Shipwreck ( Coast of Utopia-2)

HERZEN   (protesting, to Ogarev) I don’t, do I, Nick?

GRANOVSKY   Yes, you do.

KETSCHER   (to Granovsky) It’s you as well!

HERZEN   In the first place, I have a right to defend my good name, not to mention my mother’s. In the second place—

OGAREV   Stop him, stop him!

Herzen joins in the laughter against himself.

KONSTANTIN AKSAKOV, aged twenty-nine, comes from the house. He seems to be in costume. He wears an embroidered side-fastening shirt and a velvet skullcap. His trousers are tucked into tall boots.

HERZEN   Aksakov! Have some coffee!

AKSAKOV   (formally) I wanted to tell you in person that relations are over between us. It’s a pity, but there is no help for it. You understand that we can no longer meet as friends. I want to shake you by the hand and say goodbye.

Herzen allows his hand to be shaken. Aksakov starts to walk back.

HERZEN   What is the matter with everybody?

OGAREV   Aksakov, why do you dress like that?

AKSAKOV   (turning angrily) Because I am proud to be Russian!

OGAREV   But people think you’re a Persian.

AKSAKOV   I have nothing to say to you, Ogarev. As a matter of fact, I don’t hold it against you, compared with some of your friends who spend their time gallivanting around Europe … because I understand that in your case you’re not chasing after false gods but only after a false—

OGAREV   (hotly) You be careful, sir, or you will hear from me!

HERZEN   (leaping in) That’s enough of that talk!—

AKSAKOV   You Westernisers apply for passports with letters from your doctors and then go off and drink the water in Paris …

Ogarev relapses, seething.

TURGENEV   (mildly) Not at all, not at all. You can’t drink the water in Paris.

AKSAKOV   Go to France for your cravats if you must, but why do you have to go to France for your ideas?

TURGENEV   Because they’re in French. You can publish anything you like in France, it’s extraordinary.

AKSAKOV   And what’s the result? Scepticism. Materialism. Triviality.

Ogarev, still furious and agitated, leaps up.

OGAREV   Repeat what you said!

AKSAKOV   Scepticism—materialism—

OGAREV   Before!

AKSAKOV   Censorship is not all bad for a writer—it teaches precision and Christian patience.

OGAREV   (to Aksakov) Chasing after a false what?

AKSAKOV   (ignoring) France is a moral cesspit, but you can publish anything you like, so you’re all dazzled—blinded to the fact that the Western model is a bourgeois monarchy for philistines and profiteers.

HERZEN   Don’t tell me, tell them.

Ogarev goes out.

AKSAKOV   (to Herzen) Oh, I’ve heard about your socialist utopianism. What use is that to us? This is Russia … (to Granovsky) We haven’t even got a bourgeoisie.

GRANOVSKY   Don’t tell me, tell him.

AKSAKOV   It’s all of you. Jacobins and German sentimentalists. Destroyers and dreamers. You’ve turned your back on your own people, the real Russians abandoned a hundred and fifty years ago by Peter the Great Westerniser!—but you can’t agree on the next step.

Ogarev enters.

OGAREV   I demand that you finish what you were going to say!

AKSAKOV   I’m afraid I can’t remember what it was.

OGAREV   Yes, you can!

AKSAKOV   A false beard …? No … A false passport …?

Ogarev goes out.

AKSAKOV   (cont.) We have to reunite ourselves with the masses from whom we became separated when we put on silk breeches and powdered wigs. It’s not too late. From our village communes we can still develop in a Russian way, without socialism or capitalism, without a bourgeoisie, yes, and with our own culture unpolluted by the Renaissance, and our own Church unpolluted by the Popes or by the Reformation. It can even be our destiny to unite the Slav nations and lead Europe back to the true path. It will be the age of Russia.

KETSCHER   You’ve left out our own astronomy unpolluted by Copernicus.