of men, because they alone embodied moments of insight into some
portion of the everlasting pattern which lies beyond the ftux of the
appearances. Stankevich believed (as many have believed, particularly
after some great fiasco in the life of their society, in this case perhaps
the failure of the Decembrist revolution of 1 825) that in the place of
social reforms, which merely affected the outer texture of life, men
should seek rather to reform themselves within, and everything else
would be added unto them: the kingdom of heaven-the Hegelian
self-transcending Spirit-lies within. Salvation comes from individual
self-regeneration, and to achieve truth, reality, happiness, men must
learn from those who truly know : the philosophers, the poets, the
sages. Kant, Hegel, H�mer, Shakespeare, Goethe were harmonious
spirits, saints and sages who saw what the multitude would never see.
Study, endless study alone could afford a glimpse into their Elysian
world, the sole reality in which the broken fragments came together
again into their original unity. Only those who could attain to this
beatific vision were wise and good and free. To pursue material values
-social refonns or political goals of any kind�was to pursue phantoms,
to court broken hopes, frustration and misery.
For anyone who was young and idealistic in Russia between 1 830
and 1 848, or simply human enough to be depressed by the social
conditions of the country, it was comforting to be told that the
appalling evils of Russian life-the ignorance and poverty of the serfs,
the illiteracy and hypocrisy of the clergy, the corruption, inefficiency,
brutality, arbitrariness of the governing class, the pettiness, sycophancy,
and inhumanity of the merchants-that the entire barbarous system,
according to the sages of the west, was a mere bubble upon the surface
of life. It was all ultimately unimportant, the inevitable attribute of
the world of appearances which, seen from a superior vantage point,
147.
G E R M AN ROMANT I C I S M
did not disturb the deeper harmony. Musical images are frequent in
the metaphysics of this time. You were told that if you simply listened
to the isolated notes of a given musical instrument you might find
them ugly and meaningless and without purpose; but if you understood the entire work, if you listened to the orchestra as a whole, you would see that these apparently arbitrary sounds conspired with other
sounds to form a harmonious whole which satisfied your craving for
truth and beauty. This is a kind of translation into aesthetic terms of
the scientific method of explanation of an earlier time. Spinoza-and
some among the rationalists of the eighteenth century-had taught
that if you could understand the pattern of the universe (some said
by metaphysical intuition, others by perceiving a mathematical or
mechanical order) then you would cease to kick against the pricks,
for you would realise that whatever was real was necessarily what
and when and where it was, part of the rational order of the harmony
of the cosmos. And if you saw this you became reconciled and achieved
inner peace: for you could no longer, as a rational human being, rebel
in an arbitrary and capricious fashion against a logically necessary
order.
The transposition of this into aesthetic terms is the dominant
factor of the Gennan romantic movement. Instead of talking about
necessary connections of a scientific kind, or oflogical or mathematical
reasoning to be employed in the unravelling of these mysteries, you
are invited to use a new kind of logic which unfolds to you the
beauty of a picture, the depth of a piece of music, the truth of a
literary masterpiece. If you conceive of life as the artistic creation of
some cosmic divinity, and of the world as the progressive revelation
of a work of art-if, in short, you are converted from a seientific to
a mystical or 'transcendental' view of life and history, you may well
experience a sense of liberation. Previously you were the victim of
unexplained chaos, which rendered you indignant and unhappy, a
prisoner in a system which you vainly tried to reform and correct,
with the result that you only suffered failure and defeat. But now you
..cquired a sense of yourself willingly and eagerly participating in the
cosmic enterprise : whatever befeil necessarily fulfilled the universal,
.md thereby your own personal, design. You were wise, haFPY• anci
:ree : for you were at one with tile purposes of the universe.
Under the conditions ofiiterary censorship then prevalent in Russia.
where it was difficult to give open expression to political ami sociai
ideas, where literature was the ';ln)y vehicle in which �uch ideas
'43
R U S S IAN THINKERS
could, however cryptically, be conveyed, a programme which invited
you to ignore the repulsive (and, after the fate of the Decembrists,
perilous) political scene, and concentrate upon personal-moral,
literary, artistic-self-improvement, offered great comfort to people
who did not wish to suffer too much. Stankevich believed in Hegel
deeply and sincerely, and preached his quietist sermons with an
eloquence which sprang from a pure and sensitive heart and an unswerving faith which never left him. Such doubts as he had, he stilled within himself; and remained until his early end an unworldly saint
in whose presence his friends felt a sense of spiritual peace which
flowed from the beauty of his singularly unbroken personality, and
the feminine delicacy and charm with which he used to bind his
gentle spell upon them. This influence cea8ed with his death : he left
a few graceful, faded poems, a handful of fragmentary essays, and a
bundle of letters to his friends and to various German philosophers;
among them moving avowals to the most admired of his friends, a
young playwright and professor in Berlin in whom he discerned
something akin to genius, a disciple of Hegel whose very name is
now justly forgotten. From this scanty material it is scarcely possible
to reconstruct the personality of this leader of Russian Idealism.
His most gifted and impressionable disciple was a man of very
different cast, Mikhail Bakunin, at this time an amateur philosopher,
and already notorious for his turbulent and despotic character.
Bakunin had, by the late I 8Jos, resigned his commission in the army
and was living in Moscow largely by his wits. Endowed with an
exceptional capacity for absorbing other people's doctrines, he expounded them with fervour and enthusiasm as though they were his own, and in the course of this changed them somewhat, making them,
as a rule, simpler, clearer, cruder, and at times more convincing.
Bakunin had a considerable element of cynicism in his character, and
cared little what the exact effect of his sermons might be on his
friends-provided only that it was powerful enough; he did not ask
whether they excited or demoralised them, or ruined their lives, or