up was so vexed that he swore before S—— and she heard and Ketscher
heard too. I dare say he didn’t think, but Ketscher asks why he never
happens to be so careless in the presence of your wife and mine. What is
one to say to that?... And besides, for all her simplicity S—— is very
sentimental, which is quite natural in her position.’
I said nothing. This was beyond all bounds.
‘What’s to be done?’
‘It’s very simple,’ I said. ‘We must break off all acquaintance with
scoundrels who are capable of intentionally forgetting themselves before
a woman. To be the intimate friend of such people is contemptible....’
‘But he doesn’t say that Ogaryov did it intentionally.’
‘Then what’s the talk about? And you, Granovsky, Ogaryov’s friend, repeat
the ravings of a madman who ought to be put in an asylum. For shame!’
Granovsky was disconcerted.
‘My God!’ he said, ‘is it possible that our little group of friends—the
one place where I found hope, repose, and love, where I took refuge from
our oppressive environment—will break up in hatred and anger?’
He covered his eyes with his hand. I took the other hand; my heart was
very heavy.
‘Granovsky,’ I said to him, ‘Ketscher is right: we have all come too
close to each other, we are too cramped and we have stepped over each
other’s traces.... _Gemach!_ my friend, _gemach!_ We need airing,
refreshing. Ogaryov is going to the country in the autumn. I am soon
going abroad—we will part without hatred and anger; what was true in our
friendship will be set right, will be purified by absence.’
Granovsky wept. With Ketscher I had no explanation on that subject.
Ogaryov did, as a fact, go to the country in the autumn, and afterwards
we too went away.
News of our Moscow friends reached us more and more rarely. Frightened
by the terror that followed 1848, they waited for a safe opportunity to
send letters. These opportunities were rare, passports were hardly ever
given. From Ketscher we had not a word for years together; he was never
fond of writing, however.
The first living news was brought me in 1855 after I had moved to London.
Ketscher, I heard, was in his element, conspicuous at banquets in honour
of the heroes of Sebastopol, embracing Pogodin and Kokorev, embracing
the sailors from the Black Sea, making an uproar, scolding, admonishing.
Ogaryov, who had come straight from the graveside of Granovsky, told me
little; what he did tell was gloomy.
Another year and a half passed. During that time I had finished this
chapter, and to whom first of outsiders was it read?
Yes—_habeant sua fata libelli_.
In the autumn of 1857, Tchitcherin came to London; we were expecting him
with impatience: once one of Granovsky’s favourite pupils and a friend of
Korsh and Ketscher, he seemed to us one of our intimate circle. We had
heard of his rudeness, his conservative leanings, his boundless vanity,
and his _doctrinaire_ attitude, but he was still young ... many angles
are rubbed down by the passage of time.
‘I have long hesitated whether I should come and see you or not; so many
Russians visit you now that one needs more courage not to come than to
come; I, as you know, though fully respecting you, do not agree with you
in everything.’
That was how Tchitcherin began.
He made his approach not simply, not in the spirit of youth; he had
stones hidden in his bosom, the light in his eyes was cold, there was a
challenge and a dreadful, repellent conceit in the tones of his voice.
From the first words I saw that this was not an opponent but an enemy;
but I stifled the instinctive warning and we got into conversation.
Our talk soon passed to reminiscences and to questions from me. He
described the last months of the life of Granovsky, and when he went away
I felt better pleased with him than at first.
After dinner next day conversation turned on Ketscher. Tchitcherin spoke
of him as a man whom he liked, laughing without malice at his sallies;
from the details he told me I learned that his affection for his friends
was still as denunciatory, that S——’s influence had reached such a point
that many of his friends were up in arms against her, avoided their
society, and so on. Carried away by the stories he told me and my own
recollections, I offered to read Tchitcherin my unpublished chapter about
Ketscher and read aloud the whole of it. I have many times repented doing
this, not because he made a bad use of what I read, but because I was
vexed and pained that at forty-five I was capable of exposing our past
before a coarse man who afterwards jeered with such merciless impudence
at what he called my ‘temperament.’
The wide differences that separated our views and our temperaments were
soon made plain.
From the first days an argument sprang up from which it was clear that
we differed in everything. He was a disciple of the French democratic
order and had a dislike for English freedom, not reduced to any logical
order. He saw in the empire the education of the people, and advocated a
powerful state and the abasement of the individual before it. It will be
readily understood what these ideas became when applied to Russia. He was
a governmentalist, looked upon the government as far superior to society
and its movements, and took the Empress Catherine II. for almost the
ideal of what Russia needed. All this theory came from a regular edifice
of dogma from which he could always and at once deduce his theosophy of
bureaucracy.
‘Why do you want to be a professor,’ I asked him, ‘and try to get a
lecturer’s chair? You ought to be a Minister and try to get a portfolio.’
Arguing with him, we saw him off at the railway station and parted
agreeing about nothing but our mutual respect.
A fortnight later he wrote to me from France with enthusiasm about
the working classes, about the institutions. ‘You have found what you
were looking for,’ I answered, ‘and very quickly; that comes of going
there with ready-made views.’ Then I suggested that we should begin a
correspondence in print and wrote the beginning of a long letter.
He did not care to do so and said that he had no time and that such an
argument would do harm....
A remark made in the _Bell_ concerning doctrinaires in general he took
as aimed at himself; his _amour-propre_ was stung, and he sent me his
‘denunciation,’ which made a great talk at the time.
Tchitcherin got the worst of the campaign, of that I have no doubt. The
outburst of indignation invoked by his letter printed in the _Bell_ was
universal in the younger generation and in literary circles. I received
dozens of articles and letters, one of which was published. We were still
mounting an uphill path in those days, and had no need of Katkov’s[136]
drags to hold us back. The coldly offensive, insolently smooth tone,
more perhaps than was actually said, incensed the public and me alike;
it was something new in those days. On the other hand, those who took
Tchitcherin’s side were: Elena Pavlovna, the Iphigenia of the Winter
Palace; Timashov, the head of the Third Section; and N. H. Ketscher.
Ketscher remained true to the reaction, not because he ‘preferred
Grandison to Lovelace’ but because carried without a guiding compass _à
la remorque_ of a circle he remained true to it without noticing that
it was sailing in the opposite direction. The man of a coterie, for him
questions followed the banner of personalities and not the other way
about.
Never having worked through to a single clear understanding or to a
single clear conviction, he advanced with noble aspirations and bandaged
eyes, and was continually beating his enemies, not noticing that the
positions were changed and that in their game of blind-man’s buff he beat
us, beat others, is even now beating some one, even now imagining that he
is accomplishing something.
I append the letter I wrote to Tchitcherin as the beginning of a friendly
discussion which was prevented by his attacking me like a prosecutor:
‘MY LEARNED FRIEND,—It is impossible for me to argue with you;
you know so much, you know it so well, everything in your
brain is fresh and new, and what matters most is that you are
convinced you do know it, and so, untroubled, you resolutely
await the rational development of events in accordance with
the programme revealed by science. You cannot be in disharmony
with the present; you know if the past was this and that, the
present is bound to be this and that, and is bound to lead to
this and that in the future; you are able to reconcile yourself
to it through your ideas and your interpretation of it. Yours
is the happy lot of a priest, comforting the sorrowful with
the eternal truths of your theory and with your faith in them.
All these advantages you derive from your dogmatic belief,
because dogma excludes doubt. Doubt means that a question is
open; dogma, that the question is closed, settled. And so
every dogma is exclusive and uncompromising, while doubt can
never attain so sharp a finality; it is the very essence of
doubt to be ready to agree with the speaker or conscientiously
to seek significance in his words, even to the extent of
losing precious time needed for finding objections. Dogma sees
truth from a definite angle, accepted as the sole stronghold
of salvation, while doubt strives to escape from all angles,
looks all round, returns on its tracks, and often paralyses all
action by its humility before truth. You, my learned friend,
know definitely in what direction to go, how to lead; I do not
know. And so I feel that it is for us to observe and study,
and for you to teach others. It is true that we can say what
ought not to be done, we can unite men to act, rouse thought,
set it free from chains, dispel the phantoms of church and
police-station, of academy and criminal court—that is all; but
you can say what ought to be done.
‘The attitude of dogma to its object is the religious attitude,
that is the attitude from the point of view of eternity;
the temporary, the transitory, persons, events, generations
scarcely enter into the _Campo Santo_ of philosophy, or, if
they enter, it is only when purified from real life in the
form of an herbarium of logical shadows. Dogma as a whole
lives really in all times, and lives in its own period as
though it were the past, not spoiling its theoretical attitude
by too passionate an interest in it. Knowing the necessity
of suffering, dogma keeps itself as a Simeon Stylites on a
pedestal, sacrificing everything temporary to the eternal, the
living particulars to general ideas. In short, the dogmatists
are first of all historians, while we, together with the crowd,
are your substratum; you stand for history _für sich_, we—for
history _an sich_. You explain to us where our disease lies,
but are we diseased? You bury us, reward us, or punish us after
our death, you are our doctors and priests; but are we sick or
dying?
‘This antagonism is nothing new and it is of great value for
progress, for development. If all mankind could believe you, it
might be rational, but would die of universal boredom. The late
Filiminov put as an inscription on his “fool’s cap”: _Si la
raison dominait le monde, il ne s’y passerait rien_.
‘The geometrical dryness of dogma, the algebraic impersonality
of it, gives it the widest power of generalisation; it must
shun sensations and, like Augustus, command Cleopatra to be
veiled. But for active intervention passion is more essential
than dogma, and man has no algebraic passions. The general
he can understand, but it is the particular that he loves or
hates. Spinoza with all the outspoken vigour of his genius
maintained the necessity of reckoning as essential only the
incorruptible, the eternal, the unchanging substance, and
not resting one’s hopes on the fortuitous, the relative,
the personal. Every one understands this in theory, but man
attaches himself only to the particular, the personal, to the
accomplished fact; in the reconciling of these extremes, in
their harmonious combination, lies the highest wisdom of life.
‘If from this general definition of our opposite points of view
we pass to particular examples we shall find that though our
goal is the same, there is no less antagonism between us; even
in those instances in which we start from agreement. An example
will make this clear. We are completely agreed in our attitude
to religion; but this only goes so far as the denial of
supernatural religion, but as soon as we come into contact with
_sublunary_ religion the distance between us is immense. You
have moved from the dark, incense-laden walls of a cathedral
to a well-lighted government office, from Guelph you have
turned Ghibelline, you have replaced the hierarchies of heaven
by grades in the service, the absorption of the individual
soul in God by its absorption in the State, God is replaced by
centralisation, the priest by the police-inspector.
‘You see in this change an advance, a triumph, we see new
chains. We want to be neither Guelphs nor Ghibellines. Your
secular, civic, and legal religion is the more terrible
for being deprived of all that is poetical, fantastic, of
all that is childlike in character; in place of which you
have the red-tape of officialdom, the idol of the State with
the Tsar at the top and the hangman at the bottom. You want
man set free from the church to hang about for a couple of
centuries in the hall of a government office, while the caste
of high-priest officials and monks of dogma decide in what way
and to what degree he is to be free, like our committees for
the emancipation of the peasants. And all that repels us; we
can accept a great deal, make concessions, sacrifice something
to circumstance; but for you it is not a sacrifice. Of course
in that too you are happier than we. Losing your religious
faith you are not left without any support; and finding that
faith in the State may take the place of Christianity for
mankind, you have accepted it, and you have done very well for
your moral hygiene, for your peace of mind. But this remedy
sticks in our throat and we hate your government offices,
your centralisation, quite as much as the Inquisition, the
Consistory, the Book of Precepts.
‘Do you grasp the difference? You, as a teacher, want to
teach, to direct, to herd your flock. We, like a flock that
is becoming conscious, do not want to be herded, but want
to have our own village courts, our own representatives,
our own delegates, to whom we can entrust the management of
our affairs. That is why the authority of the government is
an insult to us at every step, while you applaud it as your
predecessors the priests applauded the temporal power. You may
even differ from it as the clergy has sometimes differed from
it or like people quarrelling on board ship: however great the
distance between you may be, you are still in the same boat,
and for us, laymen, you are still on the side of the government.
‘Civic religion—the apotheosis of the State—is a purely Roman
idea and in the modern world, principally French. It is
consistent with a strong state, but is incompatible with a
free people; through it you may get splendid soldiers, but
you cannot have independent citizens. The United States, on
the contrary, have, so far as it is possible, abolished the
religious character of the police and the administration.’
EPILOGUE
On re-reading the chapter about Ketscher I cannot help reflecting on
the original, eccentric characters who live or have lived in Russia.
What whimsical personalities occur again and again in the history of our
culture! In what countries, under what degrees of latitude and longitude
could a figure be found as angular, as rugged, as captious and erratic,
as good-natured and ill-natured, as noisy and unmanageable as Ketscher’s
except in Moscow?
And how many of these original figures have I watched ‘in all their
varied kinds,’ from my father to Turgenev’s ‘Children.’ ‘This is how
the Russian oven turns them out,’ Pogodin said to me. And indeed, what
marvels it does turn out, especially when the head is made on the
German pattern ... from Russian buns and bread-rings to Orthodox loaves
flavoured with Hegel, and French rolls _à la quatre-vingt-treize_! It
would be a pity if all these original products should be lost and leave
no trace. We usually dwell only upon the leading figures.
But in them the effect of the Russian oven is less obvious; in them
its peculiarities are corrected and redeemed; they are examples of the
Russian type of intelligence rather than of the influence of their
environment. These are followed by all sorts of unattached individuals
who have lost their way; the eccentric figures among them are beyond all
reckoning. The tiny connecting links that make up the chain of historical
movements, the particles of yeast which are lost in the dough, they have
raised it, not for their own benefit. Men who awoke early in the dark
night and groped feeling their way to work, stumbling against everything
in their road, they awakened others to quite different labours.
... I will try some day to save two or three more profiles from complete
oblivion. They are almost lost already in the grey fog from which only
the mountain tops and high crags stand out.
II
BASIL AND ARMANCE
(_An episode of the year 1844._)
A very characteristic episode is connected with our second
_villeggiatura_; it would really be a pity not to put it in, although
Natalie and I had very little to do with it. This episode might be
called: ‘Armance and Basil, or the philosopher from civility, the
Christian from courtesy, and George Sand’s “Jacques” turned into the
Jacques of Destiny.’ It began at a French fancy dress ball.
In the winter of 1843 I went to a fancy dress ball. There were a mass of
people there, five thousand if I remember right, and scarcely any one I
knew. Basil was whirling round with a masked lady, he had no thoughts
to spare for me. He was slightly shaking his head and screwing up his
eyelashes, as connoisseurs do when they find the wine excellent and the
grouse marvellous.
The ball took place in the hall of a reputable society. I walked about
and sat down a little, looking at Russian aristocrats dressed up as
pierrots of all sorts, zealously doing their best to look like Parisian
shopmen and desperate dancers of the _cancan_, and went upstairs to
supper; there Basil sought me out. He was in an utterly abnormal state,
and in the first glow of the acute period of love; it was more acute as
Basil was about that time forty and his hair was beginning to be thin on
his lofty brow. He talked to me incoherently of some French ‘Mignon,’
with all the simplicity of a Klärchen and all the playful charm of a
Parisian _grisette_.
At first I imagined that this was one of those romances in one chapter
in which there is a conquest on the first page and a bill to pay on the
last. But I became convinced that this was not the case. Basil saw his
Parisian girl a second or third time and followed circumvolutionary
tactics without making a direct attack. He introduced me to her. Armance
really was a lively, charming child of Paris, who took after her parent.
From her language to her manners and the special shade of independence
and boldness—everything about her was characteristic of the respectable
working-class of the great city, she was still a work-girl not a
petty-bourgeoise. This type has never existed among us. The careless
gaiety, the easy manners, freedom, mischief, were all combined with the
instinct of self-preservation, the instinctive feeling of danger and
honour. Flung as children sometimes from ten years old into the battle
of poverty and temptation, defenceless, surrounded by the pestilential
infection of Paris and snares of all sorts, they become their own
providence and protection. Such girls may readily give themselves, but it
is hard to take them by surprise, unawares. Those of them who might be
bought never get into this class of working girls; they are bought before
they reach that stage, are whirled off and engulfed in another type,
sometimes for ever, sometimes to reappear six or seven years later in
their carriage in Longchamps or in the box at the opera—_mit Perlen und
Diamanten_.
Basil was over head and ears in love. A theorist in music and a
philosopher in painting, he was one of the most complete representatives
of the ultra-Hegelians. He spent his whole life soaring in an aesthetic
heavens among philosophical and critical niceties. He looked upon life as
he did upon Shakespeare, reducing everything in life to its philosophical
significance, making everything lively boring and everything fresh
stale; in fact, leaving no emotion of the heart in its directness and
simplicity. This attitude, however, was characteristic in varying degrees
of almost every circle of that period; some broke loose from it by
talent, others from liveliness, but traces of it persisted for a long
time with all—some kept the jargon, others the philosophy itself.
‘Let us go’ Bakunin said to T—— in Berlin at the beginning of the
’forties, ‘and plunge into the gulf of real life, let us fling ourselves
into the waves’; and they went to ask Varnhagen von Ense to dip them like
a dexterous bathing man into the gulf of practical life and to present
them to a pretty actress. It will be readily understood that with such
preparations there is no reaching a plunge into the passions that ‘devour
the secret sources of our spirit,’ nor indeed to any action whatever. The
Germans too do not get to action; but then Germans do not seek action,
but simply tranquillity. Our temperament on the other hand cannot endure
this attitude—_des theoretischen Schweigens_—gets entangled, stumbles,
and trips up more funnily than seriously. And so our philosopher in love
at forty began, screwing up his eyes, to collate all the speculative
theories on the demonic power of love which drew Hercules and the
frail youth alike to the feet of Omphale, began to explain to himself
and others the moral idea of the family, the foundations of marriage
(Hegel’s _Philosophy of Law_, Chapter _Sittlichkeit_). There was no
impediment on the side of Hegel. But the phenomenal world of fortuity and
appearances—the world of the spirit not yet freed from tradition—was
not so accommodating. Basil had a father, Pyotr Konytch, a wealthy man
who had himself been married three times in succession and had had three
children by each marriage. On learning that his son, and the eldest one
too, wanted to marry a Catholic, a poor girl, and a French one, coming
moreover from Kuznetsky Bridge, he resolutely refused his blessing.
Basil, who had adopted the _chic_ and manners of scepticism, might have
perhaps dispensed with the parental blessing; but the old man associated
with the blessing not only consequences _jenseits_ (in the other world),
but also _diesseits_ (in this world), to wit, his inheritance.
The old man’s opposition hurried things on, as is always the case, and
Basil began to think of hastening the _dénouement_. The only thing left
to do was to get married without wasting words, and later on to make the
old man accept _un fait accompli_, or to conceal the marriage from him
in the expectation that before long he would neither bless nor curse nor
dispose of his fortune.
But the unenlightened world of tradition had to be reckoned with even
then. To be married on the quiet in Moscow was not easy and was extremely
expensive, and the wedding would have reached his father’s ears at once
through deacons, sacristans, church servitors, match-makers, clerks,
shopboys, and gossips of all sorts. It was proposed to sound our Father
Ioann in the village of Pokrovskoe, known to my readers from the scandal
of his stealing when inebriated a silver watch and box from the sacristan.
Father Ioann, on learning that the disobedient son was about forty,
that the bride was not Russian and that her parents were not here,
that, besides me, a university professor would sign as a witness, began
thanking me for this kind service, probably supposing that I was trying
to marry Basil in order to secure him a two-hundred rouble note. He was
so touched that he shouted to the next room: ‘Wife, wife, bring out two
or three eggs,’ and a bottle wrapt in paper out of the cupboard, in order
to regale me.
Everything went well.
The day of the wedding and other details were not fixed: Armance was to
come to Pokrovskoe to stay with us. Basil who meant to accompany her was
to return to Moscow and, after making the final arrangements, to come
from his father’s curse to receive the drunken blessing of Father Ioann.
In expectation of _i promessi sposi_ we ordered supper to be got ready
and sat down to wait for them. We waited and waited: it struck twelve
o’clock at night. No one came.... One o’clock—still no one. The ladies
went to bed. A—— and Ketscher and I set to upon the supper. _Le ore
suonan al quadriano, e una e due e tre_ ... but ... still no sign of them.
At last the tinkle of a bell came nearer and nearer, there was the rumble
of wheels over the bridge. We rushed into the porch. A coach drawn by
three horses drove rapidly into the yard and stopped, Basil came out. I
went up to give my hand to Armance; she seized my hand at once, but with
such force that I almost cried out—and then flung herself on my neck
repeating with a giggle, ‘Monsieur Herstin’ ... it was no other than
Vissarion Grigoryevitch Byelinsky in _propria persona_.
There was no one in the coach but Byelinsky who was laughing till he
coughed and Basil who was crying till he had a cold in his nose. We
looked at one another in amazement. I must observe that, to add to the
effect, there had been no trace of Byelinsky in Moscow till two days
before. ‘Give me something to eat,’ Byelinsky said at last, ‘I’ll tell
you then what marvels have been happening among us; I must defend poor
Basil, who is more afraid of you than of Armance.’
This is what had happened. Seeing that things were moving rapidly to a
climax Basil took fright; he began to reflect and was utterly overwhelmed
as he pondered on the mercilessly fatal character of marriage, its
indissolubility according to the code of Russian law and the code
of Hegel; he locked himself up, a victim to the spirit of agonising
investigation and ruthless analysis. His terror grew from hour to hour,
the more so as the way of retreat was not easy either, and to decide to
take it needed almost as much character as the marriage itself. This
terror grew till Byelinsky, who on arriving from Petersburg went straight
to see him, knocked at his door. Basil described to him all the horror
with which he was going to meet his happiness, and all the aversion with
which he was entering upon marriage with love—and asked his advice and
help.
Byelinsky answered that he must be mad after this—consciously and knowing
beforehand what it would be—to take such fetters upon himself. ‘Herzen
now,’ he said, ‘got married and eloped with his wife, and came from exile
to get her; but ask him: he never once reflected whether he ought to
do so or not and what the consequence would be. I am sure it seemed to
him that he could do nothing else. Well! But you want to do the same,
analysing and reflecting.’
This was all Basil wanted; he wrote to Armance that very night, a
dissertation upon marriage, upon his luckless theorisings, upon the
impossibility of simple happiness, from an analytic spirit, he laid
before her all the disadvantages and dangers of their union and asked her
advice—what they should do now.
He brought her answer with him.
In Byelinsky’s account and in Armance’s letter their two natures,
hers and Basil’s, came out vividly. A marriage between persons of
such opposite temperaments would certainly have been strange. Armance
wrote sorrowfully: she was surprised, wounded, did not understand his
reflections, and saw in them a pretext and a sign of cooling love. She
said that, since it was so, there must be no talk of marriage, gave him
back his promise, and concluded by saying that after what had happened
they had better not meet. ‘I shall remember you with gratitude,’
she wrote, ‘and do not blame you in the least. I know that you are
exceedingly good, but even more exceedingly weak! Good-bye, and may you
be happy.’
Such a letter could not have been altogether agreeable to receive. In
every word there was strength, vigour, and haughtiness. The child of
splendid plebeian stock, Armance was worthy of her origin. Had she been
an Englishwoman, what a tight hold she would have kept of Basil’s letter,
how by the lips of her virtuous solicitor she would have described with
indignation and shamefaced modesty his first pressure of her hand, his
first kiss, and how her lawyer with tears in his eyes and chalk on his
wig would have exhorted the jury to compensate injured innocence with a
couple of thousand pounds.
The French woman, the poor sewing girl never thought of that.
The two or three days they spent at Pokrovskoe were depressing for the
ex-bridegroom. He was like a school-boy who has disgraced himself in
class, and is afraid both of the teacher and his comrades. He wrote me
a letter which showed confusion and dissatisfaction with himself and
asked me to come and say good-bye. At the beginning of August I went from
Pokrovskoe to Moscow; while I was away Natalie received at Pokrovskoe a
new dissertation from him. I went to Basil’s and came straight in upon
a farewell banquet. They were drinking champagne, and in the toasts and
good wishes there were strange hints. ‘Of course you don’t know,’ Basil
murmured into my ear: ‘You see I ... er ...’ and he added in a whisper:
‘you see Armance is going with me. What a girl; only now I have learned
to know her,’ and he shook his head.
This was as great a surprise as Byelinsky’s unexpected appearance.
In the letter to Natalie he explained to her at great length that thought
and reflection upon marriage had brought him to hesitation and despair;
he doubted both of his love for Armance and his suitability for family
life; that in that way he had come to the agonising feeling that he ought
to break off everything and flee to Paris, that in that state of mind he
had come, pitiful and ridiculous, to Pokrovskoe. After he had reached
this decision he had read the letter of Armance over again and made a
fresh discovery, to wit, that he loved Armance very much, and he had
therefore asked her to see him and had again offered her his hand. He had
thought again of the priest at Pokrovskoe, but the proximity of Mamonov’s
factory frightened him. He was intending to be married in Petersburg and
at once to set off for France. ‘Armance is as happy as a child!’
In Petersburg Basil thought fit to be married in the Kazan cathedral.
That philosophy and learning might not be forgotten, he asked the chief
priest Sidonsky, the learned author of the _Introduction to the Study
of Philosophy_, to perform the ceremony. Sidonsky had long known Basil
from his learned articles as a free and worldly thinker and a disciple of
the German philosophy. After all the strange things that had happened to
Armance, she had the honour rarely vouchsafed to any of serving as the
occasion for one of the most comic meetings of two sworn foes, learning
and religion.
To show off his worldly culture Sidonsky began before the wedding talking
of the latest philosophic _brochures_, and when everything was ready and
the sacristan held up the epitrahil which, stooping, he began to put on,
he said to Basil, dropping his eyes: ‘Pardon me, it is a ceremony; I
know very well that the Christian ritual has outlived its time, that....’
‘Oh, no, no,’ Basil interrupted in a voice full of sympathy and
compassion: ‘Christianity is eternal; its essence, its substance, cannot
pass away.’
Sidonsky, with a chaste glance, thanked his ‘chivalrous’ antagonist,
turned to the choir and chanted: ‘Blessed be the name of the Lord, now
and for ever and ever!’ ‘Amen,’ boomed the choir, and the ceremony went
on in due order, and Sidonsky led Basil in a crown and Armance in a crown
round the lectern ... making Isaiah rejoice.
From the cathedral Basil took Armance home and leaving her there spent a
literary soirée at Krayevsky’s. Ten days later Byelinsky saw the happy
pair into the steamer. At this point it will be supposed that the story
is certainly ended.
Not a bit of it.
Things went very well as far as the Cattegat; but at that point George
Sand’s accursed novel _Jacques_ turned up.
‘What do you think of _Jacques_?’ Basil asked Armance as she was
finishing the novel.
Armance told him her opinion of it, Basil informed her that it was quite
mistaken, that her criticism wounded his spirit on its deepest side, and
that his philosophy of life had nothing in common with hers.
The sanguine Armance was unwilling to change her philosophy of life, so
they both crossed the Belt.
When they came out into the German Ocean Basil felt more at home, and
made another attempt to persuade Armance to take a different view of
_Jacques_ and to change her philosophy of life.
Almost dying of sea-sickness, Armance with a last effort declared that
she would not change her opinion of _Jacques_.
‘What have we in common after that?’ observed Basil, flying into a rage.
‘Nothing,’ answered Armance, ‘and _si vous me cherchez, querelle_, then
let us simply part as soon as we touch land.’
‘You have decided,’ said Basil, very high and mighty; ‘you prefer....’
‘Anything in the world to living with you; you are an insufferable man,
weak and tyrannical.’
‘Madame!’
‘Monsieur!’
She went to the cabin, he remained on deck. Armance kept her word. From
Havre she went to her father, and a year later returned to Russia and
indeed went on to Siberia.
This time I believe the story of this intermittent marriage is ended.
Though indeed Barère[137] has said:
‘Only the dead do not return.’
_Written 1857_,
LAUREL HOUSE, PUTNEY.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Kaunitz (1711-1794) was for over forty years the leading statesman of
Austria under Maria Theresa and Joseph II., and one of the most prominent
figures in European politics.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[2] Among my papers are several letters of Sasha’s written between 1835
and 1836. Sasha was left behind in Moscow while her friend was in the
country with the princess. I cannot read this simple and passionate
whisper of the heart without deep feeling. ‘Can it be true,’ she writes,
‘that you are coming? Ah, if you really did come, I don’t know what
would happen to me. You would not believe how often I am thinking of
you, almost all my desires, all my thoughts, all, all, all are with
you.... Ah, Natalya Alexandrovna, how splendid you are, how sweet, how
noble!—but I cannot express it. Truly, these are not studied words, they
are straight from the heart....’
In another letter she thanks Natalie for writing so often. ‘It is really
too good, but there, that’s you, you,’ and she ends the letter with the
words: ‘They keep interrupting me, I embrace you, my angel, with true
immeasurable love. Give me your blessing!’
[3] Skalozub, a character in Griboyedov’s celebrated play, ‘Woe from Wit’
(or perhaps better, ‘Sorrow comes from having Sense’), is the typical
coarse, ignorant, blustering military bully.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[4] I know very well how affected the French translation of names sounds,
but a name is a traditional thing and how is one to change it? Besides,
all unslavonic names are with us, as it were, shortened and less musical;
we, educated to some extent, ‘not in the law of our fathers,’ in our
youth ‘romanticised’ names, while the powers in authority ‘Slavonised’
them. As a man is promoted and attains to influence at court, the letters
in his name are changed—thus, for instance, Count Strogonov remained
to the end of his days Sergeyey Grigoryevitch, but Prince Golitsyn
was always called Sergiey Mihailovitch. The last example of such a
transformation we saw in General Rostovtsov, celebrated in connection
with the Fourteenth of December; throughout the reign of Nicholas he was
Yakov, as was Yakov Dolgoruky, but with the accession of Alexander II. he
became Iakov, the same as the brother of our Lord!
[5] Xavier Saintine (1798-1865), a French writer of whose many plays
and stories only _Picciola, or the Prisoner’s Flower_ is still well
known.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[6] From Pushkin’s _Yevgeny Onyegin_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[7] The reference is probably to Bulgarin, a journalist in close
relations with Benckendorf (Chief of the Secret Police). This Bulgarin
made many petty personal attacks on Pushkin, who in a well-known poem
addresses him by the name Vidok-Figlyarin.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[8] Shemyaka was a prince of ancient Russia, whose injustice is
still remembered in the proverbial expression, a ‘Shemyaka’s
judgment.’—(_Translator’s Note._)
[9] The difference between the style of Natalie’s letters and mine
is very great, especially in the early part of our correspondence;
afterwards it was less unequal and in the end becomes similar. In my
letters, together with genuine feeling there are affected expressions,
far-fetched high-flown phrases, the influence of the school of Hugo and
the new French novelists is apparent. There is nothing of the sort in her
letters, her language is simple, poetic, and sincere, the only influence
that can be discerned in it is the influence of the Gospel. At that time
I was still trying to write in the grand style and wrote badly, because
it was not my own language. A life in spheres cut off from practical
experience, and too much reading prevents a young man for years from
speaking and writing naturally and simply. Intellectual maturity only
begins when the style is established and has taken its final form.
[10] On the other hand, the enlightened government appointed as French
master in the same Vyatka high school the celebrated Orientalist
Vernikovsky, who was a colleague of Kovalevsky’s and Mickiewicz’s, and
was exiled in connection with the Philarets’ case.[11]
[11] The Philarets or ‘lovers of virtue’ were a students’ society of
the Vilna University in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
Their object was to promote learning, to help the poor, and to preach
ideals of goodness and justice. Tovjanski and Mickiewicz were members of
it.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[12] A fragment of this chapter was published in the _Polar Star_, vol.
i. page 79, together with the following note:
Who is entitled to write his reminiscences?
Every one.
Because no one is obliged to read them.
In order to write one’s reminiscences it is not at all necessary to be
a great man, nor a notorious criminal, nor a celebrated artist, nor
a statesman—it is quite enough to be simply a human being, to have
something to tell, and not merely to desire to tell it but at least some
little ability to do so.
Every life is interesting; if not the personality, then the environment,
the country are interesting, life itself is interesting. Man likes to
enter into another existence, he likes to touch the subtlest fibres
of another’s heart, and to listen to its beating ... he compares, he
checks it by his own, he seeks in himself confirmation, justification,
sympathy....
But may not memoirs be tedious, may not the life described be colourless
and commonplace?
Then we shall not read it—there is no worse punishment for a book than
that.
Moreover, that is no drawback to the writing of memoirs. Benvenuto
Cellini’s _Diary_ is not interesting because he was an excellent worker
in gold but because it is in itself as interesting as any novel.
The fact is that the very word ‘entitled’ to this or that form of
composition does not belong to our epoch, but dates from an era of
intellectual immaturity, from an era of poet-laureates, doctors’ caps,
peddling savants, certificated philosophers, diplomaed metaphysicians
and other Pharisees of the Christian world. Then the act of writing
was regarded as something sacred, a man writing for the public used a
high-flown unnatural choice language, he ‘expounded’ or ‘sang.’
We simply talk; for us writing is the same sort of secular pursuit,
the same sort of work or amusement as any other. In this connection it
is difficult to dispute ‘the right to work.’ Whether the work will win
recognition and approval is quite a different matter.
A year ago I published in Russia part of my memoirs under the title of
_Prison and Exile_. I published it in London at the beginning of the war.
I did not reckon upon readers nor upon any attention outside Russia.
The success of that book exceeded all expectations: the _Revue des Deux
Mondes_, the most chaste and rigid of journals, published half the book
in a French translation; the clever and learned _Athenaeum_ printed
extracts in English; the whole book has appeared in German and is being
published in England.
That is why I have ventured to print extracts from other parts.
In another place I speak of the immense importance my memoirs have for
me personally, and the object with which I began writing them. I confine
myself now to the general remark that the publication of contemporary
memoirs is particularly useful for us Russians. Thanks to the censorship,
we are not accustomed to anything being made public, and the slightest
publicity frightens, checks, and surprises us. In England any man who
appears on any public stage, whether as a huckster of letters or a
guardian of the press, is liable to the same hisses and applause as the
actor in the lowest theatre in Islington or Paddington. Neither the Queen
nor her husband are excluded. It is a mighty curb!
Let our Imperial Actors of the secret and open police, who have been so
well protected from publicity by the censorship and paternal punishments,
know that sooner or later their deeds will come into the light of day.
[13] Jeanne Deroin was a disciple of Saint Simon who published an
_Almanach des Femmes_ in 1851.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[14] These little notes were kept by Natalie, and on many of them she
wrote a few words in pencil. I could not preserve any of the letters she
wrote to me in prison. I was obliged to destroy them all at once.
[15] I omit it.
[16] English in the original.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[17] Arnold Ruge (1802-1880) began his political career with six years’
imprisonment in connection with the _Burschenschaft_ movement, founded
the _Deutsche Jahrbücher_, the journal of the Young Hegelian School,
and some ten years later _Die Reform_, a more definitely political
paper. From 1849 he lived in England, advocated a universal democratic
state, and wrote many books, of which his autobiography is now of most
interest.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[18] Tovjanski was a Pole, and at one time a member of the Society of
Philarets. He held that there were many Messiahs, of whom Napoleon was
one and himself another.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[19] His real name was Gaunot, and he was an adventurer well known in
Paris between 1830 and 1850. He went in for being a god and called his
religion _evadisme_ (from Eve and Adam), and himself Mapah from _mater_
and _pater_. He suggested to Dumas that the latter should become his
chief disciple.
[20] Théroigne de Méricourt, called ‘l’Amazone de la liberté,’ assisted
at the taking of the Bastille and became a popular heroine. Later on
she was publicly whipped by a crowd of women, and lost her reason in
consequence of this outrage.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[21] Carus, K. G. (1789-1869), a distinguished German physiologist,
author of numerous works on anatomy, physiology, and allied
subjects.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[22] Stefan Yavorsky was a famous monk and theologian of the eighteenth
century.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[23] ‘The Tarantass,’ a story by Count Sologub, author of various
comedies and novels satirising the official class.
[24] Parasha, an early poem of Turgenev’s.
[25] Motchalov, the great Russian actor, was particularly famous for his
playing of Hamlet.
[26] _Murmolka_, a peasant cap, and _zipun_ a long homespun peasant
coat.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[27] Saharov, Ivan Petrovitch (1807-1863), a well-known archaeologist and
ethnographist, was a doctor of medicine and lecturer on palaeology. His
discoveries are now regarded somewhat sceptically, but he did much for
Russian antiquarian study.
[28] Meiendorf, Alexander Kazimirovitch (1788-1865), a writer on
historical and geographical subjects.
[29] Ioakinth Bitchurin (1777-1853), a monk and at one time an
archimandrite, head of the Orthodox Mission to Pekin, and later on a
translator from the Chinese in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was an
authority on Chinese language and history.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[30] The reference is to the open letter in which Byelinsky expressed his
passionate indignation at the _Correspondence with Friends_, published by
Gogol.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[31] Klyutchnikov vividly expressed this in the following image:
‘Stankevitch is a silver rouble that envies the size of a copper
piece.’—Annenkov, _Biography of Stankevitch_, p. 133.
[32] Botkin, Vassily Petrovitch (1810-1865), the self-taught son of a
merchant, was a fine critic and authority on art and literature. His
criticism was greatly valued by his friends, and his writings (chiefly
articles in magazines) give no idea of his real importance in the history
of Russian culture. His brother was the great physician.
[33] Krassov, Vassily Ivanovitch (1810-1855), a poet, at one time
professor of literature in Kiev. His brother Ivan was a teacher of
history in the Petersburg secondary schools.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[34] Victor Hugo, after reading _My Past and Thoughts_, in the French
translation, wrote me a letter in defence of the youth of France at the
period of the Restoration.
[35] Translated by Juliet M. Soskice.
[36] Date of Peter the Great’s death.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[37] Timofeyev, a sixth-rate writer of forgotten poems.
[38] Kukolnik, Nestor (1805-1868), was a schoolfellow of Gogol’s, and a
very popular writer of stories and dramas in the most extreme romantic
style—fearfully bombastic and unreal, and hyper-patriotic.
[39] The Moravian Brethren, called _Herrnhuter_ from the little town of
Herrnhut in Saxony, where they settled in 1722, are a Protestant sect who
abjure military service, the taking of oaths, and all distinctions of
rank.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[40] I declare, on my word of honour, that the word ‘scoundrel’ was used
by this worthy old person.
[41] Paul Louis Courier (1772-1825), a learned and brilliant writer of
political pamphlets and letters, who discovered a complete manuscript
of Longus’s _Daphnis and Chloe_, of which he published a French
translation.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[42] Miss Wilmot’s words.
[43] The Comte d’Artois—afterwards Charles X.
[44] The Comte de Ségur (1753-1830) was French ambassador in Petersburg
and a favourite of Catherine II. He was a man of action as well
as a spirited writer, served in the American War of Independence,
welcomed every movement on the side of liberty, and wrote a charming
account of his times in his _Galerie Morale et Politique_, and his
_Mémoires_.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[45] The Grand Duke, brother of Nicholas I., is meant.—(_Translator’s
Note._)
[46] Perun was the God of sky and of thunder, the chief God of the
ancient Slavs.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[47] This is so true that a German who has abused me a dozen times in the
_Morning Advertiser_ adduced as proof that I had never been exiled the
fact that I had the post of councillor in the provincial government.
[48] I am not certain whether these dissenters were Duhobors.
[49] The landowner in ‘The Agent,’ one of Turgenev’s ‘Sportsman’s
Sketches.’
[50] Saltytchiha was a lady notorious in the reign of Catherine
for her cruelty to her serfs. She was eventually brought to
justice.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[51] _Property in Serfs._
[52] Araktcheyev left, I believe, a hundred thousand roubles to be paid a
hundred years later, together with the accumulated interest, to the man
who should write the best history of the reign of Alexander I.
[53] Araktcheyev was a pitiful coward, as Count Toll tells us in his
memoirs, and the Secretary of State Martchenko in a little story of the
Fourteenth of December published in the _Polar Star_. I have heard that
he was in hiding during the Staraya Russa rising, and was in deadly
terror of Reihel the general of Engineers.
[54] I am extremely sorry that I have forgotten the Christian name of the
worthy gentleman. I remember his surname was Zherebtsov.
[55] These extracts are inserted here by the author in a slightly altered
form.—_Note to Russian edition._
[56] Here Herzen describes how, returning late one evening after a
festive supper party with his friends, he was tempted by a maidservant,
who, half undressed, opened the door to him. This transgression came to
the knowledge of Natalya Alexandrovna.—_Note to Russian edition._
[57] Written in England.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[58] Zurbaran, a Spanish painter of religious subjects. A well-known
picture of his is of a monk castigating himself before an effigy of the
Madonna.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[59] Puchta, a German professor and authority on Roman law.
[60] Savigny, a German university teacher, of French origin, and an
authority on modern jurisprudence.
[61] Roteck, a German university teacher and authority on Roman
law.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[62] Buchez, Philippe (1796-1865), a French philosopher and political
writer; at first a follower of Saint Simon, afterwards an advocate of
what he called Christian Socialism.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[63] Cabet, Étienne (1788-1856), was a French communist, one of the
leaders of the Carbonari, and author of a philosophical and social
romance _Voyage en Icarie_, describing a Communist Utopia. In 1848
a band of French workmen went out to found an ‘Icarian colony’ in
Texas.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[64] Readers of _The Possessed_ may be interested to know that Dostoevsky
is supposed (I cannot say whether on sufficient evidence) to have
modelled the character of Stepan Trofimovitch in the earlier chapters of
that novel on Granovsky.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[65] Ciceruacchio, a popular leader (his real name was Angelo Brunetti)
in Rome, who had great influence from 1847, supporting the reforms of
Pius IX., and active in bringing about the proclamation of a republic in
February 1849. He was captured and shot with his sons the following July.
[66] The late Emperor of Austria, Francis Joseph.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[67] Translated by Juliet M. Soskice.
[68] The _Domostroy_ was a sixteenth-century book of moral precepts and
practical advice written by the priest Sylvester, the adviser of Ivan the
Terrible.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[69] Deutschthum was the nationalist movement in Germany. It was
considered more patriotic to spell it Teutschthum.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[70] Barclay de Tolly was one of the ablest of the Russian generals
of 1812. He was, as a matter of fact, of Scottish not of German
descent.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[71] Shishkov, born 1754, began his career as a naval officer and
attained the rank of vice-admiral, but, disapproving of the reforms of
the early years of Alexander’s reign, left the navy. From 1812 he became
prominent as a writer and president of the Academy, and from 1824 to 1828
was Minister of Public Instruction. Intensely conservative and patriotic,
he bitterly opposed every new movement in literature and politics.
[72] Shebuev (1776-1855) was a well-known painter of historical pictures
in the pseudo-classical style.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[73] At first the national hymn was very naïvely sung to the tune of ‘God
save the King,’ and indeed it was scarcely ever sung. It was among the
innovations of Nicholas. From the time of the Polish War the national
hymn composed by Colonel Lvov of the _Corps of gendarmes_ was, by
Imperial command, sung at all the royal festivities and at large concerts.
The Emperor Alexander was too well educated to like crude flattery; he
listened with disgust in Paris to the Academicians’ despicable speeches
grovelling at the feet of the Conqueror. On one occasion meeting
Chateaubriand in his vestibule he showed him the last number of the
_Journal des Débats_, and added: ‘I assure you I have never once seen
such dull abjectness in any Russian paper.’ But in the time of Nicholas
there were literary men who fully justified his Imperial confidence, and
outdid all the journalists of 1814 and even some of the prefects of 1852.
Bulgarin wrote in the _Northern Bee_ that among the other advantages of
the railway between Moscow and Petersburg, he could not think without
emotion that the same man would be able to hear a service for the health
of his Imperial Majesty in the morning in the Kazan Cathedral, and in
the evening in the Kremlin! One would have thought it difficult to excel
this awful absurdity, but there was found a literary man in Moscow who
surpassed its author. On one of Nicholas’s visits to Moscow a learned
professor wrote an article in which, speaking of the immense mass of the
people crowding before the palace, he added that the Tsar had but to
express the faintest desire—and those thousands rushing to carry it out
would gladly fling themselves into the river Moskva. The sentence was
erased by S. G. Strogonov, who told me this charming anecdote.
[74] Lyapunov, a national hero who fought the Poles in the ‘Time of
Trouble.’ Several plays were written about him—one by Gedeonov, on which
Turgenev wrote a criticism. Kukolnik’s play is meant here.—(_Translator’s
Note._)
[75] I was at the first performance of Lyapunov in Moscow and saw the
hero tuck up his sleeves and say something like, ‘I’ll wash my hands in
Polish blood.’ A hollow moan of repulsion broke from the whole body of
the theatre; even the gendarmes, policemen, and people in stalls, the
numbers on whose seats had somehow been rubbed off, could not summon up
the pluck to applaud.
[76] The Uniats are members of the Greek Church who accept the supremacy
of the Pope.
[77] ‘The Hand of the Most High saved the Fatherland’ is the title of a
play by Kukolnik.
[78] Baron Joseph Jellachich, an Austrian general, who was also a poet
and politician. In 1848 he was appointed Ban of Croatia, and took part in
suppressing the revolt of the Hungarians.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[79] Tchaadayev was often at the English Club. On one occasion Menshikov,
Minister of Naval Affairs, went up to him with the words: ‘How is it,
Pyotr Yakovlevitch, you don’t recognise your old acquaintances?’ ‘Oh, it
is you,’ answered Tchaadayev, who really had not recognised him, ‘but how
is it you are wearing a black collar? I fancy that you used to wear a red
one.’ ‘Why, don’t you know I am Minister of Naval Affairs?’ ‘You! why, I
imagine you have never steered a boat.’ ‘You don’t need much wit to bake
a pot, you know,’ answered Menshikov, a little bit displeased. ‘Oh well,
if it is on that principle ...’ answered Tchaadayev.
A Senator was making great complaints of being very busy. ‘With what?’
asked Tchaadayev. ‘Upon my soul, the mere reading of the notes and
papers!’ and the Senator made a gesture indicating a pile a yard from the
floor. ‘But you don’t read them?’ ‘Oh yes, sometimes I do, and besides,
it is often necessary to give my opinion on them.’ ‘Well, I don’t see the
necessity,’ answered Tchaadayev.
[80] We now know for certain from Yakushkin’s _Diary_ that Tchaadayev was
a member of the Decembrist society.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[81] Charles François Chevé (1813-1875) was a political writer, at one
time a follower of Proudhon, but afterwards a Catholic.
[82] Ronge was the founder of a school of Liberal Catholicism.
[83] Mickiewicz (1798-1855), the great Polish poet, author of _Pan
Tadeusz_, spent some time in Russia and was a friend of Pushkin and his
circle.
[84] Sigismund Krasinski (1812-1859), a Polish poet, author of _Nieboska
Komedeja_, the _Undivine Comedy_.
[85] Lady Morgan (_née_ Sydney Owenson) (1789-1859), a lively Irish
authoress (and something of an adventuress), published many novels as
well as entertaining memoirs.
[86] _Mémoires d’un Prisonnier d’État au Spitzberg_, by Alexandre
Andryane, is probably the work here referred to.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[87] Royer-Collard, Pierre Paul (1763-1845), was in 1811 Professor of
Philosophy in Paris, opposed materialism, supported the Scottish School
of Reid and Stewart, and originated the ‘Doctrinaire’ School of which
Jouffroy and Cousin were afterwards representative.
[88] Friedrich Schlegel, German critic, author of _Lectures on the
Philosophy of History_, and _History of Literature_, joined the Roman
Catholic Church.
[89] Heinrich Leo (1799-1878), originally a Radical, went over to the
reactionary side on hearing of the murder of Kotzebue. He was much
influenced by Herder, and was suspected of leanings towards Catholicism.
[90] Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852), commonly called ‘Vater Jahn,’ is
chiefly known for his advocacy of gymnastic clubs. He was also connected
with the formation of the _Burschenschaft_, a students’ association
persecuted by the government authorities. He was in prison from 1819 to
1825.
[91] Prince Hohenlohe, nicknamed the ‘miracle-worker,’ was brought up by
Jesuits, became a priest, preached in Munich and other towns, and set out
to heal diseases. He was checked in his activities both by the Pope and
the police.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[92] Translated by Juliet Soskice.
[93] Translated by Juliet Soskice.
[94] The name _Slav_ is derived from _Slovo_, _word_,
_language_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[95] ‘Moreover,’ he said to me in the presence of Homyakov, ‘they boast
of speech, but in the whole race Homyakov is the only one who speaks.’
[96] Granovitaya Palata, the hall in the Kremlin in which the Tsar and
his councillors used to meet before the time of Peter the Great.
[97] Novgorod, the most famous city in the earliest period of Russian
history, was to some extent a republic under the rule of its princes from
Rurik upwards. It was almost destroyed and was deprived of its liberties
by Ivan III. in 1471.
[98] The Ulozhenie is the code of laws of Tsar Alexis Mihailovitch
(father of Peter the Great), compiled in the seventeenth
century.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[99] The Varangians were Scandinavian and Norman tribes, whose rulers
were, according to tradition, summoned in 862 by the Northern Slavs to
rule over them.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[100] Written at the time of the Crimean War.
[101] Shevyryov, professor of literature in Moscow University and author
of a _History of Poetry_, in which he advances many fantastic theories.
Pogodin was professor of history, and they were co-editors of the
_Moskvityanin_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[102] Konstantin and Ivan Aksakov were the sons of Sergey Timofeyevitch
Aksakov (1791-1859), a writer of the first rank, some of whose charming
pictures of the country and old-fashioned Russian life are now accessible
in excellent translations by J. D. Duff.
[103] Alexandr Ivanovitch Turgenev, a distinguished person in his own
day, now chiefly remembered for having been a very good friend to
Pushkin, was one of the Turgenevs of Simbirsk, and not related to the
famous Turgenev, who has left among his critical articles an obituary
notice of this Alexandr Ivanovitch.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[104] The Larins and Lensky are characters in Pushkin’s _Yevgeny
Onyegin_. Tchatsky is the hero of Griboyedov’s _Woe from Wit_, and
Famussov is a character in the same play.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[105] Baron d’Holbach (1723-1789), of German origin, one of the French
encyclopaedists, was the social centre round which all the leading
literary and philosophic celebrities of Paris gathered. He was a
passionate atheist, and an extremely good-hearted man, giving shelter to
his worst enemies, the Jesuits, when they were persecuted.
[106] Delphine Gay (Mme. de Girardin) wrote witty verses, novels, and
plays.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[107] Sobakevitch and Nozdryov are characters in Gogol’s _Dead
Souls_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[108] Novikov, a man of letters and mystic of the time of Catherine, was
imprisoned and exiled for advocating the emancipation of the serfs.
[109] The Kireyevskys’ mother did not share their views. This is the only
explanation I can discover for his being described as ‘lonely in his own
family.’—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[110] From Lermontov’s translation of Goethe’s poem.—(_Translator’s
Note._)
[111] Baron Haxthausen was a learned German who after a visit to
Russia at this period wrote an account of the Russian system of land
tenure.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[112] Both were authors of a very low order; Gretch, a trifle more
stupid and less unscrupulous than Bulgarin, who was scurrilous in his
attacks on Pushkin, and commonly believed to be in the pay of the
police.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[113] Katchenovsky, Mihail Trofimovitch (1775-1842), of humble origin
and largely self-educated, became editor of the _Vyestnik Yevropi_, and
professor of Fine Arts, of Literature, and later on of History in Moscow
University. His sceptical attitude on historical subjects gave offence,
and he was superseded in the Chair of History by Pogodin.—(_Translator’s
Note._)
[114] Yazykov, a friend of Pushkin’s.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[115] This Glinka, one of the founders of the League of Public Welfare,
out of which the Decembrist movement developed, was exiled in 1826, but
allowed to return later. He was a literary character of the mild and
pious type.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[116] K. Kavélin’s article, and Yury Samarin’s reply to it. They are
dealt with in the _Développement des Idées Révolutionnaires en Russie_.
[117] The famous chief of a band of robbers whose feats have passed into
a legend. He flourished in France during the early part of the eighteenth
century.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[118] The peace between France and Austria in 1797 was concluded at Campo
Formio, a village in Italy.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[119] In the Time of Trouble at the beginning of the seventeenth century
the famous Troitse-Sergievsky Monastery made an heroic resistance against
the Poles. Avraamy Palitsyn, the Father Superintendent, together with the
Abbot, issued manifestoes calling on the people to drive out the Poles
and elect a Tsar.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[120] Lampi, J. B., was an Austrian painter who came to Petersburg
in 1792, and painted portraits of Catherine, Potyomkin, and various
distinguished persons.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[121] The popular writer Victor Joseph Étienne de Jouy (1754-1846) was
known as the ‘hermit of the Chausseé d’Antin,’ the name of his most
widely read prose work.
[122] Weiss, Bernhard (1827-1892), a learned German, who became adviser
to the government in spiritual concerns, and author of many theological
works.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[123] English in the original.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[124] English in the original.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[125] A character in Gogol’s _Inspector General_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[126] I think while I am speaking of Dmitry Pavlovitch I ought not to
omit to mention his last action in regard to me. After my father’s death
he was left owing me forty thousand silver roubles. I went abroad without
claiming this money. When he died, he directed his executors that I
should be the first of his debtors to be paid, because I could officially
claim nothing. I received the money by the next post after that by which
I heard of his death.
[127] English in the original.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[128] The story of how one of the students got into the university is
so full of the native flavour of the Nicholas period that I cannot
resist telling it. The anniversary day with which we are all familiar
from Pushkin’s superb verses was celebrated annually in the Lyceum. As
a rule, on this day of parting from companions and seeing again former
schoolfellows the young people were allowed to make merry. On one of
these anniversaries a youth who had not yet finished his studies in a
light-hearted moment flung a bottle at the wall; unluckily, the bottle
struck a marble slab on which was inscribed in gold letters: ‘His
Imperial Majesty the Emperor graciously deigned to visit us on such and
such a date ...’ and broke a piece off it. A superintendent ran up, fell
upon the culprit with terrible abuse, and tried to remove him. The youth,
insulted before his comrades and exhilarated by the wine, tore the cane
out of his hand and struck him with it. The superintendent promptly
reported the incident; the youth was arrested and kept in detention on
the terrible charge not merely of striking a superintendent but also
of sacrilegious disrespect for a slab on which the sacred name of the
monarch was inscribed.
He might very easily have been sent for a soldier had not another
calamity saved him. At that very time his elder brother died. His mother,
overwhelmed with grief, wrote to him that he was now her only hope and
support, and urged him to make haste and finish his studies and come to
her. The principal of the Lyceum, General Bronevsky I believe it was, was
touched on reading this letter and resolved to save the youth without
bringing it to the knowledge of Nicholas. He told the Grand Duke Michael
of the incident, and the latter directed that he should be expelled
from the Lyceum privately, and that that should end the matter. The
youth left the Lyceum with a certificate on which he could not enter any
educational institution, that is, almost every career was barred to him
for he was not at all wealthy, and all this for damaging a slab adorned
with the Imperial name! And even this was only thanks to the peculiar
favour of Providence which killed his brother at the right moment, to a
tenderness unheard of among generals, and an indulgence almost incredible
in a grand duke! Being a young man of exceptional talent, he succeeded
long afterwards in obtaining the right to attend lectures in the Moscow
University.
[129] Translated by Juliet M. Soskice.
[130] Translated by Juliet M. Soskice.
[131] See p. 335, Vol. I.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[132] One of Gogol’s Mirgorod stories.
[133] Public prosecutor of the revolutionary tribunal under the
Terror.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[134] There is no difference of culture between husband and wife among
the proletariat or the peasants, but there is a terrible equality of
slavery and terrible inequality of power between the husband and the wife.
[135] The _Vehme_ or _Vehmgerichte_ were mediaeval German tribunals
which tried capital charges and were greatly dreaded for their
severity.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[136] Katkov, one of Stankevitch’s circle, afterwards became a
Slavophil of the most reactionary type and editor of the _Moscow
Gazette_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[137] Barère de Vieuzac (1753-1841), a member of the Committee of Public
Safety, nicknamed the Anacreon of the Guillotine.—(_Translator's Note._)