Shipwreck ( Coast of Utopia-2)

Sasha enters from another direction and turns to look back. He comes forward and sees the spilled mushrooms. He rights the basket. Ogarev enters at peace, carrying Sasha’s fishing cane and jar, glancing behind him.

OGAREV   (calls) Come on, Kolya!

SASHA   He can’t hear you.

OGAREV   Come along!

SASHA   He can’t hear you.

Ogarev goes back towards Kolya.

Distant thunder.

OGAREV   There, you see? He heard that.

He goes out.

Sasha starts putting the mushrooms into the basket.

JULY   1847

Salzbrunn, a small spa town in Germany.

[VISSARION BELINSKY and Turgenev took rooms on the ground floor of a small wooden house in the main street. A shack in the courtyard served them as a summer pavilion.] Belinsky and Turgenev are reading separate manuscripts, a short story and a long letter respectively, while drinking water from large beakers. Belinsky is thirty-six and less than a year from death. His face is pale and smooth. He has a stout walking stick to hand. Turgenev finishes first. He puts the letter on the table. He waits for Belinksy to finish reading, and drinks from his beaker, making a face. Belinsky finishes reading and gives the manuscript to Turgenev. Turgenev waits for the verdict. Belinsky nods thoughtfully, drinks from his beaker.

BELINSKY   Hm. You don’t tell the reader what you think.

TURGENEV   What I think? What has that got to do with the reader?

Belinsky laughs, coughs, slams his stick, recovers.

BELINSKY   And what do you think about my letter to Gogol?

TURGENEV   Oh … well, I don’t see the necessity for it.

BELINSKY   Be careful, boy, or I’ll stand you in the corner.

TURGENEV   You said what you had to say about his book in the Contemporary. Is this the future of criticism?—first the bad notice, then the abusive letter to the author?

BELINSKY   The censor cut at least a third of my review. But that’s not the point. Gogol evidently thinks I rubbished his book, because he took a swipe at me. I’m not having that. He has to be made to understand that I took personal offence from cover to cover! I loved that man. I found him. Now he’s gone mad—and this apostle of Tsar Nicholas, this champion of serfdom, corporal punishment, censorship, ignorance and obscurantist piety, thinks I gave him a bad notice out of pique. His book is a crime against humanity and civilisation.

TURGENEV   No—it’s a book … a bad, stupid book but with all the sincerity of religious mania—why drive him madder? You should pity him.

Belinsky thumps angrily with his stick.

BELINSKY   It’s too important for pity. In other countries, the advance of civilised behaviour is everybody’s business. In Russia, there’s no division of labour, literature has to do it all. That was a hard lesson for me, boy. When I started off, I thought art was aimless, pure spirit. I was a young ruffian from the provinces, with the artistic credo of a Parisian dandy. Remember Gautier?—‘Fools! Cretins! A novel is not a pair of boots!’

TURGENEV   ‘A sonnet is not a syringe! A play is not a railway!’

BELINSKY   (chiming in with Turgenev) ‘A play is not a railway!’ Well, we have no railways, so that’s another job for literature, to open up the country. Are you laughing at me, boy? I once heard a government minister say he was against railways because they encouraged people who should stay put to indulge in purposeless travel with who knows what results. That’s what we’re up against.