No one could have been more Russian then Pushkin. Though himself of gentle birth, he yet understood Pugachev* and penetrated right into his innermost being at a time when nobody penetrated anywhere. An aristocrat, he yet carried Belkin* within his soul. By the force of his artistry he renounced his class and in Onegin* judged it with stern judgement from the standpoint of the nation as a whole. He is a prophet and a forerunner.
Is there really a chemical bond between the human spirit and a man’s native land which makes it impossible to break away from one’s country and, even if one does break away from it, makes one come back to it in the end?
After all, Slavophilism did not fall in our midst straight out of the clear blue sky, and though it did afterwards become a Muscovite fad, the basis of this fad is considerably broader than allowed for by Moscow’s formula, and lies possibly much deeper in some people’s hearts than seems likely at first sight. In fact, even in Moscow this basis is perhaps broader than Moscow’s own formula. It is at first so terribly difficult to express oneself clearly, even to oneself.
Some ideas, though powerful and full of vitality, take over three generations fully to manifest themselves, so that their final end does not resemble their beginnings in the very slightest…”
Thus did all these thoughts assail me in my railway carriage on the way to Europe, partly in spite of myself and partly because I was bored and had nothing to do. To be frank, only those of us who have nothing to do have hitherto given thought to this sort of thing. Oh, how boring it is to sit idly in a railway carriage! In fact, just as boring as it is to live in Russia without having anything specific to do.
You may be taken along and cared for, you may even be lulled to sleep sometimes, indeed your every wish may be anticipated, but you are bored, bored all the same, and precisely because you are being cared for and all you have to do is to sit and wait till you are brought to your destination.
Honestly, one sometimes feels like jumping out of the carriage and running along by the side of the engine on one’s own flat feet. The results may be worse, lack of practice may soon tire one out, but at least one would be using one’s own legs and doing a job one has found oneself and, were the carriages to collide and turn somersaults, one would not be sitting shut in and twirling one’s thumbs and one would not be answerable for someone else’s blunder…
What extraordinary ideas one gets when one has nothing to do!
In the meantime night was drawing on. Lights were being lit in the carriages. I had a husband and wife sitting opposite me, elderly people, landowners and probably respectable. They were in a hurry to get to London for the Exhibition,* but only for a few days, and they had left their family at home.
Sitting next to me on my right was a Russian who had been working in an office in London for the last ten years, who had come to St Petersburg on business for just a fortnight and who seemed to have lost all sense of longing for his native land.
On my left sat a clean, pure-bred Englishman, intensely serious and with his red hair parted in the English way. Throughout the journey he never said a single word in any language to any of us; he read all day, without lifting his head, a book of that very small English print which only English people can tolerate and even praise for its convenience, and at precisely ten o’clock at night he took off his boots and put on slippers. He was probably used to doing this all his life and had no desire to change his habits even in a railway carriage.
Soon everyone was dozing; the whistling and knocking sounds of the train made one terribly sleepy. I sat and thought and thought and somehow – I do not know how – came to the conclusion that “Frenchmen were not rational”, which served as the beginning of this chapter.
And, do you know, I am impelled by something or other, while we are making our way to Paris, to let you know my carriage thoughts, just like that, for the sake of human sympathy: after all I was bored enough, sitting in that carriage, so you might as well be bored now.
However, other readers should be protected, and I shall, therefore, deliberately include all these thoughts in one chapter which I shall call “superfluous”. It will bore you a little, but as it is superfluous, other people can simply leave it out. The reader must be treated carefully and conscientiously, but friends can be dealt with a little more cavalierly.
Well, now…
3
Which Is Quite Superfluous
AS A MATTER OF FACT, these were not thoughts, but a sort of contemplation, arbitrary notions, daydreams even, “of this and that, and nothing else”.
To begin with, I made a mental journey back into olden times and let my thoughts wander, particularly on the subject of the man who had made the above aphorism about the rationality of Frenchmen. It was, in fact, the aphorism that gave rise to these otherwise aimless thoughts. For his day that man held very progressive ideas.
But though he did go about all his life bedecked in the dress of a French gentleman – powdered wig and a little sword to show his knightly descent (which was entirely foreign to us) – and to defend his personal honour in Potemkin’s* waiting room, no sooner did he poke his nose abroad than the very name of Paris became anathema to him and he decided that “Frenchmen were not rational” and that they would even consider it most unfortunate if they were. By the way, you do not by any chance imagine, do you, that I mentioned the sword and the velvet coat as a reproach to Fonvizin?
Because I certainly did not. He could not, after all, put on a Russian peasant coat, particularly at that time, when even now certain persons, in order to be Russian and merge with the people, do not put on a peasant coat, but have instead invented a ballet dress for themselves little different from the type worn in Russian national operas by the various Ruslans in love with their Lyudmilas* wearing kokoshniks.* At least, a French coat was nearer to the people’s understanding of things: “You can see he’s a gentleman,” they would say. “What else should a gentleman wear – a peasant’s coat or something?”
I heard a short time ago that one modern landowner, in order to merge with the people, also took to wearing Russian dress and even going to village meetings in it; but the peasants, as soon as they saw him coming, would say to each other: “What’s this fellow in fancy dress barging in here for?” So that landowner had no success in merging with the people.
“I shall certainly not make any concessions,” a friend said to me. “I certainly shan’t – not me! I will make a point of not wearing a beard, and I’ll go about in white tie and tails if necessary. I’ll do all the work that must be done, but I shall not so much as hint at friendly relations. I’ll be the boss, stingy and thrifty, I’ll be a shark and a leech if need be. They’ll respect me all the more.
And this, surely, is the main thing – real respect.”
“Damn it all,” I said to myself. “It all sounds as if they were getting ready to march against enemy tribes. Asort of war council, this is.”
“Well,” said a third man – a charming man, as a matter of fact – to me: “Suppose I made myself a member of some peasant organization, and the village council ordered me to be flogged for something or other. What then?”
“And even if it did,” I wanted suddenly to say, but did not, because I was afraid to. (What is this? Why are we still sometimes afraid to express some of our thoughts?) “Even if the council did give that order,” I thought to myself, “and they did flog you, what of it?
Professors of aesthetics call such a turn of events the tragic side of life – and that is all there is to it. Surely a little thing like that does not warrant a whole life spent aloof from everyone else? Oh no, if we want to be all together let us really all be together, and if we want to be aloof let us be completely aloof. Elsewhere people had been through a good deal worse – women and children too.”
“Come, come now, women and children indeed!” my opponent would exclaim, “the village council might have me flogged just like that, for no reason at all, because of another man’s cow, perhaps, that had crashed into someone else’s vegetable garden, and you – you set it out as a general proposition.”
It sounds funny, of course, and, besides, it is a funny business altogether, a dirty business. I don’t want to soil my hands with it. It’s hardly decent even to talk of it. To hell with them all; let them all be
