The Epanchins’ country-house was a charming building, built after the model of a Swiss chalet, and covered with creepers. It was surrounded on all sides by a flower garden, and the family sat, as a rule, on the open verandah as at the prince’s house.
The subject under discussion did not appear to be very popular with the assembly, and some would have been de-
lighted to change it; but Evgenie would not stop holding forth, and the prince’s arrival seemed to spur him on to still further oratorical efforts.
Lizabetha Prokofievna frowned, but had not as yet grasped the subject, which seemed to have arisen out of a heated argument. Aglaya sat apart, almost in the corner, lis-tening in stubborn silence.
‘Excuse me,’ continued Evgenie Pavlovitch hotly, ‘I don’t say a word against liberalism. Liberalism is not a sin, it is a necessary part of a great whole, which whole would collapse and fall to pieces without it. Liberalism has just as much right to exist as has the most moral conservatism; but I am attacking RUSSIAN liberalism; and I attack it for the sim-ple reason that a Russian liberal is not a Russian liberal, he is a non-Russian liberal. Show me a real Russian liberal, and I’ll kiss him before you all, with pleasure.’
‘If he cared to kiss you, that is,’ said Alexandra, whose cheeks were red with irritation and excitement.
‘Look at that, now,’ thought the mother to herself, ‘she does nothing but sleep and eat for a year at a time, and then suddenly flies out in the most incomprehensible way!’
The prince observed that Alexandra appeared to be an-gry with Evgenie, because he spoke on a serious subject in a frivolous manner, pretending to be in earnest, but with an under-current of irony.
‘I was saying just now, before you came in, prince, that there has been nothing national up to now, about our lib-eralism, and nothing the liberals do, or have done, is in the least degree national. They are drawn from two classes only,
the old landowning class, and clerical families—‘
‘How, nothing that they have done is Russian?’ asked Prince S.
‘It may be Russian, but it is not national. Our liberals are not Russian, nor are our conservatives, and you may be sure that the nation does not recognize anything that has been done by the landed gentry, or by the seminarists, or what is to be done either.’
‘Come, that’s good! How can you maintain such a par-adox? If you are serious, that is. I cannot allow such a statement about the landed proprietors to pass unchal-lenged. Why, you are a landed proprietor yourself!’ cried Prince S. hotly.
‘I suppose you’ll say there is nothing national about our literature either?’ said Alexandra.
‘Well, I am not a great authority on literary questions, but I certainly do hold that Russian literature is not Russian, ex-cept perhaps Lomonosoff, Pouschkin and Gogol.’
‘In the first place, that is a considerable admission, and in the second place, one of the above was a peasant, and the other two were both landed proprietors!’
‘Quite so, but don’t be in such a hurry! For since it has been the part of these three men, and only these three, to say something absolutely their own, not borrowed, so by this very fact these three men become really national. If any Russian shall have done or said anything really and abso-lutely original, he is to be called national from that moment, though he may not be able to talk the Russian language; still he is a national Russian. I consider that an axiom. But we
were not speaking of literature; we began by discussing the socialists. Very well then, I insist that there does not exist one single Russian socialist. There does not, and there has never existed such a one, because all socialists are derived from the two classes—the landed proprietors, and the sem-inarists. All our eminent socialists are merely old liberals of the class of landed proprietors, men who were liberals in the days of serfdom. Why do you laugh? Give me their books, give me their studies, their memoirs, and though I am not a literary critic, yet I will prove as clear as day that every chapter and every word of their writings has been the work of a former landed proprietor of the old school. You’ll find that all their raptures, all their generous transports are proprietary, all their woes and their tears, proprietary; all proprietary or seminarist! You are laughing again, and you, prince, are smiling too. Don’t you agree with me?’
It was true enough that everybody was laughing, the prince among them.
‘I cannot tell you on the instant whether I agree with you or not,’ said the latter, suddenly stopping his laughter, and starting like a schoolboy caught at mischief. ‘But, I assure you, I am listening to you with extreme gratification.’
So saying, he almost panted with agitation, and a cold sweat stood upon his forehead. These were his first words since he had entered the house; he tried to lift his eyes, and look around, but dared not; Evgenie Pavlovitch noticed his confusion, and smiled.
‘I’ll just tell you one fact, ladies and gentlemen,’ continued the latter, with apparent seriousness and even exaltation of
manner, but with a suggestion of ‘chaff’ behind every word, as though he were laughing in his sleeve at his own non-sense—‘a fact, the discovery of which, I believe, I may claim to have made by myself alone. At all events, no other has ever said or written a word about it; and in this fact is ex-pressed the whole essence of Russian liberalism of the sort which I am now considering.
‘In the first place, what is liberalism, speaking generally, but an attack (whether mistaken or reasonable, is quite an-other question) upon the existing order of things? Is this so? Yes. Very well. Then my ‘fact’ consists in this, that RUS-SIAN liberalism is not an attack upon the existing order of things, but an attack upon the very essence of things them-selves—indeed, on the things themselves; not an attack on the Russian order of things, but on Russia itself. My Rus-sian liberal goes so far as to reject Russia; that is, he hates and strikes his own mother. Every misfortune and mishap of the mother-country fills him with mirth, and even with ecstasy. He hates the national customs, Russian history, and everything. If he has a justification, it is that he does not know what he is doing, and believes that his hatred of Rus-sia is the grandest and most profitable kind of liberalism. (You will often find a liberal who is applauded and esteemed by his fellows, but who is in reality the dreariest, blindest, dullest of conservatives, and is not aware of the fact.) This hatred for Russia has been mistaken by some of our ‘Rus-sian liberals’ for sincere love of their country, and they boast that they see better than their neighbours what real love of one’s country should consist in. But of late they have grown,
more candid and are ashamed of the expression ‘love of country,’ and have annihilated the very spirit of the words as something injurious and petty and undignified. This is the truth, and I hold by it; but at the same time it is a phe-nomenon which has not been repeated at any other time or place; and therefore, though I hold to it as a fact, yet I rec-ognize that it is an accidental phenomenon, and may likely enough pass away. There can be no such thing anywhere else as a liberal who really hates his country; and how is this fact to be explained among US? By my original statement that a Russian liberal is NOT a RUSSIAN liberal—that’s the only explanation that I can see.’
‘I take all that you have said as a joke,’ said Prince S. se-riously.
‘I have not seen all kinds of liberals, and cannot, there-fore, set myself up as a judge,’ said Alexandra, ‘but I have heard all you have said with indignation. You have taken some accidental case and twisted it into a universal law, which is unjust.’
‘Accidental case!’ said Evgenie Pavlovitch. ‘Do you con-sider it an accidental case, prince?’
‘I must also admit,’ said the prince, ‘that I have not seen much, or been very far into the question; but I cannot help thinking that you are more or less right, and that Russian liberalism— that phase of it which you are considering, at least—really is sometimes inclined to hate Russia itself, and not only its existing order of things in general. Of course this is only PARTIALLY the truth; you cannot lay down the law for all…’
The prince blushed and broke off, without finishing what he meant to say.
In spite of his shyness and agitation, he could not help being greatly interested in the conversation. A special char-acteristic of his was the naive candour with which he always listened to arguments which interested him, and with which he answered any questions put to him on the sub-ject at issue. In the very expression of his face this naivete was unmistakably evident, this disbelief in the insincerity of others, and unsuspecting disregard of irony or humour in their words.
But though Evgenie Pavlovitch had put his questions to the prince with no other purpose but to enjoy the joke of his simple-minded seriousness, yet now, at his answer, he was surprised into some seriousness himself, and looked grave-ly at Muishkin as though he had not expected that sort of answer at all.
‘Why, how strange!’ he ejaculated. ‘You didn’t answer me seriously, surely, did you?’
‘Did not you ask me
