The Icon and the Axe

on "rational egoism*r"and a strict^mlibation of the utilitarian calculusjjf maximizing material pleasure. They imitated Belinsky's iconoclasm and glorified at the same time the art of the "Gogolian period" of Russian literature with its concerns for suffering humanity over that of the more composed "Pushkinians," for whom art did not basically serve a social purpose. They preached the equality of sexes, thg_sancjity of the natural , sciences, a^^^^^^^r^cof^m^u^mdittxiaJL self-interest 1??~????? J everyjdeological pose. They-and even more, their imitators-:

their com^pe^ensForseparation from the past by adopting bizarre forms*" Ky4

of dress, practTcTngfree~*ove7and* attem^tirrgToTrvie^d WQrk cojrimuTranYr.

Medallions of Rousseau were worn in place of Orthodox medals; the stac-*" cato cry "Man is a worm" {chelovek-cherviak) was shouted out at theology lectures;msultingremarks were made about Shakespeare, Raphael, Pushkin, and other artists especially revered by the older generation.

The waToTTBe generations was d^amaTrze^^y~Tufgenev in his famous Po^^kCS^jg^^'g^r^Jch he pubHsh£d^S]T8e2jug^afterTie, as™a representative of the "fathers' " generation, had left The Contemporary","' denouncii^^he~^sbevslqr^nd_Pobroliubov as "literary Robespierres" "trying to wipe from the face of the earth poetry, the fine arts, all aesthetic pleasures, and to impose in their place mere seminarian principles."31 The

hero of the novel is Bazarov, the leader of the "sons" and a young medical student who rejects all established aesthetic, moral, or religious ideals and spends his time dissecting frogs. His credo is that "two and two is four and everything else is rubbish." The term Turgenev used to describe Bazarov's philosophy was "nihilism," which accurately suggests the almost totally negative attitude of the "men of the sixties" to all traditional ideas and practices. Chernyshevsky's associates considered Bazarov a caricature, but Pisarev, another rismgj^omig iconoclast, hajfled_BaarovjisJiJ^gllflixiSedel for ihe_!'ne3K-niea" of the sixties. When Dobroliubov died jn_i86i and

Chernyshevsky was arrested the following year~~PJsarey became the leading apostle of nihilistic materialism and remained so until 1868, when he-like Dobrolrubovandlo many others went tfl_an early death.

The importance of this spasm of negation would be hard to overemphasize. AlthoujpnrwaTaTrn^

it ^affected prgjaselythose"talented ISguteTwEISrer^to" projade the leader-ship in almost ewayTIeTdof cuTmTal effiteavor" for the remainder of the century^ Pisarev was correct in saying tEaPTf ???^???^???^?????^?? is the malady of our time."32 No one was ever quite the same again, because the young generation had deliberately broken with the broader humanistic cuiture~oTtHe ansto^liy"'as~*weTl as~tKe"official Orthodox culture "of the tsans~fregiIip~Tne first and perhaps^ mostTnrportaht JesuifoFthe iconoclastic revolution was the opening of a decisrve_split between the newnjhffisg_arjd^ the original moderate Westernizers of the fortSCchSnylnevsky took the lead jn*Brea1ang WffiT^elzeniOTnis friendliness with liberals like Kavelin and Chicherin and his "naive" hope for "reform from above" through Alexander II. "Let your 'bell' sound not for prayer but for the charge," he wrote shortly after breaking with Herzen in 1859.33 The lesson to be learned from the revolution of 1848 was that radicals must avoi3'Trtfflg"4e,atfeT5nTp of revolutionary movements to timid liber

^ ?^-v,.j "??? imperfect and hesitant

natureofthe AlexanarTan reforms-above all their purely formal emancipation of the peasantry, whose actual lot may in fact have worsened-seemed a perfect illustration to the extremist generation of what to expect from

liberal reformers.

In addition to encouraging political extremism, the nihilism of the sixties virtululy'promuted tliejewru^a^ew^orthodoxy the new analytic and reaTistjg^approach in science and literature, frose replaced poerry^aV^fe main vehicle of literaryexpression (a change whicrTPetrasnevsky had called indisp^n^abTeTm-flfiSiianprogress at the last meeting of his ill-fated circle in 1849). There was a sudden passion for meticulously realistic presentations of scenes and problems from everyday life. A decade of strident insistenceoTrTnesocial responsibility of the artist-from Chernyshevsky's

??? 1U  tiHV/ SHORES

Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality in 1855 to Pisarev's Destruction ? Aesthetics in 1865-resulted injhe establishment of a kind of "censorship of the left" alongside tW "f fhp tsaiigj ??";??. Subtly_bu,t effectively the realistic story and

plays of the aristocratic century as the major literary milieu of the new culture in St. Petersburg. Buckle's History of Civilization in England, with its attempts to explain cultures by climate, geography, and diet, was extraordinarily popular; and the beginnings of jLourely materialist_Russian school of physiology can be traced to the publication in 1863 jjQvan

Sechem^TteJleTeeYTSfThiri^^ the lead of Claude Bernard