I know, I know too well, that my words may appear ecstatic, exaggerated and fantastic. Let them be so, I do not repent having uttered them. They ought to be uttered, above all now, at the moment that we honour our great genius who by his artistic power embodied his idea. The idea has been expressed manjy times before. I say nothing new. But chiefly it will appear presumptuous. ‘Is this our dest my, the destiny of oui ooor, brutal land? Are we predestined among mankinl to utter the new wr’r J?’
Do I speak of economic glory, of the glory of the sword or of sciei ice? I speak only of the brotherhood of man; I sa y that to this universal, omni-human union the heart of Russia, perhaps more than all other nations, is chiefly predestined; I see its traces in our history, our men of genius, in the artistic genius of Pushkin. Let our country be poor, but this poor land ‘Christ traversed with blessing, in the garb of a serf.’ Why then should we not contain His final word? Was not He Himself born in a manger?
I say again, we at least can already point to Pushkin, to the universality and omni-humanity of his genius. He surely could contain the genius of foreign lands in his soul as his own. In art at least, in artistie creation, he undeniably revealed this universality of the aspiration of the Russian spirit, and therein is a great promise. If our thought is a dream, then in Pushkin at least this dream has solid foundation.
Had he lived longer, he would perhaps have revealed great and immortal embodiments of the Russian soul, whieh would then have been intelligible to our European brethren; he would have attracted them much more and closer than they are attracted now, perhaps he would have succeeded in explaining to them all the truth of our aspirations; and they would understand us more than they do now, they would have begun to have insight into us, and would have ceased to look at us so suspiciously and presumptuous” as they still do.
Had Pushkin lived longer, then amo.ng us too there would perhaps be fewe: misunderstandings and quarrels than we st o now. But God saw otherwise. Pushkin died n the full maturity of his yXowers, and undeniably )ore away with him a great secret into the grave. And now we, without him, are seeking to divine his secret.
Chapter III
TAKING THE OPPORTUNITY. FOUR SERMONS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS READ TO ME ON THE OCCASION OF ONE LECTURE, BY M. GRADOVSKY. WITH AN ADVERTISEMENT TO M. GRADOVSKY.
§ 1
of one very fundamental thingI had just been putting the finishing touch to my Journal, confining it to my ‘Speech,’ delivered in Moscow on the 8th of June, and to the foreword which I had written, anticipating the fuss which was actually made by the press after the publication of my ‘Speech ‘in the Moskovskaia Viedomosti. But when I had read your criticism, M. Gradovsky, I delayed the publication of my Journal in order to add to it also my answer to your attacks.
Oh, my misgivings were justified. There was a terrible fuss. ‘I am haughty.” I am a coward.” I am a Manilov,1 and a poet.” The police should be called in to suppress these public outbursts ‘— the moral police, the liberal police, of course. But why not the real police? The real police nowadays are quite as liberal as the liberals themselves. Truly, it is only a very little less than calling in the real police! But we will leave that for the meanwhile; I will answer your points immediately.
1 A sentimental liar, from Gogol.
From the very beginning I will confess that I personally have nothing to do, or to discuss, with you. It is impossible for me to come to an understanding with you; and therefore I have no thought either of persuading or dissuading you. When I read some of your previous articles, I naturally was always amazed by the trend of your thought. So why should I answer you now? Simply because I have in view the others who will judge between us — the public. For them I am writing now.
I hear, I feel, I even see that new elements are rising and springing forth, whieh thirst for a new word, whieh are siek and tired of the old liberal giggling at any word of hope for Russia, sick and tired of the old toothless liberal scepticism, sick and tired of the old corpses who have forgotten to be buried and still take themselves for the rising generation, sick and tired of the old liberal guide and saviour of Russia, who after the whole twenty-five years that he stayed with us was ultimately defined, in the people’s speech, as ‘a man who shouts for nothing in the market-place.’
In a word, I should like to do a great deal more than to reply to your observations. In replying now, therefore, I have only seized an opportunity.
First of all you question me and even reprove me, asking why I did not show more clearly whence the ‘wanderers ‘came of whom I spoke in my ‘Speech ‘? Well, that is a long story; one would have to go back too far.
Besides, whatever answer I made to that question, you would not agree, because you have already preconceived and prepared your own solution of the question whence and how the ‘wanderers ‘came. ‘From weariness of living with Skvoznik-Dmuhanovskys,1 and from the social yearning after the as yet unliberated serfs.’
A conclusion eminently worthy of a modern liberal-minded man, for whom everything that has to do with Russia has been settled and signed long ago, with the extraordinary ease peculiar to the Russian Liberal alone. Nevertheless the question is more complicated than you think, far more complicated, in spite of your very final solution. I will speak elsewhere of ‘Skvozniks and Yearning,’ but first of all permit me to take hold of one most characteristic word of yours, spoken with a lightness that is already on the border of playfulness, a word which I cannot pass by in silence.
You say:
‘Whether this be so or no, two centuries have already passed since we have been under the influence of European enlightenment, which acts extremely strongly upon us by reason of the “ universal sensitiveness “ of the Russian, which M. Dostoyevsky acknowledged to be our national trait. There is no way of escape from this enlightenment; neither is there any need to escape. It is a fact, against which we can do nothing for this simple reason, that every Russian who desires to be enlightened, must get this enlightenment from a western European source, because of the absolute lack of sources in Russia.’
Certainly it is playfully expressed, but you have also uttered an important word: enlightenment. Let me ask you then what you mean by it. The sciences of the West, the useful sciences and crafts, or spiritual enlightenment? The former, the 1 A type of cunning, petty swindler, taken from Gogol.
sciences and crafts, must not pass by us unheeded: assuredly we must not avoid them, neither is there any need. I also agree fully that there is no source whence we may obtain them save in Western Europe, for which our praise and gratitude to Europe shall be eternal. But by enlightenment I understand (I think that every one is bound to understand) that which is literally expressed in the very word: enlightenment — a spiritual light which shines upon the soul and illumines the heart, which directs the mind and reveals to it the way of life.
If this be so, then allow me to observe that for this enlightenment we have no need to go to Western European sources because of the absolute sufficiency (not the absolute lack) of sources in Russia. You are surprised? You see, in discussion I love to begin with the very substance of the matter, and at once to grapple with the most disputable point.
I assert that our people became enlightened long ago, by taking into its essential soul Christ and His teaching. I may be told it has no knowledge of Christ’s teaching, for no sermons are preached to it. But this is an empty objection.
It knows indeed everything that it needs to know, though it cannot pass an examination in the catechism. It came to know this in temples where for centuries it had heard prayers and hymns which are better than sermons. The people repeated and sang these prayers while they were still in the forests, in hiding from their enemies; perhaps as long ago as the invasion of Batu-Khan they sang: ‘Lord of Powers, be with us!’ and then perhapsjdiey won a firm knowledge of that hymn, because nothing was left to them but Christ, and in that one hymn is all the Christian truth.
What of it that the people hear no sermons and the clerks mumble indistinctly, which is the greatest accusation levelled against our Church, an accusation invented by the Liberals together with the inconvenience of the ecclesiastical Slavonic language, which is supposed to be incomprehensible to the common people? What of it? Instead, the priest stands forth and reads: ‘Lord Sovereign of my life
