A Herzen Reader

From an April 5, i870, letter to Strakhov, cited in Raisa Orlova, Poslednii god zhizni Gertsena (New York: Chalidze, i982), 2i-22. Irena Zhelvakova refers to a list of more than 300 literary references in The Bell, which was compiled for the facsimile edition of the newspaper. See Zhelvakova, Gertsen (Zhizn' zamechatel'nykh liudei) (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 20i0), 434.

Orlova, Poslednii god, 3; Let 5:259.

In an i857 letter to Alexander II about a book that defamed the Decembrists, Her- zen characterized modern authoritarian states with unreformed political institutions as "Chinghiz Khan plus the telegraph." See Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, i3:38.

Lampert, Studies in Rebellion, i90, i95. Lampert makes much of the resemblance to Voltaire, whom Herzen read in his father Ivan Yakovlev's library. He notes that, un­like Voltaire, Herzen was "saddened by what he knew" (i9i). For another characteriza­tion of Herzen's style, see Miller, The Russian Revolutionary Emigres, i80.

Ioann Novich, A. I. Gertsen: Stenogramma publichnoi lektsii, prochitannoi 4 aprelia 1947 goda v Dome Soiuzov v Moskve (Moscow, i947), 2i.

Lampert, Studies in Rebellion, 196. Turgenev judged Herzen's style as "mon­strously incorrect," although lively and appropriate to the message (Lampert, 196). Her- zen, in turn, criticized the politics of Turgenev's novels, in private and in public.

Let 5:171. From a January 1869 letter to Marx.

Lampert, Studies in Rebellion, 174.

M. M. Bakhtin, "Rabelais in the History of Laughter," chapter 1 of Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 59, 92.

Iakov El'sberg, Gertsen: Zhizn' i tvorchestvo, 4th rev. ed. (Moscow: Khudozhestven- naia literatura, 1963), 537-38. Given El'sberg's sinister reputation, it is fairly certain that Herzen would have felt uncomfortable in his critical embrace.

Lampert, Studies in Rebellion, 190. For some key examples of irony, see Docs. 55, 78, and 86.

Mikhail Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Essays, trans. Vern McGee, ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 135.

El'sberg, Gertsen, 539, 543.

Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, 22:98.

From his preface to his 1858 publication of works by Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov and Alexander Radishchev that had been banned in Russia. Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, 13:272. His comments on "native irony" refer to Radishchev's Journey from Petersburg to Moscow.

Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, 4:1698. See also 2:628, 808, 3:1065, and 1070. The theme came up often in Herzen's writing, in comments about Chicherin, Prou- dhon, and others, who seemed surer than he was of the most effective remedies for achieving political health. This well-known formula was a favorite of Yuri Trifonov. See the record of a 1980 conversation with critic Lev Anninsky: Iurii Trifonov, Kak nashe slovo otzovetsia (Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1985).

Isaiah Berlin, Flourishing: Letters 1928-1946, ed. Henry Hardy (London: Chatto and Windus, 2004), 68, 239, 258, 269.

Let 3:238, 449.

The first observation was cited by Michael Katz in the introduction to Who Is to Blame? A Novel in Two Parts, his translation of Herzen's 1846 novel (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cor­nell University Press, 1984), 35. The second dates from 1869; see Let 5:195-96.

Let 2:384.

Let 3:382.

Let 3:286.

Let 2:450.

Novich, A. I. Gertsen, 21.

Vasily Rozanov, "Fallen Leaves," in The Apocalypse of Our Times and Other Writ­ings, trans. Robert Payne and Nikita Romanoff (New York: Praeger, 1977), 205.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, "Ne obychai degtem shchi belit', na to smetana," Literat- urnaia Gazeta, Nov. 4, 1965. Translated by Donald Fiene for Russian Literature Triquar- terly 11 (1975): 264-69.

Docs. 3, 7, 29, 35, 39, and 92, respectively.

Orlova, Poslednii god, 29. Martin Miller reminds us that in The Polestar for 1855, Herzen issued a warm invitation to his readers, saying that the doors were wide open and all arguments were summoned (The Russian Revolutionary Emigres, 179).

Let 4:390-96.