not been so very clever. There was a blank space: it had to be filled quickly, and then and there appeared a solid, serious critic who combines a recklessness in attack with the proper blend of cmnme il faut. You were that critic, M. Gradovsky. You wrote: every one read: and all was quiet. You have at least served a common and an admirable cause. You were reprinted everywhere: ‘The poet’s speech will not bear serious criticism. Poets are poets, but wise men are on their guard and at the appointed time will always pour cold water on the dreamer.’

At the very end of your article you ask me to forgive such expressions as I may consider hard in your article. As I finish my article, I will not offer you an apology for my sharp expressions, M. Gradovsky, if there are any in my article. I am not speaking personally to A. D. Gradovsky, but to the publicist A. Gradovsky. Personally I have not the least reason for not respecting you. But if I do not respect your opinions, and insist upon it, how can I smooth matters by apologising? It gave me pain to see that a very serious and critical moment in the life of our society was misrepresented and wrongly explained. It gave me pain to see the idea which I serve dragged about the street. It was you who dragged it there.

I know, and every one will tell me, that it was not worth while, that it was ridiculous to write this long answer to your article, which was rather short compared with mine. But I repeat, your article served only as a pretext: I wished to say some things generally. I am going to begin The Journal of an Author again next year.1 Let the present number serve as a profession of faith for the future, a specimen copy, so to say.

It may perhaps still be said that by my answer I have destroyed the whole sense of the ‘Speech ‘whieh I delivered in Moscow, wherein I myself called upon both Russian parties to be united and reconciled, and admitted the justification of them both. No, no, no! The sense of my ‘Speech ‘is not destroyed; on the contrary, it is made still stronger, since in my answer to you I point out that both parties, estranged one from the other, in hostility one to the other, have put themselves and their activity into an abnormal situation, whereas in mutual union and agreement, they would perhaps exalt everything, save everything, awaken endless powers and summon Russia to a new, healthy, and mighty life, hitherto unseen.

1 At the beginning of that year Dostoyevsky died.

The End