Weak heart

According to researchers of Dostoevsky’s work, the novel “Weak Heart” was supposed to be part of an unrealized cycle of novels and short stories, united, by analogy with the Balzac “ Human Comedy ”, as single characters ^[1] . As in "Poor People", "Mistress" and "Netochka Nezvanova", the image of a dreamer plays a significant role in the work. The very name of the work refers the reader to the story "The Mistress", where for the first time his heroine - Katerina - was called a "weak heart", which implied "a deep, hopeless tyranny over the poor, defenseless creature." Yulian Mastakovich, the head and patron of Shumkov, later appears in the story “The Christmas Tree and the Wedding”, which also traces the connection with the Petersburg Chronicle, in which, in contrast to the “weak heart”, his “good heart” is ironically mentioned. In the feuilleton, this elderly character appears as the embodiment of baseness in the guise of respectability, planning to marry a young, pure girl and maintain her relationship with the previous one. In “Weak Heart”, the marriage of Julian Mastakovich becomes a fact, and his “kind heart” is the basis of the story. In addition, a certain official at the disposal of Julian Mastakovich attached to the “stopudovoy hasty business” was outlined in the Petersburg Chronicle. In “Weak Heart” this work was entrusted to Vasya Shumkov ^{[2] [1]} .

From the memoirs and correspondence of contemporaries of Dostoevsky, mainly presented in the materials of Alexander Milyukov , who was at that time on friendly terms with Fedor Mikhailovich, and the doctor of the writer Stepan Yanovsky , it follows that the idea of ​​the story arose on the basis of episodes from the biography of the writer Yakov Butkov . Dostoevsky and Butkov were peers, and Fedor Mikhailovich was sympathetic and caring to Yakov Petrovich ^{[3] [4]} . In addition, by 1848 Dostoevsky was carried away by the ideas of utopian socialism, which manifests itself in the desire of the protagonist of the work to see everyone happy ^{[5] [1]} . The writer was well aware of the contradictory nature of the life of a big city. According to the researchers, the final lines of the story with St. Petersburg disappearing in the fog appeared as a consequence of these sensations and symbolize the coming formidable changes ^[5] .

Of the manuscripts of the initial period of creativity, only the outline for the story " Double " has survived. Materials on the “Weak Heart” could either have been destroyed by Dostoevsky himself before his arrest, or seized after his arrest and destroyed after the investigation ^[6] On December 31, 1847, permission was obtained from the censorship committee. The story was first published in 1848 in the second issue of the journal " Domestic Notes " ^{[3] [1]} . By the reprint in 1865, Dostoevsky slightly modified the work, correcting stylistic inaccuracies and eliminating unnecessary repetitions. In general, the text of the story remained unchanged ^[3] .

The main character of the story is a poor official, scribe Vasya Shumkov, who continues the theme of “dreamer” and “little man” in the work of Dostoevsky. Shumkov considers himself unworthy of being happy due to his social inferiority. The character’s psyche does not withstand the happiness expressed by the consent of the beloved girl to become his wife, and guilt before the bosses for the incomplete work, which seems to him to be ungrateful in response to the mercies of the patron-boss. From surging emotions, a sense of injustice of fate, which gave the unworthy such happiness, Shumkov goes crazy ^[1] . Critic Orest Miller described characters like Shumkov as people who lack "free possession of their personality." As a result, such people are afraid even when there is absolutely nothing to fear. Regarding Vasily Shumkov, the critic believed that "an excess of moral suspiciousness, and not at all bossy oppression, drives him to insanity" ^[7] .

The prototype of Shumkov was the writer Yakov Butkov . When creating the image of Shumkov, Dostoevsky used some realities of the life of his prototype. Like Butkov, Shumkov follows an obligation to congratulate his boss Julian Mastakovich on holidays, so as not to be considered irreverent. When Butkov was just starting his literary career, a recruitment was announced, and it turned out that he needed to become a soldier. The editor-publisher of the journal " Patriotic Notes " Andrei Kraevsky bought him a recruitment receipt, which saved him from this need. However, now Butkov had to write articles for the “Domestic Notes” and pay part of the money from each fee. Like Kraevsky, Julian Mastakovich saved Shumkov from recruitment. In addition, researchers of Dostoevsky’s creativity perceive the randomness of the sound similarity of the names Shumkov and Butkov ^{[8] [4]} .

Julian Mastakovich, the head and patron of Shumkov, is depicted in satirical tones in the story ^[2] . His biography can be traced in other works of Dostoevsky, in which he appears as an elderly character who embodies the baseness in the guise of respectability. He married a young, clean girl, while maintaining his relationship with the previous girl. The writer ironically notes his “good heart”, which became the basis of the story ^[1] . The prototype of Julian Mastakovich was largely served by Andrei Aleksandrovich Kraevsky , satirical hints of which are noted by researchers. In addition to Butkov, the editor of Fatherland Notes related in a similar way to other employees, including Dostoevsky himself ^[4] . In a letter to Kraevsky on February 1, 1849, Fyodor Mikhailovich transfers Shumkov’s internal state: “I know, Andrei Aleksandrovich, that I, incidentally, several times sending you notes asking for money, he called each execution of the request a favor of mine. But I was in fits of excessive self-depreciation and humility from false delicacy. For example, I understand Butkov, who is ready, getting 10 p. silver, consider yourself the happiest person in the world. This is a momentary, painful condition, and I survived from it ” ^[9] .

On New Year's Eve, two young people, Arkady Ivanovich Nefedovich and Vasily Petrovich Shumkov, are discussing the upcoming marriage of the latter. The second hero is simply called Vasya Shumkov, thereby emphasizing his position as a poor Petersburg official, who also has a physical flaw - lopsidedness. His bride is Lisa Artemyeva. Nefedovich questions the financial viability of Vasya - three hundred rubles of annual salary. However, Vasya Shumkov reminds his friend of the official support of his patron Julian Mastakovich, who provides Vasily with the opportunity to earn an additional three hundred or four hundred rubles a year in the form of rewriting especially important documents, since Vasily differs in his service in excellent, calligraphic handwriting. Despite the fact that Vasily urgently needs to take up correspondence, Arkady still decides to immediately go with a friend to Artemyev and get to know Lisa and her family, which friends do.

Having returned from the Artemyevs extremely excited, Vasya again tries to return to the correspondence of papers, since he promised Julian Mastakovich to finish the work in two days, and there are still a lot of rewriting. How much exactly, he does not tell Nefedovich, and from the excitement he does not immediately get to work, but gradually Nefedovich also begins to worry for his friend, because he sees his unbalanced state, which is close to a breakdown. Vasya rewrites day and night, managing to take a nap for several hours. The next day, instead of correspondence, Shumkov again goes to the Artemyev, and also does not forget to leave a congratulation in the book of visitors to his boss Julian Mastakovich with his own hands, and Nefedovich completely loses sight of his restless friend. When Shumkov nevertheless arrives home to continue his disgusted correspondence, Arkady Nefedovich learns that there are six more thick notebooks left to be copied, and Vasily has been beside himself for the past two weeks from the happiness that has fallen on him and almost copied nothing.

Understanding that he would not be able to rewrite everything by the deadline, Vasya felt guilty before himself, before the boss, before Lisa. Arkady consoled his friend by settling this matter with Mastakovich, but the exhausted Shumkov was already completely suppressed by what had happened, he informed his friend that he would speed up the pen. So another sleepless night passes. Vasya faints. On the morning after the New Year, Arkady leaves for service alone, leaving Shumkov to rest, but he visits the department in search of Julian Mastakovich. At home with Shumkov, a tetanus attack occurs, after which he again returns to correspondence. The friends, who were exhausted completely, fell asleep, and when he woke up, Arkady sees how distraught Vasya Shumkov leads with a dry pen on clean paper - he still managed to speed up his too slow pen. Left unattended, Vasily, while Arkady went away in search of doctors, went to the department for an explanation with his benefactor Julian Mastakovich. Seeing the distraught subordinate and learning about the cause of the disaster, Julian Mastakovich exclaimed in dismay: “God, what a pity! And the thing entrusted to him was unimportant and not at all hasty. So, not because of what, a man died! Well, take him away! ... "

Already in the March issue of the Pantheon magazine, after Mikhail Dostoevsky ’s literary review, “Literary Signals,” the editor of the magazine Fedor Koni made the following note: “The venerable critic of the Pantheon did not mention, out of a sense of modesty, Dostoevsky’s works; we thought it necessary to supplement his article on my own <...> This is not about the plot, here is the inexorable ruthless analysis of the human heart <...>. Hearts are weak and tender <...> so far submit to oppressive fate <...> that they look at their rare joys as supernatural manifestations, as lawless deviations from the general order of things. They accept these joys from fate only as a loan and are tormented by the desire to repay a hundredfold for them. Therefore, the very joys are poisoned for them <...> to the point that they could humiliate them in their own opinion <...> The story is written hotly and leaves a deep impression in the reader. " It is assumed that Koni could express not so much his opinion as the opinion of Mikhail Dostoevsky himself, who shied away from a direct assessment of the work of his brother, with whom he was very close at that time, to the extent that they worked together in Kraevsky’s journal and attended meetings at Petrashevsky . The critic of "Domestic Notes" Stepan Dudyshkin also reacted well to the story, putting it on a par with the best works of 1848, which also included Dostoevsky's White Nights , Apollon Maikov 's Picnic in Florence, Hunter 's Notes and the comedy Where it’s subtle, it breaks ”by Ivan Turgenev ,“ Ivan Savich Podzhabrin ”by Ivan Goncharov ^{[2] [9]} .

A critic of the magazine Sovremennik Pavel Annenkov, on the contrary, spoke negatively about Weak Heart. In a review of Russian literature of 1848, he wrote: "Literary independence, given the case, although possible, but to the extreme private, somehow strangely amazes you." The critic’s objection provoked Dostoyevsky’s depiction of the love of Vasya Shumkov and Arkasha Nefedovich: “vague, teary, exaggerated to such an extent that for the most part she does not believe her, but she seems more like a cunning of the author who thought of trying to try on this plot” ^[2] .

After the release of the collected works of Dostoevsky in 1860, Nikolai Dobrolyubov also mentioned the novel “Weak Heart” in the article “Slaughtered People”, despite the fact that she was not included in this collected works. Criticism was exclusively interested in the social significance of the writer's works. In his opinion, Dostoevsky solved the question of "what general conditions develop inertia in human society to the detriment of activity and mobility of forces." Dobrolyubov explained the main conflict in the novel “Weak Heart”: “The ideal theory of the social mechanism, with the reassurance of all people in their place and in their work, does not at all provide universal prosperity. It certainly, if Vasya was a typewriter in place, would be excellent. But the fact of the matter is that you can’t improve a person to such an extent that he becomes a completely machine <...>. There are instincts that do not give in to any form of oppression and cause a person to things quite inconsistent, through which, in the usual order of things, they make up his misfortune ” ^{[10] [9]} .

• Altman M.S. Dostoevsky. By milestones of names. - Saratov: Publishing house of the Saratov University, 1975. - S. 16-19. - 280 p.
• Perlina N. M. Notes // F. M. Dostoevsky. Complete Works in thirty volumes / ed. A.S. Dolinina and E.I. Kiyko. - Leningrad: Nauka, 1972. - T. 2. - S. 472-474. - 528 s. - 200,000 copies.
• Cancer V. D. Notes // F. M. Dostoevsky. Complete works in 15 volumes / ed. N.F. Budanova. - Leningrad: Nauka, 1988 .-- T. 2 .-- S. 545-548. - 592 p. - 500,000 copies.
• Friedlander G. M. Notes // F. M. Dostoevsky. Complete Works in thirty volumes / ed. G. M. Friedlander. - Leningrad: Nauka, 1972. - T. 1. - 520 p. - 200,000 copies.

• Weak heart (unopened) . Network publication “Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. Anthology of life and work. " Date of treatment July 22, 2017.
• The first publication in the journal "Domestic Notes", 1848 (neopr.) (Inaccessible link) . Network publication “Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. Anthology of life and work. " Date of treatment July 22, 2017. Archived on October 6, 2014.
• The first separate publication of F. Stellovsky, 1865 (neopr.) . Network publication “Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. Anthology of life and work. " Date of treatment July 22, 2017.