As a matter of fact, so far as I am concerned, I can absolutely answer for the village council. My charming controversialist would not get so much as one little whack, even if it were possible to deal with him according to the council’s decision. “Let’s take a money fine off him, fellows. He’s gentry, after all – not used to this sort of thing. Now, we are a different matter; our backsides are made for flogging.” That is how the council would decide, in the words of one of Shchedrin’s provincial sketches…*
“Reaction!” someone will cry on reading this. “Fancy putting up a defence of flogging!” (Honest to God, someone will deduce from this that I am standing up for flogging.)
“Come now,” another man may say. “What are you talking about? You wanted to tell us about Paris and now you have gone right off the track to tell us about flogging. What has Paris got to do with it?”
“What’s all this?” a third might add. “You admit yourself that you heard about these things quite recently, yet you were travelling in the summer. How then could you have thought about all this in your railway carriage?”
“Quite right,” I would reply, “this really is a problem. But let me see now, these are winter reminiscences of summer impressions. And some winter impressions got mixed up with the winter reminiscences. Besides, as the train was approaching Eydtkuhnen, my thoughts were particularly concentrated on all things Russian which I was abandoning for the sake of seeing Europe, and I remember meditating in that strain.
The theme of my reflections was in fact the following: what kind of imprint did Europe leave on us at different times? Why did it constantly try to gatecrash upon us with its civilization? How civilized have we become and precisely how many of us have so far become civilized? I can now see that all this is somehow unnecessary. But then I did warn you beforehand that the whole chapter was unnecessary. But anyway, where did I stop? Oh, yes! Discussing a French coat! That is what it all started with.
Well now, one of these French coats at the time wrote The Brigadier.* The Brigadier was a marvellous thing by the standards then prevailing, and created an extraordinary effect. Potemkin himself said: “You may as well die now, Denis, never will you write anything better.”* People began to stir, as if roused from sleep. I wonder, I continued, letting my thoughts take their own course, were people even then tired of doing nothing, tired of a life in leading strings?
I do not mean merely the French leading strings at the time, and would anyway like to add that we are a very credulous nation and that it comes of our being so good natured. We might for instance, be all sitting idly around doing nothing and then suddenly take it into our heads that somebody had said or done something worthwhile. We might imagine that we, too, could be original and that we have found something to do, and then we would all get excited in the absolute conviction that now it is all going to begin.
A fly might buzz past, and we are quite ready to take it for an elephant. It is of course due to youthful inexperience and dearth of native tradition. In Russia that sort of behaviour can be traced almost further back than The Brigadier, though it was then naturally only in its rudimentary stages, but it continues to the present day: we find something to do and then give squeals of delight. Squealing and bursting from sheer delight – that’s what we really go in for. And yet, a couple of years later we slink off again, looking sheepish. But we never get tired and are always ready to begin again.
As to other leading strings, practically no one in Fonvizin’s time had the slightest doubt that these were the most sacred, the most European of leading strings and the best of all possible tutelage. Of course, there are few doubters, even now. The whole of our ultra-progressive party is frantically in favour of foreign leading strings.
But then, oh then it was a time of such faith in all kinds of leading strings that it is a wonder we did not move mountains then; it is odd indeed that all these Alaun downs and Pargolovo heights and Valdai peaks of ours still stand where they have always stood. True enough, a poet of the time did say about one of his characters that:
Mountains groaned when he lay on them
and that:
He cast towers high over clouds.*
But that, it seems, was merely a metaphor.
By the way, my dear sirs, I have only one type of literature in mind at the moment – the type known as belles lettres. It is through literature that I want to trace Europe’s gradual and beneficial influence on our country.
Just what books were then (before and at the same time as The Brigadier) published and read, we cannot conceive without feeling rather pleasantly superior! We now have a most remarkable writer, the pride of our time, a certain Kozma Prutkov.* His only defect consists in a modesty that passes all understanding: he has not yet published his complete works.
Well now, a long time ago he wrote Sketches by my Grandfather, which appeared in a miscellany published by The Contemporary. Just imagine the sort of thing that could have been written at the time by this debonair septuagenarian, who had lived in the reign of Catherine the Great,* who had seen a thing or two in his life, who had been at court, who had fought at Ochakov* and who had now retired to his ancestral farm and taken to writing his memoirs. He certainly had something to write about, that man – all the things he had witnessed in his life! Yet his book is composed entirely of such little stories as the following:
THE WITTY ANSWER OF THE CHEVALIER DE MONTBAZON
A very attractive young lady once coolly asked the Chevalier de Montbazon in the King’s presence: “Can you tell me, my lord, whether a dog is attached to its tail or the tail to the dog?” To which the Chevalier, being quick at repartee and therefore not in the slightest confused, replied in an even tone of voice. “There is no rule, madam, forbidding a man to catch a dog either by its tail or by its head.” This reply gave the King much pleasure and the Chevalier did not go unrewarded.
You think that all this is stuff and nonsense, and that an old man like that never really existed in this world. But I promise you that when I was ten years
old, I myself and with my own eyes read a book written in the Great Catherine’s time which contained the following story:
THE WITTY ANSWER OF THE CHEVALIER DE ROHAN
It is a well-known fact that the Chevalier de Rohan suffered from very bad breath. One day when he was present at a levee of the Prince de Condé, the latter said to him: “Do not stand quite so near, Chevalier, for you smell most unpleasantly.” To which the Chevalier immediately gave answer: “Not I, your most gracious Highness, but rather you, for you have just come out of bed.”
Now just try and imagine that old man living on his land, a seasoned warrior who had lost an arm perhaps, surrounded by his old wife, his country bumpkin children and a hundred servants, steaming himself every Saturday in his Russian bath till he is purple in the face. There he is with his glasses on his nose, gravely and enthusiastically reading this kind of story and imagining it to be the very essence of culture into the bargain; indeed, thinking himself almost in duty bound to read it.
What a naive faith they then had in the utility of such news from Europe and the necessity for it. “It is,” they said, “a well-known fact that the Chevalier de Rohan suffered from bad breath.” To whom was it well known? What bears somewhere in the backwoods of Russia knew it so well? And anyway who would want to know it? But such revolutionary thoughts never disturbed the old man. With the most childlike faith he would decide that this “collection of witty stories” was well known at court, and that would be quite sufficient so far as he was concerned.
Oh, certainly we found it easy to assimilate Europe then – in the physical sense, of course. It was difficult to avoid using the whip when it came to moral assimilation. People would put on silk stockings and wigs, attach swords to themselves – and look for all the world like Europeans. And not only was it not felt as an encumbrance, but it was in fact liked.
And yet in practice everything remained as before: once Rohan (of whom all that was known was that he had very bad breath) was laid aside and spectacles were taken off, people still dealt with their servants – as before, their attitude to their family was still as patriarchal – as before, they still had the neighbouring farmer thrashed in the stables – as before – if he was poorer than they and happened to say something rude, still demeaned themselves in the presence of their superiors – as before. Even the peasant understood it all better: his masters despised him less, held his customs and habits in less contempt, knew more
