A Herzen Reader

The two poets we have in mind who convey the new era in Russian po­etry are Lermontov and Koltsov.¹⁶ These two strong voices come from oppo­site sides. Nothing can demonstrate with greater clarity the change brought about in people's minds since 1825 than a comparison between Pushkin and Lermontov. Pushkin, often dissatisfied and sad, offended and full of indignation, was, however, ready to make his peace. He desired it, and did not despair of it; a chord of remembrance from the times of the emperor Alexander did not cease to resonate in his heart. Lermontov was so used to despair, to antagonism, that not only did he not look for a way out, he could not conceive of the possibility of either a battle or an accommodation. Lermontov never learned to hope, he never sacrificed himself because there was nothing to call forth such a sacrifice. He did not hold his head with pride in the noose, like Pestel and Ryleev,¹⁷ because he could not see the usefulness of sacrifice; he flung himself to the side and died for nothing.

The pistol shot that killed Pushkin aroused Lermontov's soul. He wrote an energetic ode in which, branding the vile intrigues which preceded the duel, intrigues carried out by literary ministers and spying journalists, he cried out with the indignation of a young man: "Vengeance, emperor, ven­geance!" The poet paid for this single act of defiance with exile to the Cau­casus. This took place in 1837; in 1841, Lermontov's body was placed in a grave at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains.

And what you said before your death, None among those present understood...

...your final words Their profound and bitter meaning Is lost.¹⁸

Fortunately, we have not lost what Lermontov wrote during the last four years of his life. He belonged entirely to our generation. All of us were too young to take part on the 14th of December. Awakened by that great day, we saw only executions and banishments. Reduced to a forced silence, sup­pressing our tears, we learned to retire within ourselves, to prepare our thoughts in secret, and what were those thoughts? These were no longer ideas of a civilizing liberalism, ideas of progress; they were doubts, nega­tions, and thoughts full of fury. Used to such sentiments, Lermontov could not save himself in lyricism the way Pushkin had done. He dragged a ball and chain of skepticism through all his fantasies and all his pleasures. A manly and melancholy thought never left his face and broke through to all his poetry. It was not an abstract thought that sought to adorn itself with poetic flowers; no, Lermontov's meditation is his poetry, his torment, his strength. He had deep feelings for Byron, which Pushkin did not share. To the misfortune of too much insight, he added another, the boldness of saying a great many things without varnish or discretion. Weak creatures, bruised by this, never forgive such sincerity. One spoke of Lermontov as a spoiled child from an aristocratic house, like one of those idle creatures who perish in boredom and excess. One did not wish to see how much this man had struggled, how much he had suffered before daring to express his thoughts. People accept with greater indulgence insults and ill-will than a certain maturity of thought and an alienation which desires to share neither hopes nor fears and which dares to speak openly of this rupture. When Ler- montov left Petersburg for a second period of exile in the Caucasus he was quite weary and he told his friends that he would attempt to die as quickly as possible. He kept his word.

What, in the end, is this monster that calls itself Russia, which needs so many victims and which permits its children only the sad alternative of either losing themselves morally in a setting hostile to all that is human, or of dying at the dawn of their life? It is a bottomless abyss, where the best oarsmen will perish, where the greatest efforts, the greatest talents, the greatest minds will be swallowed up before having succeeded at anything.

And yet, can one doubt of the existence of embryonic forces, when one sees from the depths of the nation a voice rise up like that of Koltsov?