A Herzen Reader

Without agreeing with Chaadaev, we understand perfectly what led him to this dark and despairing point of view, all the more so since up to the present the facts speak for him and not against him. We believe; for him it was enough to point a finger. We hope; for him it was enough to open the page of a journal to prove that he was right. The conclusion at which Chaadaev arrived could not hold up against any criticism, and that is hardly where one would find the importance of this publication; it is through the lyricism of its austere indignation, which shakes the soul and for a long time leaves it under a painful impression, that it maintains its significance. The author was reproached for his harshness, but it is that which is his greatest achievement. One must not humor us; we forget too quickly our position, we are too accustomed to be distracted within prison walls.

A cry of anguish and astonishment greeted this article, it frightened people, it wounded even those who shared these feelings, and all the same it merely stated what was vaguely agitating each of our souls. Who among us has not had such moments of anger, in which he hated this country that responds to all generous human aspirations with torment, which hastens to wake us up in order to torture us. Who among us has not wished to break away forever from this prison which occupies a quarter of the earthly sphere, from this monstrous empire where every police superintendent is a sovereign and the sovereign is a crowned superintendent of police? Who among us has not indulged in all the temptations to forget this frozen hell, to achieve a few moments of drunkenness and distraction? We see things now in a different way, we envisage Russian history in a different manner, but there is no reason to recant or repent of those moments of despair; we paid too dearly for them to yield them up; they are our right, our protest, they saved us.

Chaadaev went silent but he did not leave us in peace. The Petersburg aristocrats—those Benkendorfs and Kleinmikhels¹³—were offended for Russia. A sober-minded German, Vigel, the chief—evidently Protestant— of the department for religious congregations, protested on behalf of Rus­sian Orthodoxy. The emperor had it announced that Chaadaev suffered a mental breakdown. This tasteless joke brought even his enemies to Chaa- daev's side, and his influence in Moscow increased. Even the aristocracy bowed their heads before this thinker and surrounded him with respect and attention, thus giving lie to the imperial joke.

Chaadaev's letter was a sounding trumpet; the signal had been given and from all sides new voices were heard; young fighters entered the arena, giv­ing evidence of the silent work that had taken place during these ten years.

The 14 (26) December had too deeply cut off the past for the literature that preceded it to be able to continue in the same way. Right after this great day, a young man full of the fantasies and ideas of 1825, Veneviti- nov,¹⁴ could appear. Despair, like the ache after a wound, did not come immediately. But hardly had he pronounced a few noble words when he disappeared like the flowers of a more gentle sky, which expire from the icy breath of the Baltic.

Venevitinov was not viable in the new Russian atmosphere. In order to tolerate the air of that sinister epoch a different constitution was required, and it was necessary from childhood to get used to that ever-present harsh north wind, to become acclimated to insoluble doubts, to the bitterest truths, to one's own weakness, to daily insults; the habit must be ingrained from earliest childhood to conceal everything that disturbs the soul but not to lose any of what has been buried there; on the contrary, to ripen in quiet anger all that has deposited itself in the heart. It was necessary to know how to hate out of love, to despise for humanity's sake, to have unlimited pride in order to raise one's head high while shackled hand and foot.

Every chapter of Onegin, which appeared after 1825, was more and more profound. The poet's original plan was light and serene, he had sketched it out in a different time; he was surrounded then by a world which enjoyed this ironic, friendly, and playful laughter. The first chapters of Onegin re­mind us a lot of the sharp but robust comedy of Griboedov.¹⁵ Tears and laughter—everything changed.