A Herzen Reader

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION FROM CENSORSHIP

FREEDOM OF THE SERFS FROM THE LANDOWNERS

FREEDOM FROM CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

The editor would not limit himself, though, and "The Bell . . . will ring out from whatever touches it—absurd decrees or the foolish persecutions of religious dissidents, theft by high officials or the senate's ignorance. The comical and the criminal, the evil and the ignorant—all of these come un­der The Bell." He asks fellow countrymen who share his love for Russia "not only to listen to our Bell but to take their own turn in ringing it."

In reading the essays selected for A Herzen Reader—and in comparing them to other Herzen writing that appeared in The Bell—what is striking is the forcefulness of the style and the frequent mood swings, offering indignation, outrage, irony, sarcasm, satire (Docs. 11, 36, 43, 99), bitter scorn, wistfulness, and sympathy, alongside encouragement, civic prayers, and priceless puns (Docs. 27, 34, 57). In 1947, Ioann Novich spoke of the "assorted literary references, analogies, and comparisons" familiar to Herzen's readers, and goes on to say that the author's expressiveness was found in "the clash of naturally contrasting attributes, images and juxtapo­sitions."³⁸ The somewhat "extravagant vocabulary" was full of foreign words and phrases, but often no more than one would expect in the speech of an educated Russian member of the gentry who grew up in a trilingual house­hold and spent long years in Europe—what was different was the cause they served.³⁹ Herzen felt at home in other languages, but Engels, at least, complained that Herzen's French was "totally repulsive."⁴⁰ For the most part, the journalism translates with relative ease, although the title of a lead article (Doc. 33) from the April 15, 1861, issue posed a challenge. In the end, the English version of " 'Kolokol,' Kovalevskii, Kostomarov, kopiia, kanni- baly" preserved most, but not all, of the alliteration ("The Bell, Kovalevsky, Kostomarov, a Copy, and Cannibals").

Herzen's laughter is "no mere diversion," but "his alternative to doc­trinal or pedagogical fervor."⁴¹ In Rabelais and His World, Mikhail Bakhtin remarked on the way that Herzen was drawn to the power of laughter, al­though, as he notes, "Herzen was not acquainted with the laughing Middle Ages."⁴² Bakhtin's first chapter begins with an epigraph from "A Letter Crit­icizing The Bell" (Doc. 14), stating the need for a history of laughter.

Laughter is one of the most powerful weapons against something that is obsolete but is still propped up by God knows what. . . . I repeat what I said previously [in Letters from France and Italy]: "what a man cannot laugh about without falling into blasphemy or fearing the pangs of conscience is a fetish. . . ."

Laughter is no joking matter, and we will not give it up. . . . It would be extraordinarily interesting to write the history of laughter. . . . Laughter is a leveler, and people don't want that, afraid of being judged according to their individual merits.

Later in the same chapter Bakhtin refers to other "profound" comments on the subject by Herzen in the essay 'VERY DANGEROUS!!!" (Doc. 22).

Laughter is convulsive, and if, during the first minute a man laughs at everything, during the second moment he blushes and despises his laughter and that which caused it. . . . Without a doubt, laughter is one of the most powerful means of destruction. . . . From laughter idols fall. . . . With its revolutionary leveling power, laughter is ter­ribly popular and catchy; having begun in a modest study, it moves in widening circles to the limits of literacy.

Herzen exploited a number of comic possibilities in his writing, "from a brilliant joke to cruel sarcasm."⁴³ At times he offered skilled parody of the bombastic style (vysprennyi slog) of official communiques (Doc. 27). Irony was by far his favorite verbal weapon, a form of "controlled intensity."⁴⁴ In notebook entries on irony from 1970-71, Bakhtin described a kind of laughter that "lifts the barrier and clears the path," which was Herzen's aim, to make a more open political debate work for Russia's future.⁴⁵ His style in The Bell is remarkable for the "purposefulness" and "accuracy" of his rage.⁴⁶ Rejecting the "false monastic theory of passivity" that he saw in some of his fellow Russians in the early 1840s, Herzen boldly declared that he "loved" his anger as much as they loved a sense of peace.⁴⁷ Her- zen professed an interest in the further development of "our own native irony, irony-the-consoler and the avenger" (rodnaia nasha ironiia—ironiia uteshitel'nitsa, mstitel'nitsa).⁴⁸ In the midst of the public debate with Boris Chicherin, Herzen proclaimed his goal to be "not just Russia's revenge, but its irony" (Doc. 21).