to be calm and confident in happy moments, and to be firm in misfortune, to manage to remain happy in it.

Sergey Zhenovach

“A Seedy Family” is the first performance by Sergei Zhenovach, released after his famous Gitis course acquired the status of a theater. Without a doubt, this is a program performance. Yesterday's students preferred theatrical camaraderie based on faith over the temptations of the current music video era. It should be clarified: on faith in the moral power of art. For Zhenovach, acting is a means of comprehending ideas: the theater is trusted by them, and not they by the theater. The densely populated four-hour performance was made, in essence, artlessly - using the sketch method. The heroes appear before us as revived images of a time long past. The characters have emerged from the portraits in the flesh, but their closeness is only apparent. In the play itself, the times are mixed up, and a long-dead war hero can appear to his wife in a difficult moment to press her to his heart, but you clearly feel the gap between those times and ours - like between the golden age and the iron age, dear antiquity and merciless reality.
Zhenovach knows how and loves to write prose. He succeeds in the long novel form. His leisurely theatrical reading has such a powerful charm that the stage verbosity does not tire. But his main skill lies elsewhere - to present truly wonderful people on stage. It is known that all kinds of ghouls are easier to play than virtuous heroes. For Zhenovach, in a surprising way, it was the wrong side of the human soul that always remained a secret behind seven seals, but he usually deduced the theatrical formula of spiritual nobility and purity with ease. Princess Protozanova and Methodius Chervev are opposed by those advancing on Rus', which is no longer Holy, but still retains the idea of holiness, the world of calculation and purity. And with him, Zhenovach, like Leskov, understands everything. And questions suddenly arose with the formula of spiritual purity. What is more important – love for God’s world, imperfect, but still worthy of salvation, or the devout righteousness of an anchorite who despised the world? It seems that Zhenovach, himself no stranger to asceticism, is still on the side of the princess. In any case, his performance, full of life-giving energy, makes one hope so.

magazine "Expert"

“A Seedy Family,” based on Leskov’s unfinished novel, was released by Sergei Zhenovach not so much as a manifesto (this word is not about Zhenovach), but rather as a symbol of his theatrical faith. Intelligent gaiety is the main tone of the play, allowing for serious discussion of issues such as civic and Christian duty, the search for the common good and personal salvation. The most remarkable thing is that, having arranged this utopia on stage, Sergei Zhenovach is in no hurry to destroy it, leaving faith in the possibility of an ideal even when the plot tries to refute it. The most amazing thing is how Sergei Zhenovach managed to instill in his students the conviction that aesthetics grows out of ethics - and without this conviction his theater would, it seems, be impossible.

“A generation passes and a generation comes, but the earth endures forever.”

Eccles. 14.

The old princess and her court

Chapter first

Our great-grandmother, Pelageya Nikolaevna, having buried her husband, returned to Russia with one fifteen-year-old son, and my great-grandfather, Prince Levushka.

And then, during these pauses, grandmother Varvara Nikanorovna usually looked around at everyone, as if thanking her for respect for her father-in-law, and said:

- Yes, he was a clean man, completely clean! He was not in the case and did not have favor - they didn’t even like him, but... they respected him.

And this was always pronounced by the old princess in the same way, with repetition, in which she used the same gesture to enhance expressiveness.

This was again followed by a minute of silence, after which the grandmother, sniffing a pinch of tobacco from the golden snuffbox donated by Maria Feodorovna, either began talking about something everyday, or in a slightly lowered tone added the following about her father-in-law:

- He, the deceased, did not quarrel with anyone... No, he did not criticize people pleasant to the empress and was not rude to anyone, but he was not familiar with either Count Valerian or Prince Plato... When it was necessary, when it turned out that they they met at the kurtags, he bowed to them... You understand... As it should according to etiquette... for the courtoisie to bow and move away; but he didn’t shake hands and didn’t go into the house. He went to various poor people and received them, but did not go to those; this, perhaps, did not mean anything to them, but he did not go and so he resigned and retired to the village; That’s how he died, but he always said: “In order for others to respect you, first respect the person in yourself,” and he respected the person in himself as few people respect.

This has been said for a long time: the last time I heard this tirade from my grandmother was in 1948, a little over a year before her death, and I must say that, listening then to her reproachful remark that “so few in they respect a person,” I, in all my infancy at that time, understood that I saw before me one of those who knew how to respect herself.

Now I will try to write down what my memory has preserved about her.

Chapter two

Grandmother Varvara Nikanorovna came from the most humble family: she was a “petty noblewoman”, named Chestunov. Grandmother did not at all hide her humble origins; on the contrary, she even liked to say that she guarded the turkeys of her father and mother as a child, but at the same time she always explained that “her humble family was quiet, but honest, and they didn’t get the name Chestunov for nothing.” , but grew from the popular nickname.”

The father of Princess Varvara Nikanorovia was a very poor landowner, whose wretched fields adjoined the boundaries of Prince Lev Yakovlevich. Grandmother’s mother was a very kind woman and a great housewife, famous for her extraordinary ability to make apple marshmallows, for which the wife of Prince Lev Yakovlevich was a passionate hunter. At this point, the princess and the poor noblewoman became interested in each other and, meeting in church, became acquainted, and then, thanks to village boredom, they soon became friends and, finally, became tender friends.

Prince Lev Yakovlevich was extremely happy about this, but he found it impossible for a poor noblewoman to visit his wife as if she were some stranger, not on an equal footing. “Through this, people will not know how to understand her,” he reasoned, and immediately put on his retired colonel’s uniform and regalia and set off from his Protozanov to the village of Dranku to visit his grandmother’s father.

In the poor huts of the small fry, everyone was frightened by the arrival of such an important guest, the old man Chestunov himself barely decided to crawl out of the side room to the prince into the low room where he was holding the office of the salat, but after about half an hour all this changed: the inequality disappeared, the prince treated Chestunov kindly, gave gifts to the servants and returned home, bringing the nobleman himself next to him in a carriage, and on his lap his five-year-old daughter, from whom my grandmother, Princess Varvara Nikanorovna Protozanova, once a wonderful court beauty who enjoyed universal respect and favor with Empress Maria Feodorovna, emerged.

The Chestunovs became their own people in their great-grandfather’s house, and their grandmother grew up and was brought up in the Protozanov house. They taught her something there, although I could never form an idea of her learning. Without science, she knew everything she needed to know, she knew how to put every matter before herself in such a way as to embrace it from all sides and understand with a clear understanding its meaning and significance. By study, she seemed to know only the Holy Scriptures and the French language. But what she knew, she knew perfectly and loved to quote texts from the Holy Scriptures, and spoke French impeccably, but only in cases of extreme necessity.

Prince Lev Yakovlevich had two sons: Dimitri and Lev. Of these, Dimitri, in his nineteenth year, drowned while swimming in a cold lake in the heat, which caused him to have convulsions in the water, and Prince Lev Lvovich, in his eighteenth year, fell in love with Varvara Nikanorovna, who, in her own words, at the age of fourteen “was quite avid” . Others, for example, the old people from the princess's servants, her butler, Patrikey Semyonich, and the maid, Olga Fedotovna, expressed themselves much more decisively on this subject; they said that “there was no limit to the indescribable beauty of the grandmother.” This is most confirmed by the large portrait of her now hanging in front of me, by the famous Lampi. The portrait is painted full-length, in oil paints, and represents the princess at a time when she was only twenty years old. The princess is represented as a tall, slender brunette, with large, clear blue eyes, pure, kind and unusually intelligent. The general facial expression is affectionate, but firm and independent. The hand lowered downwards with a bouquet of white roses and the foot protruding with one toe give the figure a soft and regal movement. Looking at this portrait, I cannot imagine how the ardent and enthusiastic young man, as they describe my late grandfather, could not fall in love with this charmer? Moreover, he almost grew up with her under the same roof, he knew her intelligence, kindness, the nobility of her thoughts and that refined delicacy that riveted to her everyone who had the true happiness of knowing her. Moreover, this lovely girl, in the very early years of her youth, suddenly became completely orphaned and, remaining alone in the whole world, by her very position inspired sympathy for herself and, as if by the command of fate itself, became a natural member of the family of the Protozanov princes who had looked after her. The old Protozanovs looked at it that way, and when their son Lev Lvovich, having received a rank in the guards, came home from St. Petersburg on leave with the same flame of love for the orphan with which he had left four years ago, they were only glad that this feeling , having withstood the test, remains durable. And when the young prince decided to ask them for permission to marry Chestunova, they told him that they had not foreseen a better daughter-in-law for themselves, but for him. A thanksgiving service was served right there, and then they were re-married and soon, not having had time to rejoice at their young happiness, they were released to St. Petersburg.

Less than a year after this wedding, the old people, one after another, went to their graves, leaving grandmother Varvara Nikanorovna and her husband as full heirs of the entire fortune, although not particularly rich, but, however, sufficiently providing for them.

Thanks to the thoughtfulness of the empress, who fell in love with Varvara Nikanorovna and took her under her wing, the Protozanovs’ funds were soon greatly increased: the grandfather received a primogeniture and populated lands from old private estates as a gift and became a rich man. They were very lucky. Already large at this time, their fortune soon increased in the most unexpected way: firstly, they were inherited by the vast estates of one of their distant relatives, who had once robbed their ancestors and now had no other immediate heirs, besides his grandfather, and secondly secondly, in the old Protozanovsky forest behind Ozernaya they found a precious treasure: a small cannon filled with pearls and coins and, probably, hidden by someone in the ground from robbers.

The grandfather, who loved to live luxuriously, was very happy about this, but the grandmother, to the surprise of many, accepted the new wealth, like Polycrates his ring returned by the sea. She seemed scared of it happiness and directly said that this was too much for some people. She had a premonition that blind happiness would be followed by troubles.

However, the years passed, no misfortune came: grandfather served very successfully, they had few children: one son and daughter, Princess Nastasya Lvovna. The grandmother, to please the empress, but against her wishes, had to enroll this only daughter of hers in college, and this was for her the first shock of grief at her door. My son, my current uncle, Prince Yakov Lvovich, was much younger than my sister and was a wonderful boy. In a word, everything was fine, but in all this happiness and success, grandmother Varvara Nikanorovna still did not find peace: she was tormented by premonitions that after all this, trouble was coming not far away, in which her strength and patience would have to be tested. This premonition, which turned into some kind of deep confidence, did not deceive her: at the same time as her enviable life was rolling along with a prosperous flow, Polycrates’ ring floated towards her with the same flow. Petty envy arose against his grandfather and his wife, exacted by all the graces of fate, which vigilantly monitored the decline in the level of their importance and, finally, waited for a time quite favorable in order to communicate with them. This ripened just before the opening of the French campaign, which grandfather entered with his regiment and was remarkably unhappy: in whatever business he took part, the enemy defeated him in the most fatal way.

The grandmother, who was still moving in the highest circles at that time, felt that her husband’s fortune was changing, that he was falling out of favor, and did not maneuver and correct the falling position with intrigues, but, parting indifferently with the world, went to her home in Protozanovo with a firm determination not to leave from there.

Circumstances were such that her decision became strong.

Olga Fedotovna, a living chronicle from which I draw many legends concerning my family, told me the following about this most painful period of my grandmother’s life. I will write this down in the words of her own speech, which I can definitely hear now.

“We arrived,” said the kind old woman, “then the house was completely neglected.” For about ten years no one had looked at it; although it was strong, it began to look like it was falling apart. Princess Varvara Nikanorovna and they say: “We need to fix it.” There were masters, both our own and strangers - for the sake of the rush, free people were brought from Orel. The princess was all in a hurry, because it was as if she was waiting for some final misfortune to happen to her grandfather, and although she herself was in hardship at that time (the expected child was my father), she kept walking around and insisting that the house be finished as soon as possible. We ourselves all lived in three rooms, but for the prince she still wanted the whole house to be in parade, and her ladyship’s thought was that if misfortune still haunted him, then he should find some way to explain himself to the commander-in-chief or the sovereign I would explain everything from the bottom of my heart and resign. I knew all this, because the princess was with me, if they had something painful in their hearts, everyone spoke, and then, although I was still young, the girl was even against them, but they did not hide it from me.

“I,” Olga says, “decided that if only he came here healthy, otherwise we won’t go anywhere from here. So we will live here, as my father-in-law and mother-in-law lived, otherwise they, these people who do not understand justice and the will of God, will torture him.”

I, of course, reassured them and answered:

“Why,” I say, “Mother, Your Excellency, it’s too early to think so much about this; after all, this is all, God willing, maybe things will go completely differently, and the prince, God willing, will win such a victory that they will take the whole kingdom.”

And she interrupts me:

“Be quiet,” they say, “Olga, don’t talk nonsense: I’m not worrying in vain, but I feel it that way. The Lord gave me so much happiness, which I was not worth... well; and now,” they deign to say, “if he wants to test me, then my heart is ready.”

Out of zeal, I say a stupid word to them and say:

“Why,” I say, “will he test you: have you done any harm to anyone?”

And they got angry:

“Well, this time,” they say, “you’d better get away from me...”

“Why,” I say, “your excellency: forgive me!”

“God will forgive you,” they answer, “but I don’t love an indulgent friend, but rather I love a counter-indulgent friend, and you are a temptation to me. Shouldn’t I accept the good from God and endure the evil without complaining? No; you leave me quickly: I’d rather be alone with my humility!”

And they drove me out of sight, and, I see, they entered the bedroom and Priedyo become. And I, offended at myself for upsetting the princess so much, quickly walked through the maid’s room so that the other girls wouldn’t see me, because I was upset, and jumped out and stood in the breeze, on the porch. A kind of excitement came over me that I was crying, as if close to myself I felt something terrible, but it was so. I cried once or twice and suddenly, after just one short minute of time, I take the handkerchief from my eyes, and in front of me, I look, behind the storerooms, around the corner, stands Patrikey Semyonich and slowly beckons me with his hand. As soon as I saw him, my whole body trembled and my legs gave way, because I knew that this could not happen, since Patrikey Semyonitch was with the prince. Where could he have come here straight from the war? That’s right, I think they killed him there in the battle, he’s like a wall to me here, and I looked at him again and saw that he was looking at me too: I screamed and as I was standing, I fell back and fell, because I kept thinking that this is a dead man. But instead he immediately ran up to me, picked me up with his hand and whispered:

“Oh, what is it,” says Olga Fedotovna, what should we do?.. completely!”

And I... when I heard this, my heart began to beat like a hare’s.

“What,” I say, “what should we do?” and where is the prince?

And he tilted his head to his chest and answered:

“Don’t be alarmed,” he says, “the prince ordered everyone to live long; “And I’m alone,” he says, “I came with his letter, but for about four hours now I’ve been walking around the storerooms, looking for you from around the corner: would you come out to consult how it’s easier to report this to the princess.”

I don’t know, mother, what I would have said to him in response to this, because these words of his have absolutely left me with absolutely no sense at all, but just as we are talking, and upstairs, I hear, right above our heads, there’s a big window opened, and the princess deigned to say in such a hoarse voice:

“Patrickay! Why are you standing there: come to me now!”

Having heard this, well, I think: well, now everything is gone, because I know how fiery she is in her heart and how she loved the prince, and again she is still so young and inexperienced, and in trouble. Well, I think it’s over: everything came together at once and amen: the Lord sent her this such a test that she would not endure it. And after that I never wanted to follow Patrikey. I think: he’s still a strong person, a man, he’s seen a lot of light and can endure it, let him know how he knows, so he reports to her, but I won’t go until she screams and falls, and then I’ll run in and sprinkle water on her and her dress I'll let you go. But when Patrikey Semyonich crossed himself on the porch and walked away, and I threw off all this cowardice and couldn’t resist, stood for one minute and also ran after him, I think: if anything happens to her, to my darling, then let it be with me: Let's die together.