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Kireyevsky began publishing his excellent journal under the title of The European; no better proof than these titles could be found to show that at first the difference was only between shades of opinion and not between parties.
Belinsky's articles were awaited with feverish expectation by the young people in Moscow and Petersburg from the 25th of every month. Half a dozen times the students would call in at the coffee-houses to ask whether Notes of the Fatherland had been receive':�.; the heavy volume was snatched from hand to hand. 'Is there an article by Belinsky?' 'Yes,' and it was devoured with feverish interest, with argument . . . and three or four cherished convictions and reputations were no more.
Sokobelev, the governor of the Peter-Paul fortress, might well say in jest to Belinsky \vhen he met him on the Nevsky Prospect:
'When are you coming to us? I have a nice warm little cell all ready that I am keeping for you.'
I have spoken in another book of Belinsky's development and of his literary activity; here I will only say a few words about the man himself.
Belinsky was very shy and quite lost his head in an unfamiliar or very numerous company; he knew this and did the most absurd things in his desire to conceal i t. Ketscher tried to persuade him to go to visit a lady; the nearer they came to her house the gloomier Belinsky became; he kept asking whether they could not go another day, and talked of having a head-ache.
Ketscher, who knew him, would accept no evasions. When they arrived Belinsky set off running as soon as he got out of the sledge, but Ketscher caught him by the overcoat and led him to be introduced to the lady.
He sometimes put in an appearance at Prince Ocloyevsky's literary-diplomatic evenings. At these there were crowds of people who had nothing in common except a certain fear of and aversion from each other: clerks from the embassies and Sakharov the archaPologist, pain tPrs and A. iVIPyendorf, seVf•ral councillors of state of the cultured sort, Ioakinth Bichurinl3 from Pekin, people who were half gendarmes and half literary men, others who were wholly gendarmes and not at all literary men. The hostess concealed her affliction at her husband's vulgar tastes, and gave way to them much as Louis-Philippe at the beginning 1 3 Ioakinlh Birhurin ( 1 i77- 1 853 ) . a monk and at one lime an archimand rite, head of the Orthodox i\Iission to Pekin, and later a translator from the Chinese in the i\Iinistry of Foreign Affairs. (Tr.)
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of his reign indulged his electors by inviting to the balls at the Tuileries whole rez-de-chaussee of suspender-craftsmen, chandlers, shoe-makers, and other worthy citizens.
Belinsky was utterly lost at these evenings, between a Saxon ambassador who did not understand a word of Russian and an official of the Third Division who understood even words that were not uttered. He was usually a iling for two or three days afterwards and cursed the man who had persuaded him to go.
One Saturday, since it was New Year's Eve, Odoyevsky took it into his head to mix a punch en petit comite when the principal guests had dispersed. Belinsky would certainly have gone away, but he was prevented by a barricade of furniture ; he was somehow stuck in a corner and a little table was set before him with wine and glasses on it; Zhukovsky in the white trousers of his uniform, with gold lace on them, sat down obliquely opposite him. Belinsky stood it for a long time but, seeing no chance of his lot improving, he began moving the table a little; the table yielded at first, but then lurched over and crashed to the floor, while the bottle of Bordeaux very deliberately began to empty itself over Zhukovsky. He jumped up, and the red wine trickled down his trousers; there was an uproar: one servant rushed up with a napkin to daub the wine on to the other parts of the trousers, and another picked up the broken wine-glasses . . . while this hubbub was g-oing on Belinsky disappeared and, near to death as he was, ran home on foot.
Dear Belinsky! for what a long time he was angry and upset at such incidents, with what horror he used to recall them, walking up and down the room and shaking his head without the trace of a smile!
But in that shy man, that frail body, there dwelt a mighty spirit, the spirit of a gladiator! Yes, he was a powerful fighter!
he could not preach or lecture; what he needed was a quarrel. If he met with no objection, if he was not stirred to irritatjon, he did not speak well, but when he felt stung, when his cherished convictions were called in qtwstion, whPn dw musdPs of his cheeks began to quiver and his voice to burst out, then he was worth seeing; he pounced upon his opponent like a panther, he tore him to pieces, made him a ridiculous, a piteous object, and incidentally developed his own thought, with unusual power and poetry. The dispute would often end in blood, which flowed from the sick man's throat; pale, gasping, with his eyes fixed on the man with whom he was speaking, he would lift his handkerchief to his mouth with shaking hand and stop, deeply mortified,
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crushed by his physical weakness. How I loved and how I pitied him at those moments!
Persecuted financially by the sharks of literature, morally persecuted by the censorship, surrounded in Petersburg by people for whom he had little sympathy, and consumed by a disease to which the Baltic climate was fatal, he became more and more irritable. He shunned outsiders, was farouche, and sometimes spent weeks together in melancholy inactivity. Then the publishers sent note after note demanding copy, and the enslaved writer, grinding his teeth, took up his pen and wrote the venomous articles quivering with indignation, the indictments which so impressed their readers.
Often, utterly exhausted, he would come to us to rest, and lie on the floor with our two-year-old child ; he would play with him for hours together. While we were only the three of us things went swimmingly, but if there came a ring at the bell, a spasmodic grimace passed over his face and he would look about him uneasily, trying to find his hat; then, with the weakness of a Slav, he would often remain. Here one word, a remark that was not to his liking, would lead to the most extraordinary scenes and arguments. . . .
Once he went in Holy Week to dine with a literary man, and Lenten dishes were served.
'Is it long,' he asked, 'since you became so devout?'
'We eat Lenten fare,' answered the literary gentleman, 'simply and solely for the sake of the servants.'
'For the sake of the servants,' said Belinsky, and he turned pale. 'For the sake of the servants,' he repeated, and flung down his dinner napkin. 'Where are your servants? I'll tell them that they are deceived. Any open vice is better and more humane than this contempt for the weak and uneducated, this hypocrisy in support of ignorance. And do you imagine that you are free people? You are on the same level as all the tsars and priests and slave-owners. Good-bye. I don't eat Lenten fare for the edification of others; I have no servants!'
Among the Russians who might be classified as inveterate Germans, there was one, a magister of our university, who had lately arrived from Berlin; he was a good-natured man in darkblue spectacles, stiff and decorous; he had come to a standstill for ever after upsetting and enfeebling his faculties with philosophy and philology. A doctrinaire and something of a pedant, he was fond of holding forth in edifying style. On one occasion, at a literary evening in the house of the novelist who kept the fasts for the sake of his servants, the magister was preaching some sort