IV. To his Brother Michael
PETERSBURG,
January 1, 1840.
I thank you from my heart, good brother, for your dear letter. I am certainly quite a different sort of person from you; you could never imagine how delightfully my heart thrills when they bring me a letter from you, and I have invented a new sort of enjoyment: I put myself on the rack. I take your letter in my hand, turn it about for some minutes, feel it to see whether it’s long, and when I’ve satiated myself with the sealed envelope, I put it in my pocket.
You’d never guess what a pleasant state of heart and soul I thus procure for myself. I often wait a quarter of an hour; at last I fall greedily upon the packet, unseal it, and devour your lines — your dear lines! Countless feelings awake in my heart while I read your letter. So many tender and painful, sweet and bitter, emotions crowd into my soul — yes, dear brother, there are painful and bitted ones. You cannot dream how bitter it is for me when people don’t understand me, when they mistake what I say, and see it in the wrong light.
After I had read your last letter, I was quite enragé because you were not near me; I saw the dearest dreams of my heart, my most sacred principles, which I have won by hard experience, wholly distorted, mutilated, deformed. You said to me yourself: “Do write to me, contradict me, dispute with me.”
You anticipated some profit therefrom. Dear brother, it has not been of the least use! The only thing that you have got from it is, that in your egoism (we are all egoists, for that matter) you have formed just such an opinion of me, my views, ideas, and peculiarities, as happens to suit yourself. And that is an extremely insulting one! No — polemics in intimate letters are a subtle poison. How will it be now, when we see one another again? I believe that all this will be subject for endless contention. But enough of it.
Now for your verses — hear me yet again, dear brother! I believe that in human life are infinite pain and infinite joy. In the poet’s life spring thorns and roses. The lyric is like the poet’s shadow, always with him, for he is an articulate creature. Your lyric poems are charming: “The Walk,” “The Morning,” “Visions of the Mother,” “Roses,” “The Horse of Phoebus” — these and many others are lovely. They are all like a vital piece of news from you — and a piece of news that moves me profoundly. For in those days I could understand you so well; and they are months which have stamped themselves deeply in my consciousness. How many strange and wondrous things had I just then lived through! It is a long story, and I shall never tell it to anyone.
When I last met Schidlovsky I took a walk with him in Ekaterinhof. What an amazing talk we had that evening! We were recalling the past winter, when we talked much of Homer, Shakespeare, Schiller, and Hoffmann — particularly Hoffmann. We spoke of ourselves also, of the future, and of you, my dear fellow. But he has been away a long time now, and I have no news of him. Is he still alive even? For his health was very bad. So do write to him!
All through last winter I was in a strangely exalted mood. Intercourse with Schidlovsky had procured me many hours of fuller life, though that was not the only reason for my inspired state. You were, perhaps, hurt with me, and may be even so still, because I did not write to you at that time. Stupid service-matters were the hindrance. I must confess to you, my dear fellow, that though I have always loved you, it was for your verses, for the poetry of your life, for your sufferings… that was all.
It was neither brother-love nor comrade-love. For I had with me at that time a friend, a man, whom I did love so. You said once, brother, that I had not read Schiller. You are mistaken. I have him by heart, I have spoken his speech and dreamed his dreams; and I believe that it was a peculiarly good stroke of luck that made me acquainted with the great poet in that special period of my life. I could never have learnt to know Schiller so well as precisely in those days.
When I read Schiller with him, I saw in him the noble and fiery Don Carlos, the Marquis Posa, and Mortimer. That friendship was of great value to me, and has caused me great pain. But I desire to keep silence about it for ever. The name of Schiller is for me a beloved and intimate password, which awakens countless memories and dreams. Those memories are bitter, and that is why I have always avoided talking with you about Schiller and the impressions which I owe to him. Even to hear his name sets my heart aching.
I meant to answer other of your reproaches, and show you that you have misunderstood me. About other things besides I wanted to speak; but as I write this letter, so many sweet remembrances and dreams come over me that I can talk of nothing else. Only one reproach will I refer to — namely, that those great poets whom, according to you, I do not know at all, I have nevertheless sought to compare closely with one another. I never drew such a parallel as one between Pushkin and Schiller.
I can’t imagine how you came to think so; pray cite me the passage in my letter; it is just possible that I may have happened to mention the names of Pushkin and Schiller in immediate juxtaposition, but I believe that you will find a comma between them. They have no smallest point of resemblance. Now between Pushkin and Byron one might speak of a likeness. But as to Homer and Victor Hugo, I positively believe that you have chosen to misunderstand me! This is what I meant: Homer (a legendary figure, who was perhaps sent to us by God, as Christ was) can only be placed with Christ; by no means with Victor Hugo.
Do try, brother, to enter truly into the Iliad; read it attentively (now confess that you never have read it). Homer, in the Iliad, gave to the ancient world the same organization in spiritual and earthly matters as the modern world owes to Christ. Do you understand me now? Victor Hugo is a singer, clear as an angel, and his poetry is chaste and Christian through and through; no one is like him in that respect — neither Schiller (if Schiller is a Christian poet at all), nor the lyric Shakespeare, nor Byron, nor Pushkin.
I have read his Sonnets in French. Homer alone has the same unshakable belief in his vocation for poetry and in the god of poetry whom he serves — in that sole respect his poetry is like Victor Hugo’s, but not in the ideas with which Nature gifted him, and which he succeeded in expressing — I never meant the ideas at all, never. I even think that Dershavin stands higher as a lyricist than either of those two. Fare well, my dear fellow.
P.S. — I must give you one more scolding. When you talk about form in poetry, you seem to me quite crazy. I mean it seriously. I noticed a long time ago that in this respect you are not wholly normal. Lately you let fall a remark of the kind about Pushkin; I purposely did not take it up. Of your own forms I’ll speak at length in my next letter; now I have neither room nor time. But do tell me how, when you were talking about forms, you could advance the proposition that neither Racine nor Corneille could please us, because their forms were bad? You miserable wretch!
And then you add with such effrontery: “Do you think; then, that they were both bad poets?” Racine no poet — Racine the ardent, the passionate, the idealist Racine, no poet! Do you dare to ask that? Have you read his “Andromaque” — eh? Have you read his “Iphigénie”? Will you by any chance maintain that it is not splendid? And isn’t Racine’s Achilles of the same race as Homer’s? I grant you, Racine stole from Homer, but in -what a fashion! How marvellous are his women!
Do try to apprehend him. You say “Racine was no genius; how could he possibly (?) produce a drama? He could only imitate Corneille.” What about “Phèdre?” Brother, if you won’t agree that “Phèdre” is the highest and purest poetry, I don’t know what I shall think of you. Why, there’s the force of a Shakespeare in it, if the medium is plaster of Paris instead of marble.
Now about Corneille. Listen again, brother! I really don’t know how to talk to you; perhaps, like Ivan Nikiforovitch, (The hero of a novel by Gogol.) I ought to eat a substantial portion of herbs first. I cannot believe that you’ve read him at all; that’s why you talk such nonsense.
Why, don’t you know that Corneille, with his titanic figures and his romantic spirit, nearly approaches Shakespeare? You miserable wretch! Do you happen to know that it was not until fifty years later than the inept miserable Jodelle (author of that disgusting’” Cléopâtre”) and Ronsard, who was a forewarning of our own
