The desire to see one's name in print is one of the strongest artificial passions in a man who has been corrupted by this bookish age. Nevertheless it needs a special occasion to induce people to expose their efforts to public criticism. People who would never have dared to dream of their essays being printed in the Moscow News or in a Petersburg magazine, began to publish
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them at home. And, meanwhile, the fatal habit of having a newspaper, the habit of publicity, took root. And, indeed, it may not be amiss to have an instrument ready. The printing press, too, is an unruly member!O
6 At this point Herzen begins the story of his wife, Natalie-his first cousin and, like him, the illegitimate child of a wealthy aristocrat: her solitary and unhappy childhood, their courtship and early married life.
It takes up the last hundred pages of the first volume. They are omitted here-as are the last one hundred and seventy pages of the second volume, about their tragic later married life ( "A Family Drama") -for reasons of theme and space as explained in the Preface. ( D.M.)
M O S C O W,
P E T E R S B U R G
A N D
N O V G O R O D
( 1 8 4 0 - 1 8 4 7 )
Returtl to Moscow
and !Jltellectual Debctte
AT THE BEGINNING of 1 840 We left Vladimir and the poor, narrow River Klyazma. With anxiety and a heavy heart I left the little town where we were married. I foresaw that the same simple, profound intimate life would be no more, and that we should have to furl many of our sails.
Our long, solitary walks outside the town where, lost among the meadows, we felt so keenly the spring in nature and the spring in our hearts, would never come again. . . .
The winter evenings when, sitting side by side, we closed the book and listened to the crunch of sledge-runners and the j ingle of bells, that reminded us of the 3rd of March, 1 838, and our journey of the 9th of May1 would never come again. . . .
They would never come again!
In how many keys and for how many ages men have known and repeated that 'The May of life blossoms once and never again,'2 and yet the June of mature age with i ts hard, harvesttime work, with its stony roads, catches a man unawares. Youth, all unheeding, floats along in a sort of algebra of ideas, emotions and yearnings, is little interested in the particular, little touched by it; and then comes love, the unknown quantity found ; all i s concentrated o n one person, through whom everything passes, in whom the universal becomes dear, in whom the elegant becomes beautiful; then, too, the young are untouched by the external, they are given to each other, and about them let no grass grow!
But it does grow, together with the nettles and the thistles, and sooner or later they begin to sting or hook on to you.
We knew that we could not take Vladimir with us, but still we thought that our May was not yet over. I even fancied that in going back to Moscow I was going back once more to my student days. All the surroundings helped to maintain the illusion. The same house, the same furniture-here was the room where Ogarev and I, shut in together, used to conspire two paces away from the Senator and my father, and here was my father him-1 The dates of H.'s meeting in Moscow with his cousin Natalie, during H.'s secret visit, and of their arrival and marriage in Vladimir. (A.S.) 2 From Schiller's poem 'Resignation.' (A.S.)
229
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self, grown older and more bent, but just as ready to scold me for coming home late. 'Who i s lecturing tomorrow? When is the rehearsal? I am going from the university to Ogarev's . . . .' I t was 1833 over again!
Ogarcv \vas actually there.
He had received permission to go to Moscow a fe\v months before me. Again his house became a centre where old and new friends met. And although the old unity was no more, he was surrounded by all the nice people.
Ogarev, as I have had occasion to observe already, was endowed with a peculiar magnetism, a feminine quality of attraction. For no apparent reason others are drawn to such people and cling to them ; they warm, unite, and soothe them, they are like an open table at \vhich everyone sits down, renews his powers, rests, grows calmer and more stout-hearted, and goes away a friend.
His acquaintances swallowed up a g1·eat deal of his time; he suffered from this at times, but he kept his door open, and met e\·eryon<' \\·ith his gentle smile. Many people thought it a great weakness. Yes, time was lost and wasted, but love was gained, not only of intimate friends, but of outsiders, of the weak: and that is worth as much as read ing and other interests.
I have never been able to understand cleady how it is that people like Ogari;v can be accused of idleness. The standards of the factory and the workhouse hardly apply here. I remember that in our student days Vadim and I were once sitting over a glass of Rhine wine when he became more and more gloomy, and suddPnly \vith tPars in his eyes, repeated the words of Don Carlo sa ( \Vho quoted them from Julius Caesar) : 'Twenty-three and nothing done for immortality ! ' This so mortified him that he brought his open hand down with all his might on the green wine-glass and cu t it badly. All that is so, but neither Caesar nor Don Carlos and Posa. nor Vadim and I explained why we must do sonwthing for immortality. There is work and it has to be done. and is it to be don<' for the sake of the work, or for the sake of being r<'mcmben·d bv mankind?
All that is somewhat ob<;cure: and what is work?
vVork. business.� . . . Officials recognisl' as such only civil and criminal affairs: thl' mf'rchant regards as work nothing but commPrCI' : mil itarv Inl'll call it their \York to strut about like
:l I n Srhilll'r's play of that n;1 nu•. Act II. sc<'n<' 2. ( A .S.)
·l Engl ish in till' original. ( Tr.)
Moscow, Petersburg and Nougorod
23 1
cranes and to be armed from head to foot in time of peace. To my thinking, to serve as the link, as the centre of a whole circle of people, is a very great work, especially in a society both disunited and fettered. No one has reproached me for idleness, a nd many people have liked some of the things I have done ; but do they know how much of all that I have done has been the reflection of our talks, our arguments, the nights we spent idly strolling about the streets and fields, or still more idly sitting over a glass of wine?
The circle of young people that formed itself round Ogarev was not our old circle. Only two of his old friends, besides ourselves, were in it. Tone, interests, pursuits, all had changed. Stankevich's friends took the lead in it; Bakunin and Belinsky stood at their head, each with a volume of Hegel's philosophy in his hand, and each filled with the youthful intolerance inseparable from vital, passionate convictions.
Stankevich, a lso one of the idle people who accomplish nothing, was the first disciple of Hegel in the circle of young people in Moscow. He had made a profound study of German philosophy, which appealed to his aesthetic sense: endov1;ed with exceptional abilities, he drew a large circle of friends into his favourite pursuit. Thi s circle was extremely remarkable: from it came a rrgular legion of savants, \'\Titers and professors, among whom were Belinsky, Bakunin and Granovsky.