What did Russian classic writers think about Lent?
Fasting according to schedule
Author of ‘Dead Souls’ Nikolai Gogol took the observance of church rituals very seriously. "I finally received the icon and prayers. Both came at the right time: on the eve of the Great Lent, on the eve of my fast. God has honored me to partake of the holy mysteries. Even if I wanted to fast better,, even if I wanted to perform the high rite more, even if, finally, I wanted to be more worthy of His mercies, but thanks to Him for that, too!"
He urged others to do the same. For example, he instructed his sister Olga to fast (that is, to fast, regularly attend church services and pray) four times a year. “At this time, leaving everyone to think about oneself alone, to move as if into a mental monastery, going over oneself in all the deeds done, starting from the last fast before that, asking oneself an account of everything, examining oneself closely, from which of one’s shortcomings one has already managed to free oneself and which still remain…”
Scientist and researcher Mikhail Lomonosov held the same opinion: “…it is more pleasing to God when we have a clear conscience in our hearts than a scurvy fish in our stomachs, that fasts were not established for suicide with harmful foods, but for abstinence from excess.”
Against All & for Himself
Leo Tolstoy had a complicated relationship with the church. “There is nothing that a Christian must necessarily do and from which he must necessarily abstain, except for fasting and prayer, which the Church itself recognizes as optional,” he believed.
Often his own convictions ran counter to accepted dogmas. "As for fasting, I think that there is no need to fast on some days and weeks. To fast, that is to abstain, in my opinion, always, on all days it is necessary to abstain from four things: 1) meat, i.e. not killing animals to eat them, 2) alcohol, drunkenness and 3) from tobacco, not to smoke and the 4th thing, from which one must also try to abstain as much as possible is sexual lust."
Do not be tempted!
It was not easy to endure the long Lent – cheerful long feasts had to be avoided. “Out of boredom, I often write rather boring poems (and sometimes very boring ones), often read poems that are not better than them, I recently fasted and confessed – all this is not funny at all,” complained Alexander Pushkin to Pyotr Vyazemsky.
The emotions associated with the strictness of the Great Lent were best conveyed by Anton Chekhov in the story ‘In Passion Week’, written in the first person: "When I got home, so as not to see how they are having dinner, I went to bed as soon as possible… I hear how they are setting the table in the dining room – they are getting ready to have dinner; they will eat vinaigrette, cabbage pies and fried pike perch. How hungry I am!… I agree to endure all kinds of torment, to live in the desert without a mother, to feed bears from my own hands, but, first, I want to eat at least one cabbage pie!"