Volume 9 [Reprint 2020 ed.] 9780520334298

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CALIFORNIA SLAVIC STUDIES

CALIFORNIA SLAVIC STUDIES Volume IX

EDITORS

NICHOLAS V. RIASANOVSKY GLEB STRUVE THOMAS EEKMAN

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY • LOS ANGELES • LONDON

CALIFORNIA SLAVIC STUDIES Volume 9

U N I V E R S I T Y OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA U N I V E R S I T Y O F C A L I F O R N I A PRESS, L T D . LONDON, ENGLAND

ISBN: 0-520-09485-9 LIBRARY O F CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: ©

61-1041

1 9 7 6 BY T H E REGENTS OF T H E UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

P R I N T E D IN T H E UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS Kheraskov a n d the Christian T r a g e d y

1

MICHAEL GREEN

Sleptsov Redivivus

27

WILLIAM C. BRUMFIELD

Writer in Hell: Notes o n Dostoevsky's Letters

71

LUBOMIR RADOYCE

Russian Metapolitics: Merezhkovsky's Religious Understanding of t h e Historical Process

123

HEINRICH A. STAMMLER

T h e P e r s e p h o n e Myth in Mandelstam's Tristia DONALD C. GILLIS

139

KHERASKOV AND THE CHRISTIAN TRAGEDY BY

MICHAEL GREEN CLASSICAL TRAGEDY HOLDS an important place in Kheraskov's work; his nine examples of the form (the same number as Sumarokov composed) account for no less than half of his theatrical output. Although always ready to try his hand at new forms, such as the "tearful drama," which were in direct competition with tragedy, he maintained his allegiance to the most hallowed of theatrical genres, invariably returning to it after forays into other fields and sometimes incorporating into it certain features of what the stricter classicist Sumarokov regarded as alien genres. Kheraskov's interest in the tragedy spans his entire literary career, from Venecianskaja monakhinja (1758), his first important work, to the posthumously published Zareida i Rostislav (1809). Kheraskov's career as a dramatist began at the very time that Sumarokov's came to a temporary halt. The older writer's tragedies fall neatly into two groups, the first six (Khorev, Gamlet, Sinav i Truvor, Artistona, Semira and Jaropolk i Dimiza) belong to the years 1747-1758, and the last three ( V y seslav, Dimitrij samozvanec and Mstislav) dating from 1768-1774. In 1761 1 the irascible Sumarokov, incensed at the treatment he had received at the hands of court officials and finding his proffered resignation from the directorship of the St. Petersburg Russian theatre unexpectedly accepted, retreated into offended silence and produced no more tragedies for almost a decade. Thus it was that Kheraskov found himself the sole provider of original tragedies for the Russian stage during the decade 1758-1768, if we except his friend A. A. Rzhevsky, whose tragedy Prelesta - now lost appeared not later than 1762. 2 Kheraskov, then, was the most significant writer of tragedies in Russia between Sumarokov and Sumarokov's son-in-law, Ya. B. Knyazhnin, who did not establish himself as the leading dramatist of the day until the end of the 1770's. 3 Yet the innovations, both formal and ideological, that distinguish his 1

P. N. Arapov, Letopis'russkogo teatra (St. Petersburg, 1891), p. 72. P. N. Berkov, "Tragedija A. A. Rzevskogo 'Podloznyj Smerdij,'" Teatral'noe Nasledstvo (Moscow, 1956), p. 139 ff. 3 Knyazhnin's first tragedy, Didona, received its first performance as early as 1767; however, his two succeeding tragedies, Ol'ga (c. 1770) and Vladimir i Jaropolk (1772), remained unperformed, apparently for political reasons, while in 1773 Knyazhnin's career suffered a setback when he was accused of embezzling state funds and deprived of his title of nobility; thus Didona did not enter the repertoire of the Imperial Theatre 2

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tragedies from those of Sumarokov have hardly received the recognition they deserve. P. N. Berkov, while admitting that "the first attempt after Sumarokov to create an original Russian tragedy belonged to Kheraskov," adds dismissively that "none of these p l a y s . . . is of any particular interest." 4 V. N. Vsevolodsky-Gerngross remarks that "there existed tragedies alien to any kind of publicistic aim" in which "the entire conflict was transferred to the moral sphere"; he concludes that "these tragedies were artistically weak" and cites Kheraskov's Plamena as an example of just such a tragedy. 5 A notable exception to the chorus of dispraise is A. V. Zapadov, who, apropos of the same play, roundly asserts that "the ability to construct an absorbing plot, always characteristic of Kheraskov, was revealed in full measure in this tragedy t o o . ' " The coolness of Soviet critics toward Kheraskov's achievement, one suspects, is to be explained by his introduction of a specifically Christian form of tragedy, in contrast to the deistic tragedies of Sumarokov. The small group of Kheraskov's tragedies that might be labelled "Christian" have been particularly neglected, 7 and it is to them that the present paper will be devoted; they are, in order of composition, Plamena, Idolopoklonniki ili Gorislava and Julijan otstupnik. Since these plays are little known and not readily available, I offer no apology for including brief plot summaries. Kheraskov was unique among secular writers of his day in Russia in allotting to religion so central a place in his work. The temper of the age was not sympathetic to anything remotely resembling religious fervor. The men of the Enlightenment were hostile to mysticism and to established religion in general ("l'infâme" was Voltaire's epithet for the Catholic Church); some, such as Diderot, scarcely bothered to conceal their atheism. The deism of Voltaire has about it the coolness of a viable philosophical assumption rather than the passion of belief. "Si Dieu n'existait pas il faudrait l'inventer" is hardly the kind of assertion to breed martyrs. Voltaire, indeed, had little patience with the martyr-hero of Corneille 's "tragédie chrétienne" Polyeucte martyr; the "bon dévot" hero, as Voltaire

until 1778, the year in which its author was pardoned (L. I. Kulakova, "Zizn' tvorcestvo Ja. B. Knjaznina," in Ja. B. Knjaznin, Izbrannye proizvedenija [Leningrad 1961], (pp. 9 ff.). 4 P. N. Berkov, p. 139. Berkov is referring specifically to Venecianskaja monakhinja Plamena, Martezija i Falestra and Borislav. S V. N. Vsevolodskij-Gerngross, Russkij teatr vtoroj poloviny XVIII veka (Moscow 1960), p. 48. 6 A. V. Zapadov, "Tvorcestvo Kheraskova," in M. M. Kheraskov, Izbrannye proiz vedenija (Leningrad, 1961), p. 48. 7 Some critical tribute has been paid to the "bourgeois" Venecianskaja monakhinja the anti-despotic Borislav and the patriotic Osvobozdennaja Moskva.

Kheraskov and the Christian Tragedy

3

contemptuously calls him, and his elder mentor and fellow-martyr are pronounced to be both absurd and dangerous in their fanaticism: "Les esprits philosophes. . . méprisent beaucoup l'action de Polyeucte et de Néarque. Ils ne regardent ce Néarque que comme un convulsionnaire qui a ensorcelé un jeune imprudent." 8 Voltaire's own tragedy Zaïre was intended as a reply to Polyeucte: it was to be nothing less than a "tragédie sacrée raisonnable." In effect, Voltaire in this most popular of his tragedies reduced religion to little more than a piquant sauce in which to serve up his amorous intrigue, moving Rousseau to denounce the concoction as a "mélange odieux de piété et de libertinage.'" It is, then, extremely doubtful whether Zaïre can be called a Christian tragedy in any very meaningful sense; Voltaire makes his heroine, a young captive of Christian parentage who has been reared in the Mohammedan faith, reason as coolly as any philosophe on the relative and accidental nature of religious creeds: Je le vois trop: les soins qu'on prend de notre enfance Forment nos sentiments, nos moeurs, notre créance. J'eusse été près du Gange esclave des faux dieux, Chrétienne dans Paris, musulmane en ces lieux. . .

Zaire loves and is loved by Orosmane, a noble-minded pasha whose tolerance in matters of religion cannot but contrast favorably with the fanaticism of Zaire's long-lost Christian brother, a fanaticism that is instrumental in bringing about the tragic denouement. It is clear that in the guise of a Christian tragedy Voltaire has mounted another attack on his old enemies — intolerance and fanaticism. Zaïre is one of the plays examined by Sumarokov in his essay "Mnenie vo snovidenii o francuzskikh tragedijakh."" Written apparently during the period of Sumarokov's self-imposed separation from his "preljubeznaja Mel'pomena," the piece takes the form of a dream in which the dramatist imagines himself at a theatrical performance in Paris, in the company of none other than Voltaire. With this pretext, ten celebrated French tragedies are passed in review with frequent commendation, occasional censure and liberal quotation, affording some insight into the taste of the age in general and of Sumarokov in particular. 12 Surprisingly undisturbed by the republican senti8

Quoted by J. Calvet, Polyeucte de Corneille (Paris, 1932), p. 22. R. S. Ridgway, La propagande philosophique dans les tragédies de Voltaire (Geneva, 1961), p. 99. 10 Quoted by R. S. Ridgway, p. 101. 11 A. P. Sumarokov, Polnoe sobranie vsekh socinenij, 4 (Moscow, 1781), pp. 352-363. 12 Of the ten tragedies examined by Sumarokov, two are by Corneille (Cinna and Rodogune), four by Racine (Mithridate, Iphigénie, Phèdre and Athalie), and four by Voltaire (Brutus, Zaire, Alzire and Mérope). 9

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ments of Brutus,13 Sumarokov is at great pains to persuade his readers that Voltaire is a Christian and not a deist. There are, however, a great many unbelievers in the poet's imaginary audience: "ja, po nescastiju moemu, okruzen byl bezzakonnikami, kotorye vo vse vremja koscunstvovali, i radi togo, vstupajuscie v oci moi slezy ne vytekali na lice m o e . " In spite of this, Sumarokov professes himself assured of Voltaire's pious intentions in writing the play: "Vidno cto siju socinjaja Dramu Avtor, o torn imel popecenie, daby Khristijanskij Zakon utverdit' v serdcakh nasikh, i otvleci bezzakonikov, sikh zabluzdennykh ljudej, ot estestvennago Bogopocitanija, kotorija ne priemljut Svjascennago Pisanija." It is difficult not to feel that in presenting Voltaire as a Christian proselytizer Sumarokov is protesting altogether too much; perhaps he was hoping to soften the attitude of conservative and ecclesiastical circles to a writer widely regarded as a godless freethinker. What is certain, though, is that however much Sumarokov may have admired, or pretended to admire, the concept of Christian tragedy, he never produced anything approaching one himself. Sumarokov's tragedies are deistic through and through: God may be benevolent, but he is also remote, an abstract ideal of justice, useful above all as a reminder to the potentates of this world that there is a supreme power above them to whom they will have one day to answer for their deeds: Bogami na glavu tvoju vzlozen venec, Ctob byl narodnago ty scastija tvorec.

(Jaropolk i Dimiza)14

The monarch is the intermediate link in the chain of authority that descends from the Deity to the people; a ruler must: Upodobljatisja praviteljam prirody, Kak dolzny podrazat' emu ego narody 1 5

Kij adjures himself in Khorev, meditating on the duties of his office. From this point of view, God is indispensable, but as abstract as a point in a geometrical schema. 13 Not only is Sumarokov unperturbed by the republican sentiments expressed in Brutus, but he even administers a mild rebuke to the Parisian public for failing to appreciate the play's merits: "Brut i Tit respublikancy; tak sija Drama, ne vosla v Parize toliko v modu, skol'ko ona dostojna;" he even, in an oddly prophetic passage, anticipates the vogue that Voltaire's play was to enjoy after the Revolution ("Brut kogdanibud' mozet vojti bol'se v modu v Parize; ibo iz monarkhij Respubliki delajutsja"). 14 A. P. Sumarokov, 3: 389. Here, and throughout the article, the quotations are transliterated in accordance with the old spelling (minus, of course, the letter t and the distinction between u and i and the final"®). The punctuation follows that in the edition from which the quotation is taken.

"Ibid.,

3: 47.

Kheraskov and the Christian

Tragedy

5

The Christianization of Russia was not, judging from his works, an event that held a great deal of interest for Sumarokov. Those of the earlier group of his tragedies that are set in Russia all take place in the mythical and semi-mythical times before Russia's conversion. Sumarokov's conception of the pagan gods is no less unhistorical than his presentation of the princely courts of ancient Russia (the classical tragedy is, of course, by its very nature anti-historical, though an element of picturesque historicism did creep into the final stages of the genre's development). The pagan gods frequently invoked by Sumarokov's heroes are far removed from the cruel and bloodthirsty deities to be pictured by Kheraskov; they are, in fact, the collective equivalent of the benevolent supreme judge of the deists. This is nowhere better illustrated than in Jaropolk i Dimiza; when the ruler Vladisan, in tyrannic vein, calls upon the gods to pluck mercy from his heart, his son Jaropolk rejoins that such a request to the gods is unfitting, since: Praviteli nebes ne mogut byti zlobny; Ne dumaj, cto oni i v torn tebe podobny.

Even such a later tragedy as Mstislav (1774), set in what was historically a Christianized Russia with a protagonist who, like the Mstislav who appears as a subsidiary character in Plamena, is a son of Vladimir, contains no mention of religion, being entirely concerned with the rivalry of two brothers for the love of the same woman; the play's "message" is the ruinous nature of fraternal strife in a ruling house. Plamena also contains a pair of royal brothers, but the theme of fraternal discord is not touched on; indeed, Mstislav's continued faith in his "vozljublennyj brat," whose naive trust in the sworn enemy of his religion and his house has once almost brought them to disaster, bespeaks a complaisance bordering on idiocy. Kheraskov is not interested in developing the political implications of his situations. Kheraskov's second tragedy, Plamena, was published in 1765. There is no record of the play being performed, 1 7 but it is at least certain that it was written some years before its publication, since in his essay "O stikhotvorstve" published in the May and June, 1762, numbers of Poleznoe uveselenie S.G. Domashnev states that "G. Kheraskov napisal dve Tragedii. . . . " 18 On the surface, at least, Plamena is a return to the classical proprieties after the unorthodoxy of Venecianskaja monakhinja: it is set in the semi-historical ancient Russia standardized by Sumarokov; it is in five acts (the earlier 16

Ibid., 3: 384. M. N. Longinov, Russkij teatr v Peterburge i Moskve 1749-1774 (St. Petersburg, 1873), p. 22. 18 P. A. Efremov, Materialy dlja istorii russkoj literatury (St. Petersburg, 1867), p. 192. 17

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tragedy had been in three); its characters are of royal birth; its heroine is provided with a confidante; and its plot, at first glance, seems to be one of those love-duty conflicts which are the staple of classical tragedy. The action is set in Kiev, which is ruled in Vladimir's name by his son Mstislav with the help of his brother Pozvezd. Prevzyd, the former ruler of Kiev, has been defeated by Vladimir (the Christianizer of Russia never appears, but we are always aware of his presence looming in the background). At the beginning of the action Russia has become part of Christendom; Prevzyd, a fanatical adherent of the old gods, has been living for three years in Kiev as an honored captive; his daughter Plamena loves and is loved by Pozvezd. An order has been received from Vladimir that unless Prevzyd accepts Christianity he and his daughter must be exiled. Desperate, Prevzyd plots to lead a revolt and to restore both his own authority and that of the ancient gods of Kiev. Plamena attempts in vain to dissuade her father from his rash enterprise, at last revealing to him that she too has been baptized in the new faith. Enraged, the old man orders his kinsman Virsan to take her away and offer her up as a sacrifice to the gods. The uprising fails, and Plamena is saved by the miraculous conversion of Virsan; the princely brothers, moved by Plamena's pleas, set Prevzyd at liberty, but the old man is unwavering in his loyalty to his gods and conspires with pagan priests to stir up rebellion once more. Plamena is torn between her love for Pozvezd and her devotion to her new-found faith. Again the rising is quelled and again Prevzyd is taken prisoner. Mindful that as a Christian he ought to forgive his enemies, Pozvezd offers to stand surety for Prevzyd's future good conduct. Prevzyd, however, is quite untouched by this magnanimity; on receiving back his sword, he plunges it into Pozvezd's breast and then turns it on himself, thus bringing the play to an abrupt close. Mstislav is left to utter one of those terse summary lines that so often conclude a classical tragedy: Zlovrednaja ljubov'! ty vsekh nas pogubila."

In the three tragedies that followed Venecianskaja monakhinja there is a dependence on existing tragedies by Sumarokov that is not apparent in Kheraskov's first tragedy: Plamena can be seen as a variant of Semira, Martezija i Falestra of Sinav i Truvor, and Borislav of Dimitrij samozvanec. It is as if the youthful dramatist, conscious of having been excessively bold in his first venture, had decided to play safe. The model for Plamena, then, is Sumarokov's Semira (1751); similarities in plot and construction are too striking to be coincidental. In both plays the heroine (who gives her name to " M. M. Kheraskov, Tvorenija, 4 (Moscow, 1796-1800), p. 177.

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the play) is the daughter of a dethroned ruler torn between duty to her kin and love for the son of the usurper; in both, the conventional twenty-four hour time span of classical tragedy is stretched to the limit to accommodate not one, but two unsuccessful revolts. However, for all the strong family resemblance between the two plays, Plamena cannot be dismissed as no more than a not very successful imitation of Semira; Kheraskov's fundamental concerns are quite different from those of Sumarokov, and the ideological conflict at the center of his play is on quite another plane. The action of Semira belongs entirely to the realm of politics. The struggle with which it deals is essentially a struggle for political power in which there is little to choose between the contenders: on one side the wise and clement Oleg and his chivalrous son Rostislav, on the other Oskold, the son of the deposed ruler - hardly less noble, and with the attractive aura of one who fights for a doomed cause — and Semira herself, as resolutely Cornelian a heroine as could be imagined. There are no real ideological differences between the two sides; each acts as duty dictates, and each respects - even loves — the other, so that with Oskold's death there is nothing to prevent the play ending on the note of reconciliation dear to Enlightenment tragedy. Throughout the action the sympathy of the audience is fairly evenly divided between the two sides, and is, if anything, slightly weighted in favor of the rebels (although it is quite clear that Oskold has to die in the interest of the unification of the Russian state 2 0 ). In Plamena, by contrast, the noble and sympathetic Oskold is replaced by the cruel and barbarous Prevzyd, and the struggle becomes essentially a religious one between Christianity and the pagan gods for the salvation of the Russian land; it is the Christian God who intervenes to bring about the miraculous conversion of Virsan and thus save the heroine's life. For Prevzyd the regaining of political power is only a means of restoring the sway of the heathen pantheon, and the tragic denouement is brought about by the attempt of Pozvezd to follow the Christian ethic: Velit nam nas zakon vragov svoikh ljubit'21

he declares, preparing to return the sword that is to strike him down. Between such as these there can be no reconciliation, only war to the death. Kheraskov has christianized the tragedy as he was later to christianize the epic poem. Of his first and more conventionally heroic epic, the Rossijada, it has been said that "the struggle between Russia and Kazan, between Ortho20 V. N. Vsevolodskij-Gerngross (Russkif teatr ot istokov do serediny XVIII veka, p. 209) interprets the play as depicting a struggle for national independence, with Oskold as hero. Such an interpretation is, of course, anachronistic. 21 M. M. Kheraskov, 4: 174.

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doxy and Mohammedanism in the poem sometimes looks like a struggle between religion and atheism or more precisely, between masonic idealism and atheistic materialism"; 2 2 while his second, Vladimir, quite deliberately replaces the "rycarskija podvigi i cudesnosti" that the eighteenth century (which preferred Ariosto and Tasso to Homer and Virgil 23 ) expected of the epic by "stranstvovanie vnimatel'nago celoveka putem istiny." 2 4 In Plamena, his first Christian tragedy, Kheraskov did not follow the most famous French models, which dealt either with Christian martyrdom in a Roman setting (for example, Corneille's Polyeucte, Rotrou's Saint Genêt, comédien et martyre, de Brueys's Gabinie) — a pattern he was later to follow in Julijan otstupnik - or with a subject taken from the Old Testament (Racine's Esther and Athalie, for example). Instead, he chose a form that adheres to the tradition established by Sumarokov in treating a theme from Russian history, but replacing Sumarokov's politico-ethical considerations with religio-ethical ones. In short, with characteristic caution, he chose the path of compromise. It seems likely that the scholastic drama also exerted some influence — had not the best known of the school dramas, Feofan Prokopovich's "tragikomedija" Vladimir also had as its theme the Christianization of Russia? There are unmistakable traces of the school drama in another play written at about this time, the "geroiceskaja komedija" Bezboznik(\16\). Although Plamena adheres to the classical conventions more closely than Kheraskov's first tragedy, there is one convention from which it departs more radically than does the earlier play: that forbidding the representation of physical violence on the stage. In Venecianskaja monakhinja Korans had stabbed himself on stage, as classical usage permits. Plamena goes a step further: Prevzyd not only commits suicide on stage in the approved manner, but also stabs the hero, Pozvezd, in full view of the audience. That suicide on stage was nothing out of the ordinary is immediately apparent if we examine Sumarokov's dramas: it occurs in Khorev and Sinav i Truvor and, among the later tragedies, in Dimitrij samozvanec (although we may also note a tendency to arrange such bloody acts off stage - in Semira, for example, Oskold stabs himself off stage and is only brought on to utter his dying words). Knyazhnin also excludes killings on stage, as opposed to suicides, f r o m his tragedies, with the exception of the early and unperformed 22

Istorija russkojpoèzii, I, (Leningrad, 1968), p. 115. Kheraskov's protégé S. G. Domashnev approvingly cites Voltaire's opinion that the Orlando Furioso is superior to the Odyssey and the Gerusalemma Liberata to the Iliad (S. G. Domasnev, "O stikhotvorstve," in Materialy dlja istorii russkoj literatury, ed. P. A. Efremov [St. Petersburg, 1 8 6 1 ] , p. 183). 24 M. M. Kheraskov, 2, p. VIII. 23

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Ol'ga.25 In observing this custom, both playwrights were following the traditional practice of the French stage, which throughout the seventeenth century and for the first four decades of the eighteenth had allowed no killing except suicide to be represented. After 1740, there had appeared a few tragedies in which a negative character was dispatched in the sight of the audience; it was, however, only in 1763, in Saurin'sBlanche et Guiscard, that a sympathetic character was allowed to be murdered on stage, although "such an act did not meet with general approval even at the end of Louis XV's •>126

reign. Trivial as such French rigidities may seem to us now, it should not be forgotten that for those who took the French stage as their model they represented nothing less than the tablets of the law. By having his hero stabbed on stage in a play written not later than 1762, Kheraskov was introducing into the conservative classical tragedy a novelty that even the Parisian stage had not yet seen; the enfant terrible who had written Venecianskaja monakhinja had not, it would seem, entirely vanished. It is perhaps of significance, however, that such temerities are also to be found in the tragedies of those writers who may be said to belong to Kheraskov's literary circle; in Rzhevsky's single surviving tragedy Podloznyj Smerdij (not later than 1769) the evil usurper and his henchman are both slain on stage, while in Vasily Maykov's unperformed Femist i leronima (written 1773, published 1775) the heroine is stabbed in full view of the audience.) 27 In the light of the foregoing, it might be worth drawing a distinction between the "professional" tragedians Sumarokov and Knyazhnin and the "dilettanti" - Kheraskov, Rzhevsky, Maykov and Khemnitser. 28 Sumarokov and Knyazhnin were professionals in the sense that they were first and foremost men of the theatre, supplying the Russian stage with a steady stream of plays, both serious and comic. Both men had close links with the French literary scene — Sumarokov in his consciously assumed role of the "Russian Racine," and as the admirer and correspondent of Voltaire; Knyazhnin as a translator (for example, of Voltaire's Henriade) and as a frequent 25 It is curious that in this play, which is closely adapted from Voltaire's Merope, Knyazhnin does not follow his original in having a messenger relate the details of the tyrant's death, but departs from his usual practice by boldly portraying an assassination on stage. 26 H. C. Lancaster, French Tragedy in the Time of Louis XV and Voltaire (Baltimore, 1950), p. 6 2 0 . 27

V. I. Majkov, Izbrannye proizvedenija (Moscow-Leningrad, 1966), p. 4 3 1 . Khemnitser was the author of a single tragedy, Blanka, now lost. In his Opyt istoriceskogo slovarja o rossijskikh pisateljakh ( 1 7 7 2 ) , Novikov tells us that this tragedy was in three acts; it was probably the only example of the genre to be directly influenced by Venecianskaja monakhinja. 28

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adapter of French plays. Consequently both were conscious of their duty to maintain "correct" standards and both were somewhat conservative in their attitude toward innovation — Sumarokov's blind rage at the appearance of the "tearful drama" in Russia well illustrates this attitude. For the "dilettanti," on the other hand, the theatre was an amusement; they did not make their careers in the theatre, they produced plays spasmodically and their reputations in the world of letters did not rest primarily on their dramatic productions; in many cases there is no record of their works having been performed, at least in public. In consequence they were less concerned with correctness than their professional rivals, having, in a sense, less to lose. Kheraskov must be placed among the "dilettanti," even if the sheer bulk of his dramatic output over half a century disguises his affiliation; it should be remembered that about half his plays have no recorded production or were put on privately, and that there were prolonged hiatuses in his theatrical activities. Perhaps, after all, it is to amateurism and provincialism rather than to the experimental spirit that the unorthodoxies of his earlier plays are to be attributed. Certainly at the end of his life Kheraskov expressed dissatisfaction with his failure as a dramatist to conform with the canons of classicism; a year before his death the aged poet confessed his regret to S. N. Glinka at not having been able to read La Harpe's Lycée, ou Cours de littérature ancienne et moderne some twenty years before: "I have written tragedies, but I am not satisfied with them. They would have been different if La Harpe's Lycée had come out twenty years ago." 29 Kheraskov's second Christian tragedy, Idolopoklonniki ili Gorislava, published in 1782, 30 was written some twenty years after Plamena and ten years after his previous tragedy, Borislav; the development of the genre in the intervening years is clearly reflected in Idolopoklonniki, which moves away from the chamber tragedies of Sumarokov to the kind of grandiose spectacular tragedy associated with Knyazhnin. Sumarokov, ardent admirer of Voltaire though he was, had not followed the Frenchman in his increasing preoccupation with striking scenic effects, remaining content (perhaps the limited financial resources of the early Russian theatre had something to do with it) to preserve the chamber quality of Racine. The settings of Sumarokov's tragedies match the simplicity of their action: "V knjazeskom dome" (Khorev, Sinav i Truvor, Jaropolk i Dimiza), "V carskom dome" (Artistona, Dimitrij samozvanec), "V korolevskom " S. N. Glinka, Zapiski (St. Petersburg, 1895), p. 201. 1.1. Dmitriev ( V z g l f a d na moju zizn' [Moscow, 1 8 6 6 ] , p. 79) records a similar remark: "Ne tak by ja pisal moi tragedii, esli by sorok'ju godami prezde procital etu knigu." 30 Svodnyj katalog russkoj knigi grazdanskoj pecati XVIII veka. 1725-1800, 3, (Moscow, 1962-1967), p. 333.

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dome" (Gamlet) — such are the meagre stage directions with which Sumarokov customarily prefaces his tragedies. With the exception of Venecianskaja monakhinja - a "sport" in this respect as in so many others - Kheraskov's tragedies up to and including Borislav (1772) have a comparable simplicity of setting: the action of Plamena unfolds "V certogakh plennago Knjazja," that of Martezija i Falestra "V certogakh u Martezii," that of Borislav "V Bogemii v stolicnom gorode." It was in the interval between Borislav and Idolopoklonniki that Kheraskov first turned to the sentimental drama, incorporating into this novel form effects previously associated with opera seria; in returning to the classical tragedy after this excursion into alien territory, he introduced into it some of the effects he had learned to use there. Meanwhile the tragedy itself had continued to develop; the late 1770's had seen the emergence of Knyazhnin as Russia's leading tragic poet. Knyazhnin showed himself more receptive than Sumarokov had been to the tendency of later Voltairean tragedy to open out the chamber tragedy of Racine by means of majestic ensembles and grandiose visual effects. Here again, attention should be drawn to opera seria, where such effects were a usual part of the mise-en-scene. There is, in fact, a strong operatic element in Knyazhnin's tragic theatre; his first tragedy, Didona, was strongly influenced by Metastasio's Didone abbandonata (1724), as well as by Le Franc de Pompignan's Didon (1734); it is of interest that instead of following Le Franc, whose Carthaginian queen stabs herself in accordance with theatrical usage, 31 Knyazhnin imitates the great Italian librettist in having her cast herself into the blazing ruins of her city. 32 Nikolev's first tragedy, Pal'mira (1781), also presents a funeral pyre on stage. 33 Metastasio's Didone was well known in Russia, having been set by more than one court composer 34 and frequently performed at court. There is a close connection between Knyazhnin's Titovo miloserdie and Metastasio's La clemenza di Tito; in his tragedy Knyazhnin not only follows the three-act form of opera seria, but also imitates the irregular iambics of the opera libretto and includes a ballet and a chorus. The decor too is far removed from Sumarokov's "knjazeskij dom": "Teatr predstavljaet zdanie kapitolii i pred onoju ploscad', na kotoroj narod i poslanniki s danjami ot podvlastnykh Rimu oblastej." 35 In connection with the tendency toward a synthesis of classical tragedy and opera seria, it is worth remember31

H. C. Lancaster, p. 175. Pietro Metastasio, Opera, I (Venice, 1832), p. 95. 33 L. I. Kulakova, p. 39. 34 No less than three composers employed by the Russian court (Paisiello, Galuppi and Traetta) set Metastasio's Didone abbandonata. It was with this opera that Galuppi successfully introduced himself to the Russian public in 1766 (Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 3 [ London, 1954], p. 557). 35 Ja. B. Knjaznin, Socinenija, I (St. Petersburg, 1847), p. 75. 32

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ing that the reputation enjoyed by Metastàsio in the eighteenth century was second only to that of Voltaire himself. Voltaire admired him and compared him with Corneille, Racine and the Greeks, 36 while Sumarokov, with his customary modesty, placed him beside Racine and himself as worthy peers of the "French Sophocles" (Voltaire). 37 In this way the grandiose architectural sets characteristic of opera seria were adopted by the classical tragedy. The setting specified for Idolopoklonniki is of this type: "Teatr predstavljaet v Carskom dome mezdu dvumja perekhodami vdali zatvorennoe kapiscé Perunovo: cast' teatra zavesoju otdeljaetsja." 38 Idolopoklonniki clearly reveals the influence of certain late tragedies of Voltaire, notably of Olympie (1764) and Les lois de Minos (1772). In both these plays the French dramatist exploits to the utmost the theatrical possibilities offered by the rituals of pagan religion. As might be expected, Voltaire makes use of these trappings to preach the message of enlightenment; the Hiérophante (High Priest) in Olympie, "ministre d'un Dieu de paix et de douceur," 3 ' is, beneath his impressive robes, an eighteenth-century deist of the first water, while the cruelty and intolerance of the established religion of Crete, successfully opposed by the enlightened monarch Teucer in Les lois de Minos, were no doubt intended to suggest the machinations of the Catholic Church. In contrast to Idolopoklonniki, these two Voltaire tragedies are set in pre-Christian times, and the conflict in them is between the forces of superstition and those of reason. Nevertheless, Voltaire had shown himself surprisingly responsive to the emotional appeal of ritual; writing in the Dictionnaire philosophique of the "Cérémonie auguste" of the sacrament, he had exclaimed: "L'imagination est subjuguée, l'âme est saisie et attendrie. On respire à peine, on est détaché de tout lien terrestre, on est uni avec Dieu. . . ." 40 Small wonder that he should attempt to recreate some of this excitement on the stage, at the same time congratulating himself in the preface to Olympie on rescuing the tragedy from "Le petit cercle des dialogues, des monologues, et des récits." 41 It had now become axiomatic that "il faut que les situations théâtrales forment des tableaux animés." 42 Whatever their conscious intentions, Voltaire and Kheraskov in picturing 36

H. C. Lancaster, p. 4 6 7 . A. P. Sumarokov, 4: 351. 38 M. M. Kheraskov, 4: 339. 35 Voltaire, Oeuvres complètes, 5 (Paris, 1819), p. 4 0 4 . 40 Quoted by R. S. Ridgway, p. 173. 41 Voltaire, 5: 4 1 7 . It is interesting that Voltaire had originally intended to cast the preface to Olympie in the form of an epistle to 1.1. Shuvalov, for the reason that the Russian theatre, less bound by tradition than the French, would be more receptive to his suggestions for reform; however, Elizaveta Petrovna died, the favorite fell, and Voltaire abandoned his intention; see Pis 'ma Vol'tera (Moscow-Leningrad, 1 9 5 6 ) , p p . 263-276. 42 Ibid., 5: 4 1 6 . 37

Kheraskov and the Christian

Tragedy

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pagan ritual on stage - gloating, as it were, over the sacrificial altar - were both revealing symptoms of the subterranean shift of sensibility that was at length to break surface as Romanticism. After all, Macpherson's Ossian had been published in 1765, and the potency of its celtic gloom and mist-swathed heroics was not long in spreading through the veins of European literature. From this point of view, Idolopoklonniki is the shadow of a foreshadowing — a first step in the direction of the pre-romantic tragedy of Ozerov, in particular of Fingal. The play's action is as follows. Gorislava was formerly Rogneda, Princess of Polotsk. Vladimir killed her parents and laid Polotsk waste; becoming violently enamoured of Rogneda, he murdered her betrothed, his own brother Yaropolk, and forced her to marry him. Ten years have passed since these events, during which Vladimir has grown increasingly cold to a wife who is a living reproach to him, even though she has been a dutiful partner and born him a son, Izyaslav. For her part, Gorislava laments her present neglect and protests her love for Vladimir in spite of all. She has, however, remained a devout adherent of the old gods even though Vladimir has accepted Christianity, and the scheming high priest Zoliba plays on this loyalty, as well as on her guilt over her failure to avenge her parents, in order to make her his instrument for the assassination of Vladimir. Also involved in this plot is Svyatopolk, the supposed son of Vladimir's murdered brother Yaropolk, who is to lead an armed revolt. Vladimir, though forewarned, goes to Gorislava's chamber unarmed; finding him asleep there, she draws the dagger given to her by Zoliba, but her resolution falters and Vladimir awakes and disarms her. The attempted uprising fails. Vladimir magnanimously pardons the rebels and in a tender scene reveals that he, not Yaropolk, is Svyatopolk's real father. Determined to put an end to Zoliba's machinations, Vladimir forces his way into the temple of Perun to find Gorislava kneeling at the altar. He accuses her once more of plotting his death. News is brought that Zoliba has raised a popular revolt; this time he aims to put on the throne the still infant son of Gorislava and Vladimir, Izyaslav. Vladimir refuses to take up arms against his own people and declares that he will subdue them by love alone. It seems that Gorislava is to be excluded from the general pardon; as a terrible example, Vladimir plans to execute her before the people with his own hand. The situation is saved by the pleas of the infant Izyaslav; Vladimir relents and tells Gorislava that she may rule in Polotsk with Izyaslav, ascribing his change of heart to heavenly intervention. Gorislava declares that she will accept the God who has worked such a miracle, and the play ends on a note of reconciliation. Some of the situations and effects here are clearly borrowed from Voltaire's "pagan" tragedies. As mentioned previously, the action of Kheraskov's play unfolds against the background of a pagan temple; at certain climactic

Michael

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Green

moments the temple doors swing open to reveal highly dramatic tableaux animés. Voltaire had made use of similar sets: "Le fond du théâtre représente un temple dont les trois portes fermées sont ornées de larges pilastres" ('Olympie);43 "Le théâtre représente les portiques d'un temple, des tours sur les côtés, les cyprès sur le devant" (Les lois de Minos).44 Among the unprecedented spectacular effects offered by Olympie is an earth tremor: (Le théâtre tremble.) Statira. Lieux funèbres et saints, Vous frémissez! . . . J'entends un horrible murmure; Le temple est ébranlé. 4S Compare this with a similar moment in

Idolopoklonniki:

(Udaijaet grom vo khrame.) Svjatopolk. No cto za grom ja vnemlju! Ja slysu vkrug sebja koleblemuju zemlju! Trepescet, dvizetsja, padet Perunov khram. Les lois de Minos dramatic effect:

features a villainous high priest w h o is used to striking

Teucer. Ouvrez-vous, temple horrible! (Il enfonce la porte; le temple s'ouvre. On voit Pharès entouré de sacrificateurs. Astérie est à genoux au pied de l'autel: elle se retourne vers Pharès en étendant la main, et en le regardant avec horreur; et Pharès, le glaive à la main, est prêt à frapper.) Ah! qu'est-ce que je vois? Ma fille! Pharès. Qu'elle meure! Teucer. Arrête! qu'elle vive! Azemon. Astérie!

"Ibid., 5: 420. 44 Ibid., 6: 440. "Ibid, 5: 363. 46 M. M. Kheraskov, 4 : 4 0 4 .

Kheraskov and the Christian Tragedy

15

Pharès, à Teucer. Oses-tu délivrer ma captive? Teucer. Misérable! oses-tu lever ce bras cruel? . . . Dieux! bénissez les mains qui brisent votre autel; C'était l'autel du crime. (Il renverse l'autel et tout l'appareil du sacrifice.) Pharès. Ah! ton audace impie, Sacrilège tyran, sera bientôt punie. 47

Compare the corresponding scene in

Idolopoklonniki:

Vladimir (priblizajas' ko dverjam.) Otverzites' uzasnyja vrata! (Vrata otverzajutsja.) Tez i Gorislava, (ob"emljuscaja podnozie istukana, s kinzalom Zoliba.) Vladimir. I Gorislava zdes'!

O strasnaja mecta!

Zoliba (vo vratakh podnimaja svoj kinzal.) Zlodej bogov! primi za nikh, primi otmscen'e! (Svjatopolk ustavljaet scit i otnimaet kinzal zreca.) Vladimir (napadaja na Zolibu s mecem.) Primi, predatel', smert'! primi za vozmuscen'e! Zoliba (ukhodja vo vnutrennost' khrama.) Zlodej otecestva! bud' prokljat ot bogov!

48

The resemblance between these two scenes is too striking to be accidental. Another feature which these plays have in common is the favorite Voltairean one of the cri du sang - a recognition scene between blood kindred, usually parent and child, who have been separated by chance or circumstance; in Olympie it is mother and daughter, in Les lois de Minos father and daughter, and in Idolopoklonniki father and son. Such scenes often seem excessively contrived, an excuse for sentimental indulgence to suit the taste of an age that was not ashamed to shed tears; this is particularly true of Kheraskov's play, where Vladimir has throughout been aware that he and not Yaropolk is Svyatopolk's true father, and it is by no means clear why he should have 47 48

Voltaire, 6: 529. M. M. Kheraskov, 4: 404-406.

16

Michael Green

delayed so long in imparting this important piece of information. The scene in which he does so, producing as evidence a letter written by Svyatopolk's mother ("ty pomnis' materi rukopisan'e") is straight out of the sentimental drama, as are the scenes in Act Five where Gorislava, thinking she is going to her doom, takes leave of her infant son; finally, the scene in which the estranged parents are reconciled by the pleadings of their infant child anticipates the tearful domesticity of a Kotzebue melodrama (there is in fact just such a scene in the German dramatist's Menschenhass und Reue, a play that enjoyed a tremendous vogue in Russia).49 None of Kheraskov's earlier tragedies (and none of Sumarokov's) had contained recognition scenes, but both of his sentimental dramas of the 1770's, Drug nescastnykh and Gonimye, had relied heavily on them. Clearly, in the final stages of its development classical tragedy did not scorn to borrow elements from its dangerously successful rival, the sentimental drama. Jdolopoklonniki remains a curiously uneasy play, raising more questions than it answers, and ending on a question mark — for the reconciliation is no more than superficial: Gorislava is packed off to honorable exile in Polotsk, Vladimir will marry his Greek princess and Svyatopolk will become in his turn a fratricide (as prefigured in Zoliba's curse, "Razdaj ubijc na svet! razdaj ty ne synov! " 5 0 ). The ambiguity that is the play's keynote becomes very apparent if we set it beside Plamena, a play similar in theme and outline. The intrigue of the earlier tragedy is far simpler, without subsidiary episodes such as the Vladimir-Svyatopolk and the Gorislava-Izyaslav scenes in Idolopoklonniki; the characterization in Plamena is both monolithic and static, with no transitional shades between white and black; the conflict is direct, and there should be no division of the spectator's sympathies. In Idolopoklonniki it is as if Kheraskov were attempting to break out of the straitjacket of monochromatic characterization; duality becomes the rule, character fluctuates and behavior verges on the self-contradictory. Gorislava is at once the wronged wife and the potential murderess. She is given no fewer than three distinct motives for killing Vladimir: revenge (the spirits of her parents and her first betrothed have not been laid to rest), jealousy (Vladimir neglects her and is planning to marry a Greek princess), and fanaticism (she desires to restore the pagan gods). Vladimir is at once a merciful prince and an unfeeling husband, a tender father and a guilt-stricken fratricide; one moment he is the ideal monarch, the next he is ranting like a conventional stage tyrant: 49 Menschenhass und Reue was not only the first Kotzebue play to be given on the Russian stage, it was also selected as the first play to be performed after the ten-month closure of the St. Petersburg theatres in token of mourning for Catherine II; by this act Paul set the seal of imperial favor on Kotzebue's work (P. N. Arapov, Letopis'russkogo teatra, p. 135). 50 M . M . Kheraskov, 4: 406.

17

Kheraskov and the Christian Tragedy Mucitel'! adskikh ty uzasnee bogov! Cto vizu pred soboj? moe zlodejstvo mstjasca Mne Jaropolkova javilas' ten' stenjasca. si

One senses a lurking ambivalence on the dramatist's part toward the Christianizer of Russia. Can this ambivalence be explained? Far more than Plamena, Idolopoklonniki is a political play. In his immense epic Vladimir, on which he was probably working at this time, Kheraskov treats the theme of Vladimir's conversion; the action of the play might be said to begin where that of the epic leaves off. The spiritual quest is completed, and Idolopoklonniki is more concerned with the political consequences of Vladimir's act than the condition of his soul, and while it would be naive to suppose that every event and character in the play has some contemporary parallel, it is possible to catch hints of a political sub-text of topical relevance. Kheraskov's retiring temperament and the quietism inherent in the Masonic view of life that he espoused made him less inclined than Sumarokov to use the tragedy as a vehicle for his political views; nevertheless, he did not altogether shun the publicist's role, particularly, as we shall see, when goaded by Catherine's persecution of the Masons in the 1780's. Kheraskov was perhaps a more daring critic of Catherine's regime than he has generally been given credit for; attention might be drawn, for example, to the vision of the unjust monarch in Canto Fifteen of the original (1785) version of Vladimir, with its anticipation of the "Spasskaja polest' " chapter of Radishchev's Putesestvie iz Peterburga v Moskvu (and as a Mason and a passionate advocate of his native literature, Radishchev could scarcely have failed t o be well acquainted with Kheraskov's Masonic epic). Here is the passage in question: Ot"emljuscij u vsekh svobodu i pokoj, Pred nim stoit tiran, derzasc perun rukoj; Vo uzakh plenniki, razrusennye trony; No Lest', tocascaja ustami sladkij jad, Besstydno vopiet: cto sej postupok svjat!

52

In later editions (which appeared after the French Revolution) this passage was subjected to drastic revision, " t i r a n " being replaced by " F a n a t i z m " (i.e. Jacobinism): Svirepyj Fanatizm v desnoj ruke derzal Bagrovoj kroviju dymjascijsja kinzal."

It will not, then, be over-subtle to find resemblances between Vladimir 51 52 53

Ibid., 4: 416. M. M. Kheraskov, Vladimir (Moscow, 1785), p. 236. M. M. Kheraskov, Tvorenija, 2: 346.

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and Catherine. Vladimir has gained power by murder ("Ja skipetr priobrel i tron rukoj krovavoj" 54 ); he is of an amorous nature ("Lis' tol'ko tverdost'ju ljubovi on neslaven" 5 5 ); he is fond of calling himself the father of his people ("Detej pod skipetrom, ne poddannykh imeju" 56 ), as Catherine took pride in being called the mother of hers (the title was in fact officially conferred on her by the Senate in 1767). The claims that Vladimir makes on the gratitude of the Russian people might with better justice have been made by the Empress: Ja carstva moego rasprostranil predely, Ja grady novye ustroil, novy sely, Zakony krotkie izrek ja sej strane (. . .) Izkorenil grabez, obmany i zlodejstvo, Rossiju za odno ja ctu moe semejstvo, V oV'jatija moi vdov prinjal i sirot. 57

It would not be difficult to interpret each item here as a reference to an event in Catherine's reign: the Turkish wars and the partition of Poland; the founding of new frontier towns; the Nakaz and the various attempts to root out corruption by imperial fiat; the many charitable works carried out by Betsky with Catherine's support, such as the founding of the "Vospitatel'nyj dom dlja sirot i podkidysej." Then there is the question - a burning one for the age - of the relationship between the ruler and his heir; the hostility between Catherine and Pavel Petrovicn is well known, and it is echoed by the enmity between Vladimir and Svyatopolk and the conspiracy to put Svyatopolk on the throne (bringing to mind the plotting of the aristocratic opposition, led by the Panins, to replace Catherine by her son 58 — a plan to which the Masons were sympathetically disposed). Vladimir is shown as magnanimous and forgiving, refusing to take any action against his rebellious subjects - an object lesson to Catherine, we may suppose, in dealing with former political enemies now in disarray, and a plea for mercy that was to sound yet more clearly in Kheraskov's next tragedy, Julijan otstupnik. In light of the preceding, it is perhaps understandable that there should be no record of any public performance of Idolopoklonniki, a play that is certainly not devoid of dramatic merit. We do know, however, that it was staged at the private theatre maintained by Kheraskov and his half-brothers, the Trubetskoys. 59 The diarist Bolotov, a Mason himself, records a visit to 54

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., 57 Ibid., 58 D. F. 59 A. T. 55 56

4: 343. 4: 377. 4: 372. 4: 371. Kobeko, Cesarevic Pavel Petrovic (St. Petersburg, 1883), p. 58. Bolotov, Zizn'iprikljucenija, 3 (St. Petersburg, 1872), p. 945.

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Kheraskov in the c o m p a n y of Novikov, during which he had the good f o r t u n e t o be present at t h e first p e r f o r m a n c e of Idolopoklonniki; there is perhaps some significance in his r e m a r k : "Zritelej bylo d o v o l ' n o , n o byli oni vse e m u z n a k o m y e ljudi." 6 0 Julijan otstupnik, t h e last of this g r o u p of Christian tragedies, develops a t h e m e t h a t h a d been raised only t o be adroitly sidestepped in Idolopoklonniki: what right does a ruler have t o impose his beliefs on his subjects by force? In t h e earlier play D o b r y n y a had raised t h e q u e s t i o n : if Vladimir had himself believed in the pagan gods, worshipped t h e m and exacted a like observance f r o m his people, h o w could he expect t h e m to a b a n d o n this faith for a n o t h e r at his mere whim? Vladimir's answer is hardly t h a t of an ideal Christian m o n a r c h , a n d anticipates t h e imperious will of Julian in the succeeding play: " C t o ja sooruzil, ja to razrusit' vlasten." " N o t r u d n o , G o s u d a r ' , p r e o b r a z a t ' u m y , " 6 1 c o u n t e r s D o b r y n y a gently, and t h e p r o b l e m is discreetly shelved. These t w o s t a t e m e n t s , however, are the poles b e t w e e n which t h e a r g u m e n t of Julijan otstupnik moves. Before we take a closer l o o k at this play, we must establish that it is indeed an original c o m p o s i t i o n , and n o t , as has long been s u p p o s e d , a translation or a d a p t a t i o n of a w o r k by Voltaire. This supposition, if it does n o t stem f r o m , was influentially stated by M. M. K h m y r o v in his essay of 189 7. 6 2 According t o K h m y r o v , Kheraskov, encouraged by a successful revival of Venecianskaja monakhinja in t h e 1780s, decided to o f f e r the public an almost w o r d - f o r - w o r d translation of Corneille's Le Cid and a translation of a play by Voltaire on the subject of Julian the A p o s t a t e ; however, t h e resulting works b o t h fell dismally flat in the t h e a t r e , so that even as loyal an admirer of t h e dramatist as his wife was moved t o exclaim, " Z a c e m brat'sja ne za svoe? N i k a k o j prononsii net — i vzdumal esce perevodit' velicajsikh f r a n c u z s k i k h klassikov!" 6 3 T h e s t a t e m e n t that Julijan otstupnik is a translation f r o m Voltaire has since been r e p e a t e d , most recently by A. V. Z a p a d o v , w h o , writing in 1961, i n f o r m s us that Kheraskov "dve p'esy perevel i pererabotal ('Sid' Kornelja i ' J u l i j a n - o t s t u p n i k ' V o l ' t e r a ) . " 6 4 Z a p a d o v does go t o t h e t r o u b l e of examining Kheraskov's version of Le Cid in some detail, coming to the correct conclusion t h a t , far f r o m being a " p o c t i doslovnaja p e r e d a c a " as K h m y r o v had stated, it is in fact an e x t r e m e l y free reworking of Corneille's original. Had 60 Quoted by T. N. Livanova, Russkaja muzykal'naja kul'tura XVIII veka, 2 (Moscow, 1952), p. 142. 61 M. M. Kheraskov, Tvorenija, 4: 340. " M. D. Khmyrov, "M. M. Kheraskov," Russkaja poezija (St. Petersburg, 1893), p. 4 8 7 . 63 Ibid., p. 4 8 7 . 64 M. M. Kheraskov, Izbrannye proizvedenija (Leningrad, 1961), p. 45.

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Zapadov examined Julijan with equal care, he would have discovered that no collected edition of Voltaire's works contains any play on the subject of the Emperor Julian, or one that bears the faintest resemblance to Kheraskov's tragedy. Indeed, the play's Christian piety, its political quietism, and above all its advocacy of martyrdom as the answer to intolerance and persecution would have been profoundly distasteful to the sage of Ferney, whose derisive remarks on the subject of Polyeucte have already been cited. Julijan, then, has nothing to do with Voltaire; rather, it looks back to the martyr tragedies of the early period of French classicism, a sub-genre which had become virtually extinct in the sceptical age of the Philosophes.65 The model that Kheraskov took for his play was the best-known of these martyr tragedies — Corneille 's Polyeucte, with its theme of Christian persecution in a Roman setting, a heroine who chooses martyrdom rather than a gallant Roman suitor (the emperor's favorite Sévère in Polyeucte, the emperor himself in Julijan). Like Corneille's Pauline, Melanta is the daughter of the city governor (though the character of her father, Nikandr, resembled that of Polyeucte's mentor Néarque rather than the timorous timeserver Felix, whose last-minute conversion clearly inspires that of Julian's favorite, Leon — and is hardly more convincing). In both plays there is an act of heroic defiance that challenges the imperial power and invites martyrdom — the overturning of the pagan altars in Polyeucte and the breaking of the royal seal in Julijan. Polyeucte was one of the first French tragedies to be translated into Russian, being performed before the imperial court in 1759." It seems likely that the translation was made, if not at Kheraskov's instigation, then at least with his encouragement, since the translator, Nikolay Khrushchev, was a minor light of the Kheraskov circle whose verse appeared in Poleznoe Uveselenie, the Moscow University literary journal of which Kheraskov was the editor. 67 It is probable too that the stances in Bezboznik are imitated from those in Polyeucte. To turn to the play itself: the action is set in a town in Asia Minor. The Emperor Julian, who has renounced Christianity and turned to the pagan gods, is due to arrive. The governor of the town, Nikandr, and his daughter Melanta are secret converts to Christianity. Julian has previously been in love with Melanta and she with him; and now, having tired of his first wife, who has angered him by becoming a Christian, he has come to renew his suit. Though not indifferent to Julian, Melanta is resolved that she will never marry a pagan (and one who is already married into the bargain). Julian is 65 For an account of the lack of success encountered by attempts to revive religious tragedy in eighteenth-century France, see H. C. Lancaster, pp. 166-170. 66 P. N. Arapov, p. 55.

67

N. I. Novikov, Izbrannye socinertija (Moscow-Leningrad, 1954), p. 362.

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determined to exterminate Christianity in his domains. He is at first puzzled, then infuriated by Nikandr's lack of zeal in carrying out his policy and by Melanta's refusal to become his consort. The Emperor orders all Christian churches to be closed. News is brought to him that his order has been disobeyed and that someone has dared to break the imperial seal. Nikandr is arrested and commanded to discover the identity of the culprit on pain of death. Julian's favorite, Leon (the type of the false, flattering courtier), has assured his master that Melanta still loves him and that by holding Nikandr hostage he will soon obtain her compliance. Melanta quickly frustrates this scheme by confessing boldly that it was she who defied the imperial ban; she demands that she alone be punished. Julian offers Melanta her freedom and promises to show tolerance to the Christians if only she will marry him; she remains adamant in her refusal. Nikandr and Melanta now prepare themselves for death. Julian vows that he will put every Christian in the city to the sword and raze all the churches to the ground. Thunder is heard and the earth trembles; Leon rushes in, overcome with terror: the Emperor has been struck by a thunderbolt from heaven! The expiring Julian is carried on stage to confess the error of his ways. Nikandr points the moral in a concluding couplet: Uver'sja celyj mir pri nakazan'e strogom, Cto sil'nye Cari - bezsil'ny pered Bogom! 6 8

The choice of a Roman setting and a Roman theme was unusual in the context of the Russian tragic theatre. Sumarokov has no tragedy with a classical setting, while Knyazhnin's Didona and Titovo miloserdie are essentially adaptations of foreign plays. A Roman setting was common in French tragedy, and was particularly favored by Voltaire, who wrote no fewer than four Roman tragedies. 6 ' Was it partly for this reason that Kheraskov's play was thought to be derived from Voltaire? Certainly the title page gives no such indication, consisting simply of the words "Julijan Otstupnik, tragedija" (in contrast to the title page of Sid: "Sid, tragedija. Perevedennaja iz Tragedii P. Kornelja"). Yet there is a more likely explanation: a deliberate piece of mystification on the part of the author himself. As we shall see, there were weighty reasons why caution might have counselled such a subterfuge. In reading Julijan otstupnik, account must be taken of the worsening relations between Catherine and the Masonic movement. Catherine's growing distrust of the Masons may be explained in a number of ways: on one level it was the instinctive reaction of a true child of the Age of Reason to an 68

M. M. Kheraskov, Tvorenija, 5: 165. Voltaire's Roman tragedies are Brutus, Triumvirat. 69

La mort

de César, Rome

sauvée

and Le

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Michael Green

irrational mysticism; worse, the Empress had caught a whiff of treason in the international ramifications of the movement (one of the most serious charges brought against Novikov in 1792 was that he had been in secret correspondence with the Prince of Brunswick and a Prussian high dignitary "when they were enemies of the state" 70 ); most seriously of all, Catherine was well aware of the hopes that the Masons placed in the heir to the throne (who is said to have joined the order himself in 1776 7 1 ), and a plot to replace her on the throne by the son who had a more legitimate claim to it than she did was a perennial nightmare for Catherine. At first the Empress contented herself with directing her always industrious pen against the order. Her first attack took the form of a brochure entitled "Tajna protivunelepogo obscestva, otkrytaja nepricastnym onomu," published in French and German as well as Russian in 1780. 72 This was followed in 1786 by a batch of satirical comedies - Obmanscik, Obol'scennyj and Saman sibirskij - which clearly hint at harsher measures in store if the Masons remained blind to the error of their ways. Significantly, these plays, awarded sycophantic applause in St. Petersburg (Catherine's authorship, though anonymous, was an open secret), failed to reach the stage in Moscow, where the Masons had a great many sympathisers." The same year, 1786, saw the closing down of the Masonic lodges in Moscow,74 an event to which Kheraskov - the laureate of the Masonic movement — responded with his tragedy Julijan otstupnik. This repressive measure was implemented by the governor-general of Moscow, Count Bruce, the husband of Catherine's notorious favorite and companion in debauch, who had in September, 1784 succeeded Count Z. G. Chernyshev, a man well disposed toward the Masons. It seems not unlikely that the character of Julian's unscrupulous favorite, Leon, who is appointed governor in Nikandr's place after the latter has shown lack of zeal in persecuting the Christians, is directed against Bruce. As if trying to ward off the catastrophe that was soon to overwhelm the Masons, Kheraskov adopts a dignified and gently reproachful tone; the play is an apologia, a plea for fairness, rather than a denunciation. This is well exemplified by Nikandr's response to Julian's threat of execution: Cto smert'ju Gosudar', akh! cto ty mne grozis'? Ili ty na moej glave sedin ne zris'? 70 "Materialy o presledovanii Novikova," N. I. Novikov, Izbrannye socinenija (Moscow-Leningrad, 1954), p. 629. 71 E. S. Sumigorskij, "Imperator Pavel i masonstvo," Masonstvo v ego proslom i nastojascem, 2 (Moscow, 1915), p. 136. 72 Istorija russkoj literatury, 4 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1947), p. 367. 73 M. N. Longinov, Novikov i moskovskie martinisty (Moscow, 1867), p. 257. 74 Ibid., p. 272.

Kheraskov and the Christian Tragedy

23

Hi ne vidis' ty kolen moikh drozascikh, Edva, edva menja pri starosti derzascikh?"

This is far removed from the bold rebukes administered to the rulers of this world in the anti-despotic tragedies of Sumarokov and Knyazhnin. The ideological center of the play is to be found in Melanta's impassioned plea for tolerance, which firmly answers the question raised by Dobrynya in Idolopoklonniki: Kto pravo dal tebe ikh sovestjami pravit'? Naiusa istinnu, ty mog zakon ostavit'; No kak otvazit'sja narod svoj ponuzdat', Ikh cuvstva premenit', ikh veru pokidat'? Edinu volju kto zakonom postavljaet, Tot casto iz serdec pocten'e iztrebljaet.76

Catherine's distrust of the Masons was certainly due in good measure to her conviction that they were advocates of revolution; hence the pains that Kheraskov takes throughout the play to stress that Christians are loyal subjects of the emperor, useful citizens whose beliefs forbid active participation in politics. Melanta expresses this quietism, which was indeed characteristic of Russian Masonic thought, when she says of her fellow believers: Preodolev oni zitejski prezni slasti, Buntujuscija dukh obuzdyvajut strasti; Pod sen'ju tisiny nebesnyja zivut, Zakonov slusajut, Carja serdecno ctut. 77

The point is made even more explicitly in a short scene that was clearly introduced for no other purpose: the garrison commander, who has been ordered to take Nikandr to the place of execution, tells him that both Christians and pagans are preparing to rise against Julian's tyranny, and confesses that he too is sympathetic to their cause; but even to save his own life and that of his Christian brethren, Nikandr refuses to have any part in such an enterprise: Ne my sud'i Carjam, Gospod' im sudija. Poznaj, nevernyj rab, kak khristijane mysljat; Oni pri vsekh bedakh Monarkha Bogom cisljat.78

Thus again it is clear that Julijan cannot be included in that group of anti-despotic tragedies to which belong Rzhevsky's Podloznyj Smerdij, Suma75

M. M. Kheraskov, Tvorenija, 5: 134. Ibid., 5: 107. "Ibid., 5: 142. 78 Ibid., 5: 161.

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24

rokov's Dimitrij samozvanec, Knyazhnin's Rosslav and Vadim novgorodskij, and, with some reservations, Kheraskov's own Borislav. For Kheraskov the monarch's right is sacrosanct, not part of a contract between ruler and people that allows for the removal of the ruler who fails to carry out his part of the bargain. The ruler, being appointed by God, can only be removed by Him — as indeed he is in this play. It is curious that the ending of Julijart closely parallels that of Bezboznik, a play written some twenty-five years previously, where the self-willed rationalist Rufin — a character who has much in common with Julian — is engulfed to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning. Kheraskov was never to find a more convincing solution to the problem of evil than a thunderbolt unloosed on the head of the evildoer by a wrathful deity. The Julian of the play, far from being the fervent devotee of the pagan gods recorded by history, is at bottom an eighteenth-century rationalist who would have felt perfectly at home in the company of Catherine's admired Encyclopédistes. He is sceptical of all religions and a believer in natural philosophy: Ne dolzno pronikat' nam v tajny bozestva, Dovol'no, poznavat' zakony estestva, Dovol'no, est'li my ispravim nasi nravy, Khranim prirodoju predpisanny ustavy, Vse procee mectoj scitaet Julijan, I prosvescennymi ne ctu ja khristijan."

Godless rationalism was an obsessive target of Kheraskov's later work; he labelled it "umstvennost' " and saw in it the direct cause of the French Revolution ("Narodnoj vol'nosti khimera / Est' mracnoj umstvennosti doc' " 8 0 ). Julian admits that "v mysljakh nikakoj ne uvazaju very"; 8 1 if he had pretended to be a Christian before ascending the throne, it was "dlja bliznikh" (one remembers Catherine's own careful displays of Orthodox fervor as crown princess). His chief objections to Christianity are of a practical nature; he despises the contemplative and otherworldly spirit that saps army morale and stands in the way of his ambition to be a second Alexander: Ty vedaes', cto vnov' prostersijsja zakon Na khrabrejsikh ljudej navodit nekij son, I ratnikov tvorit ko brani nesposobnykh; Bezpecnostej terpet' ne dolzen ja podobnykh. 82

79 80 81 82

Ibid., 5: 105. M. M. Kheraskov, Car', Hi Spasennyj Novgorod M. M. Kheraskov, Tvorenija, 5: 143. Ibid., 5: 96.

(Moscow, 1800), p. 146.

Kheraskov and the Christian Tragedy

25

Once again we hear the "pacifist" note that sounds so often in Kheraskov's work. Formally, Julijan is a retreat from the complex and spectacular theatre of Idolopoklonniki. Its central conflict is a simple one and does not call for the large-scale forces of Kheraskov's previous tragedy. In a way, it is a return to the principles of seventeenth-century French classicism. Its one unusual feature — the device of a female chorus counterpointed with dialogue - was doubtless suggested by Racine's Old Testament religious dramas, in particular by Esther, where the exchanges between Esther and her handmaidens are similar to those between Melanta and her chorus of Christian maidens. Kheraskov remains the most neglected of the important writers of the Russian eighteenth century, a writer whose achievement, remarkable in its variety and range, has been consistently undervalued. To Kheraskov Russian literature owes its first completed national epic (the Rossijada), its first classical comedy in verse (Nenavistnik), its first bourgeois dramas (Venecianskaja monakhinja, Bezboznik) and its first philosophical novel (Numa, ili Procvetajuscij Rim). It has been the intention of the present essay to demonstrate that in the tragedy Kheraskov was no mere imitator of Sumarokov, but that here too he had his own word to say.

SLEPTSOV

REDIVIVUS

BY

WILLIAM C. BRUMFIELD RUSSIAN CRITICS HAVE often referred to Vasily Sleptsov, with some exaggeration, as a "forgotten writer." Although his popularity did experience a temporary decline after his period of greatest activity (the 1860s), Sleptsov was never really forgotten in Russia — as the articles of these same critics attest. Outside of Russia, Sleptsov can hardly be considered forgotten, since his existence has yet to be acknowledged. This neglect of the writer whom Tolstoy ranked with Gogol and Chekhov as one of Russia's three greatest humorists, 1 the man who, in his person as well as in his works, epitomized the intellectual atmosphere of the 1860s is unfortunate not only because it deprives one of a valuable insight into that era, but also because it overlooks a significant figure in Russian literature. It is hoped that the study which follows will, in remedying this neglect, prove it to have been unwarranted. Of course to give a detailed account of Sleptsov's life and works would be impossible within the present limits, and a considerable amount of material has been omitted or mentioned only in passing. The biographical sketch (Part I) is just that - a sketch, with extensive lacunae. As for an analysis of his works, even greater economy seemed necessary in order to spare the reader a diluted, meaningless survey of "everything" Sleptsov wrote. Therefore, it was decided to dispense with a treatment of his few short stories — considered by many to be his greatest legacy to Russian literature - and focus on Sleptsov's most prominent work, the novella Hard Times (Trudnoe vremja). The fact that this work has yet to be translated provides additional justification for the detailed analysis in Part II. This paper is drawn from chapters of my dissertation, "Vasilij Slepcov" (University of California, Berkeley, 1973). I would like to express my gratitude to Professors Simon Karlinsky, Hugh McLean, and Martin Malia for their suggestions. I am also indebted to the International Research and Exchanges Board for a grant which enabled me to do research in the Soviet Union. Soviet scholars have done much to clarify aspects of Sleptsov's biography and works (particularly in volume 71 of Literaturnoe Nasledstvo, devoted primarily to unpublished material by or about Sleptsov), and it was my pleasure to meet one of the most prominent investigators in this field, Mariya Semanova of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute. The material discovered by Semanova and her colleagues did much to expedite my own work. 1 S. T. Semenov, "Vospominanija o L've Nikolaevice Tolstom," L. N. Tolstoj v vospominanijax sovremennikov (Moscow, 1960), 1: 413.

[27]

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William C. Brumfield PART I

The biography of Vasily Alekseevich Sleptsov is both rewarding and frustrating as a picture of a typical Russian intelligent of the 1860s rewarding in that it touches upon and brings into focus so many facets of Russian intellectual life during one of its most tumultuous periods; frustrating in that the very political, partisan nature of the era colors practically every judgement made regarding Sleptsov, both the man and his work. Today, no less than in the past, Sleptsov is evaluated primarily in terms of the commentator's own political or ideological bias — a practice which has led to a misrepresentation of Sleptsov as a proto-revolutionary. Nonetheless, the labels "radical" and "nihilist" (if not the Soviets' vague demokrat) are undeniably valid for the founder of Russia's most famous commune and the author of Hard Times. Indeed, Sleptsov seems to have participated in or commented on practically every radical cause to appear during Russia's "radical decade." And although he was unable to develop beyond the sixties, as their representative, as a sestidesjatnik, Sleptsov reflects the era more accurately than his better-known contemporaries, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Turgenev, who with their broader outlook and universal appeal were able to transcend the limits of a decade. Unfortunately, contemporary accounts of minor writers tend to leave considerable gaps, frustrating anyone who would attempt to form a coherent biographical pattern. Such is the case with Sleptsov. For example, information on his early life is limited to three basic sources: a short and often inaccurate biographical sketch published under the signature of his mother, Josephine Adamovna Sleptsova;2 a somewhat fuller sketch by Vladimir Markov (a neighbor of Sleptsov's brother Nikolay, who in fact furnished Markov with most of the sketch's information); 3 and an unpublished novel by Sleptsov's second common-law wife, Lidiya Fillipovna KorolevaLamovskaya (pseud. Nelidova).4 2 Russkaja Starina, 65 (January, 1890), 231-241. According to Vladimir Markov (see below), the sketch was actually written by the editor of Russkaja Starina, Semevsky, who visited Josephine Adamovna at her home in Serdobsk and recorded the sketch "from her words." Markov attributes the sketch's errors to old age (Sleptsova was 84 at the time) and a desire to suppress the unpleasant. What seems to be a rough draft of her account (replete with spelling mistakes) is introduced by K. Chukovsky in his book Ljudi i knigi sestidesjatyx godov (Leningrad, 1934), pp. 306-308. 3 "Biografija V. A. Slepcova," Istoriceskij Vestnik, 91 (first quarter, 1903), 957-976. 4 L . Nelidova, Na maloj zemle (typescript), CGALI, f. 331, op. 1, ed khr. 12, 1.13. Although the work is not available outside of CGALI, L. A. Evstigneeva has devoted an extensive article to the novel ("Roman L. F. Nelidovoj 'Na maloj zemle' kak istocnik dlja biografii Slepcova," Literaturnoe Nasledstvo, 71 [ 1 9 6 3 ] , 495-512 [hereinafter cited as LN]), in which she explores the work's background and its reliability as a biographical

Sleptsov Redivivus

29

The last source is the most interesting, for, although it purports to be a novel, evidence suggests that much of the material dealing with the protagonist Sviridov's early years actually derives from Sleptsov's own reminiscences of childhood. However, Nelidova's novel — begun in 1880 (two years after Sleptsov's death) and finished only in the early 1930s — cannot be accepted as an absolutely reliable source of information since there is no way of determining how much of the work's content is due to the author's imagination. Nevertheless, without relying too heavily on specific details, one can use certain passages from the novel to infer tendencies in Sleptsov's development. This places a heavy (perhaps too heavy) burden of dependence on the novel's veracity, but it is the only source available with a detailed account of his childhood. One can state with reasonable certainty that Sleptsov was born July 17, 1836, in Voronezh (where his father was stationed with the Novorossisk Dragoons), and that both his parents had respectable nobility credentials, a fact which separates him from his fellow pisateli-sestidesjatniki Alexander Levitov, Nikolay Uspensky, Fyodor Reshetnikov, and Nikolay Pomyalovsky — all solid raznocincy. His mother, née Volbutovich-Paplonskaya, was descended f r o m Polish and Baltic nobility, while the father, Aleksey Vasilyevich, was of Russian nobility and apparently had a number of highly placed relatives in Moscow. A year after the birth of Vasily (the first of six children), Aleksey Vasilyevich retired from the army and moved his family to Moscow where he assumed a position with the Moscow commissariat commission. During the next eleven years Sleptsov was to grow up in a tense and unpleasant family atmosphere due, according to Nelidova, to his paternal grandmother's enmity toward Josephine Adamovna. Although a general's daughter of noble ancestry, she was given in marriage without a dowry, was plain, a Catholic, and spoke Russian poorly. In short, Sleptsov's ne'er-do-well father had married against parental opposition, and the fact that they all lived together in the same house did not improve the situation. To make matters worse, the father was something of an invalid, unable to source. Her conclusion is that the "novel" is actually little more than a thinly fictionalized biography with Sleptsov as the prototype for the character Sviridov. Nelidova ( 1 8 5 1 - 1 9 3 6 ) , well-known at one time for her story "Devocka Lida," was acquainted with Sleptsov for approximately three years at the end of his life. She was not, however, his only common-law wife. Varvara Inostrantseva, a radical feminist and Sleptsov's companion at the end of the sixties and beginning of the seventies, has been identified as his first grazdanskaja zena. After Sleptsov's death Nelidova married again, this time Aleksey Maklakov, a prominent Moscow doctor. (Her first husband, Lamovsky, shot himself soon after their marriage.) Nelidova's stepson, Vasily Maklakov - a wellknown lawyer and politician, member of the Dumas and the last Russian ambassador to France - devotes several pages to Nelidova in his book Iz vospominanij (New York: Chekhov Publishing House, 1954), but does not mention Sleptsov.

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William C. Brumfield

devote any attention to his children. Under such circumstances Nelidova's portrait of the young Sviridov-Sleptsov as reserved and sensitive seems quite believable. But however unpleasant the family situation may have been, Sleptsov was not a neglected child; quite the contrary, he was the favorite of his mother (her "idol," she called him), who frequently took the child to concerts and plays. (Sleptsov was especially fond of the Maly Theater, and it is not unlikely that his visits there formed the basis of a lifelong attraction to the theater.) In addition, he had free reign in his grandfather's sizable library. Sleptsov revealed early signs of intellectual ability, practically taught himself to read at the age of five, and — according to his mother's hagiographic account — soon expressed the desire to enter a monastery. At the age of eight he began his formal education (with a tutor), and by his eleventh year (1847) studies had progressed rapidly enough for him to be admitted to the second class of the First Moscow Gymnasium. In the meantime he studied French with his mother and German with his maternal grandmother. Sleptsov was unable to finish his schooling in Moscow, for in 1849 his father was given his share of the Sleptsov estate and moved the family to their new home at the village of Aleksandrovo (Serdobsk District, Saratov Province). Conditions were primitive — at first there was no house on the estate for the family to live in — and Sleptsov's father was by then completely bedridden. The nearest center of any importance was Penza, ninety versts away, and it was here, in the Noblemen's Institute, that Sleptsov resumed his education. 5 He did well in his studies but seems to have had trouble associating with the other students — so much so that he did not return to school for the spring term of 1851, the ostensible reason being that he was needed on the family estate after his father's death. Yet, having returned home he was more often to be found wandering about, ruminating on life's problems than engaged in any constructive work on the estate. This early preoccupation with the meaning of it all led to a religious experience of almost maniacal fervor during which Sleptsov became a selfstyled ascetic, fasting and wearing rusty chains under his shirt, disregarding the sores inflicted by his strange regimen. Upon his return to the Institute (in the fall of 1852) he voluntarily assumed altar service and succeeded in impressing the school's religious director with his piety. However, there are indications that Sleptsov's acceptance of Christianity was not total, that he had begun to have doubts as to the validity of a religion s Penzenskij dvorjanskij institut must have been another of central Russia's spawning grounds for radicals. Its alumni included members of the Ishutin circle (one of whose goals was the liberation of Chemyshevsky from his exile) and Dmitry Karakozov (also affiliated with the Ishutin circle), whose attempted assassination of Alexander II was to result in Sleptsov's imprisonment in 1866.

Sleptsov

Redivivus

31

based upon suffering. Indeed, many of Russia's radical intellectuals (Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky, Pisarev) went through similar periods of religious devotion only to shed their beliefs after prolonged self-analysis and contact with the intellectual milieu of Petersburg; but in Sleptsov's case the break was more dramatic, more scandalous. Although accounts differ as to the details, all agree that he committed an act of blasphemy during one of the most solemn moments of a church service at the Institute. For Soviet scholars such as Korney Chukovsky, the implications of this act are clear: his "I do not believe" was nothing less than a conscious defiance of the established order, a first step toward radical commitment. 6 Sleptsov's brother Nikolay (via Markov) gives another interpretation: being confident of his ability to pass the entrance examinations, Sleptsov wanted to enroll in Moscow University without completing his final year at the Institute. His mother refused, and in order to escape the narrow world of Penza he feigned madness by means of certain minor improprieties such as switching the deacon's and priest's robes during investment. Markov alludes to other improprieties which eventually landed Sleptsov in the Institute's infirmary, but does not explain what they were (perhaps out of fear of censorial difficulties). 7 He adds that Sleptsov was so successful in simulating madness (a comment on his ability as an actor) that even his brother Nikolay was duped, as were the attending doctor and school officials. Just which motive took precedence in Sleptsov's "unprecedented, impudent deed" (Chukovsky) — the valiant protest suggested by Chukovsky or the somewhat more practical desire to leave Penza — is difficult to determine. One is left with an unresolved ambiguity between Sleptsov the idealist and Sleptsov the actor. Whatever the motive, Sleptsov did leave — or was expelled from — the Institute in the beginning of 1853. For a time there was thought of his joining the army (relations between Turkey and Russia were very tense and fighting between the two was to begin in October 1853); but eventually he opted for the university in Moscow. Having passed the entrance examinations in August, he matriculated in the medical faculty — a starting point for so many "men of the sixties." 6 K . Cukovskij, "V. A. Slepcov," V. A. Slepcov: Socinenija v dvux tomax (Moscow, 1933), 2: 11. Chukovsky, in a 1957 reworking of the just-mentioned biographical sketch, identifies the source of his version as L. F. Maklakova (i.e., Nelidova), who, he claims, was told of the incident by Sleptsov's mother. (Yet Nelidova's presentation in Na maloj zemle differs from that given by Chukovsky.) In fairness to Chukovsky it should be noted that in his later article he himself admits doubts as to the believability of the incident. Cf. "Zizn' i tvorcestvo Vasilija Slepcova," Ljudi i knigi (GIXL, 1958), p. 186, nn. 1-2. 7 Markov, p. 9 6 6 .

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William C. Brumfield

However, his ardor for a university education cooled rather quickly if one can believe the memoirs of his friend Vladimir Taneev: 8 He [Sleptsov] led t h e typical s t u d e n t life of that time, was p r o u d of his u n i f o r m with its blue collar, spent time in the taverns, and c o n s t a n t l y played billiards. He loved the t h e a t e r , and played in various a m a t e u r p r o d u c t i o n s . He was very h a n d s o m e . W o m e n loved him. He, in his own words, occasionally m a d e his way to the convents at night. 9

It comes as no surprise that he soon lost interest in medicine, dropped his studies, and set out on what was to become a life of wandering from one place and occupation to another. Markov gives a curious explanation of what he calls Sleptsov's "mental and physical roaming [satanie] ": This instability and c o n s t a n t searching for s o m e t h i n g new was clearly reflected in his eternal wandering f r o m one place t o a n o t h e r , f r o m one o c c u p a t i o n t o a n o t h e r . His p a r e n t s [?] [According t o Nelidova, his f a t h e r died at the beginning of the 1850s] tried to explain it as a special feature of his character, a striving to restrain himself in everything and to tear himself f r o m any b u r g e o n i n g habit. But that, it seems to me, is far f r o m t h e t r u t h ; it can be explained n o t as strength of character b u t r a t h e r the absence of such, that is, a purely Slavic lack of discipline. . . .

Whether or not Sleptsov's Wanderlust can be ascribed to his Slavic background is open to question, but it was certainly typical of many in his generation — including writers such as Nikolay Uspensky, Reshetnikov, and Levitov as well as the many ethnographers and folklorists who had begun to "rediscover" the Russian countryside. In time Sleptsov too would participate in this rediscovery, but the immediate object of his attraction after losing interest in his studies was the theater, which provided an outlet for his apparently considerable talents as an actor. According to Markov: Having joined a circle of his s t u d e n t comrades, bearing the n i c k n a m e " t h e theater n u t s , " he [Sleptsov] d r o p s his lectures, earnestly a t t e n d s the Maly T h e a t e r , ceaselessly applauds his favorite, S h c h e p k i n , and returning h o m e raves a b o u t the m o n o l o g s and speaks only in d r a m a t i c e x c e r p t s and in phrases f r o m the c u r r e n t repertoire. . . . His c o m r a d e s w o u l d applaud and enthusiastically assure him of his artistic t a l e n t . " ' T a n e e v , the b r o t h e r of the composer Sergey Taneev, was a n o t e d radical lawyer (he d e f e n d e d t h o s e involved in the Nechaev affair), a political e c o n o m i s t , and a p r o p o n e n t of Utopian socialism. His association with Sleptsov a p p a r e n t l y arose f r o m Sleptsov's request that he read a paper o n political e c o n o m y at one of Sleptsov's lecture series for w o m e n . See Evstigneeva's i n t r o d u c t i o n to Taneev's m e m o i r s in LN, 7 1 : 5 1 3 . 9 LN, 7 1 : 5 2 1 . Taneev's a c q u a i n t a n c e with Sleptsov dates f r o m 1865; i.e., close to a decade a f t e r the events described in this q u o t e . Nevertheless, one can assume that Sleptsov himself related the details of this " t y p i c a l s t u d e n t l i f e . " 10 Markov, p. 9 6 7 . 11 Markov, p. 9 6 7 .

Sleptsov

Redivivus

33

In addition to encouragement from friends, an acquaintance with his idol Mikhail Shchepkin (famous for his portrayal of the mayor in The Inspector General) and the latter's favorable reaction finally convinced Sleptsov to go on stage. Little is known of his success during the 1854-1855 season in Yaroslavl, but it is known that he debuted as Khlestakov and remained with the company (under the pseudonym Lunin) for an entire season. He then abandoned this venture (although his involvement with the theatre was not to end with one season in Yaroslavl) and returned to Moscow, this time to be fascinated by the ballet — or, perhaps more accurately, ballet dancers, since he married one in 1856; Ekaterina Pukanova's death less than a year after her marriage to Sleptsov symbolizes the instability of his entire life: nothing he did seemed to last longer than a year. However, during 1857 he did find steady employment. In the records of his interrogation (June 8, 1866, after his arrest in connection with the Karakozov assassination attempt), he mentions accepting a government position in Moscow: "I served in the office of the Governor of Moscow [Moskovskij grazdanskij gubernator], entered service in 1857, retired for domestic reasons in 1862." 1 2 This should not lead one to believe that Sleptsov put in his eight hours a day as a bureaucrat. Indeed, it often seems that he was rarely in Moscow between 1857 and 1862 (the year he moved to Petersburg). In 1858 he was married a second time, to Ekaterina Yazykova, the daughter of a Tver landowner. As usual, Sleptsov entered this affair impetuously, with the result that his second marriage lasted only slightly longer than the first. His wife was older than he by several years, and she was constantly jealous of the attention aroused by his good looks (attention not discouraged by Sleptsov). In short, their life together was "far from tranquil." 1 3 The marriage did produce two children — a son who died soon after birth and a daughter, Valentina; but this apparently had little influence on the father. In 1860 he took his wife to the Saratov estate which he had inherited with his brother after the death of their father, settled her there (at that time divorce was a practical impossibility), and returned to Moscow, where he was to launch his career as a writer. As early as the beginning of 1860, Sleptsov had associated with a number of fashionable Moscow "radicals" grouped around the salon of Countess Elizabeth Salias de Tournemir, a publisher and minor writer (whose works held a strange fascination for Konstantin Leontyev) known under the pseudonym of Evgeniya Tur. Sleptsov was to form a lasting friendship with her son, Evgeny (the author of popular, second-rate historical novels); and the acquaintance with Countess Salias herself proved to be of considerable practical 12 13

LN, 71: 467. Markov, p. 969.

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value since it was in her journal, Russkaja Rec', that Sleptsov's first major work appeared. Although it is not the purpose of this sketch to examine Sleptsov's literary works, it is appropriate to deal with the genesis of Vladimirka i Kljaz'ma inasmuch as it reflects a typical phenomenon of the fifties and sixties — the collection of ethnographic material. Sleptsov's interest in this area dates back to his acquaintance with Vladimir Dahl, whom he met during his year at the university. Evidence suggests that Sleptsov was aware of Dahl's work on the Tolkovyj slovar' and Poslovicy russkogo naroda before their publication; and it was Dahl who urged Sleptsov to accept a commission from the Ethnographic Section of the Geographic Society. 14 As a result, in November, 1860, he set out on foot to gather folk sayings, songs, and tales of the Vladimir region, thus joining Yakushkin, Rybnikov, Otto, Levitov and others (the kaliki perekhozie as they were dubbed by the satirical journal Iskra 5 ) in a general intellectual movement to examine long-neglected examples of folk creativity. The experience was to prove very productive, for not only did it furnish Sleptsov with the material for Vladimirka i Kljaz'ma, it also honed his technique for gathering and utilizing such material in future stories and sketches, most of which are based on his knowledge of peasant life and — above all — the peasant vernacular. However, the significance of Vladimirka i Kljaz'ma is not limited to its qualities as an ethnographic sketch; as the work progresses, it becomes abundantly clear that Sleptsov is not interested merely in portraying quaint peasant customs and forgotten folk songs. The effects of industrialization on the countryside, inefficiency and corruption in the construction of the Moscow-Nizhny Novgorod railway, and the intolerable conditions under which Russian workers building this line were forced to live - all of these topics are approached and dealt with in terms reminiscent of what today would be called "investigative reporting," but which at the time came under the general term oblicenie.16 In short, it would not be unwarranted to include Vladimirka i Kljaz 'ma with Radishchev's Putesestvie and Chekhov's Ostrov Sakhalin in the tradition of Russian literature's committed travelogue. Upon returning to Moscow, Sleptsov not only published Vladimirka i M Cf. Evstigneeva's article comparing the work of Dahl with Sleptsov's "Spiski poslovic i pogovorok," LN, 71: 4 3 0 - 4 3 1 . 15 Iskra, 1864, No. 9 (cover). 16 Strictly speaking, Sleptsov, like other radical literati of the period, held the oblicitel'nyj ocerk in great disdain. Its practice of revealing minor abuses and its belief that the system would be sound if such abuses were corrected ran counter to the radicals' concept of total change. Oblicenie is used here in the broader sense of an expose.

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Kljaz'ma in Russkaja Reè'11 but also assumed certain editorial duties for the journal. (It was during this period that he made the acquaintance of another member of the Russkaja Ree ' staff — Nikolay Leskov. Their relationship soon developed into one of the bitterest and, in many ways, strangest of Russia's radical-anti-radical literary feuds.) However, in the course of 1861 Sleptsov seems to have felt that Petersburg had more to offer as a cultural and intellectual center than did Moscow, and as a result he left Moscow for Petersburg late in the summer of 1861. Once there, he became acquainted with Nekrasov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, and others associated with the journal Sovremennik, who soon had cause to welcome him as a new addition to their arsenal of polemical weapons. Evidently Nekrasov had already been impressed by Sleptsov's expose (in VTadimirka i Kljaz'ma) of construction methods on the Moscow-Nizhny Novgorod railroad, and it was decided that he should do a similar piece of muckraking for Sovremennik. Thus, toward the end of 1861 (October, November) Sleptsov visited the town of Ostashkov (in Tver Province) widely touted as a showcase of progress and liberal reform. His task was to look behind the facade to determine whether Ostashkov really was a "Russian El Dorado" (Sleptsov's words) or just an updated Potemkin village. At this point the chronology of events in Sleptsov's biography becomes unclear (as it often does), but the Soviet scholar A. L. Korkin has given a plausible reconstruction of his activities from the fall of 1861 until his move to Petersburg in 1862. 18 According to Korkin, after his visit to Ostashkov Sleptsov returned to Moscow at the end of 1861 in order to complete his new work for Sovremennik and settle various personal affairs. It is at this time that he retired from his government position and made what he thought would be a final separation with his wife (who was now living in Moscow). He then returned to Petersburg early in 1862. With him he had the manuscript of a work which was to become a landmark in his literary career. For not only did Letters on Ostashkov (Pis 'ma ob Ostaskove) signal a successful debut in one of Russia's leading journals, 19 it also represented the beginning of Sleptsov's uncompromising anti-liberalism, his belief that the reforms proposed by liberals were incapable of dealing with the Russian situation. In the nine "letters" which comprise the work, 11

There has been some difficulty in reconstructing the text of Vladimirka i Kljaz'ma since parts of the work were published under various titles in a number of different journals. As now established, the text is taken from numbers of Russkaja Rec', Moskovskij Vestnik ( 1 8 6 1 ) , and Severnaja Pcela ( 1 8 6 2 , No. 163). 18 "Peterburgskij period zizni i dejatel'nosti V. A. Slepcova," Uc. Zap. Pjatigorskogo Ped. In-ta., 15 ( 1 9 5 7 ) , 4 1 5 - 4 1 7 . 19 Published in Sovremennik, 1862, No. 5; 1863, Nos. 1 , 2 , and 6.

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Sleptsov subjects Ostashkov, its public institutions, its society, its politics to an analysis which, although unabashedly subjective, is based upon powers of observation capable of revealing and satirizing the town's pretensions as a model of progress. His conclusion (stated in the introduction) is that Russia has no reason to imitate Ostashkov's innovations, since they offer no solution to the real problems facing Russia (or Ostashkov itself)- Rather, the town is of interest as a study in deception, an example of what Pisarev would call igrusecnyj liberalizm (sandbox liberalism). 20 Ostashkov, according to Sleptsov, is nothing more than a cleverly designed toy, set in motion and controlled for the profit of its benefactors, the Savin merchant dynasty. Sleptsov's deflating of the Ostashkov legend more than fulfilled his assignment — it established him as one of Sovremennik's most promising new talents. Yet Sleptsov's commitment to Sovremennik was not total. Even as he began to publish the Letters (May 1862), he was at work — again in the company of Leskov — for the resurrected Severnaja Pcela (under the editorship of Pavel Usov), in which he published some of his early scenes and sketches. However, as the journal began to adopt a tone reminiscent of its earlier namesake, Sleptsov found himself increasingly attracted to the idea of working exclusively for Sovremennik. But there was little he could do in this regard after the authorities suspended publication of Sovremennik (June, 1862), so he continued to publish in Severnaja Pcela. Upon Sovremennik''% revival at the beginning of 1863, Sleptsov became one of its most frequent contributors. Publication of Letters on Ostashkov was resumed, and in numbers four and six his feuilleton "Petersburg N o t e s " ("Peterburgskie zametki") was published — albeit with extensive censorial cuts. In addition to feuilletons and articles, he published various "scenes" and three works which can be classified as short stories: " P i t o m k a " (1863, No. 7), "Nocleg" (1863, No. 11), and "Svin'i" (1864, No. 2). These stories, along with an earlier one, "Spevka." published in Otecestvennye Zapiski (1862, No. 9), have been praised by practically every major practitioner of realism in Russian literature — Turgenev, Shchedrin, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky. One of them, " P i t o m k a , " has been acclaimed as one of the most powerful works written in Russian; and all of them deserve attention not only for what they say about Sleptsov's creativity but also for possible connections with the stories of Chekhov, who knew and valued Sleptsov's work. At present, however, only the most general remarks are in order. These stories, which exhibited a decidedly unsentimental attitude toward the peas20

Cf. Pisarev's article (published under the pseudonym D. Ragodin) "Podrastajuscaja gumannost'," Russkoe Slovo, 1865, No. 12.

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ant, were written in the ironic tone adopted by Nikolay Uspensky and praised by Chernyshevsky (in his article "Ne nacalo li peremeny?", Sovremennik, 1861, No. 11) as an example of a healthy realism in the portrayal of the peasant. Chernyshevsky's article signaled the end of Grigorovich's long-suffering but noble muzhik (epitomized by Anton Goremyka); and it is possible that the trend toward greater naturalism was dictated as much by literary fashion as by Chernyshevsky's social pronouncements. But for many critics the new irony was a cruel jest at the expense of an oppressed class, subjected to superstition and the whims of petty Russian officialdom. For Sleptsov, however, realizing the extent of the disease was the first step toward its cure. (It is interesting to note that almost thirty years after Sleptsov's stories first appeared, Chekhov was accused — by one of the same critics, A. M. Skabichevsky — of a similar "indifference" toward the plight of the peasantry in his stories.) Quite apart from their implied social comment, the stories, with the partial exception of " P i t o m k a , " exhibit Sleptsov's abilities as one of Russia's best humorists, a writer who was able to use his knowledge of the peasant vernacular to create a vivid comic portrait. Although he later rejected his role as author of short stories, these compositions remind one of the talent he had at his disposal — when he chose to use it. While continuing to publish in Sovremennik, Sleptsov collaborated with Grigory Eliseev in the radical newspaper Ocerki until its closure in April 1863; corresponded with the writer of Ukrainian tales and stories, Maria Markovich (pseud. Marko-Vovchok), whose business he conducted during her exile in Paris; and in June and July served as editorial secretary for Sovremennik. Yet his most interesting and undoubtedly most controversial activity in 1863 was the founding of what was subsequently known as the Znamenskaya or Sleptsov commune. In and of itself a commune was not a very unusual phenomenon in Petersburg or Moscow during the 1860s. Most of them were quite practical in their outlook and modest in their aims — to provide an economical means of living for a small group of people. 21 And according to several witnesses this was the true purpose of Sleptsov's commune. Indeed, it often seems that the most remarkable feature of the Znamenskaja kommuna (so named because of its location on Znamenskaya Street in Petersburg) was the very fact that it received so much attention, from the police as well as the public. Nevertheless, it did have an impact, one far greater than a sober examination of its activities would lead one to believe. The ideas behind the project are relatively easy to trace: Sleptsov was 21

Cf. Cukovskij, "Istorija Slepcovskoj kommuny," Ljudi i knigi, pp. 272-278.

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certainly familiar with Chernyshevsky's recent novel What Is to Be Done? and its description of Vera Pavlovna's model commune for working women. Furthermore, he himself was very much involved in various efforts to provide employment for women with no means to support themselves, and a communal living arrangement a la Chernyshevsky would be the logical extension of these efforts. Finally, it is known that Sleptsov was at least superficially familiar with the theories of Fourier and was especially interested in practical ideas on the formation of a phalanstery. However, he apparently had no illusions as to the difficulties which would arise from any attempt to implement such a radical scheme, and consequently he adopted a cautious, evolutionary approach (not that it helped). In the words of one of the commune's participants: "[Sleptsov] decided to begin with a simple urban dormitory and then gradually turn it into a genuine phalanstery." 22 He began organizing in August, 1863; by September the nucleus of participants had been formed; and in October, the group moved to an apartment on Znamenskaya Street. The apartment, for which Sleptsov was to pay the not inconsiderable sum of 1,200 rubles a year, consisted of an entire floor containing eleven rooms. According to police archives the apartment was divided so that each member had his or her own room. In addition there was a common dining room, two rooms for receiving guests, and a kitchen — not exactly a spartan arrangement, but then neither was Vera Pavlovna's commune. Furthermore, it is logical to assume that Sleptsov would hardly wish to prove the superiority of communal life by making it as colorless and dreary as possible. Nevertheless, there were charges (both from within the commune as well as from without) that the participants' mode of existence was unbecomingly extravagant, that their limited resources were being squandered and mismanaged with no thought for the future. Indeed, Sleptsov was notoriously inept at managing his own financial affairs, and that he should have had any control over the commune's purse strings must be considered a serious error. There was another problem as well — the selection of members. Although there were only six (four women and two men) in addition to Sleptsov, they soon found themselves split into two, often hostile, factions: the salonnye and the burye.23 The former seem to have felt that the commune should be little more than a pleasant living cooperative for a group of independent individuals; the latter seriously believed in the idea of a radical phalanstery based on self-abnegation and devotion to the idea of a new social order. Where Sleptsov, with his idea of the commune's gradual evolution into a

22 23

Ekaterina Zukovskaja, Zap/sA:i'(Leningrad, 1930), pp. 155-156. Cf. Cukovskij, "Istorija Slepcovskoj kommuny," Ljudi i knigi, pp. 282-283.

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nastojascij falanster, stood is difficult to determine. In any event the group was something less than a determined, militant cadre of revolutionaries. Elements of divisiveness were present from the beginning and no amount of effort from Sleptsov could keep the patchwork of ideas, goals, and personalities from disintegrating. However, the commune did have its successes: it was here that Sleptsov was able to continue a series of popular science lectures for women, as well as sponsor a number of literary and musical evenings (usually with a charitable purpose). In addition the commune held open house for various Petersburg literati at least one night a week. A list of those visiting the commune or participating in its activities would include Saltykov-Shchedrin, Nikolay Uspensky, Alexander Levitov, Nikolay Kurochkin, Ivan Gorbunov, the composer Alexander Serov, and the noted physiologist Ivan Sechenov. Ironically, the commune's greatest success — its fame as an attempt to implement a new form of social organization — was due in large measure to its enemies. For no matter how sarcastic or vitriolic their portrayal (cf. Leskov's novel Nekuda), they gave the commune the wide publicity which otherwise seems unwarranted in view of its rather limited range of action. Indeed, if one dismisses the egregious assumption that the commune was little more than Sleptsov's harem (admittedly, the source of much of the commune's notoriety), what was there about it which would give rise to a play, four novels, and a short story? 24 Perhaps it was simply an easy target for the antinihilists; perhaps it really was interpreted as a dangerous threat to established society. (In light of their extensive surveillance, agents of the Third Section certainly seem to have thought so; but secret police have always had a vested interest in uncovering and exaggerating the importance of such "threats." 2 5 ) The most likely explanation lies in the nature of the times. In an intensely partisan era (such as the 1860s in Russia), it is only too convenient to seize upon such a phenomenon as representative of attitudes one admires or detests. And in this respect, whatever its other accomplishments, Sleptsov's commune served very well indeed. 24 Mikhail Chernyavsky's play "Grazdanskij brak," Leskov's Nekuda (the most famous of the lot), Vsevolod Krestovsky's Panurgovo stado, Vasily Avenarius' Povetrie, Petr Boborykin's Vecemjaja zarja, and Evgeny Salias' story "12 casov, voskresen'e." Yet another testimony to the commune's fame can be found in Aleksey Remizov's memoirs, Podstrizennymi glazami: "My mother at one time participated in a circle: this was one of the first circles of nihilists - very similar to the one described by Leskov in Nekuda. . . . The name of Sleptsov, founder of the first Znamenskaya commune, was familiar to me from childhood" (Paris: YMCA Press, 1951), p. 90. " For an insight into the workings of the Third Section, see the documents relating to Sleptsov's commune in LN, 71: 446-455.

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Sleptsov does not seem to have been disheartened by the commune's failure, despite the fact that he had spent a good deal of time and money (much of which was not his) on the project. The memoirs of Avdotya Panaeva, a frequent visitor to the commune, portray him as accepting the turn of events with philosophic resignation, confident in the eventual success of such attempts to transform society. In a passage which reveals the crux of his attitude toward social activism, he is quoted as saying: It's not worth getting upset over failures in useful social causes, because most of society is given over to the assimilation of empty, routine habits in social life, and as soon as something new arises - even if it's useful - the routinists are thrown into a panic. There's no need to lose heart at this, otherwise there would be no progress in social life. Progress is possible only when people act against the routine. 26

The commune's collapse certainly had little effect on Sleptsov's public activities, which continued to center around lectures, literary evenings, and meetings; and it was during this period (from 1863 to 1866) that he enjoyed his greatest popularity in radical circles. Yet the reserve which, according to acquaintances, was so much a part of his character prevented his wholesale embrace of certain aspects of the movement (if it can be called such), in particular certain excesses in dress and behavior. According to E. N. Vodovozova: He [Sleptsov] held a very skeptical attitude toward the striving which swept an enormous part of educated society and consisted in unswervingly fulfilling prescribed rules for practical life. The codex of these rules was ascetically severe, one-sided, and with punctual accuracy designated what dress to wear and what color it should be, what sort of furnishings one should have in the apartment, etc. Hair styles with a part behind the head for men and high, fluffed hair for women were considered a sign of vulgarity. No one was to wear gold watch chains, bracelets, colored dresses with trim, or top hats; it was considered reprehensible to have expensive furnishings in one's apartment. These rules were not set forth in writing, but since one could be subjected to censure and ridicule for not obeying them, anyone who did not wish to be labeled a hard-boiled conservative had them firmly committed to memory. Sleptsov did not adhere to this prescribed order, and as a result he was condemned by many.

Nevertheless, Sleptsov retained his standing as one of the "new people," not because he followed the dictates of radical fashion but because he was genuinely involved in a number of social causes. Unfortunately, this social activism could not but take its toll on Sleptsov's literary output, and when " Vospominanija A. Ja. Golovacevoj-Panaevoj: Russkie pisateli i artisty, 1824-70 (St. Petersburg, 1890), p. 395. 27 Na zare zizni (Moscow-Leningrad, 1934), pp. 325, 326.

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one surveys a list of his published work, the toll becomes strikingly evident. After a relatively productive year in 1863, he was able to publish only one story (albeit one of his masterpieces, "Svin'i") in 1864. There were in addition at least two articles — both rejected by the censor — written that year, but even these add little to what must be considered a very meager period. By the end of 1864, however, he managed to begin work on what was to become his magnum opus, Hard Times (Trudnoe vremja). His friends, Panaeva among them, had been puzzled by the lack of his stories in Sovremennik, and when she attempted to raise the issue he replied that he was no longer interested in writing stories. Instead, he had an idea for a novel based on contemporary social mores (although as it turned out the work's theme was much broader, with a decidedly political emphasis). When Panaeva quipped that the novel would be ready in ten years, Sleptsov countered with a bet that it would soon be completed. 28 Sleptsov won his bet. The novel, or povest', as it is usually called in Russian, was announced in the December issue of Sovremennik, and appeared in numbers 4, 5, 7, and 8 the following year (1865). It was to catapult Sleptsov to the height of his brief literary career; and it remains a monument not only to the writer but also to the decade it reflects, for few works from that era provoked such a storm of partisan reaction. (Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, frequently mentioned in discussions of Hard Times, would be a contender in this respect.) As might be expected, critical response rarely concerned itself with the work's artistic merits or defects, but concentrated on its political and social implications. Both the novel and the comment it elicited will be examined in the second part of this study; but at this point one might wonder just why the work aroused such controversy. Quite simply, it dealt with the fundamental issue confronting pre-Revolutionary Russian society; that is, what approach does one adopt toward a system faced with massive, perhaps insurmountable, social problems — a course of work and reform within the system, or one of rejection and, eventually, revolution? In no other major work of Russian fiction, not even in Fathers and Sons, are these alternatives so fully embodied in the principal characters. In discussing the book, critics quite naturally focused their attention and based their evaluation on the social concepts represented by the characters. Ryazanov — the protagonist — was presented both as a stoic, intelligent (if somewhat despondent) radical and as an irresponsible, cynical nihilist; Shchetinin — a liberal landowner — as a concerned, conscientious citizen and as a hypocritical do-gooder; Marya — Shchetinin's wife — as a brave young 28

Panaeva, p. 397.

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woman seeking liberation and self-fulfillment and as a flighty neurotic concerned only with her own caprice. Serving as an all important background for this domestic drama is the confusion of rural post-Reform Russia. All of the necessary ingredients were present. In short, Sleptsov hit the mark; and just as the commune, despite its failure, was to represent the height of his social activism, so Hard Times was to represent the apex of his literary achievement. After the commune's disintegration there was no decrease in Sleptsov's concern with social issues; but when one views his activity over the course of a decade, it becomes apparent that there was a decline in his prominence as a public figure. The descent from Hard Times was not dramatic or immediate: he continued to publish and occupy responsible positions in some of Russia's most important journals. But from the vantage point of a literary historian, it was a descent nonetheless. Although it would be incorrect to consider Sleptsov a man of one work, nothing he wrote after Hard Times was to have such an impact or enjoy such success. As prominent as Hard Times is in the corpus of Sleptsov's writings, it was not the only work of his to appear in 1865. He had firmly established his position as a feuilletonist for Sovremennik, and although a number of his articles were rejected by the censor, one series — "Modest Exercises" ("Skromnye upraznenija") — was allowed in the ninth issue, while another cycle, "Provincial Chronicle" ("Provincial'naja khronika") appeared the same year in numbers 16, 20, and 28 of the satirical journal Iskra. Both articles continued Sleptsov's attack on "small deeds" liberalism and ineffectual reforms, an attack similar to that mounted by Saltykov-Shchedrin in Sovremennik. Indeed, their views were so similar that Shchedrin, wishing to conceal his authorship of "Pis'ma o provincii," asked Nekrasov if it might not be possible to have the work appear under Sleptsov's name. 29 This period of journalistic activity soon came to an end, for Sovremennik as well as for Sleptsov. On April 4, 1866, Dmitry Karakozov — a former student and member of an extreme faction of the Ishutin circle — made an unsuccessful attempt on the life of Alexander II. The reaction which followed not only crushed the remnants of the Ishutin circle (virtually the only clandestine political group still functioning in Russia at the time), but also had a considerable effect on Russian intellectual life. Not surprisingly, this effect was a calculated part of the campaign instituted by Count Mikhail Muravyev, "the Hangman," who in Franco Venturi's words, "organized a " M. E. Saltykov-Scedrin, Polnoe sobranie socinertij, 18 (Leningrad, 1937), p. 203.

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system of repression which aimed to root out the forces of revolution by striking the intellectual tendencies which had given them birth." 30 In practice this meant the suppression of certain journals (including Sovremennik) and wholesale arrests of those considered hostile to the regime. Sleptsov, who already had an extensive police dossier in connection with his activities in the commune, had no trouble qualifying as a "harmful individual," and consequently, on April 30, 1866, he was arrested at his apartment and taken to the Peter-Paul Fortress. He was not alone: included in the sweep were Grigory Eliseev (then the editor of Iskra), Dmitry Minaev, the Kurochkins, Varfolomey Zaytsev (from Russkoe Slovo) as well as a number of nigilistki.31 Most of those arrested were released after a few weeks (seven in Sleptsov's case), but even such a relatively short confinement was not without its ill effects. In her description of the ordeal, Sleptsov's mother is quite firm on this point: "it was his arrest which led him to a premature grave."32 Sleptsov himself wrote his mother from prison to complain about the state of his health and the delay in obtaining a formal hearing. Eventually Josephine Adamovna was able to gain the intercession of certain influential relatives who had him released, on June 18, to the custody of his mother. He was placed under a police surveillance which was to last until his death. Whatever effect the arrest may have had on Sleptsov's mental and physical state, it seems to have had little immediate effect on his activity. The first edition of his collected works appeared under the auspices of Nekrasov and Ippolit Panaev; and in June, 1866 (the month of his release), he was at work organizing a journal for women, Zenskij Vestnik. For the journal's first issue (September, 1866) he wrote the lead article, ' T h e Women's Cause" — a necessarily vague statement on the need to find certain general goals for the feminist movement and let tactics take care of themselves. 30

F. Venturi, Roots of Revolution (New York, 1966), p. 347. In connection with the above quotation from Venturi, it is interesting to note that on April 30, 1866 (the day of Sleptsov's arrest), Minister of Internal Affairs Valuev wrote the following: "With a view to a more successful investigation of the personality of the criminal who made an attempt on the life of His Majesty the Emperor, it would not be unwarranted to turn to an investigation of that socio-literary milieu in which the thought of regicide is capable of developing." Quoted in LN, 71: 461. 31 "Iz Peterburga," Kolokol, June 1, 1866, p. 1806. 32 Institut russkoj literatury (IRLI), f. 265, op. 2, 1.7. (From a manuscript of Josephine Sleptsova's biography of her son. These lines were part of a section deleted by the censor when the biography was published in Russkaja Starina, 1890. See above, fn. 2.) Sleptsova's efforts on behalf of her son remind one of similar efforts by Pisarev's mother. Pisarev, however, was incarcerated for a much longer period.

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Sleptsov's involvement in the cause of greater social freedom for women deserves a separate article, but it can be noted here that this involvement took a number of forms, public as well as private. For example, from 1863 to 1865 he was active in various, largely unsuccessful, projects to provide employment for women (bookbinderies, translation projects, etc.); in lectures to further the education of those unable to enter Russia's universities; and in charitable performances designed to give financial aid to women who had recently arrived in Petersburg and had no means to support themselves. (On a more personal level Sleptsov served as something of a counselor - by mail or by interview — for women who felt the need to be liberated, usually from an unpleasant domestic situation. Sleptsov's novel Hard Times deals with just such a situation and may have had something to do with his reputation as an expert in these matters.) None of these efforts lasted for longer than a few months, nor, under the circumstances, could they have been expected to enjoy any widespread practical success. Indeed, it becomes increasingly clear that after 1866 — if not earlier — Sleptsov had relegated this type of enterprise to the realm of small deeds activism. In a typical radical formulation he seems to have felt that the overriding concern was to effect a general social change, of which women's emancipation would be one component. Nevertheless, in the feuilleton cycle "Modest Notes" ("Novosti peterburgskoj zizni: Skromnye zametki"), appearing in Zenskij Vestnik between May and September, 1867, he returned to the issue of greater independence for women and focused on the indignities which, in his opinion, their inequality forced them to accept. After "Modest Notes" Sleptsov wrote very little about the woman question — or any other question, for that matter. There were a few short pieces for Iskra and Delo in 1867; and early in 1868 he published two substantial articles in Otecestvennye Zapiski — "Zapiski metafizika," which dealt with the 1867 famine, and "Tip novejsej dramy," a critical review of recent productions at the Aleksandrinsky Theater in Petersburg. A promising beginning, but no more than that. From the second issue of Otecestvennye Zapiski in 1868 until the second issue in 1871 there is no known published work by Sleptsov. Nor is he known to have published anything other than three short scenes ("Sceny v mirovom sude," Remeslennaja Gazeta, 1876) in the more than six years between 1871 and his death. This is not to say that Sleptsov was inactive for the last ten years of his life. In January, 1868, he was invited by Nekrasov to serve as secretary for Otecestvennye Zapiski (a post which he held until January, 1872), and between 1869 and 1874 he served as director for various amateur theatrical groups in Petersburg and Tiflis. In Petersburg, for example, he had considerable success directing theatrical productions and organizing literary evenings

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45

at the Artists' Club (Klub xudoznikov) — eventually dubbed "Sleptsov's theater." Yet, the fact remains that after 1868 Sleptsov had virtually ceased to publish. Why? In the first place, the more one examines the evidence the closer one comes to the conclusion that Sleptsov did not like the process of writing. Indeed, one possible explanation for the frenetic round of activities which occupied him in the mid-sixties (much to the dismay of those following his literary career) was precisely a desire — conscious or unconscious — to avoid putting pen to paper. In attempting to explain Sleptsov's low level of productivity, Avdotya Panaeva notes this sharp contrast between his exertions in the social sphere and his "laziness" in regard to writing: "Of course, a not insignificant role was played by Sleptsov's laziness — directed, unfortunately, only toward writing, because in other respects he was unusually »133

active. It seems that anything was capable of separating Sleptsov from the desk: his involvement in social causes, his literary evenings, his affairs with women, his fascination with crafts (bookbinding, carpentry, cobbling, tailoring), or simply a quarrel in the corridor outside his apartment. However, this is not sufficient to explain his literary decline after 1867, since even with distractions and his "laziness toward writing" he managed t o produce more or less consistently between 1861 and 1868. Furthermore, it would seem that after his arrest the activities which impinged upon his ability to concentrate had decreased somewhat. Perhaps a more plausible explanation can be found in Sleptsov's attitude toward his creativity, his reasons for writing. It has been noted above that as early as the mid-sixties Sleptsov had become dissatisfied with his reputation as an author of short stories and feuilletons. When asked by Panaeva why his stories were no longer appearing in Sovremennik, he replied that he was not interested in writing stories; rather, he had an idea for a more complex work, a novel based on "contemporary relations between husband and wife, cultured people [ljudi razvitye] ." 3 4 Having succeeded at this venture (Hard Times), he returned to writing short fiction and articles; but the desire to produce a full-length work based on "cultured people" (as opposed to the peasants and urban poor depicted in most of his short stories) did not leave him, and toward the end of 1867 he began another novel, Khorosij celovek. The work, a portrait of a young gentry intelligent with the usual complex of guilt feelings toward the narod, was not a success. The first and only chapters to be published (in Sovremennik, 1861, No. 2) were poorly received, 33 34

Panaeva, p. 401. Panaeva, p. 397.

William C. Brumfield

46

but Sleptsov did not need the critics to tell him that Khorosij celovek was a failure. In his own words: "nothing of mine is turning out [ne vytancovyvaetsja], and my illness has also interfered." 3 5 To what extent his illness actually interfered is impossible to determine; but he apparently felt himself incapable of doing what he wanted (to create an involved fictional work requiring extensive psychological treatment of its characters), and he was demanding enough as an artist to realize his limitations. In a conversation with Panaeva a few months before his death, Sleptsov makes his dedication to the craft of writing quite clear: "I didn't have the strength to create something really good, and I had no desire to write mediocre works." 3 6 Such dedication made it impossible to violate one's artistic standards simply in order to publish, and perhaps it is here that one finds a partial answer to the riddle of Sleptsov's literary demise. Like Chekhov's Trigorin, Sleptsov was neither a Tolstoy nor a Turgenev; but unlike Trigorin, Sleptsov was unable to write if he felt that he could not produce "something really good." Of course, Sleptsov had written some of the best short stories in Russian literature, but, unsatisfied by this accomplishment, he became enthralled by the idea of creating a work which would somehow explain the Russian experience. It was not enough to write well; one had to be "relevant": If you're going to write, then write something real, the sort of thing which would inescapably, organically arise from the present situation of things, which would reproduce it, and thus explain it. So that everyone who reads it would say: Yes, that's it, that's true, and that absolutely, without doubt, must be written. Otherwise it's not worth it. . . . " "

The final years of Sleptsov's life were devoted in large measure to an attempt to restore his failing health. According to Nelidova's biographical sketch: "The illness f r o m which he suffered with slight intervals for five years, beginning in [18] 73, forced him to leave Petersburg and travel for a long time throughout Russia and the Caucasus." 3 8 It is true that in 1873 he began traveling extensively — usually to the Caucasus — in search of a cure for whatever ailment he may have had, and it is possible that the symptoms sharpened at that time. (The exact nature of his illness was never firmly diagnosed, despite an exploratory operation. It is generally assumed to have been intestinal cancer.) However, it would be misleading t o suggest that before 1873 (or 1872, according to some accounts) Sleptsov had no serious 35 36 37

Panaeva, p. 410. Panaeva, p. 409. Remarks to Nelidova; quoted in her biographical sketch "V. A. Slepcov," LN, 71:

493. 38

Ibid., p. 492.

Sleptsov Redivivas

47

problems with his health. As mentioned earlier in connection with his literary decline, he had been plagued with chronic ill health since his arrest, and throughout the late sixties his letters contain references to medical consultations, illness, and a general physical collapse. What is unclear is the nature of his problem between 1867 and 1872, as well as its relation to the terminal illness which is so persistently said to have begun in 1872 or 1873. Judging from the scant evidence available, one might assume that in the late sixties Sleptsov suffered primarily from emotional and physical exhaustion, and then, once the general state of his health had deteriorated, a more serious ailment (or ailments) took root. Whatever the progression of events, Sleptsov was now forced to take serious measures in order to cope with his illness. As might be expected, his medical treatment, his travels to the Caucasus, and prolonged periods of rest at the spas demanded a substantial amount of money — money very difficult to obtain since he had no work and had published practically nothing since 1871. What support he did receive came primarily from his mother and from Nekrasov, who continued to help him both personally and through his intercession with the Literary Fund; but the state of Nekrasov's own health in 1877 and 1878 (the year of his death) hampered his efforts. By this time Sleptsov had turned to Saltykov-Shchedrin for help, but there was little that either Nekrasov or Shchedrin could have done. During his stay in the Caucasus the summer of 1877, Nelidova (whom he had met in 1875) returned to Moscow to attempt raising the money on her own. Her lack of success was unfortunate not only for whatever effect it might have had on Sleptsov's treatment, but also because it meant that a great many of his personal belongings and manuscripts had to be abandoned. According to one account: "A large part of his literary legacy perished. The material he had collected in the Caucasus was lost: his friends did not have the money to redeem his things, including a trunk with his manuscripts, from the pawnshop." 3 ' On March 6, 1878, Sleptsov returned, in seriously weakened condition, to his mother's estate near Serdobsk (in present-day Penza oblast'). Two weeks later (March 23) he was dead. It was the end of a long period of agony — illness, want, exhaustion — but Sleptsov was spared the utter poverty which marked the deaths of his contemporaries Pomyalovsky, Reshetnikov, Levitov, and Nikolay Uspensky, this strange, tragic generation of writers from the sixties. 39 A. B. Popov, "Russkie pisateli na Kavkaze," Materialy po izuceniju Stavropol'skogo kraja, No. 8, 1956. (It is obviously impossible to know whether the lost material actually represented a "large part of his literary legacy," but the loss is unfortunate nonetheless.)

48

William C. Brum field

Sleptsov died peacefully, in gentry surroundings, and in the company of the one person who, throughout his life never failed to consider him her "idol." According to Nelidova, there were plans to bury him in the cemetery of Moscow's Novodevichy Monastery, or at Petersburg's Volkovo Cemetery (the site of Turgenev's grave); but, as was so often the case during Sleptsov's life, there was not enough money to realize the project. He was buried March 26, in the Serdobsk cemetery — a very Aksakovian setting, a small country church surrounded by the steppe. PART

II

Much of Sleptsov's literary fame rests on a small group of short stories dealing with the degradation of Russia's lower classes; for although the stories were frequently criticized as being excessively bleak, the skill with which Sleptsov used them to present his mixture of bitter humor and pathos established him as a master of the short fictional genre. Yet, there is another Sleptsov — the observer of his own social and intellectual milieu; and in this respect Hard Times (Trudnoe vremja, published in Sovremertnik, 1865, Nos. 4, 5, 7, 8) is by far his most significant work. It insured his reputation as a critical realist, while touching off a polemic which was to last until the Revolution. Indeed, few works in the long history of Russian literature's social and ideological orientation have been the subject of such heated debate; few works have had their characters so endlessly discussed, analyzed, dissected, and then reassembled in the political image of the commentator. (Criticism of Hard Times serves admirably as a touchstone for the political views of an entire range of late nineteenth-century publications.) That such a reaction should have occurred is no mystery when one considers the then prevailing attitudes toward the function and duty of literary criticism — to serve as a vehicle for social and political comment. Hard Times is certainly well-suited to such attitudes, since it deals with the most volatile issue confronting educated Russian society after the Emancipation: should Russia follow the path of liberal reformism or that of radical change? Furthermore, in the figure of the novel's protagonist, Ryazanov, Sleptsov presents a portrait of the radical intelligentsia during one of its most turbulent and crucial states of development. Nowhere is the politicized, radical intellectual depicted with greater sympathy and yet with so little idealization; nowhere are the attitudes of the "thinking proletariat" (Pisarev) displayed more cogently. Sleptsov's nihilist is as important — and as controversial — as Bazarov for any attempt to recapture the spirit of the sixties. Both represent the Russian intelligentsia's groping search for "the real day."

Sleptsov

Redivivas

49

Since Hard Times is so d e e p l y r o o t e d in t h e issues a n d e v e n t s o f t h e 1 8 6 0 s , it w o u l d be well t o review t h e s i t u a t i o n w h i c h e x i s t e d at t h a t t i m e b e f o r e p r o c e e d i n g t o a d e t a i l e d analysis o f t h e w o r k . T h e a c t i o n takes place in tjre s u m m e r o f 1 8 6 3 ( t h a t is, s o m e t w o y e a r s a f t e r t h e E m a n c i p a t i o n P r o c l a m a t i o n ) ; a n d t h e success (or f a i l u r e ) of t h e E m a n c i p a t i o n , as well as t h e r e f o r m s c o n n e c t e d w i t h it, h a d a l r e a d y b e c o m e t h e f o c u s of m u c h d e b a t e . Liberals (a d i f f i c u l t t e r m t o d e f i n e , especially in Russia) such as C h i c h e r i n , Kavelin a n d V e r n a d s k y w e l c o m e d t h e r e f o r m s a n d felt t h a t t h e o n l y p a t h t o progress lay in gradual c h a n g e , supervised b y a s t r o n g c e n t r a l i z e d g o v e r n m e n t . On t h e radical side, C h e r n y s h e v s k y , in p a r t i c u l a r , was q u i t e vocal in his o p p o s i t i o n t o t h e t e r m s o f t h e s e r f s ' l i b e r a t i o n . As early as 1 8 5 8 a n d 1 8 5 9 , during the argued

f o r m a t i v e stages of E m a n c i p a t i o n

for a reduction

of redemption

p o l i c y , he h a d

consistently

p a y m e n t s (e.g., " U s t r o j s t v o b y t a

p o m e s c i c ' i k h k r e s t ' j a n , t r u d e n li v y k u p z e m l i ? " , 1 8 5 9 ) a n d f o r a r e d i s t r i b u t i o n of land w i t h i n t h e f r a m e w o r k of t h e obscina

( " 0 pozemel'noj sobstvennosti,"

1857, and "Kritika filosofskix predubezdenij protiv obscinnogo vladenija," 1858).40 As it s t o o d , t h e l a n d r e f o r m of 1861 was f o r C h e r n y s h e v s k y , as f o r Sleptsov, s i m p l y a deal b e t w e e n l a n d o w n e r s a n d t h e s t a t e , a deal p r o t e c t e d t h e rights a n d m a n y of t h e privileges of t h e dvorjane

which

while leaving

the p e a s a n t t o f e n d f o r himself u n d e r e x t r e m e l y u n f a v o r a b l e

conditions.

T h u s , d e s p i t e an initial e u p h o r i a (even a m o n g c e r t a i n radicals) c o n n e c t e d w i t h the c o n c e p t o f e m a n c i p a t i o n a n d its possibilities, t h e e v e n t u a l f o r m u l a t i o n o f E m a n c i p a t i o n p o l i c y was seen as f a u l t y , i m p r a c t i c a l , a n d u n j u s t . C o r o l l a r y t o a criticism of basic principles a n d o r i e n t a t i o n was the dissatisf a c t i o n e x p r e s s e d over practical i m p l e m e n t a t i o n of t h e l a n d s e t t l e m e n t . This d i s s a t i s f a c t i o n was n o t l i m i t e d t o s u c h o b v i o u s displays of d i s c o n t e n t as t h e w i d e s p r e a d p e a s a n t d i s o r d e r s b e t w e e n 1861 a n d 1 8 6 3 ( i n c l u d i n g t h e f a m o u s Bezdna m a s s a c r e o f April, 1 8 6 1 ) . I n d e e d , these e v e n t s can be r a t i o n a l i z e d as " m i s u n d e r s t a n d i n g s " s t e m m i n g f r o m t h e p e a s a n t s ' i g n o r a n c e of t h e t e r m s of their n e w f r e e d o m . R a t h e r , criticism was d i r e c t e d at t h e d a y - t o - d a y a d m i n i s t r a t i o n o f t h e n e w o r d e r , at t h e b u r e a u c r a t i c a p p a r a t u s w h i c h e n f o r c e d it. In a d d i t i o n t o t h e f u n d a m e n t a l a d m i n i s t r a t i v e p r o b l e m s of land a p p o r t i o n m e n t a n d t h e level of r e d e m p t i o n p a y m e n t s , t h e r e were i n n u m e r a b l e d i s p u t e s over s u c h issues as 40 It has been stated that the peasant commune was preserved largely as a result of Chernyshevsky's polemic with Vernadsky (in the article "O pozemel'noj sobstvennosti"). However, as E. Lampert points out in his book Sons Against Fathers (Oxford, 1965), p. 376, the government had its own interests in the commune as an effective method of controlling the peasant. Many radicals suspected this to be the case, and Sleptsov exhibits just such suspicions in his portrayal of the mir in Hard Times.

William C. Brumfield

50

water rights, and access to grazing and forest lands. In all these matters it s e e m e d t o the radicals — and, n o d o u b t , to the peasants as well — that the landowner w o u l d continue t o retain his prerogatives by means o f a chain o f officials which began with the official arbiter {mirovoj

posrednik)

and ended

at the b a y o n e t . This was certainly a one-sided view, but it contained more than e n o u g h truth to make it valid for polemical purposes. 4 1 In "Pis'ma bez adresa" Chernyshevsky gives his summary o f the reasons for the reform's difficulties: The authorities did not notice that they were taking on a project they themselves had not conceived, and they wanted to remain the complete master of its implementation. Under such a manner of implementation, the project's realization was to be influenced by two basic habits of the authorities. The first habit consists of a bureaucratic character of action; the second - a partiality to the gentry. The project was begun with a desire to demand as little sacrifice as possible from the gentry, while the bureaucracy, by its very nature, occupied itself more than ever with formalistics. Therefore the result was that the formal relations between landowner and serf were changed, but with a very slight, barely perceptible change in the substance of their previous relations. In this way it was thought that the gentry would be satisfied. 42 Despite such obvious disparities b e t w e e n ideal and practice, the reforms c o n t i n u e d to c o m e : fiscal reforms, reforms in schools, reforms in universities, and, eventually, the zemstvo

and judicial reforms.

But if the period from 1861 to 1 8 6 5 was an era o f reform, it was also an era o f repression (although n o t as severe as that which was to f o l l o w the assassination a t t e m p t o f Karakozov). Mikhail Mikhailov was exiled in 1 8 6 1 , Afanasy

Shchapov in

1862.

Chernyshevsky,

Pisarev, and Nikolay

Solovyevich were all arrested in July, 1 8 6 2 . Publication o f both and Russkoe Dostoevsky's

Slovo

Serno-

Sovremennik

was suspended in 1 8 6 2 , and in 1 8 6 3 the same fate befell

Vremja

(ironic, but nonetheless s y m p t o m a t i c o f the general

repression).

41

It should be noted that the landowners gained very little from their supposedly favorable position. In actual fact gentry criticism of reform institutions (such as the mirovoj posrednik) was often as harsh as that of the radicals, although for different reasons. For a more objective view of the gentry and Emancipation policies, see Terence Emmons, The Russian Landed Gentry and the Peasant Emancipation of 1861 (Cambridge, 1968). " P.s.s., 10: 99. Obviously addressed to Alexander II, "Pis'ma bez adresa" is quite favorably disposed to certain segments of liberal opinion, in particular gentry liberals proposing constitutional reform in 1862. This does not mean, however, that Chernyshevsky had made any lasting peace with liberalism - as was to be amply demonstrated in the coming years (cf. his novel Prolog).

Sleptsov Redivivus

51

The ephemeral hopes of certain radicals for a general revolution, based on peasant disturbances after the Emancipation, failed to materialize; and a series of mysterious fires in Petersburg and various towns along the Volga during 1862 only served to strengthen the government's policy of repression, as did the Polish rebellion of 1863. The "liberal" Katkov had turned into a mouthpiece for Russian nationalism, oppositional tendencies among the liberal gentry simply evaporated (largely as a result of the Polish crisis), and the radicals — lacking any coherent organization — were feuding among themselves. Nekrasov could well write of hard times in his "Rycar' na cas" (1862): "Zakhvatilo vas trudnoe vremja / Negotovymi k trudnoj b o r ' b e . " It is precisely these "hard times" which form the historical background of Trudnoe vremja; but there are other issues, less directly related to historical events, which play an equally important role in establishing the work's milieu. Primary among these is the previously mentioned ideologies-dash between liberalism and radicalism for the direction of Russia's future development. In addition, the issue of women's emancipation — psychological, mental, and (to a lesser degree) physical — also occupies a prominent position in determining the relations between Sleptsov's characters. As has been noted earlier, Sleptsov displayed considerable interest in the "woman question," and he uses it in Hard Times to form a thematic line rivaling in importance the contest between liberal (Shchetinin) and radical (Ryazanov). Such is the work's base, the events and issues which comprise its theme and motivate its action. Its artistic implementation is deceptively simple: there is little plot development, and, despite the possibility for a ménage à trois, the love interest is purposely suppressed (or, more accurately, redirected). Instead, the work is oriented toward development of its two major themes, the razoblacenie of liberal gradualism and the right of a woman to determine her own future; and to this end it is heavily dependent on dialog "confrontations" between its three leading characters. Sleptsov is very much at home in this type of situation. Indeed, it is only by virtue of his ability to render conversational speech in a natural yet dramatic form that Hard Times avoids falling under the weight of leaden tendentiousness, so characteristic of

the roman à thèse. The novel opens with the arrival of Ryazanov (the protagonist) at the country estate of one of his university acquaintances — Shchetinin. From the beginning, Ryazanov is presented as an enigmatic sort, little inclined to superfluous conversation. To the coachman's queries as to his line of work and background, he merely answers that he is not employed ("ne sluzu") and that he is the son of a priest. However, to anyone at all familiar with Russia of the 1860s, Ryazanov's sardonic replies are quite sufficient to identify him as a raznocinec and, most likely, a radical.

52

William C. Brumfield

It is just such a familiarity with the course of events (fairs dela, "delo" being a frequently used euphemism for the radical cause) that Sleptsov relies on throughout Hard Times in his attempt to run ideological contraband through the censorial blockade. And in this particular case it is just as well that such a blockade existed, for it serves Sleptsov's artistic purposes. Since both author and fictional creation exist under the same circumstances of repression, Sleptsov's Aesopian language is perfectly suited to Ryazanov's thinly veiled political remarks. Korney Chukovsky has devoted an extensive article to the ezopovskaja rec' used in Hard Times," and it would be superfluous to repeat his skillful, if occasionally forced, deductions. However, Chukovsky omits certain important allusions (some in favor of his political bias, others not), and it is to these we now turn our attention. Among the first of the allusions are passages which establish the ideological "physiognomy" of the liberal pomescik Shchetinin. Presented before the reader is introduced to Shchetinin, these passages are unobtrusively integrated into the natural course of Ryazanov's observations of his new surroundings. But beneath this seemingly innocent narrative purpose is an unequivocal political message. The most notable example is contained in a description of Shchetinin's manor: The house was in the old style, one-story, with a belvedere; but it had been redone and rebuilt. Various incongruities and inconveniences peculiar to old country homes had been removed, where practical, with the help of various additions and alterations, which, although they accomplished their goal, deprived the structure of its typicality and apparently completely disfigured its former physiognomy. . . . Inside the house, even more than outside, fresh traces of the recent reform were evident. . . . But despite all this, despite the obviousness of the improvements that had been carried out, everything - absolutely everything - still bore another, ineradicable stamp: low ceilings, wide tile stoves, and even the dimensions and arrangement of the rooms - all clearly proved that one can burn houses of this sort, but they can't be done o v e r 4 4

This is political allegory of the purest sort; and if the reader is at first unable to grasp its meaning (even with the use of the word "reform"), it will become more than obvious as the work progresses. No amount of alteration (reform) can change the basic structure (of the existing order). "Doma takogo roda szec' mozno, no peresozdat' nel'zja." 43 "Tajnopis' 'Trudnogo vremeni'." Of all the sources in which this article appears, Ljudi i knigi is perhaps the most available (Moscow, 1958), pp. 228-271. 44 Slepcov, Socinenija v dvux tomax (Moscow, 1957), 2: 8. All subsequent quotations from Hard Times will be identified in the text by page number (from volume two of this edition). The translations are my own.

Sleptsov Redivivus

53

Yet, the fact that such alterations have been attempted indicates that the owner is convinced of their usefulness. Such is indeed the case with Shchetinin; and as Ryazanov wanders through Shchetinin's study he comes across further evidence of his classmate's enthusiasm for the fashionable trappings of progress: several European newspapers and certain journals — also European — devoted to agriculture (including one entitled — ironically, as it turns out — Journal d'agriculture pratique). Of course, the fact that these symbols of enlightenment, many of them with their pages uncut, are strewn about the room in no apparent order casts doubts on the depth of their reader's commitment to the new ways. One has the feeling that in more sympathetic hands Shchetinin would have taken his place in the tradition of Russia's well-meaning but ineffectual gentry reformers — another Tentetnikov or Nekhlyudov. And in a sense he does. However, Sleptsov is not prepared to let his liberal squire off that easily. These are hard times, and good intentions are worth no more than the breath it takes to express them. As a matter of fact, they are (according to Sleptsov) positively harmful, for they mask a desperate situation with the illusion that, given time, things will get better. The first indication that all is not well v dome Scetininyx comes from the estate clerk, Ivan Stepanych — one of the work's cleverly-drawn secondary characters. A born reactionary, supremely confident in the efficacy of the fist, Ivan Stepanych avidly devours newspaper accounts of wars and rumors of wars all over the world (in America, Poland, Italy), and is known to mumble the word "Maryland" (a reference to Lee's 1863 summer campaign) in his sleep. His consuming ambition is to participate in the suppression of the Polish rebellion, particularly since Russia had begun a program of pacification by replacing Polish officials with Russians. He understandably has little patience with his employer's gumannost' or with the new reforms, which he sees as so much liberal wishy washiness: [Ivan Stepanych:) "Self-government, he sez . . . They write in these here newspapers: the c o m m o n sense of the people . . . The devils! That's right. . . All these schools . . . To hell with 'em . . . Here's your towel. I sez to Alexander Vasilyich [Shchetinin] . . . Want some tea?" [Ryazanov: ] "No, not now. I'll wait for them." "All right, wait! I sez to Alexander Vasilyich: Give 'em the stick!" "And what does Alexander Vasilyich say?" "What's he say? Always the same line - humaneness, from the newspapers." 4 5 [pp. 9 - 1 0 ]

45 Sleptsov's technique of inserting incidental remarks into a conversation is wellillustrated in this passage. The device is occasionally used to vary the pace of the work's extended "ideological" dialog.

54

William C. Brumfield

As strange as it might seem at first, Ryazanov and Ivan Stepanych get along rather well together. Not that there is any chumminess, for Ivan Stepanych observes all the boundaries of class distinction; nor is there any possibility that Ryazanov sympathizes with Ivan Stepanych's reactionary mentality. But at least there is no dissimulation in his views; one knows exactly where he stands. And, curiously enough, these views coincide with Ryazanov's in their contempt toward the institution of Emancipation reforms. Whether intentional or unintentional, it is quite appropriate that Sleptsov should have radical and reactionary rooming next to each other, separated only by a thin partition. When Shchetinin finally enters, he showers Ryazanov with the usual conversational trivialities of reunion between classmates who have not seen each other for several years. However, Ryazanov is in no mood to encourage Shchetinin's effusions of Bruderschaft. His response to Shchetinin's chatter — with its jovial tone of curiosity about certain (revolutionary) events in Petersburg — contains a barely concealed sarcasm. While both were apparently idealists a la Herzen and Ogarev during their university years, it is obvious that the two are now divided by a totally different approach to social and political issues. Ryazanov has become a hardened proponent of radicalism; Shchetinin, a zealous supporter of progress through reform. The radical is exhausted by the political defeats of recent years — a condition reflected by his physical state ("Khud-to ty kak!") — while the liberal is ebullient with projects for the future. It is Ryazanov's irony opposed to Shchetinin's enthusiasm. After the initial half-joking, half-serious sparring, Shchetinin launches into a description of his goals for the future, goals reminiscent of Tolstoy's "family happiness" philosophy: one must build for the future, for one's family. Ryazanov's bemused reaction is illustrated in the following passage: [Ryazanov:] "Do you have any children?" [Shchetinin:] "Are you serious? No, my friend, no children, and thank God I don't have any yet. First you have to prepare something for them, you have to build a nest." "What more of a nest do you want?" asked the guest, pointing to the room around him. "Or maybe you plan to build each one of them a henhouse?" "No, but I'm of the general opinion that parents are obligated to save for their children, you know, education and all that. . . . You have to think of everything ahead of time." "Yes," said the guest, as if considering something. He continued to pace the room. "Yes, that's commendable. Well, and how are the preparations going?" "Not bad. A little at a time. You can't do it all at once." "Of course not. And what about these . . ." asked the guest, standing in

Sleptsov

Redivivus

55

front of Shchetinin and pointing, "these reserves? Are they in separate chests: this one for Mashenka and this one for Nicky, or are they all together?" "What's the matter with you!" Shchetinin shouted jokingly. "Did you come here to laugh at me?" [p. 14]

A dangerous question;and at this point Ryazanov makes a tactical retreat. He relates how his mother actually put his sisters' dowries in separate trunks — a system rendered superfluous when father spent them all on drink. Ryazanov's moral: "Odnomu nel'zja ne kopit', a drugomu nel'zja ne propit'." Shchetinin then strikes the pose of a generous landlord, harried and misunderstood by both the peasants (cf. Tolstoy's "Utro pomescika," Chekhov's "Novaja daca") and his fellow pomesciki. He had tried to give the peasants an allotment of land (which in their opinion they already owned), and was met with resistance: " 'We don't want it; well wait and see what else comes.' " The peasants' suspicion draws a favorable response from Ryazanov (as it did from Sleptsov in his article "Popytki narodnoj zumalistiki" 4 '): " 'Very good! That's why I love the Russian people: they don't know Latin, but they're afraid of dona ferentes just the same.' " [p. 16] Shchetinin's reply — one which Sleptsov loves to attribute to liberals — is: " 'The peasants don't know their own good.' " The affair is finally settled by the arbiter, but not before Shchetinin has incurred the wrath of neighboring landlords for his "red" practices (cf. the elder Kirsanov's complaints of a similar plight in Fathers and Sons). Ryazanov's reaction is one of mock surprise and deliberate, sarcastic exaggeration of Shchetinin's "radical" tendencies. There is clearly a difference in outlook. The following morning Ryazanov accompanies Ivan Stepanych on a trip to the village. This is the first of several interludes (passages with no direct relation to developments between the three major characters) which Sleptsov uses to illustrate the reality behind his characters' "theoretical" dialog. The message is always the same: things are bad in the country. Through a series of scenes Sleptsov gives a picture of the filth, squalor, and poverty which surround the peasant, while at the same time Ryazanov is shown expensive English agricultural equipment, lying unused because of its unsuitability to local conditions (another echo of Fathers and Sons). At the end of his tour Ryazanov returns to find Shchetinin's wife, Marya Nikolaevna, involved in her version of small deeds philanthropy — "healing" the peasants. When he makes a sarcastic aside, questioning the seriousness of one particular peasant's complaint (and, by implication, her own usefulness), she is forced to smile. Nothing, it seems, is immune from Ryazanov's irony. 46

Sovremennik,

1863, No. 3.

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William C. Bnimfleld

Once inside, he continues in the same tone with Shchetinin, who is finally driven to exasperation: " 'What's this with you people from Petersburg, that you never talk about anything seriously?' " [p. 27] Ryazanov replies, almost to himself, that there are certain matters they take quite seriously. It is doubtful that Shchetinin realizes the meaning of Ryazanov's remark, for he continues by accusing the Petersburg intellectuals of having lost contact with reality: " ' L i v e here a while, friend. Take a look at how we fieldhands work with the raw material. Maybe your views will change.' " Shchetinin then returns to his familiar lament: the peasants are too stupid and obstinate to see their own good. " 'Then you'll see that it's not enough to help these people; you have to persuade and beg them to let you be useful to them.' " [p. 28] To this bit of self-justification Ryazanov replies with a paraphrase of Hamlet (Act III, scene iv): " 'Yes. What's that Hamlet says? "Now virtue must humbly beg vice for leave to . . .".' " It soon becomes clear just what Shchetinin means when he talks of working with "raw material." A peasant comes to plead for the return of his calf, impounded by Shchetinin for trespassing (potrava). Following an old custom the peasant falls on his knees; but this only provokes an outburst from Shchetinin, whose liberal sentiments are offended by such servility. Instead, he expounds on the "real" reason for the peasant's fine: " 'Listen! Understand, I don't need your money, I won't get rich from it. I'm fining you for your own good, so from now on you'll be more careful, so you won't let your cattle loose. YouH thank me yourself for teaching you reason.' " [pp. 28-29] The peasant meekly agrees to all that Shchetinin says, but when he stammers something about overlooking the matter this time, Shchetinin insists that it is entirely in the hands of the law (similar to Alexander I's reputed evasion "The law is stronger than I am"). The peasant then throws himself on his knees to beg for mercy. Shchetinin walks away in disgust from this pathetic demonstration only to face Ryazanov's quip: " 'No, I see you still don't know how to beg vice for leave to fine himself.' " [p. 30] Ryazanov has caught Shchetinin in a basic disparity between one aspect of his liberal rhetoric (to inculcate understanding and respect for the new laws governing relations between landlord and peasant) and the level on which this rhetoric is applied. Shchetinin sees himself as a progressive and is exasperated by the fact that the peasants do not appreciate his humaneness. But for Ryazanov, Shchetinin is simply trying to persuade the peasants to accept essentially the same old system of landlord domination under a new guise. 4 7 47

Tolstoy also continued to be concerned with this issue, as is evident from a conversation between Levin and his brother Nikolay: "I am trying to find means of working productively for myself and for

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57

(Indeed, one has the feeling that the peasants would prefer the old system of complete subservience to the landlord — subservience tempered by personal relations, as opposed to purely legal ones — rather than face this strange new type with his talk of law and the peasants' interests.) Yet, somewhat later Ryazanov shocks both Shchetinin and his wife with the ironic suggestion that they should take legal action against some workmen guilty of negligence. They consider this little short of cruelty, but to Ryazanov it is only a logical extension of Shchetinin's dealings with the peasants: Now that customs have considerably softened and village inhabitants have fully recognized the value of enlightenment, forceful measures have also become more delicate, spiritual so to speak; things like admonitions and fines. . . . So we dance around in this manner and we'll continue to dance around for quite a while, until the measure of our transgressions is fulfilled. Only why stand on ceremony? . . . It's a very simple deal, and the only question is who's going to give it to whom [kto kogo ] . . . " [p. 37 ]

Through all the grappling between Ryazanov and Shchetinin, Marya Nikolaevna — assuming her husband right in all respects — has kept silent, intervening only rarely. However, in preparation for the decisive role she will eventually play, Sleptsov makes it clear that she is following their arguments with no little interest. Although annoyed by Ryazanov's irreverent attitude toward her husband's views, she is intrigued with the novelty (for her) of his iconoclasm. At first unable to elicit a response from Ryazanov — she even tries a bit of coquetry: " 'You probably despise women, don't you?' " — she finally succeeds in putting the question which has disturbed her since Ryazanov's arrival: "Tell me, please, you . . . you don't consider my husband a stupid man, do you?" "No, I don't." "Then why do you two never agree on anything?" "Because it's not in our interests." [p. 47]

Unsatisfied by Ryazanov's answer, she decides (o ask her husband what all these quarrels mean. When she does, Shchetinin -- underestimating the seriousness of her question — laughingly dismisses the whole affair as so much nonsense. This reaction leads to an emotional scene in which Marya, angry at his inability to get the better of Ryazanov, accuses her husband of deception: the laborers. I want to organize - " he [Levin] answered hotly. "You don't want to organize anything: it's simply just as you've been all your life, that you want to be original, to show that you are not simply exploiting the peasants but have some idea in view." (Anna Karenina, Part III, Chapter 32; Garnett translation)

58

William C. Brumfield "Do you really think that from all these arguments I didn't understand that you're trying to deceive me and others? Me you could, of course, but Ryazanov catches you on every word, at every step he shows that you say one thing and do another. What? That's not true, you say? Well, say something! Aha! so it's true! You see! It's true!" [p. 4 9 ]

She then hurls the ultimate reproach: " 'You wanted to make me into a housekeeper.' " (One suspects that Sleptsov might have drawn on his own marital experience for the intense realism of such scenes.) Completely beside herself with anger, Shchetinina continues with a tirade which develops into one of the fundamental passages of Hard Times; and as such, it deserves extensive quotation: "You told me we would work together, we would do some great deed which might destroy us, and not only us, but those around us. But I wasn't afraid. If you feel strong enough, we'll go together. And I did. Of course I was stupid then, I didn't really understand what you were telling me. I only felt, I guessed. And I would have gone to the end of the world. You saw how much I loved my mother, and I left her. She almost died from grief, and yet I left her all the same, because I thought, I believed we would do something really valuable. And how did it end? You swear at the peasants for every kopeck, while I pickle cucumbers and hear about peasants beating their wives, and just stand there with a dumb look on my face. I Listen and listen, and then go back to pickling cucumbers. If I'd wanted to be what you made of me, I would have married some Shishkin and maybe I would have three children by now. At least then I would know that I'm sacrificing myself for the children; but now . . . How disgusting!" [pp. 49-50]

Although this outburst illustrates a deeply felt emotional crisis, it contains an element of almost childish petulance. But then Shchetinina is no Vera Pavlovna (if one can admit the possibility of comparing Sleptsov's heroine with Chernyshevsky's cardboard moralist). No doubt of provincial background, with a limited education, somewhat naive in her demands on her husband, she is simply a young, idealistic woman in a genuine quandary as to the meaning of her existence (a situation similar to that in which the heroine of Chekhov's "Nevesta" finds herself). Searching for a sense of direction, a purpose to which she can devote herself, she now sees the difference between Shchetinin's rhetoric and its practice - so evident in his dealings with the peasants — as applicable to her own life. Furthermore, the remark about Shishkin and those three hypothetical children — a remark at once artless and calculating — raises another, more intimate question. Although Shchetinin is obviously devoted to his wife, and, in his own way, affectionate toward her, his pallid rationalizations ("saving for the future" — saving what?) lead to doubts as to his ability to satisfy his wife in any sense.

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Having brought the reader through the first (and in many respects the most important) of the work's crises, Sleptsov "decompresses," returns to the world beyond his characters' interrelationships. Shchetinin, completely dumbfounded by the scene with his wife, decides to quit the premises by going to a district meeting of the mirovoj s"ezd (ostensibly a gathering of the official arbiters and representatives of various social classes). He invites Ryazanov to accompany him, but in this, as in the other interludes, Ryazanov remains little more than a passive onlooker, an observational device for Sleptsov's portrayal (or exposé) of the meeting. The portrait is not a flattering one, but it does have moments of burlesque humor reminiscent of Sleptsov's stories. The meeting and its attendant festivities are presented as nothing other than a pretext for a drinking spree (a situation Sleptsov is quite adept at rendering), while the peasants who bring complaints for arbitration are treated like cattle. The concluding banquet — supposedly held to unite the classes at one table — consists of gentry and one "token" merchant, who, emboldened by drink, creates a scandal by swearing and threatening to buy out his noble companions ( " 'Vsekh vas kuplju, prodam i opjat' vykuplju' " — perhaps more prophetic than he realizes). As the banquet continues with drunkenness, obscenity, and even an elaborate blasphemy, Shchetinin — sickened by the spectacle — and Ryazanov — his cynicism vindicated — take their leave. Meanwhile, back at the estate, Marya Nikolaevna has recovered her composure and effects a tenuous reconciliation with her husband; but there can be no question of her going back to the old ways ( " 'I can't pickle cucumbers any more' "). The spell has been broken. However, she does make what proves to be one last attempt at liberal philanthropy: she decides to open a school for the peasant children. Reaction to her proposal is less than overwhelming. (The mother of her first prospect — a little girl from whose ear she pulls a sprouting pea — is totally unable to comprehend the sense of the mistress' offer. She thinks Shchetinina wants to take her daughter from her and — judging from her fearful reaction — obviously misinterprets ucit' to mean corporal punishment.) The village priest — another of the work's excellent secondary characters — is equally suspicious, although for different reasons: he assumes it is some scheme concocted by Ryazanov to deprive the local deacon of his job. But Ryazanov himself is anything but encouraging. In his continuing course on political awareness, he explains to Shchetinina that all the articles she intends to read on new principles of education and various other reforms are merely attempts to preserve the status quo. In a passage which illustrates Ryazanov at his most nihilistic, he states: "You see, it's all the same. You have these signs, and on them it's written

60

William C. Brumfìeld 'Russian Truth' or 'White Swan.' So you go looking for a white swan - but it's a tavern. In order to read these b o o k s and understand them, you have to have a lot of practice," continued Ryazanov, getting up. "If you have a fresh mind and you pick up one of these books, then you really will see white swans: schools, and courts, and constitutions, and prostitutions, and Magna Chartas, and the devil knows what else . . . But if you look into the matter, you'll see that it's nothing but a carry-out joint." [p. 83]

In the interval, Sleptsov again sends Ryazanov into the "real world," this time as he accompanies the mirovoj posrednik on his rounds. Entrusted with the task of mediating disputes between landowner and peasant (and among peasants themselves), the arbiter's position was not an enviable one — as Tolstoy found out in 1861. However, in keeping with Sleptsov's debunking of all institutions connected with reform, the arbiter in Hard Times is portrayed as a sort of gendarme responsible for enforcing the landlords' interests. Whether or not such a portrait was representative is certainly open to question; and Sleptsov's treatment is not entirely negative. Like Ivan Stepanych, the mediator is firmly set in his views on the peasant (lazy, shiftless, prone to drink), and he merely acts in accordance with these views (as opposed to Shchetinin, who holds the same opinions, but tries to disguise them). However, Ryazanov eventually tires of the mediator's bullying, and after a number of episodic scenes showing the latter at work (scenes which allow Sleptsov to display his talents as a humorist and a recorder of colloquial speech), he abruptly returns to the Shchetinin estate. Shchetinin and Ryazanov, thoroughly alienated from one another, are no longer arguing (their conversation is limited to coldly polite formalities), and an atmosphere of tedium settles over the estate. Symbolized by the stifling, debilitating summer heat, the characters' ennui is presented in a manner one associates with Chekhov's plays — meaningless attempts at conversation, sighs, and indefinable longings, all laced with the consumption of an immense quantity of tea. (The most frequently repeated phrase seems to be caju khotite?) Then the break occurs. During a particularly depressing stroll through the village, Shchetinina happens to witness the flogging of two peasants for arrears in payment of their assessments to the commune. In a bitter letter to her husband she writes that she can no longer stand her existence with him: " 'I've stopped loving you because you (consciously or unconsciously — it doesn't matter) forced me to play a stupid role in your stupid comedy.' " [p. 138] She concludes by stating her intention to leave; any further argument is pointless. Having disposed of Shchetinin, she now turns to Ryazanov; but he is no more capable of offering her what she desires than Shchetinin. In a conversa-

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tion which, more than any other, reveals Ryazanov's character and the motives behind his behavior, he confronts Shchetinina's search for moral support with his cold rationalism. Combining a Hegelian view of history (as an inexorable dialectical process) with a materialistic, social Darwinian explanation of man's actions, Ryazanov asserts that the events and practices which so upset her are quite natural and will continue to exist until a new order is established: " 'All that's left is to think up, to create a new life; but until then . . .' he waved his hand." [p. 148] Not content with Ryazanov's prevarication, Shchetinina timidly suggests that the two of them could work together for some useful purpose; but Ryazanov promptly quashes her proposal by characterizing his life as so much rubbish. He taunts her vision of a radical paradise in Petersburg: " 'What beckons you dahin, dahiril Do you seriously think that lemons grow there?' " (a then common expression, taken from Mignon's song in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre). Calling contemporary radical activists, with their communes and artels, "small f r y " (very likely a critical allusion to Sleptsov's own activity), he nevertheless advises her to go to Petersburg and decide for herself. Perhaps she will, after all, find something useful there. As for himself, Ryazanov has no definite plans. Exhausted, devoid of enthusiasm, he sees himself as one who understands life all too clearly, and yet is unable to act: "Life is a curious thing, I'll tell you. You think you see life inside out, and you understand man backwards and forwards; so what else would you need? But no, that's not enough. Y o u need something else. You need passion, you need to be able simply to go in and take. . . . " [p. 151 ]

The knowledge he has gained from his (political) experience, a knowledge which admits no grand revolutionary illusions, seems to be accompanied by a decline in revolutionary enthusiasm. Indeed, although professing to believe in the need for radical social change, he is perceptive enough to realize the possible dangers in its implementation. One evening he hears Shchetinina enthusiastically playing the Marseillaise (after her "conversion") and cracks that the march reminds him of military drills from his university days. When Shchetinina objects that the Marseillaise is not the same as the Darmstadt March — one symbolizing revolution, the other reaction — he replies: " 'But no matter which one it is, it's a march all the same; therefore, sooner or later you'll hear "Halt! Form up!" and "Attennnshun!" Don't ever forget that.' " [p. 118] (A prophetic reference to "barracks socialism" which seems to have been overlooked by recent studies of Sleptsov.) In sum, Ryazanov — like Sleptsov himself after 1866 - is reduced to the passive role of waiting for the storm (a metaphor frequently used in radical

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Aesopian language to signify "reaction") to pass. Until then he can only pay lip service to some nebulous future, of which he has no real concept, while adopting a determinedly nihilistic stance toward all attempts at reforming the present system. At the conclusion o f their rendezvous, Shchetinina makes a final attempt to convince Ryazanov of her devotion to him. In the middle of what appears to be a declaration of love on her part, he abruptly interrupts to inform her, quite coldly, that he intends to leave not for Petersburg, but for the south. Until this point one feels that Shchetinina's actions have been governed as much by an emotional attraction to Ryazanov as by any idealistic motives. (It is for precisely this reason that Sleptsov must make a point o f negating the traditional ménage

à trois.)

N o w the ambiguity has been resolved; there can

be no possibility o f a personal relationship. Having recovered her composure, she informs Ryazanov, equally coldly, that she is determined to carry out her intention. It is a scene as old as Eugene

Onegin;

and, true to form, the

once-naive woman emerges not only stronger as a person, but also morally superior to her male preceptor. 4 " In the final scene Ryazanov takes leave of Shchetinin who, upset by the turn of events, accuses Ryazanov of having deprived him of his "family happiness." Ryazanov answers, in a frank admission of his own superfluity, that it would have happened all the same sooner or later: " T h e reason, friend, is life. The woman wants to live; and you and I take part in all this only as benign onlookers, with the emptiest o f roles: you were necessary in order to free her from her mother; I freed her from you; and as for me, she freed herself. N o w she doesn't need anybody - she's her own mistress." [pp. 156-157J 49

Somewhat consoled by the fact that at least Ryazanov is not abducting his wife, Shchetinin begins describing his new plans for the future: to make as much money as possible in order to carry out all his philanthropic projects. Ryazanov, unconvinced, warns him that after he gets through amassing money, there may not be anyone left to receive his good deeds — assuming the unlikely event that he, by then, still intended to part with his fortune. Ryazanov's farewell with Marya Nikolaevna is short and rather formal: she thanks him for his advice; he exhorts her to follow her own judgement. As

48

Sleptsov

shows Ryazanov

not

completely

devoid of

human emotions. When

Shchetinina leaves the room he expresses his frustration by throwing a book on the floor, and rushes to catch her. However, rationalism prevails: he restrains himself (and smiles). 49

This turn o f events (as explained by Ryazanov) bears an interesting resemblance to

the plot of Chekhov's "Nevesta."

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Ryazanov prepares to leave, Ivan Stepanych — as garrulous and friendly as ever - proposes that the two of them go to Poland (Russian carpetbaggers, as it were). Ryazanov finally departs with his one "trophy" — a deacon's son who, against his father's wishes, intends to enroll in a provincial school (another raznocinec activist in the making). Marya Nikolaevna, with a sigh at Ryazanov's departure, returns to her room to pack. Thus the novel ends in a stand-off: Shchetinin takes refuge in plans for practical activity on the estate; Ryazanov is left with his belief in some distant revolution; and Marya goes to Petersburg to face an uncertain future. All three have an equal chance of success. Only time will prove which of them, if any, has chosen correctly. What is the literary significance of Hard Times'1. Although the work has traditionally been discussed in social or political terms, it contains artistic qualities which have made it a minor classic, as interesting today for its portrait of a society in change as it was one hundred years ago. This accomplishment is due not only to the work's issues, but also to Sleptsov's skill in rendering them — a skill which has frequently been overlooked. In plot the work's structure is sparse and devoid of complexity, with an exposition subordinate to the demands of thematic development. Indeed, the plot structure - limited to the events which produce an estrangement between Shchetinina and her husband — is almost too light to support the rather considerable thematic load Sleptsov places upon it. As mentioned earlier, it is only by virtue of his ability to create dialog which is at once substantive and "conversational" that the work is sustained. The language itself is colloquial and informal in tone (not to mention the passages in which peasant speech is used) with a frequent use of particles, verbs without subjects, and numerous colloquial expressions. Furthermore, the dialog is presented so that the characters never seem to lose themselves in weighty, ponderous discussions (the exegetic type which makes one wish that the author would dispense with his characters altogether). Frequent off-the-cuff remarks, humorous or sarcastic interjections, flashes of anger, an abrupt shift from one scene to the next — these devices vary the pace and propel the dialog forward, while narrative intrusions are at times so rare that the work reads like a play. (It is not surprising that Stanislavsky, in a letter to Nemirovich-Danchenko, suggested that with certain modifications Hard Times would be suitable for staging.50 ) As a result Sleptsov succeeds, as well as anyone could, in creating the illusion that his characters are quite naturally speaking the lines he writes for them. It is no mean achievement. 50

K. S. Stanislavskij, Sobranie socinenij (Moscow, 1960), 7: 302-303.

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In broader terms, the work is organized around two interconnecting thematic strands — one dealing with the ideological conflict between Shchetinin and Ryazanov (liberalism versus radical nihilism), the other centered around the development and eventual "liberation" of Marya Shchetinina. The former predominates in the first part of the book, but the latter gains in importance as the plot develops. Interspersed between these two motifs are the scenes and interludes which compose the novel's immediate background, which inform it with a sense of reality (as interpreted by Sleptsov) and serve as a counterpoint to the verbal duel between Ryazanov and Shchetinin. (One of these scenes — the flogging of the peasants — also plays an important role in the plot development.) Finally, the work is suffused with the presence of nature — not Turgenev's lyrical nature with its symbolism of reconciliation and continuity, but a harsher, more elemental force. Through it, yet another, less obtrusive, background is formed, one which reflects the atmosphere of ennui and tension so prevalent in Hard Times. As for the characters, they are treated with an admirable equanimity. Despite Sleptsov's obvious sympathy with Ryazanov's political views and Shchetinina's break with her past, neither is portrayed without shortcomings; nor are Shchetinin's faults exaggerated to the point of caricature. His emotions, if not his views, are often portrayed just as sympathetically as those of the other characters. Indeed, it is a measure of Sleptsov's success that each of his three personages was in turn designated by critics as the central, positive figure (the designation depending on the critic's political bias). By the same token, each took his (or her) share of abuse. In sum, the characters are neither heroes nor villains, but the positions they represent are developed with a clarity sufficient to make their conflicts believable. Any treatment of the literary significance of Hard Times must eventually lead to a discussion of Ryazanov. For within this, Sleptsov's greatest creation, one sees a complex mingling of two seemingly contradictory images of the Russian literary hero — the superfluous man and the man of action. Ryazanov the superfluous represents a revolution defeated, an activist transformed into a cynic (or a realist), drained of emotion and unwilling to respond to the feelings of a woman who loves him (and to whom he, in turn, is attracted). There is a bit of the Onegin-Pechorin strain in this aspect of Ryazanov's character, as well as a certain affinity with Rudin. Furthermore, there is an interesting parallel with Bazarov (who also — at least toward the end of Fathers and Sons - manifests a combination of the superfluous and the active) and in particular with the relation between Bazarov and Odintsova. Of course, there are obvious differences: Odintsova is far more complex a character than Shchetinina, and Bazarov pursues a more active role in his relation with her than does Ryazanov with Shchetinina.

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65

Nevertheless, both relations have their beginnings in the woman's fascination for the hero's unorthodox political and social views as well as his ruthless manner of expressing them; and both fail because of an intellectual realization that the relation is senseless. As for Ryazanov the active, he represents an odd variation on Russian literature's search for a positive hero during the mid-nineteenth century. Connected with the rise to prominence of a new class, the raznocincy, this search is as much a quest for identity as for a literary role. In the fifties and early sixties it often took the form of the novel of ambition - Pisemsky's A Thousand Souls, Pomyalovsky's Mescanckoe scast'e and Molotov - with protagonists such as Kalinovich and Molotov seeking to make their way in the establishment, to gain a sense of power and independence. However, their attempts to confront the system always end either in defeat (Kalinovich) or in assimilation (Molotov, Zhadov from Ostrovsky's Dokhodnoe mesto).51 And in their collaboration they are mocked by a new variant of the superfluous man — the willfully superfluous, or "underground," man. The best example of this conflict can be found in Cherevanin's relation to Molotov (in the novel Molotov), but it is reflected to some degree by Raskolnikov's attitude to Razumikhin, and, paradoxically, by Ryazanov's to Shchetinin. Rising to replace the proponents of cestnaja cicikovscina (a term from Pomyalovsky's Molotov) was a new breed — the radical hero — less interested in personal advancement and more in the general "cause." Modeled partly on Chernyshevsky's Rakhmetov and partly on Pisarev's concept of the "thinking proletariat" (the novelists seem to have been little affected by the polemics between Russkoe Slovo and Sovremennik), these "new m e n " devoted themselves entirely to a negation of the existing order and to a preparation for its overthrow. Writers such as Nikolay Bazhin (1843-1908), Nikolay Blagoveshchensky (1837-1889), Ivan Kushchevsky (1847-1876), and Innokenty Fedorov-Omulevsky (1836-1883) produced an entire gallery of radicals and nihilists, relics of an attempt to fuse politics aiid the novel. Bazarov (the first of them all) and Ryazanov remain somewhat to the side of this trend, if only because of the greater depth — and ambiguity — of their literary representation; but they too must be included. Both Bazarov and Ryazanov fit into the category of the "thinking proletariat" (Pisarev's term, which in 1870 would be superseded by Lavrov's 51 Zhadov's capitulation is the subject of a satirical article by Sleptsov ("O teatre," suppressed by the censor). It was finally published in LN, v. 71, and has now been translated (in part) into English. Cf. Andrew Field's The Complection of Russian Literature (New York, 1971).

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William C. Brumfield

"critically-thinking individual"); and, quite naturally, both were enthusiastically received by Pisarev in the articles "Bazarov" and "Podrastajuscaja gumannost' ". Both are skeptical in their attitudes toward the gentry milieu in which they find themselves (a skepticism applied to society and its institutions in general), both speak of the need to wipe the slate clean, to destroy and build anew, without dreams of liberal reform. Finally, both carry a sense of pessimism as to their ability to change the present situation (although Bazarov is initially endowed with great expectations). But if there are striking resemblances between the two, there are also substantial differences. Bazarov is a scientist and his political views, with their quasi-scientific materialism, are — as presented by Turgenev — obviously conditioned by the methods he uses in his research (symbolized by the dissection of frogs). Emotions and principles are worthless, man's needs and desires can, with proper study, be explained in physiological terms; by the same token, once society is understood and rationally organized, there will be no problems. Ryazanov, on the other hand, is something of a professional radical, a writer (probably a political essayist), and his views — also materialistic — are conditioned by a socio-political view of history. Devoid of Bazarov's breezy self-confidence, less inclined to the rhetoric of nihilism, he takes a more sober view of the difficulties involved in a reconstruction of the social order. When. compared with Bazarov's initial enthusiasm, Ryazanov's pessimism seems to be the product of an entirely different point of view — as, indeed, it is. Ryazanov's outlook is the result of experience with the realities of political life in Russia, realities of which Bazarov has no firm conception; and if Ryazanov lacks the youthful vigor of Turgenev's "nihilist," he gains in the unromantic, down-to-earth sense of one who realizes the terms of battle. In the final analysis, both Ryazanov and Bazarov are presented as defeated activists (although Sleptsov implies that Ryazanov's defeat may be only temporary). But one feels that Turgenev's Don Quixote is destroyed primarily from an inability of the author to conceive of his positive hero in action. Sleptsov's Hamlet, on the other hand, is merely biding his time. Critical reaction to Hard Times was predictably diverse, and since Korney Chukovsky has devoted an extensive article to this diversity, 52 there is no need to retrace the details of his survey here. In general, the critics took sides along a liberal-radical boundary. Foremost among the reviews of a radical persuasion is Pisarev's "Podrastajuscaja gumannost' " (Russkoe Slovo, 1865, No. 12). Characterizing Ryazanov as "one of the brilliant representatives of 52 "Obzor kriticeskix otzyvov o povesti 'Trudnoe vremja'," V. A. Slepcov: (Moscow, 1932), v. 1.

Socinenija

Sleptsov Redh'ivus

67

my beloved Bazarov t y p e , " Pisarev actually devotes most of the article to a running polemic with the proponent of igrusecnyj liberalism - Shchetinin. Other radicals' essays developed a similar pro-Ryazanov, anti-Shchetinin appraisal, although some critics were disturbed by Ryazanov's pessimism and resignation in the face of reaction. Tkachev, for example, was quite hostile to Ryazanov ("Podrastajuscie sily," Delo, 1868, No. 9), calling him a "parasite," "philistine," and "windbag"; but he was little short of ecstatic in his praise of Marya Shchetinina as a model for the "new woman." N. K. Mikhaylovsky took an equally elevated view of Shchetinina in his "Raznocincy i kajusciesja dvorjane" (Otecestvennye Zapiski, 1874, No. 4), as did certain other populistoriented critics. In an interesting "economic" interpretation Vera Zasulich takes Shchetinin to task as worse than the former serf-owners in his exploitation of the peasant under the pretense of enlightened liberalism ("Krepostnaja podkladka 'progressivnyx recej'," Novoe Slovo, 1897, No. 9). In a post-Revolutionary extension of the radical perspective, early Soviet critics (e.g., Gorky and N. Iordansky in their respective prefaces to the 1922 and 1923 editions of Hard Times) focused on Ryazanov. They admitted his failure as a revolutionary activist, but emphasized his belief in the necessity of revolution. The liberal critics were unable to muster such an impressive roster in the ideological battle over Hard Times (sociological criticism seems to be a radical province); nor were their opinions as diverse — at least not on the issue of the characters' relative moral hierarchy. 53 Quite simply, Ryazanov was the villain; Shchetinin the hero (albeit a bit too inarticulate as a spokesman for reformism); and Marya Nikolaevna a silly, ungrateful scatterbrain. M. Protopopov provides a typical example of this approach in his "Po povodu odnoj povesti" (Severnyj Vestnik, 1888, No. 6). The " l e f t " liberal M. Avdeev, in his book Nase obscestvo v gerojakh i geroinjakh literatury (1874), gives a more sympathetic portrait of Ryazanov: "the most remarkable and successful personality which our recent literature has shown us." Presenting Ryazanov as an honest sort who is unafraid to "look things right in the face and admit that his cause was lost" (a misinterpretation of Ryazanov's pessimism), Avdeev places the blame for Ryazanov's nihilistic attitudes on his "economic and social situation." Other liberal critics, however, continued to attack Ryazanov's lack of faith in progress through reform, and accused Sleptsov of deliberately making Shchetinin seem foolish and inept, thus depriving the novel of objectivity (e.g., K. Golovin,

Russkij roman i russkoe ob&cestvo, 1904). 53

As to the work's artistic value, opinions ranged from laudatory (Protopopov) to negative (E. F. Zarin, "Cetyre povesti i odin ponomar'," Otecestvennye Zapiski, 1865, No. 12).

68

William C. Brumfield

Hard Times has survived its critical comment, from proponents and detractors alike. Well-executed, strict in pursuit of its thematic objectives, it will continue to present an artistically successful picture of many of the most important issues facing Russian society during the 1860s (and later) — the Emancipation reforms, political repression, radicalism, and women's rights. 54 Marya Shchetinina, perfectly rendered in her naively idealistic striving for the nastojascee delo, will remain perhaps the best sympathetic portrait of women's emancipation in Russian literature. Shchetinin will continue to symbolize the quest for a scheme which will somehow make an intolerable situation tolerable. As for Ryazanov, with all the complexities and ambiguities of his character, one can only assume that it was he whom Chekhov had in mind when he said: "Sleptsov taught me, better than most, to understand the Russian intelligent - and my own self, as well." 55 CONCLUSION

Sleptsov is a unique phenomenon in Russian literature — a social activist who was able to translate the issues which concerned him into works of genuine literary value. As such, he was able, as no other writer, to infuse his writings with a sense of the social and political realities peculiar to that most politicized of Russian decades — the 1860s. Thus, when one compares Hard Times with two other works oriented toward the political atmosphere of the sixties — Turgenev's Fathers and Sons and Dostoevsky's The Possessed - one sees that for all Bazarov's importance as a symbol (albeit a disputed one) of the radical intelligentsia, and for all Dostoevsky's prophetic insight into the ruthlessness and amorality underlying revolutionary activity, these works remain psychological character portraits, highly colored by the authors, who had no direct experience with the movements supposedly embodied in Bazarov and Petr Verkhovensky. 56 54 In connection with these issues as presented in Hard Times, Tolstoy (who, judging from his diary, read Hard Times with great interest) wrote: "Yes, demands were different in the sixties. And because these demands were connected with the murder of March 1 [Alexander II's assassination], people imagined that these demands were not valid. In vain. They will be until such time as they are fulfilled." (December 19, 1889). P.s.s. (Moscow, 1928-1964), 51: 194. It is perhaps more than a coincidence that one week after reading Trudnoe vremja Tolstoy began work on Resurrection. One of the novel's secondary characters is a young radical named Marya Shchetinina. 55 From a conversation with Gorky. M. Gor'kij: Materialy i issledovanija (Moscow, 1934), 3: 146. 56 Although it may be true that Dostoevsky drew on his personal knowledge of Petrashevsky for the portrait of Petr Verkhovensky, the very fact that he resorted to such an anachronism only further demonstrates his lack of contact with the radicals of

Sleptsov S l e p t s o v — a t l e a s t in Hard

Times

Redivivus

69

- was able t o bring a personal k n o w l e d g e of

t h e r a d i c a l m o v e m e n t i n t o his f i c t i o n a l w o r l d , a n d in s o d o i n g a v o i d e d Turgenev's work -

romanticism

and

Dostoevsky's

caricature.

It

is t o

both

Sleptsov's

b o t h as a r e f l e c t i o n o f t h e m e n t a l i t y w h i c h p r o d u c e d it a n d as a n

illustration of a highly significant ideological trend - that one m u s t turn for a m o r e sober appraisal of the sixties. A n o t h e r , closely related, aspect of Sleptsov's c o m b i n a t i o n of literature a n d s o c i a l a c t i v i s m is his t r e a t m e n t o f t h e m o v e m e n t f o r w o m e n ' s e m a n c i p a t i o n ; for no other

Russian

writer, Chernyshevsky

not

excepted,

portrayed

the

issues of f e m i n i s m , t h e b a c k g r o u n d of f r u s t r a t i o n , t h e r e s t r a i n t s of c o n v e n t i o n as c o g e n t l y a s S l e p t s o v . In Hard

Times

as well as in h i s f e u i l l e t o n s —

w h i c h , w i t h t h e i r s p e c i f i c r e f e r e n c e t o s o c i a l i s s u e s , o f t e n s e r v e d as a b r i d g e between

social c o n c e r n

and

fictional representation -

Sleptsov

repeatedly

c h a m p i o n e d t h e c a u s e o f e q u a l i t y f o r w o m e n . ( I n t h i s r e s p e c t h e h a s m u c h in common plays Times

with A

the Norwegian

Doll's

House

in t h e i r p o r t r a y a l

playwright

in p a r t i c u l a r of

Henrik

Ibsen, certain

of

whose

bear a close r e s e m b l a n c e to

the heroine's revolt

Hard

against her bourgeois,

or

gentry, milieu.) Yet, just

what

sort

of

radical

was

Sleptsov?

Soviet

commentary

has

p r e s e n t e d h i m as a c o n v i n c e d f o e o f t h e e s t a b l i s h e d o r d e r , a b e l i e v e r in t h e c o m i n g r e v o l u t i o n . H e c e r t a i n l y w a s a n o p p o n e n t o f w h a t h e s a w as i n e f f e c tual a t t e m p t s t o p a t c h a l e a k y s h i p o f s t a t e , a n d h e w a s c o n s i s t e n t in e x p o s i n g (as f a r a s c e n s o r s h i p w o u l d a l l o w ) t h e m a n y a b u s e s a n d g r a v e s o c i a l p r o b l e m s c o n f r o n t i n g Russia during the 1 860s. However, Sleptsov was a n y t h i n g b u t a n a r r o w ideologue; nor was he, by a n y s t r e t c h o f t h e i m a g i n a t i o n , an a c t i v e r e v o l u t i o n a r y . In f a c t , t h e r a d i c a l movement

as a w h o l e d u r i n g t h e s i x t i e s h a d n o t y e t r e a c h e d t h e s t a g e o f

advocating a n d i m p l e m e n t i n g a c o n c r e t e plan for political revolution. With the d i s e n c h a n t m e n t of h o p e s for a t r a n s f o r m a t i o n of Russian society immediately a f t e r the E m a n c i p a t i o n , f e w "critically-thinking i n d i v i d u a l s " of that era were able t o visualize a specific m e t h o d

by

w h i c h m e a n i n g f u l social a n d

political change w o u l d o c c u r . " Therefore, Sleptsov for a change

a n d o t h e r s of radical persuasion — could only w o r k

in s o c i a l a t t i t u d e s a n d c o n t i n u e

to reject the possibility

of

r e f o r m w i t h i n t h e e x i s t i n g r e g i m e . T h i s a p p r o a c h c a n b e s t b e c h a r a c t e r i z e d as " c l a s s i c " n i h i l i s m — a t e r m w h i c h , in its p o l i t i c a l a n d social m e a n i n g , origithe sixties. One is reminded of Mirsky's statement: " T h e Possessed is no more a true picture of the terrorists [?] of the sixties than Gogol's Plyushkin is the true picture of a typical miser." 57 Populism was an unacceptable alternative for Sleptsov, who had no illusions as to the level of revolutionary "consciousness" among the broad mass of the peasantry.

William C. Brumfield

70

nated from and was particularly well-suited to the 1860s. It is only in this sense that Sleptsov, a true child of the age, can be defined as a radical. Artistically, such a nihilistic approach served Sleptsov well in Hard Times and in many of his other works; but his eventual (and perhaps inevitable) search for a positive alternative led only to disillusionment, frustration, and literary paralysis. In this respect it is perhaps Sleptsov's misfortune that he was so preoccupied with the political situation in Russia, for he was unable to accept literature as an occupation in and of itself. Not content with minor genres or anything less than a "significant" treatment of the issues of his day, he turned his back on an exceptional ability to portray Russia's lower classes within the framework of the story, sketch, or scene. Perhaps it is just as well that he did not inundate us with peasant stories a la Uspensky (either one). But having rejected this aspect of his talent, he found very little (beyond Hard Times) to take its place. What remains of Sleptsov's literary endeavor bears the imprint of his dual role as artist and activist. His works can be, and usually have been, interpreted as comments on the Russian social order during the 1860s — as, indeed, they were. When applied to a writer who saw his craft as part of a general social and political struggle, such an interpretation, done objectively, has a definite value. However, to limit one's appraisal to this aspect of Sleptsov's creativity is to do it less than justice. The author of "the most refined of all 'short stories' of the pre-Chekhov period," 5 8 one of Russia's greatest humorists, the creator of a political novel par excellence, Sleptsov is entitled to a far more important position in Russian literature than his small corpus of writings might lead one to believe. His firm control over the "raw material" of his works set a standard which, although unnoticed by most critics, anticipated Chekhov's own artistic mastery (and may have had an influence on it). One could assume that under better, less repressive conditions, Sleptsov would have written more. But it is useless to characterize Sleptsov as a might-have-been or should-have-become. What he has left is sufficient to establish him as one of the best (best, not greatest) Russian writers of the mid-nineteenth century. 58

Komej Cukovskij, "V. A. Slepcov, ego zizn' i tvorcestvo," in Slepcov, 1: 5.

WRITER IN HELL: NOTES ON DOSTOEVSKY'S LETTERS BY

LUBOMIR RADOYCE INTRODUCTION

"AND IF I should end up in hell, I shall no doubt be doomed for my sins to write a dozen letters a day, not fewer," Dostoevsky wrote to an admirer towards the end of his life, on March 16, 1878. 1 A lenient punishment for anyone's sins, one might think at first, and especially for Dostoevsky's, one should add if one takes any notice of the very grave sins various people have charged him with. Faced with such a statement by Dostoevsky, the reader, if he is not inclined to give credit to, for example, the personally biased or doctrinaire accusations flung at him by his one-time friend and collaborator N. N. Strakhov, by André Gide and more recently by some psychologists and politically biased critics,2 would probably see in this allusion to his sins a mere hyperbole, for which Dostoevsky is never wanting. It is not, however, a passing figure of speech; Dostoevsky insists repeatedly in his letters on the punishment of writing them, although he resigned himself to it and wrote a large number, of which almost a thousand have been preserved. In the letter already mentioned his excuse for not answering sooner is: "My terrible, invincible, impossible aversion to writing letters. I like to receive letters," he explains, "but I consider it nearly impossible and even absurd to write letters myself: I really don't know how to express myself in letters." Here he attributes his inability to the vagueness and ambiguity of epistolary expression: "I write a letter, and then all of a sudden I get back opinions or *F. M. Dostoevskij, As'ma, ed. A. S. Dolinin (Moscow, 1959), 4: 6. 2 In a letter to Tolstoy, written shortly after Dostoevsky died, Strakhov (Perepiska L.N. Tolstogo so Strakhovym [St. Petersburg, 1 9 1 4 ] , 2: 266) unleashed his longrestrained rancor against his former friend, declaring, not very convincingly, that Dostoevsky was "malicious, envious, vicious." Furthermore, he did not hesitate to report that Dostoevsky "boasted of having abused a young girl procured him by a governess while serving his sentence [in Siberia]." André Gide (Dostoevski [Paris, 1 9 0 8 ] ) was among the first and most influential writers to heed such reports. Depending upon a "reliable source" not further identified, he tried eagerly to present the most scandalous of Stavrogin's confessions as a part of Dostoevsky's biography. More recently an attempt was made (see Dominique Arban, Dostoevski le coupable [Paris, 1 9 5 4 ] ) to interpret Dostoevsky's life and work as an expression of the guilt he felt for having wished his father dead.

[71]

72

Lubomir Radoyce

expressions of certain thoughts as if they were mine and yet they could not have crossed my mind." A letter is a frighteningly shaky and misty ground for discussing anything of importance, for sharing one's deep convictions. To a woman novelist who considered herself his disciple, he confided resignedly: As for letters I am discouraged; I don't know how to write them, I am afraid of writing them. One writes with zeal (it has happened to me), and then one stroke is enough for the whole letter to be completely misunderstood. What is one to do if there really exists a thought one cannot agree with? Write letters on such a thought for two or three years? A fine occupation indeed! Similarly, to a worried and confused mother who asked him for advice on the education of her son, he answers first by an impatient remark: You raise questions to answer which one should write treatises, not letters, and furthermore such problems are solved only by living an entire life. What if I wrote you ten whole sheets and something in them raised a slight doubt in you, which in a conversation could be cleared up immediately; this doubt would be sufficient for you not to understand me, not to agree with me, to discard all ten of my sheets? The difficulty here is that the correspondents do not know each other: Anyway, is it possible for people completely unknown to each other to communicate by correspondence? In my opinion it is absolutely impossible, furthermore it can only do harm to the topic in question.4 Partly for the same reason Dostoevsky hesitates to give a full answer to a would-be writer who, having "nothing to lose," contemplated suicide. "I don't suppose you expected to receive an answer from me in a letter. It is absolutely impossible to write letters on this subject, especially as I don't know you personally, nor do I know your thoughts." 5 To an admirer whose "serious search for ideals" met with Dostoevsky's warm understanding, he confessed his inability to add anything to what has already been said in the Bible. He wrote: What can I answer, and what kind of comments can I give you on your fatal and eternal questions? And then, could the whole question be settled by two lines in a letter? It would be another matter if I could have a few hours' talk with you, but perhaps even then nothing would come of it, the unbelievers being swayed least by words and arguments.6 When, two and a half years later, this same correspondent turned again to 'Letter to L. A. Ozigina, February 28, 1 8 7 8 , f t ' i W , 4: 4. 4 Letter to a mother, March 27, 1878, Pis'ma, 4: 11. 5 To A. D. Voevodin, April 24, 1878, Pis'ma, 4: 20. 6 ToN. L. Ozmidov, February 1878,Pis'ma, 4: 4-5.

Writer in Hell

73

Dostoevsky for advice, this time regarding the education of his daughter, Dostoevsky reminded him of the difference between general principles, to which any letter is bound to conform, and particular cases: "I have read your letter very carefully, and yet, what can I say to it? You yourself remarked appropriately that one cannot put everything into a letter. I even think that nothing can be written satisfactorily in it, except ideas in general." 7 Still more categorical was Dostoevsky's rejection of letters as a means of communication when he was asked to solve such problems as loss of faith; he flatly refused to discuss it abstractly. "What can I say to your letter? These questions cannot be answered in writing. It is impossible." Therefore he invited his correspondent to his home, for "in a tête-à-tête one can speak and understand one another incomparably better than in a letter, in which, do what you will, everything remains in the abstract." 8 It is, however, not only to strangers, to people he had never seen, that Dostoevsky complains about his inability to write letters. We do not find, it is true, such complaints in his letters to his wife, to his editorial reader or to the high government official, Pobedonostsev, who supposedly shared some of his political views. But even in these the reiteration, the pathos, the "struggle to say it all" and the fear of being misunderstood are evident. To a hypersensitive painter, who had sensed to her own surprise that Dostoevsky, though "almost a stranger," an "outsider," would nevertheless understand her "labyrinth" of duality, he wrote a very frank and encouraging letter. And yet even here he does not fail to conclude in his usual manner: "Forgive me for writing such a disorderly letter! If only you knew how unable I am to write them; how difficult it is for me!" 9 Another woman admirer, also puzzled by duality, although in a different way, asked Dostoevsky how to face the difficulty of her marriage. After writing a wise and straightforward letter he hastened to add: But then, why am I writing this to you? (I may even be offending you. 10 ) Even though I know your secret, no matter how much you write me about it, there will always remain an ocean of things untold which you yourself are not capable of telling, nor I of understanding; . . . I wish I could tell you so many warm and heartfelt things, but what can one say in a letter?

In the first part of the letter he had expressed once again his hopeless scepticism about communicating by correspondence: 'August 18, 1880, Pi's'ma, 4: 195. 8 To a girl student, January 15, 1880, Pis'ma, 4: 137. ' T o E. F. Yunge, April 11, 1880, Pis 'ma, 4: 137. 10 The autograph of this letter reveals at this point what might be called a "Freudian slip"; before writing "offending" (obizat") Dostoevsky started writing "ubezdfat'J, which means "persuading," then struck it out. Pis'ma, 4 : 206.

Lubomir

74

Radoyce

Remember, Mariya Aleksandrovna, my health and my nerves, there is nothing more terrible for me than writing a letter. When I do something, when I write I mean, I throw all of myself into it, and after having written a letter, that day I am no longer capable of getting to work. And for that reason I write the most trivial, the most unsatisfactory letters, especially to those to whom I should really like to say something. 11

Finally, in a letter to another close friend, E. A. Stakenschneider, a woman writer who enjoyed a prominent position in St. Petersburg society he seems to sum up the obsessive idea of the inadequacy of letters. After talking about the weather, his work, his schedule, his children, their health and his own, he adds laconically: "There you have all my news, except for the inner, moral aspect; but that can never be described in a letter and this is why I hate writing them." 1 2 We see then that Dostoevsky's "hell," which he expected in the beyond, was worse even in this life than we might have thought at first. The context of the statement just quoted is important: after uttering it he passed on to his friend's health in the winter to come. Then he alluded to the "sickness of our society" and went on to ridicule a malicious critic of his, E. Markov, who had attacked his morbid "unreal" characters. "My best answer will be to finish successfully the novel [ The Brothers Karamazov]; after finishing it, next year I hope, I will answer at one time to all my critics. After thirty years of a literary career I ought to explain myself at last." It would seem, then, that he did not even try to explain himself in his letters. On the other hand, except for his answer to Gradovsky, a critic who attacked his Pushkin speech, Dostoevsky had no time to explain himself or his entire literary career; he died shortly after finishing The Brothers Karamazov. Whether or not he is now writing "a dozen letters a day," those he wrote this side of the grave constitute the only direct explanation he left us of his own aims and achievements. A large number of these letters remained unpublished for almost eighty years after his death. The publication of his collected letters, started in 1928, was interrupted in 1934. During the rest of Stalin's era the works of Dostoevsky, "this arch-reactionary," were hard to find in Russia. It was only in 1959, after the appearance of a new and incomplete edition of Dostoevsky's works, in 1955-56, that the editor of the first three volumes of his letters, a distinguished student of Dostoevsky, A. S. Dolinin, could publish the fourth and last volume. It contained not only the letters of the last period, 1878-81, but also one hundred and forty letters and documents "from various years," discovered in the meantime.

11

12

To M. A. Polivanova, October 18, 1880, Pis'rrm, 4: 205.

Pis'ma, 4: 62.

Writer in Hell

75

Needless to say, this volume was impatiently awaited and avidly seized upon by everyone interested in Dostoevsky; not only by those who felt the lack of his own explanation of the thirty-three years of a phenomenal literary career; not only by his biographers in general and the indiscreet hunters of any traces his sins and virtues may have left behind, but also by his increasing public, looking for a new and more direct light which might illuminate his opinions; by those who were beginning to be blinded by the torches of his disagreeing interpreters. For example, after hearing for so many years Solovyev, Berdyaev, Guardini and so many others, one is ready to hear Dostoevsky speak for himself, however unwillingly or inadequately, on religion. After the work of Freud and so many minor psychologists, it should be refreshing to see if and how Dostoevsky himself formulated, let us say, the problem of the "split personality." Even during his lifetime he was stamped by some as a reactionary and venerated by others as a prophet, and it should be interesting to see him reacting directly to such defamation and to such adulation while facing the social and political problems of his day together with his friends and admirers; problems which, for the most part, have not changed essentially to this day. Feminism, education, the cultural mission of Russia, the function of art and the significance of artistic creation: these are but a few of the other questions the curious reader may have in mind when he opens a volume of Dostoevsky's letters. And he need not be ashamed of his curiosity, even if his ideas about literature happen to be disciplined by the "New Critics": in order to justify it he need not think that he will become more susceptible to the full impact of The Brothers Karamazov. No justification should be required for wanting to know how a great man lived and thought. A more serious difficulty, however, seems to bar the way to this curiosity. We may have noticed that those of Dostoevsky's remarks which aim to disparage his art of letter-writing are to be found precisely in the letters which otherwise promise to throw some light on these topics. Indeed, the more important, the more "burning" the question, the more insistent is the avowed inadequacy to solve it. Strange indeed: the man who at the age of twentythree became famous overnight for having written an epistolary novel, which is still a masterpiece of its kind, did not know how to write letters; the already widely known author, who had the strength and courage to write Stavrogin's confession and Ivan Karamazov's nightmare, is afraid of writing letters; the supreme realist who did not forget to clothe Ivan's devil and unclothe Dmitry Karamazov, affirms that in his letters everything remains too abstract, too general. If his fame as a novelist is based above all on his power of introspection and if, on the other hand, it is true that letters are among the most suitable vehicles of inner analysis, as Tolstoy, Flaubert, Gide and so many other writers would admit, why then does Dostoevsky claim that one

76

Lubomir

Radoyce

cannot describe in a letter his "inner, moral aspect"? And finally, if his letters are really "most trivial and unsatisfactory," can they tell us anything about his opinions'.'

I. TOWARD A SELF-PORTRAIT

However strong Dostoevsky's conviction of the inadequacy of correspondence as a means of expression was, however reluctant he was to display himself in his letters, we cannot fail to realize after reading but a few of them, that several aspects of his kaleidoscopic personality are reflected quite vividly in them. For instance, he is kind even when he is cruel: he just about tells a mother what a silly goose she is, and yet at the same time he manages to give her some valuable advice; 13 or, when he is exasperated: after telling at great length and with desperate pathos a woman would-be writer how ridiculous, how unbearable her insistence is that he intervene in favor of the publication of her novel, he goes personally to pick it up from one publisher and take it to another. 14 His modesty often rings with true Christian humility; in concluding the already mentioned letter to an unhappily married woman he writes: "Furthermore, are you not carried away a little too far in thinking that I might play so important a part in your destiny? I dare not take so much upon myself. I hope for the full condescension of your benevolence towards me." On other occasions his morbid susceptibility recalls quite distinctly that fierce, even unresolved struggle between pride and humility which lacerates so many of the characters in his fiction. In a letter of apology for an insult addressed to a man who assisted in the partition of his inheritance, Dostoevsky wrote the lines which seem to come from the pen of Ippolit of The Idiot or from that of the "Underground Man": However, I am not trying to justify myself by explaining the words you addressed to me or by referring to my morbid state of mind, which I fully admit, nor finally to the state of agitation of our times in general, the mere thought of which throws me into a morbid distemper, as it has these last few days. I am entirely at fault, so that I will not even try to justify myself with any kind of explanation.

*3 To a mother, March 27, 1878, Pis'ma, 4: 11. Dostoevsky concluded this letter with the following remark, underlining some of the words: "I would not budge for anyone else: I am doing it for you, remembering Ems. I have not forgotten you at all. I read and re-read your letter. . . . But do not write about it in letters." These rather suggestive hints might interest a curious biographer who would want to know something more about Dostoevsky's summer of 1875 at that German spa .Pis'ma, 4: 201-203. 14

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Awkward as the style is, 15 up to this point the apology is conventional enough; but Dostoevsky feels the full weight of his humility and is compelled to focus on the motives of his gesture and thus open the way to his pride. He continues: However, as I am begging your pardon so unconditionally and sincerely, I should like to ask, kind sir, one thing in exchange, and precisely that you bear in mind the motives which have moved me to act in this way: is it perhaps out of fear of you? But what terrible thing could you do to me, and what is it you could frighten me with? Nor is it concern for that ill-fated inheritance, which cannot ever be divided (I wish it had never existed). Nor is it finally out of fear of public opinion that I am doing so: my morbid character is well known to many, and quite a few people highly esteemed by all love me in spite of my unreasonable character, they forgive me my extravagances-probably because of something else which is in me. But this is irrelevant here: I only want to tell you plainly that if I am now begging your pardon, I am doing it because my conscience tells me to do so, and my conscience nags me too much. This is how I should like you to understand it

This seems to be more than sufficiently clear; but the emotional dialectic of apology does not end here. Dostoevsky hastens to forestall the next stage of it and to foresee its consequences for the disturbed relationship — a disturbance which in his novels, once it sets in, is always radical and often fatal. So he dwells upon it: "After this, kind sir, it will depend upon you whether I shall be excused or not, for mind you, I do not pretend at all that you ought to excuse me in any way in consideration of the fact that I have written you such a guilty letter. Not at all. Do as it suits you. . . ," 1 6 The lustre-less aspects of Dostoevsky's character in its narrow, practical existence can be seen particularly in his letters to his second wife. Untiring petulance, morbid impressionability carried to excruciating heights and depths by an overwhelming imagination, worry that feeds on mistrust, obsessional loneliness and despair over the unsatisfactory communication with the person closest to him, alternated with or compensated for by frequent outbursts of devouring sensuality, the traces of which even his wife's subsequent expurgation could not entirely remove from his letters, a loving father's anxieties — these are but a few traits the letters reveal. In spite of these eloquent signs of human weakness, which Dostoevsky was always the first to admit, we cannot recognize, in his letters, the man whose dark portrait 15 In translating this, as well as the other quotations in this essay, we have tried to be as faithful as possible. Traduttore traditore: a translator of Dostoevsky's letters could not betray him more disastrously than by rendering into graceful prose his words and turns of phrases, the awkwardness of which illustrates better than anything the avowed "inability" or "impossibility" of expression; in an essay dealing with this very avowal, such "improvement" could be but self-defeating. 16 To P. P. Kazansky, February 23, 1880, Pis'ma, 4: 131-132.

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Strakhov painted for Tolstoy. One could, o f course, fill in and complete the "gaps" between those traits, one could illustrate the "tempers" and "extravagances" in order to portray the "morbid character"; but to start in this direction one should either be endowed with a creative imagination comparable to Dostoevsky's own, or be moved by malice, envy, vengeance or some other petty motive, or rely, like Strakhov, on hearsay and easy, misplaced invention, and produce sheer gossip. What is important for our purposes, however, is that even in this brief perusal o f some o f Dostoevsky's letters we have been able to detect, behind a thin varnish of concealment, (despite, that is, the alleged impossibility of describing the "inner, moral side" in a letter), some vivid colors and clear lines in this challenging and morbidly self-assertive self-portrait. Furthermore, it may well be that it is this unwillingness to pose and the typical, systematic and quasi dialectical repudiation o f any fixed image or "persona" imposed upon him that give Dostoevsky's portrait the freshness o f color and movement

o f line so sadly lacking in some celebrated autobiographies,

Rousseau's Confessions,

like

for example.

II. DREAM, FANCY AND IMAGINATION If, in spite of Dostoevsky's claim that he cannot write in his letters about the "inner, moral aspects," he reveals so much of himself, o f his " t e m p e r , " in this one letter, then we may proceed with more confidence in our search o f his opinions. Surely, it is easier, whatever one's scruples, to express one's opinions on the meaning of dreams or on education, politics, religion etc., than to depict one's "inner aspects." In a letter to his wife he establishes a close parallel between dream and reality: he writes that the night before his sister-in-law died he dreamt of his brother bleeding to death. Then he implies that there is more than parallelism or correlation between the t w o worlds, which are perhaps one; a dream may have a moral import, it can be a summons to examine one's conscience: " I don't think that I am very guilty as far as she is concerned," he adds immediately

after describing his dream; and then proceeds to recall the

difficult period following his brother's death, wondering if he had done his best to help the w i d o w , and concludes: "Even my late brother could not reproach me from the other w o r l d . " ' 7 Aside

from the importance

of

this personal experience in regard to

Raskolnikov's dream and Ivan Karamazov's nightmare, these few, clear lines stand in their own right as an illuminating interpretation o f the moral value of dreams. 17

August 13, 1879, Pis'ma, 4: 98.

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More surprising, perhaps, is Dostoevsky's acceptance of spiritism, which was imported from England and became fashionable in St. Petersburg in the 1870s. He went as far as to certify publicly, in a letter to a newspaper, a successful spiritistic performance. 1 8 His acceptance of spiritism, however temporary, becomes particularly relevant when we realize that he resorted to the ideal of it in order to explain the fantastic aspect of art. To a woman writer, his acquaintance from Bad Ems, already mentioned, who had sent him a story about an "offspring of the human species.. . , degenerated into something different from mankind and even hostile to it," who turned into a man with heart, he wrote: But your descendant of the terrible and sinful race has been depicted in an impossible way. He should have been assigned only moral suffering, the conscience of ending his race, he should have been presented as someone like Alexis Man of God or Mary the Egyptian, he should have overcome his blood, his ancestry through suffering unheard of. On the contrary, you have invented something grossly physical, a lump of ice instead of a heart. . . . But h o w can a man live without one of his physical organs? Y o u will say this is a fantastic story. But the fantastic element in art has its limits and rules. The fantastic aspect must be so contiguous to the real one, that you must almost believe it true.

Then Dostoevsky points to Pushkin's Queen of Spades as the "summit of fantastic a r t . " And you believe [he goes o n ] that Hermann really had a vision, a vision, that is, in accordance with his conception of the world; and yet, at the end of the story, that is, after you have read it, you cannot decide whether this vision derived from Hermann's character, or is he really one of those people w h o have touched upon the other world, the world of evil and hostile spirits (N. B. spiritualism and its theory). There you have art!

Whether this realist rule of the fantastic in art may apply to Gogol's Nose, to Hoffmann's, Poe's or Kafka's stories, or to expressionism in general, it is certainly pertinent to The Brothers Karamazov, which Dostoevsky was writing at the time: it is enough to think of Alesha's mission of washing the sins of his tarnished 2 0 blood, or of Ivan's nightmare. We must return, however, to those "hellish" letters in which Dostoevsky is discouragingly critical of his own expression. Ironically enough, it is in the letter in which he complained that nothing but "ideas in general" could be written in a letter, that he formulates nevertheless clearly and convincingly one of the fundamental principles of his aesthetic theory, that of the role of 18

To the editor of Novoe Vremja, March 27, 1878, Pis'ma, 4: 10-11. T o Y. F. Abaza, June 15, 1880, Pis'ma, 4: 178. 20 Karamazov is composed of the Tatar word kara (black) and the Russian mazat' smear). 19

(to

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art in e d u c a t i o n , illustrating it c o n c r e t e l y and c o n v i n c i n g l y w i t h his o w n e x p e r i e n c e . He writes t o a worried father: You say that up till now you have not given your daughter any work of literature to read, for fear of developing her imagination. This doesn't seem quite right to me: imagination is a natural faculty in man, and especially in a child, in whom from earliest years it develops in most cases ahead of all faculties, and requires nourishment For impressions of the beautiful are indispensable to childhood. When I was 10 years old I saw in Moscow a representation of Schiller's Brigands with Mochalov, and I assure you, the powerful impression I received then has had a very fruitful effect upon my moral disposition. When I was twelve, during a vacation in the country, I read all of Walter Scott, and if I developed my imagination and impression21

ability, I directed them along the good road, and did not direct them alternative, in the face of along the evil one [note the emphasized beauty, so deeply felt by Dmitry Karamazov!], for I acquired from this reading and kept all my life so many beautiful and sublime impressions, that they have formed in my soul a great force for fighting seductive, passionate and depraving impressions. This is a p r o f o u n d t h o u g h t in its o w n right, as well as an interesting variation o f Schiller's c o n c e p t o f the aesthetic e d u c a t i o n . It is m o r e than a c o i n c i d e n c e that the " w o r k o f literature" w h i c h inspired those impressions (whose

moral

f u n c t i o n D o s t o e v s k y will later see c o n f i r m e d b y

Schiller's

t h e o r y ) w a s Schiller's first play. We n e e d n o t say a n y t h i n g m o r e o f the t h e m a t i c value o f The Brigands

for The Brothers

Karamazov.

H o w m u c h more significant this s t a t e m e n t b e c o m e s w h e n seen w i t h i n the c o m p l e x o f D o s t o e v s k y ' s a e s t h e t i c t h e o r y , we shall realize, if we r e m e m b e r a passage f r o m his major a e s t h e t i c essay, written a l m o s t 2 0 years earlier, 2 3

with

w h i c h it s h o u l d b e c o m p a r e d : It would be difficult to measure the entire mass of usefulness" which, for example, the Iliad or the Apollo Belvedere have contributed and continue to contribute to all mankind - by things which apparently are useless in our days. Let us imagine, for example, a man who, in his adolescence, in that period when all the impressions of being are new and fresh, looked once at the Apollo Belvedere, and the god irresistibly imprinted in his soul 21 The syntactic peculiarity of saying "I d e v e l o p e d , . . . I directed my imagination and my impressionability," rather than converting, more conventionally, the objects into subjects: "My imagination, my impressionability developed . . . directed me . . . , " is not insignificant: it is no doubt meant to vindicate free will against external influences. 22 The somewhat annoying, but obviously not meaningless, reiteration is again Dostoevsky's own. 23 "Mr. -bov and the question of art," 1861. 24 This phrase is just as odd in Russian as it is in English; if we remember, however, that Dostoevsky is ridiculing the Utilitarians, for whom, he believed, nothing existed that could not be measured, we may find it less awkward.

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his magnificent and infinitely beautiful image. It would seem a fact of no consequence: he admired the beautiful statue for two minutes and went on. But this admiration is not like the admiration, for example, of an elegant woman's dress. 'For this marble is a god,' and you may spit on it as much as you like, you will never deprive it of its divinity. And therefore the youth's impression was perhaps so vivid, as to shock his nerves, to cool his epidermis; it may be - who can tell? - that during such sensations of superior beauty, during this commotion of the nerves, there takes place in man some kind of an inner change, some transposition of particles, some galvanic current which in one instant turns what was into something it was not, a piece of ordinary iron into a magnet. There is, of course, a multitude of impressions in the world, but this impression is not without reason a special one, an impression of a god. It is not without reason that such impressions remain over an entire life. And who knows? If this youth, 20 or 30 years later, acted well during some great social event, in which he took a major part in a certain way, and not in another, it may be that in the mass of reasons, which caused him to act this way and not that way, there was also, without his knowing it, the impression of the Apollo Belvedere which he had seen 20 years before.

The tone, the style of this dramatic expostulation is obviously quite different from that of the letter, and it reminds us of its context: assuming the role of an arbiter between two "hostile camps" in the field of aesthetics, the "partisans of art for art's sake," and the "utilitarians," the precursors of our "social realists," Dostoevsky in the lines just quoted is actually paraphrasing the defense of the "partisans of pure art." With his masterly technique of the double-edged sword he parodies both parties with one blow: the utilitarians are ridiculous with their rejection of anything the "use" of which they cannot measure; 25 on the other hand, no less ludicrous appears the exaggeration of the partisans of art for art's sake, with their deification of the work of art and their unrelenting exaltation of its effect. And yet, if we strip this paraphrase of the flourish that makes it a parody, however gentle, of art for art's sake, if we substitute the novels of Walter Scott for the Iliad and Schiller's play for Apollo Belvedere, if we take the "youth" for Dostoevsky himself, we shall find neither more nor less than the idea expressed by Dostoevsky when, twenty years later, he spoke frankly and openly about himself in the letter to the anxious father. We are tempted to go even further and try to establish the complete analogy between the two pieces. Since this letter has revealed that the basis of Dostoevsky's theoretical statement was his own experience with aesthetic impressions, even though he pronounced the statement almost twenty years before he acknowledged his own impressions, speaking furthermore on behalf 25 We may note in passing that this caricature in a way predicted the most extreme experiment in the field of positivist aesthetics, Fechner's law.

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of the partisans of pure art in a seemingly impartial essay, we may wonder if the "great social event," this apparently abstract phrase in that essay also contains some personal, autobiographical allusions. Specifically, we remember that almost twenty years after Dostoevsky saw the Brigands he took part in the Petrashevsky conspiracy. Perhaps this will not be considered by all as a "great social event," but it can hardly be denied it has remained as the most significant conspiracy in Russia since the Decembrist insurrection, and of course Dostoevsky was fully aware of it. We should recall, nevertheless, what he thought and wrote about it at the time of his arrest. For it is, after all, his interpretation that interests us here. Indeed, in his deposition he did explain why he acted as he did, "this way and not that way"; he stressed his education, the "impressions" he had received from literature and which had nourished his youthful idealism — all that prevented him from acting differently. However, we cannot be quite sure that Dostoevsky was alluding to a personal experience when he referred to a "great social event," for which aesthetic impressions are likely to prepare young people, until we examine his political opinions expressed in his letters and elsewhere. We shall try to do this in the following chapter. At this point we may seem to stretch too far the analogy between one of his more personal letters and one of his most objective essays. But even without this part of the analogy the autobiographical and theoretical value of this brief and "unsatisfactory" letter about "general ideas" remains extraordinary. To say nothing of the interesting list of books Dostoevsky recommends for a young girl, 26 this letter has demonstrated so far three significant facts. There is, in the first place, a clearly autobiographical motivation of one of the fundamental arguments propounded in Dostoevsky's major essay on aesthetics, even though he seems merely to express the views of the partisans of art for art's sake. If this is so, the letter proves, secondly, that the argument of the moral "use" of aesthetic impressions represents Dostoevsky's own belief rather than a vindication of Fet, Maykov, A. Tolstoy and other "pure" poets. This conclusion, it is true, can be arrived at also by an intrinsic analysis of the essay itself, but only after a considerably more involved process of sifting, of weighting the deliberate exaggeration, of seeing through the manner of parody assumed by Dostoevsky acting as a "fair judge." Lastly, the mere date of the letter (August 18, 1880) is sufficient evidence that Dostoevsky remained faithful to this ethical concept of art, expressed before he wrote the Notes from the Underground (1864), up to the time he was finishing The Brothers Karamazov (1880), 26 It is significant that Dostoevsky does not recommend his own works: "As for my own works [he adds] I don't think that they are suitable for her."

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faithful to the point of resorting again, in propounding it, to thé same argument, that of education. The worried father, responsible for this candid pronouncement in a letter, was not the only admirer who asked Dostoevsky to express his views on the problems of education; there is also a worried mother who turned to him for advice. 27 In the former letter, the deplorably unsatisfactory "general idea" was illustrated and thus validated by an example, Dostoevsky's own. In the letter to the mother, however, the "immediate" living example is seen as the very antithesis of theory: the mother, instead of worrying about "questions" of good or evil and about the exact degree of affection she owes to her son, would do much better to offer him, by her own conduct, an example of goodness. How essential this kind of practial education was to the thinking of Dostoevsky we see when at a close reading of this letter it becomes evident that it was this criticism of some common pedagogical errors, obviously addressed as a reprimand to a rather silly blue-stocking, that led him to draw up nothing less than a succinct thematic scheme of his major novels, or rather, of their principal characters. "Note further," he writes, "that your sphere of action may seem to you restrained, and that you may desire an immense, if not universal, sphere of action. But the entire question is this: does everyone have a right to such desires?" This sounds very much like Raskolnikov's dilemma. When we read the next two sentences: "Believe me, to be an example of good even in a small area of action is extremely useful, for this has an influence on tens and hundreds of people. A firm decision not to lie and to live righteously will confuse the frivolous in your habitual milieu, and it will have an effect upon them" — we cannot help thinking of Prince Myshkin and his milieu. A few lines further we read: "Not seeing around them any activity worthy of them they begin to love man from a book, abstractly; they love mankind and despise the unfortunate individual, they get annoyed when they meet him and run away from him." These words seem to sum up the credo of the "lovers of mankind" in The Possessed, particularly Shigalev, Virginsky, and Liputin. We read further: "The larger part of the environment in which a child finds itself, as well as particular individuals, exert an influence on it to the point of complete domination." This, of course, is a major theme of several of Dostoevsky's novels, and particularly of The Adolescent. Finally, in the mother herself, who prompted this letter, some critics have rightly seen the prototype of Mme. Khokhlakova of The Brothers Karamazov, which Dostoevsky at that time was about to begin. And, remembering Alyosha's words to his boys at the end of this novel: "They tell you a lot about your own education, and yet some such

27

Letter to a mother, March 27, 1878, Pis'ma, 4: 11.

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Radoyce

beautiful, sacred memory, kept from childhood, is perhaps the best education there is. . . . And even if a single good memory of this kind remains in your heart, this may well help you some day to find salvation." We can now safely affirm that Alyosha, this "favourite character" of Dostoevsky, is, in this case at least, expressing the author's own views. Relying on this letter we may assume, furthermore, that these views, which constitute Dostoevsky's "antitheory of education," based on the moral impact of the "beautiful memory," apply, in Dostoevsky's own mind, not only to his last, but to all of his major novels. He is too modest to quote them in his letter, but only a blind skeptic could deny that he refers at least to their major themes. At any rate, it would be difficult to find a more obviously genuine reflection of an author in a letter of his: even if this letter were unsigned and unidentified, anyone who has read Dostoevsky's major novels could easily guess its authorship. It should follow then that Dostoevsky succeeded in expressing himself in it. And yet, we must not forget that this is the very letter in which he disqualifies his epistolary form of expression, for it begins by proclaiming "impossible" and "harmful" a discussion of "these things" by correspondence, and it ends with angry surrender: "But enough, I have written much, though I've said little, so that, of course, you will not understand m e . " It seems, on the contrary, that Dostoevsky has said a great deal, and if we accept the allusions to his novels, we should say indeed that he has implied more than he has actually written. Whatever the "worried m o t h e r " might have thought of Dostoevsky, we may believe, with all due modesty, that we have understood him quite well. So we turn to those of his letters in which he writes on something which has more frequently been misunderstood, namely his political opinions, particularly those concerning socialism. III.

SOCIALISM AND REACTION

At the first Congress of Soviet writers in 1934 Gorky said that it is very easy to imagine Dostoevsky, as a person, as a "judge of the world and of people," in the role of a medieval inquisitor. His well-known politically motivated fight against "Dostoevskyism" ("dostoevscina," Gorky's own pejorative) "in all its aspects" was the decisive factor in producing the rigid disfavor with which Dostoevsky's works were regarded in Soviet Russia throughout the Stalin period. Even one of the most deserving among Soviet Dostoevsky scholars, Leonid Grossman, maintained in the 1920s that The Brothers Karamazov was "commissioned by government circles." The Soviet attitude towards Dostoevsky has undergone some changes in recent years; and yet the official spokesman of a new course prescribed in 1956 for interpreters

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of literature in general, and of Dostoevsky in particular, Vladimir Ermilov, readily endorses Grossman's statement, resting entirely on the superficial evidence of Dostoevsky's connections with the High Procurator of the Holy Synod, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, a man of powerful influence at the Imperial court. 28 What kind of relationship did Dostoevsky really maintain with Pobedonostsev, and can his letters throw any light on his alleged subservience to this pillar of the state and church? We have six letters which Dostoevsky wrote to Pobedonostsev while writing The Brothers Karamazov. In one of them 29 he expresses a "stupid and sinful thought:" "What is to become of Russia when we, the last of the Mohicans, die? I am, really, already laughing at myself!" He confesses, however, to being "tormented by the desire" of continuing the Diary of a Writer, believing it to have something to say — "and precisely as you would like," he assures Pobedonostsev. It would be interesting to know how this "Grand Inquisitor" of tsarist Russia, this ruthless reactionary, responded to this jovial and yet skillfully engaging declaration of alliance thrust upon him by his apparently ingenious fellow-Mohican, after he read, in the first part of the same letter, Dostoevsky's bold opinion on his own place within the ideological battle of the time: I consider my literary position (I never talked to you about it) almost phenomenal: as a man who writes usually against European principles, who has compromised himself forever with The Possessed, that is, with reactionary tendencies and obscurantism - as such a man; and yet, despite all the partisans of Europe, their magazines, newspapers and their critics, I am recognized, by our youth, and precisely by the same uprooted youth, by all the nihilists ["nigiljatina"] and such like. They themselves have acknowledged this to me in various places either personally or in entire bodies. They have declared even that from me alone they expect a sincere and sympathetic word, and that they consider me alone their leading writer. These declarations are well-known to our men of letters, the brigands of the pen and swindlers of the press, and they are very much dismayed by this, otherwise they would hardly allow me to write freely. They would bite like dogs, but they are afraid, and in this state of confusion they are waiting to see what happens next.

28 How influential he was could be seen also in the fact that a few months after Dostoevsky died Tolstoy harbored vain hopes of reaching the tsar through him with a plea for mercy towards the assassins of the latter's father, Alexander II. The plea was rejected in a letter to Tolstoy, written by Pobedonostsev, who was later to become the principal advocate of Tolstoy's excommunication. On this "Grand Inquisitor," as Pobedonostsev was called, see the excellent study by F. Steinmann, K. P. Pobjedonoszew, der Staatsmann der Reaktion unter Alexander III, Berlin, 1933. 29 Dated August 24, 1879,Pis'ma, 4: 110.

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Now, first of all, if Dostoevsky were really such a close ally of Pobedonostsev in the latter's reactionary battle, as he seemed at first, how is it that he did not explain to him such a crucial aspect of this very fight as his 'literary position" within the sphere of politics, until after composing the "synthesis" of contemporary anarchism, the "point of culmination" of The Brothers Karamazov, that is, the part of it entitled "Pro and Contra"? 30 Amicus Plato, sed magis arnica Veritas; Cervantes' words, paraphrased by Gorky himself in other circumstances, 31 seem to be more appropriate here than those which define the latest official conception in the Soviet Union of the relationship between Dostoevsky and Pobedonostsev, and as such are presented in the preface to the edition of the fourth volume of Dostoevsky's letters: "History is history. Dostoevsky's collaboration with the obscurantist Pobedonostsev is a fact which allows no hearsay, no evasive evaluations." 32 It is indeed because we want to avoid such hearsay and evasive evaluations as this "collaboration" that we must go on with our close reading of the letter in front of us. We cannot help wondering, in the second place, why Dostoevsky had to insist, to the point of seeming a miles gloriosus, on the feats of his conquest of "nigiljatina," as he wrote to his fellow-Mohican — if their "collaboration" was so unanimous. Indeed, this strategic display of power and influence looks as if it were not directed to a close ally, but rather to one of those "brigands of the pen" who are waiting to see what happens next. In fact, if we look at the circumstances of Dostoevsky's ostentatious self-assertion, we shall find, much to our surprise, that in this case at least, it is Pobedonostsev himself who is "waiting to see what happens next." For this self-assertion is but a tactful and no less categorical answer to a gentle, sly warning against an excessively "powerful" representation of the nihilists' world-view, such as was accomplished by Dostoevsky in the Grand Inquisitor. "I shall await impatiently, [Pobedonostsev wrote to Dostoevsky] the issue of the August number of Russian Messenger. Your Grand Inquisitor has produced a powerful impression upon me. I have hardly ever read anything so powerful. Only, I have waited to see from which side would come the resistance, the objection and the explanation - but I have not yet seen them."33 Dostoevsky understood the full weight of this apparently friendly comment, for in his answer he does not hesitate to ungild the pill and call things by their names: "Your opinion on the Karamazovs, which you have read so far, has

30 This is how he described the chapter "Pro and Contra" in a letter to his editorial reader, N. A. Lyubimov, May 10, 1879, Pis'ma, 4: 53. 31 Sobranie socinenij v tridcati tomakh, Moscow 1953,"vol. 25, p. 53. 32 Pis'ma, 4: IX. 33 Our italics.

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flattered me greatly (regarding the power and the energy of the part already written), but at the same time you raise the most inevitable question:34 why is there not yet to be found an answer to all these atheistic theses, since this is so necessary? That is the question, and it is that which worries me now and is the cause of all my agitation." The question why is there no answer to atheism in "Pro and Contra," raised by the High Procurator of the Holy Synod, is the point of the matter; neither Pobedonostsev nor Dostoevsky start their letters with it. The former introduces and dramatizes his warning by referring to the "unbearable deeds which are being committed," 35 and the latter starts his defense by displaying his prestige among the nihilists before coming to the point. There can be no doubt that this high government official exerted pressure on Dostoevsky, however soft and cautious it might have been. But he was not in any way instrumental in Dostoevsky's refutation of Ivan's view of the world, which he "proposed" in Zosima's "autobiography": Dostoevsky had written it before he received Pobedonostsev's warning of the "most important question." It is also evident that Dostoevsky knew how to wield the weapon of his own powerful if not too perspicacious "ally." For if Pobedonostsev in his letter associated the tragic dilemma of Ivan Karamazov with the "unbearable deeds" of the day, thus silently warning the author of its potentially "negative" political consequences, Dostoevsky retaliated by asserting his authority as the "leading writer" of the uprooted generation and by imposing it as a platform to the discussion of the "most inevitable question." As for this authority of his, quite a few of his letters bear ample evidence that he was not merely bragging. Indeed, the dialogue in these two letters that Dostoevsky and Pobedonostsev exchanged is not moved by the spirit of unanimous collaboration; it is rather a friendly but no less dangerous duel. The emphasis, the self-assertion, of Dostoevsky's letter becomes even more significant when we remember that he had already warned Pobedonostsev in a previous letter (written while he was reading the proofs of "Pro and Contra," that is, before Pobedonostsev had read this chapter) 36 not to expect a "refutation of the blasphemy" until the following installment. This letter closes with a familiar exclamation: "There, I have written four pages, and imagine, dear Konstantin Petrovich, I have written precisely on what I did not want to write!" Dostoevsky's pen once again seems to have gotten out of hand. The topics, however, on which he did not want to write are extremely important: the "meaning" of "Pro and Contra," defined as the "climax of the 34

Dostoevsky's italics. That is, the subversive agitation, which a year and a half later, a month after Dostoevsky's death, was to erupt in the assassination of Alexander II. 35

36

May 19, 1879, Pis'ma, 4: 56.

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novel," and socialism. Again, it is not an accident that they are put together. Whatever Dostoevsky thought of his own letters, the context of this one, the sequence of apparently unrelated arguments it contains are very relevant, and the blank spaces between the paragraphs are as eloquent as the paragraphs themselves. We should, therefore, focus on this letter as well. This time Dostoevsky comes to the point immediately, to explain the "blasphemy and the refutation of the blasphemy" in The Brothers Karamazov. He pleads for the "reality" of his themes, and concludes apologetically: "What the heart thinks the mouth speaks." Then, after emphatically closing this subject (with two periods and two dashes!), he turns casually to something apparently quite different: "I am reading newspapers here, and I can't make anything of them. They are simply not saying anything." How strange that newspapers had nothing to say about the explosive political situation and that a passionate and extraordinarily perceptive and imaginative reader of newspapers such as Dostoevsky could make nothing even of their crime columns! Could it not be that he was merely filling in the line with these words, rather than writing additional dashes and periods, which should impart to his next argument an air of pure casualness and complete independence from the preceding ones? Be that as it may, anyone who believes in Dostoevsky's subservient relation to the government of his time will certainly be thrown off balance when, after this brief lull, he suddenly hears the distant yet determined bolts of thunder: "I read only yesterday in Novoe Vremja about the order by the Minister of Education according to which the teachers should refute socialism in the classroom (and perhaps indulge in disputes with their pupils?). One cannot even imagine how dangerous this idea is." So, the newspapers, after all, did say something rather important, and it is not Dostoevsky who could make nothing of the dangerous news, but rather those responsible for the "idea" who do not realize ("imagine") how dangerous it is. To realize the full weight of this fearlessly overt criticism of the government's policy we should glance at the Minister's order. Considering [the Minister wrote to the District Inspectors of Education] that only the moral authority of the respected teachers and the most vigilant and steady supervision on the part of the directors of educational institutions... , especially in matters concerning the development and upholding of their religious and moral tendency, can isolate the young generation from pestilent infection by the "anarchist" teachings - I find it necessary to draw your particular attention. . . to the necessity of being very careful in appointing teachers and instructors, since the instructors are expected.. . to strengthen the feelings of loyalty to the throne and respect for the religion in the pupils entrusted them for supervision. 37 37

Novoe Vremja, No. 1154, May 17, 1879.

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Dostoevsky, however, does not go on to explain the danger of the "idea." Again he seems to drop the subject and with a new paragraph he takes up something which has no apparent connection with the Minister's order: the trial and execution of a young army officer, Dubrovin, who was hanged for revolutionary activity. Why should Dostoevsky discuss it at this point in his letter, an entire month after this sensational event? The answer is that he has not really abandoned the issue of the "dangerous idea": there is a clear dialectical connection between combating socialism ex cathedra and the ignoring of the revolutionary's "logic," his "doctrine," his "code," his "god" even, which had taken roots in him, roots that "could not be stronger." Furthermore, the subtle transition from the "dangerous idea" to the Dubrovin case is another example of Dostoevsky's deductive way of thinking: from a general idea he comes down to its function within the drama of a single person's life — in this case the drama of isolation: "Dubrovin lived and acted in the firm belief that everybody, his entire regiment would become like himself and would think nothing else but what he was thinking." We may assume that this "regiment," the entire army of the tsar, was not less scrupulously "isolated from infection by the anarchists' teachings" than the younger generation of students were intended to be after the Minister's order; that the tsar's soldiers were also "strengthened in their feeling of loyalty to the throne and in their respect for religion." And yet, this did not prevent the distinctly anarchist rebellion of the young officer. On the contrary, Dostoevsky seems to be saying that it was precisely this forceful isolation from above that provoked the tragic isolation from within. It is not socialism, or the "pestilent infection by the anarchists' teachings," that Dostoevsky blames for this tragedy. It is the lack of understanding on the part of the fellow citizens as well as on the part of the authorities, the lack of "culture," says Dostoevsky; it is the readiness to brand and exclude as "mad" and "poor uncultured" a Russian who, not "living on bread alone," "is bound to invent anything, the more fantastic and absurd the better, until it doesn't look like anything else (for although he has taken everything wholesale from European socialism, he has done it over so that it does not look like anything else)." What can we expect from those "pupils entrusted to teachers for supervision," should some of them also be "bound to invent" something fantastic and absurd derived from European socialism and thus break the barriers of prohibition? Would they not also be discarded, if not as "mad," then surely as infected by pestilent anarchism and thus driven into another, even more explosive solitude? These are the questions Dostoevsky seems to be throwing at his influential friend. He had, of course, a specific private reason for doing so at this particular moment. He had just finished the climactic scene of his own drama of precisely such a "mad" youth infected by socialism, Ivan Karamazov: he was above all pleading for an understanding of his novel. If socialism is to be

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refuted in schools, how will it be received in literature? Will the people without understanding, without culture tolerate Ivan's "nonsense," which also has its "logic," no less than that of Dubrovin? We have seen that in spite of this plea Dostoevsky, in fact, had to defend himself from such misunderstanding in the subsequent letter to Pobedonostsev. Up to this point he has managed not only to draw the consequences, however implicitly, of the government policy, represented also by his friend, consequences illustrated by the case of one of those "entrusted for supervision," the young officer. This meant little less than charging the government with at least a part of the responsibility for such tragedies as that of Dubrovin. A bold protest indeed for someone reputed to be but a mouthpiece of the tsarist reactionaries. If it cost Dostoevsky some time and trouble to convince his powerful fellow-Mohican to be more indulgent and appreciative at least towards his artistic representation of socialist "madness," in the end he succeeded. After Dostoevsky's death, Pobedonostsev wrote to the future Tsar Alexander III these words: "Our unhappy youth, erring like sheep without a shepherd, felt confidence in him [Dostoevsky], and his influence was very strong and beneficial." There are, however, other passages from Dostoevsky's correspondence with Pobedonostsev which do not illustrate his independence of mind from this high official. We have already heard him say that he wanted to write his Diary precisely as Pobedonostsev would like it. Again, thinking of publishing the Diary of a Writer, he promises to hasten to his friend ("as I did in the old days") for instructions, which, as he "fervidly believed," the latter would not refuse him.3* Later, in his last letter to Pobedonostsev, 3 ' after the latter had commented very favorably on the denouement of The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky, by way of thanking him, remarks: "It is in my nature to need encouragement from those in whom I believe, from those whose mind and convictions I deeply respect." A phrase in this tone can be found in practically every one of Dostoevsky's letters to Pobedonostsev. But how important are they for the proper understanding of their "collaboration"? As far as the Diary of a Writer is concerned, some concession to the "convictions" and "instructions" of Pobedonostsev is not improbable, even though this should be excluded in the case of the last issue of it, in which Dostoevsky published his "profession de foi for the future": he begs his "highly esteemed friend to read this Diary" and tell him his opinion of it. Be that as it may, there can be no question of such concessions as far as The Brothers Karamazov is concerned; all evidence speaks rather in favor of the inverted influence. 38 39

Letter of May 19, 1 8 8 0 , Dated August 16, 1880,

Pis'ma, 4: Pis'ma, 4:

145. 194.

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As for the rest of these polite and at times embarrassingly endearing phrases, we should perhaps not bring a grave discredit upon Dostoevsky, if we assume that he above all found it convenient to have and keep such an influential friend. We should keep in mind his extraordinary position, so precarious from practically all points of view, financial, political, literary. A phrase from a letter to Pobedonostsev written a year and a half before he died while he was at a German spa might throw some light: "I sit here and think continuously of how I am certainly going to die soon, in a year or two, and then what will become of those little heads so dear to me, after I am gone?" Dostoevsky's wife writes in her Memoirs that upon his death a government official did call on her to convey the government's readiness to pay for the funeral and for the education of their children. She proudly refused, counting on her husband's posthumous earnings. The letters he wrote during the period of The Brothers Karamazov show how destitute he was and how vitally important his literary work was for his entire family. When he went to Moscow to offer The Brothers Karamazov to the publisher of Russkij Vestnik, Katkov, he wrote to his wife: "If Katkov refuses, then God only knows what we shall live on until October." 40 A year later, in the letter to his wife in which he described his dream about his brother's death, 41 he wrote: I am constantly thinking of my own death (here I am seriously thinking of it) and of how I will leave you and the children with nothing. Everybody thinks we have money, and we have nothing. Now I have the Karamazovs round my neck, I ought to finish it properly, to polish every facet of it, and it is a difficult and risky affair, it will take much energy. But it is also of vital importance: it should establish my reputation, otherwise there will be nothing to hope for. I will finish the novel, and towards the end of next year I will announce the subscription for the Diary; with the subscription money I will buy a piece of land. As for living and publishing the Diary until the next subscription, we'll make the ends meet somehow with the sale of books.

As for his political position, we should not forget that he was still under police surveillance until at least the middle of March, 1879. Last, but not least, he was perfectly aware of the hostile attitude of most professional critics toward his "higher realism"; in the same letter in which he assures Pobedonostsev of his "high esteem" of him, and while he asks him explicitly to sustain his benevolent attitude toward his writing (not only towards his "profession de foi," the Pushkin speech and its commentary, but also towards the final part of The Brothers Karamazov), he says: "This is the last part; I 40 41

Letter of June 20, 1878,Pis'ma, 4: 26. August 13, 1879, Pis'ma, 4: 98.

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myself see and feel that it is so original and so unlike anything that the others write, that I definitely do not expect approval from our critics." The story of Dostoevsky's "collaboration" with Pobedonostsev, as told in his letters, instead of showing him as a mere tool of the tsarist reaction, brings forth with dramatic vivacity the essential traits of his own fearlessly independent and profoundly original view of the political situation of his time. One may wonder why he criticized the Minister's order to the teachers to "refute socialism in the classroom" when he himself at the same time promises a "refutation" of his socialist's (Ivan's) world-view in his novel. We have seen that his refutation was to be carried out not "point by point," not by way of a political debate, but "obliquely"; Ivan's world-view was to be contrasted "with something diametrically opposed to i t . . . . in an artistic image, so to say." This brings us to the difference between politics in fiction and politics in life — a difference of which Dostoevsky, unlike Chernyshevsky and the other radical critics, was perfectly aware, in spite of that "pamphlet," The Possessed. As interesting as this difference may be in the case of Dostoevsky we need not consider it here. We are interested at this point in the difference between the tsarist government's anti-socialism and that of Dostoevsky, not as a novelist but as a letter writer, particularly since his letters already seem to be telling us a great deal about it. We remember Dostoevsky's assertion that it was only from him that the "uprooted y o u t h , " the "nigiljatina," expected a sincere and sympathetic word. In a letter 42 to another of his presumed political collaborators, the journalist Putsykovich, he begs him not to "revile," "for heaven's sake," the Russian nihilists as much as their fathers; for not only is the "root of nihilism in the fathers, but the fathers are much worse nihilists than the sons." Most important of all, however, is again Dostoevsky's attitude towards an offspring of his own creative imagination, Ivan Karamazov. And again, in order to discover this attitude we need not resort to a critical scrutiny bearing upon the generally admitted artistic superiority of Ivan's tragedy as compared with the relatively pale "artistic image" intended to serve as its "oblique" refutation, the life of starec Zosima. There are many passages in Dostoevsky's letters which illustrate very vividly his quasi-paternal affection for Ivan, who is so different from "our s o c i a l i s t s . . . the conscious Jesuits and liars. . . " It suffices to compare the words to see where Dostoevsky's sympathies lay. Of Ivan, his "contemporary recusanthe wrote "but my socialist is a sincere p e r s o n . . ." 44 On the other hand, he communicated to his wife a spontaneous sigh of relief annoucing the completion of "Pater Seraphicus" — 45 43 44

May 3, W9,Pis'ma,

4: 50-52.

Dostoevsky's italics. Letter to N. A. Lyubimov, June 11, 1879,Pis'ma, 4: 58.

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"But more than anything else I am glad that I finally sent off the chapter! This starec lived too long on my expenses, since the very beginning of the summer I have been tormenting myself with him." 45 The young generation, whether they be sons of nihilists, of "mad" anarchists or sincere socialists, could hardly expect such sympathetic understanding from the government's orders or their authoritative teachers. Nor, for that matter, could their sons expect so much even from Maxim Gorky, for this "bird of revolutionary omen" (burevestnik) chirped once, in 1912, in a letter to Leonid Andreyev, a disciple of Dostoevsky: "Many people, seduced by the depraved nonsense of the Asiatic and nihilist Ivan Karamazov, are holding forth in the most banal manner on the 'non-acceptance' of the world in view of its 'cruelty' and 'absurdity'; if I were Governor-General, I would hang not the revolutionaries but precisely these 'refusers' (nepriemscikov), for these sinners of the word are more harmful to our country than pestilent . >>46

rats. Whose words, then, sound more like the tsarist Minister's, Dostoevsky's or Gorky's, and whose tone more closely resembles that of a "medieval inquisitor"? IV.

THE MISSION OF RUSSIA

In any case, Dostoevsky's letters, when carefully analyzed, show that perhaps no one has lived the drama of socialist Utopia as intensely as he did, and not only in his youth. He has left no written record of his "conversion," despite the bulk of his political writing, which is often very personal. We do not know what really happened to his innermost convictions during or after his Siberian exile. Only once did he write about it for the public: in 1873, in Diary of a Writer,47 The magazine Russkij Mir had published an article in which its author tried to minimize the importance of subversive plots among the young people and to deny their interest in such extreme consequences of these conspiracies as the Nechaev affair, which, as we know, inspired The Possessed. Still more important for Dostoevsky was the fact that the author of the article quoted, as the supporting evidence of his sweeping judgment, the words which the Minister of Public Instruction had uttered on the subject, after inspecting schools in seven districts. Dostoevsky reports these words, underlining them: "During the last few years the young people have been 45 46 47

August 7, 1879, Pis'ma, 4: 89. Sobranie socinenij, vol. 29, p. 231. "An error of our time," Grazdanin, no. 50, 1873.

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showing a much livelier interest in the study of sciences, they have been working harder and infinitely better." Now, if we were to take for granted Dostoevsky's repentant collaboration with the tsarist government, we should expect that he echoed this reassuring report of the Minister at least as faithfully as Russkij Mir. But such lethargic comfort before the deluge was not for him. Instead of hastily brushing aside a fact as monstrous as the killing of a revolutionary for insubordination by his own fellow conspirators, Dostoevsky, as always, sees its place within the historical perspective. For him such a deed is a logical consequence of socialist "love of mankind," and the ethical conclusion he draws from it is anything but insignificant: There are in the life of men such historic moments in which the most impudent and the most abominable misdeed can be attributed only to kindness of heart, to a manly and courageous attitude of the person who breaks his chains.

But this is not enough. Reading the lines in Russkij Mir. "The greater part of the youth is not interested in such follies," and, "a fanatic idiot such as Nechaev could find followers only among the idle, uneducated youth," Dostoevsky feels personally provoked. He does not hesitate, at this point, to establish not only a parallel, but a historical continuity between Petrashevsky's conspiracy in which he himself took part as a young man, and that of Nechaev: "I myself am an old 'Nechaevist'," he added. Furthermore, the tone of his reminiscences, far from any repentance, is that of courageous pride. "The formula of political socialism," the "quintessence" of which is envy, is one thing, and the enthusiasm and altruism of young minds is another: this is the difference on which he insists in this article and which he always had in mind, not least in his letters. He does not insist on his "conversion," however. His description of the general historical and ideological circumstances, which led to his initiation, by Belinsky, to "the truth'** of the "imminent regeneration of the world and of the sanctity of the future communist society," outweighs by far the attention he devotes to the motives of the change in his "point of view," in his "convictions," in his "heart." Recalling the punishment for the youthful illusion he shared with his fellow-conspirators, he declares boldly indeed: "Neither the years of exile nor the sufferings could break us. Nothing could subdue us, and our convictions alone sustained our souls with the consciousness that we have fulfilled our duty." We note, in passing, that these proud, fearless words contradict almost directly the Minister's official pronouncements. On the other hand, referring to the change in his convictions, 48

Dostoevsky's italics.

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which "did not occur at once, but little by little, by the force of time," he merely alludes to the direct contact with the common people as one factor, and then concludes rather hastily: "I should find it very difficult to tell how my convictions changed, the more so as this is perhaps not so interesting. Furthermore, this topic would not suit a chronicle." Whether these words be prompted by Dostoevsky's modesty or prudence, we have no doubt that the way in which his convictions changed is highly interesting — and not only for students of literature. We may wonder if this topic is not more suited to his letters. He never writes about it openly in his letters, but this lack of evidence is not less significant than his reluctance to tell the story of this change in the published article. "Your prisoners (Sakhalin and what you wrote me about them) shook me to the bottom of my soul, too near to my heart is this business, in spite of the distance of 25 years. But of this, later, when I see you." 49 This is one of the rare allusions to his exile, addressed this time to Pobedonostsev who was boasting about his humane intervention on behalf of some convicts. Obviously aiming at Dostoevsky's personal feelings, his influential friend describes in detail the provident care the government takes of its political prisoners, and even tries to impose upon his correspondent the official interpretation of such errors which lead directly along "the path of lies and contempt of law" to such just punishments. He winds up his mellifluous sermon with the following exhortation: "Not only the young people, but all of us, the so-called intelligentsia, get confused by it [by the question of what to do] as if we were bewitched; and yet right beside us runs the main, imperial road of truth. " s 0 To all this, instead of approving and applauding, Dostoevsky answers with the brief remark we have already quoted, as a postscriptum to a rather long letter. Again, the soft pressure from above failed to produce the desired effect on our writer. How near was this "business" to Dostoevsky towards the end of his life? We do not believe any longer, as did Mirsky and many critics after him, that there is a sharp difference in theme and style between the Poor Folk and The Double on one side, and his great post-Siberian novels on the other. Can we accept the old view of a total "conversion" of Dostoevsky from a social revolutionary to a Christian reactionary? It is not easy to answer such a question without considering at least some of the other aspects of Dostoevsky's thought. His dialectic is not less integral than that of Hegel, even though it is not as rational. Any attempt at following the strand of his politics cannot be confined to socialism and its antithesis, whatever that may be, as it regularly happens in Soviet criticism. Hardly any 49 50

August 9, 1879, Pis'ma, 4: 94. Cetter quoted by A. S. Dolinin in Pis'ma. 4: 395.

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of D o s t o e v s k y ' s i d e a s r e m a i n e d a b s t r a c t o r d o g m a t i c , a n d his j u v e n i l e belief in the "system'" of U t o p i a n socialism was a m o n g the

first

to be shattered, even

before he was punished

the

starting point of his

political

thinking when

f o r it. B u t

it r e m a i n e d

this t h o u g h t evolved a n d e m b r a c e d , w i t h its

most

penetrating dialectic, the ever m o r e concrete, actual spheres, f r o m the Russian

the necessity

of

C h r i s t i a n f a i t h . T o s e e if h i s l e t t e r s t h r o w a n y l i g h t o n t h i s d e v e l o p m e n t

political

scene

and

cultural

situation

in g e n e r a l

to

we

s h o u l d , t h e r e f o r e , go b a c k t o t h e d e p o s i t i o n h e w r o t e u p o n his arrest in 1 8 4 9 f o r p a r t i c i p a t i n g in m e e t i n g s o f a s u b v e r s i v e g r o u p h e a d e d b y t h e

Fourierist

Petrashevsky. What am I being accused of? Of having spoken a b o u t politics, a b o u t the West, a b o u t the censorship, etc. But w h o has n o t spoken and t h o u g h t of these p r o b l e m s in o u r days? Why t h e n did I s t u d y , w h y did learning excite curiosity in me, if I d o n ' t have the right to express m y personal opinion or disagree with an opinion b a c k e d b y a u t h o r i t y ? In the West a terrible scene is taking place; a d r a m a w i t h o u t equal is being played. T h e century-old order of things shakes and crumbles. The m o s t basic principles of society t h r e a t e n t o break u p any m i n u t e and pull with t h e m an entire n a t i o n . Thirty-six million people are literally p u t t i n g at stake their entire f u t u r e , their possessions, their o w n and their children's existence. Is this prospect n o t such as to excite a t t e n t i o n , curiosity, to shake one's soul? . . . It is precisely the c o u n t r y which has given us science, e d u c a t i o n , E u r o p e a n civilization; such a scene is a lesson! It is, a f t e r all, history, and history is the science of the f u t u r e . . . . Am I really being blamed for a t t r i b u t i n g a certain i m p o r t a n c e to the crisis which is stifling and breaking in t w o u n f o r t u n a t e France, for considering t h a t this crisis is perhaps historically necessary in the life of t h a t people as a transitory stage ( w h o can decide n o w ? ) which will in the end bring b e t t e r days. . . . I talked a b o u t the censorship, a b o u t its exaggerated severity in o u r days and I complained a b o u t it, for I felt that a misunderstanding had arisen which has b r o u g h t f o r t h a difficult situation for literature. I was distressed t o see t h a t the vocation of the writer is humiliated n o w a d a y s by some obscure suspicion, and that the censors see in a writer, even b e f o r e he has w r i t t e n a n y t h i n g , a real e n e m y of the g o v e r n m e n t and they set a b o u t e x a m i n i n g a m a n u s c r i p t with an obvious prejudice . . . . I complained and prayed that this sad misunderstanding might soon be o v e r c o m e ; for I love literature and c a n n o t help being interested in it, for I k n o w that literature is one of the expressions of the p e o p l e ' s life, a mirror of society . . . . Society c a n n o t exist w i t h o u t literature, and I realized t h a t our literature was dying . . . . Petrashevsky believes in Fourier. Fourierism is a pacific system; it c h a r m s the soul with its exquisiteness, it seduces the heart with that love of m a n k i n d which inspired Fourier w h e n he c o m p o s e d his system, it astonishes the m i n d with its h a r m o n y . It is attractive n o t by virtue of peevish invectives, b u t in as m u c h as it inspires love for m a n k i n d . There is n o h a t r e d in this system. Fourierism does n o t propose any political

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Writer in Hell reforms; it aims to reform e c o n o m y . It opposed neither the government nor private property . . .

Although Dostoevsky concludes his "answer" with the words: "I have told the truth," our willingness to accept it as a serious piece of evidence, as a valid testimony of Dostoevsky's early political convictions might be weakened by our knowledge of some more modern political depositions usually followed by an easy and as it were prescribed recanting. Dostoevsky's courage and sincerity cannot be questioned; they are, in fact, so authentic that even the last note of disenchantment in the "Utopia" does not sound false, and the whole "answer" is actually such a fearless accusation of the authorities that it makes the modern reader forget the more recent confessions of error and deviation. Its biographical value is heightened by the fact that it hinges on some ideological points which, within the larger frame of Dostoevsky's life, and particularly in the light of the eptistolary evidence, instead of vanishing like ephemeral scratches of time and circumstance, reveal further their depth and significance: Dostoevsky's position in the controversy between "Slavophiles" and "Westerners," his struggle with censorship and, above all, his prevailing over socialist Utopia. In fact, the main question, raised by Dostoevsky's correspondence, regarding his political opinions, is whether, and how far, did the views expressed in his deposition change in the later years of his life. His interest in the West and his awareness of Russia's debt to European culture did not diminish after his return from Siberia, in spite of his more or less overt "Slavophilism." His focus shifted, however, from the cultural relationship between Russia and the West to a considerably graver antagonism within Russia itself. In September of 1860, Dostoevsky announced the program of his review which was meant to voice his new cultural and political ideas: The reform of Peter the Great has cost us a great deal: it has separated us from the people . . . . We have finally convinced ourselves that we have a particular nationality, autonomous to the highest degree, and that it is our duty to create a n e w form, our own form based on our family, taken from our native soil (pocva), from the spirit of the people.

So far Dostoevsky is only repeating one of the essential arguments of the Slavophiles. But he adds significantly: "The Russian idea may be the synthesis of all those ideas Europe has developed with such perseverance and

51 Quoted from: N. F. Bel'cikov, Dostoevskij Leningrad, 1 9 3 6 ) , p. 85.

v processe

petrasevcev

(Moscow-

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so much force in its various nations." This view of history surpasses the Slavophile parochialism. It is well known that Dostoevsky, in his political writings, continued to develop this ideal until at the end of his life he gave it the fullest expression in the Pushkin speech. In the last years, however, several times he referred to himself in his letters as he did in his Diary, as a "Slavophile." In some of the letters of this period he appears as the semi-official leader of the Slavophiles during the Pushkin celebrations. After these celebrations, in a letter to the leader of the Slavophiles at the time, to Ivan Aksakov, he even criticized the latter's ideas about Peter the Great,52 appearing to be more Catholic than the Pope. Does this mean that in the end Dostoevsky really embraced without reserve Slavophile ideas? We should hear what the other two parties involved had to say about Dostoevsky's speech. Turgenev, leader of the "Westerners" for the occasion, after recovering from the enthusiam inspired by Dostoevsky's fiery words and which even he could not resist, wrote in a letter to a friend: I have not yet cried out "You have won, Galilean." This very intelligent, brilliant and clever speech, in spite of all its passion, rests entirely on a hypocrisy extremely agreeable to Russian self-esteem. Pushkin's Aleko is a purely Byronic figure and not at all the type of the contemporary Russian wanderer; Dostoevsky's description of Tatyana's character is very subtle, but are Russian women really the only ones who remain faithful to their old husbands? But this is most important of all: "We shall say the last word to Europe, we shall bequeath it to her, for Pushkin has recreated with genius Shakespeare, Goethe, and others." But he recreated them and did not create them, and we shall not create a new Europe just as he did not create Shakespeare and others.53

What is astonishing in this sobering, realistic criticism by Turgenev is that he, a "Westerner," resorted in the end to a rather Slavophile concept of the "authentic Russian" in order to confute Dostoevsky's "universal man": "And then, why this universal man," he continues, "which the audience greeted with such frenetic applause? One shouldn't even aspire to become such a man; it is better to be an original Russian than this impersonal universal man." He concludes, however, in a way typical of a "Westerner": Again the same old pride under the disguise of humility. It may well be that Europeans find this assimilation, which has been exalted as a universal work of genius, so much more difficult because they are more original than we are. But of course, the audience was thrilled to hear these compliments; and then, the speech was really remarkable for its beauty and tact.54 si

December 3, 1880, Pis'ma, 4: 217-218. Pis 'ma, 4: 426-427. 54 Letter to M. M. Stasyulevich of June 13,1880, quoted in Pis'ma, 4: 427.

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It would seem then t h a t Turgenev, with his criticism of Dostoevsky's central concept of "universal m a n , " questioned his "Slavophilism." On the other h a n d , one of the first and most consistent Slavophiles, A. I. Koshelev, c o m m e n t i n g on Dostoevsky's speech, was not more favorable to it than Turgenev. According to him, the " p r o p h e t " of Russia's mission was not Pushkin, b u t K h o m y a k o v , one of the f o u n d e r s of Slavophilism. He argued f u r t h e r that "universal receptiveness," a capacity for receiving and transforming cultural values of all nations, was n o t the main gift of Russian people, nor d o the Russians aspire towards "universality" and "universal h u m a n i s m , " as Dostoevsky c l a i m e d . " We see then that in this essential matter the leaders of Westerners and Slavophiles b o t h unanimously disagreed with Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky's t r i u m p h during the Pushkin festivities was not a Slavophile victory, as Dostoevsky himself h o p e d and believed, but rather a clear sign of his recognition as a writer of genius, as an extraordinarily gifted reader of p o e t r y , an acute moralist, and a political orator of exceptional power. The concepts of "universal receptiveness" of Pushkin, of the new "synthesis" of culture, of "universal h u m a n i s m " of the Russians — words which more than anything else conquered the audience — were not taken out of the Slavophile vocabulary; they constitute, even if some of t h e m were first formulated b y Gogol fifty years before, the basis of Dostoevsky's own entire ideological complex, f r o m the time of the Fourierist illusion to his death. His speech, t h e n , was acclaimed with undivided enthusiasm when it was delivered, b u t was very soon repudiated by the leaders of b o t h parties. A few years later, however, the obstinately one-sided, partial theories of b o t h Slavophiles and "Westerners" were o u t d a t e d , whereas Dostoevsky's Pushkin speech, with its dialectics of the reconciliation of contraries and its concept of cultural synthesis, has remained n o t only a manifest testimony of the " e x t r e m e spirit" of the "convictions" 5 6 of the great writer, but represents even t o this day a valuable contribution to the t h e o r y of culture in general. And again his letters, particularly those written during the Pushkin festivities, t h r o w full light on the utter sincerity of his speech, on the quasi-prophetic zeal of his c o m m i t m e n t , on the pathetic, o f t e n naive joy at the belated public recognition of his own greatness. The three focal points in the development of Dostoevsky's thought bearing u p o n the Russian cultural controversy, f r o m the time of his arrest to the end of his life, are clear particularly in his letters: first, belief in France and Western Europe in general and their Utopian socialism; second, exaltation of Russian " n a t i o n a l i t y " and its power of synthesis; and finally, the concentration of this power in a single individual, the ideal p r o t o t y p e of whom is 55 56

Pis'ma, 4: 438.

Letter of May 19, 1880, to Pobedonostsev, Pis 'ma, 4: 144.

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Pushkin. Some of the reasons for the transition from the first to the second stage may be seen in the words which Dostoevsky addressed to some students, the representatives of the new generation in 1878, at the time, that is, when these students were as old as he had been when he believed in Fourierist Utopia: "The gulf between [the upper stratum of our society] and [its] environment must be a great deal deeper than the gulf, for example, which, according to the socialist theory, separates the present society from the future one." 57 In spite of his antagonism, however, Dostoevsky believed toward the end of his life that some "synthesis," some reconciliation of opposites had been achieved in his own ideological development as well as within the larger course of Russian history during those four decades. "To judge by my sympathies, I am not at all a man of the '60s, or even of the '40s," he wrote to a contemporary of his, "I rather prefer the present years which already bring a breath of things accomplished, to replace the previous guessing and idealizing."5* It is difficult to know exactly what "things" Dostoevsky meant; we may think of those various Utopias or ideals, which many Russian leaders of Dostoevsky's generation pursued, before and during the reforms of the 60s on different ideological fronts, "waiting for happier days"; men like Belinsky and Chernyshevsky, Bakunin and Herzen, Khomyakov and Grigoryev. In another letter to the same admirer a few months earlier, he wrote: As for the men of those days [the 60s] who appeared then with a word, they certainly did their share and went with their time. It is certain that new men are coming (and will soon arrive), so it is necessary to long and pine about them. Let us be worthy of meeting understanding them . . . . This is an immensely important moment Russia, and we have lived to witness the most interesting turn . . . . s '

new also not and for

In the other letter to this correspondent, however, he does name one of those "things accomplished": in spite of the disappointing consequences of the liberation of the serfs (lamented also by Tolstoy), a "political conscience has taken root in the people, an exact (or at least constantly becoming more and more exact) conception of the sense and the mission of Russia." This was revealed to Dostoevsky during the Serbo-Turkish war of 1876-1878, and particularly by the response of the volunteers (which was, on the contrary, ridiculed by Tolstoy in the last part of Anna Karenina, very much to Dostoevsky's horror). 60 57

Letter "To the students," April 18, 1878, Pis'ma, 4: 19. Letter to L. V. Grigoryev, July 21, 1878, Pis'ma, 4: 33-34. 59 March 27, 1878,Pis'ma, 4: 14. 60 Cf. Dostoevsky's review of Part VIII of Anna Karenina September, 1878. 58

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It may be supposed that Dostoevsky also had in mind the accomplishment in the field of Russian literature during those four decades. Naturally, one thinks first of his attitude towards Tolstoy. It is true that Dostoevsky's criticism of War and Peace, demanding originality and not finding it, was rather unfavorable. Even if one overlooks Dostoevsky's biting satire of Levin in Anna Karenina, provoked by the latter's (and Tolstoy's) unpatriotic attitude, one cannot ignore Dostoevsky's definitive judgment of this novel, voiced a few months later in his Diary: "Anna Karenina, as far as its idea is concerned, is, of course, not a novelty, it isn't something that we haven't heard of before. We could, naturally, draw the attention of Europe directly to its source, that is, to Pushkin . . . . " We know also that two years later, during his Pushkin speech, Dostoevsky declared that this poet had already found a synthesis not only of "Russian spirit," but also of all the literary ideals of Europe in general. In spite of all this, it is significant that Dostoevsky did recognize Anna Karenina as an accomplishment of national importance, as "our own word, precisely that which represents to the European world our originality, that which constitutes our national 'new word,' or at least the beginning of it." We have seen that in drawing up a laconic summary of the four decades of Russian cultural development Dostoevsky actually projected into it his own spiritual growth during those years. His supreme and unrelenting artistic aspiration, on the other hand, to accomplish in each novel a "synthesis" of the "burning questions" of the time, to mark by his poetic vision the crucial stages of historical development, leaves no doubt that the "accomplished things" he was referring to were above all the historical conditions, the right moment for uttering such a "new word," for creating a synthesis "in artistic images" of those antagonistic social and ethical problems which had agitated Russian society since Dostoevsky's youth, and which he himself had lived so intensely. In other words, the time had come when such a colossal synthesis as The Brothers Karamazov was possible. All this does not mean, however, that Dostoevsky's "synthesis" applies to the late 1870s, because — as many critics would maintain — he optimistically believed that the danger of a revolution had been averted, that socialist and radical tendencies had been at last surpassed by Christian, nationalist, monarchic or other opposing ideologies. On the contrary: "We have never had, in our Russian life, an epoch when the youth (as if they sensed that all Russia has halted on a certain final point oscillating on the verge of an abyss) in their overwhelming majority were more sincere, purer in their heart, more longing for truth and justice, more ready to sacrifice everything, even their lives, for justice, for a word of justice." 61 He declared this, two weeks after his first 61

April 18, 1878, Pis'ma, 4: 17.

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letter to Grigoryev, to a group of students involved in a demonstration. The "synthesis" of the '60s means essentially that a cycle of history, from Utopian socialism, passing through the years of "guessing and idealizing," had reached its "final point" from which the aesthetic distance would allow a truly original writer to say his "new word" about it. This brings us back to Dostoevsky's deposition of 1849. We saw in this deposition that even before his exile he had overcome the "love of mankind" inspired not by concrete presence of a fellow-man, of a neighbor, but by an abstract system. But the "charm" of the system — or any attempt at the total rational organization of society for the purpose of providing happiness for all — persists not in the form of a militant conviction, but as sympathy for those young people who seek a sincerely and altruistically motivated "world view," however erroneous and immature it may be. If the "charm of a system" had not continued to "astonish" the mind of Dostoevsky with its harmony, it is unlikely that the tremendous drama of Ivan Karamazov, created thirty years after his youthful delusion, would be as convincing as it is; nor would Dostoevsky's understanding of the young people's temptation to see in history the superior "science" and sole arbiter of the future, have been as warm as it was. And if, in 1861, he showed in his controversy with one of the representatives of the new generation, Dobrolyubov, much less confidence in history as an "exact science," this sympathy made his arguments in this controversy so much more convincing. In any case, if literature can be prophetic, as Dostoevsky believed, and as more recently Heidegger claimed, we might do well to pause and think of the supremely real tragedy of Dostoevsky's "socialist," alongside the rather pale "artistic image" of the "Russian monk," in the light of the last eighty years of history, before we laugh at the even paler pages of Dostoevsky's journalistic writing which promised many a time that Russia would save the world from socialism. How irresistible, nonetheless, the "enchantment" of an organized, collective happiness for all was, how strong the temptation was to see in "history" the true science and the only criterion of the future (and this precisely at the time when this kind of dialectic found its function as the basis of the historical materialism of Marx) — all this was to be shown later not only by the profoundly human personal tragedy of Ivan Karamazov, which Dostoevsky unveiled thirty years after this profession de foi, this confession of an illusion; but also, as we have seen, by these last letters of his. The last glance at Dostoevsky's deposition reminds us of his protest against censorship. His letters show that his struggle with it continued, only with less public, less provocative, but so much more efficient weapons — his persistent persuading of Pobedonostsev, the preliminary explanations in his letters to his editorial reader and to his publisher are all examples of this new strategy, one of the very few that the mighty enemy left him.

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Here in Petersburg even for the most innocent literary evening . . .absolutely every line, even if it was written 2 0 years before, has to be submitted for approval to the Superintendent of the District of Education . . . . Are they really going to allow new things to be read without any previous censorship? 6 2

This was the "most important and highly interesting" question which Dostoevsky addressed to one of the organizers of the Pushkin festivities during which he was to deliver his famous speech; twenty days before leaving for Moscow he begs to be informed about it, so that he may be " r e a d y " in time for an eventual approval. The "most interesting" thing is obviously not " t i m e , " it is rather the censor's disposition. The fight for the freedom of expression, whether it be threatened by a rigid, autocratic censorship or by friendly insinuations; the irresistible attraction of an abstract system to guarantee the happiness of mankind, inevitably followed by a tragic delusion; loyalty to Western civilization and belief in the love of literature as an "expression of the people's life," as a "mirror of society": these are the main points of Dostoevsky's "answer" to the prosecution of 1849. His letters of the last period show that they continued to be nothing less than the essential aspects of his political and social commitment. The accent had shifted, but the motives persisted; the strategy and the weapons changed, but the fronts of action remained. The astonishing consistency, in spite of exile and autocratic pressure, invalidates any theory of a "radical change" in Dostoevsky's convictions during or after the years of his exile; just as a recognition of an inner dimension which was opened even in his first novel (though noticed and criticized by Belinsky only in the second: in The Double), already detaching Dostoevsky's style from Gogol's "naturalist school," easily disqualifies the concept of the two entirely different manners of Dostoevsky. In both cases we see growth rather than change. There can be, for example, no comparison between Dostoevsky's evolution (from his first literary works and his youthful convictions to his great novels, from his "pocvennicestvo" to his "Slavophilism") and Gogol's or Tolstoy's profoundly disruptive crises. But Dostoevsky's deposition is important not only for what it says, but also for h o w it says it. A clear note of pride rings from these pages: Dostoevsky's European education, the ideals of science and culture would not permit him to act differently at such a decisive moment in the life of the West, so important for his own country. In the subsequent years, in all his correspondence there is no trace of his recanting this pride, expressed at such a dramatic moment of his own life. In the light of this pride we can now be more confident of the analogy we " Letter to S. A. Yuryev, May 5, 1 8 8 0 , Pis'ma, 4: 142.

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seemed to see between the general concept of a "great social event" as the aim of aesthetic education and the particular, private fact of Dostoevsky's participation in the Petrashevsky conspiracy. We can safely conclude that he had this action of his in mind when, in his essay "Mr. — bov and the question of art" he paraphrased the "pure artists' " concept of the moral value of aesthetic impressions; we can now also conclude that the "good road," of which he spoke twenty years later in the letter to the anxious father, and along which he had directed his imagination and his impressionability, thanks to his reading of novels, was the road which may lead to such fulfillment of duty as that conspiracy. V . DUALITY AND FAITH

Even in his speech on Pushkin, where he propounded such a theoretical and general program, Dostoevsky gave evidence of his predilection for the deductive way of thinking, always hastening to leave the plane of the "idea" and come down to the concrete example: Pushkin's characters, in this case. The fact that he was supposed to talk about Pushkin and yet ended by formulating some sweeping judgments on Russia and Europe should not prevent us from seeing his preference in every question for the individual involved. For it was not a secret — and his letters tell us so plainly — that the unveiling of the monument of Pushkin was not, nor could it have been at the particular moment of Russian history, a mere commemoration of a poet; it was clear from the very beginning that under the shadow of the new monument to Pushkin an important ideological battle was to take place, that, as Dostoevsky put it, a "great social cause" was at stake; "for Pushkin in fact expressed the idea to which we all (as yet only a small group) adhere, and this must be pointed out and expressed." 63 In spite of the political necessity of generalizing "the phenomenon of Pushkin" he never fails to focus on the ideological conflicts within the frame of the individual. And thus he uses the fictional characters of Pushkin to sketch out an ideal image of Russia, to point out her basic moral problems and define her role in history. It is very important to note this procedure, for two main reasons. In the first place, it is a rare, if not original, way of discussing Russian literature and art in general, for exactly the reverse method was a common practice in Russian literary criticism since Belinsky, where literature was used, for better or for worse, to fill out the rigid contours of an already pre-conceived image, to support a social, political or moral theory, whether it was Belinsky's "progress of culture, education and humanism" or,

63

Letter to K. P. Pobedonostsev, May 19, 1880,Pis'ma, 4: 144.

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half a century later, L. Tolstoy's "brotherly love among men." In the second place, his impatience with abstraction is essential for an understanding of his antidogmatic and dialectical way of thinking in general. And again, his letters are the most eloquent evidence of his untiring search for the individual, his inner world and his personal dilemma. It is no wonder, therefore, that this inner dimension, this existentialist inquiry, as we are tempted to say today, constitutes the most fascinating aspect of Dostoevsky's correspondence. Among the most relevant fields of this inquiry are duality, faith, and artistic creation. While conventional opinion would classify duality as insincerity, amorality or anormality, Dostoevsky, as he always did when faced with "psychological problems," saw it rooted within a vast ethical complex of spiritual life. In fact, in his brief and yet extremely illuminating explanation of duality, 6 4 together with his "axiom" of existence, 65 it is not difficult to see an outline of Dostoevsky's entire ethics. The "evolved" intellect follows a dialectical process: the first stage is the pride of knowledge, that is to say, the consciousness of the world as an object. This stage is described particularly in the second of the two letters just mentioned: as much as the intellect understands and judges "the entire earth and its axiom," it absorbs the laws of nature; thus identifying itself with the object, it surpasses it precisely by its capacity of comprehending it, and it must therefore find another, superior "law," another "organism" on the basis of which it may give sense and measure to its new existence: it must establish a new relationship between subject and object. Not finding this new basis of subjectivity, the mind, if endowed with a "powerful conscience," feeling the "necessity of personal responsibility," and aware of the presence in itself of the "necessity of the moral obligation toward itself and toward mankind," turns to itself, splits in two, and by comprehending and judging itself (whereby the "subject" and the "object" are maddeningly interchangeable), reaches the second stage of duality "with its great pain" and its "great pleasure." The only way out of this circle of uncertainty, the only synthesis possible, is to be found in faith. The synthesis is personal, it is Christ, just as the immortality of the soul and resurrection are conceived as personal. 66 His letters also show that Dostoevsky himself always looked for this direct relation to Christ, and they illuminate his attitude toward the Church: another problem for which many, often contradictory, solutions have been proposed. The first interpreter of Dostoevsky's notion of the Church was his friend, the philosopher Vladimir Solovyev. He accompanied him on the 64 65 66

Letter to E. F. Yunge, April 11, 1880, Pis'ma, 4: 136-137. Letter to N. L. Ozmidov, February, 1878, Pis'ma, 4: 5. Letter to N. P. Peterson, March 24, 1878, Pis'ma, 4: 9-10.

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pilgrimage to the convent of Optina Pustyn' and later reported that during this trip Dostoevsky talked of the Karamazov "epic," which he intended to write. "The Church [wrote Solovyev], as a positive social ideal, was to be the central idea of his new novel, or of a series of novels, only the first of which, The Brothers Karamazov, was written." 61 Before we accept Solovyev's testimony, we should remember that he himself assigned to the Church an important function in his ethics. On the other hand, it is rather significant that Dostoevsky, in these letters at least, never speaks of the Church, not even when a reference to it could be expected, for example in his "lesson" to a mother worried about the education of her son,68 or in his advice to a girl student who has lost faith,69 or to a woman painter who is tormented by "duality." 70 And yet his fundamental ethical-religious concepts, such as "people" (at times identical with "faith"), "Russia" (also "Orthodox Russia"), "immortality" ("The immortality of the soul and God - this is one and the same thing, the same idea"),11 and so on, recur very frequently. Furthermore, in The Brothers Karamazov the Church is not an important motive — if we accept the manifestly negative function assigned to it by the Great Inquisitor. Finally, in his speech on Pushkin, in which he "indicated the way out toward a new era," 12 Dostoevsky does not even mention the Church. And indeed, another outstanding Russian theologian, K. N. Leontyev, did not fail to notice this peculiarity of Dostoevsky's Orthodoxy. In his criticism of Dostoevsky's speech he advanced an argument directly opposed to that of Solovyev: In Mr. Dostoevsky's speech Christ is evidently so easily accessible, to say the least, to anyone of us without the mediation of the Church, that one could presume to have the right to attribute to the Creator promises which He never made, such as the general fraternity of nations, "universal peace" and "harmony" - without even consulting the ABC of cathechism, that is to say, the most essential principles and unconditional requirements of the Orthodox dogma. 73

It is interesting to note here, in reference to our discussion of the purported agreement between Dostoevsky and Pobedonostsev, that even Leontyev noticed a profound disagreement between the two "fellow-Mohicans" on an issue no less important than the mission of the Russian Orthodox Church. It 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

"Pervaja ree' Solov'eva v pamjat' Dostoevskogo," quoted from Pis'ma, 4: 349. Letter to a mother, March 27, 1878,Pis'ma, 4: 11. Letter of January 15, 1880, Pis'ma, 4: 128. Letter to E. F. Yunge, April 11, 1880, Pis'ma, 4: 136. Letter to N. L. Ozmidov, February 1878, Pis'ma, 4: 5. Letter to S. A. Tolstaya, June 13, 1880, Pis'ma, 4: 175. Varsavskij Dnevnik, nos. 162, 169, 173; quoted from Pis'ma, 4: 433.

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is, in fact, by opposing Dostoevsky to Pobedonostsev that Leontyev attacks the former's idea of faith: "In Pobedonostsev's speech [to the students of a school for the daughters of the clergy] Christ can only be known through the C h u r c h . . . " This censure, or rather the newspaper containing it, was referred to Dostoevsky by none other than Pobedonostsev, who sent him Leontyev's article, which thus became but another subtle warning by the "fellowMohican," the High Procurator of the Holy Synod, not to deviate from the official line of Orthodoxy and autocracy. And again Dostoevsky's resistance to him was unflinching: "Thank you for sending the Warsaw Diary; Leontyev is, after all, somewhat of an heretic, did you notice it? However, I will talk to you about it personally, when, at the end of September, I come to Petersburg. There is much that is curious in his judgments." 74 Most of the subsequent Russian philosophers and theologians have opted in favor of Solovyev's kind of interpretation of Dostoevsky's faith in its relation to the Church. In fact, while his attitude toward the powers-that-be has repeatedly been defined as servile collaboration, his role in the propagation of the dogma of the Eastern Chruch has often been magnified, by those of the adverse party, out of all proportion to the facts. For example, one of the prominent Russian philosophers of the twentieth century, Nikolay Lossky (1870-1965), maintained that Dostoevsky saw his dream of the universal reconciliation among nations "in precise relation to the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church." 75 On the other hand, an eminent historian of the Eastern Church, Fr. G. Florovsky, claimed that Dostoevsky's alternative for Western morality was the Orthodox Church, "our Russian socialism." "He wanted to say that it was the Church that could inspire and enforce an ultimate realization of social justice in the spirit of brotherly love and mutuality". 7 6 We have already stated that no clear evidence in support of such claims could be found in Dostoevsky's letters — or in his other writings, for that matter. In fact, Nikolay Strakhov, a close acquaintance of Dostoevsky's for many years and the first editor of his letters, had to admit that the letters do not give a clear idea even of the "essential change" in his religious outlook upon his return from Europe in 1871. 17 Still less could be said of his supposed and ever-increasing advocacy of the Russian Orthodox Church. 78 74

Letter of August 16, 1880, Pis'ma, 4: 195. N. Losskij, Dostoevski/ i ego miroponimanie (New York, 1953), p. 349. G. Florovsky, Christianity and Culture (Belmont 1974), 2: 136-137. 77 Quoted from Losskij, p. 90. 78 Lossky himself considers Dostoevsky's last novel, only to conclude that Ivan Karamazov's "haughty Titanism . . . in its relation to the Church" proves rather the opposite: "In the poem 'The Great Inquisitor' he depicts Jesus Christ and his teaching actually as the absolute goodness, while he describes the Church as an institution that 75

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Most of these persistent and biased claims upon Dostoevsky's religious thought are based, it seems, on a willful and more or less skillful confusion of the terms "Church" and "people." Since this is done, more often than not, by resorting to Dostoevsky's letters as if they were the treasury of his intimate, "real" thoughts and feelings, we ought to pause for a while and consider this method. N. Lossky offers a very typical example of it; we shall, therefore, examine briefly the main points of his thesis. In quoting Dostoevsky's reminiscences of childhood (written in 1877), Lossky stresses the conventional, "practicing" aspects of the writer's early religious education, to the point of using, rather indiscriminately, starets Zosima's childhood memories. He does not seem to notice, however, that it was the people, rather than the Church, which helped Dostoevsky find Christ again, although Dostoevsky himself makes it quite clear: Our people cherish the memory of their ascetics, they love to tell their children martyrs. They know these stories by heart, I first heard them, as they were told with remained in my heart.

great and humble hermits and stories of the great Christian and it was from the people that feeling and awe; and they have

This is followed immediately by another quotation, taken from the August issue of the Diary of a Writer for 1880: It was from the people that I received again Christ in my soul, whom I had got to know while still a child in my parents' home, and whom I nearly lost when my turn came to become a European liberal. 79

One might have expected to hear from a supposed proselytizer of the established Church that this "reconversion" was effected rather by the sermons and the sacraments performed by the clergy. Instead, Lossky hastens to conclude with a flimsy conjecture: "[Dostoevsky] in his turn, perhaps moved by the example of Yanovsky, returned to the Church,probably during the Lent of 1847." Another argument used in support of the theory of Dostoevsky's return to the Church is his intention to dedicate an essay which he never wrote, on the role of Christianity in art, to the grand-duchess Mariya Nikolaevna. "Consequently [concludes Lossky] he considered the thoughts expressed in it acceptable to a person occupying a high position in Russia." 80 At about the same time (1856) Dostoevsky had written an ode to the tsar, which has sometimes been used as one of the first signs of his repentant and blind loyalty to belittles goodness and man." He goes on to say that in his own "chapter on the Church it will be shown that these reproaches are directed as much against the Catholics as against the Orthodox Churches, and are essentially unfair." Ibid., p. 251. 79 Ibid., p. 54. 80

Ibid., p. 65.

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autocracy. Yet the truth behind these signs is as simple as it is pathetic: he was only trying to ingratiate himself with those in power, sufficiently to be allowed to return from Siberia and to continue writing. As an illustration of Dostoevsky's return to the fold during his penal servitude in Siberia, a passage from the Notes from the Dead House is quoted: I particularly liked the Great Fast week. Those who fasted were excused from work. We went to a church not far from the jail, twice or three times a day. I hadn't gone to church for a long time. The Lenten mass, so familiar to me ever since my early childhood in my parents' home, the solemn prayers, the bows to the ground - all that stirred in my soul memories of the days long past, it brought back impressions from my earliest childhood.

This passage is used as the basis for the following affirmation: "At that time, no doubt, the Church was for him the source of solace and profound, soul-lifting impressions." 8 1 Then the reader is reminded that establishing a link with childhood memories is very important in overcoming a temporary break-away from the Church. This piece of evidence is so ambiguous that it could be used, at least as convincingly, to support the opposite thesis: the prisoner (granted it is plainly and purely Dostoevsky himself) had not gone to church for a long time, until he could be excused from hard labor; and once he did go, what he found there was but an aesthetic and sentimental experience. As for his fellow-Christians, the community of the faithful, shown as straying sheep in the grips of contrition, their repentance is not related, in the narrator's mind, to absolution, penance, or any other sacrament, although he described their visits to the local church. Their sense of guilt and their way of overcoming it are associated, quite clearly, with another, slightly different, tradition. Lossky himself mentions it, without realizing, apparently, that he thus defeats his purpose: " N o less important for Dostoevsky was the association of the profound impressions made by the church with those attitudes of the mind of the Russian people which he calls the 'people's justice.' " 8 2 Lossky is aware, however, that he did not succeed in proving his thesis with such flimsy arguments, for occasionally, almost periodically, he makes statements such as the following: "[Dostoevsky's] return to the Church in 1847 was mainly an adherence to Christ as the God-Man, and not to the Russian Orthodox Church. His love of Russian Orthodoxy and of the Church was conceived in him at a later stage, and it grew slowly and gradually." 8 3 No convincing evidence is offered, however, in support of this statement, 81 Ibid., p. 70. "Ibid., p. 71. 83 Ibid., p. 66.

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either. No growth in the desired direction can be detected in Lossky's own commentary of the well-known article entitled "The Three Ideas," which opens the Diary of a Writer for 1877: Dostoevsky speaks here about the Catholic, the Protestant and the Slav ideas, the latter mainly in the form developed by the Russian people. He considers these ideas not only as religious denominations, but also as forces controlling, over the centuries, all the aspects of the life of the nations which have adopted t h e m . "

What could be more significant in this context than the substitution of Slav for Orthodox? The Poles, the Czechs, the Slovaks are not Orthodox, but they are Slavs. The historical force that matters is obviously not the Church, but the ethnic group with its traditional, cultural and eventually religious mission. How far-removed from the established Russian Church Dostoevsky's idea of the community of the faithful was, how unorthodox his view of Orthodoxy was, could be seen from the very material that Lossky presents in order to demonstrate the opposite thesis. He quotes, for example, Dostoevsky's answer to Gradovsky, written a few months before his death in defense of Russian culture. A few excerpts from the lengthy quotation should suffice: They will tell me the Russian people do not know the teaching of Christ, that no one is teaching them sermons. But this is a vain objection: they know everything, everything, I mean, that is necessary to know, even if they would not be able to pass an exam in catechism. They learnt it in churches, where for centuries they have heard prayers and hymns, which are better than sermons. Many a time they have sung these prayers by themselves, in the woods, while hiding from their enemies, already during Batu's invasion, perhaps, they sang "O Lord of might, be with us!" And it was then, perhaps, that they learnt this hymn by heart, for apart from Christ they had nothing left, and in it, in this one hymn lies the whole truth of Christ. The fact that all too few sermons are read to the people, while young deacons mumble indistinctly, has been interpreted by our liberals as the most colossal charge against our Church, together with the inappropriateness of the Church Slavonic language, supposedly incomprehensible to the common man (good Heavens! And what about the Old Believers?). But then, to make up for it, the priest comes out and reads: "O Lord, master of my life," and this prayer contains all the essence of Christianity, its entire catechism, and the people know this prayer by heart." 8 5

We have here, in the reference to the "most colossal charge," a typical example of Dostoevsky's dialectics, the far-reaching, though circuitous acuteness of which has often been overlooked in interpreting his words without 84 85

Ibid., p. 334. Ibid., p. 336.

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carefully considering their context: at a first glance the liberals seem to be condemned for making this charge, but then we realize that it is taken into account, and instead of being denied, it is parried by means of additional arguments. The conclusion, therefore, is not that the liberals were wrong in attacking the Church for not providing sermons and for using an archaic language, but rather in not considering the other, non-ecclesiastic ways the Russian people have of expressing their religious feelings. In any case, the further one reads this text, the more one becomes aware of the absence of dogma. Furthermore, as one reads the following lines, one cannot help but wonder just how important, to Dostoevsky's mind, the role of the Church was in the history of the Russian people: They know many of the lives of the saints, they tell them over and over again, and listen with tender emotion. But the main school in which they learnt Christianity was the centuries-long period of countless and endless sufferings, which they have borne in the course of their history; when, abandoned by all, scorned by all, working for all and sundry, they were left only with Christ the Comforter, whom they then received in their soul forever, and who, therefore, saved their souls from despair."

The Russian has prayed without the catechism and the sermons, and now we see that he has had to do for many centuries without protection from his Church, not only when he was invaded by an infidel, but even when he was exploited by his own countrymen. "Historical failures of Christians in the social field," writes Fr. G. Florovsky, "must be admitted and recognized. And still the basic conviction remains unshaken: the faith of the church provides a solid ground for social action." 8 7 Can we presume, in the light of Dostoevsky's emphatic words just quoted, that in him this conviction remained unshaken, as his love of Christ never really left him? Is it by pure chance that, in this deliberately "unecclesiastical" review of the history of the faith among the Russian people, he referred to Batu Khan's invasion and to the Old Believers? Shouldn't we rather venture to say that, knowing Russian history intimately, and believing as ardently as he did in the social commitment of all concerned - not excluding the clergy - he did admit and recognize the failures of the Christians; that is, certainly not of the laymen, but of the Church? The simple facts are that, subsequent to Batu's invasion, in 1270, the Russian Church enjoyed special privileges, such as immunity from taxation ; and that the Old Believers were persecuted by none other than the high clergy, who thus facilitated the subjugation of the Russian Church to the state, accomplished by Peter the Great; and that this persecution continued all through Dostoevsky's lifetime (it only ceased in 1905), very much " Quoted by Losskij, ibid., p. 336. 87 Christianity and Culture, p. 138.

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to his embarrassment: for he believed that religious tolerance was one of the noble and exclusive traits of the Russian people. "As for sectarian feelings," he wrote in 1876, "almost no one persecutes any longer even the Old Believers, let alone aliens, and if recently there have been a few rare and quite isolated cases of persecution of the stundists, those cases were immediately and severely condemned by our entire press." 88 That Dostoevsky, who hardly ever had a kind word to say about the contemporary Russian press, should endorse it without exception, suggests that the clergy and the authorities were, at least in this case, more reprehensible than the liberals and the radicals. Another fact to remember is that the Russian Church, since Peter the Great, was administered by a Holy Synod, headed by a lay procurator. Since May of 1880 this high position was occupied by Pobedonostsev. His letter to Dostoevsky, containing a copy of Leontyev's article, was dated August 2. The special (and last) issue of the Diary of a Writer containing the Pushkin speech and the answer to Gradovsky, from which we quoted above, was published on August 12, while Dostoevsky's response to Pobedonostsev was written on August 16. If we now recall Leontyev's strong objection to the easy accessibility of Christ "without the mediation of the Church," to the presumption in attributing to the Creator "promises which He never made . . . without even consulting the ABC of catechism"; if we consider another passage from Leontyev's article, such as this: To our nation was entrusted one great treasure — our strict and unbending church Orthodoxy. But our best minds do not wish to 'submit' to it, to its 'exclusivism' and to that apparent coldness which is the effect always produced on romantically nurtured souls by all things established, correct and firm. 8 9

— we can submit that Dostoevsky's "answer" was not directed solely at Gradovsky and his zapadnicestvo. At least in the passages quoted here of his answer, which he called his "profession of faith," Dostoevsky is also responding to the powerful arch-reactionary Pobedonostsev, as well as to the latter's main authority in matters of Orthodoxy, Leontyev. And again one wonders how long his unflinching courage would have allowed his friendship with Pobedonostsev to last, had he lived as long as Tolstoy, for example. In any case, it is misleading to speak of Dostoevsky's growing love of the Russian Church. Disregard — and indeed, when provocation interfered, even an indictment for offenses of omission at least, — seems to be a more accurate assessment of his attitude toward it. Yet, even his deep compassion for the 88

Losskij.p. 3 3 9 . K. Leontiev, Against the Current, Selections from the novels, essays, notes letters. Edited by G. Ivask, translated by G. Reavey (New York, 1969), p. 244. 89

and

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Russian people, "abandoned by all," his quasi-mystical faith in it, has often been misinterpreted in favor of an ultimate loyalty to the Church. Here again Lossky offers a typical example, by resorting to a psychological theory of the substitution of the means (the Orthodox cult) for the end (the Russian people): at first Dostoevsky saw in the Orthodox Church only a means, "indispensable for Russia's political life, internal as well as external"; but then, once he had started to preach Orthodoxy (in 1868), "its intrinsic value was consciously revealed to his mind and heart." 9 0 It should be clear by now that such a conclusion, if it is drawn from a reading of Dostoevsky's letters and journalistic writings, is nothing but a pure conjecture. If it is based on his fiction, it becomes worse than that: a willful misinterpretation. An unbiased analysis of the " p o l y p h o n y " in any of Dostoevsky's novels can contradict this substitution. Lossky himself quotes Shatov's well-known axiom: "God is a synthetic character of an entire people," and he even adds a supporting statement made by Dostoevsky in his own voice, and no less familiar: "Whoever loses his people and his national roots, also loses the faith of his fathers and God." 9 1 (From a letter written in 1870.) As for his last novel, it was Leontyev who, in that stern disapproval forwarded by Pobedonostsev, first noticed the unfavorable treatment of institutional Orthodoxy: It is true that in The Brothers Karamazov the monks say things that are not quite so . . . . True, little is said here about church liturgy and monastic vows; there is not a single liturgical service, not a single prayer. Ferapont, the hermit and strict faster, who has little contact with other people, is depicted in an unfavorable and ironic light. 92

The most significant objection, however, is that In this novel of Mr. Dostoevsky's the strictly mystical feelings are weakly described, while the feelings of humanitarian idealization are expressed with extreme ardor and at length even in the statements made by the monks. 9 3

The evidence that we have discussed here seems indeed to support this preference of the "humanitarian idealization" over the "strictly mystical feelings" concerning the Church as the mystical body of Christ, even as far as Dostoevsky's personal convictions are concerned. In fact, a different substitution suggests itself more strongly than the one proposed by Lossky. Again, he mentions it, though only to minimize its relevance. Namely, the "substitution of the people for G o d , " or at least, for the Church. One could argue, of 90 91 92 93

Losskij, p. 103. Ibid., p. 103. Leontiev, p. 242. Ibid., p. 243.

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course, that there is no real substitution, since Church and people could be, and in a certain sense are, considered as one, especially within the tradition of the Eastern Church: "Christians are 'the New Israel,' " writes Fr. Florovsky. ' T h e whole phraseology of the Scripture is highly instructive: the Covenant, the Kingdom, 'a holy Nation, a peculiar People.' ' " 4 If "Covenant" could be read as those exclusively Russian promises of "universal peace" and " h a r m o n y " (to which Leontyev specifically objected), if "the New Israel" and "a holy Nation" could mean but the Russian Empire, including Constantinople, then we could accept "Church" and "people" as synonyms. That would be the only way of solving this semantic problem and the following statement, made by Dostoevsky in 1876, and also quoted by Lossky, should leave no doubt: He [the Russian] has named his entire country, the entire community, all Russia - Christianity, 'krestjanstvo'. Examine more closely the Orthodoxy: it is not at all what pertains only to Church and rite (ne odna tol'ko cerkovnost' i obrjadnost'), it is a living feeling which has become among our people one of those basic forces without which nations do not survive. Even mysticism is, in fact, nowhere to be found in Russian Christianity, there is only love of mankind, only Christ's image - at least that is the most important thing. In Europe clericalism and everything that has to do with the Church has for a long time been looked upon with misgiving, and rightly so; there, especially in some places, they are obstructing the pulse of life, every success in life, and of course, they are even harmful to religion itself.

The alternative for the Catholic or Protestant churches is clearly not the Russian Orthodox Church but "Russian Christianity." On the other hand, it cannot be assumed that Dostoevsky regarded the Russian Orthodox Church as different, in its clericalism and reactionary tendencies, from the Western churches. That he never stated it explicitly, is quite understandable if one bears in mind Pobedonostsev's vigilant interest in his religious pronouncements. Be this as it may, in order to see quite clearly how undogmatic Dostoevsky's views were, it will suffice to compare the above passage, as well as the preceding ones, with the definition of the role of the Church given by one of the leading Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century, Fr. S. Bulgakov: The individual reader of the Word of God cannot comprehend by himself its divine inspiration, for the individual has not been given an organ for such comprehension; he can comprehend it only when in union with all in

94 95

Florovsky, p. 131. Losskij, p. 338.

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the Church. It is a false and deceptive thought - that one can, by himself, at his risk and peril, comprehend the Word of God, become God's interlocutor: this gift is received only in the Church. This gift, therefore, is received fully, directly, only in the temple, in union with the Church, where the reading of the Word of God is preceded and accompanied by a special prayer that we may be heard, that our spiritual eyes may open. 9 6

We have seen that this is not how, according to Dostoevsky, the Russian people at crucial trials of their lives discovered and practiced "Christ's whole truth." If, after this long excursion, we now return to his letters, we cannot fail to realize that in his own search for Christ Dostoevsky hardly ever thought of such intercession: "not as a child do I believe in Christ and profess him, my hosanna has gone through a great crucible of doubt, as the devil says in the same novel of mine." 57 The only way out of the unrelenting torment of doubt, the only resolution of the struggle between the opposite selves, is the strong desire to believe in Christ and to give oneself entirely to him. Although in the letter on duality there is not even an allusion to the Church, Lossky concludes his chapter on Dostoevsky's religious life, designed to prove the writer's ultimate return to the fold, with a quotation from that letter: Do you believe in Christ and in His promises? Dostoevsky asks his correspondent. If you believe (or if you very much want to believe), give yourself completely to Him, and the torments of this duality will ease off greatly, and you will find a solution for your soul: for that is what matters most. 98

We can conclude that man can "become God's interlocutor"; and if he sometimes needs a "union," a community to receive the gift of comprehension and to sing his hosanna, it is most likely not "the union with the Church," but rather the union with the people, the Russian people, that is needed. Indeed, a close reading of the terms which Dostoevsky uses to describe the Russian people in its relation to Christian faith suggests that his ultimate vision has — if we may say so — strongly "ecclesiastical" shades. The image of the "Christ-bearing people," while deriving from a peculiarly ethnic philosophy of culture, is so overwhelming that it transforms even the image of God himself into something which an eminent scholar has called a "monstrous Russian Christ, destined to save Europe." 99 The same scholar quite rightly concludes that, the "hierarchical Church being 'paralyzed' since

96 S. Bulgakov, Pravoslavie. Ocerki ucenija pravoslavnoj cerkvi (Paris, n. d.), pp. 51-52. 97 Neizdannvj Dostoevskij, zapisnye knizki i tetrodi (Moscow, 1971). 98 To E. F. Yunge, April 11, 1880, Pis'ma, 4: 137. 99 P. Pascal, Dostoevskij. les écrivains devant Dieu (Paris, 1969), p. 102.

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Peter the Great, 1 0 0 Dostoevsky, while not contesting it in principle, had for it no reverence whatsoever: he did not consider it capable of teaching either the faith or the morals." 1 0 1 If this is so, then one could talk of heresy, as Leontyev did. 1 0 2 Dostoevsky's quick counter-charge should not be brushed aside as a mere quid pro quo: he genuinely believed in the rectitude of his sense of Orthodoxy, and the authority to which he constantly referred was the traditional Christian ethics of the Russian people, with which he believed he was more intimately familiar than any other educated Russian. If one agrees with Leontyev in considering Dostoevsky's Christian ethics as essentially idealistic and optimistic, as proclaiming the possibility of "universal peace" on this earth; and if, on the other hand, one recalls Leontyev's "dark Christianity", 103 even as it was expressed in his criticism of Dostoevsky; then one should realize that this exchange of accusations of heresy between the two writers was far more than a cavil.

V I . THE CREATIVE IMPULSE

None of these problems, of course, have such a prominent place in Dostoevsky's letters as the theme of literature, of his own writing. The composition of The Brothers Karamazov, for example, can be followed step by step. And again, Dostoevsky does not fail to point out the ethical function, in this case of artistic creation, in the life of an individual. Whereas an inductive mind, like that of Tolstoy, for example, would start with a general statement, a categorical definition of artistic creation, and then proceed to apply it to all the particular facets of it, Dostoevsky, in his letters at least, never sees it as an abstract problem; on the two occasions where he is brought to face this problem he seizes in vivo the essential function of artistic creation within Lhe very private complex of an individual predicament, in order to deduce from it, very cautiously, not an axiom, but a more or less practical rule of some general validity. "I know, I've heard (forgive me) that you are not very happy," he writes to a woman who defined herself as a "sick soul." "Living in solitude and lacerating your soul with memories, you may make your life too somber. The only refuge, the only cure from it is art and creativity." It would be an error to see in this private advice a general moral

100 Such a rare, direct statement can be found in a "formula" Dostoevsky wrote down in his last notebook, a few months before he died: "The Church has been paralyzed, as it were, and for a long time." Neizdannyj Dostoevskij, p. 682. 101 Pascal, p. 102. 102 In his article Leontyev asserted that the author of the Pushkin speech "is almost harmful with his aberrations, is almost a heretic." Quoted from Pis'ma, 4: 433. 103 The phrase is Lossky's. See his comparison of the two conceptions in the work quoted above, pp. 346-350.

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principle, for it is c o n d i t i o n e d b y the person t o w h o m it is addressed, it was proferred o n l y after t h e s e w o r d s : "I k n o w that y o u are an artist, y o u paint. A l l o w m e t o give y o u advice that c o m e s f r o m t h e heart: d o n ' t give up art, d e v o t e y o u s e l f t o it even m o r e than y o u have d o n e till n o w . " 1 0 4

The

particular, personal character o f this k i n d o f allusion t o the ethical f u n c t i o n o f artistic creation b e c o m e s even m o r e evident w h e n D o s t o e v s k y reveals it in himself. A f t e r suggesting t o a n o t h e r u n h a p p y w o m a n that the best "way o u t " is in "a n e w , s e c o n d a r y activity, capable o f giving f o o d t o t h e m i n d , o f q u e n c h i n g its thirst," h e hastens t o add: But do you know that I myself, for example, am less capable, less entitled than anyone else to solve such problems? This is because my position in itself, as a writer, is too special in view of such questions. I have an ever-ready activity, that of a writer, to which I give myself with enthusiasm, to which I devote all my endeavors, all my joys and hopes, and it is in this activity that I give them an outlet. Thus, if such a problem were to face me personally, I would always find a spiritual activity which would immediately carry me away from hard reality to another world. Having such a way out of all the difficult problems of life, I am no doubt, as it were, prejudiced, 106 f o r . I am secure, and I may be partial in my judgments. They may be based on my particular case. But how do they feel who have no such outlet, such a ready activity, which can always lift them up and carry them far away from those insoluble problems which present themselves to the conscience and to the heart, often causing extreme torment and, as if they intended to exasperate and torture them, insistently demand solution? 1 0 7 This is n o t to say, h o w e v e r , that artistic creation is a gratuitous pleasure, that

this " i m m e d i a t e " passage

from

"hard reality" to

"another

world"

proceeds w i t h o u t d i f f i c u l t y : it is e n o u g h to read D o s t o e v s k y ' s letters f r o m the period o f the writing o f The Brothers

Karamazov

t o see that the "activity

o f a writer" was n o t for h i m w h a t it w a s for s o m e romantic p o e t s , an easy escape f r o m crude reality t o the w o r l d o f free fantasy. For if there is a man condemned to forced labor, it is I. I spent four years in prison in Siberia, but work and life there were easier than my present life. From the fifteenth of June to the first of October I wrote up to 20 octavo sheets of the novel and published The Diary of a Writer in 3 sheets. And yet, I cannot write carelessly, I must write with art; I owe it to God, to poetry, to the success of what I write, and literally to the entire reading public of Russia which is awaiting the conclusion of my work. 1 0 9 104

Letter to E. F. Yunge, April, 1880, Pis'ma, 4: 137. Osoblivo. 106 Literally: bribed. 107 To M. A. Polivanova, August 16, 1880, Pis'ma, 4: 194. 108 Poezija, like the German word Dichtung, has a wider meaning and is closer to the Greek poiesis than " p o e t r y . " 109 Letter to P. E. Guseva, October 15, 1880,AV?w, 4: 201. 105

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There is hardly another concept of Dostoevsky's which could be studied so thoroughly on the basis of his letters as that of the creative impulse. It is perhaps surprising to discover that after having written such a worthy sequence to Gogol's Overcoat as his first novel, The Poor Folk, after having thus demonstrated his allegiance to the realist movement, he continued to profess faith in the highly idealistic, romantic concept of artistic creation. "The work for the Holy Art is sacred, it is pure in the simplicity of the heart," he wrote to his brother in 1846. 110 However lofty this youthful enthusiasm, it does not evade or despise reality. "I feel reborn, not only spiritually, but even physically," he concluded. This spiritual and physical renaissance is not a casual figure of speech. Dostoevsky's monistic principle of artistic creation is fully developed in another letter to his brother, written three years later, from prison, while waiting to be transferred to Siberia. First of all, he tries to reconcile himself to the life in the "house of the dead" which was awaiting him: I have lost neither courage nor hope. Life is still life, it is in ourselves and not outside of us. There will be people around me, and mind you, to be a man among men, not to give up in the worst misfortune; not to be defeated - this is life, this is its meaning. That is what 1 have understood! This idea has gone into my flesh and b l o o d . 1 "

The young writer can now consider the "work for the Holy Art" from a point of view of a deeper humanism. Reflecting upon man's position in the world, his awe of art appears to him as a memory of a happy but nonetheless closed period of his life. Sadly yet stoically, he takes leave of that other Dostoevsky, the young apostle of art: "Yes, indeed, the head which had created and lived the sublime life of art, which had known and shared the high demands of the spirit, this head has already been cut off from my shoulders." But his belief in the moral function of art was so deeply rooted that even the brutal jail sentence could not shake it, nor did Dostoevsky himself renounce it. "What I have left are the memories and the images which I have conceived but not yet put through in my work." Antinomy and paradox had always been typical of Dostoevsky's way of thinking, and so, immediately after declaring that the "sublime life of art" has been quenched in him, he acknowledges the overwhelming power of those images: "They [the images] will ulcerate me!" But how can art be regenerating, if artistic images may be so corrosive? Let us not forget, however, that the regeneration was brought forth by the work on art and not by the images "conceived but not yet put 1.0 1.1

Pis'ma, 1: 102. Pis'ma, 1: 129.

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through." It should follow that these images are destructive only insofar as they are stunted and forced to grow inwards, instead of being put forth, instead of being given an objective form of a work of art. Indeed, Dostoevsky develops still more vividly, more realistically, this idea of the corrosive effect of impeded expression of artistic images. "My God," he exclaims in the same letter, "how many images have I called to life, awakened to new life! And they will all be extinguished or else they will flow forth into my blood, like poison! Yes, I will be ruined if I cannot write. Fifteen years in j a i l , " 2 but with a pen in the hand, would be better!" Not only is he sorry to lose the images he has conceived, he is also worried about his mental and even physical welfare, threatened not so much by the loss of freedom as by the interdiction from writing. It would seem, then, that impeded creativity is just as destructive as the accomplished one is regenerating. And if this creation is more important to the writer than his freedom, it means that only in it does he find his true life, whatever the consoling illusions he may want to call up in view of some other mode of existence (as "man among men," etc.). Particularly striking are the metaphors usecl at the most dramatic moments of this sincere, pathetic confession: the idea which has gone into flesh and blood, the head cut off, the images that ulcerate, 113 or flow forth into the blood, like poison. Of course, this letter is not a philosophical treatise on the relationship between matter and mind, and yet this stylist's device of using physiological figures in describing a spiritual state is surely not mere rhetoric: it points to the essential unity and organic correlation of the two principles, at least insofar as the aesthetic faculty is concerned. We need not apply this correlation to the sickness of the "Underground Man" or to the epilepsy of Prince Myshkin. It is enough to bear in mind that no abstract ideal, however lofty, was attractive enough to carry Dostoevsky away for long from concrete, "psychological" or "physiological," reality, whether this ideal be an enchanting Utopia or the "Holy Art." Going back to his last letters, we find that in writing The Brothers Karamazov his intentions were still far from avoiding "hard reality" and resorting to abstract ideals. This is how he described, in a letter to his publisher, his purpose in depicting the "ideal" Russian monk, starec Zosima: "/ want to make people realize114 that a pure, ideal Christian is not an abstraction, but, on the contrary, he is vividly real, possible, evident, and that 1,2

He was sentenced to four years of hard labor. The word iz"jazvit' has also a more general meaning, "to wound"; as Dostoevsky does not use the more common word ranitit seems that he is stressing the etymology and the original meaning of iz"jazvit' (jazva, 'ulcer'). 114 Dostoevsky's italics. 113

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Christianity is the only refuge for Russia from all its e v i l s . " " 5 What he meant by his " o u t l e t , " his "spiritual activity," was anything but an escape from reality: it is that same cathartic impulse which creates out of "insoluble p r o b l e m s " images which the "spiritual activity," the " p o e t r y " then "lifts u p , " sublimates from the personal, private realm, in which they are pent up, to the sphere of general, not abstract, not dogmatic, but artistic solutions of national or universal relevance. Regarding Dostoevsky's realism, his letters show that, in spite of frequent criticism of his "fantastic" themes, which Belinsky was first to denounce, Dostoevsky never lost faith in the supreme reality of his vision. Referring to the "blasphemy and refutation of blasphemy" in the book "Pro and Contra" of The Brothers Karamazov, he wrote: "Many critics have reproached me, because I tackle in my novels unreal themes, etc. On the contrary, I don't know anything more real than precisely these themes. . . ." 116 His themes are always "syntheses" of the most urgent problems of the time, and his "activi t y " is therefore a process of transforming the amorphous practical reality into an ideal world with its more enduring laws. As the artistic creation is a peculiarly personal necessity and individual gift, so the scene of revelation of those laws, the battleground of those syntheses is always the individual with his "inner life," that is to say, the innermost recesses of the tragic characters of Dostoevsky's novels. "I flatter myself with the hope that even with such an abstract theme I have not betrayed realism": abstraction was for him the exact opposite of realism, and it is in this sense that we should understand his famous reminder to himself: "Maintain full realism, find the man in man. . . . They call me a psychologist; this is not true, I am only a realist in a higher sense; that is, I present all the depths of the soul." 117 CONCLUSION

This brief examination of Dostoevsky's letters shows how amazingly faithful he was to the principle just quoted. We should bear in mind these words of his when we are tempted to consider Dostoevsky not only a "psychologist" but also a "sociologist," a "religious thinker," and, to come to our first and last problem of Dostoevsky's correspondence in particular, a "letter writer." At this point the paradox of his "aversion" and "inability" to write letters should vanish: Because he was a writer, because he always looked 115

To N. A. Lyubimov, June 11, 1879, Pis'rm, 4: 59. The already quoted letter to Pobedonostsev of May 19, 1879, in which he astutely defended his artistic treatment of Socialism. Pis'ma, 4: 56-57. 1,7 Materialy dlja zizneopisanija Dostoevskogo (St. Petersburg, 1883), p. 373. 116

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for the "depths of the soul," he hated to write letters, for in them the expression either "remains abstract," that is "unreal," or is hampered by already existing, unfathomable, private problems of his correspondents; or, worst of all, it is swayed toward egocentricity. In each of these cases it is forced into directions away from Dostoevsky's genius. He did not share with Tolstoy inductive intuition and intellectual abstraction, he ridiculed the "objective" analysis of empirical " f a c t s , " arbitrarily selected upon the surface of human condition, as demanded from literature by Dobrolyubov; and he was disgusted by Turgenev's tendency toward aristocratic subjectivity. If we bear in mind all these things, we should not be surprised that Dostoevsky found it impossible to "describe the interior, moral aspect" in a letter, which, by its very nature as a medium of communication, is limited, on the one hand, by the correspondent and his private problems, so difficult to recreate and so easy to misinterpret (at least in the eyes of the correspondent); and on the other, by the writer himself, who is constantly menaced by the temptation or the demand to publicize, and to generalize upon, his own "inner life." And yet, for Dostoevsky, the only sensible way of talking about anything was to refer it to a person, to see it within his or her moral complex. Here again, the only way out of "hard reality" leads toward the realm of artistic creation, of superior reality, where the imagination can move and create freely, where the "synthesis" is not restrained by the practical reality of any particular reader or that of the admired author himself. The great, the unique quality of Dostoevsky's letters, however, is precisely in these constant, touchingly honest admissions of the inability to write them. We have seen that he did manage to say a great deal that is extremely releveant, in spite of his scepticism, particularly about things which inspire this very scepticism; namely about the overwhelming importance of individual conscience as the basis of all reality, whether we look for this reality in education, or in politics, in religion or in art. These admissions and complaints are, in themselves, the most eloquent evidence of his way of thinking, or rather creating. He complained to his correspondents that the problems they sometimes raised were "alas, t o o general"; he declared that he gave all of himself to whatever he wrote, so that after writing a letter, he was not capable of facing his work that day; and he concluded melancholically: "And yet, I write most ordinary and most inadequate letters, particularly to those to whom I should like to say something. It really seems to me that I don't manage to say even a hundredth part, and this has always tormented m e . " " 8 We have seen, however, even from examples cited in this essay, that, especially when he was

118

To M. A. Polivanova, October 18, 1880, Pis'ma, 4: 205.

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allowed to focus on situations within the life of an individual, he did manage to convey some extremely penetrating thoughts. On the other hand, in his novels, he knew (and Grigoryev and other critics told him, even if he didn't know) that he always tackled vast, "impossible" themes, and he confessed once to a fellow artist: "You can imagine that in some difficult moments of inner reckoning I often realize with sorrow that I have not expressed literally a twentieth part of what I wished to, and perhaps might have expressed." 119 Yet, no one would doubt today that Dostoevsky "expressed" so many "depths of the soul" that, whenever he turned his eyes to the colossal drama that rages in those depths, he found the man within man. His letters are the best evidence that it was he for whom he was always looking, not only in his "activity as a writer," but in his private and social life, and in his correspondence as well. This is why his letters are the best introduction to his novels. 1,9

To E. F. Yunge, April 11, 1880, Pis 'ma, 4: 136.

RUSSIAN METAPOLITICS: MEREZHKOVSKY'S RELIGIOUS UNDERSTANDING OF THE HISTORICAL PROCESS BY

HEINRICH A. STAMMLER STRANGE TO SAY, Merezhkovsky nowadays is an almost unknown author. He is also an underrated one. And yet he was one of the most productive, widely read and discussed Russian writers of the first half of this century. Nevertheless, he has remained a homo unius libri — a man whose claim to literary fame and renown rests on one book, in this case the historical romance about Leonardo da Vinci, which still enjoys some popularity, being printed and reprinted in several languages. But otherwise, he is almost forgotten. An examination of critical studies devoted to his art and thought yields but meager results. Apart from occasional reviews, most of them unfavorable, there exists only a handful of major works written with the purpose of analyzing his achievements as a poet, novelist, literary critic, and political and religious philosopher. On the eve of the First World War, E. Lundberg published a book about Merezhkovsky's New Christianity, clearly inspired by the desire not to criticize his metaphysical and religious intuitions, but rather to deprecate and deflate them. Published in 1922, Jean de Chuzeville's introduction to the man and his work remains too superficial to provide essential insights into the chief forces motivating Merezhkovsky's thought. Zinaida Hippius's controversial book dedicated to the memory of her husband contains numerous interesting details of hi,s life and career and penetrating reflections on the intellectual and spiritual atmosphere in Russia during the last twenty years before the catastrophes of 1914 and 1917. But as regards Merezhkovsky's personality, the ways in which he arrived at his basic intuitions, the manner in which he composed his books and essays, it conceals more than it reveals. It is one of those books written by one genius about another, from which the reader learns more about the painter than about the one portrayed. Only recently, separated by an interval of about ten years, there appeared, in 1957 and 1968 respectively, two short but perceptive, systematic studies of Merezhkovsky's thought: Alexis de Schmourlo gave in his brief but substantial sketch La pensée de Mérejkovski (Nice, 1957) a concise, yet at the same time comprehensive precis of the ideas dominating the Russian thinker's and novelist's Weltanschauung in its gradual evolution. James Scanlan has contributed a valuable critical analysis of Merezhkovsky's thought from the point of view of systematic philosophy, especially focusing [123]

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on ontology and epistemology, but not neglecting general historical and cultural considerations either. 1 To these studies must be added some notable and occasionally revealing personal reminiscences about Merezhkovsky the man, especially as he was during his later years in Paris, to be found in periodicals and editions of collected essays by Waclaw Lednicki, Vladimir Zlobin, Yury Terapiano, Georgy Adamovich, and Sergey Makovsky.2 In Soviet Russia, Merezhkovsky has sunk into almost complete oblivion (only recently, in an anthology of late nineteenth-century poetry, his name unexpectedly cropped up.) This, however, should surprise no one, given Merezhkovsky's irreconcilable attitude to the Bolshevik regime. It may be mentioned here, in passing, that this uncompromising hostility towards communism sometimes induced him to commit errors in political judgment which he later came to regret. His initial infatuation with Pilsudski as well as Mussolini, and even Hitler for a while, are cases in point. His disinterested, but nevertheless passionate, partisanship did not endear him to his contemporaries, even in the Russian emigration, and has contributed to his still being under a cloud with many people. What must be noted, furthermore, is the fact that he was a prolific, although sometimes repetitive, author almost to the very end of his life, a sizable number of unpublished materials, drafts for books, essays and letters making up the bulk of his literary legacy. Since, however, he was what the Russians call an odnodum, a man possessed by one dominant idea to the 1 James P. Scanlan, "The New Religious Consciousness: Merezhkovsky and Berdyaev," La philosophic idéaliste en Russie (Aix-en-Provence, 1968), original mimeographed version. 2 Waclaw Lednicki, "D. S. Merezhkovsky: 1865-1941," Russian Review, 1, 2 (1942). For further references see the present author's article "D. S. Merezhkovskij 1865-1965: A Reappraisal," Welt der Slaven, 12, 2 (1967): 142-152. Regarding the present-day neglect of Merezhkovsky, the negative - or condescending evaluations accorded to his achievement by D. S. Mirsky and Marc Slonim played an important part. The depreciative pronouncements of such an influential critic as Mirsky did considerable damage to Merezhkovsky's reputation as an author, especially in the English-speaking world. To this must be added the attacks directed against Merezhkovsky's ideas by such an eminent philosopher as the late Ivan Ilyin (cf. his article "Merezkovskij-khudoznik" in Russkaja literatura v èmigracii [Pittsburgh, 1972]). As far as Merezhkovsky's ambieuous attitude toward Hitler is concerned, see Jurij Terapiano's article "Konec Merezkovskikh" in Russkaja Mysl' (Paris), January 25, 1973. With the publication of C. Harold Bedford's excellent, sympathetic, though not uncritical study The Seeker: D. S. Merezhkovskiy (The University Press of Kansas, Lawrence 1975) the situation as far as a just evaluation of Merezhkovsky's achievement is concerned has considerably improved. Professor Bedford's conclusions, however, have not caused me to alter substantially my point of view as expounded in the present paper. This article was already written and set when another book on Merezhkovsky was published: Bernice G. Rosenthal, D. S. Merezhkovsky and the Silver Age: The Development of a Revolutionary Mentality (the Hague, 1975).

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exclusion of all others, people became bored with the continually renewed elaboration of his basic intuition. After he had abandoned the writing of historical novels, romances and plays as vehicles for the dissemination of his ideas, the familiar figure of the novelist and literary critic disappeared; what appeared in its stead was the shockingly unfamiliar figure of the prophet, the apocalyptic seer and eschatologist. So long as the age is prepared to take cognizance of revolutionary transformations, menacing disintegration and universal crisis, it prefers to see them outlined, described and analyzed in historical, political, and socio-economic terms. The voice of the religious prophet, whether it proclaims hope or doom, falls on deaf ears, remaining the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Merezhkovsky's avowed untimeliness is another telling reason for his unpopularity. The indifference, not to say disdain, with which the general reader chooses to react to Merezhkovsky's literary and philosophical, historical and theosophic endeavors can be traced back to the first decade of this century when his celebrated trilogy The Death of the Gods (Julian the Apostate), The

Resurrection of the Gods (Leonardo da Vinci) and Christ and Antichrist (Peter and Alexis) was completed (in 1905). Even then a perceptive, knowledgeable critic like the late Arthur Luther could not but note with resignation that the indifference of the Russian public towards this cycle of historical novels was quite inexplicable, unless one had a clear idea of the character of the Russian intelligentsia of those years and the critics allied with it. 3 This insensibility and unconcern of readers and reviewers notwithstanding, the trilogy brought the greatest success Merezhkovsky the writer was ever to enjoy — a paradox which can be explained in light of two specific properties of these romances. On the one hand, there is the attraction of the colorful, exciting, and even bizarre subject matter and its (on the whole) quite skillful arrangement and treatment by the author, even though Merezhkovsky has not always been so "remarkably faithful to historical f a c t " as is sometimes assumed. 4 It is true that "he made careful use of the available sources. There can be little doubt that he regarded factual study of historical evolution and cultural development as at least one avenue toward an understanding of the mystery of being." 5 But on occasion he grouped his material 3

Arthur Luther, "Eine Roman-Trilogie," Die Literatur (1905): 1232-1238. Cf. also Kurt Miinzer, "Mereschkowski," Das literarische Echo (1912): 1171-1181. It is not necessary, of course, to generalize unduly. Certainly there were at the time when the Trilogy began to appear perceptive minds perfectly capable and willing to appreciate Merezhkovsky's grand design. But since they represented a minority, it seemed appropriate to stress the fact that, on the whole, the reaction to the Trilogy was not characterized by much approval and understanding, let alone enthusiasm. 4 Scanlan, p. 10. s Ibid.

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to suit the inner purpose of his exposition, regardless of its factuality.® On the other hand, these romances were of special interest to the Russian reader because their author undertook to demonstrate that the great dialectical struggle between the gods of the earth and the God in Heaven, between Christ and Antichrist, permeating the history of Christendom, has its immediate bearing also on the destinies of the Russian motherland. The "mystery of being," as far as it concerns man immediately, must be unraveled and disentangled from a thick incrustation of natural and historical contingency. That means to raise the problem of a possible meaning of history. As a corollary of this problem three questions arise: Does history have some deeper meaning at all? Or, in other words, is it possible for the human understanding to perceive some meaning in history? Secondly, can the meaning of history be discovered in the historical process itself? And thirdly, does the process of history receive its meaning from some entity outside itself? Will a meaning of history be revealed only by the intercession of a transcendent, metahistorical agent? For an authority like Goethe the answer to the first question, whether some higher meaning is discernible in the disjointed jumble of the flux of history, was an unequivocally negative one. So, in a conversation with the historian Luden, he expostulated: Even if you were able to interpret and investigate all sources, what would you find? Nothing but one great truth which has long been discovered and for whose confirmation one does not need to seek far; the truth that in all times and in all countries things have been miserable. Men have always been in fear and trouble, they have pained and tortured one another; what little life they had they made sour one to the other. The beauty of the world and the sweetness of existence which the beauty of the world offered them, they were not able to esteem or to enjoy. Only to a few life became comfortable and enjoyable. Most people, after having played the game of life, preferred to depart rather than to begin anew. That which perhaps gave or gives them some degree of attachment to life was and is the fear of death. Thus life is, thus it always was; thus it will always remain. That is, after all, the lot of man. What further witness is needed?

On another occasion, Goethe remarked that history is "the most absurd of all things . . a web of nonsense for the higher thinker." 7 Since Hegel, however, and some of his predecessors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, man is no longer inclined to give history such short shrift. Human history now becomes the process by means of which the world 'Heinrich Stammler, "Julianus Apostata Redivivus," Welt der Slaven, 1 1 , 2 (1966): 180-205. 7 Goethes Gespräche (Leipzig, 1909), 1: 434 ff.

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spirit progresses to the highest consciousness of itself in the ultimate attainment of an absolute sense of freedom. In the philosophy of the Hegelian " l e f t " this gradual awakening of the world spirit to its own fulfillment in freedom takes place above all in the human mind. The consequence is a history-conscious, activistic humanism, man himself administering the business of the world spirit. All the immanentist and Utopian designs and schemes positing a meaning and fulfillment of history through the historical process itself — above all, of course, Marxism, the most influential of these systems — are but the logical result of the Hegelian premise. Where does, in this frame of reference, Merezhkovsky belong? His first novels are not historical novels in the conventional Scottian sense of the term, although he immensely profited from the unprecedentedly heightened historical awareness of the nineteenth century. They were not designed with the aim of graphically reviving a colorful slice of the past, of resuscitating the picturesque pageant of bygone ages in minute and faithful detail. Nor were they meant, as some critics have assumed, to spread "culture" in the vast cultural hinterland of Russia. Nor are they animated by a romantic nostalgia for the past in comparison with which the present would offer nothing but desiccation, decadence, and decomposition. The scholarly meticulousness, the erudition, and the painstaking thoroughness with which all the polychrome and fascinating features and characteristics of an age are painted on the enormous fresco, are but a device, not an end in itself. It must also be emphasized that the patriotic note often heard so clearly in the nineteenthcentury historical novel is entirely absent from Merezhkovsky's novelistic instrumentation. Arthur Luther was the first to note this when he stated succinctly that what the reader is offered here is not a series of historical novels, but Weltanschauungsromane.' They depict the pervasive struggle between Hellenism and Christianity, between Christ and Antichrist, Athens and Jerusalem. In this early stage of Merezhkovsky's development what is still noticeable is the striving for a synthesis of these two transhistorical antitheses. For basically, Christ (as well as the non- and pre-Christian world) find their reincarnation in the apostate Emperor Julian; the powerful representatives of the Italian Renaissance belong to the same category; they are, in a fallen world, the divided halves of an ideally indivisible whole, like some precious tapestry which shows the same pattern on both sides, but in opposite coloration. Nevertheless, the later apocalyptic vision of the Antichrist, anticipated in Vladimir Solovyev's celebrated Three Conversations, is already implied here. It is significant that these intimations of a later total separation of Christ and Antichrist in Merezhkovsky's thought refer to the historical process especially with regard to the destinies of Russia. A t the end 8Cf.

Luther.

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of the romance of Leonardo da Vinci, the young Russian artist Evtikhy, who is attached to the staff of a Muscovite envoy to the court of King Francis I of France, reads in ancient Russian books the stories of the Kingdom of Babylon and the legend of the White Cowl. In a sort of special illumination, he understands that the Babylon story foretold the earthly grandeur of the land of Russia, and that the White Cowl legend prophesied Russia's heavenly calling — an echo of Vladimir Solovyev's poem Ex oriente lux, beloved by Merezhkovsky and often quoted by him, in which the apprehensive query is raised as to whose Orient Russia would choose to be: Christ's or Xerxes's. This presages historiosophic positions taken later by Merezhkovsky with increasingly unyielding consistency: the idea that all earthly power and glory is "Babylonian," "satanic," as long as this glory remains purely immanent, telluric, comprehended entirely by the historical process, and organically immersed in a naturalistically understood flux of all things. To use a term applied so successfully to the theological and philosophical interpretation of history by Karl Lowith in his book Meaning in History, Merezhkovsky also believed that the history of mankind is essentially the history of salvation (Weltgeschichte als Heilsgeschehen).9 But in the development of his thought he arrived at the firm conviction that the modern attempt to achieve salvation within a purely secular immanence would not only be doomed to failure, but also condemned to inevitable disaster. Each attempt radically to transform human society by revolutionary, i.e. violent, means — whether this revolution comes from "above" or from "below" — presupposes the exercise of nearly unlimited power over the bodies as well as the minds and souls of men. Even though such an attempt may be undertaken with a generous design for a creative improvement of the conditions of society and even the whole human race — behind this mask of benevolence and generosity there lurks the pride of Lucifer, the hubris of hell. This monstrous ambivalence of power becomes manifest to Alexis, the son of Peter, the great revolutionary on the throne, when, as in a vision, he perceives how the face of his father suddenly takes on the features of a werewolf: "The Tsarevich saw two faces, the one good and full of love, the face of his dear father, and another one, strange, terrifying like a dead mask — the contorted features of the Beast. And — most frightening thought — he did not know which of the two faces was the true one, that of the father or that of the Beast. Has the father turned into the Beast, or the Beast into the father?" At another point in the novel, the crown prince, forced to be present at the blasphemous orgies of the "most drunken Synod" convoked by his 'Karl Löwith, Meaning in History (Chicago, 1949). German version: und Heilsgeschehen (Stuttgart, 1953).

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father, broods, abstracting himself from his disgusting surroundings: "If all the kings, even those who have renounced God, are the saviours of mankind — who then is the last and greatest of them all, the coming Lord and Master of the earth — the Antichrist?" Who and what is the Antichrist for Merezhkovsky? Metaphysically and religiously speaking, the Antichrist is that transcendent force, incarnated in various historical phenomena, which does its utmost to hinder and prevent the biblical prediction of the arrival of the Paraclete from fulfilling itself, the arrival of the comforter who will appear to usher in the second advent of Christ, the third realm of the Holy Spirit, a new heaven and a new earth, the kingdom of the everlasting gospel in freedom and peace. Merezhkovsky never tired of emphasizing, inculcating and extolling this vision which must not be seen as the erection of an ideal, but as a prophecy of things known and promised to happen. Not only the Bible, the apocrypha, logia, and agrapha, the lives of the great saints and religious teachers, but also the entire pre- and non-Christian mythology, cosmogonic legendry, religious poetry and ritual symbolism he interprets in his ambitious elaborations of a speculative philosophy of religion as pointing forward to the fulfillment of the mystery of the Trinity by the realization of the third realm of the Holy Spirit. There is undoubtedly a gnostic element in Merezhkovsky's effort to distil from collations of ancient sacred documents, the legends and sagas of days of yore, a definite knowledge as the means for the attainment of certainty of salvation — even an anticipation of salvation itself. There is also the gnostic claim to the possession of this esoteric knowledge in one's own articulate doctrine — a knowledge of something that is otherwise not accessible to natural man — the combination of a practical salvational concept of knowledge with the theoretical satisfaction in quasi-rational, quasi-historical systems of thought. What further fits this precise definition of gnosticism as coined by Hans Jonas in his book The Gnostic Religion is the preoccupation with cosmogony, the origins and the meaning of the primeval mythos and the initial stages of creation on the one hand, and the eschatological theme on the other. Even the evaluation of the historical process is approached by the gnostic under these auspices. A given historical phenomenon, for example the crises of the Renaissance or the Reformation, the transformation of Russia under Peter, and finally the permanent crisis of the twentieth century, all the minute historical and cultural details of his novels, essays, and biographies notwithstanding, are weighed and measured by Merezhkovsky in these terms. For to the true gnostic, looking towards God is tantamount to jumping across 10 Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion pp. 43 ff.

(Boston, 1958 [Beacon paperback, 1963]),

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intervening realities which for this direct relationship are nothing but fetters and obstacles, or distracting temptations, which are at best irrelevant. The sum of these intervening realities is the world, including the social world, history, civilization." But it must not be overlooked that despite gnostic ingredients in the thought of many modern Russian thinkers like Merezhkovsky himself, Berdyaev, and Vasily Rozanov, there exists one fundamental difference between them and the original gnostics. While for most of the authentic gnostic schools of thought the determining intellectual experience and moral intuition is expressed in terms of metaphysical dualism which views the tangible created world with all its variegated phenomena as basically evil and therefore unredeemable, these Russian thinkers in their quest for salvation and redemption of the cosmos, mankind, and all creatures in general, wage a relentless war against all dualism or manichaeism. Some of them, like Merezhkovsky, hoped to be able to harness the historical process, even in its revolutionary manifestations, to the pursuit of salvational purposes. In this respect, their mode of thought is rather origenistic than dualistic, as was pointed out by Merezhkovsky in the chapter about the meaning of hell, forming a part of his spiritual biography of Dante. 12 It is partly for this reason that they inveighed so violently (and frequently so unjustly) against their native Russian Orthodox Church. They saw the Church not only lying in paralysis, as Gogol and Dostoevsky before them had seen it, on account of her subjugation by the state, but also because of what they deemed the Church's latent manichaeism which for them was only formally and theoretically covered by doctrinal correctness. Also for Merezhkovsky the "ossified" Russian Church had become one of the props of that general reign of a positivistic mediocrity which he called "the kingdom of the vulgar," about to take possession of the whole world, the "grjaduscij kham" incarnate in the commercial bourgeoisie and a proletariat which has no other desire than to put itself in the place of the vanquished middle classes. This passionate aversion to the modern commercial and industrial bourgeoisie with its juste milieu and its illegitimate offspring (but blood of its blood and flesh of its flesh nevertheless), a powerhungry proletariat, was shared by several Russian nineteenth-century intellectuals, the radical Herzen, for whom Merezhkovsky felt deep respect, no less than the conservative advocate of Byzantine ideals, Konstantin Leontyev. In the West, above all in Nietzsche and Flaubert, they found kindred spirits, who held the bourgeoisie in contempt — not so much because it exploited the working class, but above all because it spread materialistic and 11

Jonas, p. 42. Dimitri Merejkowski, pp. 3 4 0 - 3 5 2 . 12

Dante.

Traduction

de

Jean

Chuzeville

(Paris,

1940),

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melioristic conceptions of life, the machine civilization, a deadening, smug version of positivism, and, as a substitute for true wit and esprit, a diluted, cheap Voltairean view of the world, so well described by Flaubert in the character of M. Homais and the mordant satire Bouvard and Pécuchet. Not in vain did Merezhkovsky devote to Flaubert one of the essays in his celebrated book of literary portraits called Vecnye sputniki. What impressed him most of all was the French novelist's grim resolve to destroy the faith in the immutability and authority of scientific principles and to prove that modern science is just as shaky an edifice as medieval theology. And, naturally, he sympathized with Flaubert's antipathy toward positivism, for had not the hermit of Rouen declared that Auguste Comte's system "c'est assommant de bêtise"? Flaubert, as Thomas Molnar has pointed out in his recent book on Sartre, 13 detested the proletariat also, not as the group at the suffering end of the economic process, but as the modern equivalent of the barbarian with an appetite for leveling and destruction. The antipathy to socialism of men like Nietzsche and Flaubert was originally not shared by the Russians, apart from isolated figures like Pobedonostsev and Konstantin Leontyev, and, partly, Vasily Rozanov. Still, a goodly number of the Russian advanced intelligentsia, although they had forsworn the single-minded revolutionary creed of the narodniki and Marxists alike, were determined to transform Russian society and political life in the name of a great spiritual truth. Therefore they were prepared to accept the revolution, hoping that out of the cataclysmic disruption of historical Russia there would evolve a new religious consciousness common to the intellectuals as well as the people, thus becoming a step on the way to the realization of that new heaven and new earth that are promised in the Bible. How these aspirations arose and how they were dashed to the ground has been ably described and analyzed recently by the Canadian Slavist C. H. Bedford, so that there is no need here to dwell on that chapter in the history of the Russian revolutionary movement." 1 What caused Merezhkovsky and his wife, the poetess, novelist, and essayist Zinaida Hippius, to sympathize so enthusiastically with the revolutionary 13

Thomas Molnar, Sartre: Ideologue of Our time (New York, 1968), p. 15. C. H. Bedford, "Dmitry Merezhkovsky, the Intelligentsia, and the Revolution of 1 9 0 5 , " Canadian Slavonic Papers, 3 ( 1 9 5 8 ) : 27-43. Very instructive in this regard are the remarks about Merezhkovsky made by Peter Struve in his article "Na raznye t e m y " in Russkaja My si' for January 1 9 0 9 (reprinted in Patriótica. Politika, kul'tura, religija, socializm. Sbornik statej za pjat' let ( 1 9 0 5 - 1 9 1 0 gg.) (St. Petersburg, 1911), see pp. 4 4 2 - 4 4 3 . In the context of Merezhkovsky's religious aspirations and strivings and his attempts to adapt them to the spiritual and intellectual needs and capacities of the intelligencija he speaks, characteristically, of Merezhkovsky's "hopeless love" for just this intelligencija. 14

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132 movement before monarchy

1 9 1 4 , w a s its d e d i c a t i o n t o the o v e r t h r o w o f the Russian

which they, not quite correctly, identified with

caesaro-papism.

Caesaro-papism, as w e l l as papo-caesarism, w a s anathema f o r t h e m , the seal o f the P r i n c e o f this W o r l d . I n their n o t e w o r t h y ( a n d , in certain circles, n o t o r i o u s ) c o l l e c t i o n o f essays Le

Tsar et la Révolution,

published in Paris in 1907,

M e r e z h k o v s k y declared: There is for all mankind only one king in heaven and on earth - Jesus Christ. God has concealed this from the wise but revealed it to the children. Official Christianity accepts the Kingdom of God only in heaven, while the kingdom of the earth is delivered over into the hands of the Prince of this World in the person of the Pope-Caesar in the West, the Caesar-Pope in the East. But if Christ is on this earth not merely an ideal, an unincarnate priest-king, but incarnate and real - if His word is true: I shall be with you until the end of all times - then there cannot be another king, another pontiff but Christ who will abide with us until the end of all times in our flesh and our blood through the Mystery of Flesh and Blood. Therefore every substitution for the true image of Christ by a human mask - be it Pope or Caesar - is blasphemy, absolute anti-Christianity. For who could aspire to take the place of Christ, substituting himself for Him, but the Antichrist? In this sense, every vicar of Christ, every pontiff or autocrat is an impostor of Chirst - he is an Antichrist. 15 A n d the j u s t i f i c a t i o n f o r r e v o l u t i o n is given in the f o l l o w i n g w o r d s : The transfiguration of human society [as intimated by Dostoevsky's starec Zosima, whom Merezhkovsky quotes in this context] must end in a great external upheaval of all things, for the supreme triumph of the Church, the Kingdom of God on earth, will provoke the final destruction of the state, of every kingdom that is nothing but human . . . This means that the final struggle between Church and state must be merciless and fatal for the state. For the power of the Church is the total negation of the state . . . Verily, the Church is a kingdom destined to rule, and at the end of the world she will appear as the kingdom of all the earth . . . Thy kingdom come. 16 I n his iater writings, as w i l l be s h o w n , M e r e z h k o v s k y m a i n t a i n e d this p o i n t o f v i e w . It recurs w i t h p r o p h e t i c i m p a c t in b o o k s like The Kingdom

Antichrist, Atlantis-Europe:

of

the

The Mystery of the West, in Napoleon, as well as

in the biographies o f St. Paul, St. A u g u s t i n e , St. Francis, D a n t e , Joan o f A r c , L u t h e r , and Calvin. W h a t strikes the reader in the lines q u o t e d a b o v e is the i m p a t i e n c e in M e r e z h k o v s k y ' s r e v o l u t i o n a r y ardor, again the gnostic desire t o j u m p across all the i n t e r v e n i n g realities, including the s t u b b o r n resistance o f the facts and traditions Of the social w o r l d and h i s t o r y , so as t o arrive at the

15 D. Merejkovsky, Z. Hippius, Dm. Philosophoff, Le Tsar et la révolution 1907), pp. 159-160. 16

Ibid., pp. 179-180.

(Paris,

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Kingdom of God on earth, the descent of Heaven onto this world, the perfect communion of mankind redeemed with the redeemer in the transcendent light of the Holy Spirit. In later years, these ideas of Merezhkovsky were fortified by his study of the writings of the twelfth-century Calabrian monk Joachim of Floris, the prophet of the Kingdom of the Spirit and the Third Testament of the Everlasting Gospel, the teacher and precursor of the Franciscan spirituales before they submitted to the doctrine and discipline of the official church, the inspirer of many medieval religious rebels and millenarians — a man whose spiritual eradiation was to reach Lessing, Hegel, Krasinski, Ibsen and Merezhkovsky himself. Dante in the Paradiso referred to him as "the abbot Joachim of Calabria, endowed with the spirit of prophecy . . ." Among modern scholars, Karl Lowith stated expressly: "It is well known how deeply Russian thinkers of the nineteenth century have been influenced by Hegel and Schelling. It is therefore not surprising to find many parallels among them, for instance, in Krasinski's Third Realm of the Holy Spirit and in Merezhkovsky's Third Testament Christianity. " I 7 What Lowith calls Merezhkovsky's 'Third Testament Christianty" was formed and formulated in its Joachitic aspects not only through Hegelian or Schellingist mediation, but by direct familiarity with the prophetic utterances of the Calabrian abbot. The parallels are striking, as the following sketch will demonstrate: In Joachim's as well as in Merezhkovsky's vision the world as we know it approaches its imminent doom. It will be judged according to its merits to give way to the Third Realm of the communion of saints, a new heaven and a new earth redeemed by the power of the Holy Spirit as promised in the Scripture. That is, the world progresses toward a definite goal. This progress, however, must not be confused with the modern sense of this term. As Ernst Benz in his study about the Ecclesia Spiritualis has pointed out, Joachim's vision has nothing in common with the idea of human reason progressing toward higher and higher levels of knowledge. Joachim's spirit is far removed from the modern concept of Reason. It is rather the Holy Spirit realizing itself through the historical process. But the way in which the self-realization of the Holy Spirit unfolds remains unrevealed and concealed from human reason. The parallels to Hegel are obvious, with the difference that in Hegel's system the Holy Spirit has become the world spirit; human reason has come of age so as to discover the dialectics of the self-realization of the world spirit in history. With all the stress on the unfolding of knowledge about the three ages — the age of the Father in the Old Testament, the age of the Son in the New Testament, and the age of the Spirit in the Everlasting Gospel — what is envisioned here is the

17

Lowith, p. 120.

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gradual evolution of a spiritual reality which becomes revealed by becoming history. What it is not is the perfection of an immanent, natural function as represented by human reason. 18 Therefore also Merezhkovsky could not but reject the modern notion of progress. While in his book The Meaning of History Nicholas Berdyaev polemicized for moral reasons against the theory of progress, Merezhkovsky opposed it as a secularist substitute for Providence: Connected with the possibly correct idea of an infinite evolution is the evidently false theory of an infinite progress here on earth: We well know that the world is finite, in time as well as in space. If it had a beginning, it will also have an end. However, we don't know when this end will come. Making out of this unknown quantity the coefficient of progress, we lift it up to the level of an absolute comparable to Divine Providence; and then there is no human sacrifice which this absolute could not demand . .

What was to be of great importance for Merezhkovsky's thought was the idea that the age of the Second Testament of the Son, the Christian era, was nearing its terminal point. The post-Christian period of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is consequently interpreted, in the spirit of Joachim, as the transitional period characterized by the great struggle between Christ and Antichrist. If by the blindness, corruption, hubris and greed of man the arrival of the Third Realm were to be forfeited, then the end would be the inevitable doom that befell Plato's legendary Atlantis, which is seen by Merezhkovsky as the first age of Mankind. 20 What is called the historical age of mankind is defined by Merezhkovsky as the Second Realm of the Son, since all the portents in myth, cult, and saga of the pre- and non-Christian nations and creeds point to the Cross. Only faith in the Cross and the Blessed Mother preserves man from utter despair in view of possible total destruction from without, provoked and caused by total corruption within. For Merezhkovsky's analysis of modern civilization is profoundly pessimistic. He sees it as having fallen prey to the evil forces of war, civil and otherwise, violence of an unprecedented destructive potential, and licentiousness, unbridled lust and greed — shielded and protected by a corrosive, all-pervading relativism: The apocalyptic vision of a modern Sodom. 21 There is another prominent spiritual endeavor which Merezhkovsky has in common with Joachim, namely the bold attempt to present history as the 18 Ernst Benz, Ecclesia Spiritualis (Stuttgart, 1964), pp. 13-14. See also Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (Chicago, 1952), pp. 110-113. 19 Dmitrij Merezkovskij, Tajna Zapada: Atlantida-Evropa (Belgrade, 1931), pp. 17-18. 20 Ibid., see the entire first part of the book, passim. 21 Ibid., pp. 195 ff.

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fulfillment of biblical promises, with the difference that in Merezhkovsky's religious understanding of the historical process the entire mythology of mankind, the most varied prophecies, portents, and mysteries are also adduced and referred for their clarification and elucidation to biblical revelation. A further point of view shared by Merezhkovsky and Joachim is a common hostility toward the secular kingdoms and empires of this world and their rulers, especially if and when these rulers aspire to the sublime function of imperial pontiffs, priest-emperors or philosopher-kings. So the followers of Joachim, the spirituales minores, regarded the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II as the Antichrist incarnate of truly eschatological dimensions. This was not the hysterical reaction of a faction of ascetics to the political activities of the emperor as such. What they resented and condemned was Frederick's claim to be a chosen instrument of God, a Messiah endowed by the Holy Spirit for a work of salvation, destined to usher in a new era of peace and justice, in which the promises of a paradisiacal terminal state of all things would be fulfilled. Such Utopian imperial metaphysics of an eschatological character was understood by the spirituales as a diabolical perversion of the Christian hope for salvation. 22 Such views were to be echoed in Merezhkovsky's passionate repudiation of the idea of the Christian universal monarchy of Emperor or Pope, and his later unrelenting condemnation of a communist experiment inspired by hubris and aiming at the transformation of human society according to a purely and merely human blueprint hatched by the fallible intellect. There can be no doubt that Merezhkovsky in his later years viewed himself as a warning voice, a prophet rather than as a writer. Yury Terapiano in his essay about Merezhkovsky has emphasized that he wanted to be judged not in literary but in religious and philosophic terms, that in his old age he even complained with bitterness about critics who approached his writings with literary criteria only. 2 3 Terapiano here repeats what was already in 1908 sensed by Andrey Bely when he remarked in an otherwise quite unfavorable review article on Merezhkovsky's Trilogy: "To insist that Merezhkovsky's Trilogy suffers from many artistic defects and to look at him as if he were an artist would be tactless. . . Merezhkovsky is a striking example of one not understood in our times. He is an enigma which has turned up among us from out of the future . . ," 2 4 Out of the future or out of the deep past? In any case, there is one sensation which Merezhkovsky shares with intellectuals of a Sartrian stamp, " Benz, p. 225. 23 Jurij Terapiano, Vstreci (New York, 1953), p. 26. 24 Andrej Belyj, "Trilogija Merezkovskogo," Vesy, 1 (1908): 73-81.

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Utopian revolutionaries, and neo-Marxists — the exciting sensation of living in a transitional period which, to use Professor Molnar's words, catches the philosopher's fancy, because he feels he is at a critical point of the world drama, with his own powers correspondingly enhanced like those of a demiurge. What lies behind them is what they deem the first period of the history of mankind, a confused, disorderly phase, studded with obscure and thwarted attempts to liberate humanity from evil influences which still make themselves felt. They sense the approach of the last period when men are in the possession of their real powers and have vanquished a hostile nature as well as irrational, reactionary, and retarding forces — a last period of fulfillment which they believe they are called upon to usher in. 25 What they too have in common is their impatience with time which they find an embarrassing obstacle. This was already observable in the case of Joachim of Flores who had predicted the advent of the Realm of the Holy Spirit for the near future, thus compromising his theology of history by linking it too closely with the political events of his own time. The frustration in view of the fact that history was going on as usual was to sow serious doubts into the minds of his disciples and finally to lead to the collapse of his m o v e m e n t . 2 6 Similarly, modern revolutionary Utopians tend to reject all history up to their own present, thus invalidating the succession of time and, within time, of civilizations. This impatience causes them to assert that mankind is just beginning, without carrying in the marrow of its bones the indestructible sediment that time deposited t h e r e . 2 7 Merezhkovsky, too, believed himself to live in such an "in-between" period, the transitional phase of the battle between Christ and Antichrist. It is true, as a Christian, albeit one of a very individual stamp, he firmly believed in ultimate salvation and redemption; nevertheless, his prognosis for the future of mankind was by no means determined by the humanistic confidence of the post-Hegelian Utopians and revolutionaries. Examining, scrutinizing, and weighing the characteristic events, moods, and tendencies of the age, he became more and more sombre in his outlook, sometimes despairing of his calling as a Cassandra, but never giving up. In 1925, in his book The Mysteries of the East, he said: "This book is a letter in a bottle thrown into the sea from a sinking ship — the sinking ship not only of Russia, perhaps, but of the whole of Europe." He repeated this appeal in 1930 in his prophetic work The Mystery of the West, adding: "Has someone found this letter, or is it still drifting in the sea?" 28 Once again he took up his leitmotiv in his swan song, the essay The 25

Molnar, p. 121. " Benz, p. 209. 27 Molnar, p. 124. 28 Tajna Zapada, p. 6.

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Mystery of Russian Communism which was written between 1935 and 1939 and completed shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War. In book form it appeared in full only in 1963 in an Italian translation by Jean de Chuzeville and Salvatore Cossu. At the end of the preface to this desperate outcry of a man who sees the world hurling itself willfully and wantonly into the abyss, the same note o f resignation is sounded: "But I have no illusions. I know all too well how fatuous, useless, and obscure will appear what I am going to say n o w . " " In this his last exhortation to his fellow men he shows himself overcome by the frightening vision of a new tripartite periodization of human history: If we divide the history of the world into three epochs: paganism, Christianity, and bestialism, then it seems that this third epoch is already throwing its shadows over us . . . It is as if all of contemporary civilization were about to celebrate the cult of this bestialism. Innumerable victims have been slaughtered before its altar. On its account, the War of 1914-18 broke out, it is the ultimate reason for the Russian revolution, and just now a dreadful world war has broken out, and - may God protect us - we are on the threshold of universal revolution. No longer does mankind turn to Christ when it prays: Adveniat regnum tuum, but to the Beast from the abyss.30 Merezhkovsky is not willing any more to make the worn-out conventional distinction between bourgeoisie and proletariat. He pronounces a curse on both their houses: The fruits of bourgeois atheism are imperialism, world wars, and corruption in the name of liberal democracy - but the bourgeoisie is ripe, it is on the point of toppling. On the other hand, the fruits of so-called proletarian atheism - actually directed and inspired by a handful of bankrupt bourgeois - are: Imperialism, world revolution, and total assassination in the name of a non-existent democracy. These evils are in the state of maturation. 31 Also he is not prepared to give much credit to the accumulated knowledge of the age with its science and technology: The miracles of material progress, the wonders of technology could be miracles of a more or less diabolical character, our science nothing but ignorance, our light nothing but darkness, as the prophet says: We looked for light, and behold darkness: brightness, and we have walked in the dark . . . We have stumbled at noonday, as in darkness, we are in dark places as dead men (Isaiah, 59, 9-10). 32

29 30 31 32

Dmitri Merejkovskij, II mistero del communismo russo (Rome, 1963), p. 16. Ibid., pp. 2-3. Ibid., p. 11. Ibid.

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To this slender but weighty volume could be applied what Gleb Struve remarked about Merezhkovsky in his book Russian Literature in Exile: "One can look at Merezhkovsky from this or that angle; one can reject his writings. But what one cannot do is to negate the seriousness and significance of the things he wrote during the last years of his life." 33 Toward the end of this last admonition which he was directing to Russia and the West he once again sums up what had been the very essence of his creative career as a writer, thinker, and seer: That the will of the Father be done in Heaven - this Christianity has profoundly understood and accepted in its religious consciousness. But that this will be done also on earth - this Christianity has accepted, it is true, but not actually undertaken to f u l f i l l . . . Only one half has been realized by Christianity: Spiritual truth, the truth of Heaven, of individual salvation. The future must realize the other half of the whole: The truth of the flesh, of the earth, of social salvation. These two truths must be reunited forever in universal historical action of the Church, in the same way as they were united from the beginning of all time in the person of Christ. 34

Suffice it here to note that Merezhkovsky, in expressing his fervent hopes for a "social salvation," follows a marked trail in Russian speculation on the meaning of history, which was characterized by V. V. Zenkovsky as the preponderance of the ethical, the socio-ethical component in all Russian thought since it came of age with Chaadaev. This thinker already was agitated and troubled by the presentiment that soon there will arrive a man who will bring to light "the truth of the time" — the truth of the kairos. In letters addressed to Pushkin and Prince Vyazemsky he intimated that this at first might correspond to the political ideas as set forth by Saint-Simon and preached by some courageous Catholic priests (no doubt an allusion to men like Lamennais). Chaadaev was convinced that "somehow a movement will soon start which is to change the destinies of mankind from the very bottom." In expectations and prognostications like these there is contained a premonition of the idea of theocracy socially understood and interpreted in the famous First Philosophical Letter.35 If one accepts Karl Lowith's definition of the term "philosophy of history," namely, a consistent interpretation of universal history in accordance with a principle by which historical events and successions are unified and directed to an ultimate meaning, 36 then I believe Merezhkovsky was truly a philosopher of history, although an untimely one, since he judged history from a religious and prophetic understanding of the historical process. 33 34 35 36

Gleb Struve, Russkaja literatura v izgnanii (New York, 1956), p. 254. // mistero del communismo russo, p. 115. Peter Scheibert, Von Bakunin zu Lenin (Leiden, 1956), p. 39. Lowith, p. 1.

THE PERSEPHONE MYTH IN MANDELSTAM'S TRISTIA BY

DONALD C. GILLIS I Persephone, the maiden whose name may not be spoken, 1 appears in five poems of the Tristia volume of Mandelstam's verse. The myth of the rape of the Koprj (Maiden) is beautifully retold in the fifth book of Metamorphoses, the setting of transformations by Ovid, with whom Mandelstam identified personally throughout much of Tristia. Ovid begins with an idyllic narrative describing the maiden as she picks violets and lilies in a glade, when suddenly Hades appears and carries her off to the Underworld. The maiden's distraught mother, Demeter (Ceres), searches the whole world for her daughter. Having finally found her in Hades, the mother refuses to return to the earth proper, which subsequently withers and fades. Meanwhile Hades has made Persephone his bride and queen of the shades of the Underworld; he adamantly refuses to allow her to return to earth. The dilemma is resolved when Zeus, Hades' brother, arrives and, after much negotiation, convinces Hades to allow Persephone to return to middle earth so that the land can regain its verdancy. The maiden, however, has inadvertently eaten of the pomegranate and must return to Hades at regular intervals to reign over the shades. Thus is the annual cycle split in half, six months of which Persephone spends on earth and six months of which she dwells with her awesome consort in the Underworld. T H E IMAGE OF

Consequently the name of Persephone is affiliated with seasonal change and with the notion of recurrent death in Greek religious practice. The peninsular Greeks depict her spending the dry summer months in Hades and the wet, rainy winter season on earth. This arrangement varies in the north of Greece and, as one might expect, the Romans varied the myth and thereby added to the seasonal confusion of Persephone in the annual cycle. The maiden carries with her many symbols — the ear of corn, representative of her contribution to the abundant harvest; the torch, symbol of the return of the flame of life to earth; the inevitable pomegranate; and, most interestingly, the image of the crowing cock, the harbinger of a new life, a variation of which

1

The appellation apprjrcx tcovpa is f o u n d in Euripides' Helen, [139]

lines 1 3 0 6 - 1 3 0 7 .

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Mandelstam employed in his poem "Tristia," 2 in which he anticipates the dawn of a new life in exile. This two-fold aspect of Persephone is most important for achieving an understanding of her treatment by Mandelstam. Metamorphoses describes the problem of her duality in this way: A n d n o w the g o d d e s s w h o s e divinity is shared b y t w o k i n g d o m s spends the same number o f m o n t h s with her husband and w i t h her mother. Her expression and her t e m p e r a m e n t change instantly: at o n e m o m e n t she is so m e l a n c h o l y as t o seem sad to Dis [Hades] himself; the next, she appears w i t h radiant face, as w h e n the sun breaks through and disperses the watery c l o u d s that have previously concealed h i m . 3

An understanding of the development of this duality in Mandelstam's poems and of the implications it has for interpreting his attitude toward his poetry will be the eventual goal of this study of the five poems in which Persephone appears. Persephone first appears in poem No. 89 of Tristia, in which she is called by the Latin equivalent of her name, Proserpine." This poem, "In Petropolis transparent we shall die," is by far the simplest of the five poems in which her image is used. It presents a straightforward picture of the dread side of the maiden of the Underworld and affiliates her with a traditional poetic conception of Petersburg as an unnatural, demonic city. The notion of death enters into play and lends a Sologubian eeriness to the poem as a whole. This fatal aspect of the northern capital will be treated again by Mandelstam in No. 101, with the haunting refrain, "Your brother, Petropolis, is dying" (Tvoj brat, Petropol', umiraet). In No. 89 the death idea is stated immediately in the first line, then developed by the following imagery. B n e T p o n o j i e n p 0 3 p a m j 0 M MM yiupeM, Tfle BJiacTByeT Han HSMH n p o 3 e p r m H a . Mbl B Ka>KflOM B3flOXe CMepTHtlH B03flyx ntCM,

2

These lines in "Tristia" refer, at least in Kiev in 1 9 1 9 : Zacem petukh, glasataj novoj ("Why d o e s the c o c k , harbinger o f a new life, exile to T o m i s o n the Black Sea also c o m e s t o 3 O v i d , Metamorphoses, B o o k V , lines 5 6 7 - 5 7 4 . 4

part, t o Mandelstam's "voluntary e x i l e " t o zizni, / Na gorodskoj stene krylami b'et? / Flap its wings o n the city wall?") Ovid's mind.

tr. Mary M. Innes (Middlesex, Engl.: Penguin B o o k s , 1 9 7 1 ) ,

C l a r e n c e B r o w n in Mandelstam (Cambridge University Press, 1 9 7 3 ) o n pages 2 6 3 - 2 6 4 n o t e s that this variant of the goddess' name is better fitted t o the device o f c o n s o n a n c e in the p o e m : Petropol', Prozerpina, prozracnaja. T h e numbering o f the p o e m s in this article f o l l o w s the system in Osip Mandel'stam, Sobranie socinenij v trekh tomakh, edited b y G. P. Struve and B. A. Filippov ( S e c o n d edition, revised and expanded. Washington: Inter-Language Literary Associates, 1 9 6 7 - 7 1 ) .

Persephone Myth in Mandelstam's

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H KaxKH3HB cnycKaeTca K TCMM B nojiynpo3pamu>iit nee, Bocnen 3a IIepceoHoii, Cnenafl jiacTomca 6pocaexca K HoraM C cTHrHftcKoft He*H0CTbi0 h BeTKOK) 3eneHoii. When Psyche-life descends among the shades, Into the half-tiansparent forest, after Persephone, A blind swallow throws itself at her feet With Stygian tenderness and a green branch.

Psyche is the representative of the soul, the essence of life encased in the body. She is the sublime half of the body/soul dichotomy of Greek philosophy. Mandelstam refers to her in No. 112 as "Psyche-life," an epithet which is the poet's way of emphasizing that Psyche is not dead, but a living being passing through Hades at Venus' behest. A more likely descriptive term for the maid would perhaps be Psikheja-dusa, using a caique that Bogdanovich had already employed in naming his Russian Psyche. The living Psyche descends to the realm of the shades in this tale. Numbers 114 and 123 will again make reference to the same shadowy terrain of Hades. 11

Terras, p. 261.

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The name of Hades itself derives from at