“Allow me,” Yevgeny Pavlovitch was protesting warmly. “I say nothing against Liberalism. Liberalism is not a sin; it is an essential part of the whole, which without it would drop to pieces or perish; Liberalism has just as much right to exist as the most judicious Conservatism. But I am attacking Russian Liberalism, and I repeat aqain I attack it just for the reason that the Russian Liberal is not a Russian Liberal, but an un-Russian Liberal. Show me a Russian Liberal and I’ll kiss him in front of you all.”
“That is, if he cares to kiss you,” said Alexandra, who was exceptionally excited, so much so that her cheeks were redder than usual.
“There,” thought Lizaveta Prokofyevna to herself, “she goes on sleeping and eating, and you can’t rouse her, and then suddenly, once a year, she pops up and begins talking in such a way that one can only gape at her.”
Myshkin momentarily noticed that Alexandra seemed particularly to dislike Yevgeny Pavlovitch’s talking too light-heartedly; he was talking about a serious subject, and seemed to be hot about it, and at the same time he seemed to be making a joke of it.
“I was maintaining just now, just before you came in, prince,”
“Vfevgeny Pavlovitch went on, “that Liberals so far have come only from two classes of society — from the old land-owning class, that’s now a thing of the past, and from clerical families. And as those two classes have become regular castes,
something quite apart from the nation, and more and more so from generation to generation, so everything they have done and are doing is absolutely non-national.”
“What? So everything that has been done is un-Russian?” protested Prince S.
“Non-national; though it’s Russian, it’s not national. The Liberals among us are not Russian, and the Conservatives are not Russian either, any of them. . . . And you may be sure that the nation will accept nothing of what has been done by landowners and divinity students, either now or later.
“Well, that’s too much! How can you maintain such a paradox, that is, if you are speaking in earnest. I must protest against such wild statements about the Russian landowner; you are a Russian landowner yourself,” Prince S. objected warmly.
“But I didn’t speak of the Russian landowner in the sense in which you are taking it. It’s the most respectable class, if only because I belong to it; especially now, since it has ceased to be a caste. . .
“Do you mean to say there has been nothing national in literature?” Alexandra interposed.
“I am not an authority on literature, but even Russian literature is in my opinion not Russian at all, unless perhaps Lomonosov, Pushkin, and Gogol are national.”
“That’s not bad, to begin with; and besides, one of those was a peasant and the other two were landowners,” said Adelaida, laughing.
“Quite so, but don’t be triumphant. As, of all Russian writers, these three are the only ones that have so far been able to say something of their own, something not borrowed, they have by this fact become national. Any Russian who says or writes or does anything of his own — something original, not borrowed — inevitably becomes national, even if he can’t speak Russian properly. That I regard as an axiom. But we were not talking of literature at first; we were talking of Socialists, at the beginning. Well, I maintain that we haven’t one single Russian Socialist; there are none and there have never been, for all our Socialists are also landowners or divinity students. All our notorious and professed Socialists, both here and abroad, are nothing more than Liberals from the landed gentry of the serf-owning days. Why are you laughing? Show me their books, show me their theories, their memories; and, though I am no literary critic, I can write you the most convincing criticism, in which I’ll show you as clear as daylight that every page of their books, pamphlets, and memories has been written by Russian landowners of the old school. Their anger, their indignation, their wit, are all typical of that class, as it was even in pre-Famusov — times; their raptures, their tears are perhaps real, genuine tears, but they are landowners’ tears — landowners’ or divinity students’. . . . “Vbu are laughing again, and you are laughing too, prince? “Vbu don’t agree either, then?”
They really were all laughing, and Myshkin smiled too.
“I can’t say off-hand yet whether I agree or not,” Myshkin brought out, suddenly leaving off smiling and starting with the air of a schoolboy caught in a fault, “but I assure you I am listening to you with the greatest pleasure….”
He was almost breathless, as he said this, and cold sweat came out on his forehead. They were the first words he had uttered since he had sat down. He tried to look round at the company and had not the courage; “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch caught his movement and smiled.
“I will tell you a fact, gentlemen,” he went on in the same tone as before, that is, with extraordinary gusto and warmth, though at the same time he seemed almost laughing, possibly at his own words— “a fact, the observation and discovery of which I have the honour of ascribing to myself and to myself alone; nothing has been said or written about it, anyway. This fact expresses the whole essence of Russian Liberalism of the sort of which I am speaking. In the first place, what is Liberalism, speaking generally, but an attack (whether judicious or mistaken is another question) on the established order of things? That’s so, isn’t it? Well, my fact is that Russian Liberalism is not an attack on the existing order of things, but is an attack on the very essence of things, on the things themselves, not merely on the order of things; not on the Russian regime, but on Russia itself. My Liberal goes so far as to deny even Russia itself, that is, he hates and beats his own mother. Every unhappy and disastrous fact in Russia excites his laughter and almost his delight. He hates the national habits, Russian history, everything. If there is any justification for him, it is that he doesn’t know what he is about and takes his hatred of Russia for Liberalism of the most fruitful kind. (Oh, you often meet among us Liberals who are applauded by the rest and who are perhaps the most absurd, the most stupid and dangerous of Conservatives, and they are unaware of it themselves.) This hatred of Russia was quite lately almost regarded by some of our Liberals as sincere love for their country. They boasted that they knew better than other people how that love ought to show itself; but now they have become more candid and are ashamed of the very idea of ‘loving’ one’s country; the very conception of it they have dismissed and banished as trivial and pernicious. This is a fact; I insist on that and . . . and the truth must be told sooner or later fully, simply, and openly. But it’s a fact that has never been heard of and has never existed in any other people since the world began, and so it is an accidental phenomenon and may not be permanent, I admit. There cannot be a Liberal anywhere else who hates his own country.
How can we explain it among us? Why, by the same fact as before, that the Russian Liberal hitherto has not been Russian; nothing else explains it, to my thinking.”
“I take all that you have said as a joke, Yevgeny Pavlovitch,” Prince S. replied earnestly.
“I haven’t seen every Liberal, so I can’t undertake to judge,” said Alexandra, “but I’ve listened to your ideas with indignation; you’ve taken an individual case and generalised from it, and so you’ve been unjust.”
“An individual case? Ah! The word has been uttered,”
“Vfevgeny Pavlovitch caught her up. “Prince, what do you think? Have I taken an individual case or not?”
“I ought to say, too, that I have been very little with Liberals and seen very little of them,” said Myshkin, “but I fancy that you may be partly right and that the sort of Russian Liberalism of which you are speaking really is disposed to hate Russia itself, not only its institutions. Of course, this is only partly true . .. of course, this cannot be true of all.”
He broke off in confusion. In spite of his excitement, he was greatly interested in the conversation. One of Myshkin’s striking characteristics was the extraordinary naivete of the attention, with which he always listened to anything that interested him, and of the answers he gave when any one asked him questions. His face, and even his attitude, somehow reflected that naivete, that good faith, unsuspicious of mockery or humour. But though Yevgeny Pavlovitch had for a long time past always behaved to him with a certain shade of mockery, now, on hearing his answer, he looked very gravely at him, as though he had not expected such ananswerfrom him.
“So . . . how strange it is of you, though!” he said. “Did you really answer me in earnest, prince?”
“Why, didn’t you ask me in earnest?” replied Myshkin in surprise.
Everyone laughed.
“Trust him,” said Adelaida. “\fevgeny Pavlovitch always makes
