Now, when he reflected on his growing boys, he observed how close their maturation processes were to the metamorphosis that insects undergo.
Small babies with unformed minds, human larvae, devour whatever food comes their way—they suck, munch, and swallow ideas and impressions at random, and then pupate; and within their cocoons everything falls into place in the required order—reflexes are developed and refined, skills are learned, initial impressions of the world are mastered. But how many cocoons perish without reaching the final phase of growth, never bursting the seams and releasing the butterfly within? Anima, anima, little soul … colorful and airborne, a short-lived marvel. And how many of them remain larvae until their very death, never realizing that their maturity has eluded them.
Vygotsky discussed the differences between the process of habit-formation and the unfolding of interests. But Victor Yulievich saw the picture otherwise—he observed in his pupils the unfolding of wings, and the meanings and designs imprinted on them. But why did some, like insects with a full cycle of development, undergo metamorphosis, while others did not?
Victor Yulievich sensed almost physically these moments when the horny covering of the chrysalis bursts apart. He heard the flutter and rustle of wings, and was filled with happiness, like a midwife attending a birth.
But for some reason this metamorphosis didn’t occur in all of his pupils, or even most of them, but rather in the minority. What was the essence of this process? The awakening of a moral sensibility? Yes, of course. But why did it happen in some, and not in others? Is there some kind of mysterious module of transition: a ritual, or rite? Or perhaps Homo sapiens, rational man, also undergoes a phenomenon similar to neoteny, which is observed in worms, insects, and amphibians—when the ability to reproduce appears not in mature specimens, but already in the larval stages? And then the immature organism spawns analogous larvae, which will in their turn never mature.
“Naturally, this is only a metaphor. I understand that my adolescents are, physiologically, full-grown beings. Imagos, so to speak,” he said for Kolesnik’s benefit. But Kolesnik grasped the idea at once and needed no interpretations.
Kolesnik raised his thick, arched eyebrows, and drawing out his Rs, spoke with feigned amazement.
“Well, Mr. Littérateur, you’ve certainly grown wiser during the last five-year plan. But can you provide a definition of the imago, the ‘mature’ person? What are the criteria for ‘maturity’?”
Victor Yulievich thought about it. “Not simply the ability to reproduce. Responsibility for one’s actions, perhaps? Independence? A degree of self-awareness?”
“Those are qualitative criteria, not quantitative,” Kolesnik said, jabbing him with his finger. “Look what you end up with: initiation—some indeterminate thing—and responsibility—how do you measure it? So, according to you, the human larva becomes an imago as the result of some process of initiation?”
Victor Yulievich pressed on. “You admit, Mishka, that we live in a society of larvae—immature human beings, adolescents disguised as adults?”
“There is something to that. I’ll think about it,” Kolesnik said. “The question you pose is purely anthropological, and modern anthropology is in a period of stagnation, which is a problem. But, indeed, some element of neoteny can be observed.”
* * *
Victor Yulievich combed through the pages of a stack of books. He was searching for the coming-of-age ritual he had in mind.
He found descriptions of all manner of rituals—those connected with sexual maturity, with a change in social status, with entering a select community of warriors, shamans, or wizards. He kept looking for something that touched upon the moment when the wildness and rudeness of youth underwent an instantaneous transformation into a cultured state, into mature adult existence. Of course, one could consider the graduation ceremony of European universities, when the newly educated youth are swathed in robes and silly hats, to be this kind of rite of passage. But weren’t they the very people—doctors, psychologists, and engineers—who devised that most rational system of enslavement and extermination of human beings, the Third Reich? The volume of knowledge digested did not guarantee moral maturity. No, that wasn’t the answer, either.
Although his reading failed to provide direct answers, it was fruitful nonetheless. He learned to discern the outlines of ancient rites and rituals distorted beyond recognition, watered down or taken to extremes, in the rules and customs of contemporary Soviet life. Even the induction of Pioneers into the fold, accompanied by oaths and a change of attire, was a parody of some sort of ancient initiation rite. True, these were not the new white robes of the ancient Christians, not the aprons of the Masonic order, but a simple red kerchief tied around the neck. Still, the connection was not far to seek.
When he had come to the bottom of his small mountain of books, he turned again to the Russian classics—the source of authority he trusted implicitly. He reread Tolstoy’s Childhood. Boyhood. Youth, Herzen’s My Life and Thoughts, and Aksakov’s The Childhood Years of Grandson Bagrov. To these he added Kropotkin’s Notes of a Revolutionary and Maxim Gorky’s trilogy, which already fell outside the bounds of Russian literature’s Golden Age, and describe the sense of injury in the childish psyche at the absolute injustice and cruelty of the world, and how this can awaken compassion and empathy.
He led his boys down the paths of little Nikolay Irteniev, Peter Kropotkin, Sasha Herzen, even Alesha Peshkov—through orphanhood, humiliation, cruelty, and loneliness, to their acceptance of things that he himself considered absolutely basic: the sense of good and evil, and the understanding that love is the supreme value.
His boys responded to his call, and learned to identify important episodes in the books on their own—Garin’s descriptions of Tema descending into the darkness of a slimy well, as though into the underworld, to rescue the dog that had fallen down it; the triumph over fear; the cat, killed by the house caretaker before the very eyes of Alesha Peshkov; and on, and on … The execution of the Decembrists, which so deeply affected Sasha Herzen. Some kind of change was under way. They were becoming more conscious and conscientious—or did it just seem so?
Victor Yulievich himself, who had to remain within the confines of the school curriculum, continually sought what he termed a “strategy of awakening.”
To this end, he gave everything he had. Those were, in essence, simple things—honor, fairness and justice, contempt for baseness and greed. He grounded them in what he considered the absolute pinnacle of classical Russian literature—he opened the door to the room, in Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter, where the fifteen-year-old adolescent, seduced by the breadth and quality of paper that had been used for a geography map, affixed a bast tail to the Cape of Good Hope while Monsieur Beaupré slept his drunken slumber, and his aristocratic father sent the worthless teacher packing, to the delight of the boy’s servant, the peasant Savelich.
And Petrusha Grinev, enduring the cruelest forms of torture, preserved his honor and dignity, which became more valuable to him than life.
Still, there was one strange feature in this whole magnificent body of literature: it was all written by men, about boys. For boys. It was all about honor, about bravery, about duty. As though Russian childhood were solely a male affair. And what about the childhood of girls? What a paltry role they played! Natasha Rostova dances and sings exquisitely, Kitty can skate, Masha Mironova fends off the unwanted advances of a scoundrel. All the young cousins and their girlfriends, with whom the boys are so smitten, are admired for their curls and frills. All the rest are hapless victims: from Anna Karenina and Katyusha Maslova to Sonya Marmeladova. Very curious. What is their story? Are they only the objects of male interest? Where is their childhood? Do they undergo the same inner transformation that boys experience? Can it be just a mere function of physiology? Of biology?